Philip Pape

As you age, strength training gets more and more important because it does increase our bone density, it increases our metabolism, it um helps us with balance, with stability, with mobility, posture, helps us sleep better, it can even reduce pain. Like if you have lower back pain, like almost everybody gets by the time they're in their 40s, doing deadlifts could mitigate that pain. I've seen it time and time again, even if you're 75 and you've never lifted a barbell before. Welcome to the Wits and Weights podcast. I'm your host, Philip Pape, and this twice-a-week podcast is dedicated to helping you achieve physical self-mastery by getting stronger, optimizing your nutrition, and upgrading your body composition. We'll uncover science-fact strategies for movement, metabolism, muscle, and mindset with a skeptical eye on the fitness industry so you can look and feel your absolute best. Let's dive right in. Lisa was also on my show back on episode 73, which was called Breaking Free of the Clean Plate Club for Sustainable Weight Loss. So download episode 73 to check out that conversation. Now on to my conversation with Lisa Salisbury.

SPEAKER_02

Philip's here to help us really get into some differences between health and body composition, and we're going to talk a little bit about strength training, all the things. So I'm going to let him introduce himself and then we'll get into our conversation.

Philip Pape

Lisa, it's great to see you again. Yeah, we did have a fun conversation on my show, which should be coming out soon. Uh my name is Philip Pape. I'm a certified nutrition coach, body composition expert. And I just love to help people really get strong and fit and get past, you know, some of the things holding them back in terms of their nutrition, their training, and just uh, you know, take control of life. I don't know if you wanted more of a background than that, but uh yeah, keep going, keep going.

SPEAKER_02

I love to hear how people get started and you know what brought them to this work.

Philip Pape

Yeah, absolutely. So I like to tell people I didn't figure any of this out until uh four decades in when I was turning 40 in the year 2020. In that year, a life change for a lot of people, myself included, but for me it was more of discovering who I was and who I could be. I had struggled with weight through my 20s and 30s and a little bit of body image as well. And I had tried all the things most of us have fad diets, intermittent fasting. Uh, we can go way back, Slim Fast and Atkins back in the day. Uh later on, paleo and keto. And I, you know, I'm too um, I I never stuck around for the carnivore craze, so didn't get didn't do that one. Yeah, petty. Yeah, yeah. And then uh uh and then for for fitness, you know, throughout my 20s, I didn't grow up playing sports. I didn't grow up uh with an athletic family or anything like that. Most of my family had the kind of typical, we'll say typical health issues here in the US with whether it's diabetes or heart disease, being overweight and so on. And I grew up with uh the traditional, you know, eating fast food and having to clean your plate, uh, not really eating many vegetables, all that stuff. And my weight fluctuated a lot during the 20s. I was lucky to meet my wife who who loves me for who I am and you know, didn't judge me for any of this stuff. And uh, we got married in in my mid-20s and then later on had a couple uh daughters who are now nine and eleven. But when I was turning 30, I thought I need to do something different to get in shape here. And I started the CrossFit craze like everyone else around that time. Uh that was 2010 time frame. And I met some great people there.

SPEAKER_02

I think that's exactly when I started. Maybe, maybe 2011 or 12 that I had a CrossFit phase as well.

Philip Pape

Yeah, that was their peak, wasn't it? Yeah, it was their peak. And I thank CrossFit for a lot of things because it introduced me to the barbell for the first time to the Olympic lifts. The same for you.

SPEAKER_02

Yes, yeah.

Philip Pape

And also, like I guess working hard or conditioning, you know, the idea of I was never can I never consider myself an athletic person. So now to be able to spend 20 minutes with a massively high heart rate without stopping was a source of pride, even though it kind of beat me up. And over the years, I I had fun doing it, but I didn't really see the results I wanted in terms of we'll say body composition. That's the term we use. But we we mean having an improved physique, health, more muscle, being able to maintain your weight with a certain kind of average, sustainable diet, all those things that we all want generally from from our bodies. And so as I was turning 40 in 2020, which I kind of started the story, um, my trainer, the CrossFit trainer, he had evolved as well, kind of away from CrossFit, more towards strength and conditioning and training for strength and programming. And he said, Look, you've got to get stronger. Like that's what you have to do. You have to get stronger. I said, I've been watching these power lifters and they they take a lot of rest periods. They don't seem to be, you know, their heart rate's not very high, like, although they, you know, they had pretty good physiques, right? But um, I didn't quite get the connection between strength and health. And I like to make that connection, not just strength and physique, but strength and health. And I switched to a strength-based program, you know, lifting heavy, progressive overload, and I started to build muscle for the first time effectively during 2020. And while I did that, I dove into the science of strength and why does that work? Why is it associated with physical health? Um, and then I started to gain a lot of weight as I built muscle, and that was another problem because I didn't mentally approve it.

