December 3, 2025 • 28 mins
Join the 3-Week Strong Finish Challenge to build strength training momentum and end 2025 strong instead of waiting until January. Kickoff call December 8th at 5pm Eastern. Get direct coaching, the flexible framework, holiday nutrition strategies, and travel workout templates you need to protect your metabolism through the holidays:
https://live.witsandweights.com
--
If you're trying to lose weight by focusing on diet, cardio, and steps but skipping the weight room, you're not just leaving results on the table. You're actively suppressing your metabolism, wrecking your body composition, and almost guaranteeing weight regain with more body fat.
Discover why strength training isn't optional during fat loss... it's the primary metabolic lever that determines whether you end up lean and strong or skinny, weak, and fighting your metabolism.
Learn why up to 30% of weight loss without lifting comes from muscle (not fat), how muscle acts as your metabolic engine for insulin sensitivity and longevity, and the minimum effective dose of lifting that protects everything you're working for.
You'll understand the hormonal consequences of diet-only weight loss, why building muscle is your retirement fund for healthy aging, and how resistance training transforms your identity from "someone on a diet" to "someone who trains." This evidence-based approach shows you exactly how to build muscle, lose fat, and create sustainable body recomp, even if you're over 40 and starting from scratch.
Episode Resources:
- 3-Week Strong Finish Challenge - Kickoff December 8th at 5pm Eastern: https://live.witsandweights.com
Timestamps:
0:00 - Why skipping strength training during weight loss is terrible
2:50 - How losing muscle creates the weight regain trap
6:30 - The body composition truth: looking lighter but weaker without lifting
10:24 - Hormonal consequences and metabolic adaptation during fat loss
14:26 - Minimum effective dose for building muscle and preserving strength
21:17 - Strength training for longevity (not just vanity)
24:52 - Why muscle compounds like retirement savings
28:42 - Becoming someone who trains is a permanent identity shift
📱 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 you are trying to lose weight and you're
focused on steps, your macros,your carbs, your sleep, your
cardio, but you're not liftingweights, you're not just leaving
results on the table, you areactively making things worse.
Today I'm going to explain whyskipping strength training
during weight loss massivelysuppresses your metabolism,
(00:23):
wrecks your body composition,and almost guarantees you'll
regain the weight and probablymore body fat.
You'll learn why muscle is yourmetabolic engine, why diet alone
leads to looking lighter butsofter, and the minimum dose of
lifting that protects everythingyou're working for.
(00:51):
Welcome to Wits and Weights, theshow that helps you build a
strong, healthy physique usingevidence, engineering, and
efficiency.
I'm your host, certifiednutrition coach, Philip Pape,
and creator of the Fitness Labapp.
Today we are addressing one ofthe most common and damaging
mistakes I see in attempts atfat loss, and that is people who
focus on diet, cardio, andsteps, but they skip the weight
(01:15):
room.
I alluded to this in the thirdtrap of Monday's episode of our
last episode about the threeweight loss traps.
And I want to dive in deep onthis one.
I'm not gonna sugarcoat it.
If you're trying to lose fatwithout lifting weights, you are
actively sabotaging yourresults.
You're not just leaving gains onthe table.
I think you are digging a holethat becomes harder to climb out
(01:36):
of with every pound you lose.
So listen up.
Whatever age you are, you've gotto start this.
This is a wake-up call.
This episode is for anyone who'sbeen told that weight loss is
just eating less and movingmore.
For anyone who wants to strengthtrain but hasn't been doing it
consistently, for anyone whohears mixed signals in the
fitness industry about whetheryou need to lift weights, all of
(01:59):
these theories have some tinybits of truth where they're
coming from, but they're mostlydangerously incomplete.
Because how you lose weightdetermines whether you end up
lean and strong or skinny, weak,and fighting your metabolism and
making all of this more and morefrustrating.
So let's jump into it.
And let me set the stage herewith a scenario that I see a
(02:20):
lot, and that is that someonedecides they want to lose
weight.
Probably the most commonscenario in existence right now,
right?
I gotta lose weight, I gottalose 10 pounds, 20, 40, 50, 100,
whatever.
And they do something, they dialin their nutrition, whatever
that means.
Dial in could be calories, maybethey're cutting and restricting,
but in their mind, they'redialing it in.
(02:40):
Maybe they're eating quoteunquote clean whole foods,
whatever.
Maybe they're walking more,maybe they add some cardio, and
then the scale goes down, andthen you think you're making
progress.
But what's probably happeningwith the vast majority of people
who lose weight, which isaccelerated today because of the
weight loss medications, is thatwithout the stimulus of lifting
weights, your body has zeroreason to preserve muscle.
(03:03):
So as you lose weight, asignificant portion of that loss
is lean mass.
How much?
Well, research shows thatwithout resistance training, up
to 30% of weight loss duringdieting can come from muscle.
It's the classic biggest losereffect.
And now we see it as the GOP1,somagatides, terzepatite, all
the weight loss drugs affect aswell.
(03:25):
I mean, I've seen numbers up to40% even.
And I think it has to do withhow fast you're losing weight.
It's not the meds, it's notabout the medications, it's
about the approach, right?
And this is where the math turnsagainst people because muscle is
so, so valuable, and we'realready starting to lose it in
our 30s and beyond.
And now you're just making theproblem even worse.
And you get things like body fatovershooting, where when you
(03:48):
regain the weight, which 95% ofpeople apparently do, you're
actually gaining more fat thanyou had before.
And you end up at the same orhigher scale weight with even
more fat and less muscle, whichis just the opposite of what
we're trying to do.
Muscle is an engine, itdefinitely is like the amount of
muscle you have in your body.
Think of it as your engine.
We want a massive gas-guzzlingengine, is what we want.
(04:12):
Super big, powerful engine thatalso burns a lot of calories.
Okay.
But, you know, physiologically,it does burn calories, but also
handles glucose.
It also oxidizes fat.
People forget that like themuscle itself translates to the
fat loss side of the equation aswell, and to the insulin
sensitivity and how you, youknow, handle your carbs.
When you lose that wonderfultissue of muscle, a lot of
(04:35):
things happen in the negativedirection that lead to the
ultimate decline and frailty ofaging that we are, I guess, used
to, unfortunately, seeing in theworld.
That is, but that is notinevitable.
So, yes, your expenditure drops,right?
Your maintenance calories,that's one thing, one small
thing that happens.
It's not the worst thing,though, even though it does make
(04:56):
mean you know, you don't have asmuch room to eat while you're in
a deficit, for example.
But worse than that is when yourdiet is over after you've lost
weight and muscle, let's sayyou've lost 20 pounds and your
metabolism has adapted downward,right?
Now what happens is because yourmetabolism has dropped even more
than you probably expected,you're more ravenous, you're
(05:18):
hungry, you're craving food.
Now you start to eat back thecalories, right?
And and that's okay, right?
We want to get back tomaintenance.
And even if you go just tomaintenance, the problem is now
you're what you're regainingonce you start gaining more
weight back, is fat, almostexclusively fat.
And it's usually more than whatyou lost because if you lost 20
(05:39):
pounds, and let's say five ofthose pounds were muscle and 15
of those pounds were fat, butnow you gain 20 pounds back,
you're gonna gain back 20 poundsof fat.
And so the net effect is you'velost five pounds of muscle.
