The PERMA Framework - 5 Pillars of Positive Psychology for Sustainable Fat Loss | Ep 345

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Struggling with fat loss despite knowing exactly what to do? You're not alone.

The answer isn't about knowledge, it's about psychology. 

Learn how the PERMA framework from positive psychology reveals the 5 psychological elements that separate people who sustain their transformation from those who remain stuck.

Discover how to engineer your fat loss approach to work WITH your psychology instead of against it, creating conditions where healthy behaviors actually feel good to maintain.

Main Takeaways:

• The intelligence paradox: Why smart people often struggle most with sustainable fat loss
• The 5 PERMA elements: Positive emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment
• How to systematically engineer psychological momentum into your fat loss approach
• Why traditional approaches focus on mechanics but miss the psychological infrastructure
• How to audit yourself across the PERMA dimensions to identify your weakest area

Timestamps:

0:01 - The intelligence paradox in fat loss
3:22 - Why smart people struggle with fat loss
5:06 - Introduction to the PERMA framework
6:17 - P: Positive Emotion and cognitive flexibility
8:31 - E: Engagement and finding flow states
10:50 - R: Relationships and social connection
13:07 - M: Meaning and purpose-driven goals
14:05 - A: Accomplishment and self-efficacy
17:24 - How to engineer YOUR psychology

Chapters

• 0:00 The Intelligence Paradox in Fat Loss
• 2:31 Join Email List for Mindset & Psychology Tips for Fat Loss
• 5:08 Understanding the PERMA Framework
• 8:39 Positive Emotion: Beyond Toxic Positivity
• 11:23 Engagement, Flow, and Relationships
• 14:00 Meaning and Accomplishment
• 17:20 Engineering Psychology Into Your Approach
• 21:32 Creating Psychological Momentum
• 22:28 Join Email List for More Tips!

Transcript

Philip Pape: 0:01

What's fascinating is that the smartest people often struggle the most with sustainable fat loss, not because they lack knowledge, but because they're missing the psychological infrastructure that makes any system actually work. Today, we're looking at the PERMA framework from positive psychology five psychological elements that separate people who sustain their transformation and their results from those who keep spinning their wheels. You'll discover how to engineer your fat loss system to work with your psychology. So if you're tired of feeling like you're fighting yourself every step of the way, this episode will help you achieve success. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering and efficiency. I'm your host, certified nutrition coach, philip Pape, and today we're going back into my training from positive psychology and help you tackle something that might sound counterintuitive to those of you who love data and systems thinking, like I do, because we're going to talk about why your perfectly calculated plan keeps falling apart. Not because of the numbers, but because you don't have the psychological foundation that makes systems work for you. Even if the system seems quote-unquote perfect, or the plan seems perfect, most people approach fat loss, or really any endeavor, as more of a mechanical problem. Energy balance, calories in, calories out, track your macros, hit your target train, be consistent, etc. But what they're missing is engineering the psychological elements that go along with the physiology, and those often determine whether you'll actually want to maintain those behaviors over time. And we are talking about much more than just habit theory here. I'm actually going to introduce you to a framework from positive psychology called PERMA, p-e-r-m-a, and we'll define what that means. Positive psychology is a special field of psychology focused on the positive, not fixing the negative or dwelling on issues with the brain, but actually focusing on adding in the positive, and it was developed by Dr Martin Seligman, I want to say, in the 90s. It's not a very old field, but it's a very empowering field when you can take away from it into this industry, and I'm going to show you how to apply it to create an approach for you that is not just working on paper but actually works in your real life.

Philip Pape: 2:31

Now, before we get into the PERMA framework, I want to let you know that I've been diving very deep into this intersection between psychology and physique development and I'm trying to create more exclusive content around mindset and psychological approaches that you're not going to find anywhere else, because it combines the engineering with the psychology, with the health and fitness. And if you want access to this kind of deeper, more nuanced content, join my email list. Just go to witsandweightscom slash email. That's where you're going to get that. I rarely take anything from there and publish it elsewhere, so it's a unique lens Plus. You get notified of podcast episodes and special promotions, things like that, but mostly this very unique content that I think will help you, give you frameworks, give you strategies that go beyond just the mechanics of fat loss and into the mental game, and that's really where things go up another level. Things can finally stick for you.