SPEAKER_02

Mentally a problem for you.

Philip Pape

Because I gained muscle now, all of a sudden I was kind of big again, and I didn't know what to do about that side of it. I didn't understand nutrition. Okay. I was just eating indiscriminately. So I I started to learn about nutrition, and and we're talking podcasts, books, videos, you know, all the evidence-based folks, not the not the fitness influencers and not the YouTube doctors, okay. We're talking, you know, legitimate people who worked for years on this stuff, and came across the idea of flexible dieting, which, and I know you and I have similar philosophies um and come from it in different from different approaches. But the idea was you don't have to cut out food groups, you don't have to restrict and do anything extreme. You can enjoy the foods you like to enjoy, but understand where it's taking you and how it's serving you and how you get from this goal to that goal. So once I figured that out, I was able to control things, you know, for the first time. Whether that was my weight on the scale, my or or just my body composition, it didn't matter. I had the control. And I went through my first what I'll call transformation in 2021, where I actually uh was was happy with how I felt and how I looked and that I could perform and do it within um, you know, within the choices I made, as opposed to spinning my wheels like I felt I had been doing for years. Um and then in late 2021, I said, Well, I I love to talk. And I, as you can tell, I'm I'm just going on and on. I love to talk. Let me start a podcast and get the information out there in the way I like to communicate. And I did. I started the Wits and Weights podcast late 2021. I met some great people through that, including a power lifter who became my first client as a nutrition coach, and kind of uh it went from there. So I've been a coach for about a year and a half now, working with a lot of great people. And I think a lot of people know me as the strength guy. Like when you work with me, we got to train. Like, that's a requirement for working with me because I think it's so effective for your health and for your physique.

SPEAKER_02

Couple things I want to point out from your story for our listeners. Number one, Phillips obviously a guy, and most of my listeners are female. For a long time as a coach, I was like, well, guys don't have emotional eating problems, guys don't have body issue problems, but like this is really a human problem. This is really just like the human condition. And so I just, it just helps to normalize it. Like, yes, we we have maybe different thoughts as women, but you know, we're not alone in this. I did have my first male client earlier this year, which was fascinating and very fun. And we teased a lot about how my workbook is just straight up pink all over the place. And he was like, it's fine. Um, but that was great. Another thing I really love that you said I want to point out is from CrossFit, you're like, that's where I learned the love of the barbell. And I just am always saying, like, hey, we've all been, we've all been dieters. I know, because like statistics show that women of my age have been on between 40 and 60 diets. So chances are, if you're listening to this, you have been on a diet. Like rather than say, gosh, I wish I hadn't done that. I wish I should, I, you know, I should have known better. There's tons of things in my life that I'm like, I would have done that differently. But instead, like for CrossFit, for me, like maybe I sometimes look at it and think, I probably shouldn't have beat up my body in the way that I was, you know, doing in that way. I still, you know, feel the effects of a shoulder injury from when my coach came around and was like, I thought you were here to work out and put 20 more pounds on my bar like that. You know, but that's okay. That's okay. I am so glad that now I can work out in my garage with a barbell because of that time that I gained confidence and the knowledge that I needed to properly do a squat and properly do a deadlift. Now, I don't do snatches by myself in my garage. I will tell you that. It's a little too technical to be doing without a coach for me. But I love how you were like, I learned that there rather than detailing out all the reasons why it wasn't good for you. So um, I just I think that's really important for us to point out those things that we did in the past. And it's like with food too, I've talked about how like, let's look at foods that have worked for you in past diets. Like you mentioned a lot of diets you've been on, like the slim fast. I've done that in when I was a very young girl. Um, and I know like shakes do not work for me. I don't even use smoothies now. Like, I don't do a protein drink. I do not like smoothies, but I can look to other diets that I've been on and say, like, oh, you know what does work for me? Tons of vegetables. That actually works really well for me. Those diets that I was on where I was eating a decent amount of protein, tons of vegetables, lots of fruit, these things work for me. I don't have to cut them out just because I'm technically not dieting. We want to look at those past experiences and use them to inform what we want to currently do. So thank you for that.

