Hey everyone , I'm taking the last week off of the year to celebrate the holidays with my family , so I'm dropping two surprise Rewind episodes from way back in the archives this week . These are among our most popular episodes back by popular demand and I think you'll find them educational and motivating heading into the new year , because they are all about body composition , one of our favorite topics . These episodes originally aired on January 10 , 2023 as episode number 40 , titled Everything you Need to Know About Fat Loss Simple Strategies for a Fitter , Leaner Body . Sit back and enjoy .
Speaker 1Welcome to the Wits and Weights podcast . I'm your host , phillip 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-backed 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 . This is another live training in the Wits and Weights Facebook community , which is totally free . It gives you access to lots of free , valuable content challenges , guides , nutrition blueprints , even early access to podcast episodes . You can see me posting regularly to follow along with my upcoming fat loss journey . If you would like , Just click the link in the show notes to join . Again , it's the Wits and Weights Facebook community , which you can also just search . My name is Phillip Pape . I'm a certified nutrition coach , body composition expert and founder of Wits and Weights . As always , I would be very grateful for your support . The easiest way to do that is to submit a five-star rating and review on whatever platform you use to listen to your podcast and then tell others about the podcast if you find it helpful . With that , let's get into today's topic , which is everything you need to know about fat loss .
Speaker 1Now , this is going live in January 2023 , when everyone's making New Year's resolutions , the most frequent one being to lose weight by starting a weight loss or fat loss phase . We're going to make a distinction between what we mean by weight loss versus fat loss . Whether you're trying to lose extra weight or you're trying to switch to a fat loss phase after building muscle , like I'm doing , or you want to get lifestyle lean or shredded , or you finally want to just achieve success with your New Year's resolution , I think this episode will help you get there . You may want to listen to it a second time and take notes to really let it sink in . I think you're going to learn everything you need to know about fat loss so you can lose the weight and keep it off sustainably , efficiently and in a way that actually improves how you look and feel for the long term . I realize everything , saying that this is everything you need to know is a presumptuous statement , but when I was preparing this episode , I tried to think of all the things that really matter , based on experience , based on the evidence , based on other experts that I listen to or watch and read , so that you can refer this episode in the future as sort of a definitive guide .
Speaker 1Now , this is not a rapid weight loss prescription . This is a fat loss for life approach that I use with clients , that you can use on your own , that I use on myself . If you have a little bit of knowledge , practice and accountability , you can incorporate these practices . As a body composition expert , I work with clients who want to eat more and enjoy their lifestyle , but they also want to improve their physique . They want to have more energy . They want to have more self-confidence . This really requires a focused , disciplined and evidence-based approach to fat loss that prioritizes strength training and body composition . That's where the magic happens . You can hear a lot of emphasis on that today . You may have heard somewhere all of these principles and strategies before , but I'm going to lay them out in a way where you can refer to this episode in the future as a fat loss blueprint if you ever get stuck . As I mentioned before , I am following my own 12-week fat loss phase starting this month , and I will be adhering to these principles and these strategies . If you want to follow along and see updates of my journey , make sure to join our free Wits and Weights Facebook community . I also made a fat loss for life guide that I can send you after you join the group associated with this episode . Just check out the links in the show notes to join our free community or to apply for one-on-one coaching if you need that extra boost of support .
Speaker 1Before even considering fat loss , let's review three principles that we are going to adhere to throughout this process , three principles that I think govern a lot of why we do it this way and what the strategies are . The first principle is that building muscle increases your metabolism and that's going to make fat loss easier . Muscle burns more calories and fat . Having more muscle allows you to carry more weight and be leaner but have a higher BMR , a higher baseline metabolism . More muscle means you're more active . More muscle means you can push more in the gym . More muscle means higher bone density . More muscle means deeper sleep and additional recovery . All of these mean easier fat loss . That's the first principle is that building muscle makes fat loss easier . Principle number two you can't improve your body composition without building or at least preserving , muscle . This is tied in with principle number one . We don't just want to lose weight , we want to lose fat .
Speaker 1The vast majority of people we're talking 95% of people or more have been doing it the wrong way . You've been either crash dieting or dieting very quickly , without regard for protein training steps , any of these other things , potentially doing a lot of cardio . Every time you lose 20 , 30 , 40 pounds , you lose a lot of muscle in the process . I mean , I've said this many times before , but I can't overstate it enough If you lost 30 pounds doing it that way , you might be losing 15 pounds of muscle , and it's easy to lose fat and muscle . It's hard and it takes time to build muscle back . So let's not lose it in the first place . So that concept of body fat overshooting , which I've talked about before and I think one of my recent episodes was a replay on Paul Hatton's podcast where I talked about it as well the idea that every time you lose weight , you lose muscle , and every time you gain weight back , you're gaining mainly fat and you're constantly getting worse in terms of body composition .