This isn't hypothetical.
This is what happens to mostdieters who do not lift weights.
And the cool thing is it'stotally preventable.
(06:00):
That's why you're listening tothis show.
That's why you're looking forthe help and support on this
journey.
It's what I had just couldn'tdiscover until my 40s.
I always wondered why during myCrossFit days and doing paleo
and doing diets and all that,lots of cardio, why I would lose
weight and and look worse andworse.
And I thought, ah, it'sgenetics.
It's my age.
Like I'm skinny, fat, and thenI'm fat.
(06:21):
And then I'm skinny, fat, andlike, how do I actually look the
way I want to look?
I don't, I don't get it.
So here's the piece thatmatters, even more than what I
just talked about, is you arenot trying to lose weight.
Like I thought I was trying tolose weight and that was the
goal.
No, you're trying to lookbetter, aren't you?
It's not just about thephysique, but let's start there.
Let's let's be honest withourselves.
Let's start there.
You want to see muscledefinition.
(06:42):
You also want to feel strong andquote unquote functional.
That word is kind of a buzzwordtoday, but you know, you want to
function in your daily living atany age.
So maybe you're in your 60s or70s and listening to the show,
having trouble getting off thecouch, right?
And that's a real thing thathappens.
Okay.
And you want to be able to dothat, you want to spring off
that couch and have no problemwith it.
(07:04):
And you want to also look likeyou put in the work, right?
You don't, you kind of lookaround and you see what happens
with aging.
When your friends, when you getinto your 40s and 50s, you see
them on Facebook, you're like,wow, what has happened to them?
And it's not a matter ofjudgment and saying, oh, this
person's fat.
No.
It's a matter of, are you doingthe things that support your
(07:25):
health and your body because youlove yourself?
You do, right?
We all love ourselves.
So we want to give ourselves thebest shot in this world.
We also don't want people todepend on us when we get older.
And so that outcome, as much asit somewhat depends on
maintaining a healthy level ofbody fat, for most people, that
end result of managing body fatis helped tremendously and
(07:49):
almost exclusively by being ableto build muscle, at least over
the long term.
In the short term, you can dropa bunch of body fat with energy
balance alone.
You're gonna lose muscle.
You might be in a healthierstate than you were before
because you had a lot of fat.
I'm talking about people whohave a lot of weight to lose,
right?
But once you get to that point,you've got to build muscle.
Body fat percentage is like it'smore like geometry, whereas
(08:11):
scale weight is like arithmetic,right?
We need to focus on the geometryof the body.
Geometry as in like the thespace, the spatial distribution,
because if you lose a pound offat, but you also lose a pound
of muscle, that's not a win.
You've lost two pounds on thescale, but that's that's
setting, that's going backward.
That's becoming a smallerversion of the same shape.
(08:31):
Lighter on the scale, but softerin the mirror.
It's it's that deflated lookthat happens when people diet
without lifting.
You see it with the weight lossmeds when people aren't lifting.
You're like, whoa, they lost alot of weight, but they don't
look great, right?
It's just the instinct we havein our head.
You might not say that out loud.
I'm saying it out loud for you.
And let's be honest, that's whatwe're thinking.
And we see them shrink, butthey're not, they don't look
(08:54):
healthier.
And healthy is a good word forthis, I think.
Vibrant, healthy, right?
We don't have to say, noteveryone's gonna be chiseled,
jack toned.
We all have different body typesand body shapes, right?
I'm kind of devolving a littlebit into the whole body image
thing here.
But when you do maintain orbuild muscle while losing fat,
then your body compositionchanges.
So from an objective standpoint,that's what I'm talking about.
(09:15):
And objectively, what this lookslike is hey, your waist gets
smaller because you're notcarrying as much of that
visceral abdominal fat, which isnot healthy for you.
Your shoulders look broader,your arms have shape, you know,
you weigh the same or more thansomeone who just dieted, but you
look dramatically different.
You look healthier.
And if it does, even if it isabout vanity and physique, which
again is fine if that's what onething that drives you.
(09:37):
Most people's ideal physique,believe it or not, requires 10
to 20 pounds more pounds, 10 to20 more pounds of muscle than
they currently have.
Let that sink in.
That's a that's like a reallygood number.
10 to 20 more pounds of muscle.
So if that's the case, your goalreally isn't to get smaller, is
it?
It's to reshape.
And you can't reshape withoutresistance training.
(10:00):
All right.
So let's talk about anotherlayer here that gets overlooked.
The hormonal consequences ofdieting.
Dieting is a stress.
Your body perceives a caloriedeficit as a threat and it
responds accordingly.
Your hunger goes up, your neatgoes down.
I know you're you're like, hey,Philip, no, I'm getting more
steps and fat loss.
Yeah, you might be getting moreintentional steps, but you'd be
surprised at the unintentional,unconscious movement that goes
(10:23):
down, even inside your body.
Your leptin drops, your recoverygets worse, your whole system
starts pushing back against thedeficit.
It's a stress.
You may do it intentionally,yes, but it's a short-term
stress.
And that's called metabolicadaptation.
That's why fat loss gets harderover time.
And if you're not strengthtraining, these adaptations will
hit harder and faster.
(10:44):
I've seen it in people'snumbers.
Your body has less reason tohold on to metabolically
expensive tissue like muscle, soit dumps it.
And so even those of you doingthe UTAL YouTube workouts or the
P90 or those types of workouts,Pilates, and you're not making
any, you're not progressing,you're not increasing in weight
or reps over time, you're notactually getting stronger.
And then you go into a fat lossphase, you're not really doing
(11:05):
much for yourself.
You may, if you're lucky, holdon to some of your muscle, but
you're still probably gonnaprobably gonna lose some muscle.
At best, you're never in aperiod where you're gaining new
muscle tissue, if that makessense.
And going back to my commentwhere most people need to gain
10 to 20 pounds of muscle, andthat's beyond a baseline that I
(11:26):
would say is when you're 30.
So if you're already 40, 50, 60years old, you've lost some of
that muscle too.
The goal is to get it back andthen add those 10 to 20 pounds.
When you lift, you blunt thecompensatory mechanisms.
Okay.
Resistance training signals yourbody that muscle is essential,
that it's being used, that itshould be preserved.
You keep your need higher, youmaintain strength, you support
(11:48):
insulin sensitivity, youstabilize your mood and sleep.
Yes, even during fat loss, itmakes it a little bit easier,
and you're doing the mostimportant thing, which is
holding on to that muscle.
And I definitely have seen starkdifferences between people who
are not lifting properly or atall.
They they try to lose weight,and it's just this fight.
Whereas people who lift, they'relike, we're gonna go in a
moderate deficit, I'm gonna doall the right things, I'm gonna
(12:09):
eat a high satiety diet, plentyof protein, and I'm gonna train.
And it actually feels, I'm notgonna say it feels easy, but it
doesn't feel that bad at all.
You got a little bit of hunger,a little bit of stress, and you
get through it in six, eight,10, 12 weeks.
And now you've lost fat and youmove on to the rest of your life
being at maintenance or above.
This is a big distinction thatchanges how the whole process
(12:30):
feels and how sustainable itbecomes.
Now, before I keep going, I wantto mention something for those
of you who are ready to takeaction on this as we end the
year.