Philip Pape: 3:22

All right, let's talk about why smart people you're a smart person, right Listening to this show, wits and Weights why we struggle with fat loss and I say we because I'm one of those, along with you, not that I'm smart, but that I struggle with fat loss. Hopefully I'm a little bit smart too, but that's a different topic. All right, the first thing I want to talk about is the intelligence paradox, and this might sting because if you are listening to the show, as I just said, you're probably pretty intelligent. You have a successful career, or maybe you're a stay-at-home mom or, in other ways, fulfilled at doing what you do best at solving problems, understanding complex systems. Yes, we all have challenges in our lives, of course, but you have this intelligence that's working for you in many areas of your life, but it might be working against you when it comes to your fitness, your health, your sustainable fat loss. The reason why is that intelligent people often approach fat loss like they approach other problems, or a problem at work, right, A very mechanical thing, where you research it extensively, you create a detailed plan and then you optimize for efficiency.

Philip Pape: 4:26

Well, yeah, philip, because that's what you talk about all the time here, isn't it? Well, that's part of it. That's not all of it. And if you treat your body just like a machine, a physical machine that responds predictably to inputs, then you're going to get frustrated when it doesn't seem to quite work and you're going to assume that you need better data, more precise tracking, a more sophisticated approach. And, as an aside, a lot of you are not even tracking the bare minimum, and so there's a lot of power in getting more and better and more precise data, for sure. So I'm not going to discount that at all. It's the fact that that is not all you need.

Philip Pape: 5:06

So, if we look at the research from positive psychology, it tells us that sustainable behavior change isn't about. It stands for positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning and accomplishment. And these five elements are what psychologists have identified as the core components of human flourishing and well-being, backed by lots of research, lots of science. And when your approach is missing these elements, when your life is missing these elements, you are trying to sustain behaviors that might not jive, that might make you feel worse about yourself, about your life, and that is a recipe for failure, no matter how perfect your macros are. Let's just be honest. So I wanna break down. You're like, okay, that's the PERMA framework from psychology, great, how does that actually apply to fat loss? Like when we get very specific and talk about getting lean, building muscle, losing fat, the physical things that we're trying to manifest, to be healthier, to live longer, to get the things that we want, to be more confident, all of that.

Philip Pape: 6:17

So let's start with a P positive emotion. This isn't about delusional, toxic positivity. It's not about pretending everything is great. Positive emotions are critical as humans. They broaden our thinking and they build our psychological resources, because when you feel good about your choices, like your nutrition choices, you're more likely to make good choices in the future. But most people are associating their fat loss with negative things like stress, like guilt, like deprivation, like restriction. They feel bad when they go over their calories, guilty when you eat something off your plan, stressed about hitting your targets every day. All of that Sound familiar.

Philip Pape: 6:59

The research by Barbara Fredrickson, which is a very well-known name in positive psychology, shows that positive emotions literally expand our cognitive flexibility, right, our brain's resilience, our flexibility, and they help us build lasting psychological resources. It's kind of like your mental bandwidth, and so in practical terms, this means, if you can find ways to feel good about your fat loss process, you're going to be more creative than in problem solving. You're going to be more resilient when you face those setbacks and challenges, which is guess what? Hashtag life, and you're going to be more motivated to continue. And I'm so sorry I did a hashtag in there, all my fellow 40 somethings. We didn't grow up with that, I'm ashamed, but anyway, that is where positive emotion comes in.

Philip Pape: 7:45

It is not being delusional. As you guys know, I'm a pretty positive guy, kind of naturally, but I've also cultivated the idea of having an optimism bias and leaning into things that are positive so that I get the reinforcing feedback that this is a good thing that I want to keep doing. Right, if you go to the gym and you suffer and you think it's a thing you hate and you don't like, of course you're not going to do it. But if you can make it a positive experience not forcing that and not faking it, but actually doing things that make it genuinely positive of course you're going to want to do more of it. So that's the first one how can you make your situation, your process, more positive? Then we have E engagement. Engagement is about finding flow.