Speaker 1And what we want to do is principle number one build muscle . And then principle number two preserve . Build or preserve that muscle as part of the fat loss phase . So , if you're doing it for the very first time , if you've never built muscle , yes , you can get leaner and improve your body composition just by doing what we're going to talk about today and focusing on fat loss and holding whatever muscle you have . It's not much muscle you have , I get it , but you're going to hold on to it , which you've never really done before when doing a traditional approach or a crash diet type approach or a restrictive diet . Now , this is going to get you what I'm going to call skinny lean , not skinny fat . Skinny fat is what's been happening over the years of yo-yo dieting , when you lost fat and muscle and you keep getting what seems to be fluffier , even if you're at the same weight . I'm talking about skinny , lean , meaning wouldn't cut fat , hold on your muscle and you're going to reveal some of that little bit of muscle you have . However , I would suggest going back to principle number one building muscle first at some point and then revealing that muscle with fat loss and periodizing your training and periodizing your nutrition . That's the way I work with my clients at least , and I highly recommend it , but either way , we're going to at least preserve the muscle we have .
Speaker 1Principle number three you cannot maintain your results , your fat loss results , using traditional , restrictive dieting approaches . We don't want to arbitrarily cut out food groups , like all carbs , or pick a one size fits all low calorie target , like an 800 calorie target that Optavia and these other damaging , highly dangerous programs use . We don't want to rely on a packaged food service where we don't really even know how to make our own meals . I'm not talking about food delivery , where you still make the meals and they serve the ingredients . I'm talking about programs where you're spending hundreds of dollars a month and they're delivering all your food and telling you to eat it this specific way .
Speaker 1We don't want to use something like fasting as a primary fat loss technique . It's a tool in the toolbox for certain people , but it's generally not something you need . It's not the sure way to fat loss . Those things I just mentioned that's just a few of them are all short term fixes . I guarantee that you will lose weight on those , but at a huge cost to your metabolism , to your behaviors , to your lifestyle and really to your ability to maintain results .
Speaker 1Once those diets are done , or whatever approach you're taking , it's like what do I do now ? Instead , we need a flexible approach . We call this flexible dieting . A flexible approach that lets you enjoy dieting out social events , food and drinks you prefer , and maybe not those that you don't prefer . Something that works whether you are losing , maintaining or gaining weight . In other words , we are going to learn the skill of manipulating your nutrition to fit whatever dietary pattern makes sense for you and your goals . By definition , this can change with your goals . That's a flexible approach . Those are the three principles . Principle one building muscle makes fat loss easier . Principle two you can't improve body composition without building or holding onto muscle . And number three you can't maintain your results using a crazy restrictive prescription .
Speaker 1That brings us to the strategies . I'm going to start with the first three strategies , which I think you're going to want to put in place before you even think about dieting and by dieting I mean going into a calorie deficit . Okay , so the first strategy start strength training now and always train as if you're building muscle , even when you're dieting . So I'm going to go through what I mean by all this . But basically , if you're not strength training , look to do that first . Seriously , I am that guy who says strength training is so pivotal to this , even as a nutrition coach , that I want you to be doing that from the beginning , because it makes everything else work better , it makes it easier , and so on .
So , no matter what people tell you , if your goal is to lose fat , to improve body composition , you have to have a strong muscle building signal period . Refer back to principle number two that you have to build a preserved muscle to prioritize fat loss , or you're just going to lose muscle , defeating the entire purpose of this exercise . So , even when you're losing weight , if you have a strong muscle building signal , that is what's going to retain your muscle . That's the most important thing , even more important than protein , believe it or not . Protein has a lot of tolerance behind it . Shocking is that , maybe to hear from me .
Speaker 1I've come to realize from the evidence that the training signal is the most important thing , our goal when we train whether we're gaining or losing weight doesn't matter . Our goal is always muscular tension and progressive overload , meaning we have to prioritize a mode of lifting that is high intensity intensity meaning weight on the bar , relatively heavy for us , 60 , 70 , 80 , 90% of our max , which would put you into a range of somewhere between I don't know two to six reps as your baseline before you start stacking other types of rep ranges and movements onto that , and that's going to give you the muscular tension you need . We're not necessarily talking going to failure all the time . We're talking about recruiting as much muscle mass as possible and then giving ourselves the chance to increase that weight over time or increase the reps over time for progressive overload , even when we're in a fat loss phase , because when we're in a fat loss phase we're not getting much nutrition coming in , we're having the stressor on our body and there's going to come a point where it's going to be very hard to make further gains or any build any muscle , and all we're trying to do is hold on to the muscle . So what we need to do is lift , probably three or four days per week . I would say at least two , but almost anybody would benefit optimally from three or four days per week . So that's like three to five hours in the gym with a high load based program , foundationally based on the compound lifts , the squat , the deadlift , the bench press , and then I also love the overhead press . I actually posted in the community group not long I think it was last week about my own switch in my programming from a four day power building program where I was going an hour and a half to the gym , to a three day basic barbell programming , but in a low rep range .