If you've been putting offstrength training or you know
you need more structure headinginto the new year, we are
starting, we are running athree-week finish strong
(12:50):
challenge designed to help youbuild that momentum and end the
year strong instead of waitinguntil January.
It's not, hey, let's do a dietat the end of the year or let's
do a fat loss phase at the endof the year.
That's gonna self-destruct,isn't it?
No, this is about getting thefundamental behaviors like
strength training in place nowand also having a flexible
(13:13):
framework for doing so, nomatter how stressful or chaotic
the holidays get, or any time ofyear.
Because if you could get throughthat time of year, the rest of
the year is gonna seem like abreeze.
It's building that foundationthat protects your metabolism,
your metabolic health, sets youup for real progress in 2026,
even if, yes, even if you wantto have a New Year's resolution
to lose fat.
So you can sign up right now forthat challenge.
(13:35):
Go to live.witsandweights.com.
The kickoff is on December 8th,but the challenge starts a
couple days later.
So December 8th is a Monday at 5p.m.
Eastern.
It would be great if you couldbe on the live kickoff, but if
you're not, it's okay.
The replay will be availableshortly thereafter.
And you'll have about a day anda half to watch it, to download
the guide, to download all thewonderful resources that Carol
(13:57):
has made for dealing with theholidays and all the situations
you find yourself in, like atthe airport, at the gas station,
at the hotel, to download ourminimum and bailout workout
templates for hotel gym travel.
If you don't have access to afull gym, all of that stuff is
included, as well as the replay.
Go to live.witsandweights.com.
Link is in the show notes, sothat you can join the challenge
(14:19):
and get started for the finalthree weeks of the year.
That's live.witsandweights.com.
All right, let's zoom out for asecond because this isn't just
about looking good at your goalweight, is it?
Right?
I I kind of have alluded, I'vedanced around the fact that
physique, which by the way, Idefine physique as much more
nuanced than a lot of people do.
(14:40):
To me, physique is everythingabout your body and mind.
But still, even if it's a vanitygoal, we need to couple that
with something more meaningfulabout our future self, our
identity, so that we have itall, we have the whole package.
And that will really drive youto want to do this.
This is about the rest of yourlife.
Without lifting, sarcopenia, theloss of muscle mass,
(15:01):
accelerates.
And I recently heard a podcast,gosh, I think it was Docs Who
Lift.
They talked about, or was itbarbell medicine, talked about
how sarcopenia, we we often talkabout it as a loss of muscle
mass, but really it's a loss offunction with our muscle, loss
of strength.
And I think that's just asimportant, if not more so, than
the muscle itself, becausethere's there's a reason we want
(15:21):
to have that muscle.
And it's not just the look of itor to say we have more muscle,
right?
So when we go through thisage-related, but also functional
muscle loss after 30, and thatoccurs because you're not doing
something about it, it doesn'tjust affect how you look, does
it?
It affects things like your bonedensity, your risk of falling,
(15:42):
your ability to carry grocerieswhen you're 65, to get up off
the floor when you're 75, tolive independently when you're
80 and above.
So at the end of the day,today's episode is a longevity
episode in disguise.
Because there is no healthyaging without strength.
That's the statement I want youto remember.
(16:03):
Quote it.
Put it on Instagram, I don'tcare, put it on your post-it
note, share it.
There is no healthy agingwithout strength.
Your quality of life in your60s, 70s, 80s, beyond depends on
the muscle and strength that youbuild and preserve now.
And I say now, I was gonna sayin your 30s, 40s, 50s, it
doesn't matter.
(16:24):
Now, starting now.
If you're already 70, start now.
If you're already 80, start now.
Testosterone, growth hormone,IGF 1, all of these track and
they correlate with muscle mass.
When you let muscle go, yourhormonal health spirals with it.
Whereas when you build and youmaintain muscle, you support
that hormonal environment thatkeeps you healthy and
(16:46):
functional.
And I know there's a lot of talkabout hormones today and hormone
replacement therapy, but reallyit has to start from lifestyle.
I mean, the lifestyle has to bethere regardless, is is is the
way to think about it.
So this isn't just vanity, it'sabout remaining capable,
remaining independent, remainingalive in a meaningful sense for
as long as possible.
Lifespan, health span, and mindspan.
(17:09):
Now, you know I think about thisfrom an engineering standpoint.
I talk about engineering in theintro.
Some of you guys that are new tothe podcast are like, where does
engineering fall into all ofthis stuff about fitness?
I think it's a really importantlens to use when we think about
our body and how it ages overtime.
For example, cardio.
It gives you some benefitstoday.
You burn some calories, you getsome cardiovascular
conditioning, but then it'sdone.
(17:30):
It's short term.
Tomorrow you have to do it againto get the same benefit, right?
Cardio is very short term.
Muscle is gonna give you benefittoday, tomorrow, and the next
decade once you add it.
That's incredible.
If you add 10 pounds of musclein your 40s, that tissue
continues to burn calories,support your metabolism, keep
you strong for years.
You can kind of coast for awhile and still be far better
(17:51):
off than someone who never builtit.
I know people who've built a lotof muscle through their lives,
and just about everythingthey're doing is suboptimal.
They may even be sitting allday.
And still their health markers,their biomarkers, based on their
blood work, are far superiorthan the average person their
age simply because they haveextra muscle.
And then when we work on thingslike walking more and a little
bit of cardiovascular health ontop of it, they get incredibly
(18:15):
superior numbers withoutbecoming an endurance athlete,
right?
Just by a little, a littlewalking.
Now, the opposite is a prettyhorrible situation.
If you lose 10 pounds of musclebecause you're not lifting, then
you're gonna spend the rest ofyour life fighting your body.
You're not gonna be able to eatas much.
Every time you want to dosomething that's physical, it's
gonna get harder and harder.
(18:36):
Every time you do try to loseweight, it's gonna feel harder
because you're not doing theright way and you're losing
muscle.
Muscle compounds like interest.
Nothing or not lifting is likepulling money out of the stock
market at age 40 and thenwondering why you can't retire.
I always think it's a greatanalogy to think of muscle as
like a retirement fund for yourbody.
Right?
That investment you make now isgonna pay dividends for decades.
(18:59):
Investment's not just financial,it's just lifting and eating the
right way, et cetera.
Right?
So this is the uncomfortabletruth about diet-only fat loss,
which isn't even fat loss, it'sjust weight loss.
It creates more hunger, worsecravings, higher dropout rates,
more weight regain, lesssatisfaction with your
appearance.
When you diet without lifting,you're stripping away everything
(19:21):
that makes the diet sustainable,believe it or not.
Like the lifting is almostexclusively what makes it
sustainable in that it driveseverything else around it,
right?
You don't, because without it,you're not gonna have that food
flexibility, you're not gonnause the nutrients in the best
way, and you're gonna end up ata body weight that requires
eating less and less just tomaintain.
Whereas with strength training,you're building a buffer, you
(19:43):
create the physique you want tomaintain, it changes your
relationship with the wholeprocess, you feel progress every
week, and it reframes whatlifting is.
And when people say, Well, Idon't like to lift, we've got to
change that somehow.
We've got to change honestly,getting the result from it tends
to be enough to tell somebodythis is something I've got to do
that's part of my identity thatI want to do.
(20:04):
And so that's a good segue intothe next thing, which is that
some of you are thinking, youknow, I'm busy, I don't have
time for a routine, or I'mworried about doing too much.