Philip Pape: 8:31

Flow is a state you ever heard of the flow state? It's a state where time seems to stop and whatever you're doing just feels intrinsically rewarding. And just think about something you so love to do that you get lost for hours in it. It might be woodworking, it might be playing an instrument, it might be playing a sport right, it could be just reading, it doesn't matter, but it's something challenging that puts you into a flow state. Right, it's not passive. It's not, for example, playing video games as much as I love those, to just pass the time and veg out. It doesn't necessarily. It's not necessarily the same as being in a flow state.

Philip Pape: 9:07

Now, you don't have to be an elite athlete to experience flow. You don't have to be super skilled at something to experience flow, but you can find it in the process of gaining skill and challenging yourself. That could be cooking, meal prepping, mindful eating, like all the things I'm talking about related to nutrition, even the process of tracking your food. You can get into a flow state by shifting from a mentality of checklist habits to engaging rituals right, instead of just checking off okay, I hit my protein. Let's focus on the creativity of finding ways to incorporate protein into meals that you enjoy, and that might be researching recipes. That might be using AI to put things together. That might be having fun at the grocery store trying to find ways to incorporate protein. It might be planning out your meals right there's lots of different ways and it might not. It might feel, let's say, hard or even not that fun at first. Right, engagement isn't necessarily quote unquote fun, but challenging yourself and getting in that flow state and seeing a result will help you understand the output and feed back to wanting to do more of it. Very much like having the positive emotions. So finding a way to be in a flow state, and that might be mindfulness when you're lifting, you know, turning the music off and just really focusing on the form. So this is kind of a complex area. When we talk about engagement and flow and I'm kind of just scratching the surface, positive psychology is a very deep field. So if you're more curious, definitely go look up the PERMA model. And that brings us to R relationships. So P-E-R-M-A PERMA model and that brings us to R relationships, so P-E-R-M-A PERMA relationships.

Philip Pape: 10:50

We as human beings are absolutely wired for connection. Our social environment has an inordinate, a dramatically high influence on our habits. I mean more than you can possibly imagine. Research shows that weight loss interventions that involve friends, partners, result in significantly better outcomes than solo efforts. Right, that relatedness, that community, is massive and this goes beyond just having a training partner. It's really creating that identity within all of your relationships that supports your goals. When your family understands and supports your nutrition choices.

Philip Pape: 11:22

When you have a community that normalizes the process, the ups and downs, they don't judge you, they don't come in and say what the heck are you doing? That's weird, you're not going to succeed that way. No, when they're positive and they normalize what you're doing and they understand the ups and downs. When you feel connected rather than isolated in your efforts, then everything becomes so much easier. This is a huge point of friction for people and so if we flip that around and we look for incorporating our identity and leaning into it with our relationships and then seeing what comes of that, seeing what relationships may be more toxic than we want or need in our life right now, seeing what Facebook groups we should and shouldn't be in, who we should and shouldn't follow, which podcasts we should and shouldn't listen to, right, who we should talk to versus who maybe we just will be friends, but they're not aligned with my goals right now. So that's relationships.

Philip Pape: 12:14

Then we get to M for meaning. So meaning is connecting your behavior to something bigger. Some people call this spirituality, some people call this purpose. It is just something bigger than yourself and bigger than the immediate results. So this goes back to the superficial goals, the short-term goals, the vanity goals, which there's nothing wrong with those. Right, I want abs, I want six pack abs for the summer. But when pressure hits your system from life, those goals tend to collapse very quickly. But meaning based goals like I want to be able to play with my kids without pain, or I want to model healthy behavior for my family. Those are deeply rooted, they're so resilient, they don't collapse as easily because lots of things will flux up and down and change in your life and you're going to come back to that mentally and say I still want that.

Philip Pape: 13:07

When something challenges you in the short term, you might not still say I need to have abs for summer. You get the difference right and again, it's not right or wrong, it's just how deep and meaningful do you want it to be to drive you. Research shows that individuals with a greater sense of purpose live longer and they engage in better health behaviors period. And when your fat loss journey becomes part of your larger life mission right, we're not talking about just losing weight and getting skinny or getting lean even. We are talking about fat loss for the purposes of metabolic health, physical health, of fitness, of healthy aging when that becomes part of your larger mission in life, then any setbacks, any challenges just become that. They become temporary obstacles rather than the reason that you're going to quit. Because why would you quit when you have such a deep, purposeful goal to go after? And that brings us to the final letter here A for accomplishment. I love accomplishment.