Speaker 1You can meet plenty of stimulus to hold on to that muscle during a dieting phase . So it's probably the opposite of what a lot of you are thinking . You're thinking , oh , I need to go with more cardio , more endurance , more reps to burn the fat . No , we need to go heavy to give the stimulus to muscle so that you maintain that muscle . All right , so that's strategy . Number one Starts training right now and always train as if you're building muscle , even when you're dieting , and it's hard to do so . Number two consume sufficient protein to maintain muscle while dieting . You knew this was going to be next and , by the way , you're going to hear a lot in here , a lot of detail . I'm going to summarize all this later in the episode . You can skip to that if you want , but you're going to miss a lot of new ones in context . Just warning you , but you will have that . So consume sufficient protein to maintain muscle while dieting .
Speaker 1Now , protein is what I call , or a lot of people call , the body composition macro . It's the one that lets you really control your body composition . Now , studies have shown time and again that a higher protein diet leads to more lean mass retention and more fat loss during weight loss . So it's very well established . Also , protein naturally leads to eating more whole foods . It's a nice side effect because you're trying to get all this protein from animal sources like meat , eggs , dairy and also from plant sources Legumes , some grains have proteins , vegetables that have proteins , and so on . It forces you into making choices that incorporate more whole foods , which is a great side effect . Protein also forces you to establish appropriate meal frequency and timing , because to get enough protein , you have to eat a certain amount of times per day , and then that forces you to kind of time your meals throughout the day to optimize muscle building and muscle retention , which is another way to say of just having enough protein spread evenly throughout the day . And then it also crowds out other foods that don't serve your goals , which is kind of tied to the first thing I said about . It gets you to eat more whole foods .
Speaker 1Now I suggest building your protein habit as follows . First , just get protein every time you eat . A lot of people aren't doing that right now . If you think about your three or four meals a day , is there a meal that just doesn't have protein ? For a lot of people that's breakfast , right . Bagel , muffin , cereal , oatmeal . I mean , oatmeal has a little protein , but it's like trace amounts , and you realize well , if you don't have eggs or cottage cheese or meat or even a protein shake , whatever , you're probably not getting protein at that meal . So the first thing is just get protein at every meal . Then we step it up and we say , okay , let's make sure to eat four or five times a day where there's always protein and one or two those may be just protein . It may be just a bowl of Greek yogurt , right , it may be just a whey protein shake . And then the next step up from that is to actually track your protein , which is going to be in the third strategy . I'm going to cover in a second .
Speaker 1So the goal of how much protein to get , I've said it many times and I'm going to continue to use the same window that I think is supported by the evidence , and that is 0.7 to 1 gram per pound of target body weight . So if you weigh 250 and you want to lose 50 pounds and get to 200 , you're aiming for between 140 and 200 grams of protein pretty straightforward , and it's a big range . If you're on the lower end of that range , most people are perfectly fine . Okay , I'm not going to be a zealot about the one gram per pound if that's just such a far cry from where you are today . Or if you're dieting and we're talking about fat loss and you don't want to have so much protein that it crowds out the fats and carbs . So there's a fine balance there . Now , leaner individuals or people further into a diet may need to actually have higher protein just to continue to retain as much muscle as possible . That's where we get worried about the muscle loss accelerating , so keep that in mind .
Speaker 1So that was strategy number two is to consume sufficient protein . Strategy number three is check out my notes here . Strategy number three is to use data to maximize your results and stay consistent . Okay , so notice I'm making these strategies somewhat generic and then I'm diving in with specifics that I recommend , but the principle of the strategy is that the more information you have about your body and how it's changing , the more you can respond to it and continue to make progress , toward your results , as well as stay consistent and hold yourself accountable . Whether you're working with a coach or not , having that data will give you its feedback . Right , it says , okay , I'm not doing what I need to be doing to get from here to there and I have a process to follow , and the data I'm gathering every day is telling me how I'm tracking on that process .
