Finding Fitness Later in Life and the Power of Protein with Philip Pape

Paul Salter:

Hey Philip, welcome to Screw The Scale Radio. Thank you so much for joining me today. How are you?

Philip Pape:

I’m awesome, Paul. Thanks for having me on.

Paul Salter:

Yeah, it’s really neat to be able to reconnect. You were kind enough to have me as a guest on your show, and we thoroughly enjoyed that conversation. Had a lot of fun. And now we get to kind of do a little role reversal here, and I get to really just step back, take notes, and learn from you. So thank you again for being here.

Philip Pape:

Yeah, I think the feeling’s mutual, because you were actually one of my first interview guests. I had done quite a few solo episodes, and then you were one of maybe number three or four out there. So when I’m at Joe Rogan level of millions of downloads, you know you have a place in history on my show.

Paul Salter:

Yes, I love that. And I love the confidence too. Because to be honest, if you told me that, I never would’ve known. Because your questions, I already told you how good your preparation was and your attention to detail. But your questions, your navigation from the hosting role was outstanding.

Philip Pape:

Cool. No, I appreciate it. Yeah. And I’m looking forward to this conversation.

Paul Salter:

Absolutely. So let’s lay a good strong foundation for our listeners. You have your own personal transformation story related to weight, fitness, your relationship with food. So go ahead and fill our listeners in on that transformation story.

Philip Pape:

Yeah, let’s see. So I’m in my early 40s, and I like to say that I found all of this kind of later in life. It wasn’t until my late 40s that things started to click. But if we take the clock back and go from my childhood through my 20s and 30s, I didn’t grow up with a very active sports oriented childhood. I was never an organized sports. I wasn’t around gyms or lifting or any of that stuff. And I was always a little bit overweight. I dealt with bullies and getting made fun of and things like that throughout my school years.

And getting into college and into my 20s, none of that really changed in terms of fitness. But I definitely attempted things, like many of us have dealt with frustrations of what do I do, how do I do it? And we’re talking back in the 2000s, where it’s still early internet days and all of your information comes through very specious sources. Today, there’s plenty of terrible sources of information too, but there’s also a lot of great sources you can land on, like your podcast.

So throughout my 20s, I did the usual, I did a lot of fad diets, everything from SlimFast to Atkins, to later on, there were things I can’t even name, to keto and paleo, and I’ve tried them all. Mostly the low carb stuff. And my wife didn’t seem to mind how I looked or how I was. She fell in love with me. I’ve got married in my 20s. And right when we were about to have a kid when I was turning 30, I said, “I need to get in shape.” We always have those moments, those crucibles where we say something’s got to change. I don’t feel as well as I did. I’m getting older. Something’s happening. My clothes aren’t fitting anymore.

And it spreads to everything. It spreads to your workplace and your relationships, and just your overall confidence. Kind of preaching to the choir, and I’m sure people listening can relate here. So when I was about 30, I decided to try CrossFit. So CrossFit was the big craze. We’re talking about around 2010. It was at its peak. Yeah. It was at its peak. So I joined CrossFit. I don’t think I threw up after the first workout like a lot of people did, but I passed out for about an hour on the bed because it’s just so insane.

What I like to say about CrossFit is, like anything in life, I don’t really have regrets because everything I do teaches me something, right? Everything you do, no matter how off the path you’d like to be on it takes you, it takes you on another path and opens up new opportunities. So it was the first time I ever touched a barbell. It’s the first time I ever did anything athletic really. The first time I experienced conditioning. What it takes to push yourself and work hard, and realize that it’s probably the hard things that give you the results. But consistency of those hard things ultimately is what keeps it going.

So I did CrossFit for about eight years, but I never was still happy with my body composition, how I felt, how I looked in the mirror, and all the results of that, right? As a guy, we want to look good, we want to have nice arms and six pack and all that. I didn’t even think I could have those things, to be honest. I didn’t even think that was… I just wanted to be healthier for my kids, and look good for my wife and just enjoy life in that way.

So about 2019, my CrossFit coach, he had kind of evolved as well. As CrossFit started to wane in popularity, he moved more toward the strength and conditioning side. And he had a strength program. And I said, “Rome,” that’s his name, “Rome, I want to look better, I want to feel better. And this CrossFit thing’s not quite doing it for me.” And he’s like, “I’ve told you that a few times. You just weren’t ready to listen. As your coach, if you do this, you’re going to see some results.” And this was get stronger, focus on strength.

