As of this episode , thanksgiving is just one week away and I think the fitness industry is obsessed with giving really bad advice when it comes to the holidays , and it usually involves around tracking or avoiding or using moderation or some other very specific way to maintain perfect control during the holidays , which I think misses the point , because you're going to have chaos whether it's the holiday or not . That's life , and the question is how resilient you are against that . So today we're using an engineering lens to show you why fighting against this type of disorder is what usually backfires , and we're going to show you how to build a system strong enough to handle any amount of holiday chaos , which will then actually accelerate rather than derail your progress . Welcome to Wits and Weights , the show that blends evidence and engineering to help you build smart , efficient systems to achieve your dream physique . I'm your host , philip Pape , and today we are using thermodynamics to completely reframe how you think about Thanksgiving nutrition . What the heck am I talking about ? Well , in engineering , entropy refers to the natural progression toward disorder in any system . But here's the thing , because well-designed systems can handle temporary spikes in entropy without falling apart , we're not talking about the overall entropy of the universe , where everything is just going to dissolve into nothingness . We're talking about day-to-day entropy , like a skyscraper swaying in high winds or your body maintaining temperature despite extreme weather , and we're going to apply this principle to your holiday nutrition approach . So if you're listening to this a week out from Thanksgiving when it comes out , or in the future leading up to any event , any holiday , any party in fact , where there's a little bit of extra chaos than normal from a food availability perspective , we're gonna talk about the strategy no rigid meal plans , no guilt trips , just a smart system designed to work with reality instead of fighting it .
Philip PapeAnd before we dive in , I just want to say I'm gathering some more questions for our upcoming Q&A episodes , so if you want to submit your question , you can either send a text message in the show notes or reach out to me on Instagram at witsandweights , or just say hello . You don't even have to ask a question . Just say hey , I love your podcast , or hey , you can do this better in your podcast . Whatever it is , I love to hear from people . So let's talk about what most people do during the holidays and why it fails .
Philip PapeThey approach any holiday , say Thanksgiving , like it's a battle that has to be won , and I hear this a lot of times in the framing right . I have a vacation coming up , I have a holiday coming up , what do I do ? How do I deal with it ? And the premise is that you're trying to maintain some sort of control , and I'm all for being in control of your situation , but there's a level of control we're talking about here that is that's nearing perfection , right ? The all or nothing mentality . Or even if it's not all or nothing , if , even if it's just hey , I have a plan and I want to keep sticking exactly to it . And so what do I do to do that ? Okay , I need to make sure I'm tracking everything I eat , avoiding or including certain foods , stressing about the portions so that the calories don't go haywire , right ? And if this sounds familiar to you , then I think that's the approach that is
working against you .
Philip PapeIt comes from a misunderstanding of how a system can work and why we use what we call physique engineering on this program . And here's where entropy comes in Entropy E-N-T-R-O-P-Y entropy . In thermodynamics , entropy is a measure of disorder in a system . How much chaos exists in the system ? And the second law of thermodynamics tells us that entropy always increases over time . Always right . We fight against this natural tendency . It requires massive energy input . We're talking on the level of cold fusion , the level of stars , and eventually the system breaks down .
Philip PapeSo now , this is just an analogy , of course , but think about how this plays out next Thursday , if you're listening to this before Thanksgiving , or just substitute any upcoming holiday or food event , a party , birthday party , heck . You start the day determined to track your food , maybe pre-log your meals , maybe front load your protein , maybe save up on some calories . And then Aunt Susan brings out her famous pecan pie . That wasn't in your plan , or maybe it was , but maybe not quite the amount that you ended up having . Your cousin makes a new stuffing recipe which , by the way , if you have Thanksgiving at my house , you are gonna be blown away , because we make something called the Pape Sausage Stuffing Very simple recipe , but it's full of sausage , it's not bready , it's dense , so good , and it has a lot of fat , it has a lot of calories . So you gotta , you know , kinda think about that if you're trying to think about things . But anyway , it's super delicious .
Philip PapeSomeone tops off your wine glass when you're not looking . I mean , come on , it happens , you know , maybe throw a little whiskey in your eggnog . I'm not saying we have to imbibe on alcohol , but these things happen in the holidays , right ? The more you try to maintain perfect order , the more chaos creeps in until finally the system fails . And you know what I'm talking about . You are the system . You either end up binge eating and feeling guilty or you become rigid and you can't really enjoy your time because you're trying to make it all work .
