November 17, 2025 • 34 mins
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--
Even if your tracker or workout/nutrition app logs everything, it still can’t tell you WHAT to do when progress stalls.
We dig into the hidden gap sabotaging results... the missing interpretation layer... and show how to turn raw data into smart, timely decisions that finally help you get unstuck.
If you’ve hit a wall with MyFitnessPal, MacroFactor, or your favorite lifting app, this conversation explains why the numbers look fine while your body says otherwise.
You’ll hear how midlife physiology changes the rules over 40, why plateaus are often upstream issues like sleep debt or weekend habits, and how qualitative signals like training effort, hunger, and mood complete the picture missed by most algorithms.
Learn how a coaching-style layer can synthesize your logs, photos, and health data into clear actions: training load, rest and recovery, protein and carbs, or a weekend plan that prevents backslides.
The goal isn’t more tracking. It’s better decisions from the tracking you already do, so you can build muscle, lose fat, and sustain results with less guesswork and more confidence.
Timestamps
0:00 - Why tracking alone isn't enough for building muscle over 40
2:18 - The missing interpretation gap that keeps you stuck
5:30 - What fitness apps actually do well (and their limitations)
9:10 - When tracking algorithms miss the root cause of your plateau
14:06 - Why recovery capacity matters more in your 40s and 50s
18:56 - How identity and behavior change drive sustainable results
22:56 - Sleep and recovery optimization for strength training
25:06 - Making personalized coaching accessible and affordable
28:56 - How adaptive training decisions improve muscle-building progress
32:16 - Analyzing meal patterns beyond calories and macros for better body composition
📱 Get Fitness Lab - Philip’s science-based AI app for fat loss, muscle building, and strength training for people over 40. It adapts to your nutrition, recovery, and training to improve body composition without guesswork.
🎓 Try Physique University - Evidence-based nutrition coaching and strength training to help you lose fat, build muscle, and master your metabolism with support and accountability (free custom nutrition plan with code FREEPLAN).
👥 Join our Facebook community - Free fat loss, muscle building, and body recomposition strategies for adults over 40 who want practical, science-backed fitness guidance.
👋 Ask a question or find Philip Pape on Instagram
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Philip Pape (00:01):
If I were to guess, you've probably tried many
fitness, nutrition, and workoutapps.
For a while, you use them andthey help you make progress.
You might track your food, youfollow workouts, and then
something happens.
The scale stops, your liftsstop, and the app can't really
respond to those.
What about all the obstaclesalong the way?
What is missing is often thatinterpretation layer.
(00:25):
The coaching that takes yourdata and tells you what to do
next for your specificsituation.
Today we're gonna break downwhy most fitness apps today fail
in doing the thing you reallyneed, and what actually works
without having to hire a coach.
Welcome to Wits and Weights,the show that helps you build a
(00:53):
strong, healthy physique usingevidence, engineering, and
efficiency.
I'm your host, certifiednutrition coach, Philip Pape,
and today we're gonna look atfitness apps in general, how
they're designed today, the oneson your phone for nutrition,
for workouts, uh maybe even someof the new lifestyle type apps,
and why they're not giving youwhat you need.
(01:14):
I talk to people every day,every week, who tell me they're
using this app or that app.
It might be a food tracker likemy FitnessPal chronometer.
Of course, I will suggestupgrades like Macro Factor along
the way, or some of thestrength and workout apps that I
like, like Boost Camp.
And a lot of folks using theseapps, they listen to the show,
they understand principles likeprogressive overload, they know
they have to get enough protein,they know they want to track
(01:37):
their numbers and kind of seehow things change, but they're
still stuck in some way.
And when I ask them, hey, yousaid you're using an app, you're
following some sort of system.
How do you know what to do whenthis happens?
How do you know what to do whenyou hit a plateau of some kind,
whether it is in your body fator your lifts or food issues
like emotional eating, you know,just the holidays coming up?
(01:59):
The answer is always the same.
The app doesn't really tell methat, right?
The app isn't smart enough todo that.
Maybe I go ask ChatGPT orsomething, or maybe I hire a
coach or work with a coach orcome into the Facebook group,
right?
In other words, we usually seekout some extra intelligence,
human connection, a thirdperson, a third-party
perspective, things like that,rather than something generic
(02:21):
because this is about us asindividuals.
And so that's the problem we'regonna solve today.
And tomorrow, Tuesday, November18th, I am launching something
that fixes this exact gap.
It's the whole reason that I uhdesigned what's coming out
tomorrow.
Look, it's an app.
It is an app, but it'scompletely different than
everything else in the space.
Today I want to show you whythe gap exists in the first
(02:43):
place.
So you understand why I spentall the time and effort over the
past several months puttingthis together for you.
Before we get into it, if youwant early access to the app
that I'm launching tomorrow,join my email list at
witsandwaits.com slash email.
There's a link in the shownotes as well.
And if you're already on thelist, you're already getting
this information.
If you're not on the list yet,join, reply, and say, hey, I
(03:08):
want the secret link to the app.
All right, and I will get it toyou.
And you can get access to itright now, including the Black
Friday pricing before anyoneelse gets it when it launches
tomorrow.
All right, let's get into ittoday and start with what most
fitness apps actually do quitewell.
And the first one is thatthey're good at tracking data.
They're really good at this.
(03:29):
Whether it is MyFitnessPal,Chronometer, MacroFactor, Boost
Camp, Strong, any of these, theywill help you log the data.
And in some cases, they willuse that with an algorithm or
some sort of calculation, right?
Like we know MyFitnessPaldoesn't really do much of
anything other than let you log,but at least it shows you what
you ate.
My macrofactor will take thatdata along with your weight and
(03:52):
say, okay, here's yourexpenditure, therefore we can
calculate your targets forgaining or losing weight, right?
So it takes it to that nextlevel, which is very impressive
that they can do that.
I really do.
You guys know I'm a big fan ofMacroFactor for that reason.
You take a workout logger likeBoostcamp and it will say, hey,
here are your PRs, here's whatyou did last time, and now you
can figure out what I need to dothis time.
(04:14):
And sometimes there's a littlebit extra intelligence, like a
percent of your max or somethinglike that.
And at the end of the day,tracking something that you care
about is foundational.
It's a first principle.
You can't manage what you don'tmeasure.
So I'm never gonna say don'ttrack.
Absolutely not.
Tracking is invaluable.
But tracking is only the halfthe equation, and that's if you
(04:36):
even know what to track, right?
Because there are a lot ofthings.
The other half, the part thatdrives the result is how do you
interpret that data and takeaction based on it, right?
What does the data mean?
What should you do with it?
And what's interesting is inphysique university, we've
covered this multiple times whenit comes to your macrofactor
data or however you're trackingyour data, of as much as as much
(04:58):
of that you have in your app oryour notebook or whatever,
things happen that where thedata doesn't seem to make sense,
right?
Like people say, why is mymetabolism dropping?
And there's 20 possiblereasons.
I don't know until I look atit.
And then I'm gonna ask you 10more questions, right?
I'm gonna say, okay, are yousleeping enough?
How's your stress?
What did you do?
You know, did you eat a bunchof salt and Chinese food?
(05:21):
Right?
Like there's a lot of thesequestions.
And as good as some of theseapps are, like Macrofactor, it
doesn't have that level ofintelligence.
Maybe it will one day, but itdoesn't today.
And that's where pretty muchevery app falls short today.
Even the AI apps, like the AIFitness apps, I'll say that
they're very narrow in scope.
You know, they're gettingbetter, they they attack like
one small problem, but notnecessarily the full context.
(05:42):
So that's what we're gonna getto today.
Just bear with me.
So going back to this wholedata thing, if again, let's say
you're using MacroFactor and itgives you a target, if you hit
the target consistently, you areprobably going to get the
result you want, at leastinitially, or part of that
result.
But what's gonna happen is inreality, things change.
(06:04):
Maybe you walk less, maybe youget injured, maybe you are
stressed out of your mind, andnow your expenditure drops.
But the app can't predict that.
It doesn't have a crystal ball,right?
So it's gonna happen, and thenall of a sudden you don't quite
get the result you thought.
And the app's like, well, youdidn't get the results, but but
here's what's happening, sowe're gonna keep adjusting you.