I guess most people aren'tworried about that last one
necessarily, but I want to pushback on all of this gently.
Most people listening to theshow are probably undertrained,
not overtrained.
I'm gonna repeat that.
Most people listening to thisshow are probably undertrained,
(20:25):
not overtrained.
What you're actually doing isprobably less than the minimum
effective dose.
So you're worried about doingtoo much when you haven't even
started.
Now, the too much might be inthe form of cardio running,
cardio endurance machines, butfrom a strength training
perspective, three to foursessions a week is pretty much
all it takes to preserve everyounce of muscle during fat loss.
Even two sessions isdramatically better than zero.
(20:48):
So the minimum effective dose topreserve muscle is actually
shockingly low.
It's it's a quarter to an eighthof what it takes to build
muscle.
It's pretty low.
So even starting there is agreat place to be.
That's what I'm saying.
Better than zero infinitely.
So that's 45 minutes to an hour,three or four times a week.
You probably spend more timethan that scrolling, doom
(21:08):
scrolling, watching TV, Netflix,right?
The barrier for most people isnot time.
I know if you're a busy mom,single mom, you've got kids,
still, I found that there areplenty of other things that are
far less effective than strengthtraining that you're doing that
takes a lot of time that can besupplanted by this wonderful
thing of lifting weights.
And a home gym can be a reallyhelpful thing for that for a lot
(21:30):
of you.
It should be the prioritybecause once you understand
what's at stake, the priorityitself becomes obvious.
And I hope today's episode ishelping you frame that, right?
What message are you sendingyour body?
Without lifting, you're sendingthe message that your muscle is
expensive and apparently I don'tneed it.
Let's dump it, let's hold on tothe fat.
You're getting fatter.
When you lift, the messagechanges.
This muscle is important.
(21:51):
It's necessary for my survival,it's essential.
And when I need extra energy,I'm gonna pull from fat instead.
You're telling your body what todo and keep and how to reshape
itself through your actions.
So that's the game.
Resistance training is thesignal, it's communication with
your own physiology.
And if you're not sending thatduring fat loss or really any
time, your body's gonna make thewrong choice, or it's gonna make
(22:13):
the natural choice, the one thatyou don't want.
All right, I have one more angletoday, and this one is
psychological.
When you show up in the gym,let's say three days a week, you
start to see yourselfdifferently.
You're not just someone on adiet, you are someone who
trains.
You're an athlete, or at leastyou're becoming an athlete.
That identity shift is whatchanges everything else outside
(22:36):
the gym.
You make better food choicesbecause guess what?
Athletes fuel their training.
You prioritize sleep becauseathletes recover.
You think long term becauseathletes build over years, not
weeks.
Whereas not lifting weightstotally removes that anchor from
your life.
Without the gym, you're nowrelying just on willpower, on
restriction, on low-carb diets,on fasting, on all the gimmicks,
(22:58):
all the supplements, all thethings that are shortcuts.
And then willpower, of course,is gonna run out.
Restriction is gonna create allsorts of backlash that you're
not gonna like.
Whereas with that training, withthe gym, you have a practice, a
ritual.
I will say it's a habit, but notreally.
A habit is something automaticautomatic.
This is more part of youridentity, an identity-based set
(23:20):
of behaviors which stick.
They're very sticky.
All right, they stick a lotlonger than something that's
goal-based or outcome-based.
This is process-based,identity-based.
And I see this again and again.
Those who lift consistently arenot just getting the physical
result.
They're transforming theirself-concept, right?
And that and that is what makesthe results last.
(23:42):
And by the way, in my appfitness lab, I worked really
hard to incorporate this idea ofidentity transformation from day
one.
After you onboard and startwithin a day or two, you're
gonna get an activity that helpsyou develop the vision of your
future.
Very simple.
A few simple prompts.
And the app is gonna use that toreinforce this meaningful drive
(24:03):
that you have for your identity,which is a really cool part of
the process.
All right, I'm gonna close withthis.
After about the age of 35,things change, don't they?
Right?
Anabolic resistance increases,which means you need more
protein.
Muscle protein synthesis slowsdown, recovery definitely
becomes more important.
You know, your connective tissueis a little bit less pliable,
(24:24):
life is a little bit morestressful, neat tends to drop,
hormones start to shift in your30s and 40s, don't they?
And lifting weights is theantidote to every single one of
these, at least partially, ifnot completely.
It's not that you're gettingolder, it's that your training
(24:44):
has to match the physiology ofaging.
You might need more deliberatestimulus and more intention to
build and maintain muscle.
You might need more attention torecovery and your protein.
You might need a system thatworks a little more subtly with
nuance for your body, whichmeans you have to have a
feedback loop.
All of the things we talk abouton the show, that's what the
engineering side is.
(25:04):
The good news is that it works.
People in their 50s, 60s, 70s,80s, 90s can still build muscle.
You can still get stronger, youcan still transform your body
composition.
The research is quite clear onthis at this point.
But this is the big butt.
It doesn't happen by accident,right?
It only happens because you showup and you lift weights and you
(25:25):
send the body the signal thatmuscle actually matters.
So the conclusion, of course, islifting is not optional.
It is the infrastructure thatmakes everything else work.
So here are your actions fromtoday.
First, if you're not lifting atall, just start with two
sessions a week, which isdramatically better than zero.
(25:46):
I would encourage you to havethree sessions.
But if two is the bare minimumthat you could possibly get and
you're gonna just utterly failtrying to go in for three, start
with two.
Second, if you're alreadylifting, making make it make
sure that you're training, I'llsay hard enough.
And that's a whole topic.
I've done multiple episodes onthis, but basically it's getting
within a few reps shy of failureso that you get the appropriate
(26:10):
mechanical tension and thatyou're going up in weighted reps
each week to stay in that regimeso you actually build the
muscle.
Third, I want you to prioritizeprotein.
Your muscles need the materialsthat you get from protein.
So you've got to have that to goalong with your training, aiming
for 0.7 to one gram per pound ofbody weight.
Fourth, progressive overload.
I kind of alluded to thisalready in my training hard
(26:32):
enough.
But not only do you have totrain hard enough, you have to
lift a little bit more over timeto be able to train hard enough,
or else it'll start getting easyand you'll stop making progress.
That's the adaptation that yourbody gets.
And then fifth and finally, beconsistent.
And so this is theidentity-based behavior change.
This is where uh something likea system or an app or program
(26:54):
that keeps you consistent can behelpful.
Speaking of, if you wantpersonalized guidance that
adapts to your training andgoals, helps you create the
identity, helps you create thosebehaviors through daily
activities, and has a coachbuilt in in your pocket who can
answer all your questions, checkout the fitness lab app at
(27:14):
witsandweights.com slash app.
This is like a coachingintelligence layer that I built
based on my years of coachingand my content and the podcasts
to help you navigate exactlywhat we talked about today.
How to structure your training,your nutrition, your phases over
time.
It gives you personalizedrecommendations, it adapts every
day.
(27:34):
If you're having trouble in somearea of your life, it will
notice that and it will startadapting the activities for
that.
And that is how it helps buildthe behaviors without replacing
whatever other tools you alreadyuse.
It complements other tools quitewell.
