292. Fat Loss vs Weight Loss and Health Over 40 with Philip Pape

I love Philip Pape’s approach to health, because everything he teaches is evidence-based.

So today he’s joining me on the podcast to unpack a few “trendy” nutrition and fitness topics like fat loss, muscle building, protein, calorie-counting, satiety, GLP-1s and more!

Join us a we explore what’s really going on with health and weight loss — especially for women over forty. And don’t forget that this spring I’m teaching the first and only live round of Your Emotional Eating Blueprint: Why Am I Eating This Now? course, which you can hear more about by getting on my email list here

We discuss:

• Mindset shifts for health over 40
• Why Philip uses the term “fat loss” instead of “weight loss”
• Over-fat vs under-muscled & why that’s a false dichotomy
• Why crash diets don’t work
• How Ali shifted her nutrition through perimenopause and menopause
• Protein’s role in satiety and satisfaction
• Walking vs running and the importance of sleep
• GLP-1s and dieting

More about our guest: Philip Pape is the host of Wits & Weights, a top 1% nutrition podcast where complex science meets real-world results. Known as the Physique Engineer, he combines his engineering background with evidence-based nutrition expertise to help people build stronger, leaner, and healthier bodies without the usual fitness industry confusion. Through his work, Philip proves that transforming your physique doesn't require endless hours in the gym, cardio, or extreme dieting—it just requires working smarter.

Connect with Philip Pape:

• Follow Philip on Instagram @witsandweights
• Get the Muscle-Building Nutrition Blueprint
• Try Wits & Weights Physique University for 14 days and get your first challenge FREE: https://link.fastpaydirect.com/payment-link/679e81b4ea47af97fc12172e
• Listen to this episode of Philip’s podcast for more on this topic: The Most UNDERRATED Fat Loss Secret Making You FATTER (and Sabotaging Muscle Gain Too) | Ep 257

🌟 Registration for Your Emotional Eating Blueprint is now open! You can enroll for only $67 until April 30th or sign-up for a free sneak peak here: https://alishapiro.com/blueprint/

Transcript

Ali Shapiro [00:00:00]:
Welcome to Insatiable, the podcast where we discuss the intersection of food, psychology, and culture.

Philip Pape [00:00:09]:
The long game of sustainability and precision is the fastest path to getting what you want, or I should say it's the most efficient because the way everyone's doing it with the crash diets, you're gonna repeat that cycle for the next ten years. You'll be worse off than where you started. So tell me how fast that is.

Ali Shapiro [00:00:28]:
I'm your host, Ali Shapiro, an integrated health coach, thirty two year and counting cancer survivor, and have radically healed my relationship with food and my body. And for the past seventeen years, I've been working with clients individually, in group programs, and in company settings to do the same. Welcome. The information in this podcast should not be considered personal, individual, or medical advice. So it seems that we're on a little bit of a weight loss kick recently, but if you listen to last week's episode, SAS and I really talked about feeling satisfied from food, right, instead of restricted. And I talked about satiety. And I think this is such a big missing piece concept that isn't talked about enough. Right.

Ali Shapiro [00:01:21]:
How do we get food to feel good in our body and also, you know, lead to good health results? And satiety is really a key. And one of the things we don't see think about is how fitness can contribute to satiety. So I wanted to have Philip Cape, who is the host of Wits and Weights, which is another top 1% nutrition podcast, so sensational. And he brings complex science and mixes that with real world results. Okay? He's an engineer by background, someone who loves efficiency where you can find it. And Philip is known as the physique engineer to combine his engineering background with evidence based nutrition expertise to help people build stronger, leaner, and healthier bodies without the usual fitness industry confusion. I don't know if a lot of people realize, but a lot of what's out there is not evidence based. Okay? And look, I'm someone who understands the science is always changing.

Ali Shapiro [00:02:17]:
I don't think science is ever settled. But a lot of what's being claimed out there, especially around fitness, is is bonkers to me and to Philip, and we're gonna talk about that. But Philip's work is all about proving that transforming your your physique doesn't require endless hours in the gym, cardio, or extreme dieting. It just requires working smarter. So we're gonna talk about that today of how do we think about exercise as a way to feel more satisfied from our food to how to feel stronger in our body, and a lot of the things that people don't talk about, including walking. I think walking is about to blow up in this in the in the space about how important it is, but how so many of us dismiss it because we don't think it counts, etcetera. But meanwhile, it's one of the most important things you can do for your health and weight, especially around sustainable efforts. And it is so important for mental health, especially today.

Ali Shapiro [00:03:16]:
So we're gonna just talk about a lot of that stuff. I think you're really going to enjoy it and have hopefully a mindset shift around fat loss versus weight loss, you know, nutrition versus calories, all the things that you really need to unpack if you're gonna understand how to feel really satisfied from your food and be able to lose weight in a sustainable way. And again, as I've been talking about in the last two insatiable episodes, I am hosting a live Why Am I Eating This Now mini course from mid April to mid May, '4 weeks, '4 lessons, great community, great insights, all for only $97. So there's a link in the show notes to get onto my list so that you can get into the know of when I release information. At this point with Phillips episode, I will definitely be promoting a free masterclass around it, which is a sneak peek at the first lesson. But if you're someone who has been listening to Insatiable for a while or even just recently found it and binging on it, which happens to a lot of people, and you're someone who knows there's something deeper going on with your eating of why you fall off track, but can't quite put your finger on it. Or if you're someone who is on GLP ones and you wanna know why was I eating that now so that you can have a sustainability with those. Or you're someone coming off GLP ones.

Ali Shapiro [00:04:43]:
Philip and I talk about that today, how to come off them because yeah. You'll you'll hear about that in the conversation of why of how to use them so you don't have to be on them for life. But if you're someone coming off of those and wanna keep off the results, this is a great intro and mini course into how to eat healthy consistently and do that sustainably. Okay? So this is a course for those of you who are interested. It will be how to take manageable, actionable steps to start to be more consistent with your food. And more importantly, you'll finally address the root cause of why you fall off track. So you don't have to think that you need another better interesting novel diet. Okay? So come check it out.

Ali Shapiro [00:05:26]:
Link in the show notes. And again, this will be the only time I'm running it live. It's going to go to self study after that. So come teach with me live. There's so much magic in live groups, and we need community more than ever. We're all feeling really isolated and come together to talk about this topic with people who understand and wanna really work through it in a sane, sensible, and life changing way. All right. Enjoy today's episode with Philip and I'll see you next week.

Ali Shapiro [00:06:00]:
Thank you so much for being here today, Philip. I love that you bring an engineering mindset to fitness and health because to me, that screams efficiency, and I am like an efficiency junkie. So welcome. Thanks so

Philip Pape [00:06:12]:
much for having me on. I know. I I feel like we've talked a bunch over the past few weeks, and it's exciting.

Ali Shapiro [00:06:17]:
Yeah. Yeah. And before we get started, I just want people to know also because for me, I don't know if most of my listeners are female, but a lot of times when I hear efficiency and a dude is talking, I am like, oh, this is a biohacker who doesn't understand the inefficiency of the female body, or we could call it inefficiency. I would call it elegance of the female body, and they often try to they miss important things because the human the female body does not work the way the male body, but you work with female clients do. So I just wanna put everyone at ease.

Philip Pape [00:06:48]:
Yeah. No. But actually actually, it's a really good string to pull because it's a little bit of a a challenge to me and others who might work with data. I like that you brought that up. Yeah. Two thirds of my clients are are women. I love women, love men, love everybody, human beings. And I think, you know, our body our bodies are universal in some ways and so unique and individual in others.