Philip Pape

Yeah, no problem. And just to add to that, being that I'm in my 40s as well, if you asked me like what would I change? I usually my answer is nothing because I'm glad I went through those experiences to learn these very things. And even with my clients, you know, the more information they're able to tell me about what didn't work, I don't, you know, I understand there's a framing aspect to it when they say, well, I'm not good at this or this didn't work, or I made a bad decision here. I don't care. Like that's in your past. We're gonna go forward and we're gonna do the right thing. But knowing that's the case, like, I don't know, you might have an intolerance, right? That's gonna be helpful going forward because that you can't eat a certain food group just because it doesn't uh fit for you. Having said that, I'm a big fan of experimentation and also not making assumptions. So if if we think that, hey, carbs are uh a problem for us, maybe it's not the carbs. Maybe it's some combination of carbs and fat you had in the past, or maybe it's because you were on a certain diet. It doesn't matter. Let's let's be open to these things that unless it's a medical or an established allergen, let's just be open to them going forward because you never know. Yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_02

Okay, well, even though we're saying like, hey, don't be upset about what we've done in the past, we can look back and be like, okay, that didn't work for us. And then we might call it a mistake, right? So if we're looking at what mistakes people are making when they're trying to improve their health and their body composition, what do you think is the main problem there?

Philip Pape

I I think about this a lot because there isn't just one, but the biggest one, one of the biggest ones I see is this focus on the short term, which for most people is weight on the scale, right? They're focused on some uh short-term goal or number that they're trying to move instead of why they want to move that number, right? So if you ask a client, what what is your goal and they say I want to lose 10 pounds? That's not your goal. That that's a method, that's a thing that you can do. All right, why do you want to lose 10 pounds? Well, I want to be back to some target weight. Okay, why do you want to be at that weight? Well, that's where I was when I was in when I was 24. Okay, why do you want to be like you were when you were 24? Oh, because I felt confident about myself. Oh, okay, now we're getting to the heart of the matter. So let's when we talk about body composition, I like to help people see the holistic picture, right? It's not just a number, it's how you feel, how you perform, and and ultimately that can be traced to your physical mastery. Okay, and when I talk about physical mastery, I don't talk about what you're eating, it's it's how you interact with the physical world. So this usually comes down to building muscle, being stronger, and fueling yourself to perform. And once you do that, it's amazing how many of these other issues start to go away. Uh, whether it's hormonal um dysregulation, whether it's the uh mindset we've had in the past that was like an all or nothing kind of mentality, a restrictive mentality. Um, whether we've done tons of cardio in the past and thought that was the way to go, and now we realize that there's a more balanced approach to our fitness. And so instead of focusing on weight in the scale, let's focus on building our body. And and that often leads to a more positive approach to all of this.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Sometimes I like to play a little devil's advocate with my guests just because you know I could hear, I can hear the listeners being like, yeah, except for that I do want to lose weight. Yep. I do like, I do want to lose weight. And so how is strength the path to do that?

Philip Pape

Well, let's look at let's think about our metabolism, right? Um, building strength, which also then builds muscle mass, um, increases our metabolic rate. We can we can burn more calories, right? So that alone can help us burn more fat. Um, having strength allows us to uh improve our health markers, right? So when we talk about our blood work, um uh factors for metabolic disease, our heart rate, and so on. So it makes us more capable in this physical world. Uh and then um because you have a higher metabolic rate and you have a healthier, you know, expression of your body in life, losing fat becomes easier. Um most clients I work work with, we go through like what we call a pre-diet maintenance phase for a couple months before we even lose any of any of the weight. And here's what magically, what magically happens to most people. If you haven't been training properly, and I can define what that means, if you haven't been weight lifting properly till now, and you start to do it, and we're tracking everything, you know, we're tracking not necessarily macro tracking, but we're tracking the our um uh our lifts, you know, we're tracking how we feel. We might be doing body measurements. You don't have to, you can go by how you look and how you feel. What you end up finding is over the first few months, you may not move that number on the scale, but you actually may go down one or two path sizes. You may all of a sudden feel more energy. You all of a sudden may have some of these issues that were that express themselves as like hypothyroidism or other hormonal dysregulation start to dissipate because you have a focus on building muscle and strength. And after this one or two months, all of a sudden the focus starts to change. And like you said, well, I want to lose weight. I've seen many clients start to change their focus from I want to lose weight to huh, I want my PR, my deadlift to keep going up because I'm feeling great and now I'm looking great and my pant size went down. Then you get to a point where you're like, all right, now let's hit the gas pedal on a fat loss phase if we need to do that to kind of get rid of the excess fat, but you're in a much healthier spot to start that from.

SPEAKER_02

Okay, good. So um let's talk a little bit more about strength training. I've I've had another trainer on talking about strength training specifically for women. Do you I assume you train both genders, but if we kind of highlight women here, what is the goal? Because the truth is women aren't going to have the kind of results that you do as far as like that quick muscle building. We just don't see that with the amount of circulating testosterone that we do have. It just doesn't happen. Women don't really need to fear getting bulky, like I promise.

Philip Pape

Even men, even men have trouble doing it, to be honest.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, it's like really truly, don't worry about it. It's not gonna happen.