So it's it's reactive, and tobe fair, it's very quickly
(06:24):
reactive, but it's stillreactive.
What if the problem reallyisn't your energy balance,
though?
At the end of the day, it is,but there's a root cause that's
upstream.
What if your protein's beeninconsistent?
What if your step count droppedand maybe you're not even aware
of it?
Maybe you're in a fat lossphase, you're moving a lot less
than you thought.
What if your sleep's beenterrible and you're
underrecovered and that'saffecting a lot of other things?
(06:47):
A tracker as it exists today isnot going to tell you that.
It's going to show the numbersand try to crunch some
algorithms to give you a littlemore to work from, but not
nearly as much as you want,which is why most people need
some level of accountability orcoaching or partnership or, you
know, a Facebook group or acommunity, somebody else to
(07:08):
connect with them to help lookat that data, not just that
data, but all the data, right?
Yeah, it's your weight trend,it's your training feedback,
your recovery signals, yourbiofeedback in general, your
body measurements, yournutrition patterns, what does
your food look like?
What's the quality of food?
What's the balance, the mealtiming, the supplementation,
right?
I can go on and on.
You guys are like overwhelmed.
(07:28):
I know all this.
I know it's like a huge list ofthe fitness pillars that we
have to deal with.
But at the end of the day, likefor me as a coach, when
somebody pays me a bunch ofmoney every month to personally
look at their data line by lineand understand what's going on,
that's what I'm doing.
I'm trying to figure out, likea detective, here's what's
happening, here's what'schanging, here's what you have
to do to address.
Now, many of you have done thison your own and done it fairly
(07:50):
successfully.
There is a whole spectrum.
Some of you do it on your ownsuccessfully because maybe there
isn't too much happening.
Others are just you're stressedout of your mind because you
know you're in your 40s, there'sperimenopause, the hormones are
changing, you've got more bellyfat, you're doing what you did
before, but it's not workinganymore.
You're doing everything thatthe influencers and the
podcasters say and it's notworking.
You're tracking all the apps.
(08:11):
Does this sound familiar?
Right?
Does this sound familiar?
And I'm sick of it, frankly.
I'm sick of I love helpingpeople.
I'm sick of people notsucceeding even when they put in
the effort and they're smartand they're listening and
they're taking action andthey're changing their
behaviors, right?
And so the next thing I want totalk about here is why this
(08:33):
does matter even more for thoseof us that are older, right?
As you get into your 40s and50s, I think that's kind of the
sweet spot in someone's lifewhere they're past the point
where they can kind of doanything they want and get away
with it.
And they're right in the pointwhere life gets more stressful.
You have more obligations, youhave family, you have uh your
career, right?
Your body is uh starting todegrade a little bit, you're
(08:56):
starting to lose that musclemass, the hormones are starting
to decline.
There is a reason that this isthis midlife transition is so
challenging for so many of you,right?
I get it.
Now, in your 60s and 70s, canit still be challenging?
Of course.
But I'm I want to hit on whenthis stuff starts so that we can
understand what to do.
Now, maybe in your 30s youstart to have issues as well.
(09:17):
It doesn't matter, it's not somuch the number as kind of the
general idea here, right?
Your body doesn't respond theway it did in your 20s.
You had your hormones raging,you had everything going for
you, there was no degradation,no aging that had occurred
really in your body at thatpoint.
Your ability to recover wassuper high, your hormones were
super good, well balanced, yourlife stress was less, right?
All of that.
(09:38):
And so if you just take theprinciples and a plan and then
you try to apply it to you,that's a good start.
But immediately on day two, theplan starts to fall apart
because of these issues.
And it might have to do withthe training split, the training
volume, the way you're tryingto progress, your equipment,
what you did last night, yourjoints are achy, you're
(10:01):
exhausted every session.
What do I do for that?
What do I do when I have anenergy crash in the afternoon
and I can't help but raid thefreezer for ice cream, you know,
(10:38):
or muffins or whatever yourthing is, right?
So again, if you're just tryingto take a plan and track and
then go, you might be frustratedbecause of these things.
You might start strong, makesome progress, and then burn
out.
Now, some of this has to dowith misunderstanding of
behavior change and habitformation, the idea that we're
(10:59):
trying to go all out, or theidea that we're trying to create
a so-called quote-unquote habitof working out, when really
that's not the habit.
The habit is the littleautomated things that tie to
your identity as a person whojust, yeah, works out and
trains.
There's a process to get there,right?
So it's not because of a lackof, I'll say willpower or
(11:22):
discipline, although disciplinedepends on how you define
discipline, right?
There's an element ofdiscipline that actually is uh
valid in terms of you've builtup habits, you've changed your
identity, you just do the thing.
There is that element ofdiscipline.
But I'm thinking more of likejust do it type discipline,
right?
It's not because you're tooold.
No, no, no.
Okay.
I've worked with people intheir 70s and 80s who are just
(11:44):
killing it, they're crushing it.
It's fine.
Their body responds, the humanbody responds pretty much till
the day you die to any of thisstuff at different levels, okay?
It's because the system they'reusing doesn't account for their
physiology and their lifecircumstances.
Now, I've been hammering thismessage since the beginning on
the show, but in the past, Ihammered it in the context of
(12:05):
hey, maybe you need to work witha coach or be in a community or
get a training partner orsomeone else that can help you
with this, or at least reallylearn these skills and this
knowledge, which for a lot ofyou, it's it's overwhelming.
It's like, I don't want to be anutrition expert, you know, I
want to listen to a podcast orwork with a coach and kind of be
told what to do, or at leastlearn what to do for me.
(12:27):
So it's scoped down, right?
So the general principle hereis having something that adapts,
that evolves, that is dynamicwith you, that says, hey, your
sleep was terrible last night.
Let's think about what thatmeans today for, I don't know,
training intensity orcapability, what it means for
(12:48):
your emotions around food todaybecause you're tired.
You know, if your protein hasbeen consistently low for three
days, even though you'veaveraged well for the past two
weeks, but all of a sudden it'sdropped.
What's going on?
What strategies do we do to fixthat?
Is this a deviation from yourhabits that we want to look at?
Right.
So it gets kind of nuanced.
(13:08):
And that's what coaching does.
That's but a lot of peoplecan't hire a coach or afford a
coach.
You know, this is why over theyears I've put together
different levels like physiqueuniversity, which is super
affordable, but even some peoplecan't afford that.
I get it.
It's super affordable, but it'smore self-motivated, even
though we have education, wehave community accountability,
(13:29):
right?
We do have some of that inthere for sure.
We have real human coaches likemyself and Carol who can you
can tag and talk to.
And I think that's really,really important.
And a lot of people need thatand want that.
But when we talk about doing ityourself or using an app or
trying to scale this so it'ssuper accessible to as many
people as possible in the world,yourself included, because you
may not want to deal withcoaches and paying for coaches
(13:52):
and dealing with all that, thatis what's missing from fitness
apps today.
Okay, that is what's missing.
And we're gonna talk about thatin a second.
I did just talk about recovery,though, as a big piece of what
is what is critical when you'reover 40, right?
We have stimulus, which is theactivity, the training, the
things you're doing, and then wehave the recovery, which is
(14:13):
kind of everything else.
It's super critical.
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All right, let's get back tonow what actually works then if
(16:23):
we want to fill this gap in thespace, get you something that's
really affordable as well,because I'm all about that,
right?
People say, look, I want acoach, I can't afford it.
I want to join a group program,I can't afford it.
Okay, so what's the solutionhere?
Something you can use on yourown, but we can't replicate a
coach, can we?
Right?
Because the obvious answer ishire a coach.
(16:43):
And you're gonna hear coachesgo on podcasts, and at the end
of the day, they want you tohire them.
They want you to pay, pay themfor their time, right?
Which is which can bedefinitely valuable if it's a
good coach.
And you get someone who looksat your data, who interprets it,
who tells you what to do next.
And that works.
That's what I do with privateclients.
And I have clients who they runinto financial difficulty and
they'll say, Look, can you dosomething to work with me so I
(17:06):
can still have that connectionwith you?
I'm like, Yeah, let's let'sreduce the number of calls or
let's, you know, let's justscale something down so that
it's a win-win for both of us,right?
