Rather than explaining to them and trying to teach them right off the bat, I want to take them through a process of experimentation.
SPEAKER_05Right.
Philip PapeSo in the hierarchy of evidence, is n equals one at the bottom or is it at the top? That's an interesting question. Because you and your individual variants is the most important data you have about you. Like, you know, no studies, normal curve response is going to tell you as much as your individual data point response. 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. Wits and weights community, welcome to another bonus episode of the Wits and Weights podcast. This conversation is from my appearance on Dustin Lambert's and Dwayne Ulrich's Working Weights LLC podcast. I think it was only their fourth or fifth episode. And I received from them, particularly from Dustin, the most epic, flattering introduction any guest could ever receive, complete with background music, as a nod to my own tradition of detailed credibility building introductions of my guests. So if nothing else, you should be listening to this for that introduction. Uh very entertaining. And in the spirit of Dustin's intro, let me just describe this as a game-changing episode like you've never heard before, where we dropped some serious knowledge bombs on leveling up your health and fitness using evidence-based practices. Forget the myths. We cut through the noise, giving you actionable science-backed strategies to crush your goals and take control of your health journey like a boss. By the way, Dustin was also on my show back on episode 71, How to Achieve Peak Performance and Wellness with Dustin Lambert. So search the archives for episode 71 to hear that. But let's get to this groundbreaking earth-shattering episode right now.
SPEAKER_00Ladies and gentlemen, fitness enthusiasts and seeker of a stronger, healthier self, get ready to be inspired and empowered as we bring you an extraordinary guest who is on a mission to transform lives one rep at a time. Today, we have the privilege of introducing a powerhouse in the world of high-performance nutrition coaching and physique engineering, the last of a dying breed, a legend in his own time, the one and only Philip Pape. Philip isn't just a coach, he's a catalyst for change, a beacon of knowledge and the driving force behind the transformational journey from before to after. With a profound understanding of the intricate dance between strength training and evidence-based nutrition, Philip has embarked on a personal odyssey to become the epitome of strength, cleanness, and health. Through his own remarkable transformation, he's learned firsthand the secrets to unlocking the body's true potential. But Philip's mission extends far beyond his own transformation. As the host of the groundbreaking Wits and Weights podcast, he has reached the incredible milestone of 100 episodes. This podcast isn't just a collection of words, it's a symphony of wisdom, experience, and actual insight that Philip orchestrates to help you achieve your ultimate physique goals. Whether you're a lifter with a defending lifestyle, an aspiring muscle enthusiast, or simply someone seeking to unleash your inner strength, Philip's podcast is your compass on this transformative journey. Through his coaching and guidance, Philip empowers his clients to achieve more with less, scattering plateaus and optimizing their metabolism, energy, and health. As approaches relative, evidence, and propelled by passion. Philip understands that true transformation requires more than just physical effort. It requires knowledge, balance, and confidence. He helps you break free from limitations both inside and outside the gym, leading you towards a newfound realization of your own potential. So if you're ready to shatter your own limits, redefine what's possible, and reveal the ideal version of yourself, tune in to the wisdom that Philip Pate shares on his remarkable podcast, Wits and Weights. With each episode, you'll uncover the keys to a more defined muscular and linear physique without wasting precious time. Folks, this isn't just a podcast episode. This is a monster truck rally of transformation. You paid for the whole seat, but you'll only need the edge. Ladies and gentlemen, it is time to welcome a true trailblazer, a sculptor of physiques, an advocate of the iron, a metabolic maestro, and a bulldozer of barriers, Philip Pape.
Philip PapeDustin, man, I think I think you got it all right. I think it's exactly who I am, and that's what this podcast is all about. And I'm I'm glad you got all the details right. It sounds like it is rooted in the evidence. Um probably can cite exactly where all that came from and and back it up too.
SPEAKER_02I want to be Philip when I grow up. That's what I want. I want to be that guy too.
Philip PapeWho are you talking about?
SPEAKER_01I have a cape with Philip Pape on the back of it.
SPEAKER_02It's red. I'm gonna leave the title.
Philip PapeIt's nice to have a fan or two. It's yeah, I appreciate that, Dustin. No, that was really cool. I mean, for those listening, honestly, I think I know that was a that was uh an ode and uh um a nod to my introductions on my show, or I've kind of I've worked over the months to craft a pretty good, you know, high credibility intro for my guests, but I don't think I've ever taken it that far.
SPEAKER_02It was good, man. I should have had my guitar, I mean, yeah, some bad.
SPEAKER_00Yes, I'm definitely gonna have to put something uh in post that's like uh uh epic cinematic kind of music. I think you I think you should, just in case people are a little bit lost and are like, what is he doing?
SPEAKER_01Is this is this a joke?
Philip PapeYeah, this is like it has not Tom But Billieu has nothing on you, man.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. So listen, Philip, it's great to have you on. Uh, for everybody who doesn't know, Philip um invited me onto his podcast, and that was my first podcast, actually, my only podcast experience besides this one. And so um going through that, uh, I definitely wanted to to start my own podcast and uh reach people and get information out just like Philip does. And so I knew um having a conversation with him, he was such a gracious host. He does a fantastic job um of having people on, and he has all different types of people on his podcast, and there's no um there's no arguments, it's not like a debate. He he really lets people um you know talk about themselves and their their coaching practices or their personal experiences, which is I think an awesome uh part of his podcast too. But I knew that he had to be my first guest on my podcast. So here we are. Thanks for coming on, Philip.
Philip PapeYeah, man, it's a true honor. And I I thank you for recognizing some of those aspects of what I do on the show, whether I do them deliberately or not. But I've kind of leaned into the idea of just giving a platform for guests who everyone has a different perspective and where they come from and and they all mean well, and that's really the the heart of the matter. Um, and by the way, for those listening, Dustin was on episode 71. So if you do want to hear that, check that out. Yeah, definitely. All right.
SPEAKER_00Uh so Dwayne, how are you doing today?
SPEAKER_02I'm doing great, man. I'm super excited that uh this is my first time to meet Philip. And uh man, I've heard a lot about you. Uh Dustin's a fan, and uh I'm just excited to be here, brother. I can't wait to hear you talk.
Philip PapeYeah, man. No, I'm loving your show. It's a few episodes in. I was talking before we recorded that I'm in the middle of the one about seed oils, and I'm gonna learn a ton from the episodes. For people who may not think that they want to get into a great deal about the evidence, I think you should give Dustin's show a shot. I mean, you're already listening to it now, but you're gonna discover different angles. You're gonna discover different ways to frame arguments if you're looking to do that as well. Like that, that's kind of what I'm getting out of it because I think Dustin goes way deeper than I generally do. And I know we're gonna talk about that, some some of that today.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, definitely. So um, yeah, getting into this. This is just gonna be uh uh an organic conversation about some things. We do have some questions lined up just to keep things going. I know Dwayne has some some questions that he probably has, but um, I kind of want to get started with like I know that you've done lots of um diets, and then you just posted uh this morning, I got the email that you used to do CrossFit for like eight plus years. So maybe if you want to like give an introduction into how you got into coaching and nutrition and lifting and all that stuff, and yeah, for sure.