Philip Pape

I want to be bulky and I can't get there.

SPEAKER_02

So that's not really what happens. I mean, tell tell me though, then how can women measure? Because I find like I've been strength training for several, several years now. I'm not really seeing any changes. I'm mostly just trying to maintain my muscle mass because as I go into menopause, I just feel like that's really important. I think that um I mean, I just really believe and I think there's a lot of evidence that shows us that exercise really is the fountain of youth and strength training in particular. I am constantly when when I'm talking about my goals, like why do I want to do this? Why do I want to be a certain weight? Why do I want to exercise? It's because I think it's the fountain of youth. And I think that it's the way I stay young and I want to be able to get on the floor and off the floor in my 70s and 80s. I want to be able to be an influence for good of my grandchildren. And the only way I can do that is if I have the mobility and the ability to move to where they are, whether that is on the floor because they're toddlers, or if that's getting on a plane and going to their high school graduation across the country because that's where they live. I need to have that ability. And I think exercise is where it's at for that. So talk to us a little bit about strength training, what women should be doing and what they can expect with strength training.

Philip Pape

Yeah. First you alluded to some of the benefits. As you age, strength training gets more and more important because it does increase our bone density, it increases our metabolism, it um helps us with balance, with stability, with mobility, posture, helps us sleep better. It can even reduce pain. Like if you have lower back pain, like almost everybody gets by the time they're in their 40s, doing deadlifts could mitigate that pain. I've seen it time and time again, even if you're 75 and you've never lifted a barbell before.

SPEAKER_02

Which is, by the way, like so counterintuitive. You're like, wait, what? That isn't that like a back exercise? I mean, it's not, it's a it's a lower body exercise. But people that don't know are like, that sounds like a terrible idea. But no.

Philip Pape

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's true. Well, well, deadlifting it, right. It's a it's more of a hamstring exercise, but then your back is a stabilizer for that. And you've got these like large ropes of muscle that go along your spine. And every time you're doing an isometric contraction on those when you deadlift, you're strengthening them, they're getting bigger and bigger. And now that supports your spine instead of your spine. Like that supports your body instead of your spine. So think of it that way. Um, yeah. So anyway, I can go on and on about the benefits, but uh here, so you mentioned something you've been training for several years, haven't necessarily seen huge results. Uh, what I found is that there's sometimes a misapplication of what's called the stress recovery adaptation model. And there's different names for this. This is the one I know it as. And the idea is when you're training under the bar, when you're lifting a barbell or dumbbell or machine, you're putting stress on your body. You're putting stress on your muscles through tension, right? And you have to put sufficient amount of stress and then recover for that stress. And then your body supercompensates for that and actually builds a little bit extra tissue or rebuilds new muscle tissue. And then the next time, and here's the key, you have to lift a little more. So that's a little bit heavier or a few extra reps or a few extra sets. What I've seen time again is a few mistakes. One mistake is uh lifting in too high of a rep range, like lifting 15 or 20 reps, and you just don't really go very heavy, you don't put much stress on your muscle, and then you do the same weight every week.

SPEAKER_02

And I think yeah, go ahead. But well, I think part of the reason that women especially do that is because they think they don't want to be bulky. So they're like, I'll pick up a 15-pound dumbbell. Like, don't do that. Pick up something heavier than your purse or your toddler.

Philip Pape

There you go. Yeah, no, no, for sure. Yeah. So the reasons why are one thing, and then the fact you do it is another. So I'm just addressing the fact that you do it at the moment. Um, progressive overload is the concept of actually lifting, you know, adding weight or adding reps over time. Uh, and that and these are very important principles of training. The other thing is you mentioned lifting light dumbbells. If if you're just trying to build muscle, um, kind of like a bodybuilder, you're just trying to build muscle or size, different rep ranges can work, but you're generally not strong enough to lift very much for high reps when you start. So there tends to be this sweet spot around five reps. We like to say four to six reps, where you can lift pretty darn heavy because it's only five reps, but you also get enough volume, right, to to translate into muscle growth. So the volume is what gives you the muscle growth or the hypertrophy, and the intensity, the weight on the bar at that low rep range is what gives you the strength. So the strength and the muscle mass go hand in hand, where each time you go to the gym, let's say you're doing three sets of five reps of squats, okay? Whatever you start at, let's say it's 95 pounds. Uh let's say 95 pounds on the bar, Lisa. The next time you go in, Which would literally be the next workout session you would try 100 pounds, then the next time you try 105, then 110. And you have the a really good capacity to do that as a beginner. I'm not saying you're a beginner, but someone who's beginning at strength has a good capacity to go up very quickly. And then it starts to plateau and plateau. But within three months, you've gone from say 95 pounds on the bar to maybe 180 or 200 pounds. And I see this in women who've never lifted before, who are parry and post-menopause, because that's most of my clients. And it happened and it works. But it's a very different mode of training than what most people are used to with the isolation movements, the higher reps, and all of that. Um, so yeah, that's the idea, the idea is to use as much muscle mass as possible to stress it so it actually grows bigger. And if you're a woman, if you've ever watched uh athletes or you like even in CrossFit, and you say, Well, she has a really lean physique, like she's lean, she doesn't look bulky, you know, muscle definition. Chances are that woman is probably 20, 30 pounds heavier than you think she is, and she has built a lot of muscle and she doesn't look bulky at all. Like the classic lean physique for a woman athlete, that's what that's what it is. So yeah, you're not gonna get bulky.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Um, I think I'm in that plateau face.