Speaker 1So here's what I recommend . I recommend tracking at least calories and protein , but go ahead and just track all your macros , because it's so easy to do with technology today . Why limit yourself to calories and protein ? That's my opinion . Having said that , if you know your calories and you know your protein , to track calories you're gonna have to track the calories in their food , which generally comes along with the macros , and then you're gonna know what your fats and carbs are anyway . Even if you don't care where you fall on those fats and carbs , you feel me there . So it kind of all works out anyway , because calories and protein are what's most important to hit . The fats and carbs are much more flexible .
Speaker 1Now what I recommend ? I recommend an app called macro factor . So in the past I've lightly suggested it More and more . I'm coming to find that not only does everyone I know on this planet who've used it preferred over all the other apps . I've seen coaches who were just diehard , my fitness pal users or chronometer or RP users Switched to macro factor and they're all like okay , we're not going back . It's just that helpful . Like I rarely see something that's designed with what we are trying to do so clearly in mind . Right , the developers , the team behind it , the owners , the community is just all toward this . So I'm an evangelist for it . I admit macro factor , I do have a code , an affiliate code , that will give you an extra free week in your Free trial , although you're gonna end up wanting to buy it anyway . But you can use my code , wits and weights , when you sign up for the free trial . It also supports me , so I really appreciate that . But heck , I'm a user , I've used it since day one . I still use it . I'm gonna continue using it in my upcoming fat loss phase that you're gonna follow along in our group with , if you want , and all my clients use it . So everybody that I recommend use this . And when people reach out to me asking for help , like I'm having trouble with my protein , I'm having trouble with this .
First question is are you logging , are you tracking ? Because how do you know what you're eating , the quantities , the macros , the balance , unless you track ? We are terrible , terrible at estimating calories . That's just a fact . And as much as you want to do intuitive eating , you can't do it without the intuition Developed first , that skill of okay , I'm gonna intuitively , do I even know how many calories or macros are in this food on my plate ? No , generally you don't , unless you've tracked it . So you something like macro factor to track your macros and calories . And Then the other thing you want to track is your weight .
Speaker 1Okay , now , I know there's a lot of Coaches and a lot of programs that are all about Getting rid of the scale and and not using the scale , and you know , especially I know a lot of them are marketed toward women , like you know , stop . You don't have to obsess over the scale , etc . I'm I'm not gonna trash any of those whatsoever , because the principle behind them is totally sound , that you don't have to weigh yourself to put in the principles for fat loss totally true . However , I'm a big fan of understanding what's going on with your body . Specifically , why do we get blood work ? Why do we get our blood pressure checked Right ? Or why do we measure our resting heart rate ? Why do we measure our steps ? Why do we measure our lifts in our in the gym ? So that we know what's happening and we can make adjustments . Same thing with weight .
Speaker 1I would recommend weighing as frequently as you can , ideally every day , and the reason I support weighing yourself every day Is because it makes it a habit that you start just not having to think about Meaning . You actually start to reduce your obsession with the scale because it's now a daily thing . And then the second part of that is you see the number fluctuating up and down , and up and down , and up and down , and you realize , heck , this number doesn't mean a whole lot in a short term and instead I need to know what's happening over roughly a three week period to see how men bodies are spawning . So if you're using an app like macro factor , it uses something called trend weight , which is a 20-day exponential moving average , and I tell you that and it's no secret , because you grew reverse engineer and they've admitted it you can do this in a spreadsheet . You could do it in Excel or Google sheets . If you just want to do it on your own , track your weight every single day and apply a 20-day moving average , exponential moving average formula .
Speaker 1Okay , why am I telling you all this ? Because at the end of the day , the daily weight on the scale isn't that important at all . It's the two , three , four week change in your weight that's important . Once you have your calories in and your weight , which is the output of your energy , then that will let you monitor your current daily metabolism . You know , daily or weekly . However , whatever resolution you're using , if you use macro factor , it's every day . If you do it on your own , manually with the spreadsheets , roughly every week , you're gonna get some decent data and Macro factor calls this dynamic maintenance and what this allows you to do is see exactly how your body is responding to Everything to your activity , to your food , everything . You do so that each week , you can adjust your calorie intake and keep Progressing toward your fat loss goals . So that really is kind of the crux of why data is important , isn't it All right ?
Speaker 1So I just shared the first three strategies and I want you to put these in place Before you continue to the remaining strategies . So , number one start strength training properly . Number two consume sufficient protein . And number three , use data , track your calories and macros and track your weight so that you have what you need to make adjustments and to stay Consistent , because we truly are trying to do this as effectively and efficiently as possible , as quickly as we can . We're not trying to , you know , go for months and months and months and hope that we lose weight in fat , because nobody wants to be hanging around that long in a diet . Hey , this is Phillip Pape , and if you feel like you've put in effort to improve your health and fitness but aren't getting results , I invite you to apply for one-on-one coaching to make real progress and get the body you desire . We'll work together to figure out what's missing so you can look better , perform better and feel better . Just go to witsandweightscom slash coaching to learn about my program and apply today .