Philip PapeDo the macro Tetris , track all the things and this is coming from me , yes , the guy who says we should be tracking and measuring things Absolutely but there is a flexible way to do it . And this is where most podcasts coming out for Thanksgiving and I admit I am taking advantage of the attention to this holiday , but most podcasts on this topic will tell you you just need to buckle down and try harder with whatever their specific strategies are . Now , to be fair , some podcasts will say , hey , just completely enjoy yourself and don't worry about it , and in my opinion , that's probably the best kind of default strategy . If you had to pick one , because it is just one day and generally just one meal , okay , but being that we are engineers here and we know better , and I know you're gonna face situations like this quite frequently , not just Thanksgiving .
Philip PapeInstead of trying to eliminate entropy right , which is impossible , we just want to design a system that expects and accommodates disorder . So think about how a modern building handles earthquakes I was going to say hurricanes , but that's probably too close to home , given all the tragedy we've seen over the last year or so here . But earthquakes Engineers don't try to make buildings rigid , right , they build in flexibility . Have you ever seen a really tall building zoomed in , where they show it just slightly swaying in the wind ? You might have even felt it . When you're up high in a building or on a bridge or something like that , the structure actually becomes stronger because it can adapt rather than fight against it . Right , it's not going to break against that force , and your personal nutrition system needs this same kind of intelligence when you design it . We build what's called robust stability . Your system can handle perturbations right , as my kids would have said years ago when we read the Fancy Nancy books that's a fancy word for disruptions without falling apart . That is what we're trying to do .
Philip PapeI talked to one of my clients on this podcast a long time ago and her name is Heather and she talked about actually being in a literal earthquake and her system holding up , her system of training , nutrition and whatnot . And it wasn't because of some obsessive level of tracking , it was because of a flexible level of routine , right , and those are very different concepts . So I'm going to give you four ways to implement this next week for Thanksgiving , and these would apply in general to really anything that comes up that is like that okay , birthday parties , holidays , vacations , anything going out to eat . And the first strategy is simply to plan for entropy . What do I mean ? I actually don't want you to say to yourself okay , thanksgiving is Thursday , so I'm going to restrict my calories big time in the days leading up .
Philip PapeNow , I used to advise some form of this strategy . It's called calorie banking and I still think there is an opportunity to shift your calories around in a given week . But I much more prefer that you plan to do that regularly and weekly rather than do it as a last minute strategy , if that makes sense , because when you do that , it creates unstable conditions , which , ironically , amplifies the chaos . It creates kind of a pressure cooker and instead of maintaining your normal eating patterns leading up to the holiday , you're now forcing yourself into this very unstable eating pattern , which may even lead to some binging and way overconsuming on the holiday . Do you see what I mean ? And so we don't want any anything in the way we do things to feel unstable or forced . We want to plan it in in a way that is is real to us . Okay Now , if that means that you know every , every weekend , you have a refeed and you increase to maintenance calories and on the weekdays you're in a dieting phase , that's perfectly fine if you plan it in that way consistently and then it becomes your routine .
Philip PapeBut we don't want to add to the chaos by , like , cutting calories and going on a fast or not eating in the morning at all and then going crazy at Thanksgiving . It's just really because , think about it Now , you're just giving yourself three or four days of some level of misery . That takes away from the holiday as far as I'm concerned . So that's number one is just plan for entropy . Like entropy is going to exist , allow it in , allow it in , accept it . Okay , accept the entropy and don't try to fight against it .
Philip PapeNumber two the second strategy I have out of the four strategies today , is to create flexible boundaries . This is the . This is the bedrock of flexible dieting that we talk about on the show . Whether we talk about minimums or ranges or or boundaries , constraints , whatever you want to call them . We want to have minimum standards that allow us to maintain progress no matter what's happening , no matter how chaos it is , chaotic it is , without requiring perfection , and for a lot of us that's something like hitting our protein targets right . Getting a minimum level of protein . Now , to get a minimum level of protein .