But not everyone can affordone-on-one or group coaching.
And honestly, and this issacrilege, not everyone needs
it.
What everyone does need is away to interpret their results.
(17:27):
The thing that sits on top ofyour data and gives you coaching
level feedback.
Now, that might come from yourown brain, that might come from
listening to a podcast, or we'reall about efficiency here.
It might come from an app thatcan actually do these things,
which is what I'm getting to.
And I know this sounds like onebig sales pitch for the app,
and you know what?
Frankly, it probably is.
(17:48):
But it is because I'm it's apassion project of mine that I
created that I'm using myselfthat I love, and I think you
will too.
But let me show you what thislooks like in practice, okay?
The first thing you need from atraining perspective, your
training has to adapt to whatyou're doing.
Now, if you go back tosomething like starting starting
strength, three sets of five,every session you go up five
(18:08):
pounds.
Now, they don't really meanfive pounds.
If you look into the nuance,they'll say, go up the
appropriate level for how muchyou're adapting and getting
stronger so that you don't missany reps.
But then people are like, well,how much is that?
And if somebody fails the reps,I say, okay, did you go up the
right amount?
Are you resting long enough?
Are you getting enoughrecovery?
It always comes down to thatanyway.
And so even a baseline newbeginner program like Starting
(18:33):
Strength, they're not sayingjust get the three sets of five
done, regardless of everythingelse.
They're saying get it done anddo the other things to support
getting that done.
And if not, if you fail reps,there's something else
happening, right?
So then you're you're like,okay, well, how do I do that?
Well, that's where you have toask questions of yourself or a
(18:55):
coach asks you, how did thatfeel?
Was it easier the same orharder?
Did it feel like a grind?
How are you sleeping?
How are you eating, right?
Are you taking long enough restbetween your sets?
I mean, now if a coach islooking at your data, they'll
know that, right?
And then use that to decide howdo what do we do next time?
Now, in a beginner program likethat, like starting strength,
you would then decide, well,we're still probably gonna go
(19:17):
up, but maybe we're gonna go upa little bit less, right?
As you get more advanced,you're not necessarily going up
in weight every session.
You might be adding reps, youmight be adding sets, you might
be, you know, switching theintensities around and rotating
through rep ranges, all of thosesorts of things, right?
We're not gonna get into thattoday.
The point is you have to makean adaptive decision based on
(19:38):
your recovery and adaptation.
Okay.
And so if you think about reallife, the best time this works
is when you have a trainer andyou have a conversation with
them, right?
Like when I work with trainers,it's either a spreadsheet or a
chat or something, and I'm like,this is how it felt, this is
what I'm doing, blah, blah,blah, blah, blah.
And learn from that qualitativefeedback instead of just the
(19:59):
numbers, because the numbers areonly gonna tell you part of the
situation.
So on the training side, that'swhat you need.
Let's go to the food side,okay?
Now, you guys know I'm a bigfan of tracking calories and
macros.
However, this is gonna, this isgonna seem like a paradigm
shift, but it's all consistent.
What most people need, when Istart working with a client and
(20:19):
they use macro factor, that'slike 1% of the equation.
I'd love to have the data forsure, but even if you didn't
have the data, what would youhave to do?
Or I should put it this way,whether you have the data or
not, what do you end up doingbased on that data?
Well, what you end up doing islooking at the quality of your
food, right?
(20:39):
Are you eating mostly wholefoods that are satiating?
The micronutrients, themacronutrients, is there
sufficient protein?
Are your meals balanced to helpwith appetite, hunger signals,
even blood sugar?
Do you have enough meals?
Is the timing spacedaccordingly to work with your
life?
Is the timing around yourworkouts for protein and carbs
(21:00):
adequate for fueling yourselfand feeling your best?
So, what it gets down to isreally analyzing the patterns of
your meals.
By patterns, I don't just meantiming.
I mean all the informationcontained in how you eat, which
goes far beyond calories andmacros.
Now, if you only did caloriesand macros and tried to hit
(21:21):
those, we've talked about thisbefore, you could hit them with
like Twinkies and pizza andhamburgers and like throw all
that together and somehow hityour macros, but it's not gonna
be a great diet because you'renot gonna be fueled properly,
you're not gonna feel great,your digestion's gonna be awful,
your energy is not gonna begood, and you're gonna be
hungry.
And so it isn't just those, itisn't just hitting your macros,
is it?
(21:42):
Now, we know that hitting yourmacros and calories will cause
you to control your energybalance, but it's only a tiny
piece of the equation.
So, having said all that, whatif a human being, or in this
case AI vision, which has comeso far and is so impressive and
amazing, can look at your foodand just look at one typical
(22:03):
meal a day.
Analyze that food for color,for nutrients, for balance, for
macros, even for calories basedon the volume on the plate, and
ask you some qualitativequestions.
Oh, does that sound familiar?
Yeah, kind of like what we justtalked about with training.
Ask you a few qualitativequestions.
And what if those qualitativequestions changed based on the
situation and how you've beenprogressing?
(22:24):
Like if I were a if I, as acoach, I'm not gonna ask you the
same exact question every time.
I'm gonna probably ask adifferent one based on what's
going on, based on the context,right?
So if your protein's beensolid, let's say you upload a
meal each day, just one meal,and the app's like, is this a
typical meal for you?
Sure, yes.
And it has a lot of protein.
And the app asks you at the endof the night, hey, how many
(22:46):
protein servings did you havetoday, by the way?
Oh, you know, I have five.
And you say that every day andprotein's been good, but then
all of a sudden on the weekend,you're eating a lot more or in a
different way, or you reportless protein.
An intelligent analysis caninfer from that pretty
accurately that something's offon the weekends.
And now we need a differentstrategy, right?
(23:08):
That that's the impressivemind-blowing part about this.
So, guys, I worked a lot of uhon this in terms of
brainstorming and talking withexperts and reviewing some of
the great information out therefrom you know, mass and the
evidence and behavior changeexperts, all of that as I
developed the app.
And so at the end of the day, Isaid, what is the lowest stress
(23:29):
way to actually help you changeyour behaviors when it comes to
eating to build up yourmicronutrients and your
macronutrients, and thenultimately your energy without
having to track calories andmacros.
I know it sounds sacrilegious.
We're not talking aboutintuitive eating, we're still
talking about tracking andanalysis.
But in this case, you uploadone photo a day, the AI then
(23:49):
spots lots of different patternsand gets you feedback.
That is the difference.
Okay.
I also don't think it's likeNoom.
Okay, Noom is I'm not gonna godown that road.
I don't want to compare toother apps like that.
Okay, let's keep going.
So I might do another episodeabout that if you guys want it.
Let me know.
So I've just covered trainingand nutrition.
(24:10):
The third thing that you need,okay, so training and nutrition
are usually separate apps today.
It's rare that those aretogether.
There are a few apps that putthem together, and when they do
that, it's kind of less lesswell designed for both, right?
But that's just two pieces.
Another piece you need iseducation, reminders of the
(24:31):
science and the evidence andwhat works, strategies,
guidance, right?
A lot of the reasons you'reprobably listening to this
podcast, but the problem withthe podcast is it's it's kind of
random.
It's all over the place.
We have over 400 episodes now.
I love sending people specificlinks to the episode that might
work for them, and I'm alwayshappy to do that.
You could also search.
(24:51):
But what if you had a quickbriefing every day in the
morning that was targetedexactly to what you needed that
day, that adapt and evolved withyour progress, that adapt with
what you said your goal was.
For example, as I'm as I'mtesting the app on my end, I'm
trying to work on sleep.
So a lot of the briefings wererelate to sleep.
(25:12):
Now, if all of a sudden mysleep gets locked down and it's
good, the app is actually gonnachange to my next biggest
constraint, my next mostimmediate constraint.
That is as personalized as itgets.
That's again like if you had ahuman coach every day in the
morning who said, Hey, hey,what's the big thing right now I
can help you with?
But it's even more powerfulthan that because the AI knows
(25:32):
everything going on, the data.
It has your Apple Health data,it has all anyway.
I don't want to get into thefeatures of my app specifically,
even though I'm doing thatalready more than I expected.
I want to talk about what'smissing in current apps.
And I think that's a big one.