Speaker 1Now back to the episode . So once you've used those , once you've done those first three things , we get to strategy number four is to spend time Finding your true maintenance Before you actually start the diet , before you go into a calorie deficit . I would say four weeks is usually a good time frame for a lot of people and if you're using Macrofactor you don't have to do anything like reverse dieting , where you slowly up the calories over time and it kind of takes forever to get there . No , just eat at your dynamic maintenance . You're gonna know week to week what your maintenance is . Maybe you overestimate your diet . Your maintenance is . Maybe you overshot a little , maybe you undershot . You're not gonna get a whole bunch of weight . It's gonna keep you roughly in in your maintenance level and In about three weeks , maybe four weeks , you'll know exactly where you need to be to start your diet , all right . So the all of these prerequisites are gonna help you . They're gonna set you up for success and they're gonna set you up for retaining that muscle and losing that fat . All right
strategy .
Speaker 1So strategy number four that I just mentioned is spend time finding true maintenance and if you use Macrofactor it's gonna happen pretty quickly . Number five is Now we're gonna go into the diet . So this is critical . Unlike all the restrictive diets out there or the names diets where you're not counting calories and you really don't know how quickly you're dieting or slowly , maybe you're going too slowly we are gonna use a known Moderately aggressive deficit . Moderately aggressive is the word I like to use , meaning we want it to be aggressive enough that we get it done quickly , that would get the fat loss done as quickly as we can , but moderate enough to avoid Losing muscle and also to keep it sustainable right , because if it's too , if it's too aggressive , you may also feel like you're suffering Because you're just not eating anywhere close to where you would feel good . So it's that fine balance between get it over with and keep it going right .
Speaker 1So the the what am I trying to say here ? If you're training and if you've got the protein , you're in a great position , and what we're going to aim for here is 0.25 to 1% of your weight per week . I found . I found through experience and working with clients at 0.5 or 0.75 percent , kind of in the middle , is the sweet spot when they can do it consistently and see the fat fall off , but not feel like they're suffering and it's just a constant like oh my god , I binged and I couldn't help myself because I'm so hungry . You know , we don't want to be in that state . So the range is 0.25 to 1 find a sweet spot . So , for example , I'm I'm at 185 and I'm gonna go pretty aggressive at maybe 0.8 or maybe one person , maybe the full 1% , because I want to get it over with in 12 weeks . But I'm also dieting on way more calories than I used to because I've added muscle . You see , this is this is where it comes in handy , because I can diet on something like 2200 calories and actually lose 1% . Somebody else that might have to go down a 1400 calories . It's a big difference in your ability to do the diet .
Speaker 1So number five is to use it a moderately aggressive energy deficit . Number six is to select foods To prioritize appetite management . So this is the only strategy , or I'm actually talking about the food you eat , and you'll see why I think this is really important . We you , when you think of named diets like keto or vegetarianism or whatever . They're all about cutting things out , or there's good and bad foods , or there's clean and dirty . You know the , you know clean or just just just cutting something right , something crazy . So it's not about that . What we want to do is Select foods that we prefer , that meet our calories and macros but that minimize our hunger as much as possible .
Speaker 1I think appetite management is one of the primary Drivers during fat loss , of selecting foods that meet all your other needs protein , micronutrients , hydration , you know calories and and Mitigate the most important adaptation that negatively affects us during a diet , which is hunger . Really , hunger is the big thing . Yes , adherence is important and all these other things I'm talking about have to do with adherence , but managing hunger is is probably the biggest thing . That comes from hormonal down regulation when we're dieting , because all of our all of our hormones are leptin , ghrelin , cortisol , thyroid , everything . They all tend to gang up on you and to make you want to eat and survive because it's like , come on , you're not bringing in enough calories , we're gonna have to keep pulling from your fat cells . Well , that's what we want , that's the trade-off . We want is the fat cells to shrink , but as a result , we get these other symptoms and we get some adaptation . So we're gonna select foods that minimize hunger as much as possible , which then generally results in you .
