Ep 40: Everything You Need to Know About Fat Loss (Simple Strategies for a Fitter, Leaner Body)

Episode Transcript
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Philip Pape (00:08):
Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast, where we
discuss getting strong andhealthy with strength training
and sustainable nutrition. I'myour host, Philip Pape. And in
each episode, we examinestrategies to help you achieve
physical self mastery through ahealthy skepticism of the
fitness industry, and acommitment to consistent
nutrition and training forsustainable results.

(00:30):
Welcome to another episode ofWits & Weights. This is another
live training in the Wits &Weights Facebook community,
which is totally free, it givesyou access to lots of free
valuable content, challenges,guides, nutrition, blueprints,
even early access to podcastepisodes. And you can see me
posting regularly to followalong with my upcoming fat loss

(00:54):
journey if you would like. Sojust click the link in the show
notes to join. Again, it's theWits & Weights, Facebook
community, which you can alsojust search.
And my name is Philip Pape. I'ma certified nutrition coach,
body composition expert andfounder of Wits & Weights. And
as always, I would be verygrateful for your support. And

(01:15):
the easiest way to do that is tosubmit a five star rating and
review on whatever platform youuse to listen to your podcast,
and then tell others about thepodcast if you find it helpful.
So with that, let's get intotoday's topic, which is
everything you need to knowabout fat loss. Now this is
going live in January 2023. Wheneveryone's making new year's

(01:39):
resolutions, the most frequentone being to lose weight by
starting a weight loss or fatloss phase. And we're going to
make a distinction between whatwe mean by weight loss versus
fat loss.
Whether you're trying to loseextra weight, or you're trying
to switch to a fat loss phaseafter building muscle like I'm
doing, or you want to getlifestyle lean or shredded, or

(02:02):
you finally want to just achievesuccess with your New Year's
resolution. I think this episodewill help you get there. And you
may want to listen to it asecond time and take notes to to
really let it sink in. So Ithink you're going to learn
everything you need to knowabout fat loss so you can lose
the weight and keep it offsustainably efficiently. And in

(02:22):
a way that actually improves howyou look and feel for the long
term. And I realize everythingsaying that this is everything
you need to know is apresumption of statement. But
when I was preparing thisepisode, I tried to think of all
the things that really matter,based on experience based on the
evidence based on other expertsthat I listened to or watch and
read so that you can refer tothis episode in the future as

(02:45):
sort of a definitive guide. Now,this is not a rapid weight loss
prescription. This is a fat lossfor life approach that I use
with clients that you can use onyour own that I use on myself.
And if you have a little bit ofknowledge, practice and
accountability, you canincorporate this, these

(03:05):
practices. As a body compositionexpert, I work with clients who
want to eat more and enjoy theirlifestyle, but they also want to
improve their physique. Theywant to have more energy, I want
to have more self confidence.
And this really requires afocused, disciplined and
evidence based approach to fatloss, that prioritizes strength
training and body composition.

(03:28):
That's where it's at. That'swhere the magic happens. And
you're gonna hear a lot ofemphasis on that today. You may
have heard some or all of theseprinciples and strategies
before, but I'm going to laythem out in a way where you can
refer to this episode in thefuture as a fat loss blueprint
if you ever get stuck. And as Imentioned before, I am following
my own 12 week fat loss phasestarting this month, and I will

(03:51):
be adhering to these principlesand the strategies. So if you
want to follow along and seeupdates of my journey, make sure
to join our free Wits & WeightsFacebook community, I also made
a fat loss for life guide that Ican send you after you join the
group associated with thisepisode. So just check out the
links in the show notes to joinour free community or to apply

(04:11):
for a one on one coaching if youneed that extra boost of
support. Okay, so before evenconsidering fat loss, let's
review three principlesthat we are going to adhere to
throughout this process threeprinciples that I think govern a
lot of why we do it this way andwhat the strategies are. So the
first principle is that buildingmuscle increases your metabolism

(04:35):
and that's going to make fatloss easier. Muscle burns more
calories and fat. Having moremuscle allows you to carry more
weight and be leaner but have ahigher BMR higher baseline
metabolism. More muscle meansyou're more active more muscle
means you can push more in thegym. More muscle means higher
bone density. More muscle meansdeeper sleep and additional

(04:57):
recovery. and all of these mean,easier fat loss. So that's the
first principle is that buildingmuscle makes fat loss easier.
Principle number two, you can'timprove your body composition
without building, or at leastpreserving muscle. Okay, so this
is sort of tied in withprinciple number one. We don't,

(05:20):
we don't just want to loseweight, right? We want to lose
fat. And the vast majority ofpeople we're talking 95% of
people or more, have been doingit the wrong way, right? You've
been either crash dieting, ordieting very quickly, without
regard for protein trainingsteps, any of these other
things, potentially do a lot ofcardio. And every time you lose

(05:41):
20 3040 pounds, you lose a lotof muscle in the process. I
mean, I've said this many timesbefore, but I can't overstate it
enough. If you lost 30 pounds,doing it that way, you might be
losing 15 pounds of muscle. Andit's easy to lose fat and
muscle. It's hard and it takestime to build muscle back. So
let's not lose it in the firstplace. Okay, so that concept of