And to me, at that time, strength was the thing that those guys with the power lifter bellies were doing, the big guys on the corner, or the Olympic lifters. And I thought, well, what’s that going to do for me? It’s a skill, but I don’t think it’s going to help in the physique and health department. I didn’t understand it. And I just did it anyway, right? My coach said it was a good thing to do. I trusted him.

And I dived into the world of strength. And by strength I mean lifting heavy, in the four to six rep range, mostly barbell movements, things like that. I did that in 2019, going to the ’20. The pandemic came and locked everything down. And now I didn’t have my gym. I also didn’t have anything at home. I didn’t have any equipment other than a few dumbbells and a band. So that year I hustled. I went to Craigslist, Facebook, wherever, and I found all the equipment I needed to build a home gym because I wanted to keep the train going.

And at the same time, I had extra time because I was working from home. So I learned as much as I could about strength. I looked at Starting Strength , and Mike Matthews, and all the evidence-based guys out there, Eric Helms, and the Muscle and Strength Pyramids, all that wonderful stuff. And I just started to apply myself and get stronger. Well, at the same time, I learned that I had to eat a lot to get strong, but I probably overdid it on that side. So here I am gaining 30 pounds in just a few months, putting on muscle, but also putting on weight. Still not feeling super great about myself, but knowing that I’m halfway there.

And that’s when I found nutrition, evidence-based nutrition. The guys like Alan Aragon and Bill Campbell. And I can name a whole bunch of guys. And from that perspective, I realized that there were some changes I had to make to my habits, to my daily practices. I had to not necessarily pay attention to the scale, but really how I felt and how I was performing. And then use principles like sufficient protein, along with my training, along with movement, not doing so much cardio. All these other things that seemed counterintuitive to me. And actually go on the first fat loss phase that I had ever been through.

So it probably took me 16 or maybe 20 weeks. It was a longer fat loss phase than I would recommend for clients these days. I typically stick around 12 to 16. But for the first time in my life, I saw some muscle definition, a little bit of a six pack. I felt lighter, I felt stronger. And I was so excited by having smashed all of my previous theories, the conventional wisdom, that I started a podcast just to get the information out of my head. I like talking, I like rambling on. You could see how long… I could probably tell you my story for 10, 20 more minutes, so let me know if I’m going too long. But that was my way of getting out the information to help people do the same thing. The podcast led to meeting a lot more people like yourself, but also someone who became my first nutrition coaching client who inspired me to get into it. And it kind of spiraled from there. That’s where we are today.

Paul Salter:

Yeah, that’s really cool. So looking back, what were two, maybe three of the biggest mistakes you were making with your nutrition that were really preventing you from achieving that energy, that confidence, and that lean look you desired?

Philip Pape:

The three biggest mistakes. I mean, there were a lot of mistakes, Paul. But one was protein. I mean, protein is such a simple macro. We all know about it. And yet it’s highly misunderstood in my opinion. So the idea of just getting enough protein, and how it aided you in muscle building and holding onto muscle when you’re losing fat. Because now I’m a huge advocate of focusing on body composition. And how you feel, look, and move things, not so much as the number on the scale. And screw the scale, right?

So protein was a big one. And then also fueling myself. Fueling myself for lifting, for recovery, fueling not just with food, but also fueling with sleep, managing stress. And all those things that came together. Because I realized that if my deadlift didn’t go up five or 10 pounds, there’s probably something in my control that made that happen because I was still a beginner lifter. So I wasn’t getting enough sleep, I wasn’t eating enough, whatever it was. So that’s another one.

What would be the third one? You asked for three things. Let’s see. The third thing was, oh yeah, this is a good one, that I could eat in an extremely flexible way, and that I didn’t have to follow a diet. That was a huge revelation. I had always followed… It was always a quick fix. What’s the thing? What’s the prescription that’s going to work? The cookie cutter. You don’t need that. You can eat, and I hate to say it this way maybe, but almost anything and have a healthy life. It’s a matter of quantity and scale and application to your goals and timing, and all these other things. That was a big revelation.