Philip Pape [00:07:06]:
And fortunately, I've had the chance to learn a ton about female physiology through this process, especially through peri and postmenopause. And what's cool is I was just talking about this the other day with someone that math is the universal language. Right? To me, math is a form of beauty. I'm an engineer by background. It's like art and science combined. And not that you could reduce everything about your body down to a number, but it's empowering, I think, to know that you can have some control over what's happening by measuring what's happening. And that's really the lens I like to come to. So if you're a woman going through some sort of mysterious issue, I love to help you break it down to the point where you do understand it.

Philip Pape [00:07:43]:
And if that involves using numbers, so be it.

Ali Shapiro [00:07:46]:
Yeah. Well, and it's holding the and because and we're gonna talk about mindset shifts around weight loss and health as you age. But I think the numbers that we need to pay attention to shift obviously, with weight loss, you still need a caloric deficit, but how we arrive there really has to change then when you were in your twenties and thirties. And we'll we'll talk about that today. And that's actually why I wanted to chat with you. I mean, I was on your podcast. We had a great interview and that will have been replayed on my insatiable channel, so people will probably listen to that. But this came up in my truce with food group, actually.

Ali Shapiro [00:08:22]:
A client went to the doctor and the doctor basically ran their their labs, you know, traditional stuff that you get usually once a year with a physical. And there were some concerning creeping numbers. And I think a lot of us, especially in perimenopause and menopause, I know my cholesterol shot through the roof when I wasn't paying attention to it. And you often have creeping a one c, creeping fasting glucose. But her doctor wanted her to lose he said that she had, like, 25 to 30 pounds to lose and gave her this, like, really aggressive deadline. I think it was like, alright. You have, like, six months or something. Right? Which when in your twenties and thirties, maybe you can lose a pound a week and maybe some people still can.

Ali Shapiro [00:09:02]:
But I was like, woah, that's an aggressive deadline, especially because she had a full plate. She's self employed. She's very driven. Right? She's caregiving for aging parents who have really hard diagnosis. She has children. She's alive in late stage capitalism. Right? So it's just kind of like, okay. How I go about this has to shift because another reason people come to me is what used to work doesn't work anymore.

Ali Shapiro [00:09:25]:
And I also wanted to bring you on to tackle that because I have lost about 25 pounds in the last, I don't know, since 2021. What are we? Four years. And I hadn't tried to lose weight since my twenties prior to that, but I was pregnancy weight, menopausal weight. And I realized that there are like things about weight loss that I didn't realize that I want to talk to you about today that like in your twenties and thirties, you don't need to be aware concerned about. But now I was like, oh my God. Like, what I have to eat has to change to feel more satisfied. Oh my God. I have to make sure I'm sleeping.

Ali Shapiro [00:10:00]:
Like all these other things that you didn't have to worry about in, you know, under 40, we'll just say as a threshold. So I wanted to talk to you about that because you do focus a lot on fat loss, weight loss, and probably have more of those details than is in my background as someone who helps clients on the more emotional and nutrition side, but not necessarily on the numbers side of weight loss. So

Philip Pape [00:10:22]:
Yeah. I love it. I I think we complement each other really well like that. So I'm happy to get into any of that. I mean, do you have a place do you wanna start otherwise?

Ali Shapiro [00:10:29]:
Yeah. Yeah. So what are the top mindset shifts just for starters that we have to shift around weight loss and health and where they overlap over 40, and why do we have to have these mindset shifts?

Philip Pape [00:10:42]:
Sure. I mean, the first one that comes to mind is the use of the phrase weight loss and questioning whether that's even your goal. Right? Like, so when somebody and I'm sure this happens to you too. You say, well, why are you here? What are you trying to do? And it's like, well, I wanna lose 20 pounds and look like I did when I was 25, or I need to fit into that dress, or I need to be that ideal weight. And in reality, what do you want? You want to feel great. You wanna look great. You wanna function. You wanna be a role model for your kids.

Philip Pape [00:11:07]:
You wanna be able to not be a burden to your parents when you get older. Right? There's all these deeper whys behind it. And at the end of the day, you're actually trying to improve your ability to be a human physically, functionally, and fitness wise in this world. Right? Humans are meant to walk. They're meant to lift things. They're meant to be functional with upright posture. We're meant to be outside a lot. Right? And just, like, just imagine, like, play as a kid.

Philip Pape [00:11:32]:
Wouldn't it be great if you could be 40, 50, 60 and still doing that? And there are people doing that. And so your question is, do you really wanna lose weight, or do you want to improve x? Right? Whatever x is. So I don't even use the phrase weight loss. I don't know if I've mentioned that before, Ali, but I did an episode a long time ago called fat loss versus weight loss because especially now with the the weight loss drugs, all the rage. What's happening is people are taking these drugs and they're going on what what amount of crash diets, but they're not lifting weights. They're not improving the lifestyle side of it. They're not eating protein, and they end up losing a bunch of muscle as well. And so now if you are a long term dieter, which I know many women have gone through many diets, on average over a hundred in their lifetime, right, that every time you do that, you're gonna lose some muscle if you're not lifting weights.

Philip Pape [00:12:19]:
And then in peri and postmenopause, because the hormonal changes, we see muscle loss increase, accelerate, and we see fat loss increase even if you maintain the same scale weight. So ditch the scale weights, don't necessarily ditch the scale, two different concepts. Okay? We can get into the subtle difference there, but focusing more on supporting your metabolism and lifting and improving your body composition, that's where I come from. So the big mindset set shift is lifting. And then when you do lose weight, you're losing only fat and you're not losing muscle and then slowly getting leaner over over time. And then that segues into one of the other shifts, which is at some point, ladies, women watching, listening, you've gotta gain some weight to build muscle at some point if you wanna do it meaningfully. Like, that's an assertion I make, Ali. You may disagree.

Philip Pape [00:13:07]:
Others may disagree and say, no. You can kind of body recomp. But I believe you have to spend one cycle at least of, like, six to nine months, any calories surplus to build muscle. And that will fix a lot of the challenges you're having with trying to lose fat and trying to eat food and so on. So that's the first one that comes to mind.

Ali Shapiro [00:13:25]:
Oh, I mean, as you say that that's interesting because I've noticed in my own journey, I I mean, I lost 10 pounds in six months just from lifting. Right? But that was, like, excess weight. But then the next 10, it was, like, I lost some. I went up. I went down. And again, I'd I say it took me that long, but I also wasn't tracking my my food consistently. Like, once I figured out the benefits of exercise and how it helped me sleep and mentally after in perimenopause, I was like, okay, this is like a no brainer to keep going. But my weight has kind of gone like up and down, like, you know, as it always does.

Ali Shapiro [00:13:57]:
But maybe I was building muscle and I didn't know it while I was gaining weight because I am pretty good at sticking to my protein targets. So maybe that's that's what was happening. And I just wanna kinda back up because I think a lot of people listening will say, well, I want what you're talking about and I wanna lose weight. So it's not either or. And I think that's like a whole other conversation over when is it healthy to lose weight. Right? Because it's inflammatory and there's different types of weight, which is what essentially you're saying is you could get on the scale and be, say, like, in your twenties and say you're a hundred and fifty pounds. Right? You're maintaining that. But in your twenties and thirties, that a hundred and fifty pounds was, like, a lot more muscle.

Ali Shapiro [00:14:36]:
Right? Versus, like, just naturally over time because of aging, that a hundred and fifty pounds is gonna be more and more fat, which, again, if it's not some fat is healthy cause it helps with estrogen creation after menopause, but if it's the visceral fat around the organs and everything, you're looking at the quality of the weight, I think is the message.