Philip PapeYeah, the email I sent out this morning was how I did CrossFit for about a decade. Um, and that was my first foray into fitness because if we rewind the clock to my youth and into my 20s, I did not play organized sports, I didn't come from an athletic family. Um, and I didn't really use the gym much until my 20s, and even then it was just flailing around on machines, had no clue what I was doing. So it wasn't until I was turning 30, and I think I think we were actually pregnant with our first daughter at that point, uh, if I have the timeline right. And I said, you know, I just I know I'm gonna have this kid and she's gonna want to play, and I need to be there for I need to be healthy and strong. And I didn't quite know how to get those things. I also didn't think genetics had it in for me, right? This is one of the many excuses we tell ourselves or the identities that we place on ourselves over our life, like, well, my family's just as overweight, and I'm gonna get, you know, diabetes or heart disease someday. It's just in my lot of life, and so be it, but I can try. So I I just I started CrossFit because it was all the rage around that time. We're talking 2010, 2011. Oh yeah, the peak of CrossFit. And I I have every nothing but good things to say about what it did for me, uh in terms of introducing me to things that I had never seen before, like a barbell. I had never touched a barbell before. Let's just I'll just say that I'd never touched a barbell before. So learning just basic movements, even if the form was probably terrible in hindsight, at least learning to you know move my body in that way and feel what's what load and strength was like. And then the conditioning and the the work ethic and the community and all those things were a lot of fun. And I did that for a good I like I said, eight years pretty religiously, all while having no clue how to eat, right? Like most people, it was diet, diet, diet, diet. Oh yeah. It was uh way back in the day, it was Atkins. I even did Slim Fast. I mean, we're talking a long time ago. Uh just nice, right? Delicious. Uh, but but I did some of the big did right. You do you do diets. That's what we did. Do diets. Um, I did uh all the low carb diets, keto. I did intermittent fasting. Actually, I trained fasted for a long time. Um, and I did like the lean gains protocol and stuff like that. Uh training fasted and intermittent fasting. Um, and through it all, I just didn't have the results I wanted. And the results I wanted were I just wanted to feel good, look good, perform all those things that we want. And I didn't want to have a dad bod, you know, as I was aging. And here I am getting more and more skinny fat and sluggish, and like, you know, just like hey, hey, hey, hey, back it down, back it down. I'm just telling you, Dwayne. It's it's trigger warning.
unknownTriggering.
Philip PapeUm, so anyway, this uh I kept doing random things. I kept doing exercise, right? We we we know the difference between exercise and training. I kept doing exercise, and it wasn't until uh 2019, late 2019, where my coach at this gym, he also had evolved his practice and his thinking over the years kind of away from boot camps and CrossFit and more towards strength. So it was more of a strength and conditioning, but still making it fun, right? Like personal trainers, they want to make their programming fun. Yeah, so it had a lot of other stuff in there. But I said, Man, I I I need a better physique. I need to do something, it's not working. He's like, All right, nutrition and get stronger. Like, you mean get it? You mean what do you mean getting stronger? He's like, you know, we have this strength club over here. These guys are lifting, you know, they're doing deadlifts, they're doing squats, they're not doing all these other things, they're taking long rest periods, they're eating a lot of food, that's what you need to do. And I just didn't believe it. I didn't see how that would get me what I wanted. I didn't understand. Um, but I started the program and I was doing things like squats, deads, pressing uh three or four days a week. And then the pandemic came and locked everything down. We're only talking a couple months into this journey. So we're locked down. I have no access to the gym. Um, I have very little equipment at home. But what do I do? That's when I started to dive into podcasts, books. I will say the scientific literature, but not really, not to the extent you you do now, but that came later, right? As a way to kind of uh clarify things and fill in the gaps. And I read books, I I felt I found starting strength. So I don't know how I found it. I found starting strength and uh Dr. Eric Helms and Annie Morgan's muscle and strength pyramids, uh, and kind of that whole circle of folks where you know, people in the strength world, the 531, Jim Wendler, right? All that stuff, uh, Bill Starr, etc. But then also the modern kind of evidence-based group of folks, the Eric Helms and Eric Trexler and uh Andy Morgan and others.
SPEAKER_00And what I've done is the stronger by science crew, right?
Philip PapeStronger by science, yep, yep. Greg Knuckles and all of them, exactly. And it and it kind of you you started to see that they would all reference certain people time and again, and and you could you could create this library of experts who you tended to trust because it seemed like they were drawing on the research in a reasonable way. You know, they weren't influencers, they weren't yelling at you, you know, like seed oils are bad, you know. Yeah, TikTok video, right? And I started to kind of trust these folks and apply it and apply it and experiment with it. And I, you know, I went and hustled and got a power rack and a bar and plates all used, you know, through like Facebook or Craigslist or something. Um, did the starting strength program, ate a lot, started drinking milk, you know, the whole thing. Even the go mat, I almost took it to heart as a 40-year-old, even though you're not supposed to do that. And and I started to build muscle for the first time in a way that I didn't know was possible before. Uh, got a lot stronger, gained a bunch of fat. I was okay with that though, because I was getting stronger on building muscle. And then I said, Well, now I need to learn nutrition, right? And so this was now we're uh where are we now? We're like early 2021. I think I did my first fat loss phase, trying to follow all the evidence, uh, track my macros and everything, and figure it out over time. And then by late 2021, I had gone through my first successful cut, let's call it, where I'm like, hey, I could actually see abs for the first time in my life. And I know that's not the marker of of everything in the world, but for somebody who's been, you know, dad bod for 20 years, it was but it's wonderful.
SPEAKER_02But it's wonderful.
Philip PapeIt's wonderful when you can do it for the first time, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
Philip PapeUm, and that's when I said, Well, let me share this with the world. I'd love to talk. You could tell I'd love to talk because this in this intro uh answer to your question is like droning on and on. But uh, I'm in an organization called Toastmasters, right? It's a public speaking organization that I've been in for about 10 years. Highly recommend anyone who wants to break out of their shell for speaking. And one of their advanced projects that you can do is create a podcast. So I created a podcast, took messy action. You know, you saw me post the other day about like the closet that I used.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yep.
Philip PapeYou know, I had a closet, a TV tray, I had like uh some books that I stacked up to put my laptop on, and I had uh an old uh mic that was like three, three months, three years old. It worked, right? And I used Audacity for you know free software, right? And then I think I used a free hosting service initially and then eventually moved to a paid service. Um, but I didn't know what I was doing then with the podcast. I just wanted to tell people what I had learned. I wasn't really backing it up by the science per se, right? I was just saying, look, I was skeptical for years, I didn't know what worked, and now I have some clarity and I'd like to help you go through that process as well. And then eventually that evolved to answer your question how did I get into coaching? Um, a power lifter who came on my show who I knew. She asked me to be her coach because she found that the way I communicated helped her understand why things worked, and that was the missing piece. Because now that you know that, you have power to do that in the future, even when you're not working with a coach. And that's where I want to take my clients.
SPEAKER_00Awesome. That's fantastic. Yeah. Um, wow, so many things in there. I'm speechless. Yeah. So first, I guess I would have to say, I think that um uh maybe everyone who's uh gone through uh starting strength linear progression, you don't find starting strength, starting strength finds you.
SPEAKER_03That's great.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but uh yeah, that's kind of like every everybody who I that I know and talk to um who knows about starting strength and has done it and all that stuff, they kind of that's the same answer. Like, yeah, I'm not really sure where I found and this is the same thing for me. It's just like I don't really know how it just like it just popped up one day, and I was like, Oh, this is it, this is it right here.