Paul Salter:

Yeah, I appreciate you sharing that. I see a lot of myself in those mistakes, especially just when it comes to, I think, really working with so many parents, and you can attest to this, the fueling aspect. Fuel is such an important word to use. So many people listening are eating to survive. And eating to survive versus eating to thrive are two totally different things. And you can think about fueling your workouts, but then kind of like you alluded to, you got to fuel for life. And if you’re a parent, you need to fuel to take care of your kids. To have the energy after a nine or 10 hour work day, to then go sit on the floor and play XYZ, walk the dog, cook dinner, then take care of yourself, connect with your spouse. Fueling is so important. And it is more than just food. It’s the recovery end as well. So I’m so glad that you mentioned that, just to really keep it top of mind for everybody listening.

Philip Pape:

Yeah, for sure. I think, however you want to call it, self-love, care, de-stressing, sleep, the whole package. It’s really part of the things that you have to get in place as just part of your life before you think of adding any other stressors to that. And one of those might be a fat loss phase. It’s a huge stressor. And most people go through life trying to do a fat loss phase on top of six other things that are stressing them out.

Paul Salter:

So what are some of the common ways you practice, whether we call it self-care, self-love, or recovery?

Philip Pape:

Yeah. First, I have to have time for myself. And that could be individual things like a massage, or reading, the things that basically take me away from a screen, that’s for me, a big one, and away from overstimulating my brain. Because even if you’re off of a screen, but you’re reading a very interesting non-fiction book, which I love to do for my business and for life, even that can get the gears going and prevent you from sleeping, prevent you from recovery. And of course, spending time with my wife and kids. I’m constantly thinking about how to prioritize my active listening skills with my wife. That’s a huge thing for me. And I put it out there for accountability when I get on podcasts.

Paul Salter:

I love it.

Philip Pape:

Because I know there’s something different between men and women. So my wife can multitask mentally and physically. I can multitask physically, but not mentally. Meaning if I’m doing something, and she’s trying to get my attention and I don’t look up, it’s like she’s not there. So I’ve had to train myself. And it’s doable, guys. It’s doable. And the women listening are like, oh yeah, we know what you mean. I’ve had to train myself. When I hear my wife, it’s like stop what you’re doing, pay attention. And this is important because this is one of the most important things in my life.

Paul Salter:

So I’m glad you brought that up because you’ve seen an incredible transformation and change in your life the past decade. You started making yourself a priority with your exercise, and then eventually with your nutrition. Now you have the podcast, you have the coaching business. How have you managed to make yourself a priority, yet still show up as the loving husband and father simultaneously?

Philip Pape:

I think I have to schedule it in with myself is one technique. Things like lifting and walking, little things like that that I know I have to do regularly, that also kill two birds of one stone in that, when I lift, to me that de-stresses me. Even though it’s a acute stressor, it de-stresses me. And I could also do some things in between my sets, catch up on emails. Even though it’s not always recommended to do that, but I do. And I just schedule them on my calendar, just like when I do a podcast interview, I schedule it in. I don’t necessarily schedule time with my wife because I know there’s blocks each day that are just family time. So that is the time. But yeah, I would say that’s one technique. Schedule it in.

Paul Salter:

Absolutely. And have you found, looking back the last, maybe it’s one year, two, three or more years, were there ever a series of mistakes you were making where things got out of balance in terms of you were putting too much time and effort to, whether it’s your own self-care, the podcast and the business, versus how much you wanted to be showing up with your family?

Philip Pape:

Sure, yeah. We’re all human. We all make mistakes. And there are times when I think I’d say yes to too many things. So I love to be active. I’ve always thought, okay, if I cut things out, that’ll solve everything. But as soon as I do, that vacuum has to be filled. So for me, I have to fill all the time. But part of that time is filled with nothing, if that makes sense.

Paul Salter:

100%. I’m a big believer, and I’ve been struggling with this for years, but trying to seek out and create many moments of nothingness, and just being in a quietude of nothingness. It’s so freaking hard for so many of us, especially you and I who are wired so similarly. But it is so restorative. It is so clarifying when we do make it a priority.