Philip Pape [00:14:56]:
But I do wanna be more specific because there is there are two camps out there that compete on whether we are over fat or we're under muscled. And I don't think I don't think they're mutually exclusive. Like, you know, doctor Gabrielle Lyon and and and folks like her always talk about muscle centric medicine. We need more muscle. And that's true, and we can talk about that. But there is an unhealthy level of body fat, like you mentioned, especially visceral fat around the organs, where I think I have, like, seven scenarios where you say when someone says, what should I do now? I'm just getting started. What should I do? I'm, like, there's seven scenarios that come to mind. I don't need to list them all, but they're effectively different levels of, okay, do you have, like, 40 or more pounds to lose regardless of muscle or anything else because it's not metabolically healthy? Are you skinny fat? Like and then everything in between.

Philip Pape [00:15:39]:
Like, do you have 10 to 20 pounds to lose? Okay. That might be right in the cusp of where maybe you don't need to lose weight. You just need to build muscle, and then you could always do a fat loss phase later and kinda cut down to be a little bit leaner. But what I found, especially with a lot of my, female clients, is they will start with me, and for a month or two, we don't try to lose weight. We're just dialing in training. We're dialing in consistency and eating and so on. High satiety, we can talk about that too. And then what happens is they start to see some body fat drop and some muscle increase anyway.

Philip Pape [00:16:12]:
Right? We're measuring their waist circumference or their biceps and trying to do some body fat measurements. They are losing fat and then gaining muscle, and all of a sudden, their how they see themselves and their their, you know, their waist, their clothes, they drop a size without changing on the scale. And that's a huge mindset shift for them because then they say, maybe losing weight isn't everything in that context. And then some of them are like, maybe I should gain because now all my lifts are starting to go up, and I want them to keep going up. But to your point, Al, if you have, like, thirty, forty, 50 pounds of lose or more and you're visibly, like, over fat and it's a metabolic concern, we need to get you walking, need to get you training, and then you might start on a fat loss phase right away. And as you do that, because you have the extra stored energy on your body, that's an advantage for you. Like, people joke at me. I'm like, I wish I was fat right now.

Philip Pape [00:16:57]:
I I hate to use the word fat, but I wish I was like that now because I know that my body has extra calories to draw from as I start to lift weights. So yeah. And then once you drop the weight and you get in that lean range, you can decide which way you wanna go. Super flexible.

Ali Shapiro [00:17:11]:
I like that threshold though for people to think of because it's almost like, okay. If I'm thirty pounds or more, I probably have some weight to lose. And I wanna mention the fact that you said, like, start with walking because one of what I wrote down is kind of mindset shifts. And you even talking about people who have under 30 and you start with them just the first couple of months, we're just trying to dial in habits. I think that's the biggest mindset shift is it's gonna be slower. Like it's gonna be more consistent and sustainable this way, but it's not like, okay, I'm gonna cut 500 calories a day and I'm not gonna support my muscle. I'm not no. No.

Ali Shapiro [00:17:42]:
No. You gotta slow down because you're so much more susceptible to stress and and and drastic calorie reduction and going fast. So that's what I was thinking more about. Like, okay. I mean, I love that you put it that way, You know? But what you're saying is we have to go a little slower. We have to be more strategic than because really, when you're in your twenties and early thirties, like, anything will quote unquote work short term. But when you get over 40 and especially in the perimenopause and menopause, a lot of quick stuff backfires on you. If you're doing, like you said, the GLPs and you're not doing them, we're gonna talk about those at the end.

Ali Shapiro [00:18:15]:
But if you're doing them at the dosage that's recommended, I mean, you're basically on a crash diet, which is not great for muscle loss over 40. And then I also wrote down, like, you know, much more flexibility, right, in your approach. So you even demonstrated that with if you're under thirty pounds, right, you're gonna take a different approach versus if you're above thirty pounds. But also, I have found and again, this is a big one. Like, stress is such a bucket that you have to pay attention to because, like, for example, if I'm stressed I was telling you, we're applying to schools for my son for kindergarten. I had my truce with food launch. It was the holidays. I barely slept in I mean, I had a lot of disrupted sleep in January.

Ali Shapiro [00:18:57]:
It's not because I can't emotionally handle all of this, but it just physically is taxing because there's not as much recovery in my life. Right? My son, who I love I adore, he has taken all the recovery time. Right? And added so it's like, oh, I have to be flexible that this month, because I'm not sleeping as well, I'm not gonna be able to push on my lifts. I'm not gonna be I mean, I'm gonna have to walk more to keep my energy up. But I think that flexibility of, like, stress interruptions and everything is also a huge like, it's no longer do the same thing every day. Like, you have to account for real life and the stress that brings, I think, much more, and as we age.

Philip Pape [00:19:36]:
Yeah. You hit on at least three things that I hope I remember to cover. One is when you talked about flexibility. To me, the long game of sustainability and precision is the fastest path to getting what you want. Actually, it's the or and I should say it's the most efficient because the way everyone's doing it with the crash diets, you're gonna repeat that cycle for the next ten years, and then you won't get there and you'll start you'll be worse off than where you started. So tell me how fast that is. Just because you did the keto diet and lost 40 pounds in a month, tell me a year from now where you are. Please tell me where you are.

Philip Pape [00:20:10]:
It is efficient in that sense. The second thing let me see. What else did you mention? Oh, the second thing I want to mention is this concept of anabolic versus catabolic. Right? Anabolic meaning you're supporting muscle tissue growth and adding to your body and building, and catabolic is breakdown. Now it's not good or bad. Right? Like, the body does both things constantly. But you mentioned stress. Stress is massively catabolic, meaning it's going to cause your body to tear down its tissue to compensate for the fact that you're stressing yourself at the cellular level.

Philip Pape [00:20:40]:
You might see it as this, like, abstract conceptual thing, but chronic stress and lack of sleep, which increases chronic stress, it all affects cortisol and that affects you at the cellular level, and your body will compensate for it. Your body is really good at maintaining homeostasis. So that means if you run a lot, you're gonna stress yourself out and your body's gonna burn fewer calories. If you are super stressful, your body's gonna burn fewer calories. So to your point, it's not about the food and the calories and calories in, calories out. Even though at the very end of the root cause, like, analysis, that's what matters, you gotta take 10 steps back and say, what's the real root of the problem here? And it's because you're not supporting your metabolism. You're either running too much, doing too much cardio. You're not lifting and giving yourself enough recovery.

Philip Pape [00:21:24]:
You're not eating enough because many of you are not eating enough at any point to fully recover, and the list goes on and on. The beautiful thing is once you're tracking and aware of this, you can do the reverse.

Ali Shapiro [00:21:36]:
Yeah. Well, I think that speaks to how you approach it. Right? Like you said, like, oh my god. You have to approach it fueled instead of under fueled. You have to approach it giving yourself time to recover versus when you're younger. Like, I never thought of recovery. I didn't even have that, like, in my language. Right? Like, I just recovered automatically.

Ali Shapiro [00:21:55]:
I also too just wanna circle back because you were like, I love math. It's beauty. Like, I think what you were getting on is, like, universal truths. And I think for people listening, how I know something is universally true is if it's paradoxical. And I think what Philip was saying around, like, these crash diets is, like, to go fast, you need to go slow. That's what the said. Right? To go fast, go slow. And so that is what both of us are are saying essentially.

Ali Shapiro [00:22:19]:
Like, it may feel like you're going slow in the beginning, but you're accumulating metabolic power. You're accumulating strength. All of this stuff leads to exponential results rather than so you're almost like a snowball going down the hill instead of trying to be Sissapin and push the boulder up the hill. And so yeah. So that's kind of what we've we were both saying, I think. I don't wanna speak for you.