Philip PapeYou know, I think I think the name Starting Strength probably helps a lot. Yeah, because it just sounds like okay, I'm getting started, I want to get stronger, right? It's a really good name, just a simple, effective name.
SPEAKER_02Yep. I had no idea of any of that. I just I just happened to be friends with Coach Lambey, and boom, it just all started happening. Uh we started working out uh through a deal we did with our church, and then uh I really liked it. I started, I mean, I couldn't we we did a thing where I started we were deadlifting just a bunch of guys, our first deadlift. My first I've never seen a real bar.
SPEAKER_00I hosted a deadlift seminar at my house.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and uh so I I pick I'm picking up like uh I don't know 95 pounds, I think, or something, you know? And uh so I'm picking up this bar and and form sucked, and I mean I mean I could do it. But uh at that point he goes, Okay, you're done. What? And a couple of old guys, they're over there and they're picking up way more. And I'm like, dude, seriously, I'm done.
Philip PapeYou did your one set of five for the day?
SPEAKER_02Once I picked up one, one, okay. And I'm going, I'm I'm gonna kind of kind of kind of my feelings hurt a little bit. But anyway, we kind of got into this, and uh, I got stronger and stronger and uh setting more and more PRs, and then next thing you know, he's like, All right, we need to talk about nutrition. Okay, I'm just I'm like a duck in a new world. And so uh starting strength found me, just like that. I didn't even I I know I wasn't out looking for it, and boom, it just there it was. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Dead silence, crickets. What do you think?
SPEAKER_00You know, there's three of us here, so who goes next? Who goes next? Yeah. Um, let's talk a little bit about uh I think misinformation is probably one of my favorite topics, and you having brought up um CrossFit and that you did all of those diets um leads me to um that topic of misinformation. And so I think uh maybe you'll agree with me, maybe you won't, but I think that there are trends within the online, you know, nutrition, fitness, wellness space that kind of gain momentum before there's actually um any any significant amount or any good amount or um quality evidence be to back it up. Um so how do you how do you navigate through those kinds of trends with yourself um and your clients and and kind of keep everybody on the straight and narrow?
Philip PapeI mean, so when we look at trends, right? There are there are trends that have persisted for a long time that just won't go away. I don't even know if you can call them a trend anymore, right? Like, I don't know, intermittent fasting or carbs make you fat, right? Like these general concepts that just persist. And then there are the things that come up out of nowhere. It's usually tied to someone trying to sell something online. Um, and those I I kind of I don't know, there's so much noise. There's so much noise that I try to just not ignore so much as understand where they're coming from and question the motives. Like anybody who's listening, that's the first thing you want to do is question where it's coming from. Right? What are the motives? What are they trying to get at? Who's paying for it? Who's paying for this? Um, before you go to the next step. Um, but when it so I like to separate kind of my clients from the public, right? My clients tend tend to be people who have gotten to a certain level of education before they meet me or before they work with me. And that's my goal, with that's my mission, like with the podcast, with the community and everything, is a way to get as much of that information and kind of questioning yourself and questioning your own beliefs and get to the point of ah, okay, I kind of get why this, this, and this works. Maybe I've even tried it for a bit, and now and now I need help taking it to that next level and being super successful with that. And therefore, you know, let's work together with coaching. Whereas the community or the public or my podcast, I have to put the hat on of, you know, they found me for the first time today. How do I not lead them astray? Oh, that rhymes. That's good. How do I not lead them astray? Right. And you know, I I take my cues from guys like I mentioned Andy Morgan, right? He's a co-author of the muscle and strength pyramids, and he was on my show. He's out of Japan, funny guy, fun guy, you know, lay F bombs left and right all the time. And he's very prescriptive, like so prescriptive, almost to a fault where he almost never mentions the science. But it's refreshing in a way because if you understand that he's basing his information off the science and you can trust that, given it secondhand, um, that's a very helpful communication style. When we talk about science communication, for people to take the message and run with it. So if it's like I'm struggling with you know gaining muscle, I'm a Skinny dude, what do I do? He'll say, okay, step one, two, three, four, five. Boom. Like for your situation. And a lot of people don't even, I don't want to say they don't care about the the papers behind it or the research behind it. Um, they just want to know it's correct. And a lot of my clients are that way too. It's like they they're curious, they're very curious. And that's what I want. I want people who are learning, who want to learn and know why things work, but they don't necessarily have to go to the level of like, here are the studies, here are the main analyses. Right. When it comes to trends, um I mean, I don't know, to answer your question, it's like I just am very skeptical all the time. For if something new comes up, I'm skeptical because what what do we not already know? And usually things get nudged, but not much further than that, right? Things get nudged. So, like if you think of fat loss, right? Uh I we know that there's a general rate of loss for fat loss that tends to be supported by the evidence, something like a quarter to one percent of your body weight a week. But then I also know that there's research being conducted right now, like this year by Dr. Bill Campbell in US at USF, that you can go faster if the duration is shorter, right? Little things like that where you're challenging the status quo, but just in a little direction, right? A nudge. So I guess I don't know if I answered your question, Dustin, but you can tell I'm a very conservative guy in that regard. Like I don't jump onto these things. And if a client comes to me with a question, like I heard this or I read that, I might go through the hierarchy of evidence and say, okay, where is that on that hierarchy? Is it anecdotes and media and one-offs, or is it, you know, they're backing it up from research. But even if they're backing up from research, the most dangerous thing you have are charlatans who you who cherry pick research and then misapply it. So that that's my thought on the matter.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, no, definitely. Um, yeah, so I'm I'm in the Facebook group. Uh, for everybody out there who doesn't know, Philip also I didn't put it in the uh in the introduction uh admonishment. You're gonna have to redo that. So yeah, so Philip has a Facebook group um by the same name as the podcast, uh Wits and Weights. Is that right? Yeah, it's Wits and Wits. Wits and Weights. And um, yeah, so really, really active group, and there are several members in there um who are probably the prominent contributors to that, but uh fantastic group, and Philip is always posting in there. But I know that you you have some people in there, um, and I think some of them are are your clients who maybe come to you with some of these um uh preconceived notions about certain things like carbohydrates. And I know you just um did a whole talk and uh um posted some information about um low carbs and carbohydrates and how they may be beneficial for you rather than um, you know, the magical thing that you have to cut out. So how does how does um maybe working in some of the evidence-backed recommendations that you have to those types of clients? Um, does it seem counterintuitive to them sometimes? Do you get pushback from them? How do you work through that process?
Philip PapeI mean, I kind of alluded to before that when a client just gets to the point where they want to work with me, I want them to be in a place where they already they kind of trust me, right? They already have a certain level of trust and they know who I am. And if not, I may actually push back and say, maybe you're you may not be ready to work with me just yet. Go check out these couple resources, like you know, the basics of lifting and the basics of nutrition or whatever, and and then come back to me because we want to start, we want to be effective, you know, we want to be effective, efficient, like you said in the intro without wasting precious time.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah.