Philip PapeHeading into a holiday where there's a lot of food , it shouldn't be a problem , right , like it shouldn't be a problem to eat more than something . It's when we try to cut and restrict where the problems happen . So , hitting protein targets , getting in your morning walk right . If you like to walk , get in that walk on Thanksgiving . Get in it every day , right . Staying hydrated it's your anchors of order , that's what I'm going to say . Your anchors of order that help your system stay grounded , even when all these other variables fluctuate . And I'm sure you can come up with others , but again , we don't want things that feel unnatural to what we normally do . We wanna have minimum standards and ranges that would allow for us to be successful and hit them even when there's lots of chaos , which was number one , the chaos that we've allowed into our lives .
Philip PapeNumber three is to focus on recovery , and what I mean by this is , if we're gonna use the engineering analogy just like a bridge or anything that has force on it applied to it returns to center after done swaying , or if you think of a rubber band , you stretch it , you let go , it comes back to its original shape If you have a clear strategy to get back to your baseline after the holiday , that's a good thing , right ? Not by restricting , not by punishing , not by making up , but simply resuming your normal routine on Friday . Now , friday's Black Friday . That may be yet another reason to be a little bit off your routine , and that's okay too , but the goal is we are shifting , we are converging , we are gradually getting back to our baseline as soon as we can , and the quicker you can get there , the less impact the entropy will have . You'll see it in your rear view mirror . You'll move on . No big deal . It is just the noise in the signal .
Philip PapeAnd number four , the last strategy , is to measure what matters . Okay , and what do I mean by this ? If you are the person who is tracking your food and you want to track your Thanksgiving dinner ? I'm not going to tell you not to . I'm not going to tell you to track it . Okay , I'm going to say , when we track at all , we are thinking of things over time . We're thinking at weeklies and monthlies . So , because Thanksgiving or a Christmas party are usually a single day or a single meal , most celebrations are right . You're rarely feasting for days on end . Now , maybe if you go on that week-long cruise , it's a different story , in which case I wouldn't even worry about it . I would go to maintenance and just say enjoy yourself and then come back A single day of this entropy , or even if it's amplified entropy , it doesn't define your progress , right ? Any more than that . One windy day determines a bridge's integrity , like if we're going to we're going to take this analogy to the extreme right your system works if you're trending in the right direction over time , regardless of this entropy that you've made room for . And so , when we summarize all of this , here's what the people are missing and what a lot of these podcasts are missing about entropy and order .
Philip PapeIt's not about eliminating the chaos . It's about building robust systems that can absorb chaos and return to baseline right . Your body does this constantly with homeostasis . It regulates temperature , ph balance , whole bunch of other things . When you view Thanksgiving or any holiday this way , as a temporary increase in entropy that your well-designed system can handle , you stop seeing it as a threat to your progress . In fact , these periodic challenges listen to this these can make your system more resilient .
Philip PapeIt's a form of stress that makes you stronger . It's just like moderate stress on your muscles when you lift make you stronger because you have foundational habits and now you're strengthening them over time , regardless of short-term chaos . And every one of these bits of chaos just teaches you a little bit more about yourself and gives you a little bit more resilience , because you come out of it the other end , back to your baseline , you're confident , you know what you're doing and you make progress over time . All right . So the holidays do not have to be a source of stress , at least in this context . There may be other reasons to stress you out having to do with family members or what have you but when it comes to your nutrition , your training , it doesn't have to be a deviation from your goals . It's entropy , it's chaos , it's a little bit off on that day , but it doesn't mean you as a person or with your system has deviated from your goals because you're working with it , you're not fighting against it , and then you could just enjoy the season . Think of next Thursday , think of Thanksgiving or any other holiday . And , by the way , if you're listening to this and you're not in the US , I just totally maybe lost you as an audience . I'm not sure , but think of it as a chance to test your system's resilience , not as a threat to your progress . All right , if you want to learn more about any of these kinds of concepts , follow the podcast , go check them out .
Philip PapeMy Wednesday episodes usually get into the a little bit of a nerdy kind of engineering lens . My Mondays are deep dives . My Fridays are interviews . If you didn't like this episode , you'll like another . If you don't like any of them , let me know . Hopefully you love them and you'll follow , and you'll give a five-star rating on a review . If you took a moment to do that , maybe as a holiday gift to me , that would be awesome . I'd be very grateful . And that is it . Until next time , keep using your wits lifting those weights and remember , sometimes the best way to maintain order is to embrace a little chaos . I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights Podcast .