(06:05):
body fat overshooting, whichI've talked about before, and I
think one of my recent episodeswas a replay on Paul Hinton's
podcast, where I talked about itas well. The idea that every
time you lose weight, you losemuscle. And every time you gain
weight back, you're gainingmainly fat, and you're
constantly getting worse interms of body composition. And
what we want to do is principlenumber one, build muscle. And

(06:28):
then principle number two,preserve, build or preserve that
muscle as part of the fat lossphase. So if you're doing it for
the very first time, if you'venever built muscle, yes, you can
get leaner and improve your bodycomposition, just by doing what
we're going to talk about today.
And focusing on fat loss andholding whatever muscle you
have, it's not much muscle youhave I get it, but you're gonna

(06:50):
hold on to it, which you'venever really done before, when
doing a traditional approach orcrash diet type approach, or a
restrictive diet, okay, now,this is going to get you what
I'm going to call skinny lean,not skinny fat, right? skinny
fat is what's been happeningover the years of yo yo dieting
when you lost fat and muscle,and you keep getting what seems

(07:11):
to be fluffier, even if you'reat the same weight, I'm talking
about skinny lean, meaningwouldn't cut fat hold on your
muscle, and you're going toreveal some of that little bit
of muscle you have. However, Iwould suggest going back to
principle number one, buildingmuscle first at some point, and
then revealing that muscle withfat loss and periodized in your
training, and periodized in yournutrition. That's the way I work

(07:33):
with my clients at least. And Ihighly recommend it. But either
way, we're going to at leastpreserve the muscle we have
principle number three, okay,you cannot maintain your
results, your fat loss resultsusing traditional restrictive
dieting approaches. We don'twant to arbitrarily cut out food

(07:56):
groups, like all carbs, or picka one size fits all low calorie
target, you know, like a, likean 800 Calorie target that
optive via and these otherdamaging, highly dangerous
programs use. We don't want torely on a packaged food service
where we don't really even knowhow to make our own meals. And
I'm not talking about fooddelivery. Where do you still

(08:16):
make the meals and they servethe ingredients I'm talking
about? Programs are you spendinghundreds of dollars a month and
they're delivering all your foodand telling you to eat it this
specific way. And then we don'twant to use something like
fasting as a primary fat losstechnique. It's a tool in the
toolbox for certain people, butit's generally not something you
need. And it's not the you know,sure way to to fat loss. So

(08:39):
those those things I justmentioned, that's just a few of
them are all short term fixes. Iguarantee that you will lose
weight on those, but at a hugecost to your metabolism, to your
behaviors to your lifestyle, andreally to your ability to
maintain results once thosediets are done, or whatever
approach you're taking. Becausethen it's like what do I do now?

(09:02):
Instead, we need a flexibleapproach, right? We call this
flexible dieting, a flexibleapproach that lets you enjoy
Dining Out social events, foodand drinks you prefer and maybe
not those that you don't prefer.
And something that works whetheryou are losing, maintaining or
gaining weight. So in otherwords, we are going to learn the
skill of manipulating yournutrition to fit whatever

(09:24):
dietary pattern makes sense foryou and your goals. And by
definition, this can change withyour goals. So it's a flexible
approach. So those are the threeprinciples. Okay, principle one,
building muscle makes fat losseasier. Principle two, you can't
improve body composition withoutbuilding or holding on to
muscle. And number three, youcan't maintain your results

(09:46):
using a crazy restrictiveprescription. So that brings us
to the strategies. Okay, and I'mgoing to start with the first
three strategies, which I thinkyou're going to want to put in
place Before you even thinkabout dieting, and by dieting, I
mean going into a caloriedeficit. Okay, so the first
strategy, start strengthtraining now, and always train

(10:10):
as if you're building muscle,even when you're dieting. So I'm
gonna, I'm gonna go through whatI mean by others. But basically,
if you're not strength training,look to do that first.
Seriously, I am, I am that guywho, who says strength training
is so pivotal to this, even as anutrition coach, that I want you
to be doing that from thebeginning, because it makes

(10:32):
everything else work better, itmakes it easier, and so on. So
no matter what people tell you,if your goal is to lose fat, to
improve body composition, youhave to have a strong muscle
building signal, period. Referback to principle number two,
that you have to build apreserve muscle to prioritize
fat loss, or you're just goingto lose muscle defeating the

(10:54):
entire purpose of this exercise.
Even when you're losing weight,if you have a strong muscle
building signal, that is what'sgoing to retain your muscle,
that's the most important thing.
Even more important thanprotein, believe it or not,
protein has a lot of tolerancebehind it. shocking is that
maybe, to hear from me, youknow, I've come to realize from

(11:15):
from the evidence that thetraining signal is the is the
most important thing. Our goalwhen we train, whether we're
gaining or losing weight doesn'tmatter. Our goal is always
muscular tension, andprogressive overload, meaning we
have to prioritize a mode oflifting that has high intensity,
intensity, meaning meaningweight on the bar, relatively

(11:37):
heavy for us, 60 7080 90% of ourmax, which would put you into a
range of somewhere between, Idon't know two to six reps as
your baseline, before you startstacking other types of rep
ranges and movements on to that.
And that's going to that's goingto give you the muscular tension

(11:59):
you need, we're not necessarilytalking going to failure all the
time, we're talking aboutrecruiting as much muscle mass
as possible. And then givingourselves the chance to increase
that weight over time, orincrease the reps over time for
progressive overload, even whenwe're in a fat loss phase. Okay,
because when we're in a fat lossphase, we're not getting much
nutrition coming in, we'rehaving a stressor on our body.