Speaker 1Eating a wide , diverse variety of whole foods , very much like protein , gets you to eat more whole foods . So what does this look like ? Okay , foods that are higher in fiber fruits , vegetables , whole grains . Making smart decisions to Say , go from , you know , white bread to whole grain bread , or go to white rice to brown rice , or , you know , start eating oats or quinoa . Right , substituting starches and grains for vegetables where you need it . So the further on you are into the fat loss phase where you have low calories to deal to work with . You know , if you're dieting on 1600 or 1500 calories , you don't really have a lot of carbs in there anyway , and the carbs that you do , you want to get full from . So you're gonna want to prioritize vegetables , or even something like potatoes . Potatoes are very high in Fulness as long as you don't put butter and sour cream all over them . So , substituting vegetables in using something like vegetable soups , where you're combining the benefit of water and hydration , filling you up with Filling vegetables like zucchini , for example , zucchini , tomatoes and so on . On the other hand which is kind of the opposite of soups Eating foods that are harder in texture and I hear Eric Trexler mentioned this all the time Harder .
Speaker 1Texture will slow down your eating , will allow you to chew for longer , it'll lengthen the amount of time you eat and it actually increases your sensory satisfaction . It sends a signal in your brain that you're actually eating food and you're eating a decent amount of it . You're chewing and swallowing chewy swallowing and this can actually manage your hunger , make you feel like you've trick yourself in it , feeling like you've eaten more . What's what's another thing ? Stain hydrated . So when you're hungry sometimes you're thirsty just drink a glass of water , or drink a glass of water before every meal , for example . Stay really hydrated . I like to use a salad Every day at lunch . If you know , when I'm in a building phase , I don't do that so often . When I'm in a fat loss phase , I plan to incorporate lots of greens with my protein at lunch because they're fibrous and they fill you up .
Speaker 1Shift toward lower or zero calorie drinks . This can make a big difference , because drinks don't really fill you up , but if they have calories , they give you calories that don't fill you up . So , going from soda diet , soda whole milk to 2% milk or almond milk , coffee with cream to coffee with half and half an IPA in terms of beer to like a light beer or God forbid , a an alcohol free beer . Guinness is alcohol free bears actually not bad . Also , whole versions instead of ultra processed , highly palatable foods . So this would be okay . You know , you really have a craving for something sweet , or pop tart or something like that . You know , instead of a strawberry pop tart , have strawberries . Now , obviously that's a bigger leap . But these are the kind of decisions and swaps we start to make on a diet to make sure that we manage appetite as the main driver of why we're selecting all these foods and then , ultimately , that allows us to get through the diet Successfully and in the meantime , we've transitioned our overall dietary pattern to one that supports optimal health , good nutrition , plenty of micronutrients and so on . Okay , so that's it . That's all I'm gonna say about food . Notice , I didn't really tell you exactly foods to eat . The more how to pick foods . Strategy number seven Incorporate movement into everything you do .
Speaker 1So usually I make this very specific about steps and it will come down to that from a tracking perspective , but the idea is , the more you move with everything like just think of what you're doing right now . You're listening to this podcast or you're watching it . You could be walking around your house Holding your phone and watching it this , and if you're not doing it right now and you're watching this on your phone sitting on your couch , get up right now and start pacing around . For the rest of the podcast I probably have another 20 30 minutes . Well , you're gonna , you're gonna get like two , three thousand steps doing that . Okay , so incorporate movement in everything you do . I think steps on a wearable are the best proxy for that . Right , it's not super , super precise , but it's enough to tell you how your patterns are changing . So if you always get two or three thousand steps and you change your movement patterns and now you're getting six or seven thousand steps , well you're definitely more active . Based on step count , like it's plenty accurate enough to tell you that . So do all the things that get you to move more .
Speaker 1Go listen to episode 34 , which was another live that I did and recorded . It was all about walking and it's more exciting than it sounds . A lot of Great stuff in there and strategies and things you can try and why walking itself is so beneficial , but really anything you could do to move . That's not Intense cardio , which I'm gonna get to in the next strategy . So the the other thing , okay , why are we doing this ? Well , steps or movement is a great way to boost your metabolism . It really is .
Speaker 1Yes , you are gonna burn more calories moving around , and that's not the only reason we do it . We do it for health and To avoid sitting down too long . It helps with your heart rate , helps you cardiovascular health and lots of other things . But it also burns more calories , let's admit it . And in a fat loss phase , you may need the extra two or three or four hundred calories a day To ease up on your diet or to speed up the fat loss , however you want to use it . So that brings us to strategy number eight , which is to use cardio Strategically and not excessively .
Speaker 1So remember , the point of cardio is to improve your conditioning , your cardiovascular health , not to burn calories . That's not really the point , because the amount of calories you burn burning cardio in a half hour of highly stressful movement on your body in a fat loss phase , you could just eat a little bit less and Not have all that stress and have more recovery and better sleep , and it's not really a great trade-off , but a little bit of it can go a long way , and a little bit of it also Prevents you from adapting to it such that your metabolism actually comes down , and you don't want that . So I like the advice from Mike Matthews of Legion athletics . He always says to live , limit your cardio to half of the amount of time that you lift . So if you're lifting three to five hours a week , limit cardio to an hour and a half to two and a half hours a week .