Personalized lessons, or evensaying, hey, out of Phillips
podcast, here's the one you needright now.
Maybe you've heard it, maybenot, but here's the one you
(25:53):
need.
Your protein's been low, here'sa strategy for getting more
protein.
Your sleep is affectingrecovery, here's sleep
optimization, right?
So it the education itselfadapts to your situation.
It's not just a staticcurriculum.
And, you know, I'mcannibalizing some of my own
stuff here because in physiqueuniversity we have courses that
walk you through all the things.
But imagine if you can take oneof those courses, take a piece
(26:16):
out of it, and have itautomatically fed to you on a
given day that you needed it.
And then, of course, this ishuge.
This is why people tend to joincommunities and hire coaches.
You need to be able to askquestions and get answers
ideally immediately.
So all my clients have 24-7access to me, but that doesn't
mean that I respond at 3 a.m.
That means you send me amessage at 3 a.m.
And then during business hours,I respond.
(26:37):
But what if you could just getan answer immediately?
So in my app, and again, I'mgetting into the features of the
app today.
You know what I did?
Today is a non-training day forme, but I wanted a form check
on something I did yesterday.
And there wasn't an activityfor that today because it's a
non-training day.
So I went over into thecoaching chat and I said, How
can I give you a form check?
And it said, you know what?
(26:57):
I'm gonna create an activityright now for you so you can put
a form check in.
And I did that, and it didthat.
That's what I've designed theapp to do.
It's it's it's it's blowing myown mind.
And I hope it blows your mindtoo, because of how on demand
and adaptive it is.
So you don't have to wait for acall, you don't have to wait
for a group call, you don't haveto wait, you don't have to
schedule something, you don'thave to wait for your coach to
(27:19):
wake up or get back to you.
You don't have to post someFacebook group and hope somebody
responds, right?
Just ask the coach, hey, why ismy weight moving?
I'm really struggling rightnow, I'm trying to lose fat.
Why is my weight moving?
And it can then help diagnosewhat is going on right now.
And it will know based on yourdata, hey, you know what?
Your sleep has been six hours anight lately, used to be eight.
That could be part of theissue.
(27:40):
Let's talk about it, right?
Incredible.
So that's what coaching does.
That's what human coaches do.
But imagine if an app can dothat and make intelligent
personalized decisions for youor suggestions for you.
Until now, as far as I can see,and I've done a lot of
research, and I hope you guyshave as well.
No app can really do that asgood as an actual human coach.
(28:01):
But what if it could?
What if you can get thatinterpretation layer without the
cost and the scheduling and thetime and the effort of
one-on-one or group orcommunity-based coaching?
What if the app could do theinterpretation for you?
And that is what I built.
And that launches tomorrow.
So there's your pitch.
There's your pitch.
Now, what's interesting aboutall of this is when I was
(28:23):
building the app, I always cameback to the same question.
What would I want myself ifthis was five years ago and I
was starting my early 40s?
Because you guys know, youknow, I didn't have my stuff
together until then.
And I'm still figuring it out,like we all are.
But what if I could, what couldI have back then?
Right.
Like when Macro Factor cameout, I jumped out on day one
because it was a game changercompared to what was available.
(28:43):
Well, I think this is going tobe at least as much of a game
changer in the space becauseback then I was, I was where a
lot of you are now, right?
I had so much information.
I was up, I was gobbling uppodcasts and videos and books.
I was reading, I was evenreading studies directly, right?
And I understood the principlesafter a while.
It took me a while to learn itand absorb it.
But there's still so muchguessw and detective work.
(29:05):
And like, is this trainingright for me?
Am I using the right intensity?
Should I add weight or reps?
Am I recovering properly?
What do I do with my food andmy calories and blah, blah,
blah.
Right.
And all the apps I used, it'sthey couldn't really answer
those directly.
So I had to become my owncoach, but I also had to work
with some other coaches whocoached me.
(29:25):
And then I became a coachbecause I realized people were
struggling with this.
And now we have something withtechnology that can do that.
I think it's so impressive.
And you know what?
Maybe coaches are gonna hate meout there.
Maybe if you're a coach and youlisten, you're like, Philip,
you're gonna take our jobs.
You know what?
I don't know what the futureholds.
I just know that when asolution exists and we can make
(29:46):
things better and we can helppeople, let's try to do that.
And it especially if it's moreaccessible to more people.
And that's why I built FitnessLab the way I did.
Not to replace your trackingapps, by the way.
Look, if you want to keep usingMacro Factor for the calories
and macros, I actually encouragethat.
I encourage like a fewdifferent apps that are in your
tool set that work really welltogether.
I believe you probably couldreplace those with just this one
(30:09):
app.
But I would say, look, whenthis launches, it's brand new.
There's gonna be a lot ofthings I still want to add to
the app going forward.
And, you know, don't just dropeverything.
Try it, give feedback into theapp, and we're gonna make it
better and better over time.
But really, it's that coachinglayer.
And once you have that, thenwhatever you are already
tracking.
In the app or outside the appbecomes exponentially more
(30:31):
valuable because now it'sdriving decisions, right?
Instead of just sitting therein a logger, it's driving
intelligent decisions.
All right, so let's wrap it up.
Most fitness apps are great attracking data, terrible at
interpreting it.
I think we've established that.
It's not their fault, it's justwhat we were capable of doing
with modern technology.
(30:53):
That interpretation gap iswhere people get stuck,
especially as we get older whenrecovery and hormones require a
little more nuance.
You don't need moreinformation, more tracking.
You need to take that data andunderstand what to do with it.
So tomorrow, Tuesday, November18th, all right, I'm launching
Fitness Lab.
It's the AI coaching app thatfills this exact gap.
Daily coaching briefingspersonalized to you, meal photo
(31:15):
analysis to spot your eatingpatterns, adaptive strength
training that responds torecovery, real-time AI coaching
when you get stuck.
Um, there's progress metrics.
There's so much.
There's so much I haven't eventalked about.
And I'm gonna talk about it alittle more tomorrow, so stay
tuned.
But what matters most is Ithink it actually ends up
teaching you how to coachyourself.
So I always joke that I wantpeople to fire me once they've
(31:38):
learned what they need to learnand know how to do this and have
the confidence.
I think the app is gonna be asimilar situation where you
could get to a point probablywhere you're like, yeah, I
probably don't need this appanymore.
I believe the app is gonna beso valuable and have so much
runway that you're probablygonna not run out of ways that
it can help you improve formany, many months.
(31:58):
And I hope years, of course,you know, from a as a business
perspective, I hope it's years,but I still think it's going to
teach you how to coach yourself.
It's not gonna hide that behindthe scenes.
It's gonna explain why.
It's trained on all my podcastepisodes, all my coaching
guides, and a ton of manualinstructions that I gave it to
emulate our philosophy of thisshow: flexibility,
(32:21):
sustainability, self-autonomy,and efficacy, right?
Not just getting the result,which is important, but how to
read your body's feedback, howto make better decisions about
everything, training, recovery,et cetera, and how to think like
a coach about your ownprogress, but not have to stress
about wondering what to do.
It takes the stress out.
And it's built specifically foradults over 40 who want to
(32:42):
build muscle, lose fat, improveyour body composition without
guessing.
The Black Friday pricing isgonna be 20% off through Black
Friday.
I don't know if there's gonnabe any more discounts in the
future, probably big holidaysand stuff.
You know how these things go,but it'll be 20% off at launch.
If you want early access today,I know it comes out tomorrow,
but if you want to get accesstoday, just join my email list
(33:03):
right now at witsandweights.comslash email, and you'll get an
automated response that says,hey, if you want the secret
link, let me know.
I'll send you the secret link.
It's the same link that's gonnago live tomorrow, but nobody
knows what it is.
Okay, so I'm gonna send that toyou.
And then tomorrow I'm gonnarelease a shorter bonus episode
that walks you through how itworks.
So check your email, join myemail list, witsandwaits.com
(33:26):
slash email, and keep followingthe podcast for that tomorrow.
If you want early access toFitness Lab, be first in line
before everybody else,witsandweights.com slash email.
Until next time, keep usingyour wits, lifting those
weights.
And I'm gonna talk to youtomorrow with a full walkthrough
of Fitness Lab.