Philip Pape: 14:05

This is about building self-efficacy through meaningful progress. When somebody joins, for example, physique University, which we're going through a big relaunch now don't know if you heard. We used to. It used to be 87 a month. Now we have two tiers. One is 27 a month because I'm trying to make it more accessible to more people so that they can build this self-efficacy, so that they can find community A lot of the things we're talking about here today.

Philip Pape: 14:29

And when somebody joins and says you know, I thought I was going to come in here and you were just going to tell me, tell me my workouts, tell me the rest period, show me the videos, and just I was just going to follow it. I said, no, actually you're lucky. You're lucky, you found us because we are going to teach you to fish. We're not going to give you a fish. We're going to show you how to program, how to make adjustments, how to work with whatever your gym environment is. Whether it's now or you move five years from now, or your physical situation changes or you have an injury, it doesn't matter. We're not going to stick you to one method or one program. We're going to give you the principles right, and that gives you self-efficacy, because it's not about external validation or hitting a specific program or numbers or plan, whether it's a template or anything.

Philip Pape: 15:16

It's the intrinsic satisfaction of growth and mastery. I mean, let that sit with you for a bit. If that doesn't appeal to you, then I'm sorry. You're not going to find much fulfillment in your life. I'm just going to be honest about it. But if you embrace this idea of constant growth which, yes, means constant failures to get that growth and mastery was yes. Yes Means having a purpose and understanding yourself at a deeper level and empowering yourself through all of these things we're talking about and focusing on the process rather than the outcome, that's going to be powerful. You're not just trying to lose 20 pounds, you're not. You're trying to focus on the day-to-day elements of mastery.

Philip Pape: 15:56

Now those could be very concrete things like okay, I'm going to plan my meals today to eat protein at every meal so that I can make sure I get 150 grams of protein. Nothing wrong with that, absolutely. Those are all micro pieces of the process and those kinds of behaviors are where the momentum comes. Those little actions, those micro actions, those micro goals that all tie to your big purposeful goal. That helps you build momentum and then create a sense of competence, confidence and competence and progress. Even when little things like weight on the scale might not be moving for a few days or a few weeks, it doesn't matter. You understand the big picture.

Philip Pape: 16:32

Now, as I'm explaining these concepts, I realize how much deeper we can go into each of these. I mean, I could do months and months of episodes related to positive psychology, because the intersection between that and engineering and physique development is something I'm very passionate about and I'm developing more content around that going forward, because I think frameworks are super helpful and I think the fitness industry ignores this quite frequently. So if you want to get that content, just a reminder I'm diving deeper into this stuff, into the psychology of sustainable change, in my email list. Go to witsandweightscom slash email. I just wanted to remind you again. It came to mind that if you want more of this, join my list. You'll get more of it. Witsandweightscom slash email. All right. So here's where my engineering brain gets really excited, because you can engineer the psychological elements into your approach for something like fat loss.

Philip Pape: 17:24

And this isn't about hoping that you're going to feel motivated right, we've talked about motivation before. That's not a thing. It is really about creating the conditions that generate positive emotions, engagement, meaningful connections, purpose and accomplishment, per the PERMA model. So for positive emotions, you might find a way to document your wins on a regular basis. This could be a journal. It could be as part of community. You know we do that both in our Facebook group and more frequently in our Physique University, where we encourage you to tell us what were your wins. Just lay it out there. What were your wins, what went well? We don't care about the things that went not well, what went well. So you can look at where you felt good about your choices and lean into those.

Philip Pape: 18:09

For engagement, you could gamify anything Like you can gamify meal prep, try a new food each week. You could approach your food tracking like a scientist, like you're gathering data about an interesting experiment. And if you use macro factor, you get all these graphs and curves and sure you can go crazy with that. But you could also use them and just try to understand all of these things and how they play together and really get in, get engaged and get into the flow of that. For relationships, maybe share your goals with your family, invite their support, join a community. Again, we have a free Facebook community or jump right into Physique University. It's more accessible than ever.