Philip PapeYou added a bunch of adjectives in that intro that I don't use, which I love. Um, so um the question was what if a client comes to me about uh something that is opposite or of uh conventional wisdom that's the opposite, it does happen, right? Where a client will maybe they aren't eating very many carbs. And um rather than explaining to them and trying to teach them right off the bat, I want to take them through a process of experimentation, right? So in the hierarchy of evidence, is n equals one at the bottom or is it at the top? That's an interesting question because you and your individual variants is the most important data you have about you. Like, you know, no studies, normal curve response is gonna tell you as much as your individual data point response. And so why don't we try it out? And so I being a coach, I'm able to have you know, give them conviction and confidence from me that this is gonna work. And that's very important to not be wishy-washy, like this is gonna work, let's do it. Um take these actions this week and in your next week's check-in, let me know how that went. And by the way, we collect a whole bunch of data that will tell me how your body's responding biofeedback, you know, measurements, scale weight, food intake, and so on. And from that, we can say, okay, the increase in carbs just bumped up your recovery, you're not as sore, your energy went up, and you're sleeping better. What does that tell us? And we, you know, we understand it's a multivariate equation here, like there's a lot of things changing, but if we can narrow the scope, change one thing or two things at a time, you can get that information. So that's how I deal with it. And then if they're like, well, why is it work that way? You know, I've got clients, why, why, why? All right, here's why. Here's a study. Um, here's what I know about it, here's an article, etc. And it generally works out just fine.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Uh yeah, I I definitely see that. Um, like your your ability to communicate things without having to um cite a a specific study and like show the the chart and be like, well, here's where we can see, you know, the the way that I do it, like uh it's something that I admire uh a great deal. Um, and I'm always looking to to try and um kind of maneuver things in that direction, which is one of the reasons why I have Dwayne on the on the podcast here too, is to help me rein in the the uh the coach speak, the scientific talk.
SPEAKER_02So however, I want to jump in real quick and say this uh about I'm not I'm not being a fanboy, but in reality, when we work when we worked out together, because he no longer lives in the great state of Texas, but um when we worked out together, we didn't go all deep off into the studies. Uh I am kind of a why guy and I would ask him, well, why, why, why, why, or why is this happening, why is that happening? And then he would he would just explain it. And of course, somehow I just had implicit trust in in Dustin. And um only did he go off in person did he go off into the studies if I kind of pushed him there. But like you were talking about your clients uh trusting you, Philip, so that if they just have an implicit trust, I think that's important. Although Dustin does dive into um you know the studies more on the podcast than he did in person. I just want to say that. I don't know if Dustin, I don't know if you realize that or not.
SPEAKER_00Oh yeah, I definitely do.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Your camera's gone.
Philip PapeYeah, camera's gone.
SPEAKER_00Okay, hold on.
Philip PapeYeah, yeah. I saw it counting down. Assumed it was on battery then. I'm actually surprised we could see that in the feed. I know, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. His his camera has a mind of its own. It wants to know why. I just wanted to ask you really quick while he's trying to figure all that stuff out. Is like, uh I'm really curious about your CrossFit uh experience and how you went through that and and still had a desire to move even deeper. Uh the people that I know that have done, I tried CrossFit for a short time, super short, because it kind of weirded me out. The people were just almost fanatic, doing crazy stuff that I I didn't know anything about fitness, I didn't know anything about weights, I didn't know anything about the proper workout or nutrition. And I see these people doing things in the gym. It was like, well, you know, it's sort of a gym, but anyway, doing things is like that's gonna hurt you. Yeah, it's just it's just common sense. I mean, how did you make it through all of that and still come out with a a desire to move forward?
Philip PapeYeah, I want to touch on CrossFit real quick because I know we had the technical glitch. What you said to Dustin about um, and Dustin, you know, thank you for the compliment about how I communicate. But I will say again, both both both of us have a lot to learn from each other at all times because I admire your ability to actually be able to draw on the research and the way you do and like understand the methodology and the data. So I think there's a perfect medium, and we all communicate differently, of course. So um, anyway, the CrossFit thing is interesting, right? Because to be a CrossFit coach or gym owner, you have very few requirements. It was like a thousand dollar certification class, something like a level one class to do that. And so there was a significant amount of variation between CrossFit gyms. You probably heard this, and the one I went to, I think was better than most, because again, the the guy who owns it, who it's now called Romeo Athletics, his name is Andrew Romeo, he's gonna be on the show, um, kind of evolved with it and understood uh sports and performance and strength and all these other aspects and ways to lift. So he tended to focus on uh lifting and some sort of progression. If you came to all the classes, like there was a squat day, there was a dead day. So it was a little bit of progression, and then it was the wad, right? The workout of the day. And that's where you did all the conditioning stuff. And that's where when you talk about people getting injured and whatnot, I think that's where that happens. You're moving fast, you're doing AMRAPS, you're doing things for time, and you're doing stuff with barbells among burpees, pull-ups, running. And so you would do, I remember doing like sets of uh max max deadlifts with like 135 off the ground, and they always bumper plates, you know, you're drop throwing stuff all the time. And it was as part of a round. So you would you would come and do as many deadlifts as you can in like 30 seconds, take 30 seconds off, go do something else. Eventually you're coming back. I know that I took I was not doing good things to my back the way I was lifting that, I was just slamming it up, you know, just randomly, like like a gorilla. So I I eventually had back surgery, you know, two years ago, and I'm convinced there was stuff I probably did with squatting and deadlifting and CrossFit that wow exacerbated that over the years. But I I don't know. So, how do I come out the other side? Because I'm a positive guy, man. I learn from everything, all my mistakes, all my failures, and all my you know, growth. I learned from and hopefully, you know, what what to do and what not to do, and tell others the same.
SPEAKER_02That's awesome. That's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Man, I didn't know about the back injury. So that um uh maybe is a good segue into your current uh situation where you just had um eight weeks ago you had shoulder surgery, uh, and you're making your way back from that. And um I think it's fantastic to see all the progress that you're making. Um, so uh last week, was it last week? Dwayne and I talked about um strength training and how how having uh uh a significant amount of muscle mass and a base level of strength allows you to come back from um injuries like that faster and better than you would otherwise. So maybe you want to talk about your your current situation and your current um rehab uh and training that you're doing to get you back to normal with that shoulder.