My name is Philip Hape, andyou've been listening to Wits
(33:46):
and Weights.
If I were to guess, you've probably tried many
fitness, nutrition, and workoutapps.
For a while, you use them andthey help you make progress.
You might track your food, youfollow workouts, and then
something happens.
The scale stops, your liftsstop, and the app can't really
respond to those.
What about all the obstaclesalong the way?
What is missing is often thatinterpretation layer.
(00:25):
The coaching that takes yourdata and tells you what to do
next for your specificsituation.
Today we're gonna break downwhy most fitness apps today fail
in doing the thing you reallyneed, and what actually works
without having to hire a coach.
Welcome to Wits and Weights,the show that helps you build a
(00:53):
strong, healthy physique usingevidence, engineering, and
efficiency.
I'm your host, certifiednutrition coach, Philip Pape,
and today we're gonna look atfitness apps in general, how
they're designed today, the oneson your phone for nutrition,
for workouts, uh maybe even someof the new lifestyle type apps,
and why they're not giving youwhat you need.
(01:14):
I talk to people every day,every week, who tell me they're
using this app or that app.
It might be a food tracker likemy FitnessPal chronometer.
Of course, I will suggestupgrades like Macro Factor along
the way, or some of thestrength and workout apps that I
like, like Boost Camp.
And a lot of folks using theseapps, they listen to the show,
they understand principles likeprogressive overload, they know
they have to get enough protein,they know they want to track
(01:37):
their numbers and kind of seehow things change, but they're
still stuck in some way.
And when I ask them, hey, yousaid you're using an app, you're
following some sort of system.
How do you know what to do whenthis happens?
How do you know what to do whenyou hit a plateau of some kind,
whether it is in your body fator your lifts or food issues
like emotional eating, you know,just the holidays coming up?
(01:59):
The answer is always the same.
The app doesn't really tell methat, right?
The app isn't smart enough todo that.
Maybe I go ask ChatGPT orsomething, or maybe I hire a
coach or work with a coach orcome into the Facebook group,
right?
In other words, we usually seekout some extra intelligence,
human connection, a thirdperson, a third-party
perspective, things like that,rather than something generic
(02:21):
because this is about us asindividuals.
And so that's the problem we'regonna solve today.
And tomorrow, Tuesday, November18th, I am launching something
that fixes this exact gap.
It's the whole reason that I uhdesigned what's coming out
tomorrow.
Look, it's an app.
It is an app, but it'scompletely different than
everything else in the space.
Today I want to show you whythe gap exists in the first
(02:43):
place.
So you understand why I spentall the time and effort over the
past several months puttingthis together for you.
Before we get into it, if youwant early access to the app
that I'm launching tomorrow,join my email list at
witsandwaits.com slash email.
There's a link in the shownotes as well.
And if you're already on thelist, you're already getting
this information.
If you're not on the list yet,join, reply, and say, hey, I
(03:08):
want the secret link to the app.
All right, and I will get it toyou.
And you can get access to itright now, including the Black
Friday pricing before anyoneelse gets it when it launches
tomorrow.
All right, let's get into ittoday and start with what most
fitness apps actually do quitewell.
And the first one is thatthey're good at tracking data.
They're really good at this.
(03:29):
Whether it is MyFitnessPal,Chronometer, MacroFactor, Boost
Camp, Strong, any of these, theywill help you log the data.
And in some cases, they willuse that with an algorithm or
some sort of calculation, right?
Like we know MyFitnessPaldoesn't really do much of
anything other than let you log,but at least it shows you what
you ate.
My macrofactor will take thatdata along with your weight and
(03:52):
say, okay, here's yourexpenditure, therefore we can
calculate your targets forgaining or losing weight, right?
So it takes it to that nextlevel, which is very impressive
that they can do that.
I really do.
You guys know I'm a big fan ofMacroFactor for that reason.
You take a workout logger likeBoostcamp and it will say, hey,
here are your PRs, here's whatyou did last time, and now you
can figure out what I need to dothis time.
(04:14):
And sometimes there's a littlebit extra intelligence, like a
percent of your max or somethinglike that.
And at the end of the day,tracking something that you care
about is foundational.
It's a first principle.
You can't manage what you don'tmeasure.
So I'm never gonna say don'ttrack.
Absolutely not.
Tracking is invaluable.
But tracking is only the halfthe equation, and that's if you
(04:36):
even know what to track, right?
Because there are a lot ofthings.
The other half, the part thatdrives the result is how do you
interpret that data and takeaction based on it, right?
What does the data mean?
What should you do with it?
And what's interesting is inphysique university, we've
covered this multiple times whenit comes to your macrofactor
data or however you're trackingyour data, of as much as as much
(04:58):
of that you have in your app oryour notebook or whatever,
things happen that where thedata doesn't seem to make sense,
right?
Like people say, why is mymetabolism dropping?
And there's 20 possiblereasons.
I don't know until I look atit.
And then I'm gonna ask you 10more questions, right?
I'm gonna say, okay, are yousleeping enough?
How's your stress?
What did you do?
You know, did you eat a bunchof salt and Chinese food?
(05:21):
Right?
Like there's a lot of thesequestions.
And as good as some of theseapps are, like Macrofactor, it
doesn't have that level ofintelligence.
Maybe it will one day, but itdoesn't today.
And that's where pretty muchevery app falls short today.
Even the AI apps, like the AIFitness apps, I'll say that
they're very narrow in scope.
You know, they're gettingbetter, they they attack like
one small problem, but notnecessarily the full context.
(05:42):
So that's what we're gonna getto today.
Just bear with me.
So going back to this wholedata thing, if again, let's say
you're using MacroFactor and itgives you a target, if you hit
the target consistently, you areprobably going to get the
result you want, at leastinitially, or part of that
result.
But what's gonna happen is inreality, things change.
(06:04):
Maybe you walk less, maybe youget injured, maybe you are
stressed out of your mind, andnow your expenditure drops.
But the app can't predict that.
It doesn't have a crystal ball,right?
So it's gonna happen, and thenall of a sudden you don't quite
get the result you thought.
And the app's like, well, youdidn't get the results, but but
here's what's happening, sowe're gonna keep adjusting you.
So it's it's reactive, and tobe fair, it's very quickly
(06:24):
reactive, but it's stillreactive.
What if the problem reallyisn't your energy balance,
though?
At the end of the day, it is,but there's a root cause that's
upstream.
What if your protein's beeninconsistent?
What if your step count droppedand maybe you're not even aware
of it?
Maybe you're in a fat lossphase, you're moving a lot less
than you thought.
What if your sleep's beenterrible and you're
underrecovered and that'saffecting a lot of other things?
(06:47):
A tracker as it exists today isnot going to tell you that.
It's going to show the numbersand try to crunch some
algorithms to give you a littlemore to work from, but not
nearly as much as you want,which is why most people need
some level of accountability orcoaching or partnership or, you
know, a Facebook group or acommunity, somebody else to
(07:08):
connect with them to help lookat that data, not just that
data, but all the data, right?
Yeah, it's your weight trend,it's your training feedback,
your recovery signals, yourbiofeedback in general, your
body measurements, yournutrition patterns, what does
your food look like?
What's the quality of food?
What's the balance, the mealtiming, the supplementation,
right?
I can go on and on.
You guys are like overwhelmed.
(07:28):
I know all this.
I know it's like a huge list ofthe fitness pillars that we
have to deal with.
But at the end of the day, likefor me as a coach, when
somebody pays me a bunch ofmoney every month to personally
look at their data line by lineand understand what's going on,
that's what I'm doing.
I'm trying to figure out, likea detective, here's what's
happening, here's what'schanging, here's what you have
to do to address.
Now, many of you have done thison your own and done it fairly
(07:50):
successfully.
There is a whole spectrum.
Some of you do it on your ownsuccessfully because maybe there
isn't too much happening.
Others are just you're stressedout of your mind because you
know you're in your 40s, there'sperimenopause, the hormones are
changing, you've got more bellyfat, you're doing what you did
before, but it's not workinganymore.
You're doing everything thatthe influencers and the
podcasters say and it's notworking.
You're tracking all the apps.
(08:11):
Does this sound familiar?
Right?
Does this sound familiar?
And I'm sick of it, frankly.
I'm sick of I love helpingpeople.