Philip Pape [00:22:42]:
It it is. We we can get as philosophical as you want. I love it. I mean, and and it's all relative to you. Right? It's it's like if you look at elite athletes or Tour de France cyclists or somebody, they have their own level of how do they reduce stress. You know, they do their easy pedaling on their two rest days between the biking events. Right? Like, that's don't look at others and compare yourself to them. You've gotta start where you're at and make the recovery work for you.

Philip Pape [00:23:07]:
And if that means two days in the gym and lots of walking and sleeping and just taking it easy and eating enough to fuel yourself and not even worrying about the scale for a while, that could be the best thing you can do to then, ironically, lose fat and lose weight. Right? You know this, Ali, all the time is people are are caught up in themselves, and they may have traumas or or emotional issues that cause them to derail themselves. And part of it is they don't have the space in their lives. They don't have the the room to just, you know, recover.

Ali Shapiro [00:23:37]:
Yeah. No. I mean, that's why I love my YMing This Now program because, I mean, I don't present it this way, but, essentially, you know, when you're under a lot of stress, not only do you crave more salty sweet because you're you just need more intensity to register it physiologically because of what stress is doing to your body. But it's like if you're stress eating or emotionally eating or falling off track, it's almost like you're doubly hurting yourself not only because of the food, but you're also not addressing the underlying stress that is also impacting recovery, fat loss, sleep, all the things. So I like efficiency, too. I'm like an efficiency. Okay. So we've talked about a lot of things, and I think a lot of people who listen to this podcast have heard about lifting and walking and protein.

Ali Shapiro [00:24:22]:
And what I want us to talk about today because my background in how adults actually changes because we have so many competing commitments. Right. We got kids to pick up, parents to take care of, senators to call, whatever. We have to understand how this affects us in our day to day life. And one of the biggest kind of shockers for me was like satiety. And you would mention, you know, we had said that word, but satiety, everyone for listening is basically like just how satiated from your food do you feel? And I found that and so I wanna put all of these kind of recommendations that maybe people have heard and bring your own brilliance and wisdom so that people can almost, like, understand it on a different level. Because I think one of the biggest pain points I noticed that I had as I went through perimenopause and over 40 was how I had to really shift my nutrition because what I used to eat, not that it didn't quote unquote work, what I meant was it no longer made me feel satisfied. So So just to give everyone a concrete example, in my twenties and thirties well, once I learned about nutrition, we'll say late twenties, all of my thirties, I basically ate two eggs and kale and, like, either coffee or tea for breakfast.

Ali Shapiro [00:25:36]:
And maybe I had an apple. I don't I didn't track my food, but I was really satisfied from that. And I thought I was getting enough protein, all the things. But then after going through perimenopause and menopause into my forties, it was like that same meal left me starving. And then I was like, oh, wait, eggs don't have that much protein or this is only like two fifty calories. And to your point of under fueling, so now and people are going to this may sound like a huge breakfast. I also like don't snack and and I wake up hungry, which is a good sign. I have those two eggs and kale.

Ali Shapiro [00:26:10]:
I have some two pieces of turkey breast that are organic. No nitrates. Don't worry. And like a fourth a cup of oats with some protein powder. Right. So now my breakfasts are like they're more calories, but they last me so much longer than when I was just doing the same thing that would last me forever under 20 or 30. So I just wanna give people, like, a con some for people who still counting calories or to give them a concrete idea of how satiety switches. So I wanted to ask you, like, how in terms of nutrition, because you talked about protein, but how does protein contribute to satiety? And what's happening that now we have to shift our really the quality and maybe quantity of what we're eating?

Philip Pape [00:26:52]:
Protein yeah. Protein's an interesting one because I'll have somebody who comes in as a client and I ask them to eat more protein, and sometimes they can't even eat enough to get it all in because they're so full. Like, it's amazing, the satiety effects of protein. There's actually something called the protein leverage hypothesis. It's like a biological drive that humans have for protein. And, basically, what it means is if we if we eat low protein foods, we're gonna compensate by eating more calories because we feel that we don't have enough protein. It's not something that's talked about a lot in the industry, but but it's it's one of many hypotheses along with stress and lack of sleep and other things that cause us to eat besides the fact that processed foods are predigested for you and so they don't trigger your satiety signals like leptin and ghrelin in your stomach and PPY and all this other technical stuff. But protein, not only is it great for muscles, it's super filling, it also burns more calorie if you burn about 20 to 30% of the of every every calorie of protein you eat, you burn, like, 20 to 30% of those calories just digesting it.

Ali Shapiro [00:28:01]:
I didn't know that.

Philip Pape [00:28:02]:
With fat, it's zero to 3% and with carbs, it's kind of in the middle. It's like 10 to 20%. So here's what happens. I'll ask especially a female client who's like potentially worried about gaining weight. I say, all right, I want you to ramp up your protein by like triple. We're not going to do it overnight. We're going to, you know, titrate it up. And the calories end up being the same, and all of a sudden she's like, I can't eat that much.

Philip Pape [00:28:23]:
And there's strategies around that, like, oh, you're only eating twice a day. We need to eat maybe three or four times a day. And then what happens is she start her expenditure, her metabolism, calories burned per day, starts to go up out of nowhere. This is an independent of training or walking or anything else. And then she either has to eat even more just to maintain her weight or she starts losing weight or fat kind of naturally. And I know you talk about this a lot of where if we just eat foods that are mostly whole foods, satiating, voluminous, you could end up not eating fairly intuitively and have a decent body composition and and body weight without really doing much else. Like, it's a massive switch. I don't know if that answered your question about protein, but

Ali Shapiro [00:29:01]:
One thing I'm curious about is you said, like, you titrate up with calories. So this is something that, again, I think people often think, like, I just need to eat less. But what's happening is a lot of people this is where the nuance comes in. Right? You're not eating enough to begin with. So then you overeat at night or on the weekends or you're binging. Right? Because there's other emotional issues going on. But but let's just assume people are undereating. Right? Just to give people an example, like, when I was losing, like, a half a pound a week, I was still eating, like, 1,800 calories because I'm also really active.

Ali Shapiro [00:29:32]:
Like, I I work out three times a week. I get, like, 10 to 15,000 steps a day. I chase a toddler around. That's just an example. And again, I could have a different body weight, different body composition, stress, all that stuff. But I think some people are still thinking 1,200 calories is like or, like, even 1,500, and maybe that may work for some people. So this is it's all individual. But if someone is what would you say is a ballpark of thinking, like, maybe I'm not eating enough, and then maybe I need to slowly add in to Kindle my metabolism instead of just piling on calories.

Ali Shapiro [00:30:06]:
So like when you think of titrating, adding more food in, how do you approach that?

Philip Pape [00:30:12]:
Yeah. Because I wanna separate the eating, how much you're eating from the weight? Because that's the fear that women have is you're gonna ask me to eat more and then I'm gonna gain weight. I also think there's this myth of, like, you just need to eat more and you'll lose weight. Again, everything gets so oversimplified. So the way I look at it as if you start tracking your biofeedback, like your hunger, your obviously, your sleep and stress, but also your digestion, your satiety level, and you feel like you're always hungry, then you are undereating the way I like to frame it, even if potentially you haven't lost weight. And And that's because you're probably undereating the wrong things. Like, you're under you're not eating the correct things. Right? You're not eating the protein and the highest tidy foods.