Speaker 1Tops , avoid forms of cardio that impact your recovery or Cause additional muscle stress and tearing like running . It really isn't great for you if you're a lifter , but if you really really like cardio running and it's just like it makes your day , reduces your stress and maybe you're pretty good at it and maybe you were an athlete and so on Sure , incorporate it and do it in an intelligent way . Do it with sprint workouts , you know . Just don't don't be running half marathons , you know , a couple times a week , unless you're training to be running athlete . So good examples . Alternatives would be biking , swimming or pushing or pulling a sled or prowler in the gym . These are all good , concentric only movements .
Speaker 1You can also use high intensity interval training if you need like a calorie boost a couple times a week and it's something fun . I mean , a lot of people don't really find it that much fun , to be honest . You know I did CrossFit for eight years so I was doing it constantly but I wouldn't actually just sign up for it . But even that is not super effective . Like you're gonna find that maybe bodybuilders deeper into a cut have to pull out these extra things , but you don't have to do them . I mean , if you just don't want to do cardio at all , go for a lot of walks , do all the other stuff I'm talking about here and you're gonna lose fat just fine . All right .
Speaker 1Number nine strategy number nine is to get plenty of high quality sleep . You knew this one was coming . You're like oh there , he goes again on sleep . Maybe I , maybe I could have made this number one like before . You can do anything , fix your sleep issues so that you get recovered and Improve your fat loss . But a lot of people have trouble with this some . For some people it's really a process over time of improving sleep and I get it . So I'm just gonna throw a couple things that you hear .
Speaker 1There's a study done last year by Kovacin at all , hopefully I pronounced it right that found that Participants in the study that were sleep restricted . They had just over four hours of sleep . They , they and another group that got about eight hours of sleep . They both gained the same amount of fat . Okay , in this case they were just eating whatever they wanted and they were all overeating slightly . So they all gained fat , but they gained the same amount . The sleep restricted group they gained more than three times of that fat in the abdominal area . Then the other participants so . So the body fat gain was the same , but the belly fat was up by nine percent in the sleep restricted group and it was only two point six percent in the normal full sleep group .
Speaker 1So even if you're doing everything right and you're at the right calories and everything , all the other stress , just not getting enough sleep can cause you to store fat in your belly , which I know is a problem for a lot of people , especially , you know , women , especially in para menopause and post menopause . It becomes an issue because of the effects of the reproductive hormones and estrogen For that fast storage . But men as well , right with the beer gut , think about it . The CPAS that big of an impact . The other thing is so if you're not really tracking , insane top of all the other things which we are right we're gonna be doing , that sleep deprivation can cause people to just eat more calories . It just makes you hungry and makes you eat more . It lowers your metabolic rate . This is a hormonal thing . It down regulates your hormones . It causes the appetite , it causes the metabolism to go down .
Okay , just like other stressors on the body , so sleep is the biggest thing . If you have other chronic stress in your life that is hard to get rid of because of your job or your family , sleep can be that big mitigator of the negative effects from that , like the negative effects of cortisol , your stress hormone . When you're , you're stressed all the time and it stays higher than it needs to be and it doesn't come down enough at night and then you don't get poor , good quality sleep . Well , if you , you can kind of turn that around a bit by focusing on Scheduling in enough sleep . Okay , we're talking seven to eight hours of sleep and no screens 30 minutes before bed . That's the bare bones thing you can do to improve your sleep . If you want to learn a lot more beyond that , I did an episode quite a while back about sleep . That has , like you know , 20 things . You can try all the little subtle things , but getting enough and avoiding screens before bed will go a long way toward this , and getting enough sleep will help with fat loss , help with hunger and it'll definitely help with your recovery During a time when you don't have a lot of other resources coming in .
Speaker 1Okay , strategy number 10 . This is the last one and then I'm gonna summarize everything . Okay , this strategy is To use diet breaks to conquer those mental demons of dieting . So we already talked about selecting foods for hunger . That's gonna help a lot . Having said that , though , it can get tiring , it can get fatiguing when you're on going on 10 , 12 weeks or 14 , like you maybe have a little more weight to lose and you're going for a 16 week fat loss phase , which is the maximum I would ever recommend , to be honest , but I've seen people I've had clients that can go well beyond that , because we're managing all the biofeedback so well that it's okay . They can keep going and their body response just fine and the metabolism isn't too low , etc .