(12:22):
And there's going to come apoint where it's going to be
very hard to make further gainsor any build any muscle. And all
we're trying to do is hold on tothe muscle. So what we need to
do is lift probably three orfour days per week, I would say
at least two but almost anybodywould benefit optimally from
three or four days per week. Sothat's like three to five hours

(12:42):
in the gym with a high loadbased program.
foundationally based on thecompound lifts, right, the
squat, the deadlift, the benchpress. And then I also loved the
overhead press.
I actually posted in thecommunity group, not long, I
think it was last week about myown switch from in my

(13:03):
programming from a four daypower building program where I
was going an hour and a half tothe gym, to a three day basic
barbell programming, but in alow rep range to give me plenty
of stimulus to hold on to thatmuscle during the dieting phase.
So it's probably the opposite ofwhat a lot of you are thinking,
you're thinking, oh, I need togo with, you know, more cardio,
more endurance, more reps toburn the fat. No, we need to go

(13:26):
heavy to give the stimulus tomuscle so that you maintain that
muscle. Alright, so that'sstrategy number one starts
training right now. And alwaystrain as if you're building
muscle, even when you'redieting, and it's hard to do.
So. Number two, consumesufficient protein to maintain
muscle while dieting you knewthis was going to be next. And

(13:49):
by the way, you're gonna hear alot in here, a lot of detail.
I'm going to summarize all thislater in the episode, you can
skip to that if you want, you'regonna miss a lot of nuance and
context, just warning you. Butyou will have that. So consume
sufficient protein to maintainmuscle on it. Now protein is
what I call, or a lot of peoplecall the body composition macro,

(14:09):
right? It's the one that letsyou really control your body
composition. Now studies haveshown time and time again that a
higher protein diet leads tomore lean mass retention, and
more fat loss during weightloss. So it's very well
established. Also, proteinnaturally leads to eating more

(14:31):
whole foods. It's a nice sideeffect, because you're trying to
get all this protein from animalsources like meat, eggs, dairy,
and also from plant sources. Youknow, legumes, some grains have
proteins, vegetables that haveproteins and so on, kind of
forces you into making choicesthat incorporate more whole
foods, which is a great sideeffect. Protein also forces you

(14:55):
to establish appropriate mealfrequency and timing because To
get enough protein, you have toeat a certain amount of times
per day. And then that forcesyou to kind of time your meals
throughout the day to optimizemuscle building and muscle
retention, which, which issimply another way to say, of
just having enough proteinspread evenly throughout the

(15:16):
day. And then it also crowds outother foods that don't serve
your goals, which kind of tiedto the first thing I said about
it gets you to eat more wholefoods. Now, I suggest building
your protein habit as followsFirst, just get protein every
time you eat. Okay, a lot ofpeople aren't doing that, right
now, if you think about yourthree or four meals a day is

(15:39):
their meal, it just doesn't haveprotein for a lot of people.
That's breakfast, right? Bagelmuffin cereal, oatmeal. I mean,
oatmeal has a little protein,but it's like trace amounts. And
you realize, well, if you don'thave eggs, or cottage cheese, or
meat, or even a protein shake,whatever, you're probably not
getting protein at that meal. Sothe first thing is just get
protein at every meal, then westep it up, and we say, okay,

(16:00):
let's make sure to eat four orfive times a day, where there's
always protein, and one or twoof those maybe just protein and
maybe just a bowl of Greekyogurt, right, and maybe just a
whey protein shake. And then thenext step up from that is to
actually track your protein,which is going to be in the
third strategy I'm going tocover in a second. So the goal

(16:21):
of how much protein to get, I'vesaid it many times, and I'm
gonna continue to use the samewindow that I think is supported
by the evidence. And that is 0.7to one gram per pound of target
bodyweight. So if you a 250, andyou want to lose 50 pounds and
get to 200, you're aiming forbetween 140 and 200 grams of

(16:47):
protein, pretty straightforward.
And it's a big range, if you'reon the lower end of that range
of most people are perfectlyfine. Okay, I'm not going to be
a zealot about the one gram perpound, if that's just such a far
cry from where you are today. Orif you're dieting, and we're
talking about fat loss, and youdon't want to have so much
protein that it crowds out thefats and carbs. So there's a
fine balance there. Now leanerindividuals, or people further

(17:07):
into a diet may need to actuallyhave higher protein, just to
continue to retain as muchmuscle as possible. That's where
we get worried about the muscleloss accelerating. So keep that
in mind. So that was a strategynumber two is to consume
sufficient protein. Strategynumber three, is checking my
notes here. Strategy numberthree is to use data to maximize

(17:28):
your results and stayconsistent. Okay, so notice I'm
making the strategy somewhatgeneric. And then I'm diving in
with specifics that I recommend.
But the principle of thestrategy is that the more
information you have about yourbody and how it's changing, the

(17:49):
more you can respond to it, andcontinue to make progress toward
your results. As well as stayconsistent and hold yourself
accountable. Whether you'reworking with a coach or not.
Having that data will give youits feedback, right? It says,
Okay, I'm not doing what I needto be doing to get from here to
there. And I have a process tofollow in the data I'm gathering

(18:09):
every day is telling me how I'mtracking on that process. So
here's what I recommend. Irecommend tracking at least
calories and protein. But goahead and just track all your
macros, because it's so easy todo with technology today. Why
limit yourself to calories andprotein? That's my opinion.
Having said that, if you knowyour calories, and you know your

(18:31):
protein, to track calories,you're going to have to track
the calories and the food, whichgenerally comes along with the
macros. And then you're going toknow what your fats and carbs
are anyway, even if you don'tcare where you fall on those
fats and carbs, you feel methere. So it kind of all works
out anyway, because calories andprotein are what's most
important to hit. The fats andcarbs are much more flexible.