Philip Pape: 18:46

For meaning, here's an idea I came up with. You can write a letter to your future self describing how your health goals connect to your deeper values and life mission. So write a letter to your future self describing how your goals connect to your deeper values and your life mission. Literally, talk to yourself of the future, because that's going to start to get you thinking about did you accomplish what you intended to toward that deeper meaning in your future self, because that is what you are embodying right now your future self. And then for accomplishment, I would say this is something we've probably talked about a lot, which is tracking behavioral metrics, not just the outcome metrics so that you can be consistent, and that could be as simple as your training log, but it could also be specific habits that you want to check off each day to make sure that you're doing them kind of like an off on not necessarily that you achieved a certain goal, because the goal is farther down the line.

Philip Pape: 19:47

So what's brilliant about this whole framework, the PERMA framework, is that when you get all five elements working together, they create this system that reinforces itself right, like the positive emotions will then make you more engaged. When you're more engaged, guess what happens? Your relationships are strengthened. The strong relationships actually give you more meaning in your life, and then meaningful work leads to a greater sense of accomplishment. And then, finally, guess what? The accomplishment generates more positive emotions, boom. It all ties together. This is psychological momentum we're talking about right, or upward spiraling is another word that's been used. You're not going to white knuckle your way through a diet hopelessly. You're going to create conditions where the healthy behaviors feel good to maintain and you want to do them. Because when you're struggling with consistency, you can take this framework now the PERMA framework, and audit yourself across these five dimensions, because usually one or two areas are quite a bit weaker than the others. Maybe you've got the accomplishment piece down because you're great at tracking, but you're missing the relationship support. Or maybe you're highly engaged with the process, but then you've lost sight of the deeper why the deeper? Meaning. So if you can identify the weakest PERMA element, that's one way to focus your energy on strengthening that, knowing that it will improve markedly your overall sustainability.

Philip Pape: 21:08

And I think about the most successful clients I've worked with and, yeah, they're doing all the things, but they also pay really close attention to their psychological state. They have a high level of self-awareness Now. They may not have it initially, and we work on that together. It's part of the process. May not have it initially, and we work on that together. It's, it's part of the process. But they notice when they're starting to feel the thing they don't want to feel. Maybe they feel deprived and they're not empowered, even though they were empowered for a while. And all of a sudden they're like I'm starting to feel this as a restrictive thing, and they catch themselves, when the process starts, feeling like drudgery rather than growth.

Philip Pape: 21:36

And that's a great place to be, because now you're at a fork in the road where you can do something about it, and then people who feel good about their process, then they make better choices, people are engaged in their habits, are more consistent. People who feel supported are more resilient with periods, when, when, during difficult periods, and so guess what? This is your life. This isn't just fat loss, is it? And I always like to bring it back to that, because at the end of the day, you're like, hmm, it's a pretty cool framework for everything I do, because sustainable fat loss it's not just about changing your body, but your relationship with the process of change. That's why I love it so much because you can see it, it's visceral and when you align the approach with these psychology of wellbeing, your transformation becomes enjoyable and fulfilling as well, because it's aligned with your flourishing and your well-being. All right, if today's episode resonated with you.

Philip Pape: 22:28

If you want to go deeper into the psychology of all of this, especially sustainable transformation, I'm creating exclusive content around these frameworks. You're not going to find it anywhere else. Join my email list at witsandweightscom slash email or click the link in the show notes and you'll get access to some of these advanced strategies, specific tools, deep dive into psychology. Something will absolutely resonate.

Philip Pape: 22:51

I've heard from people all the time where they might have gotten 10 of my emails and you know that's fine and then email number 11 comes along. They're like I had to hear this. Oh, my God, that is me and thank you, you made my day. Now I'm thinking differently and deeply about what's going on and if we can change our lives that way, that's powerful. Go to witsowheightscom slash email to get the content. Until next time, keep using your wits lifting those weights and remember, the most sophisticated system in the world is not going to work if it doesn't work with your psychology. I want you to engineer your approach, but don't forget to engineer your mindset as well. I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.