Philip Pape

Okay, okay. I can help Lisa.

SPEAKER_02

Um speak to some of yeah, I know. Speak to some of your favorite um movements because I think one thing that people and again women want to do is go in and and do a single joint movement, a bicep curl. And I'm a big fan of multi-joint movements, like you're talking about the squat, the deadlift. Um for a basic strength training, what are what is like the um the foundation really? Sure. Not, I mean, obviously you're gonna have accessory movements at the end of each workout, but for your base movements, what are your favorites?

Philip Pape

Yeah, and if you have access to a barbell, that's ideal. If you don't, you could do these with dumbbells. But Lisa mentioned multi versus single joint. So multi-joint movements are compound movements, right? And the big three that we know from the powerlifting world, but they're also super effective, is gonna be the back squat. I like the low back squat when you have a barbell, but even a high back squat or a dumbbell squat can work. Uh the bench press, which is our horizontal push, and then the deadlift, which is our uh vertical, which is our pull. Um, I would add to that the overhead press. Okay, the overhead press, you know, shoulder press or strict press, you might know it as, or you might even know it as military press.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

Philip Pape

Exactly. Um again with a barbell, but you could do it with dumbbells. Those are like the big four. And then after maybe a month or two of training, I like to have the I like to introduce chin-ups. And if you can't do a chin-up with your body weight, we work up to that with like lap pull downs or bands or something, something like that. The only other movement that you can throw in there at the early phases is something like rows, like barbell rows. And then everything we just talked about, there's a whole bunch of variations of them. Like you don't have to be, if this sounds boring or it doesn't sound you know doesn't work for you, we individualize it. You know, there's Romanian deadlifts. Or if you're like, I want to work on my glutes and my hamstrings, okay, we'll use specific movements besides the regular deadlift.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I think one of the things you just said is, oh, that sounds boring. I think that's probably one of my biggest problems when I strike train. Okay. Is I think it's boring.

SPEAKER_01

Okay.

SPEAKER_02

I still do it because, like I said, I do think it is like the the core, but I do think it's boring. Is there anything that you do that like can keep and and it possibly to be fair, I work out by myself in my garage. That's already boring. So I probably should join the gym that's going in a few minutes away from me that they're building right now. They're actually building a 24-hour fitness, and I consider doing even though I'd probably go in and do the same movements, I think I might be a little more a little less bored if I was um in a gym. But what would you say to women that are like, I don't want to strength train because it's just not as fun as when I do my cardio or do my classes or jump on my bike, those kinds of things I find, you know, women prefer to do.

Philip Pape

Well, what do you find boring about strength training? Let me ask you that. I'm asking you, yes, you're me personally.

SPEAKER_02

Um, I don't know. I just think like, I don't know, just moving the bar and then okay, probably all the rest. It's like two, three minutes rest between each set, which I think is really important to really rest. Like it's not restful to do burpees in between sets. Don't do that.

SPEAKER_01

You know, you're I really do I really do rest.

SPEAKER_02

And so then I'll get on my phone or I'll try. I'm you know, listening to an audiobook or something, and I'll get distracted. And then what do you know? I've been resting for seven minutes and I'm like, oh dear.