Philip Pape [00:30:51]:
So, for example, if you have 80% processed foods in your diet, which isn't far from what most Americans eat, you're always gonna be hungry even though you're packing a lot of calories. Right? A person eating processed foods is gonna eat 500 more calories a day just naturally than a person who's eating whole foods. Secondly, you might be just slightly undereating to your metabolism, thus putting you in a little bit of a diet, thus causing your metabolism to adapt. You just created a vicious cycle. You've basically told your body, I don't have enough energy coming in. It's kind of a feast or it's kind of a famine, an ongoing famine. Your body says, alright. I'm gonna just clamp down, and we're gonna keep you here at homeostasis at a low metabolism.

Philip Pape [00:31:29]:
So your point, Ali, if you just start eating more, what'll happen is your metabolism will ramp up in kind. You've gotta be doing the right movement for that. You don't want to just see on a couch potato. Right? You gotta be walking and and lifting, but definitely walking. And then what what happens is your energy flux goes up. It's the term that I use. It's you eat more to move more. You don't move more and eat less.

Philip Pape [00:31:49]:
You eat more to move more, and then you get to a point of equilibrium where you don't feel hungry anymore, and you feel fueled, and you feel energized, and then your body weight stabilizes, and it doesn't go up or down. Right? What might happen then is your metabolism will continue to climb as you have the protein, as you have the lifting, and now you're in a sweet spot of, okay. I can now eat more than what I felt like I was eating in the past, and I can lose weight, or I can just stay where I am and feel super full and energized and not gain weight. And it kinda solves both problems. And so it all satiety and protein is at the root of a lot of that.

Ali Shapiro [00:32:22]:
Yeah. So I think what you're saying to people is, like, there has to be this almost correction period. Because, like, I know some people who take YMed and Lift now and they'll be, like which is the more emotional side, and they'll be, like, yeah, my weight hasn't changed, like, at all. Some people, you know, it isn't the same. But I'm, like, but you just sent a signal of safety to your body because you're eating now consistently. You're not overeating, undereating. Like that is huge progress to just maintain while correcting for these other imbalances. Right.

Ali Shapiro [00:32:52]:
Would you agree with that? Oh my God. You almost have to get to this. Like, what is my real set set point right now without feeling hungry?

Philip Pape [00:32:58]:
And you've exasperated the problem over the years with repeated dieting, and there's also called something called leptin resistance that increases as we age where your hunger signals get more and more off, and so you're kind of trying to rejigger them back into a normal state. And this is, again, why the weight loss drugs are so popular because people have lost complete control of their appetite. And even when they do try to do all the right things, it may be so far in one direction that they they really have a lot of trouble, you know, dealing with the appetite, the the food noise. And I believe anybody can address this with lifestyle and doesn't need to do that, but I also understand that there's a place for those, and I know we can talk about that a bit. I I always bring it back to that because it's a great example of of of kind of the extreme.

Ali Shapiro [00:33:39]:
Yeah. This is kind of a tangent and and this is like a selfish question, but so every six weeks, I had to leave my old gym that I loved because I wasn't recovering. On my days where I would just walk, I would be exhausted. I'm like, this is I couldn't chase s around. I'm like, this is defeating the point. Like, I'm doing all this so I can be an active older parent. And so I hired my old trainer, Brandon, from Philly, and we meet, like, every six weeks and he gives me a lifting routine. And then I get bored in six weeks.

Ali Shapiro [00:34:03]:
It's it's been great. But I sometimes have the problem where if I don't track my food, I undereat compared to how active I am. And then it causes me to to wake up overnight, and I'm, like, starving. When when again, I'm eating 18 to two I'm eating enough calories, and I'm like, what is going on? And I was taking kind of a lot of the advice that a lot of women hear around. Like, okay. Eat before your workout and then eat thirty minutes with that afterwards. And my trainer knows, like, he knows more about the human body, probably as much as, like, you and and all these people. It's like, but he was like, it sounds like you have some leptin resistance.

Ali Shapiro [00:34:38]:
And he had me, like, now, like, not I mean, if I if I'm going to the gym after breakfast, fine. That's fine. But I no longer eat right, like, thirty minutes before a workout or worry about getting in all my food within thirty minutes. And I've been fine. Like, my you know, but he was like, you probably have some leptin resistance from eating so frequently. And he and I was like, I fucking hate having to eat before, having to eat right after. Because I I like to just do three meals a day because I just I don't like to think about snacks and all that. Is that like something you've heard of of like that kind of some of this advice we've been hearing can actually sometimes induce leptin resistance.

Ali Shapiro [00:35:16]:
And, again, I do all the things, but my big thing is I just have a very full plate of aging parents, young kids, running a business, trying to have friends. You know, like, it's

Philip Pape [00:35:27]:
So I I don't know everything about the science, and I know we're always discovering new things. I'm always open minded to whatever comes. I think the leptin leptin resistance is more hormonal changes with age type of thing. Maybe it gets exacerbated with repeated yo yo dieting, but I also think most people shouldn't even care about it.

Ali Shapiro [00:35:44]:
Oh, okay.

Philip Pape [00:35:45]:
In reality, if you're listening to this, you're like, oh, now I gotta go down the leptin resistance rabbit hole. Don't do that, please. Like, do what Ally did. She listened to her body. Like, you listen to how you respond. You have to understand how you feel before and after training, how you're recovering, how is your soreness. Because some people do perfectly fine eating around their workout, eating the same calories every day. Others, they need to cycle their carbs.

Philip Pape [00:36:05]:
They need to, like, have bigger weekends and lower weekdays. And, like, I've done episodes talking about, like, six different ways you can do fat loss because we're all so different. So the only way you're gonna know is start with something simple, measure, and then play around with it. Like, that's that's what I do with clients, and it's hard sometimes to know what to play around with, so that's where a good, you know, expert or guidance can help. But to what you're saying, it sounds like you don't don't thrive on peri workout nutrition as much as somebody else might, and it's better to have it elsewhere in the day.

Ali Shapiro [00:36:34]:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, everyone I'm also this like, I'm a very simple case in the sense that, like, I'm not on any meds. I will accept HRT, and I don't have any existing complications, but I'm also complicated because a lot of this is, like, what did the chemo do to you? We have no idea. So it's it's like it's it's like I never know. Right? It's it's part of my ongoing search. Okay. So protein is really important.

Ali Shapiro [00:36:57]:
Can we also talk about carbs though? Because I think people think they need to be low carb. And I have found to your point when you're getting the protein you need, I have a really hard time getting enough carbs in. Because I because if you eat whole foods, your fat goes up. Right? It's not like I'm out here like, oh, I'm so hungry. I can't eat. That's not true. I have hunger is a good thing, but you need carbs so that they don't take from your muscle. Right? Like and so I think that's like, how do you think of carbs? Because like you said, keto.

Ali Shapiro [00:37:25]:
Oh, I have so many clients. They're like, I heard keto for my, you know, my menopause stomach now and stuff like that.

Philip Pape [00:37:32]:
It's the topic that I get the most trolls on YouTube about.

Ali Shapiro [00:37:37]:
Carbs have haters or carbs canceled?

Philip Pape [00:37:40]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anything yeah. So

Ali Shapiro [00:37:43]:
You can't say anything these days. People come on.

Philip Pape [00:37:46]:
It's a great way to get clicks, let me tell you. I mean, you should you should go to my podcast history and just search carbs and see which ones come up. Like, there's one I did called, like oh, there's there's something like the most underrated reason to eat more carbs, and it's to the muscle sparing thing you talked about. And just a whole bunch of them that talk about, like, you you wanna eat more carbs. More carbs, more muscle, a whole bunch of titles. Anyway, the main things about carbs are, number one, yeah, you should definitely not fear it if you're active if you're lifting weights, and that's the distinction people need to make. If you're sedentary, if you're not walking, if you're not lifting, just just think of yourself as living in a internal toxic environment for your whole life. Like, everything in your body is just deteriorating.