Philip PapeYeah, man, I'd love to because this is when you get older, you're gonna have stuff like this no matter what, no matter how strong and fit you are and how careful you are, things are gonna happen. And a lot of these have nothing to do with lifting, right? The cause of these uh injuries. So if I would just go back two years real quick to my back surgery, my microdyskectomy, uh, which isn't isn't the most invasive type of surgery, like fusions and things tend to be a little more um disruptive. But I had I had a numb leg due to sciatica and a pinched nerve, right? The L1S5 for about six weeks, and I wasn't able to walk or stand for very long doing that. So it needed surgery. Even so, I would I was still working out three or four days a week because I found that working out actually made it feel better, even while it was injured, you know, the blood flow and everything else. And by the time I had my surgery and got out of it, it took like a week or two before I could lift again. And the doctor's like, that is completely because you're already strong and like you were primed and ready to go, and you could get right back into it. I'm seeing the same thing this time, and I'm having a lot of fun. And I it's so weird to say that. And people are like, Oh, there he goes again, Pollyanna, you know. But I I I see people when they when I post about my surgery, there's there's two types. There's the type that's, you know, go after it, good on you. Like, that's what you want to do. I'm glad you're moving ahead. And then the people are like, take it easy, you don't want to get hurt, you just got to relax, or or even like, I'm gonna have a surgery like that too, and I'm not looking forward to it. And it's just this kind of ee or and I know everybody's a little different in their level of positivity. I don't mean to be fake positive, uh, but you kind of approach it that way as a new challenge, as a new linear progression, right? And that's what I'm looking at as I'm actually having fun. The fact that yesterday I finally did a conventional deadlift without my harness, I could use it with my my arms, and it was it was 135, which is normally a warm-up weight. And I don't want I don't want to push it, right? So, in terms of like taking it slow, there's there's a reasonable level of that. Um, but it felt so good, and now I'm like, this is this is fun. Instead of doing my more complex programming, I've done the last year or two, I could just back it up and do kind of a starting strength deal and act like I'm a newbie again and start seeing that progression, right? Because it works every time. And when I told my physical therapist this, he's like, Well, as long as we don't tell the doctor, but you're doing the right thing. Because the surgeon, you know, super conservative about everything. And he's like, You're doing the right thing. He's like, it's gonna get everything stronger. So the best advice I have for people going into surgery is to uh train up until like two days before surgery, if you can. And if there's things you can't use, just work around it. Um, and then when you come out of it, uh, see if you can find a like-minded person who maybe is a physical therapist. So, for example, John Patrizo, right? He's in our uh the barbell club and he's helping me out kind of on the side, giving me pointers on what I can and can't do. And he was reasonable about it. He said, Look, you can't do lap pull downs for another four weeks, you just don't have the range of motion. The lap pulldowns will then lead to uh will lead to other pulls like chin-ups and such. But I can like I can only lift my arm up maybe, I don't know, um, what is it? What is this range? You know, uh 100 something degrees, right? I can't go all the way overhead, is what I'm saying. So yeah, I don't know if I answered your question. I go off on tangents. No, no, it's good. It's it's important to be strong before and after and just keep training no matter what. It's my my opinion.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so yeah. So I guess the uh uh the general consensus, not from the surgeon, um him excluded, is that having that uh that uh strength training beforehand is probably allowing you a better recovery um than maybe somebody who just sits on the couch or just works an office job um and doesn't doesn't exercise or or strength train.
Philip PapeYeah, it's huge. Not only the recovery, I I probably would have had um I may not have been able to have the surgery I had. In other words, I might have had to have a full shoulder replacement given the injury was there for like two years and it was a full rotator cuff tear. It was actually a lam delaminated tear, it wasn't all the way through. But because the deltoids and and the biceps tendon and everything else around it was strong, um, it kind of kept it in place long enough to last as long as I did. And he was able to stretch my muscles out and the tendons out and attach them pretty easily because of the flexibility due to strength. That's the way the doctor put it. He said, like there's uh you know elasticity from your muscles that when people are uh not training, they're just atrophied, they're kind of stiff, they're small, and and at such a deep, long tear, you couldn't necessarily pull it all the way to the humerus to attach it. We're talking rotator cuff. I don't even know if I mentioned that, but yeah, yeah. Um, yeah. So all of these, there's all there's only benefits in being strong and building muscle. And yeah, that's I'm all about it, man.
SPEAKER_02I just want to jump in for a second. Is that okay? I just want to jump in real quick. So uh there's a couple of things that you guys have said, and that I want to speak from my own experience. A couple of years ago, I snapped my TIB fib. And the point of uh what I want to say there is that um my wife's in healthcare and um and I shot x-rays for a while uh uh as a rad tech and in surgeries. And so what I'm what I see, and I know this is a generalization on a based on a small set of of medical professionals that we, my wife and I have been working, have worked around. But the younger, like orthopedic guys, shoulder guys, knee guys, uh that I've encountered, they they work out already. So they're already into that mindset about being strong. So my orthopedic guy that basically saved my leg, he worked out, he worked out hard. He's a strapping guy. And I remember a visiting hospital, and he's like, dude, if you hadn't been as strong as you are, and Dustin, I don't know if I've told you this, but if you hadn't been as strong as you are and you hadn't been working out, hadn't been fit like you are, this would have taken a lot longer than if you weren't. And uh and and I'm seeing that in younger guys. And there, I know some older orthopedic guys that uh I shot x-rays for in surgeries, and they're of that mindset. Oh, this is gonna take you forever, and oh, take it easy, take it easy. Even in my uh physical therapy coming out of the leg break, I went to them for I don't know, two or three weeks, you know, a couple twenty times a week, and you know, doing little things. And and I at some point I just said, I'm out. And I just I just started working with Dustin and we just did smart things. And so there's a real there, I I see them well, I guess what I'm saying is is I'm seeing a move in younger physicians who have come up in a strength-building mindset just in their own lives, and they're more at they're more they're leaning more to the side of being fit is a is better for you to it's a quicker recovery. And uh uh I guess that's really the crux of what I'm trying to say is I see that transition from older orthopedic guys and uh who are like, oh, you shouldn't walk on this for six months, whatever. But yeah. I hope that made sense. You know, I'm kind of intimidated by by Phillips bios.
Philip PapeSo I'm just no my so it's funny. My my first surgeon for the back, he after a few weeks, he's like, You're good to go, and there's nothing I can stop you from doing. I know you're gonna do it anyway, but it's okay. You know, it was like go squat and netlift and all that. And I've been doing that ever since, hitting PRs and everything, uh, just fine. And then my current surgeon, I do think he is athletically minded. He just his his feedback was the repair was so aggressive that it helps to just take a little bit longer. And a rotator cuff is unique in that you want scar tissue to develop as a scaffolding. You don't want to overuse the tissue, kind of the opposite of with other things like a knee surgery where you want to use it a lot. And once I got past that point, you know, his surgical plan it gets more and more aggressive to the point where the physical therapist is pretty much the one making the shots with me. And I'll go into the office like yesterday. I went in and he's like, wink wink, you know, we're not gonna tell the surgeon what you did, but you're ready for this, you know, like two weeks early. Let's just do that. I'm like, okay, cool. He has me doing isometrics. It's a lot of the PT office stuff, but some of it is helpful because it's like pushing the range of motion. And then I go home and I do some other, you know, barbell stuff and training there to kind of complement it. Um, what was the last thing? Oh, the cross-training effect is incredible. So, this is one of those things in science. I don't know, Dustin, if you know much about it. I've been meaning to research it for an episode of, but I've heard it before and and they've done studies where somebody will be one group is put in a sling or kept immobile and the other one isn't. And am I saying this right? And they have the group, or they might have three groups, one that has both arms where they do like bicep curls or something, one where they do um one arm with a bicep curl and one arm immobilized, and one where the arm is immobilized with no training. And they found that the the middle group, the one that trains the one other arm, it maintains strength in the immobilized arm, which is incredible. Yeah, you're not even using it. Wow. How is that possible? It's like a crossover, like a neuromuscular systemic effect. I don't know. See, that's where the science, I don't even know the details of the science. Maybe you do, Dustin, but it's fascinating.
SPEAKER_00I yeah, I don't I don't know the details, like the um the biology and the the organic chemistry that happens there. I don't really know about that, but yeah, I know what you're talking about. And a lot of a lot of um literature that we have on stuff about like um uh rates of of muscle synthesis and stuff, they'll do a lot of stuff like that. Well, they'll have people come in and do leg presses with one leg and then do like leg extensions and leg curls with the other leg. And uh yeah, there's a lot of that research. So yeah, interesting stuff. So uh yeah, glad to see you're coming back. I had a client who had a rotator cuffed hair, not to the extent where it needed surgery, um, but she, you know, had to go in and see a uh physical therapist. And we had been doing strength training for um uh maybe four or five months, and she got pretty strong. Like she was stout and she went into this physical therapy office. And of course, they're like, hey, listen, we need you to stop doing overhead stuff with this other guy. And so she told me, and I was like, Yeah, whatever, that's fine. And uh she walked in on the first day and they gave her the little band, you know. Um, and so they told her to to uh extend her arms out and she said, Dustin, I snapped the band and it went so loud, I was so embarrassed. And the guy came over and he was like, I'm not really sure what to do with you.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00It's true. It's true. Yep. So having that strength is important.