I'm sick of people notsucceeding even when they put in
the effort and they're smartand they're listening and
they're taking action andthey're changing their
behaviors, right?
And so the next thing I want totalk about here is why this
(08:33):
does matter even more for thoseof us that are older, right?
As you get into your 40s and50s, I think that's kind of the
sweet spot in someone's lifewhere they're past the point
where they can kind of doanything they want and get away
with it.
And they're right in the pointwhere life gets more stressful.
You have more obligations, youhave family, you have uh your
career, right?
Your body is uh starting todegrade a little bit, you're
(08:56):
starting to lose that musclemass, the hormones are starting
to decline.
There is a reason that this isthis midlife transition is so
challenging for so many of you,right?
I get it.
Now, in your 60s and 70s, canit still be challenging?
Of course.
But I'm I want to hit on whenthis stuff starts so that we can
understand what to do.
Now, maybe in your 30s youstart to have issues as well.
(09:17):
It doesn't matter, it's not somuch the number as kind of the
general idea here, right?
Your body doesn't respond theway it did in your 20s.
You had your hormones raging,you had everything going for
you, there was no degradation,no aging that had occurred
really in your body at thatpoint.
Your ability to recover wassuper high, your hormones were
super good, well balanced, yourlife stress was less, right?
All of that.
(09:38):
And so if you just take theprinciples and a plan and then
you try to apply it to you,that's a good start.
But immediately on day two, theplan starts to fall apart
because of these issues.
And it might have to do withthe training split, the training
volume, the way you're tryingto progress, your equipment,
what you did last night, yourjoints are achy, you're
(10:01):
exhausted every session.
What do I do for that?
What do I do when I have anenergy crash in the afternoon
and I can't help but raid thefreezer for ice cream, you know,
(10:38):
or muffins or whatever yourthing is, right?
So again, if you're just tryingto take a plan and track and
then go, you might be frustratedbecause of these things.
You might start strong, makesome progress, and then burn
out.
Now, some of this has to dowith misunderstanding of
behavior change and habitformation, the idea that we're
(10:59):
trying to go all out, or theidea that we're trying to create
a so-called quote-unquote habitof working out, when really
that's not the habit.
The habit is the littleautomated things that tie to
your identity as a person whojust, yeah, works out and
trains.
There's a process to get there,right?
So it's not because of a lackof, I'll say willpower or
(11:22):
discipline, although disciplinedepends on how you define
discipline, right?
There's an element ofdiscipline that actually is uh
valid in terms of you've builtup habits, you've changed your
identity, you just do the thing.
There is that element ofdiscipline.
But I'm thinking more of likejust do it type discipline,
right?
It's not because you're tooold.
No, no, no.
Okay.
I've worked with people intheir 70s and 80s who are just
(11:44):
killing it, they're crushing it.
It's fine.
Their body responds, the humanbody responds pretty much till
the day you die to any of thisstuff at different levels, okay?
It's because the system they'reusing doesn't account for their
physiology and their lifecircumstances.
Now, I've been hammering thismessage since the beginning on
the show, but in the past, Ihammered it in the context of
(12:05):
hey, maybe you need to work witha coach or be in a community or
get a training partner orsomeone else that can help you
with this, or at least reallylearn these skills and this
knowledge, which for a lot ofyou, it's it's overwhelming.
It's like, I don't want to be anutrition expert, you know, I
want to listen to a podcast orwork with a coach and kind of be
told what to do, or at leastlearn what to do for me.
(12:27):
So it's scoped down, right?
So the general principle hereis having something that adapts,
that evolves, that is dynamicwith you, that says, hey, your
sleep was terrible last night.
Let's think about what thatmeans today for, I don't know,
training intensity orcapability, what it means for
(12:48):
your emotions around food todaybecause you're tired.
You know, if your protein hasbeen consistently low for three
days, even though you'veaveraged well for the past two
weeks, but all of a sudden it'sdropped.
What's going on?
What strategies do we do to fixthat?
Is this a deviation from yourhabits that we want to look at?
Right.
So it gets kind of nuanced.
(13:08):
And that's what coaching does.
That's but a lot of peoplecan't hire a coach or afford a
coach.
You know, this is why over theyears I've put together
different levels like physiqueuniversity, which is super
affordable, but even some peoplecan't afford that.
I get it.
It's super affordable, but it'smore self-motivated, even
though we have education, wehave community accountability,
(13:29):
right?
We do have some of that inthere for sure.
We have real human coaches likemyself and Carol who can you
can tag and talk to.
And I think that's really,really important.
And a lot of people need thatand want that.
But when we talk about doing ityourself or using an app or
trying to scale this so it'ssuper accessible to as many
people as possible in the world,yourself included, because you
may not want to deal withcoaches and paying for coaches
(13:52):
and dealing with all that, thatis what's missing from fitness
apps today.
Okay, that is what's missing.
And we're gonna talk about thatin a second.
I did just talk about recovery,though, as a big piece of what
is what is critical when you'reover 40, right?
We have stimulus, which is theactivity, the training, the
things you're doing, and then wehave the recovery, which is
(14:13):
kind of everything else.
It's super critical.
So I just wanna give a shoutout to today's sponsor, Cozy
Earth, because they have helpedme tremendously improve my sleep
quality.
I'm actually really excitedright now because we're at the
tail end of our sheets beforethey have to get washed.
And so I know I have a few moredays with the cozy earth sheets
before we go to the inferiorother sheets that feel, you
(14:36):
know, harsh and dry and they Isweat in them, but the cozy
earth sheets are amazing, guys.
They really are.
They make cozy earth makesbedding, but specifically
sheets, but they make a lot ofother things.
And it's derived from bamboo.
And I'm not exaggerating when Isay they are the most
comfortable sheets I've everslept on because of how it
(14:57):
regulates temperature.
You guys know I'm an engineer.
I love it when somebody comesup with a material engineering
solution to a problem.
And I think they did that.
And I I know bamboo-dry fabriccan be super luxurious and
temperature regulating in otherproducts, like like briefs.
I have personal experience.
I've joked about that before.
But for the sheets, you know, Iwant to sleep restfully.
(15:17):
I want to get that high sleepscore.
I want to have really goodrecovery for muscle building.
I don't want to wake up too hotor cold or wake up in the
middle of the night because ofit, right?
And these sheets are amazing.
They stay soft after manywashes.
I can attest to that.
We bought a second set, so Icould almost have uninterrupted
use of the sheets, I hope.
And at the end of the day,better sleep means better
(15:38):
recovery, means better training,means better results.
It's just a piece of theoverall pie, but it's a very,
very important one.
If you want to upgrade yoursleep quality, and again, if
you're over 40, sleep isprobably one of the highest
leverage, the highest ROIvariables that you're not
optimizing right now.
Check out Cozy Earth, go towins and weights.com slash cozy
earth, use code wits and weightsfor 20% off.
(16:00):
Again, that's wits andweights.com slash cozy earth.
Use code wits and weights for20% off.
They have a hundred dayguarantee where you can return
them for no cost.
And they have all sorts ofwarranties and guarantees
because the stuff is just thatgood.
So go to wits and weights.comslash cozy earth and use code
wits and weights for 20% off.
All right, let's get back tonow what actually works then if
(16:23):
we want to fill this gap in thespace, get you something that's
really affordable as well,because I'm all about that,
right?
People say, look, I want acoach, I can't afford it.
I want to join a group program,I can't afford it.
Okay, so what's the solutionhere?
Something you can use on yourown, but we can't replicate a
coach, can we?
Right?
Because the obvious answer ishire a coach.
(16:43):
And you're gonna hear coachesgo on podcasts, and at the end
of the day, they want you tohire them.
They want you to pay, pay themfor their time, right?
Which is which can bedefinitely valuable if it's a
good coach.
And you get someone who looksat your data, who interprets it,
who tells you what to do next.
And that works.
That's what I do with privateclients.
And I have clients who they runinto financial difficulty and
they'll say, Look, can you dosomething to work with me so I
(17:06):
can still have that connectionwith you?
I'm like, Yeah, let's let'sreduce the number of calls or
let's, you know, let's justscale something down so that
it's a win-win for both of us,right?
But not everyone can affordone-on-one or group coaching.