So Fitness Lab is great whetheryou're starting out or you've
been at this for years, whetheryou need a workout program or
(27:55):
are following your own, whetheryou're tracking your own food or
want the app to do it for you.
It helps you make those smartdecisions faster.
Go to wits and weights.com slashapp or click the link in the
show notes.
That is Fitness Lab,witsandweights.com slash app.
All right, until next time, keepusing your wits, lifting those
weights.
And remember, your body iscapable of incredible things,
(28:15):
but it needs that signal oflifting weights to do it.
Send that signal by showing upin the gym and getting your
training done.
I'm Philip Bates, and I'll talkto you next time here on the
Wits and Weights Podcast.
If you are trying to lose weight and you're
focused on steps, your macros,your carbs, your sleep, your
cardio, but you're not liftingweights, you're not just leaving
results on the table, you areactively making things worse.
Today I'm going to explain whyskipping strength training
during weight loss massivelysuppresses your metabolism,
(00:23):
wrecks your body composition,and almost guarantees you'll
regain the weight and probablymore body fat.
You'll learn why muscle is yourmetabolic engine, why diet alone
leads to looking lighter butsofter, and the minimum dose of
lifting that protects everythingyou're working for.
(00:51):
Welcome to Wits and Weights, theshow that helps you build a
strong, healthy physique usingevidence, engineering, and
efficiency.
I'm your host, certifiednutrition coach, Philip Pape,
and creator of the Fitness Labapp.
Today we are addressing one ofthe most common and damaging
mistakes I see in attempts atfat loss, and that is people who
focus on diet, cardio, andsteps, but they skip the weight
(01:15):
room.
I alluded to this in the thirdtrap of Monday's episode of our
last episode about the threeweight loss traps.
And I want to dive in deep onthis one.
I'm not gonna sugarcoat it.
If you're trying to lose fatwithout lifting weights, you are
actively sabotaging yourresults.
You're not just leaving gains onthe table.
I think you are digging a holethat becomes harder to climb out
(01:36):
of with every pound you lose.
So listen up.
Whatever age you are, you've gotto start this.
This is a wake-up call.
This episode is for anyone who'sbeen told that weight loss is
just eating less and movingmore.
For anyone who wants to strengthtrain but hasn't been doing it
consistently, for anyone whohears mixed signals in the
fitness industry about whetheryou need to lift weights, all of
(01:59):
these theories have some tinybits of truth where they're
coming from, but they're mostlydangerously incomplete.
Because how you lose weightdetermines whether you end up
lean and strong or skinny, weak,and fighting your metabolism and
making all of this more and morefrustrating.
So let's jump into it.
And let me set the stage herewith a scenario that I see a
(02:20):
lot, and that is that someonedecides they want to lose
weight.
Probably the most commonscenario in existence right now,
right?
I gotta lose weight, I gottalose 10 pounds, 20, 40, 50, 100,
whatever.
And they do something, they dialin their nutrition, whatever
that means.
Dial in could be calories, maybethey're cutting and restricting,
but in their mind, they'redialing it in.
(02:40):
Maybe they're eating quoteunquote clean whole foods,
whatever.
Maybe they're walking more,maybe they add some cardio, and
then the scale goes down, andthen you think you're making
progress.
But what's probably happeningwith the vast majority of people
who lose weight, which isaccelerated today because of the
weight loss medications, is thatwithout the stimulus of lifting
weights, your body has zeroreason to preserve muscle.
(03:03):
So as you lose weight, asignificant portion of that loss
is lean mass.
How much?
Well, research shows thatwithout resistance training, up
to 30% of weight loss duringdieting can come from muscle.
It's the classic biggest losereffect.
And now we see it as the GOP1,somagatides, terzepatite, all
the weight loss drugs affect aswell.
(03:25):
I mean, I've seen numbers up to40% even.
And I think it has to do withhow fast you're losing weight.
It's not the meds, it's notabout the medications, it's
about the approach, right?
And this is where the math turnsagainst people because muscle is
so, so valuable, and we'realready starting to lose it in
our 30s and beyond.
And now you're just making theproblem even worse.
And you get things like body fatovershooting, where when you
(03:48):
regain the weight, which 95% ofpeople apparently do, you're
actually gaining more fat thanyou had before.
And you end up at the same orhigher scale weight with even
more fat and less muscle, whichis just the opposite of what
we're trying to do.
Muscle is an engine, itdefinitely is like the amount of
muscle you have in your body.
Think of it as your engine.
We want a massive gas-guzzlingengine, is what we want.
(04:12):
Super big, powerful engine thatalso burns a lot of calories.
Okay.
But, you know, physiologically,it does burn calories, but also
handles glucose.
It also oxidizes fat.
People forget that like themuscle itself translates to the
fat loss side of the equation aswell, and to the insulin
sensitivity and how you, youknow, handle your carbs.
When you lose that wonderfultissue of muscle, a lot of
(04:35):
things happen in the negativedirection that lead to the
ultimate decline and frailty ofaging that we are, I guess, used
to, unfortunately, seeing in theworld.
That is, but that is notinevitable.
So, yes, your expenditure drops,right?
Your maintenance calories,that's one thing, one small
thing that happens.
It's not the worst thing,though, even though it does make
(04:56):
mean you know, you don't have asmuch room to eat while you're in
a deficit, for example.
But worse than that is when yourdiet is over after you've lost
weight and muscle, let's sayyou've lost 20 pounds and your
metabolism has adapted downward,right?
Now what happens is because yourmetabolism has dropped even more
than you probably expected,you're more ravenous, you're
(05:18):
hungry, you're craving food.
Now you start to eat back thecalories, right?
And and that's okay, right?
We want to get back tomaintenance.
And even if you go just tomaintenance, the problem is now
you're what you're regainingonce you start gaining more
weight back, is fat, almostexclusively fat.
And it's usually more than whatyou lost because if you lost 20
(05:39):
pounds, and let's say five ofthose pounds were muscle and 15
of those pounds were fat, butnow you gain 20 pounds back,
you're gonna gain back 20 poundsof fat.
And so the net effect is you'velost five pounds of muscle.
This isn't hypothetical.
This is what happens to mostdieters who do not lift weights.
And the cool thing is it'stotally preventable.
(06:00):
That's why you're listening tothis show.
That's why you're looking forthe help and support on this
journey.
It's what I had just couldn'tdiscover until my 40s.
I always wondered why during myCrossFit days and doing paleo
and doing diets and all that,lots of cardio, why I would lose
weight and and look worse andworse.
And I thought, ah, it'sgenetics.
It's my age.
Like I'm skinny, fat, and thenI'm fat.
(06:21):
And then I'm skinny, fat, andlike, how do I actually look the
way I want to look?
I don't, I don't get it.
So here's the piece thatmatters, even more than what I
just talked about, is you arenot trying to lose weight.
Like I thought I was trying tolose weight and that was the
goal.
No, you're trying to lookbetter, aren't you?
It's not just about thephysique, but let's start there.
Let's let's be honest withourselves.
Let's start there.
You want to see muscledefinition.
(06:42):
You also want to feel strong andquote unquote functional.
That word is kind of a buzzwordtoday, but you know, you want to
function in your daily living atany age.
So maybe you're in your 60s or70s and listening to the show,
having trouble getting off thecouch, right?
And that's a real thing thathappens.
Okay.