(18:55):
Now what I recommend, Irecommend an app called macro
factor. So in the past, I'velately suggested it more and
more I'm coming to find that notonly does everyone I know on
this planet who've used itpreferred over all the other
apps. I've seen coaches who arejust diehard My Fitness Pal
users and chronometer or RPusers switch to macro factor and

(19:15):
they're all like, okay, we'renot going back. It's just that
helpful. Like, I rarely seesomething that's designed with
what we are trying to do soclearly in mind, right, the
developers, the team behind it,the owners, the community is
just all toward this. So I'm anevangelist for it. I admit,
macro factor, I do have a codeand affiliate code that will

(19:37):
give you an extra free week inyour free trial, although you're
gonna end up wanting to buy itanyway. But you can use my code
Wits & Weights, when you sign upfor the free trial. It also
supports me so I reallyappreciate that. But heck, I'm a
user. I've used it since dayone. I still use it. I'm going
to continue using it in myupcoming fat loss phase that
you're going to follow along inour group with if you want And

(20:00):
all my clients use it. Soeverybody that I recommend use
this. And when people reach outto me asking for help, like I'm
having trouble with my protein,I'm having trouble with this.
First question is, are youlogging? Are you tracking?
Because how do you know whatyou're eating the quantities,
the macros the balance, unlessyou track we are terrible,
terrible at estimating calories.
That's just a fact. And as muchas you want to do intuitive

(20:24):
eating, you can't do it withoutthe intuition developed first,
that skill of okay, I'm going tointuitively eat do I even know
how many calories or macros arein this food on my plate? No,
generally you don't, unlessyou've tracked it. So use
something like macro factor totrack your macros and calories.
And then the other thing youwant to track is your weight.

(20:47):
Okay. Now, I know there's a lotof coaches and a lot of programs
that are all about getting ridof the scale and not using the
scale. And, you know, especiallyI note, a lot of them are
marketed toward women, like, youknow, start, you don't have to
obsess over the scale, etc. I'm,I'm not going to trash any of
those whatsoever, because theprinciple behind them is totally

(21:09):
sound that you don't have toweigh yourself to put in the
principles for fat loss. Totallytrue. However, I'm a big fan of
understanding what's going onwith your body specifically, why
do we get bloodwork? Why do weget our blood pressure checked?
Right? Or why do we measure ourresting heart rate? Why do we
measure our steps? Why do wemeasure our lifts in our in the

(21:31):
gym, so that we know what'shappening. And we can make
adjustments. Same thing withweight, I would recommend
weighing as frequently as youcan, ideally every day. And the
reason I support weighingyourself every day is because it
makes it a habit that you startjust not having to think about
meaning you actually start toreduce your obsession with a

(21:53):
scale because it's now a dailything. And then the second part
of that is you see the numberfluctuating up and down and up
and down and up and down. Andyou realize, heck, this number
doesn't mean a whole lot in theshort term. And instead, I need
to know what's happening overroughly a three week period to
see how my body's responding. Soif you're using an app like

(22:14):
macro factor, it uses somethingcalled trend weight, which is a
20 day exponential movingaverage. And I tell you that and
it's no secret, because you canreverse engineer and they've
admitted it, you can do this ina spreadsheet, you could do it
in Excel or Google Sheets, ifyou just want to do it on your
own, track your weight everysingle day and apply a 20 day
moving average ExponentialMoving Average formula. Okay,

(22:37):
why am I telling you all this,because at the end of the day,
the daily weight on the scale,isn't that important at all,
it's the 234 week change in yourweight, that's important. Once
you have your calories in, andyour weight, which is the output
of your energy, then that willlet you monitor your current

(22:58):
daily metabolism, you know,daily or weekly, whatever
resolution you're using. If youuse macro factors every day, if
you do it on your own manuallywith the spreadsheets roughly
every week, you're gonna getsome decent data. And macro
factual calls this dynamicmaintenance. And what this
allows you to do is see exactlyhow your body is responding to

(23:19):
everything, to your activity, toyour food, everything you do, so
that each week you can adjustyour calorie intake and keep
progressing toward your fat lossgoals. So that really is kind of
the crux of why data isimportant, isn't it? Alright, so
I just shared the first threestrategies. And I want you to
put these in place before youcontinue to the remaining

(23:43):
strategies. So number one, startstrength training properly.
Number two, consume sufficientprotein. And number three, use
data, track your calories andmacros and track your weight. So
that you have what you need tomake adjustments and to stay
consistent. Because we truly aretrying to do this as effectively
and efficiently as possible asquickly as we can. We're not