SPEAKER_02In my experience, in my experience with my uh broken leg, it's like um, so I was laid up for a while and then I didn't work out for, I don't know, maybe a month uh with Dustin. But I felt like I didn't lose strength, but there was a um um pain from the break itself, you know, from the healing of the of the break. And and more than anything, I think that I was I was tentative. I was, I don't want to say I was scared, but I was tentative because of putting the weight that I was normally putting onto my leg. But I didn't feel a whole lot of strength loss. Uh it was just like um, like I said, the healing point uh where my leg was. And uh of course I have a titanium rod in there, but I don't feel like I lost a lot of strength in that leg. So um I don't know. And I've I've I leaned a lot on the opposite side. I can't say it was a truly isomet, uh you know, I can't say that's it's exactly what we're talking about here, but it was interesting. That's that's a really interesting concept to me, the whole study with the arm.
Philip PapeYeah.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
Philip PapeI think strength comes, I think strength comes back quickly anyway, right? We know this from people who are detrained and then they get into do a linear progression. It comes back way more quickly than it first came. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, definitely.
SPEAKER_00Uh, do you have uh uh a hard stop, Philip? No, we can keep going. Let's do it. Okay, so maybe we can do a question or two more here. So we're gonna talk about um, since you have such a varied um history with different diets and stuff, can you talk about maybe some personal experience with uh challenging so seeing some evidence that may have challenged previous beliefs? So having gone through keto and some of the low carb um diets that you went through, and then coming to an understanding of how carbohydrates may be important, like maybe talk about some things that you've had to change your mind on from seeing um evidence or or you know, personal experience. For sure.
Philip PapeI think carbohydrates is a good anchor for that discussion because it's it's vast majority of people. I mean, so many. If I have a uh strategy call or breakthrough session or whatever with somebody who comes in looking for help, it's like the premise is that cutting carbs is a good thing. And now why aren't they getting results? Can you help with that? And it's like, wait, wait, wait, wait, let's back it up. You know, because they'll say, I've been cutting carbs and it's not working. I need your help. Okay, let's address the premise that any form of restriction of any kind is somehow a good thing. Like I just apply that principle to everything. Um, maybe not even just food, just everything in my life. If I feel like it's something I am forced to do, we as humans rebel and we're just not gonna do it. And so that's a general principle that I think is gonna come out of all of what I'm gonna say here. But then you get into the specifics of the science and why and and so on. When it comes to carbs, um, I didn't believe that they're they were something that could help until I started strength training and had to fuel my strength training and my performance. And I think that's a nice way to approach it because if we can if we can pick one thing that we can focus on for personal development in the physical world, which would be strength training, I think, and then let all of our other decisions help that. It everything starts to align. Everything starts to align with our bodies. And you almost don't need convincing at that point. So for me, that was I started to train, I started to eat more because starting strength said, hey, you got to eat all this food. And I just ate indiscriminately, right? So I started to eat more carbs just naturally. I wasn't forcing myself to cut at that point. I just said, Let me just eat everything. And I was eating processed food, I was just eating whatever, you know, not even paying attention to my macros. But man, did my lifts go up? And did I get sleep? And did I feel recovered? I was like, okay, this is great. And I'd never before in my life used food in a positive way, especially to gain weight. And that was a big revelation of like intentionally gaining weight and it being a good thing.
SPEAKER_03Right.
Philip PapeAnd and it's a struggle even more with women when I talk to women, just because of stigma and society expectations and ideal body image and all this, with the idea of eating more food, increasing your energy flux, increasing your metabolism by eating, by moving, by lifting, and then that fueling your muscle, you know, building your muscle and recovering your hormones and all that good stuff. Like your body just loves it because you're now in this abundant environment. And once you get there, then you have a lot more directions you could take it, right? So um I think I mentioned much earlier that like I used the science to fill in the gaps when I finally understood something worked, and that's kind of how it worked for me is I started to build muscle. I actually saw like I would go to bed, lay laying next to my wife, and see like a little bit of bicep poking out, which I had never seen, you know, little things like that in your body, and you're like, okay, this is working. And so um later, only later on did I realize that carbohydrates are like the uh high octane performance fuel for our bodies, right? That without them, studies have shown time and again, it's very hard to build muscle. I mean, you can still do it, of course. You can build muscle on keto. I'm not saying you can't. Um, and it's very hard to hold on to muscle when you lose fat. So, carbohydrates, when I work with a client, it's again experimentation. It's let's bump up those carbs by if you're eating 80 grams of carbs, we're gonna go to 220, maybe not overnight, but like over the next few weeks, because that's where the macros seem to align. And I get, you know, giant eyes of shock. I've never eaten that many carbs before. I'm gonna gain a bunch of weight. How could I even do that? It's all good. No stress. I'm here for you. Like, yeah, it's okay. Do you like rice? Do you like potatoes? Do you like um what about pasta? Like, nothing's really off limits, right? Don't think of carbs as the traditional, what the keto zealots will tell you, which is like processed foods equals carbs, because that is far, far from the truth as you can get. We know that processed foods are a lot of fat, sugar, and carbs, all in a delicious, highly palatable combination, pre-digested for you, right? With with oils thrown in. I don't care what oils they are. Um, and and you want to eat a lot of them. So that contrasted with grains, starches, potatoes, you know, I could just this a nice boring list of carbs that you know don't fall into that category. Um, and then once once clients start to do that, again, we collect data. How do you feel? And sleep improves, hormones improve. I mean, I have client, I have so many clients, Dustin, who came to me with like a history of hormonal issues for decades, or or maybe like a two like two decades, low DHA, imbalances, you know, uh testosterone's low, progesterone and estrogen are off, thyroid, right? They're taking synthetic T3. You you name it. And all of a sudden the blood work starts to improve just because they're eating more and eating more carbs and doing less, like just lifting weights and not doing all this other crazy stuff. And and those are the shattering revelations that I love people to have because now they can enjoy food, they could eat the things that they were restricting, and they can get the results and not have stress. Like it all aligns, and that's where you want to be. So if you're listening and and in your life, something doesn't feel right, if it feels like you're making a forced decision, there's probably something off. And that's where you start to question and listen to guys like Dustin on on why this stuff is true, what the science says.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and yeah, and there are definitely people who feel fantastic on a low carb diet, and for them, you know, uh it's probably the appropriate thing to do. Um yeah, so exactly I'm glad I'm um kind of the same thing when I was on your podcast. It's like I'm I'm glad some of my clients are getting to hear the same things that I tell them. And uh yeah, so uh yeah, same. A lot of women come having you know been super restricted for years and years and years, and and uh low thyroid, and it's like, well, we need to get more food in you, and you know, you get that immediate like, I'm sorry, you want to do what? Yes, and then yeah, lo and behold, the waist starts shrinking and they start feeling better and they start sleeping.