And you want to be able to dothat, you want to spring off
that couch and have no problemwith it.
(07:04):
And you want to also look likeyou put in the work, right?
You don't, you kind of lookaround and you see what happens
with aging.
When your friends, when you getinto your 40s and 50s, you see
them on Facebook, you're like,wow, what has happened to them?
And it's not a matter ofjudgment and saying, oh, this
person's fat.
No.
It's a matter of, are you doingthe things that support your
(07:25):
health and your body because youlove yourself?
You do, right?
We all love ourselves.
So we want to give ourselves thebest shot in this world.
We also don't want people todepend on us when we get older.
And so that outcome, as much asit somewhat depends on
maintaining a healthy level ofbody fat, for most people, that
end result of managing body fatis helped tremendously and
(07:49):
almost exclusively by being ableto build muscle, at least over
the long term.
In the short term, you can dropa bunch of body fat with energy
balance alone.
You're gonna lose muscle.
You might be in a healthierstate than you were before
because you had a lot of fat.
I'm talking about people whohave a lot of weight to lose,
right?
But once you get to that point,you've got to build muscle.
Body fat percentage is like it'smore like geometry, whereas
(08:11):
scale weight is like arithmetic,right?
We need to focus on the geometryof the body.
Geometry as in like the thespace, the spatial distribution,
because if you lose a pound offat, but you also lose a pound
of muscle, that's not a win.
You've lost two pounds on thescale, but that's that's
setting, that's going backward.
That's becoming a smallerversion of the same shape.
(08:31):
Lighter on the scale, but softerin the mirror.
It's it's that deflated lookthat happens when people diet
without lifting.
You see it with the weight lossmeds when people aren't lifting.
You're like, whoa, they lost alot of weight, but they don't
look great, right?
It's just the instinct we havein our head.
You might not say that out loud.
I'm saying it out loud for you.
And let's be honest, that's whatwe're thinking.
And we see them shrink, butthey're not, they don't look
(08:54):
healthier.
And healthy is a good word forthis, I think.
Vibrant, healthy, right?
We don't have to say, noteveryone's gonna be chiseled,
jack toned.
We all have different body typesand body shapes, right?
I'm kind of devolving a littlebit into the whole body image
thing here.
But when you do maintain orbuild muscle while losing fat,
then your body compositionchanges.
So from an objective standpoint,that's what I'm talking about.
(09:15):
And objectively, what this lookslike is hey, your waist gets
smaller because you're notcarrying as much of that
visceral abdominal fat, which isnot healthy for you.
Your shoulders look broader,your arms have shape, you know,
you weigh the same or more thansomeone who just dieted, but you
look dramatically different.
You look healthier.
And if it does, even if it isabout vanity and physique, which
again is fine if that's what onething that drives you.
(09:37):
Most people's ideal physique,believe it or not, requires 10
to 20 pounds more pounds, 10 to20 more pounds of muscle than
they currently have.
Let that sink in.
That's a that's like a reallygood number.
10 to 20 more pounds of muscle.
So if that's the case, your goalreally isn't to get smaller, is
it?
It's to reshape.
And you can't reshape withoutresistance training.
(10:00):
All right.
So let's talk about anotherlayer here that gets overlooked.
The hormonal consequences ofdieting.
Dieting is a stress.
Your body perceives a caloriedeficit as a threat and it
responds accordingly.
Your hunger goes up, your neatgoes down.
I know you're you're like, hey,Philip, no, I'm getting more
steps and fat loss.
Yeah, you might be getting moreintentional steps, but you'd be
surprised at the unintentional,unconscious movement that goes
(10:23):
down, even inside your body.
Your leptin drops, your recoverygets worse, your whole system
starts pushing back against thedeficit.
It's a stress.
You may do it intentionally,yes, but it's a short-term
stress.
And that's called metabolicadaptation.
That's why fat loss gets harderover time.
And if you're not strengthtraining, these adaptations will
hit harder and faster.
(10:44):
I've seen it in people'snumbers.
Your body has less reason tohold on to metabolically
expensive tissue like muscle, soit dumps it.
And so even those of you doingthe UTAL YouTube workouts or the
P90 or those types of workouts,Pilates, and you're not making
any, you're not progressing,you're not increasing in weight
or reps over time, you're notactually getting stronger.
And then you go into a fat lossphase, you're not really doing
(11:05):
much for yourself.
You may, if you're lucky, holdon to some of your muscle, but
you're still probably gonnaprobably gonna lose some muscle.
At best, you're never in aperiod where you're gaining new
muscle tissue, if that makessense.
And going back to my commentwhere most people need to gain
10 to 20 pounds of muscle, andthat's beyond a baseline that I
(11:26):
would say is when you're 30.
So if you're already 40, 50, 60years old, you've lost some of
that muscle too.
The goal is to get it back andthen add those 10 to 20 pounds.
When you lift, you blunt thecompensatory mechanisms.
Okay.
Resistance training signals yourbody that muscle is essential,
that it's being used, that itshould be preserved.
You keep your need higher, youmaintain strength, you support
(11:48):
insulin sensitivity, youstabilize your mood and sleep.
Yes, even during fat loss, itmakes it a little bit easier,
and you're doing the mostimportant thing, which is
holding on to that muscle.
And I definitely have seen starkdifferences between people who
are not lifting properly or atall.
They they try to lose weight,and it's just this fight.
Whereas people who lift, they'relike, we're gonna go in a
moderate deficit, I'm gonna doall the right things, I'm gonna
(12:09):
eat a high satiety diet, plentyof protein, and I'm gonna train.
And it actually feels, I'm notgonna say it feels easy, but it
doesn't feel that bad at all.
You got a little bit of hunger,a little bit of stress, and you
get through it in six, eight,10, 12 weeks.
And now you've lost fat and youmove on to the rest of your life
being at maintenance or above.
This is a big distinction thatchanges how the whole process
(12:30):
feels and how sustainable itbecomes.
Now, before I keep going, I wantto mention something for those
of you who are ready to takeaction on this as we end the
year.
If you've been putting offstrength training or you know
you need more structure headinginto the new year, we are
starting, we are running athree-week finish strong
(12:50):
challenge designed to help youbuild that momentum and end the
year strong instead of waitinguntil January.
It's not, hey, let's do a dietat the end of the year or let's
do a fat loss phase at the endof the year.
That's gonna self-destruct,isn't it?
No, this is about getting thefundamental behaviors like
strength training in place nowand also having a flexible
(13:13):
framework for doing so, nomatter how stressful or chaotic
the holidays get, or any time ofyear.
Because if you could get throughthat time of year, the rest of
the year is gonna seem like abreeze.
It's building that foundationthat protects your metabolism,
your metabolic health, sets youup for real progress in 2026,
even if, yes, even if you wantto have a New Year's resolution
to lose fat.
So you can sign up right now forthat challenge.
(13:35):
Go to live.witsandweights.com.
The kickoff is on December 8th,but the challenge starts a
couple days later.
So December 8th is a Monday at 5p.m.
Eastern.
It would be great if you couldbe on the live kickoff, but if
you're not, it's okay.
The replay will be availableshortly thereafter.
And you'll have about a day anda half to watch it, to download
the guide, to download all thewonderful resources that Carol
(13:57):
has made for dealing with theholidays and all the situations
you find yourself in, like atthe airport, at the gas station,
at the hotel, to download ourminimum and bailout workout
templates for hotel gym travel.