Philip Pape:

Yeah, we do. And it also, things can’t become static. So even if you think you’re in a situation where everything is lined up about where you want it, always be reevaluating those things and get creative and intelligent about it. So a lot of my clients, they’re very busy, right? I’m sure a lot of your clients are busy. They have busy lives. And it’s how do we reclaim our time and how do we make everything work? And what worked last year might not work this year.

Simple example for me might be my lifting schedule. I was working out four or five days a week last year. I wasn’t getting enough sleep. I just moved into a fat loss phase now. And I said, it’s not going to work unless I go to three days. A simple change like that, go from four to three. Now I get an extra day of sleep, I get an extra block to do some more work, or what have you to make it work. Yeah.

Paul Salter:

I love that because I think a lot of us are guilty of thinking that our schedule can and always should be the same. But when in reality, life is always evolving. Every new chapter of life has a different set of challenges, priorities, and responsibilities. And you can’t be afraid to audit your habits and your schedule to make sure that they are optimal. Because for example, just like you said, your schedule last year served the 2022 Philip really well. It wasn’t going to cut it for 2023. And you recognize that, so you made the necessary changes.

Philip Pape:

For sure. Yeah.

Paul Salter:

Yeah. And I love that. And I think too, there’s an element that hasn’t quite been said, but it’s been alluded to in the past few minutes, this less is more. So whether it’s dieting and trying to do 15 other things, or trying to prioritize family, significant other, business, health and fitness goals, and self-care, less is always more. When you focus on less, again, easier said than done, you can really overdeliver and pour into those to make them feel like more because of the joy, the fulfillment, the confidence that you are experiencing as a result.

Philip Pape:

Yeah. And I was reminded of the principle of the big rocks. It’s been around for many years. The big rock, the rocks, the little rocks on the sand. And I’m sure most people are familiar with it. But the idea that if you start with the big rocks and you place them in a jar, you could then fit in the medium rocks and then fit in the sand, and you have the capacity for everything. So start with the big rocks. And when we talk about less is more, it also could mean that fewer things can give you more of the impact in your life. Such that once you realize that and prioritize it, you could easily figure out the things are that can be cut out is where I’m going.

Paul Salter:

Yeah. I like that. And never be afraid to edit or to eliminate things on your to-do list, your priorities, whoever it may be. Because it is such an empowering and free position to be in.

Philip Pape:

And stop following people that take you down. That’s part of eliminating is unfriending and de-following the negative people out there. Move on. Stick with the people like Paul and others who bring you up and give the info to support you.

Paul Salter:

Yeah, 1,000%. And I appreciate that. Which brings me to the next question, kind of circling back to, if I understood correctly, you’re in the midst of a fat loss phase, correct?

Philip Pape:

I just started two weeks ago. Yes. [inaudible 00:18:14].

Paul Salter:

Okay. So you and I both know that dieting is a major stressor, physiologically of course, but also psychologically and emotionally. Yet especially this time of year, we’re recording on January 18th, people are so quick to rush into a diet. So before starting a diet, what are a couple variables that people should really focus on to ensure they are set up for, not only success during the diet, but success sustaining their weight loss after the diet?

Philip Pape:

I think by the time you decide to go on a diet, the diet should be fairly easy. It shouldn’t take much thought or effort. And if there’s anything that seems that it will cause a lot of roadblocks during that diet right off the bat, take a step back and reevaluate what those things are. So there’s a whole litany of things. Of course, if I were to go through a client, and I’ve done entire hour long podcasts on this, but it’s really the basics and making sure those basics are consistent first. And I know you’re fully aligned on the idea of having what you call a pre-diet maintenance phase. Sometimes I call it the off-season when I use a sports analogy, of building skills and building practices, routines in preparing you for the season.

The season is where you’re going to get beat up. You’re going to have everything thrown at you. It’s going to be a stressor. And you’re trying to get to the goal, you’re trying to win. You’re getting to the end. But it’s going to be a little bit relentless if you haven’t prepared ahead of time. But if you prepared, you take away a lot of that friction. So some things would be, of course, from the nutrition perspective, having a consistent meal planning and prepping, whatever skill works for you to make sure that you know what’s coming on your plate, and you know what’s coming each day in terms of hitting your macros, hitting your protein. Even if it’s portion based, whatever your goal is. Or if you’re working with a coach, it’s you don’t have to think about it. As soon as you’re making decisions in the moment or emotionally is where you’ve lost the battle because you haven’t a priori taken control of that. And that’s kind of the crux of dealing with emotional binge eating as we know. So there’s that.