(24:03):
trying to you know, go formonths and months and months and
hope that we lose weight and fatbecause nobody wants to be
hanging around that long in adiet.
Hey, this is Philip Pape. And ifyou feel like you've put in
effort to improve your healthand fitness but aren't getting
results, I invite you to applyfor a one on one coaching to
make real progress and get thebody you desire. We'll work

(24:26):
together to figure out what'smissing so you can look better,
perform better and feel better.
Just go to wits &weights.com/coaching to learn
about my program and applytoday. Now back to the episode.
So once you've used those, onceyou've done those first three
things, we get to strategynumber four, is to spend time
finding your true maintenancebefore you actually start the

(24:47):
diet before you go into acalorie deficit. I would say
four weeks is usually a goodtimeframe for a lot of people.
And if you're using macrofactor, you don't have to do
anything like reverse dieting orYou slowly up the calories over
time, and it kind of takesforever to get there. No, just
eat at your dynamic maintenance,you're going to know week to
week what your maintenance is,maybe you overshot a little,

(25:08):
maybe you under shot, you're notgoing to gain a whole bunch of
weight, it's going to keep youroughly in your maintenance
level. And in about three weeks,maybe four weeks, you'll know
exactly where you need to be tostart your diet. Alright, so
the, all of these prerequisitesare going to help you they're
going to set you up for success.
And they're going to set you upfor retaining that muscle and

(25:30):
losing that fat. All right,strategy. So strategy number
four that I just mentioned, isspend time finding true
maintenance. And if use macrofactor, it's going to happen
pretty quickly. Number five, isnow we're gonna go into the
diet. So this is critical onlike all that restrictive diets
out there, or the names dietswhere you're not counting

(25:51):
calories. And you really don'tknow how quickly or dieting or
slowly maybe you're going toslowly we're going to use a
known moderately aggressivedeficit, moderately aggressive
as the word I like to use,meaning we want it to be
aggressive enough that we get itdone quickly, that we get the
fat loss done as quickly as wecan, but moderate enough to

(26:13):
avoid losing muscle, and also tokeep it sustainable, right,
because if it's too if it's tooaggressive, you may also feel
like you're suffering, becauseyou're just not eating anywhere
close to where you would feelgood. So it's that fine balance
between, get it over with andkeep it going. Right. So the

(26:34):
the, what am I trying to sayhere, if you're training, and if
you've got the protein, you'rein a great position. And what
we're going to aim for here is0.25 to 1% of your weight per
week, I find I found throughexperience and working with
clients that 0.5 or 0.75%, kindof in the middle is the sweet

(26:55):
spot where they can do itconsistently and see the fat
fall off, but not feel likethey're suffering. And it's just
a constant like, oh my god, Ibinged and I couldn't help
myself, because I'm so hungry,you know, we don't want to be in
that state. So the range ispoint two, five to one, find a
sweet spot. So for example, I'm,I'm at 185. And I'm going to go

(27:16):
pretty aggressive at maybe pointeight, or maybe one person,
maybe the full 1%, because Iwant to get it over with in 12
weeks. But I'm also dieting onway more calories than I used
to. Because I've added muscleyou see, this is where it comes
in handy. Because I can diet onsomething like 2200 calories and
actually lose 1% Somebody elsemight have to go down to 1400

(27:38):
calories, it's a big differencein your ability to do the diet.
So number five is using amoderately aggressive energy
deficit. Number six is to selectfoods to prioritize appetite
management. So this is the onlystrategy I'm actually talking
about the food you eat. Andyou'll see why I think this is

(28:00):
really important. We, you whenyou think of named diets like
keto or vegetarianism, orwhatever, they're all about
cutting things out. Or there'sgood and bad foods or there's
clean and dirty you know, theyou know, clean eating or just
just just cutting somethingright so something crazy. So

(28:21):
it's not about that. What wewant to do is select foods that
we prefer that meet our caloriesand macros, but that minimize
our hunger as much as possible.
I think appetite management isone of the primary drivers
during fat loss of selectingfoods that meet all your other
needs. Protein micronutrients,hydration, you know, calories

(28:46):
and mitigate the most importantadaptation that negatively
affects us during a diet whichis hunger really, hungers? The
big thing? Yes, adherence isimportant. And all these other
things I'm talking about have todo with adherence. But managing
hunger is probably the biggestthing that comes from hormonal
downregulation when we'redieting because all of our all

(29:07):
of our hormones are leptin,ghrelin, cortisol, thyroid,
everything, they all tend togang up on you to make you want
to eat and survive becauseyou're like, come on, you're not
bringing in enough calories,we're gonna have to keep pulling
from your fat cells. Well,that's what we want. That's the
trade off we want is the fatcells to shrink. But as a

(29:27):
result, we get these othersymptoms and we get some
adaptation. So we're going toselect foods and minimize hunger
as much as possible, which thengenerally results in you eating
a wide, diverse variety of WholeFoods very much like protein
gets you to eat more wholefoods. So what does this look
like okay, foods that are higherand fiber, fruits, vegetables,

(29:47):
whole grains, making smartdecisions to say go from you
know, white bread to whole grainbread or go to white rice to
brown rice or you know, starteating Oh, For quinoa, right,
substituting starches and grainsfor vegetables where you need
it. So the further you are intothe fat loss phase where you
have low calories to do to workwith, you know, if you're