Philip Pape [00:38:26]:
No. I'm just kidding. No. If you're lifting weights, muscle is going to not only carbs are gonna spare protein, but more importantly, they're gonna give you the energy and the glycogen to actually push the weights in the gym, lift more reps, lift more weight, recover better, have less soreness, get to the gym next time, reduce injury. Like, I could go on and on. It's really about energy. It's it's energy. It's glycosy.

Philip Pape [00:38:49]:
You know, there's different energy systems. There's the ATP creatine phosphate system, which is the one that gets depleted, like, within seconds from an explosive movement, like doing a squat or doing a sprint. And then there's the glycolytic system that uses glucose. So that's your the sugar burning. And I don't mean that in a bad way. I mean that as if you lift weights and you're active, you need that energy because you're gonna burn it right away. You're gonna burn it. Right? You're not gonna you know, eventually, you get into a fat burning mode once you've depleted that.

Philip Pape [00:39:16]:
And at the end of the day, all that matters for weight is calories, but for building muscle and actually giving yourself the chance to perform your best, you need the carbs. Now the muscle sparing piece of it, it doesn't affect most people, I'm gonna say, because you either are in a surplus and you have enough calories and it's not a concern, or when you're in a fat loss phase, you should be eating a lot of protein anyway, and then the protein kind of covers you, if you will.

Ali Shapiro [00:39:47]:
Got it. Got it. Like, you can afford to pull some because you got yeah.

Philip Pape [00:39:51]:
You can afford to eat lower carbs. And so so let's cover both sides of the equation. We know from studies on bodybuilders who are in a surplus. Okay? And I know not everybody out there is a bodybuilder, but this still is it's it's physiology. A keto diet when compared to a moderate to high carb diet, when equated protein and calories, because the fat and carbs change. Right? One in one case, the fat's high, in one case, the carbs are high. Bodybuilders with a hot moderate to high carb diet could build up to five times as much muscle over muscle building phase as those with a low carb diet. Very important to understand.

Philip Pape [00:40:23]:
It doesn't mean you can't, and there are plenty of plant based and low carb bodybuilders out there. Right? It's just they have to be more strategic about it. But you, you know, you give yourself the best shot if you eat carbs. And I'm talking about a lot of carbs. Like, if you're eating, let's say, 3,000 calories, you're gonna have four or 500 grams of carbs. If you're eating 2,000 calories in a surplus, you're still gonna have probably 200 or more maybe around there, which for a lot of people is like, oh my god, 200 grams of carbs. Right? And that's like my starting point. In a deficit, when you're in fat loss phase, that's where it could look like a low carb diet.

Philip Pape [00:40:58]:
Because if you're a woman who burns 2,000 calories and you're in a 500 calorie deficit eating 1,500 calories, well, your protein's gonna take up, like, almost half those calories. Fat's gonna take up some minimum for hormonal health and energy. The rest is gonna be carbs. Well, you're probably down to, like, a hundred grams of carbs, maybe less. And that's more like low carb keto, but it's not because keto's good. It's because you only have so many calories to play with, so that's just where you are.

Ali Shapiro [00:41:23]:
Yeah. Who what you're saying is it's and this is what's hard to explain to people about blood sugar and all this stuff. It's relative. It's relative to what other macronutrients you're getting. It's not about being keto and low carb, which is like high fat and not a lot of protein. It's about, okay, the protein is what's taking it up so you can afford to pull back on the carb.

Philip Pape [00:41:41]:
Not the fat. Yep. One more thing about blood sugar. That that's another one too. I talk to somebody so I do these, like, free calls all the time, like rapid nutrition assessments or audits. And I had someone say, I was wearing a glucose monitor, and it showed me that I had blood spikes when I ate potatoes, so I stopped eating potatoes. And I'm like, okay. We need we need some education here out there because blood sugar spikes are a % normal.

Philip Pape [00:42:06]:
Every time you eat carbs, any form of sugar, which carb is, you're going to have a spike in your blood sugar. Now if you want to mitigate that, eat more balanced meals where you have carbs, mix of proteins and fats, be active, walk after your meals, and lift weights because lifting weights is the biggest like, if you lined up all the variables, that's the one that has the biggest impact on insulin sensitivity and basically mitigates all this stuff because your muscles are these massive sponges for glucose. You know? They're like, give me carbs, and the more you have, the more you could eat, and they don't have inflammatory effects or anything like that because you're using it. Like, that's the key. Now if you're a couch potato, again, and you're just eating a bunch of carbs, that's a big problem. They're gonna go to fat storage. You're gonna have inflammation and so on. Whatever carbs they are.

Philip Pape [00:42:48]:
I don't care if they're potatoes or M and M's. So blood sugar is not a concern if you are healthy and fit. That's just the the the be all, end all of it. Like, you're not gonna get diabetes if you're lifting weights and you're managing your body weight and eating whole foods just because you have blood sugar spikes.

Ali Shapiro [00:43:05]:
Well, and it's also those monitors can't figure out stress either. That's the thing. Stress will cause your blood sugar to spike. I mean, he or she had narrowed it down to potatoes maybe, but it's like, were you stressed about the carbs? You know what I mean?

Philip Pape [00:43:16]:
But well, and plus a lot it's long term numbers that matter more when it comes to blood sugar. Like your a one c your a one c. Right? It's not the the short term. That's people are people are that's the biohacking part that I don't like.

Ali Shapiro [00:43:29]:
So I wanna get into how muscle affects satiety, but you mentioned something about plant based, which so when you're talking about protein, are you talking about just animal protein versus or just all protein together? Because that's a big I have some clients who are vegetarian and they know it works. I have some clients who are vegetarian and I have this sneaking suspicion it's not working for them anymore. And then some are just confused. But when you think of building muscle and protein, are you just talking about all inclusive? Like, broccoli is five grams of protein. I know that because it helps me get my protein, but I'm also eating it with chicken or you know what I mean? Like, so how do you think of protein in terms of animal versus plant?

Philip Pape [00:44:06]:
Yeah. I think so I've had vegetarian and vegan clients. Vegan veganism is is very challenging, but also I find that vegan and vegetarian clients have a little more education and kind of I don't wanna say that they're more dialed in. I've had clients who really struggled, and we had to work on that. And I've also seen vegans who have a highly processed food diet of, you know, vegan products. But as long as you have all the amino acids, you're good. And so I think a lot of people who are on plant based diets kind of understand, basically, you need to combine foods or you need to have a diversity of foods like rice and beans. You combine them too, and you have all the amino acids.

Philip Pape [00:44:39]:
As long as you meet your total protein needs every day, and it doesn't even have to be evenly distributed, we know in the evidence, just having the total minimum protein from a diversity of animal and plant based sources should be good enough, and that's because they've kind of built in the buffer. And what I mean by that is, just so your listeners know, the target I use is point seven to one gram per pound of your body weight a day. And you could get more complicated, like, pounds of target body weight and based on lean mass and all this fun stuff. Just keep it simple.

Ali Shapiro [00:45:09]:
I like that you even did it in terms of grams and pounds instead of I hate when they give it in kilograms. And I'm like, is it 2.2? I don't know. I can't do the math. But you're saying pounds for everyone. That means take your weight, your full weight times point seven to one. So, like, if you wanted to be a hundred and fifty pounds, that would be I'm doing quick math here. A 20 grams?