If you don't have access to afull gym, all of that stuff is
included, as well as the replay.
Go to live.witsandweights.com.
Link is in the show notes, sothat you can join the challenge
(14:19):
and get started for the finalthree weeks of the year.
That's live.witsandweights.com.
All right, let's zoom out for asecond because this isn't just
about looking good at your goalweight, is it?
Right?
I I kind of have alluded, I'vedanced around the fact that
physique, which by the way, Idefine physique as much more
nuanced than a lot of people do.
(14:40):
To me, physique is everythingabout your body and mind.
But still, even if it's a vanitygoal, we need to couple that
with something more meaningfulabout our future self, our
identity, so that we have itall, we have the whole package.
And that will really drive youto want to do this.
This is about the rest of yourlife.
Without lifting, sarcopenia, theloss of muscle mass,
(15:01):
accelerates.
And I recently heard a podcast,gosh, I think it was Docs Who
Lift.
They talked about, or was itbarbell medicine, talked about
how sarcopenia, we we often talkabout it as a loss of muscle
mass, but really it's a loss offunction with our muscle, loss
of strength.
And I think that's just asimportant, if not more so, than
the muscle itself, becausethere's there's a reason we want
(15:21):
to have that muscle.
And it's not just the look of itor to say we have more muscle,
right?
So when we go through thisage-related, but also functional
muscle loss after 30, and thatoccurs because you're not doing
something about it, it doesn'tjust affect how you look, does
it?
It affects things like your bonedensity, your risk of falling,
(15:42):
your ability to carry grocerieswhen you're 65, to get up off
the floor when you're 75, tolive independently when you're
80 and above.
So at the end of the day,today's episode is a longevity
episode in disguise.
Because there is no healthyaging without strength.
That's the statement I want youto remember.
(16:03):
Quote it.
Put it on Instagram, I don'tcare, put it on your post-it
note, share it.
There is no healthy agingwithout strength.
Your quality of life in your60s, 70s, 80s, beyond depends on
the muscle and strength that youbuild and preserve now.
And I say now, I was gonna sayin your 30s, 40s, 50s, it
doesn't matter.
(16:24):
Now, starting now.
If you're already 70, start now.
If you're already 80, start now.
Testosterone, growth hormone,IGF 1, all of these track and
they correlate with muscle mass.
When you let muscle go, yourhormonal health spirals with it.
Whereas when you build and youmaintain muscle, you support
that hormonal environment thatkeeps you healthy and
(16:46):
functional.
And I know there's a lot of talkabout hormones today and hormone
replacement therapy, but reallyit has to start from lifestyle.
I mean, the lifestyle has to bethere regardless, is is is the
way to think about it.
So this isn't just vanity, it'sabout remaining capable,
remaining independent, remainingalive in a meaningful sense for
as long as possible.
Lifespan, health span, and mindspan.
(17:09):
Now, you know I think about thisfrom an engineering standpoint.
I talk about engineering in theintro.
Some of you guys that are new tothe podcast are like, where does
engineering fall into all ofthis stuff about fitness?
I think it's a really importantlens to use when we think about
our body and how it ages overtime.
For example, cardio.
It gives you some benefitstoday.
You burn some calories, you getsome cardiovascular
conditioning, but then it'sdone.
(17:30):
It's short term.
Tomorrow you have to do it againto get the same benefit, right?
Cardio is very short term.
Muscle is gonna give you benefittoday, tomorrow, and the next
decade once you add it.
That's incredible.
If you add 10 pounds of musclein your 40s, that tissue
continues to burn calories,support your metabolism, keep
you strong for years.
You can kind of coast for awhile and still be far better
(17:51):
off than someone who never builtit.
I know people who've built a lotof muscle through their lives,
and just about everythingthey're doing is suboptimal.
They may even be sitting allday.
And still their health markers,their biomarkers, based on their
blood work, are far superiorthan the average person their
age simply because they haveextra muscle.
And then when we work on thingslike walking more and a little
bit of cardiovascular health ontop of it, they get incredibly
(18:15):
superior numbers withoutbecoming an endurance athlete,
right?
Just by a little, a littlewalking.
Now, the opposite is a prettyhorrible situation.
If you lose 10 pounds of musclebecause you're not lifting, then
you're gonna spend the rest ofyour life fighting your body.
You're not gonna be able to eatas much.
Every time you want to dosomething that's physical, it's
gonna get harder and harder.
(18:36):
Every time you do try to loseweight, it's gonna feel harder
because you're not doing theright way and you're losing
muscle.
Muscle compounds like interest.
Nothing or not lifting is likepulling money out of the stock
market at age 40 and thenwondering why you can't retire.
I always think it's a greatanalogy to think of muscle as
like a retirement fund for yourbody.
Right?
That investment you make now isgonna pay dividends for decades.
(18:59):
Investment's not just financial,it's just lifting and eating the
right way, et cetera.
Right?
So this is the uncomfortabletruth about diet-only fat loss,
which isn't even fat loss, it'sjust weight loss.
It creates more hunger, worsecravings, higher dropout rates,
more weight regain, lesssatisfaction with your
appearance.
When you diet without lifting,you're stripping away everything
(19:21):
that makes the diet sustainable,believe it or not.
Like the lifting is almostexclusively what makes it
sustainable in that it driveseverything else around it,
right?
You don't, because without it,you're not gonna have that food
flexibility, you're not gonnause the nutrients in the best
way, and you're gonna end up ata body weight that requires
eating less and less just tomaintain.
Whereas with strength training,you're building a buffer, you
(19:43):
create the physique you want tomaintain, it changes your
relationship with the wholeprocess, you feel progress every
week, and it reframes whatlifting is.
And when people say, Well, Idon't like to lift, we've got to
change that somehow.
We've got to change honestly,getting the result from it tends
to be enough to tell somebodythis is something I've got to do
that's part of my identity thatI want to do.
(20:04):
And so that's a good segue intothe next thing, which is that
some of you are thinking, youknow, I'm busy, I don't have
time for a routine, or I'mworried about doing too much.
I guess most people aren'tworried about that last one
necessarily, but I want to pushback on all of this gently.
Most people listening to theshow are probably undertrained,
not overtrained.
I'm gonna repeat that.
Most people listening to thisshow are probably undertrained,
(20:25):
not overtrained.
What you're actually doing isprobably less than the minimum
effective dose.
So you're worried about doingtoo much when you haven't even
started.
Now, the too much might be inthe form of cardio running,
cardio endurance machines, butfrom a strength training
perspective, three to foursessions a week is pretty much
all it takes to preserve everyounce of muscle during fat loss.
Even two sessions isdramatically better than zero.
(20:48):
So the minimum effective dose topreserve muscle is actually
shockingly low.
It's it's a quarter to an eighthof what it takes to build
muscle.
It's pretty low.
So even starting there is agreat place to be.
That's what I'm saying.
Better than zero infinitely.
So that's 45 minutes to an hour,three or four times a week.
You probably spend more timethan that scrolling, doom
(21:08):
scrolling, watching TV, Netflix,right?
The barrier for most people isnot time.
I know if you're a busy mom,single mom, you've got kids,
still, I found that there areplenty of other things that are
far less effective than strengthtraining that you're doing that
takes a lot of time that can besupplanted by this wonderful
thing of lifting weights.