Philip Pape

That happens. Actually, yeah. But I mean, my advice for rest periods is just to get your steps in, like get your steps in during the rest period. That's a good way to stack. Um, it's gonna depend on what you as an individual are looking for. So you mentioned community as one thing, right? And that's definitely for some women that's intimidating, actually, right? To go to the gym, there's a whole intimidation factor depends on on the gym. And I have other clients who they have a workout partner they like to work out with. Um, but I'm gonna look at um, is there another way we can make this fun, right? Making it fun might be I just got a new PR this week and I got another new PR and another PR. I see this all the time in check-ins from clients. Like, oh, I just got another PR on my overhead press. And that right there just drives them. If you're kind of doing the same thing every time you go to the gym, that could become boring. But if you're doing a simple workout that's the same movements, but you're actually breaking records each time of on your own, that could be fun. So it doesn't get much more complicated than that, Lisa. Like if if a client says, I just really don't like this programming at all, it's super boring. I'm gonna throw in other movements. That's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna throw in other things. And if they miss like the classes or the um cardio stuff, there's ways to to work in a little bit of interesting cardio without it interfering with your lifting and your recovery. Because listen carefully, too much cardio can be a problem when you're trying to build muscle.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that is so hard, I think, for a lot of us. Um, well, you know, we come out of children being in the 80s and 90s, just not only was it the low fat craze as far as what we were eating, but I think it was also the cardio craze. Like you just gotta be on the stairmaster for as long as possible. Like that's uh that's what you had to do. Or running. I I I can't not stand running. But I do like to get my heart rate up now and again. And I think that it it is part of a well-balanced, well-rounded physical training kind of program. What do you what do you think is an ideal training program or schedule? Let's say money and time, no object. If we're like, okay, this is the ideal training schedule. What would a woman want to be aiming for? Cardio versus strength versus rest.

Philip Pape

Yeah, for a beginner, I would say three days a week, full body, because you as a beginner have the capacity to recover. Full body strength. Yeah, for full body strength. Yeah. So that means you would you could you could potentially squat and deadlift every session when you're a beginner. And then you could bench or um press, you know, do a pressing movement um every single session. So this is again where people leave gains on the table because they might only squat once a week. When when you're a beginner, you can squat three times a week. Even as an advanced trainee, I might squat once or twice a week, but I'm doing it, I'm mitigating the stress. But as a beginner, you could just go up, up, up. So three days a week, very simple, like three big lifts with maybe an accessory for fun, you know, accessory whether you want to focus on your arms or shoulders or back or whatever. And you could do between zero cardio and a little bit of cardio, no more than half of your lifting. Now, let me clarify when I say cardio, I'm not talking about walking. Walking, I want you to do as much as possible. So, walking is my preferred form of cardio for anybody. You can walk anywhere, you can go at whatever pace you want. It's low stress, anyone can do it. You can make it fun by listening to a podcast, looking at nature, walking with friends. Um, you can wear a rucksack to make it challenge you, you can go for a hike. I can go on and on about walking. Like, I'm a huge fan of walking. And walking, going from like 4,000 steps a day as a sedentary person to say eight or even 10 over several weeks building up will burn several hundred more calories a day, you know, and let you eat more and kind of have that flexibility, but it also is great for your health. So that's the form of cardia I would choose. And if you're a beginner working with me on this very stressful lifting program, you're gonna want all the recovery you can take. If still you feel like you're missing something, I would say a couple hit sessions a week, or maybe like two medium intensity, like half hour sessions on a bike. I discourage running unless you like it. And a lot of people don't even like it, right?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Well, I think people think I I gotta lose weight, so I better start running. And I just think that's such a fallacy. You do not, you do not have have to start running. You don't have to keep running if you hate it. No.

Philip Pape

Not at all. No. Yeah, I know, because it sounds it's easy, right? Like you lace up your shoes and you go. Um, but you definitely don't need to run. But go for a walk then, in in that case. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Well, that's really about what I do. I'm really lifting only two days a week right now, just because of the way the time is working out. But I do have an echelon bike, which is similar to a Peloton.

SPEAKER_01

So sure.

SPEAKER_02

I do I use that for warm-up for my lifting days, just you know, five minutes or something, 10 minutes.

SPEAKER_01

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02

And then I get like a a pretty intense, like a Tabata or just one of their fusion classes between 30 and 45 minutes at least once a week. And then I walk. Yeah, walk my down.

Philip Pape

Sure. Yeah. It's not, it's not gonna kill your games, people. I mean, there's there's like extremes of everything.

SPEAKER_02

There's extremes of well, and I I do think the cardio conditioning, there's there's benefits to that as well. We just don't need to be doing cardio every single day because the walking is really a low intensity, steady state. So you'll you may see that list L-I-SS, low intensity, steady state cardio. That's really what you want to do with combined with your lifting. So you could do that if if it's raining, I sometimes do just a low intensity on my bike, which I consider part like similar to the walking. It is, yeah. My my darn Apple Watch doesn't think I'm stepping though, so I don't get any mileage for that.

Philip Pape

There's it's you know what the hack to that is? I think the hack to that is to set it to like elliptical or something else, and it actually will work. If you set it to a different mode, you can put it at and it'll count it as steps.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah, because um, and and it's not that I'm like, oh, I gotta count my workouts, but I have been looking at my overall step count as a whole, you know, by the month. And I I did actually some research on this for another episode I did on meat on your non-exercise activity thermogenesis, and I was really surprised how much my step count went down in the winter. I was like, oh yeah. And I think my my bike usage went up, but it wasn't, you know, counting into that daily average.