Philip Pape [00:45:30]:
Sure. Yeah. A 20 to a 50 in that ballpark. Yeah. But if you if you ate a 20 grams of protein a day, even if it was from a lot of plants, even if it was quote unquote suboptimal, you probably really only need like 90 grams worth of the complete amino acids. And it's kind of like buffered in for you. So that's why I say, like, don't overthink it, but also don't be eating one food, you know, all the time. Like, you need to have diversity of food for other reasons too.

Philip Pape [00:45:55]:
We can get into that because I love all the findings now we're seeing about how fiber affects your gut, which then affects satiety in a in a in the opposite way that we think.

Ali Shapiro [00:46:05]:
Yeah. Oh, I've been telling people for I mean, well, at least in my groups, like, a healthy gut is actually about how many foods you can tolerate, not how many you can eliminate, but that's a whole other podcast. But I wanna get back to lifting because you talked about your muscles kind of sucking up that glucose. And so I think a lot of us understand we need muscle for aging. Okay. It helps some metabolism, but how does it affect satiety? How satisfied we feel from our food and preventing cravings? How does that work physiologically?

Philip Pape [00:46:35]:
What you mean having muscle?

Ali Shapiro [00:46:37]:
Yes. Why is it better to have? Cause what you've been talking about, maybe I'm filling in some blanks that I just kind of know from my knowledge, but what Philip has been talking about is kind of how to increase your metabolism. Right? You know, I used to think metabolism was like an organ or this entity, but it's just the energy exchange in your body. That's how I think it most simply. And when you have what he was talking about at the beginning, like excess fat and being under muscled, that fat isn't just neutral, it's metabolically active. If it's visceral, it's putting off inflammation, which contributes to insulin resistance. And you have might have, if you've been around them perimenopause, menopause space, you have heard of these terms and it's really hard to, in some ways, understand how it affects you day to day. But part of why satiety shifts over 40 is because you lose progesterone and estrogen.

Ali Shapiro [00:47:27]:
And so, essentially, what happens is your your cells lose insulin sensitivity and they become more resistant to insulin. So you can add to this metaphor if you want, Philip, but I say it's almost like your cells have put headphones on their ears and they can't hear the food in your system as much. And so it's harder to get that food into your system. And so what ends up happening is you don't feel satisfied from your food. And so when you're under 40, you don't got headphones on. Everything's just blowing in the club, you know? But this is different over 40. When you start to lose muscle mass, muscle helps you increase insulin sensitivity, decreasing insulin resistance, which makes you feel more satiety. So that's kind of what my leading question was.

Philip Pape [00:48:14]:
I mean, Ali, look, you guys listening to Ali, you've gotta keep following her because she knows her stuff like this. She's talking about hyperinsulinemia, right, which is, like, ultimately started from you mentioned stress. Stress, you're also if you're eating carbs but not working out, you chronically overproduce insulin, which then promotes visceral fat accumulation, and then it prompts, you know, inflammation and oxidative damage, and then it also makes you super hungry all the time. So, like, beautiful. Like, you just said it all right there. It's and and then I think your question was, like, how does lifting or muscle counteract that, Which it's it's exactly one of the top reasons to lift weights that we don't talk about enough when it comes to longevity, because it does improve your insulin sensitivity. Right? Immediately counteracts that. And by the way, I wanna talk about walking in the same breath.

Ali Shapiro [00:49:02]:
Yes. Yes. I like how you call it not sitting.

Philip Pape [00:49:05]:
Yes. Because sitting also is highly correlated with visceral fat accumulation as well. It's just signals that you're telling your body about what it needs to do in to survive in the environment that you're in. And so if the environment is you're totally sedentary. It's going to store that visceral fat. If you are walking, if you're lifting, it's actually gonna use more of that. It's gonna prioritize that because visceral fat is even more active than the other types of fat. Right? So it's actually gonna wanna tap into that first, which is amazing.

Philip Pape [00:49:34]:
Right? So people with more muscle are gonna have fewer sugar cravings. They're gonna have better insulin resistance. Their body handles more carbs more efficiently. So better appetite regulation, period. To the point where, I mean, I've experienced this firsthand. I'm doing it right now. It's like I sometimes can't eat enough. You know what I mean? Like, I can't I need to eat more sometimes.

Philip Pape [00:49:52]:
It also suppresses the hunger hormones. So, like, we know that's another reason not to sit because if you sit too long and get hungry just from satiety signals, a single session of resistance training will lower your ghrelin for several hours. You notice you don't really get as hungry from lifting as you do from, like, running.

Ali Shapiro [00:50:09]:
1000%.

Philip Pape [00:50:10]:
Or walking. Like, walking doesn't usually make you that I mean, it might even make you a little hungry, but nothing like, you know, chronic cardio would, which can increase hunger. And then we know that what else? Well, you could eat more when you have more muscle mass, right, because you have more metabolically active tissue on your body. And again, back to GLP-one, GLP-one and peptide YY, those are two more, two other hormones we learned a lot about. Those actually go up when you have more muscle mass. They go down with age, which is part of the reason people get worse and worse with age. It has to do with mitochondria and everything else. I don't even know remember all the science behind that.

Philip Pape [00:50:45]:
Did I miss anything? No. It's there's no reason not to lift people.

Ali Shapiro [00:50:50]:
Well, I think that's really interesting about the visceral fat. Well, as you were talking, I kind of you know, I do everything through the lens of safety, like both my emotional work, but also the physical safety of, like, getting the quality nutrition, getting enough nutrition, but the lifting, the sleep. And as you were talking, I'm like, oh, my God. If you have the energy to walk around, if you have the energy to build muscle, your physiology is saying we're resourced. We're safe here. You don't have to hoard all of this weight. Because again, if if you are someone who is like, I'm eating less and less and I'm gaining more weight, your body does not feel safe enough to use the the the material you're giving for for whatever reason. It'd be lots of reason.

Philip Pape [00:51:33]:
And and, you know, I would argue you're not living like humans evolved to live. Like, if you wanna throw in the evolutionary and ancestral component

Ali Shapiro [00:51:39]:
Are we still believing in that? Yes.

Philip Pape [00:51:41]:
Well, well, it's not like okay. So I don't I don't like to use that to make invalid leaps of logic like people do, but we evolved to, you know, as as persistence hunters, as walkers, as people who lift. Right? So, like, I always say think sprinting, walking, and occasional bouts of intense activity in play are, like, a good foundation for how to live your life as a human.

Ali Shapiro [00:52:05]:
Yeah. Well and can we go back to walking? Because this has been over 40 like, I feel like I did you know how when people become religious, they're like, I just just I feel like that way about walking. Like, yes, I walked my whole life. I've lived in cities the past twenty something years, but use it really. And and I think a lot of people listening really think of like, well, if it's not hard and I'm not sweaty and I'm not burning a lot of calories, it doesn't count in terms of exercise and movement. And I loved in one of your episodes, you talked about, like, just think of it as not sitting time. Right? Because the scientific word is like non exercise activity thermogenesis. But when it comes to health and weight and muscle maintenance and and all this stuff, you need to be active.

Ali Shapiro [00:52:48]:
Right? So what Phillips is saying is like we were built to be active and everything. But can we just talk of anything else you have to say about walking? Because this has been the biggest thing for me to like after lunch, if I'm especially if I haven't slept the night before and I'm like kind of feeling like something sweet and like, just go for a walk because I know the sugar might interfere with my sleep that night, but it's like the walk ends up making me feel more satiated. It gives me energy. And I love like, because I go outside and I I love being outside. It clears my head. And I found this through working with my sleep coach. Like, I I use it to really bring down my cortisol, like, throughout the day rather than just kind of, like, thinking you can just unwind in ten minutes before you go to bed by doing a few yoga poses. But I have just and on my days that I don't lift, I walk.