There’s actual numerical things like hitting a certain amount of protein I think is important before a fat loss phase. Because maybe the most important thing during fat loss is to not lose muscle, because otherwise you’re not just losing fat. That is so, so important. And I like to use a scenario where, if you imagine that you wanted to lose 20 pounds, and you are not strength training, and you’re not having the protein, not doing all these other things, up to half of that 20 pounds is fat. Okay?

And the reason that is, and kind of to explain it in, not layman’s terms, but just the terms that even I understand, when you go into a calorie deficit, you’re not eating enough calories to maintain everything that your body needs, your hormones, everything else. Your body’s going to say, okay, well we could take from your fat, but we could also not do certain things. Like that muscle over there that you’re not using, we don’t need it. So we’re just not going to rebuild it. So we’re going to save 100 of those 200 calories just not rebuilding muscle, and any other 100 calories are going to come from fat.

But if you’re instead the guy or the woman who is telling your body, I need this muscle because I’m training hard, and I’ve got protein to back it up, your body’s going to say, all right, well that’s super important. We’re going to prioritize that. And we’re going to take all 200 calories from fat. It’s huge. I can’t stress enough to everybody listening, to my clients, that without the training signal and the protein, you’re just going to lose a lot of muscle. And you’re going to get skinny fat, as we like to say. And you’re going to repeat what you’ve done in the past. And then you’re going to gain fat back, and you’re not going to gain that muscle back. So that’s huge. So protein training.

And then the things we talked about before, self-care, sleep, stress management. And then walking. Walking’s huge for me as well. Getting into a routine of sufficient number of steps for you, whether that’s five, six, seven, eight, it’s relative to where you started, walking is going to have a massive impact on your metabolism, your ability to lose fat, your overall health. Just the kind of person you are going through today, being an active person. I think that covers it. So that’s all.

Paul Salter:

That was well said.

Philip Pape:

Just do those things.

Paul Salter:

Yeah, that was great. I loved both, A, the sports analogy was genius. Being a big sports fan, I’ve never thought of it like that, but I really appreciated that. And then B, the way you just did an excellent job articulating the difference between actually doing the strength training, eating the protein, and losing weight, and changing your body composition versus just cutting calories, not doing anything else. And the skinny fat objective that you inevitably achieve. Major, major difference there. I think it’s worth noting too, muscle is very metabolically active, meaning your body has to expend energy to maintain it, which also supports your calorie deficit fat loss goals because you’re burning more calories, which means you get to actually get away with eating more food while still losing weight. So, so many reasons to train hard and to protect and even grow that precious muscle.

Philip Pape:

Yes. And everything tends to feed on itself. Eating more protein, for example, let’s think about what that does. Number one, it has a higher thermic effect of food. So actually burns a little bit more calories to digest. And by the way, a study just came out in 2022 that shows if you have a consistent regular eating schedule, you will also burn more calories through digestion than if you have an irregular eating schedule. Anyway, that’s an aside, right?

Paul Salter:

That’s fascinating.

Philip Pape:

It is fascinating, right? There was a difference, a meaningful difference. And I think it has to do with your body’s awareness of food scarcity. If it knows food is coming, it doesn’t have to be as efficient. That’s what I think is going on. Yeah. But protein has that. Also, and here’s what I’ve come to find with clients is if we do nothing else to your food habits, and we say, “Look, let’s just get more protein. However we do it. We can do it by eating more, by making sure everything starts with protein, et cetera.” It starts to crowd out a lot of the processed and other foods. Because think about where protein comes from, animal sources, animal and plant sources, whole food sources. It’s hard to get protein in packaged foods unless you’re just doing whey shakes and protein bars. And so if you’re going to eat protein, it’s going to crowd out a lot of processed foods.

Paul Salter:

And why is that? Elaborate a little bit more.