SPEAKER_02So I just want to say, but I want to say also this it's it's not just women, but like men.
SPEAKER_04Yes.
SPEAKER_02I know that when I started working out with Dustin, I'm working and working and working and working and working, and we're doing a lot of stuff, and I wasn't feeling I wasn't feeling a whole lot of anything. And I think I mentioned a while ago that it's okay, we need to talk about nutrition, and then we started uh just kind of counting calories just for for us for a beginner thing. Uh and of course later on we talked about carbs, we talked about sodium and so forth, but just counting calories, and uh in the end, I had no idea, but man, I was in a huge calorie deficit. Yep. I mean, slept horrible, felt bad all the time. Uh, recovery from workouts was super hard. And that's going, dude, we you need to eat. You just need to eat. And so one of the things that I uh I kind of laughed a while ago when you said something about uh a bowl of rice, you know, it's like, well, I like rice, but I never ate a whole lot of it. But man, I just started eating a lot more rice, uh picking up some carbs, just started eating some more. So many people, I think, as medium, especially women, but men too, who are just always on the go and just aren't paying attention, can be in a calorie deficit. I mean, I was like a thousand calories low from what I should have been. And when I just started eating more, then I found gains in the in the in the gym. I found gain, I started sleeping better, felt better, woke up early, had energy to spare during the day. It's huge, huge.
Philip PapeYeah, yeah, yeah. And your and your comment about tracking is spot on too, because I know there's all different types of coaches, and some coaches will say, like, well, yeah, if you don't like calorie counting, we could do portions and this and then again. I don't I don't know your specific philosophy, Dustin, but mine is as much data as possible right from day one. Like that's just my philosophy. And if you know, if you're gonna work with me, you know that. And I don't sugarcoat it. Like, if if you don't want to track calories, it's that's not an option with me. You have to track your calories and macros. But I've never found somebody who did that and then wasn't completely amazed at how much information they learned within a week or two that liberated them from this restrictive mindset because now they have choices to hit those calories. Yeah, that's you know, I think data is your friend.
SPEAKER_02And full and fullness doesn't equate to calories.
Philip PapeOh, yeah, that's the thing. Hunger signals and all that can be way screwed up.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
Philip PapeUm you're in that situation. You can develop that eventually once you shift everything toward aligning with your goals, right? Aligning with your body and your needs and everything. Once it's all aligned, then you find that you there's more flexibility, especially when you're at maintenance, that yeah, you may not have to track, right? But still, if you're gonna go after a specific goal in a short period of time, like fat loss or muscle gaining, it's only gonna help you to have that data.
SPEAKER_00Right. Yeah, agreed. Yeah. Um, so in your 100th episode, you talked about five things that you have um learned over doing 100 um podcasts. And so something that I found to be really, really, really profound, um, which I think I I have found this to be the um the main driver for my personal goals. And it's I try to I try to iterate this to my clients, and it's hard to get people to accept it. But the thing was finding magic in maintenance, where kind of the more time you spend in maintenance, um you you may start to see more benefits than you otherwise would if you're if you're constantly trying to drive um for that fat loss or or you know losing weight or whatever the case may be. So um maybe want to talk a little bit about that. Um there was one other thing. Oh, I forget what it was, but there were two things that I was like, those are just the hammer on the nail, hitting it right on the head. Yeah.
Philip PapeTwo out of five isn't bad, you know?
SPEAKER_00Well, I thought I thought all five were great, but two of them really really uh had a had an impact for me personally.
Philip PapeYeah. Yeah, those those are those are tricky to come up with, you know. And when you when you get to a hundred episodes, you'll see it's just like a little i pick.
SPEAKER_00And you have so many, you have so many different people who come on and say so many different things. There I've listened to some people on there that were a little uh they're out there, yeah.
Philip PapeSo a little out there. They make you yeah, they they challenge they challenge your beliefs. Let's put it in that to be nice.
SPEAKER_02Uh and in some cases, that you know, they may did you bring them on no did you bring them on knowing they were gonna challenge you?
Philip PapeSometimes, yeah. In fact, there was one one guest, I won't name names, who I actually reached out to a friend slash mentor of mine. I'm like, I'm not sure. I think I should cancel this one. Like, it's not really aligned with with my message. And he's like, But you know what? You talk about skepticism and challenging beliefs, so why don't you bring them on anyway and practice what you preach? I'm like, great point. So I did, and you know what? Every single one of these, I learned something, and there's something applicable that is correct out of that. And that's you know, that's you take what you want, and people are smart, they're they make their own judgment and they'll know where I come from. Um, anyway, the the magic in maintenance, yeah, that that actual phrase came from Alan Freeman, right? He's in the group. Um, I think what's interesting about that is we don't even think of maintenance until we discover this lifestyle, this lifestyle of like evidence-based nutrition and training and how it all works together, because life is this random uh meandering path of well, I'm gaining weight again, I need to go on a diet, right? I got I'm too fat, I need to go on a diet. And it's like you just don't know. And this idea of intentionally staying in one place sounds foreign to some people, right? So if you're a new client of mine um and you haven't gone through this process, maintenance is the very first thing we start with because that's how you learn about yourself without adding stress to your body with a fat loss phase, without trying to build muscle and like get freaked out that you have to gain all this weight. Let's just keep it where it is and learn about ourselves, learn about what it means to eat enough food. I think your uh camera's gonna die again.
unknownHold on.
Philip PapeYeah. And and so maintenance is the idea of understanding your energy needs, in my opinion. Like that's the beauty of it, and that's the magic of it, is it tells you what um budget you have based on your your lifestyle. And so if uh for I always say women because women are are more petite, you know, they have lower metabolism, less muscle, just a fact, will come to me saying, like, I gotta lose fat, I gotta lose 20 pounds. And and you know, maybe they maybe they do from a health perspective or their physique or whatever. But if they're only burning, I don't know, 1500 calories, that's gonna be really tough. And so we want to go through that first phase of like understanding that that's what you burn. And I know a lot, I know a lot of coaches they track calories and macros, but don't necessarily really understand the energy needs. It's kind of a crapshoot. You know, it's like we'll reverse diet and maybe get you here, and then that's gonna everything once you feel good, then we're gonna go into a fat less phase. But I actually want the number for you. Once we get the number, we could say, Well, what do we need to do now? Like now that we're at maintenance, how do we get that maintenance to be bigger? That's the goal. How do we get the maintenance bigger? Um, and there's a million ways to do that. You know, we can spend a whole hour talking about movement and training and sleep and stress and yada yada, right? Alcohol, like there's so many little factors that an individual may need to focus on. Once we do that, now it opens up your options. Now you're eating more. Now you can go burn the fat like much more easily. So knowing the maintenance is important, knowing how to stay at maintenance is important, and then um what the options that it gives you, you know.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I really, really like that. Answer your question. Yeah, yeah. Making the making the uh maintenance bigger. That's a a good way. So yeah, I do the same thing with my clients where it's um uh first thing is maintenance. Like I tell people, listen, I don't know what direction to send you if we don't know where you're at. And you have to do that. Um, and I find uh uh, you know, once we run through whatever phase that person may have come to me specifically to get through, um, and and you get the education to them. Um, you know, I'm always trying to drive home like, listen, let's just spend the next, you know, nine months to a year right here. Just maintain what you've what you've managed to accomplish um and do that nine months to a year. And, you know, I think you're gonna find that as long as you're you're continually year over year, you know, working in the direction that you want to be, you're gonna find that the results are a little bit better. And it's also easier to sustain that. Yeah. What do you think?