(30:09):
dieting on 1600 or 1500calories, you don't really have
a lot of carbs in there anyway.
And the carbs that you do youwant to get full from. So you're
going to want to prioritizevegetables, or even something
like potatoes, potatoes are veryhigh and in fullness, as long as
you don't put butter and sourcream all over them. So

(30:30):
substituting vegetables in usingsomething like vegetable soups
where you're combining thebenefit of water and hydration,
filling you up with fillingvegetables like zucchini, for
example, zucchini, tomatoes, andso on. On the other hand, which
is kind of the opposite ofsoups, eating foods that are
harder in texture. And I hearEric Trexler mentioned this all

(30:51):
the time, harder, texture willslow down your eating will allow
you to chew for longer, it'lllengthen the amount of time you
eat. And it actually increasesyour sensory satisfaction, it
sends a signal in your brainthat you're actually eating food
and you're eating a decentamount of it. You're chewing and
swallowing, chewing swallowing.
And this can actually manageyour hunger make you feel like
you've tricked yourself intofeeling like you've eaten more.

(31:15):
What's What's another thing,staying hydrated. So when you're
hungry, sometimes you'rethirsty, just drink a glass of
water, or drink a glass of waterbefore every meal, for example,
stay really hydrated. I like touse a salad every day at lunch.
If you know when I'm in abuilding phase, I don't do that.
So often when I'm in a fat lossphase, I plan to incorporate

(31:35):
lots of greens with my proteinat lunch because they're fibers
and they fill you up, shifttoward lower or zero calorie
drinks. Okay, this can make abig difference because drinks
don't really fill you up. But ifthey have calories, they give
you calories that don't fill youup. So going from soda to diet
soda, whole milk to 2% milk oralmond milk, coffee with cream

(31:58):
to Coffee with half and half anIPA in terms of beer to like a
light beer or god forbid, a analcohol free beer. Guinness is
alcohol free beer is actuallynot bad. Also whole versions
instead of ultra processedhighly palatable foods. So this
would be okay, if you reallyhave a craving for something

(32:20):
sweet or pop tart or somethinglike that, you know, instead of
a Strawberry Pop Tart havestrawberries. Now, obviously,
that's a bigger leap. But theseare the kinds of decisions and
swaps we start to make on a dietto make sure that we manage
appetite as the main driver ofwhy we're selecting all these
foods. And then ultimately, thatallows us to get through the
diet successfully. And in themeantime, we've transitioned our

(32:43):
overall dietary pattern to onethat supports optimal health,
good nutrition, plenty ofmicronutrients, and so on. Okay,
so that's it. That's all I'mgoing to say about food. Notice
I didn't I didn't really tellyou exactly what foods to eat,
but more how to pick foods.
Strategy number seven,incorporate movement into
everything you do. So usually Imake this very specific about

(33:04):
steps. And it will come down tothat from a tracking
perspective. But the idea is,the more you move with
everything, like just think ofwhat you're doing right now
you're listening to thispodcast, are you watching it,
you could be walking around yourhouse, holding your phone and
watching this. And if you're notdoing it right now, and you're
watching this on your phonesitting on your couch, Get up
right now, it's our pacingaround for the rest of the

(33:26):
podcast, I probably have another2030 minutes, or you're gonna
you're gonna get like two 3000Steps doing that. Okay. So
incorporate movement andeverything you do. I think steps
on a wearable are the best proxyfor that, right? It's not super,
super precise, but it's enoughto tell you how your patterns
are changing. So if you alwaysget two or 3000 steps, and you

(33:48):
change your movement patterns,and now you're getting six or
7000 steps, while you'redefinitely more active, based on
step count, like it's plentyaccurate enough to tell you
that. So do all the things thatget you to move more, go listen
to episode 34, which was anotherlive that I did and recorded it
it was all about walking. Andit's more exciting than it

(34:11):
sounds a lot of great stuff inthere and strategies and things
you can try and why walkingitself is so beneficial, but
really anything you could do tomove that's not intense cardio,
which I'm gonna get to in thenext strategy. So the other
thing okay, why are we doingthis? Well, steps or movement is
a great way to boost yourmetabolism it really is. Yes,

(34:32):
you are going to burn morecalories moving around. And
that's not the only reason we doit. We do it for health and to
avoid sitting down too long. Ithelps with your heart rate helps
your cardiovascular health andlots of other things but it also
burns more calories. Let's admitit and in a fat loss phase you
may need the extra two or threeor 400 calories a day to ease up
on your diet or to speed up thefat loss however you want to use

(34:56):
it. So that brings us tostrategy Number eight, which is
to use cardio strategically, andnot excessively. So remember the
point of cardio is to improveyour conditioning, your
cardiovascular health, not toburn calories. That's not really
the point. Because the amount ofcalories you burn burning cardio
in a half hour of highlystressful movement on your body

(35:20):
in a fat loss phase, you couldjust eat a little bit less, and
not have all that stress andhave more recovery and better
sleep. And it's not really agreat trade off. But a little
bit of it can go a long way. Anda little bit of it also prevents
you from adapting to it, suchthat your metabolism actually
comes down and you don't wantthat. So I liked the advice from

(35:42):
Mike Matthews of Legionathletics, he always says to
live up, limit your cardio tohalf of the amount of time that
you lift. So if you're liftingthree to five hours a week,
limit cardio to an hour and ahalf to two and a half hours a
week tops, avoid forms of cardiothat impact your recovery, or
cause additional muscle stressand tearing like running, it