Speaker 1But what you want to do is monitor all those things we talked about monitor your hunger , your energy , your recovery , tracking everything . Monitor your performance in the gym . That's one of the most important things , to be honest , because as soon as you start to degrade on your Lifts and you start to feel tired in the gym , that tells me you may be starting to lose muscle . If any of these things go past the point that are comfortable for you , take a diet break . Okay , so if your biofeedback is poor , like like your recovery , or hunger , your energy , your performance and so on , or you're just getting tired of dieting , or you want to align a break in your dieting with a special event or holiday right , we just had Thanksgiving and Christmas here and those were good times to take a diet break so that you could eat more food and enjoy without too much pressure . Or if you're traveling , right , or if you have a lot of weight to lose and you need to break it up into phases , take a diet break .
Speaker 1There are a lot of ways to do this . The easiest way to do it is just eat at your maintenance calories by increasing your carbs To get you to those calories . So let's say you're you're dieting on 1600 calories , but your maintenance calories are 2200 . Just get 600 more calories of carbs per day During the break . So 600 divided by 4 , that's gonna be 2 . That's gonna be 150 More grams of carbs . So if you were at like , you know , 100 grams of carbs Now you can have 250 grams of carbs during the break . That's gonna refuel your glycogen . That's going to give you more energy . It's gonna is gonna help bring your metabolism up all these things For a while before you get right back to dieting and everything adapts right back .
Speaker 1It's a good strategy to try . There are many more advanced , what are called non-linear dieting strategies . You can look up non-linear dieting or reach out to me for questions . I have interesting schemes that could use , like interval dieting , where you you're aggressively dieting for two weeks and then maintenance for two and then aggressive or Five two dieting , where you pick two high calorie days during the week . There's a lot of ways to do this , but I don't want to get into the weeds today . Just know that that strategy is available to you . Okay , so we just went through 10 strategies . We established three principles for fat loss and I'm gonna summarize all of this because it is a lot , and again , I recommend going through this again in the future if needed , and I will also have a guide a fat fat loss for life guide available If you join the community and just reach out . You can get it . Here we go .
Speaker 1Number one always train heavy and train Hard . Use low intensity , I mean , I'm sorry , use high intensity , that's weight on the bar low to moderate volume Programming so that you can recover . So this is going to be training as if you're building muscle . Number two Track your calories , protein and weight so that you know your dynamic maintenance for , for your metabolism , before we go dieting . So this is actually number two and three . I just I'm sorry , this is number two and three . So number two is protein . Number three is tracking . All right , so getting sufficient protein and tracking .
Speaker 1Number four do the first three things first and Then try to find your true maintenance calories . Spend time getting to true maintenance . Using an app like macro factor makes it really easy to do . I generally recommend something like four weeks for this phase . Number five Use a moderately aggressive Energy deficit . Okay , point two five to one percent per week . Number six select foods that mitigate hunger . So you want to prioritize appetite management .
Speaker 1Number seven move , just move . Get steps . Aim for somewhere around eight to ten thousand steps , but get steps and movement . However , you can get more than you get now and then get more than that later and keep pushing yourself to get more Movement in . That's low intensity . The next one this is number eight use cardio Strategically . Limit it to like half the time you lift and if you need to use something like hit , do it . If you want to do medium-intensity cardio , go with a high recovery , low impact , one like swimming , biking or prowler pushing . Number nine get seven to eight hours of sleep and Limit screens at least 30 minutes before bed . And then , number ten use diet breaks at Maintenance calories by increasing your cat carbs whenever you need to to remain consistent and continue dieting . All right , there , you have it . A lot , I know , but hopefully it was organized well enough that you can Absorb it all and apply it to your own life .
Speaker 1That's my attempt at providing everything you need to know about fat loss , or at least the things that really matter , and I would say , rather than try to implement everything at once , work your way down the list and incorporate these over time . I ordered them in a way that I think is Effective , useful and doable , maybe with the exception of sleep . Sleep , maybe it could be higher on the list , but you really can customize it to what makes sense for you and if you want that free fat loss for life guide that goes along with this training , just join the Whitson weights Facebook community . The link again is in the show notes . And if you want more support than this because I know it's hard to do this on your own , it really can be hard you may have tried in the past and you know you just want to do it in the most effective , time efficient way possible .
Speaker 1I Do have a few spots open for one-on-one Coaching where we're gonna work together on all the things I talked about in this episode To get you the results , the body you deserve , a sustainable plan to maintain those results For the rest of your life . The easiest way to get in touch is go to witson weights comm slash coaching , where you can fill out an application or DM me directly and then I'll just set up a quick call with you and see if it's good fit and then , if it is , we'll get started again . Just go to witson weights comm slash coaching . 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 there 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 you .