And a home gym can be a reallyhelpful thing for that for a lot
(21:30):
of you.
It should be the prioritybecause once you understand
what's at stake, the priorityitself becomes obvious.
And I hope today's episode ishelping you frame that, right?
What message are you sendingyour body?
Without lifting, you're sendingthe message that your muscle is
expensive and apparently I don'tneed it.
Let's dump it, let's hold on tothe fat.
You're getting fatter.
When you lift, the messagechanges.
This muscle is important.
(21:51):
It's necessary for my survival,it's essential.
And when I need extra energy,I'm gonna pull from fat instead.
You're telling your body what todo and keep and how to reshape
itself through your actions.
So that's the game.
Resistance training is thesignal, it's communication with
your own physiology.
And if you're not sending thatduring fat loss or really any
time, your body's gonna make thewrong choice, or it's gonna make
(22:13):
the natural choice, the one thatyou don't want.
All right, I have one more angletoday, and this one is
psychological.
When you show up in the gym,let's say three days a week, you
start to see yourselfdifferently.
You're not just someone on adiet, you are someone who
trains.
You're an athlete, or at leastyou're becoming an athlete.
That identity shift is whatchanges everything else outside
(22:36):
the gym.
You make better food choicesbecause guess what?
Athletes fuel their training.
You prioritize sleep becauseathletes recover.
You think long term becauseathletes build over years, not
weeks.
Whereas not lifting weightstotally removes that anchor from
your life.
Without the gym, you're nowrelying just on willpower, on
restriction, on low-carb diets,on fasting, on all the gimmicks,
(22:58):
all the supplements, all thethings that are shortcuts.
And then willpower, of course,is gonna run out.
Restriction is gonna create allsorts of backlash that you're
not gonna like.
Whereas with that training, withthe gym, you have a practice, a
ritual.
I will say it's a habit, but notreally.
A habit is something automaticautomatic.
This is more part of youridentity, an identity-based set
(23:20):
of behaviors which stick.
They're very sticky.
All right, they stick a lotlonger than something that's
goal-based or outcome-based.
This is process-based,identity-based.
And I see this again and again.
Those who lift consistently arenot just getting the physical
result.
They're transforming theirself-concept, right?
And that and that is what makesthe results last.
(23:42):
And by the way, in my appfitness lab, I worked really
hard to incorporate this idea ofidentity transformation from day
one.
After you onboard and startwithin a day or two, you're
gonna get an activity that helpsyou develop the vision of your
future.
Very simple.
A few simple prompts.
And the app is gonna use that toreinforce this meaningful drive
(24:03):
that you have for your identity,which is a really cool part of
the process.
All right, I'm gonna close withthis.
After about the age of 35,things change, don't they?
Right?
Anabolic resistance increases,which means you need more
protein.
Muscle protein synthesis slowsdown, recovery definitely
becomes more important.
You know, your connective tissueis a little bit less pliable,
(24:24):
life is a little bit morestressful, neat tends to drop,
hormones start to shift in your30s and 40s, don't they?
And lifting weights is theantidote to every single one of
these, at least partially, ifnot completely.
It's not that you're gettingolder, it's that your training
(24:44):
has to match the physiology ofaging.
You might need more deliberatestimulus and more intention to
build and maintain muscle.
You might need more attention torecovery and your protein.
You might need a system thatworks a little more subtly with
nuance for your body, whichmeans you have to have a
feedback loop.
All of the things we talk abouton the show, that's what the
engineering side is.
(25:04):
The good news is that it works.
People in their 50s, 60s, 70s,80s, 90s can still build muscle.
You can still get stronger, youcan still transform your body
composition.
The research is quite clear onthis at this point.
But this is the big butt.
It doesn't happen by accident,right?
It only happens because you showup and you lift weights and you
(25:25):
send the body the signal thatmuscle actually matters.
So the conclusion, of course, islifting is not optional.
It is the infrastructure thatmakes everything else work.
So here are your actions fromtoday.
First, if you're not lifting atall, just start with two
sessions a week, which isdramatically better than zero.
(25:46):
I would encourage you to havethree sessions.
But if two is the bare minimumthat you could possibly get and
you're gonna just utterly failtrying to go in for three, start
with two.
Second, if you're alreadylifting, making make it make
sure that you're training, I'llsay hard enough.
And that's a whole topic.
I've done multiple episodes onthis, but basically it's getting
within a few reps shy of failureso that you get the appropriate
(26:10):
mechanical tension and thatyou're going up in weighted reps
each week to stay in that regimeso you actually build the
muscle.
Third, I want you to prioritizeprotein.
Your muscles need the materialsthat you get from protein.
So you've got to have that to goalong with your training, aiming
for 0.7 to one gram per pound ofbody weight.
Fourth, progressive overload.
I kind of alluded to thisalready in my training hard
(26:32):
enough.
But not only do you have totrain hard enough, you have to
lift a little bit more over timeto be able to train hard enough,
or else it'll start getting easyand you'll stop making progress.
That's the adaptation that yourbody gets.
And then fifth and finally, beconsistent.
And so this is theidentity-based behavior change.
This is where uh something likea system or an app or program
(26:54):
that keeps you consistent can behelpful.
Speaking of, if you wantpersonalized guidance that
adapts to your training andgoals, helps you create the
identity, helps you create thosebehaviors through daily
activities, and has a coachbuilt in in your pocket who can
answer all your questions, checkout the fitness lab app at
(27:14):
witsandweights.com slash app.
This is like a coachingintelligence layer that I built
based on my years of coachingand my content and the podcasts
to help you navigate exactlywhat we talked about today.
How to structure your training,your nutrition, your phases over
time.
It gives you personalizedrecommendations, it adapts every
day.
(27:34):
If you're having trouble in somearea of your life, it will
notice that and it will startadapting the activities for
that.
And that is how it helps buildthe behaviors without replacing
whatever other tools you alreadyuse.
It complements other tools quitewell.
So Fitness Lab is great whetheryou're starting out or you've
been at this for years, whetheryou need a workout program or
(27:55):
are following your own, whetheryou're tracking your own food or
want the app to do it for you.
It helps you make those smartdecisions faster.
Go to wits and weights.com slashapp or click the link in the
show notes.
That is Fitness Lab,witsandweights.com slash app.
All right, until next time, keepusing your wits, lifting those
weights.
And remember, your body iscapable of incredible things,
(28:15):
but it needs that signal oflifting weights to do it.
Send that signal by showing upin the gym and getting your
training done.
I'm Philip Bates, and I'll talkto you next time here on the
Wits and Weights Podcast.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Are You A Charlotte?
In 1997, actress Kristin Davis’ life was forever changed when she took on the role of Charlotte York in Sex and the City. As we watched Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte navigate relationships in NYC, the show helped push once unacceptable conversation topics out of the shadows and altered the narrative around women and sex. We all saw ourselves in them as they searched for fulfillment in life, sex and friendships. Now, Kristin Davis wants to connect with you, the fans, and share untold stories and all the behind the scenes. Together, with Kristin and special guests, what will begin with Sex and the City will evolve into talks about themes that are still so relevant today. "Are you a Charlotte?" is much more than just rewatching this beloved show, it brings the past and the present together as we talk with heart, humor and of course some optimism.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.