Philip Pape:

Oh, and so where I’m going with that is if you currently have 60 grams of protein, and you need 140 or 150, that means you’re going to have to have maybe four or five meals a day that all contain protein. Unless you’re doing just protein bars, you’re going to have to go to things like meat, eggs, dairy, legumes, other plant sources that have beans. It’s very hard to have a lot of pizza and tortilla chips and ice cream, and whatever processed foods may currently dominate your diet, it would be hard to fit them in. And so I like to come from an approach of not cutting or trying to eliminate things, unless they’re a trigger food, but adding in the things we need to support our goals. And then naturally it just starts to crowd out the others.

Paul Salter:

Yeah, it’s subtraction by addition, kind of backwards from the common cliche. But I love that approach. I was sitting there writing in my own notes right now, if you want to make one healthy change to better curb your appetite and clean up your eating, just start by eating more protein. I love that.

Philip Pape:

Big time.

Paul Salter:

So continuing with the discussion on dieting, I know you have talked about a lot, I believe I saw this on social media, is diet breaks. When or how do you use them, either with yourself, with your clients? Tell us what they are and more about them.

Philip Pape:

Yeah. A diet break is an excellent tool when you have diet fatigue or when your diet is really long. So typically after you’ve done the whole pre-diet maintenance thing, and you’re prepared and you’re ready for your diet, it’d be great to just get it over with. It’d be great to just go 12 weeks or 16 weeks at somewhere like a half or three quarters of a percent a week of your body weight is what works for most people. If you have a lot of weight to lose, you may have to break that up. So if you break it up, a diet break is simply a technique of adding carbs back in. back to your maintenance level. Whatever your maintenance is at that time, which has likely declined quite a bit from when you started. And doing that for anywhere for one week to several months so that you can recover mentally and physically, and then continue the diet.

Paul Salter:

So to paint an arbitrary example, and please I’m looking for you to chime in and correct me, just I want to regurgitate. So let’s say person A has, let’s say, 50 pounds to lose. And we’ve done a great job preparing them in a pre-diet maintenance phase. They are now embarking on their diet phase. And you have penciled them into tentatively diet for 12 weeks. They’re not going to lose 50 pounds in 12 weeks if they’re taking a sustainable approach, maybe they lose 25. And at that time you, you’ve dieted for 12 weeks, you’ve lost 25 pounds. You say, “Hey, the best approach right now is a diet break.” For someone in that position, how long are you recommending that particular diet break to be?

Philip Pape:

I think it’s mainly psychologically driven, and also based on your biofeedback, which in many cases are one and the same. How you feel and how it allows you to continue. So in that scenario, if you’re working with me as a coach, it’s not arbitrary. So when we get down to 12 weeks, if you’re feeling great, and you’re calories are sufficient and you’re like, “Let’s just keep going because everything’s good,” we’re going to keep going. Why not?

The literature, the evidence doesn’t support diet breaks for anything other than a break from fatigue and from how you feel. It doesn’t support what people think reverse dieting does, which is magically increases your metabolism kind of permanently so you can continue dieting on higher calories. It doesn’t work that way. As soon as you increase and it recovers, and then you go back on the diet, it’s going to readapt back to its previous point. Unless you’re using that diet break to build muscle. There’s a little bit of a context there. If it’s a sufficiently long, like a three or four or five month diet break, which would be most usually beyond the point that I would be working with clients, unless it’s that, it’s basically just for a mental break.

Paul Salter:

Okay. So how early into a diet could you potentially consider starting with a diet break already?

Philip Pape:

I would say probably six weeks in or so. Six to eight weeks would be. Just because the first few weeks is a lot of chaos in terms of your body, the way your body responds. There’s usually some sort of whoosh. There’s the reduction in carbs, there’s reduction in fluid, there’s the mental and emotional discussions we have to have at the beginning. There’s, oh my God, my weight’s not moving after three days. What’s going on? And it’s like we have to shift from scale weight to everything else that’s going on.

But after we get into rhythm and you’re consistent, we’re about six or seven weeks in, then we’re looking at things like is your body overresponsive to your metabolism? Is your metabolism really plummeting, such that we have to keep cutting calories by 100 calories a week or something? That’s one. Are you just feeling ravenously hungry? Is something like that going on? Whatever makes sense. Because what I don’t want to happen is what’s happened every time in the past to you, which is you go off the rails, you binge. You say, I failed, and you give up on the diet. We want to be realistic. So if realistic is stopping for a while, and then continuing later, that’s what we’re going to do.