(36:06):
really isn't great for you ifyou're a lifter. But if you
really, really like hardrunning, and it's just like, it
makes your day reduces yourstress. And maybe you're pretty
good at it. And maybe you're anathlete, so I'm sure incorporate
it and do it in an intelligentway. Do it with Sprint workouts.
You know, just don't Don't berunning half marathons, you
know, a couple of times a week,unless you're training to be

(36:28):
running athlete. So goodexamples. Alternatives would be
biking, swimming, or pushing orpulling a sled or Prowler in the
gym. These are all good,concentric only movements. You
can also use high intensityinterval training, if you need
like a calorie boost a coupletimes a week. And it's something

(36:49):
fun. I mean, a lot of peopledon't really find it that much
fun, to be honest. You know, Idid CrossFit for eight years, I
was doing it constantly. But Iwouldn't necessarily just sign
up for it.
But even that is not supereffective. Like you're gonna
find that maybe bodybuildersdeeper, new cut, have to pull
out these extra things. But youdon't have to do them. I mean,

(37:10):
if you just don't want to docardio at all, go for a lot of
walks, do all the stuff I'mtalking about here and you're
gonna lose fat just fine. Allright, number nine, strategy
number nine is to get plenty ofhigh quality sleep, you knew
this one was coming like Oh,there he goes again, on sleep.
Maybe I maybe I could have madethis number one, like before
even do anything, fix your sleepissues, so that you get

(37:32):
recovered and improve your fatloss. But a lot of people have
trouble with this some for somepeople, it's really a process
over time of improving sleep,and I get it. So I'm just gonna
throw a couple of things at youhere. There's a study done last
year by Avacyn at all. HopefullyI pronounced it right. That
found that participants in thestudy that were sleep

(37:53):
restricted, they had just overfour hours of sleep. They, they
and another group that got abouteight hours of sleep, they both
gain the same amount of fat,okay, in this case, they were
just eating whatever theywanted. And they were all over
eating slightly. So they allgain fat, but they gain the same
amount. The Sleep restrictedgroup, they gained more than
three times of that fat in theabdominal area, then the other

(38:17):
participants so so the body fatgain was the same, but the belly
fat was up by 9% in the sleeprestricted group, and it was
only 2.6% in the normal fullsleep group. So even if you're
doing everything right, andyou're the right calories and
all the other stress, just notgetting enough sleep can cause

(38:37):
you to store fat in your belly,which I know is a problem for a
lot of people especially youknow women, especially in
perimenopause and postmenopause, it becomes an issue
because of the effects of thereproductive hormones and
estrogen for that fasters. Butmen as well right with the beer
gut, think about it, see pas howbig of an impact. The other
thing is. So if you're notreally tracking and saying top

(38:59):
of all the other things, whichwe are right, we're going to be
doing that sleep deprivation cancause people to just eat more
calories, it just makes youhungry and makes you eat more.
It lowers your metabolic rate.
This is a hormonal thing anddown regulate your hormones. It
causes the appetite, it causesthe metabolism to go down. Okay,
just like other stressors on thebody. So sleep is the biggest

(39:19):
thing. If you have other chronicstress in your life that is hard
to get rid of, because of yourjob or your family sleep can be
that big mitigator of thenegative effects from that, like
the negative effects ofcortisol, your stress hormone,
when you're stressed all thetime and it stays higher than it
needs to be and it doesn't comedown enough at night. And then
you don't get good quality sleepwell if you can kind of turn

(39:41):
that around a bit by focusing onscheduling in enough sleep.
Okay, we're talking seven toeight hours of sleep and no
screens 30 minutes before bed.
That's the bare bones thing youcan do to improve your sleep. If
you want to learn a lot morebeyond that, I do did an episode
quite a while back about sleepthat has like, you know, 20

(40:03):
things, you can try all thelittle subtle things. But
getting enough and avoidingscreens before bed will go a
long way toward this and gettingenough sleep will really help
with fat loss, help with hunger.
And it'll definitely help withyour recovery during a time when
you don't have a lot of otherresources coming in. Okay,
strategy number 10. This is thelast one. And then I'm going to

(40:24):
summarize everything okay, thisstrategy is to use diet breaks
to conquer those mental demonsof dieting. So we already talked
about selecting foods forhunger, that's going to help a
lot. Having said that, though,it can get tiring it can get
fatiguing. When you're on goingon 1012 weeks or 14, like maybe

(40:44):
you have a little more weight tolose, and you're going for a 16
week fat loss phase was themaximum I would ever recommend
to be honest. But I've seenpeople I've had clients, I can
go well beyond that, becausewe're managing all the
biofeedback so well, that it'sokay they can keep going in
their body responds just fine inthe metabolism isn't too low,
etc. But what you want to do ismonitor all those things we

(41:06):
talked about, monitor yourhunger, your energy, your
recovery, tracking everything,monitor your performance in the
gym, that's one of the mostimportant things to be honest.
Because as soon as you start todegrade on your lifts, and you
start to feel tired in the gym,that tells me you may be
starting to lose muscle. If anyof these things go past the
point that are comfortable foryou. Take a diet break. Okay, so

(41:27):
if your biofeedback is poor,like like your recovery, your
hunger, your energy performance,and so on, or you're just
getting tired of dieting, or youwant to align a break in your
diet in with a special event orholiday, right, we just had
Thanksgiving Christmas here. Andthose are good times to take a