Philip Pape

So that just and steps are a good proxy for for that. So let me let me add a few more on this, right? Because you mentioned uh the heart rate and cardiovascular health. So you could walk faster. That's one thing. You can walk very briskly. Like for for me, that's like four miles an hour, 4.2 miles an hour. And if you're shorter, it might be 3.7 or something. You'll know what it is because after about 20 minutes, if you your heart rate will climb, climb, climb, it'll get into zone two. It'll get into zone two. We talk about zones a lot these days, you know, zone two being like that optimal where you can go sustain.

SPEAKER_02

70 to 80 percent of your. Don't don't quiz me on it. Yeah, I don't know.

Philip Pape

I just I just know what it's yeah, I know because that that's a I don't even care. Honestly, I don't even quote unquote care that much because I know you know it when you get it. It's like it doesn't have to be that precise. But if you have like an Apple Watch, it will tell you in a workout which zones you're in for how long. And if you walk briskly, you'll get in a zone two, and then you'll just sustain that uh as long as you walk at that pace. Now you could also throw on a rucksack, that'll definitely get you up there and it'll work your traps a little bit as you're walking. You could also um if you've never trained like the way I suggested a little a few minutes ago, Lisa, like really heavy deadlifts and squats, that gives you intense cardio. Okay. Like it spikes your heart rate. Like for me, it'll spark it, spike it in the 150s for minutes on end, which reminds me when I was in CrossFit. It is that intense. So you're getting plenty of work capacity and heart health from the combination of those things.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. I was doing Bulgarian split squats this morning, and oh my word, I was just like, oh, why am I breathing so hard? So there you go. That's cardio. Yeah, effectively. Um, okay, I want to get into, we're gonna switch gears a little bit. Philip and I talked um in advance a little bit about the negative consequences of yo-yo dieting. So this is gonna get back into our nutrition side. We've been really hammering on the strength. And uh, you know, my clients know I'm always like, what are we doing for movement? Although I'm not a trainer myself, I do just really, really believe in movement. It's separate really from your eating because you make very little progress in your um energy expenditure by your formal exercise routine. It only accounts for about 5% of your total daily energy expenditure. So, really, if you want to effectively change your body composition, which means losing fat, using fat for fuel, that's burning fat, that's losing weight, that's what we want to do. That's gonna happen with your nutrition. But when we're talking about our body fat, we have some negative consequences from yo-yo dieting. Tell me a little bit about that.

Philip Pape

Yeah, I was shocked to learn this when I did, but when you are losing weight from a diet, right? Up to half of that weight, if you are a sedentary kind of the average person, is muscle. Up to half that weight is muscle. So if you think about the yo-yo dieting, the cycles that people go through. And you mentioned women go through, well, what did you say? Like 60, how many diets?

SPEAKER_02

It depends on what survey and research you're looking at. It's between 40 and 60 diets that women have started by the time they're um approaching menopause age.

Philip Pape

Okay, yeah, but that that makes, yeah. So it's like one every year or two at least. So every time you go on one of those diets, and many of these work in the short term. We know that. We know that these diets tend to induce weight loss of some kind. And when you do that, if you're not strength training and you're not eating sufficient protein, because those are the two big things when it comes to preserving muscle, you will lose some muscle and more than you think. And so this is why we see uh gradual loss in muscle with age. We see slowing metabolisms with age. And when you say, okay, I'm 60 now, my metabolism is way slower than when I was 20, that's true, but it's not because of age, it's because of muscle loss with age. And it's the the great thing about it is you can reverse that at any time. Now, we think of the yo-yo diet, if you lose 20 pounds and 10 of it is muscle, guess what happens after you lose the weight? What happens, Lisa? Every time people lose weight.

SPEAKER_02

Well, you bounce right back and you gain it back.

Philip Pape

That's right. And 95% of people do within five years.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

Philip Pape

So, and and when they gain the weight back, they're gaining back almost all fat. Because again, you're you're talking about people who aren't strength training, they're not giving their body the signal that muscle is important. And so your body says, well, muscle is very expensive tissue to maintain. As you're losing weight, instead of going bonkers on your hormones or pulling from these fat cells, we're just going to not rebuild your muscles. And that'll cover half the energy deficit. Then the rest of the deficit will come from fat cells. And of course, we know then that causes hormonal cascades and stuff that are that are negative as well. So here's the thing: every time you do that, your body composition is getting worse and worse. So every time you lose weight, you get more and more quote unquote skinny fat. Um, even worse than that is you tend to crave things that are the things you probably don't want to overconsume when you lose the fat and muscle at that rate because this lack of muscle causes you to think you're you're like dying almost. It's it's not starvation mode. I don't like that term, but I think it's called hyperphasia or something, um, where you crave carbs, fats, and and sugars because they're high energy, right? Carbs are high energy in terms of the glycogen they provide, and then fats are high energy because they're very dense. And so what does that lead to? Well, I was on keto, I lost 40 pounds, and I just can't stand it anymore, and I'm starving, and I'm gonna go have donuts and pizza and all the other things that I've been creating.