Philip PapeYeah. Yeah, no, no, I do, I do agree. Uh, and I like what the way I put it is to stay on the top side of maintenance is the way I like to say it. The top side. Yeah. The top side, meaning to stay always, you never want to be underfed. So, because if you think of maintenance, you could think of it as like an exact middle where you're technically over and under to average it out. But I'd rather you be sitting right on top of it the whole time and always be slightly overfed, which may result in the tiniest bit of weight gain over many, many, many months, but it's like negligible. But you at least fuel your performance. And that is if you don't want to go after a muscle building phase intentionally and be in a surplus, right? So we might call this main gaining or lean, whatever lean gaining or whatever. Yeah, you know what I'm saying? Lean taining. I don't know. Um, yeah, but but I agree.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
Philip PapeYeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I just want to say gains. Go ahead, go ahead.
SPEAKER_02I just want to jump in also as like as as an illustration of that. So when I first started working out with Dustin, we were we had a goal we wanted to meet. Um, we were gonna do one of these crazy Spartan run kind of things. And so we discovered what my maintenance was well. First of all, we discovered I was in maintenance deficit. And then so once we discovered what my maintenance was, and then we started pushing. So I started eating more, eating more, eating more, putting on more muscle, more muscle, more muscle. And so if I had a chart, I would show like had this, you know, really sharp rise in my strength building. Uh yeah, I added more weight, but not massive. I mean, but I added more weight. And I had this huge rise in muscle. Uh uh anyway, anyway. So after that, we kind of came down. Uh, is I lowered it, just my I wasn't working for these huge numbers. And then I just started talking like you're talking about being on the top side of maintenance. So that's what I would do. I was like, I was eating right just at the top end of maintenance, maybe, uh, but not what I was eating to build large amounts of muscle and large amounts of weight gains and uh performance gains. And so then, but I saw that my increase was like not as drastic, but it was consistently more linear, uh, especially right through and up to my bone break, and then even after just a continuous uh continuous maintenance. And I thought I thought that was amazing, and that was the best I'd felt in my life, honestly, was being just on the top side in maintenance and that slow linear gain in strength and performance. That's just me. But I think that that illustrates what we're talking about.
Philip PapeI think you're right, and that's that's universally supported, right? Because you are giving your body everything it needs. Yeah, you're filling up the reserves, you're giving it everything it needs at a minimum and slightly above that at all times. Right. And the only reason to go beyond that is because we want to build even more muscle and and take the risk that you build add a little fat in the process, but not everybody wants or needs to do that. And still you can get pretty good performance. We're not all on NLP forever where you just want to, you know.
SPEAKER_03Right, right, right.
SPEAKER_00Yep. Ah, good uh uh productive conversation, Philip. Is there anything that you want to talk talk about? No, man.
Philip PapeI mean we cover we covered a lot. I don't know. Um, I know we were gonna talk about like all the misinformation stuff, but I I like where we went with this. Um, I guess the the main thing is that I want people listening this as important as it is to have an understanding of the science and want to do the things at work and that are correct. It really comes down to you as an individual taking that action, trying things out and having that community and having these podcasts and having people that you can go to and trust. Because I don't expect everybody listening to even have an account to uh a research paper database, right? Or PubMed or whatever, and to be pouring through research papers. Uh, some people find that downright boring to do, right? Or nor do they want to do it, uh, nor do they do it well. Let's just be honest, it's hard to do. So a middle ground to that could be to get a research review, for example, like subscribe to one of the research reviews out there where they will um take the data and kind of dissect it for you. Um, and or find people that you trust in a community, on podcasts, through books, whatever, and just continue to question everything, but like also trust people that you trust. It's okay, you know, because we don't want to just be paralyzed by what to do. We want to take action.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, definitely. Awesome. Awesome. So I was thinking about a question to uh ask my guests going forward, um, the same way you do. Lots of podcasts do it, but I thought about what's one thing, what's one recommendation that you would make to people to improve their lives that is not fitness or nutrition related.
Philip PapeOkay, that's a good one. That's a good one. Not fitness or nutrition related. Personal improvement, improve your lives. Well, I'm gonna be very specific. I'll I mentioned Toastmasters earlier. I would say if you can I think most people I I think this is a safe statement. The vast majority of people are afraid or or lack confidence in their communication, you know, or speaking in some way. And um finding a place where you can effectively do a starting strength or a nutrition feedback version of public speaking is gonna pay off. And we're what I'm talking about here is the principle of feedback loops, right? We know that through our nutrition, by collecting data, by collecting macros. By collecting our lifting performance and biofeedback, we get awareness that feeds back, lets us increase our potential. Same thing with um our lifting, right? We progress, we get our lifts are going up. That means we're doing the right thing. If not, something has to change, and so on. With speaking, it's get in front of people, practice, have people that give you that feedback of you know how you organized your speech, how you sound, how you delivered it, the mechanics, uh, the filler words, the all this stuff. And guess what? You're gonna have massive level of awareness to improve your speaking skills. And I think a lot of people listening probably want to improve those. So that's what I would say. Uh to be very specific, join Toastmasters or find an organization like it. I don't think there is another one quite like it, and it's a nonprofit. So you could always reach out to me or Google it.
SPEAKER_00Fantastic. I definitely want to join it. Um, I've been putting it off for a while, but uh yeah, I think I'm gonna have to make find if if there's a uh a Sholo Arizona chapter up here in the city.
Philip PapeThey have local in-person clubs everywhere, but there's also online clubs like ours has been online since the pandemic.
SPEAKER_00Oh, okay. So you do Zoom meeting.
Philip PapeYeah, Zoom meeting.
SPEAKER_00Oh, cool. All right, well, yeah, definitely gonna get into that.
SPEAKER_01No excuses, man. Now you know there's options. Yep. Uh all right now there's accountability, bro. Yeah, yeah. I know. Now that's let me know what club you join, man. All right, here we go.
SPEAKER_00Okay, well, uh, great conversation. Dwayne, you have anything left?
SPEAKER_02No, I don't. Uh I'm just uh just it's just been a pleasure to hear to listen to talk to you both you guys, uh, to have experienced uh working out training and nutrition training with uh with Dustin. And his concepts are so in line with uh what you're talking about, Philip. It's just it's just been an honor to be here with you guys. Yeah, I think it's as the normal person's ombudsman.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think it's always good to uh confirm our biases by creating an echo chamber of having on people who I was thinking of the three things like, yeah, we've got our echo chamber all set.
SPEAKER_02That's funny. That's funny. You know, what's like so the the question he asked you about uh not nutrition rated, not strength rated, what would you encourage people to do? And uh he's never asked me that question. I you know, I don't know why, you know.
Philip PapeDo it on your next uh interview episode.
SPEAKER_02I'll answer the I'll answer the question in just a few words. And the few words is be engaged with other people, just be able to talk to people and work on your conversations, be able to stand up with you for what you think, you know. Bomb done. All right. There you go.
SPEAKER_00Very cool. All right, Philip, thank you for coming on. And uh as always, I hope somebody gained something out of this. And we will see you next time on the Working Weights podcast. Lambi out.
Philip PapeThank 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.