(41:48):
diet break so that you can eatmore food and enjoy without too
much pressure. Or if you'retraveling right. Or if you have
a lot of weight to lose, and youneed to break it up into phases,
take a diet break, there are alot of ways to do this, the
easiest way to do it is just eatat your maintenance calories, by
increasing your carbs to get youto those calories. So let's say

(42:11):
you're you're dieting on 1600calories, but your maintenance
calories are 2200 Just get 600more calories of carbs per day
during the break. So 600 dividedby four, that's going to be two,
that's gonna be 150 more gramsof carbs. So if you were at

(42:31):
like, you know, 100 grams ofcarbs, now you can have 250
grams of carbs during the break,that's going to refuel your
glycogen, that's going to giveyou more energy to cut is going
to help bring your metabolism upall these things for a while
before you get right back todieting, and everything adapts
right back. It's a good strategyto try. There are many more

(42:53):
advanced, what are callednonlinear dieting strategies.
You can look up nonlineardieting or reach out to me for
questions, I have interestingschemes that could use like
interval dieting, where youyou're aggressively dieting for
two weeks, and then maintenancefor two and then aggressive, or
five to dieting, or you pick twohigh calorie days during the
week. There's a lot of ways todo this. But I don't want to get

(43:15):
into the weeds today. Just knowthat that strategy is available
to you. Okay, so we just wentthrough 10 strategies, we
established three principles forfat loss. And I'm going to
summarize all of this because itis a lot. And again, I recommend
going through this again in thefuture, if needed. And I will
also have a guide a fat, fatloss for life guide available.

(43:35):
If you join the community andjust reach out you can get it.
Here we go. Number one, alwaystrain heavy, and train hard. Use
low intensity, I mean sorry, usehigh intensity that's weight on
the bar, low to moderate volumeprogramming, so that you can
recover. So this is going to betraining as if you're building

(43:57):
muscle. Number two, track yourcalories, protein and weight. So
that you know your dynamicmaintenance for for your
metabolism before we go died. Sothis is actually number two and
three, I just I'm sorry, this isnumber two and three. So number
two is protein. Number three istracking. Alright, so getting
sufficient protein, andtracking.

(44:23):
Number four, do the first threethings first, and then try to
find your true maintenancecalories spend time getting to
true maintenance. Using an applike macro factor makes it
really easy to do. I generallyrecommend something like four
weeks for this phase. Numberfive, use a moderately
aggressive energy deficit. Okay,point two five to 1% per week.

(44:49):
Number six select foods thatmitigate hunger. So you want to
prioritize appetite management.
Number seven move just move GetIt steps, aim for somewhere
around eight to 10,000 steps,but get steps and movement,
however, you can get more thanyou get now, and then get more
than that later and keep pushingyourself to get more movement
in. That's low intensity. Thenext one, this is number eight,

(45:14):
use cardio, strategicallylimited, so like half the time
you lift. And if you need to usesomething like hit, do it. If
you want to do medium intensitycardio, go with a high recovery,
low impact one like swimming,biking or Prowler pushing.

(45:34):
Number nine, get seven, eighthours of sleep and limit screens
at least 30 minutes before bed.
And then number 10. Use dietbreaks at maintenance calories
by increasing your cat carbswhenever you need to, to remain
consistent and continue dieting.
All right, there you have it alot I know. But hopefully it was

(45:57):
organized well enough that youcan absorb it all and apply it
to your own life. And that's myattempt at providing everything
you need to know about fat loss,or at least the things that
really matter. And I would sayrather than try to implement
everything at once, work yourway down the list and
incorporate these over time. Iordered them in a way that I
think is effective, useful anddoable. maybe with the exception

(46:21):
of sleep, sleep maybe could behigher on the list, but you
really can customize it to whatmakes sense for you. And if you
want that free fat loss for alife guide that goes along with
this training, just join theWits & Weights Facebook
community, the link again is inthe show notes. And if you want
more support than this, becauseI know it's hard to do this on
your own, it really can be hardyou may have tried in the past,

(46:43):
and you just want to do it inthe most effective time
efficient way possible. I dohave a few spots open for one on
one coaching, where we're goingto work together on all the
things I talked about in thisepisode. To get you the results
the body you deserve asustainable plan to maintain
those results. For the rest ofyour life. The easiest way to

(47:03):
get in touch is go to wits &weights.com/coaching, where you
can fill out an application orDM me directly. And then I'll
just set up a quick call withyou and see if it's good fit.
And then if it is, we'll getstarted. Again, just go to wits.
& weights.com/coaching. If youhave any questions about any
nutrition or fitness topic, goto wits & weights.com and look

(47:24):
for the Ask Philip section onthe homepage. And lastly, I
really do want to thank you andI do appreciate you for taking
the time out to listen to orwatch this episode. And as
always, stay strong. Thanks forlistening to the show. Before
you go, I have a quick favoriteask if you enjoy the podcast.

(47:44):
Let me know by leaving a fivestar review in Apple podcasts
and telling others about theshow. Thanks again for joining
me Philip Pape in this episodeof Wits & Weights. I'll see you
next time and stay strong

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Ep 40: Everything You Need to Know About Fat Loss (Simple Strategies for a Fitter, Leaner Body)

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