Paul Salter:

So it’s like a psychological reprieve if we’re airing on the side of a shorter one. So a 12 week diet could actually look like six weeks of dieting, one week of diet break, and then another five weeks of dieting?

Philip Pape:

For sure. And you might go more aggressive in one of those phases if it makes sense. More or less aggressive. You could also accommodate travel, holidays, events. I mean, this happened recently with Thanksgiving and Christmas. I had a lot of diet breaks going on with my clients because we had that conversation. They said, “Well, I just know I’m going to overeat.” And I said, “Well, no, you don’t know that. We have control. But how about this? You’re going to choose to overeat and enjoy yourself, not overeat, but you’re going to choose to eat a higher level of calories. So why don’t we plan for that? Put in the break, make sure this is how you’re overeating those calories, and then you could enjoy yourself, and then we come back.”

Paul Salter:

I love that. So with those you work with, and even with yourself, what level of portion control and logging have you found to be kind of that sweet spot of sustainable and simple?

Philip Pape:

That could be a loaded question, Paul, because all my clients track.

Paul Salter:

Okay.

Philip Pape:

I use MacroFactor, if you’re familiar with it. Yeah. It’s an adherence neutral app. So it doesn’t give you any flags or indicators that anything is wrong just because you went over or under. There’s nothing to chide you or shame you about-

Paul Salter:

I like that.

Philip Pape:

… for your behavior. So it’s just data. And I try to get my clients used to just detaching emotionally from the scale weight and the data by recognizing that it’s almost meaningless on a day-to-day basis. But that over time, the information can help us along with other factors. So they track. And the idea is that eventually they’ve trained their brain so well that they can go to a restaurant, they can look at the plate, and they know how many grams are in something, how many calories, and they know how they feel. And so they develop that intuitive eating ultimately and can get off the tracking.

Paul Salter:

Yeah, I love that. And so many people are so quick to say, fuck the food scale. I don’t want to track my food. And I get it. Like MyFitnessPal can cause massive emotional and mental burnout. But at the same time, if you’re doing so intentionally, just like you mentioned, you accumulate millions of mental repetitions. You know what six ounces of protein looks like, 25 grams of carbs from sweet potatoes, a baked potato, rice, quinoa, whatever it may be. So you can get to the point where you’re slowly beginning to eyeball more in favor of less food scale use. But it takes those mental repetitions. You have to have that structure, the level of training wheels, before you ride the two-wheel bike.

Philip Pape:

Yeah. If you need any convincing, just think about the fact that the average person underestimates their calories by 50%, right? Professionals like you, like a dietician or a nutritionist, underestimate by 20 to 30%. And no matter how long you’ve done it, it’s very difficult. And this is in the average population, not somebody who has trained themselves. So think about that. Think about the awareness that you get from going through an activity like that so that eventually, like you said, you could estimate what’s going on.

I had a client recently who I just started with, and his metabolism seemed to be taking a significant turn downward. And we weren’t even dieting yet. I’m like, what’s going on here? And so we really dug into his food logs and how he was logging. And he was way off on just how he was estimating his food. Even though he was using a logger because he was eating out a lot, which is another challenge. He was misestimating. So he would send me a picture, and I’d say, “Okay, that’s probably about 800 calories of tacos.” And he was logging, he was like three, right? Or oh, I didn’t know chorizo had so much fat. But kind of working through those skills and logging things and knowing what macros in each food, you take much more control, and it’s liberating at the end of the day.

Paul Salter:

Yeah, it absolutely is. And I’m so happy you mentioned metabolism, because you’ve set me up beautifully for a great segue. The words damaged or broken are often thrown around to describe one’s metabolism. So from your perspective, are those words appropriate, inappropriate, to describe someone’s metabolism? And what do most people get wrong about metabolism when it comes to fat loss?

Philip Pape:

Yeah. That’s a whole detailed topic we can dive into. I don’t use those terms damaged or broken. I use adapted. That’s all I use. Or downregulated. Because they’re temporary, and they’re things you can change. I like to look at metabolism as something that you can both permanently shift and temporarily shift. And that will change based on what stressors you have on your body. So let’s think about it. The biggest stressor you can have is dieting when it comes to metabolism. So as soon as you go into a diet, your metabolism will go down, all things equal. And that’s because your body’s trying to save energy for hormones. It also starts to tell your body that you’re hungry, and that gets you to want to eat. And all of these things are related to metabolism. Thyroid, leptin, all the hormones we’re familiar with, are also tied closely to metabolism.