SPEAKER_02

It's the carb fat combination that's so desirable to the brain. Yeah.

Philip Pape

Because it doesn't exist in nature either, right? Carbs and fats. Yeah, it's amazing.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Actually, I just I just like that just kind of dawned on me. I've heard that before, but like I saw that recently, I was like, wait, what? Yeah, think about it. Like, lit really think through it, think about that. Carb fat combination does not exist in nature. Protein fat combination does, that's your animal products. And then you've got carbs, which are like and protein carbs too.

SPEAKER_01

Vegetables and plants, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, right. Plants are protein carbs, and then you've got fruit, which is just kind of carbs. Yeah, then you got fat, like almonds and most, you know, your nuts are protein fats, but mostly fats. I mean, like you start going through it and you're like, no, really? But yeah, they don't.

Philip Pape

Yeah, it's it's very rare. I mean, I guess there could be a few things like um, well, wait, nuts are, I mean, some nuts, nuts can be fats and carbs. Yeah, there's a few.

SPEAKER_02

It's not in those combinations. We've created those combinations, which are fabulous and should be part of your life, by the way. We're not saying to to eliminate those. It's just, it's just interesting. Like, oh, fascinating that this doesn't occur in nature and that we've created it and it's so very desirable from the brain because that will keep us alive. That's what putting on weight does. It keeps us alive.

Philip Pape

Yeah, yeah. So that's how your body responds. And and like you just mentioned the sustainability part. If I were to take a client through a fat loss phase, they're gonna be enjoying the things that they like. And it might be pizza, it's gonna be, you know, less pizza than may they may otherwise like. And it's gonna be in combination with all the other things, plenty of fiber and vegetables and and protein, but your body's not gonna fight back like it would if you were in this hyperphagia state of body fat overshooting, but you also have to be training and eating protein. So that's the key here is because when you lose weight, you're going to prioritize fat if you if you're telling your body to keep muscle, right? That that kind of goes back to the opposite of what we were saying before is if you're training really hard and heavy during a fat loss phase and you're eating the protein, your body's gonna say, okay, well, I'm gonna shuttle that protein over to the muscle because we really need that. And I have nowhere else to go but my but your fat cells. And so we're gonna draw energy for that. The only other place it draws energy from is down regulating your hormones, which we know that that happens as well. And we get metabolic adaptation in the process. So that's yeah, that's kind of the big uh revelation of body fat overshooting and why it's so important to, in my opinion, to strength train.

SPEAKER_02

So many benefits of strength training. Okay, last quick question. What is, because protein and fiber are so important, and we want to reach for those heavy carb fat snacks? That's what the and honestly, they're easy. They're it's very easy to reach for a carb snack. So when you are hungry and it's time for a meal, what is your favorite protein fiber meal combination with carbs as well? But when we're prioritizing the protein and fiber.

Philip Pape

Protein fiber. Well, I'm always gonna go to lean meats as my protein, as my protein of source. Animal products are gonna give you all your essential amino acids. If you're vegetarian or vegan, well, if you're vegetarian, you could you can go with eggs or dairy. And if you're vegan, you've got to really get creative with the plant sources. But for me, it's gonna be lean meats and uh vegetables galore. I do love fruit as well. And calorie-wise, it's not what people think, right? Like have been led to believe, like, oh, fruits are so high in sugar. Really go and look at the macros and the calories in even something like a banana, which was like, oh my God, that's all sugar. Uh, it's it's not nearly as dense as you think. In fact, it's considered uh, you know, nutrient dense food. So that's that's what I would go for. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

I'm I'm a big fan of being an omnivore. I mean, if you're a vegan or vegetarian, I'm not gonna try to convince you otherwise because you have your reasons for that. But if you're willing to be an omnivore, yeah, animal protein is really it's where it's at for building muscle as far as ease goes. That's gonna be your easiest protein for muscle building.

Philip Pape

Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Wits and Weights. If you found value in today's episode and know someone else who's looking to level up their wits or weights, please take a moment to share this episode with them. And make sure to hit the follow button in your podcast platform right now to catch the next episode. Until then, stay strong.