And honestly, and this issacrilege, not everyone needs
it.
What everyone does need is away to interpret their results.
(17:27):
The thing that sits on top ofyour data and gives you coaching
level feedback.
Now, that might come from yourown brain, that might come from
listening to a podcast, or we'reall about efficiency here.
It might come from an app thatcan actually do these things,
which is what I'm getting to.
And I know this sounds like onebig sales pitch for the app,
and you know what?
Frankly, it probably is.
(17:48):
But it is because I'm it's apassion project of mine that I
created that I'm using myselfthat I love, and I think you
will too.
But let me show you what thislooks like in practice, okay?
The first thing you need from atraining perspective, your
training has to adapt to whatyou're doing.
Now, if you go back tosomething like starting starting
strength, three sets of five,every session you go up five
(18:08):
pounds.
Now, they don't really meanfive pounds.
If you look into the nuance,they'll say, go up the
appropriate level for how muchyou're adapting and getting
stronger so that you don't missany reps.
But then people are like, well,how much is that?
And if somebody fails the reps,I say, okay, did you go up the
right amount?
Are you resting long enough?
Are you getting enoughrecovery?
It always comes down to thatanyway.
And so even a baseline newbeginner program like Starting
(18:33):
Strength, they're not sayingjust get the three sets of five
done, regardless of everythingelse.
They're saying get it done anddo the other things to support
getting that done.
And if not, if you fail reps,there's something else
happening, right?
So then you're you're like,okay, well, how do I do that?
Well, that's where you have toask questions of yourself or a
(18:55):
coach asks you, how did thatfeel?
Was it easier the same orharder?
Did it feel like a grind?
How are you sleeping?
How are you eating, right?
Are you taking long enough restbetween your sets?
I mean, now if a coach islooking at your data, they'll
know that, right?
And then use that to decide howdo what do we do next time?
Now, in a beginner program likethat, like starting strength,
you would then decide, well,we're still probably gonna go
(19:17):
up, but maybe we're gonna go upa little bit less, right?
As you get more advanced,you're not necessarily going up
in weight every session.
You might be adding reps, youmight be adding sets, you might
be, you know, switching theintensities around and rotating
through rep ranges, all of thosesorts of things, right?
We're not gonna get into thattoday.
The point is you have to makean adaptive decision based on
(19:38):
your recovery and adaptation.
Okay.
And so if you think about reallife, the best time this works
is when you have a trainer andyou have a conversation with
them, right?
Like when I work with trainers,it's either a spreadsheet or a
chat or something, and I'm like,this is how it felt, this is
what I'm doing, blah, blah,blah, blah, blah.
And learn from that qualitativefeedback instead of just the
(19:59):
numbers, because the numbers areonly gonna tell you part of the
situation.
So on the training side, that'swhat you need.
Let's go to the food side,okay?
Now, you guys know I'm a bigfan of tracking calories and
macros.
However, this is gonna, this isgonna seem like a paradigm
shift, but it's all consistent.
What most people need, when Istart working with a client and
(20:19):
they use macro factor, that'slike 1% of the equation.
I'd love to have the data forsure, but even if you didn't
have the data, what would youhave to do?
Or I should put it this way,whether you have the data or
not, what do you end up doingbased on that data?
Well, what you end up doing islooking at the quality of your
food, right?
(20:39):
Are you eating mostly wholefoods that are satiating?
The micronutrients, themacronutrients, is there
sufficient protein?
Are your meals balanced to helpwith appetite, hunger signals,
even blood sugar?
Do you have enough meals?
Is the timing spacedaccordingly to work with your
life?
Is the timing around yourworkouts for protein and carbs
(21:00):
adequate for fueling yourselfand feeling your best?
So, what it gets down to isreally analyzing the patterns of
your meals.
By patterns, I don't just meantiming.
I mean all the informationcontained in how you eat, which
goes far beyond calories andmacros.
Now, if you only did caloriesand macros and tried to hit
(21:21):
those, we've talked about thisbefore, you could hit them with
like Twinkies and pizza andhamburgers and like throw all
that together and somehow hityour macros, but it's not gonna
be a great diet because you'renot gonna be fueled properly,
you're not gonna feel great,your digestion's gonna be awful,
your energy is not gonna begood, and you're gonna be
hungry.
And so it isn't just those, itisn't just hitting your macros,
is it?
(21:42):
Now, we know that hitting yourmacros and calories will cause
you to control your energybalance, but it's only a tiny
piece of the equation.
So, having said all that, whatif a human being, or in this
case AI vision, which has comeso far and is so impressive and
amazing, can look at your foodand just look at one typical
(22:03):
meal a day.
Analyze that food for color,for nutrients, for balance, for
macros, even for calories basedon the volume on the plate, and
ask you some qualitativequestions.
Oh, does that sound familiar?
Yeah, kind of like what we justtalked about with training.
Ask you a few qualitativequestions.
And what if those qualitativequestions changed based on the
situation and how you've beenprogressing?
(22:24):
Like if I were a if I, as acoach, I'm not gonna ask you the
same exact question every time.
I'm gonna probably ask adifferent one based on what's
going on, based on the context,right?
So if your protein's beensolid, let's say you upload a
meal each day, just one meal,and the app's like, is this a
typical meal for you?
Sure, yes.
And it has a lot of protein.
And the app asks you at the endof the night, hey, how many
(22:46):
protein servings did you havetoday, by the way?
Oh, you know, I have five.
And you say that every day andprotein's been good, but then
all of a sudden on the weekend,you're eating a lot more or in a
different way, or you reportless protein.
An intelligent analysis caninfer from that pretty
accurately that something's offon the weekends.
And now we need a differentstrategy, right?
(23:08):
That that's the impressivemind-blowing part about this.
So, guys, I worked a lot of uhon this in terms of
brainstorming and talking withexperts and reviewing some of
the great information out therefrom you know, mass and the
evidence and behavior changeexperts, all of that as I
developed the app.
And so at the end of the day, Isaid, what is the lowest stress
(23:29):
way to actually help you changeyour behaviors when it comes to
eating to build up yourmicronutrients and your
macronutrients, and thenultimately your energy without
having to track calories andmacros.
I know it sounds sacrilegious.
We're not talking aboutintuitive eating, we're still
talking about tracking andanalysis.
But in this case, you uploadone photo a day, the AI then
(23:49):
spots lots of different patternsand gets you feedback.
That is the difference.
Okay.
I also don't think it's likeNoom.
Okay, Noom is I'm not gonna godown that road.
I don't want to compare toother apps like that.
Okay, let's keep going.
So I might do another episodeabout that if you guys want it.
Let me know.
So I've just covered trainingand nutrition.
(24:10):
The third thing that you need,okay, so training and nutrition
are usually separate apps today.
It's rare that those aretogether.
There are a few apps that putthem together, and when they do
that, it's kind of less lesswell designed for both, right?
But that's just two pieces.
Another piece you need iseducation, reminders of the
(24:31):
science and the evidence andwhat works, strategies,
guidance, right?
A lot of the reasons you'reprobably listening to this
podcast, but the problem withthe podcast is it's it's kind of
random.
It's all over the place.
We have over 400 episodes now.
I love sending people specificlinks to the episode that might
work for them, and I'm alwayshappy to do that.
You could also search.
(24:51):
But what if you had a quickbriefing every day in the
morning that was targetedexactly to what you needed that
day, that adapt and evolved withyour progress, that adapt with
what you said your goal was.
For example, as I'm as I'mtesting the app on my end, I'm
trying to work on sleep.
So a lot of the briefings wererelate to sleep.
(25:12):
Now, if all of a sudden mysleep gets locked down and it's
good, the app is actually gonnachange to my next biggest
constraint, my next mostimmediate constraint.
That is as personalized as itgets.
That's again like if you had ahuman coach every day in the
morning who said, Hey, hey,what's the big thing right now I
can help you with?
But it's even more powerfulthan that because the AI knows
(25:32):
everything going on, the data.
It has your Apple Health data,it has all anyway.
I don't want to get into thefeatures of my app specifically,
even though I'm doing thatalready more than I expected.
I want to talk about what'smissing in current apps.
And I think that's a big one.
Personalized lessons, or evensaying, hey, out of Phillips
podcast, here's the one you needright now.