So dieting is a big stressor. What you can do about it though, in the short term, you can move more. Moving like steps. Low grade, low stress activity, not high intensity activity, will shift your metabolism up quite a bit. There was a study that compared sedentary workers to shop clerks who moved around to manual laborers. And they found as much as a 2,000 calorie day difference in their calorie burn just from non-exercise activity. All things equated. It’s crazy. And I’ve seen it with clients, and I’m sure you have as well, just going from 2,000 steps being very sedentary to 6,000 steps, multiple hundreds of calories can be burned every day doing that.

The permanent way to increase your metabolism, there’s only one way, to build muscle, right? When you think of the differences between people’s metabolism, we make a lot of excuses for ourselves. We say, I’m getting older, my metabolism is declining because I’m getting older. Well, you’re 40, and at one point you were 20. Well, when you were 20, do you think you had the same amount of muscle mass as you do now? No, you had a lot more than you do now. You can turn back the clock though. If you strength train and build that muscle back and improve your body composition to the point it was when you were 30, you’ll have the metabolism of a 30 year old. Same thing if you rolled it back even further. The only difference in calories burned between people is generally due to fat-free mass. I mean, that’s the big difference. And once people understand that, they are empowered to take control of it.

Paul Salter:

Yeah, I love that. And again, kind of our underlying theme here is the importance of preserving, protecting, and growing muscle. Strength training, making protein a priority are just two of the best things you can do, not only from a weight loss and body comp perspective, but just truly for a wellbeing, longevity, and quality of life, quality of movement perspective.

Philip Pape:

Yes. Yes. You’re preaching to the choir, Paul, for sure. My whole thing is strength. Anybody who knows, that watches my stuff, or wants to work with me, if they either don’t currently or aren’t willing to strength train, I’m going to say come back. Because you have to be strength training to cascade into all these other things and to make fat loss easier. And if you want to truly lose fat, that’s the only way to do it because otherwise you’re going to lose muscle. It’s a fact. You’re going to lose muscle. Your body doesn’t need it if you’re not using it.

Paul Salter:

Yeah. Very well said. And where can everyone listening today go to connect with you on social media to learn more about what you do and work with you?

Philip Pape:

Yeah, I would say go to my website, witsandweights.com. Join my email list, and you’ll get some free stuff. Macros guide and a recipe pack. And then you’ll be in my inner circle, and you’ll get information from me, and we can reach out. And then you can reach me @witsandwaits on Insta.

Paul Salter:

Perfect. And of course, subscribe and listen to the Wits and Waits Podcast as well. So much gold there. You do a tremendous job, as I mentioned at the beginning of this episode.

Philip Pape:

No, I appreciate it. I love the podcast. It’s a passion project, and it’s great. We have a lot of great guests, and there’s solo episodes. And I even have a Facebook community where we’ll do the episodes live occasionally that then become the podcast episodes. Yes.

Paul Salter:

Oh, that’s really cool. I did not know that. That’s a neat experience.

Philip Pape:

Yes, for sure.

Paul Salter:

Awesome. Well, Philip, well thank you so much for joining today. I learned a ton, which is always a secret win-win from my perspective. But I appreciate how much you were willing to share and all of your wonderful explanations. I took some notes on some great analogies and examples you used. So thank you for sharing that with us.

Philip Pape:

I appreciate it, man. I could go on for hours, so thank you for keeping it concise and keep me honest. But I enjoyed it. Great questions.

Paul Salter:

Yeah, absolutely. And for those of you listening, thank you so much for being here today. If you found this episode valuable, go ahead and share it with a loved one, friend, gym worker, or gym coworker, whoever it may be, who would also find this information beneficial. And of course, if you haven’t done so already, it takes 30 seconds to leave a genuine rating and review on Apple Podcasts, or wherever it is you are listening to this episode. Thank you again for listening. Have a wonderful rest of your day. And as always, screw the scale.