Maybe you've heard it, maybenot, but here's the one you
(25:53):
need.
Your protein's been low, here'sa strategy for getting more
protein.
Your sleep is affectingrecovery, here's sleep
optimization, right?
So it the education itselfadapts to your situation.
It's not just a staticcurriculum.
And, you know, I'mcannibalizing some of my own
stuff here because in physiqueuniversity we have courses that
walk you through all the things.
But imagine if you can take oneof those courses, take a piece
(26:16):
out of it, and have itautomatically fed to you on a
given day that you needed it.
And then, of course, this ishuge.
This is why people tend to joincommunities and hire coaches.
You need to be able to askquestions and get answers
ideally immediately.
So all my clients have 24-7access to me, but that doesn't
mean that I respond at 3 a.m.
That means you send me amessage at 3 a.m.
And then during business hours,I respond.
(26:37):
But what if you could just getan answer immediately?
So in my app, and again, I'mgetting into the features of the
app today.
You know what I did?
Today is a non-training day forme, but I wanted a form check
on something I did yesterday.
And there wasn't an activityfor that today because it's a
non-training day.
So I went over into thecoaching chat and I said, How
can I give you a form check?
And it said, you know what?
(26:57):
I'm gonna create an activityright now for you so you can put
a form check in.
And I did that, and it didthat.
That's what I've designed theapp to do.
It's it's it's it's blowing myown mind.
And I hope it blows your mindtoo, because of how on demand
and adaptive it is.
So you don't have to wait for acall, you don't have to wait
for a group call, you don't haveto wait, you don't have to
schedule something, you don'thave to wait for your coach to
(27:19):
wake up or get back to you.
You don't have to post someFacebook group and hope somebody
responds, right?
Just ask the coach, hey, why ismy weight moving?
I'm really struggling rightnow, I'm trying to lose fat.
Why is my weight moving?
And it can then help diagnosewhat is going on right now.
And it will know based on yourdata, hey, you know what?
Your sleep has been six hours anight lately, used to be eight.
That could be part of theissue.
(27:40):
Let's talk about it, right?
Incredible.
So that's what coaching does.
That's what human coaches do.
But imagine if an app can dothat and make intelligent
personalized decisions for youor suggestions for you.
Until now, as far as I can see,and I've done a lot of
research, and I hope you guyshave as well.
No app can really do that asgood as an actual human coach.
(28:01):
But what if it could?
What if you can get thatinterpretation layer without the
cost and the scheduling and thetime and the effort of
one-on-one or group orcommunity-based coaching?
What if the app could do theinterpretation for you?
And that is what I built.
And that launches tomorrow.
So there's your pitch.
There's your pitch.
Now, what's interesting aboutall of this is when I was
(28:23):
building the app, I always cameback to the same question.
What would I want myself ifthis was five years ago and I
was starting my early 40s?
Because you guys know, youknow, I didn't have my stuff
together until then.
And I'm still figuring it out,like we all are.
But what if I could, what couldI have back then?
Right.
Like when Macro Factor cameout, I jumped out on day one
because it was a game changercompared to what was available.
(28:43):
Well, I think this is going tobe at least as much of a game
changer in the space becauseback then I was, I was where a
lot of you are now, right?
I had so much information.
I was up, I was gobbling uppodcasts and videos and books.
I was reading, I was evenreading studies directly, right?
And I understood the principlesafter a while.
It took me a while to learn itand absorb it.
But there's still so muchguessw and detective work.
(29:05):
And like, is this trainingright for me?
Am I using the right intensity?
Should I add weight or reps?
Am I recovering properly?
What do I do with my food andmy calories and blah, blah,
blah.
Right.
And all the apps I used, it'sthey couldn't really answer
those directly.
So I had to become my owncoach, but I also had to work
with some other coaches whocoached me.
(29:25):
And then I became a coachbecause I realized people were
struggling with this.
And now we have something withtechnology that can do that.
I think it's so impressive.
And you know what?
Maybe coaches are gonna hate meout there.
Maybe if you're a coach and youlisten, you're like, Philip,
you're gonna take our jobs.
You know what?
I don't know what the futureholds.
I just know that when asolution exists and we can make
(29:46):
things better and we can helppeople, let's try to do that.
And it especially if it's moreaccessible to more people.
And that's why I built FitnessLab the way I did.
Not to replace your trackingapps, by the way.
Look, if you want to keep usingMacro Factor for the calories
and macros, I actually encouragethat.
I encourage like a fewdifferent apps that are in your
tool set that work really welltogether.
I believe you probably couldreplace those with just this one
(30:09):
app.
But I would say, look, whenthis launches, it's brand new.
There's gonna be a lot ofthings I still want to add to
the app going forward.
And, you know, don't just dropeverything.
Try it, give feedback into theapp, and we're gonna make it
better and better over time.
But really, it's that coachinglayer.
And once you have that, thenwhatever you are already
tracking.
In the app or outside the appbecomes exponentially more
(30:31):
valuable because now it'sdriving decisions, right?
Instead of just sitting therein a logger, it's driving
intelligent decisions.
All right, so let's wrap it up.
Most fitness apps are great attracking data, terrible at
interpreting it.
I think we've established that.
It's not their fault, it's justwhat we were capable of doing
with modern technology.
(30:53):
That interpretation gap iswhere people get stuck,
especially as we get older whenrecovery and hormones require a
little more nuance.
You don't need moreinformation, more tracking.
You need to take that data andunderstand what to do with it.
So tomorrow, Tuesday, November18th, all right, I'm launching
Fitness Lab.
It's the AI coaching app thatfills this exact gap.
Daily coaching briefingspersonalized to you, meal photo
(31:15):
analysis to spot your eatingpatterns, adaptive strength
training that responds torecovery, real-time AI coaching
when you get stuck.
Um, there's progress metrics.
There's so much.
There's so much I haven't eventalked about.
And I'm gonna talk about it alittle more tomorrow, so stay
tuned.
But what matters most is Ithink it actually ends up
teaching you how to coachyourself.
So I always joke that I wantpeople to fire me once they've
(31:38):
learned what they need to learnand know how to do this and have
the confidence.
I think the app is gonna be asimilar situation where you
could get to a point probablywhere you're like, yeah, I
probably don't need this appanymore.
I believe the app is gonna beso valuable and have so much
runway that you're probablygonna not run out of ways that
it can help you improve formany, many months.
(31:58):
And I hope years, of course,you know, from a as a business
perspective, I hope it's years,but I still think it's going to
teach you how to coach yourself.
It's not gonna hide that behindthe scenes.
It's gonna explain why.
It's trained on all my podcastepisodes, all my coaching
guides, and a ton of manualinstructions that I gave it to
emulate our philosophy of thisshow: flexibility,
(32:21):
sustainability, self-autonomy,and efficacy, right?
Not just getting the result,which is important, but how to
read your body's feedback, howto make better decisions about
everything, training, recovery,et cetera, and how to think like
a coach about your ownprogress, but not have to stress
about wondering what to do.
It takes the stress out.
And it's built specifically foradults over 40 who want to
(32:42):
build muscle, lose fat, improveyour body composition without
guessing.
The Black Friday pricing isgonna be 20% off through Black
Friday.
I don't know if there's gonnabe any more discounts in the
future, probably big holidaysand stuff.
You know how these things go,but it'll be 20% off at launch.
If you want early access today,I know it comes out tomorrow,
but if you want to get accesstoday, just join my email list
(33:03):
right now at witsandweights.comslash email, and you'll get an
automated response that says,hey, if you want the secret
link, let me know.
I'll send you the secret link.
It's the same link that's gonnago live tomorrow, but nobody
knows what it is.
Okay, so I'm gonna send that toyou.
And then tomorrow I'm gonnarelease a shorter bonus episode
that walks you through how itworks.
So check your email, join myemail list, witsandwaits.com
(33:26):
slash email, and keep followingthe podcast for that tomorrow.
If you want early access toFitness Lab, be first in line
before everybody else,witsandweights.com slash email.
Until next time, keep usingyour wits, lifting those
weights.
And I'm gonna talk to youtomorrow with a full walkthrough
of Fitness Lab.
My name is Philip Hape, andyou've been listening to Wits
(33:46):
and Weights.
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