Ali Shapiro [00:53:33]:
I make sure I get like three or four miles in. And I just feel like walking is like, why aren't more people talking about this? Like, and again, I think some of it is the like, well, it's not hard. It doesn't burn enough calories. Although I notice on my Fitbit the days that I do walking, those are some of my highest, like, caloric burn days, which has been interesting to me because it doesn't feel hard. It's like, oh, I enjoy this, you know? So can you just speak a little bit more to why walking is so important for our metabolism, our mental health, all the things?

Philip Pape [00:54:03]:
Yeah. Where do I start? Right. I I do wanna give a shout out to a book that I recently read called Born to Walk by Mark Sisson and Brad Kearns. Now people may know Mark Sisson from the primal community. You may not agree with everything he says, but when it comes to walking, he knows his stuff. And Brad Kearns is actually on my podcast. His episode's coming out in a week or so. Well, I don't know when this is coming out, but it might already be out.

Philip Pape [00:54:26]:
But, anyway, these are guys who have a history of running at the elite level and have basically come to the conclusion and the evidence support supports it, that running is one of the worst things most people can do. Whereas walking and and I mean and I and I say that emphatically. If you're not an elite runner or an f endurance competitor who truly, you know, pursues it as a sport with the proper footwear, with the proper form. Ever since Nike invented cushion soles in the seventies, like, that has been a problem because people think they could just go out and heel strike and impact their joints in a very unhealthy way for miles and miles and miles on end. It's really bad. Anyway, I know you asked about walking, not running, but it's good to contrast the two even from a calorie perspective. Take everything out of the equation. If you look at the equations, and doctor Herman Pontzer has a really good section on this in his book Burn.

Philip Pape [00:55:19]:
He's the guy responsible for studying civilizations all over the world, including the Hadza hunter gatherer tribes, including, like, the Blue Zones, Western civilization. And he basically came to the conclusion that if you take two people of the same height and body composition, no matter how active they are, they're going to burn roughly the same amount of calories. And that's like, woah, that's mind blowing. And that's because our bodies compensate. Our bodies compensate for what we're doing. Now, there's a small window where as you move more, as you get off the couch and move more, you are going to burn more calories up to a point. And then it's going to start to level off because for every calorie you burn, your body says, I need this to take it from somewhere else. I'm going to down regulate your hormones.

Philip Pape [00:55:59]:
And sometimes it's very severe, right? If you're chronically doing cardio, chronically dieting, you lose your period, it gets really bad, right, down at that level. We see that with bodybuilders. So, but my point is he had a graph that showed how many calories per whatever per unit that you would burn between different activities. And with running, you burn the same amount of calories per mile no matter what speed you go because you're lifting yourself off the ground, so, like, the physics work out that way. With walking, remember, you're not lifting yourself off the ground. You're, like, pushing yourself at different stride speeds. The faster you go, the more you burn to the point where when you're, like, four miles an hour, you're burning almost as much as when you run, but without any of the negatives of running, without the recovery issues, without the impact, without the soreness.

Ali Shapiro [00:56:44]:
The dread? The dread of running.

Philip Pape [00:56:47]:
Without the dread, without the right. Like, yeah. If you think you enjoy running, question whether it's an addiction rather than an enjoyment. But anyway

Ali Shapiro [00:56:53]:
Or you're just doing it because you feel like you should, and it feels good because you burn calories versus the process.

Philip Pape [00:56:59]:
Yes. So to to your point, how long can you run versus how long can you walk? You can walk forever. Humans are meant to walk. We can we can walk thirty, forty, 50 thousand miles in or steps in a day if you wanted to. Hunter gatherer tribes put in about 20. You know, not a crazy number, but it's still a lot. If you go to Disney World, you're gonna put in 20 or 25, right, like walking all day unless you take one of those carts. Don't get me started.

Philip Pape [00:57:21]:
Just from a calorie burn perspective, you could actually burn a lot more walking because you could do a lot more of it, and it's not gonna impede your recovery. When you run, you then get hungrier, you compensate by eating, and you compensate by moving less the rest of the day, and you actually become lazier. I've seen a lot of runners who become lazy lazy elsewhere in their life because they're like, I did my run, and now the rest of the day, I'm lazy.

Ali Shapiro [00:57:42]:
It wears on a lot of I deserve this eating too because I did working out that I hated.

Philip Pape [00:57:48]:
That's right. We're saying this so that people listening are like, I can ditch that, and I can instead walk and I can lift weights and lifting weights can be really fun and empowering once you start to make progress. But that's just the car, the calories. We know it regulates appetite as well. I mean, you talked about walking to manage hunger and also manage blood sugar.

Ali Shapiro [00:58:08]:
Yeah. Hasn't it shown that even, like, five minutes, ideally, you do at least fifteen, but it brings your blood sugar back down to pre meal levels, which is important in terms of satiety so that you're not crashing.

Philip Pape [00:58:18]:
You know what else it does? Because you mentioned cravings is it blunts dopamine. So the irony is walking can be pleasurable, but not in the dopamine way that it's not in the really fast, like, addictive nature of dopamine.

Ali Shapiro [00:58:33]:
It's a slow dopamine?

Philip Pape [00:58:34]:
No. It's not dopamine. It it it blunts dopamine. It's more of I don't know if it's the endorphins or just whatever, but it blunts it reduces sugar cravings by blunting dopamine.

Ali Shapiro [00:58:45]:
Interesting.

Philip Pape [00:58:46]:
You know, it's not it's not an addictive high from walking. You don't really get an addictive high from walking. You know what I'm saying?

Ali Shapiro [00:58:52]:
Oh, I see. But what you're saying, almost like, but what comes up must go down. So if you're getting an addictive high from running, but then you're gonna crash.

Philip Pape [00:59:00]:
Oh, yeah. Exactly. Because you're gonna have that's what I meant.

Ali Shapiro [00:59:03]:
Interesting. That's so interesting. Yeah. Because if anyone's listening to this, I mean, we've gotten to some technicalities and all this stuff. And I I just want people to realize, like, if you wanna do anything for satiety, for your health, like, walking is the best place to start. Like, if you're just like, I don't know how to lift yet. I'm not ready to go to a gym. Like, just start walking.

Ali Shapiro [00:59:22]:
And it doesn't even have to be for an hour at a time. Start ten minutes in the morning, get your sunlight and your and your steps in. Go after lunch, go after dinner. If you can. Like three, ten minute walks will be do amazing wonders for you. I just I just think it's so underrated and it's so I love it.

Philip Pape [00:59:39]:
I do. And I think I think people make excuses, but there are a hundred different ways I can rattle off right now for how to walk more. And half of them won't involve changing your routine. Right? Like, habit stacking what you're already doing.

Ali Shapiro [00:59:51]:
You don't work out clothes. I half the time, I'm walking in my work in my work clothes, you know, in between clients.

Philip Pape [00:59:57]:
Or you walk as part of what you're doing. Like, if you can walk while pacing on the phone, walk while watching Netflix, watch while walk while reading. I mean, you don't wanna you don't wanna be unsafe, but, you know, I'll I'll pace around the house. If I have to so if I have to scroll social or if I'm doing, like if I have to do the dreaded Instagram posts or whatever for my work, that's when I'm gonna either be I'm gonna be walking. I'll either be doing it between, like, sets in the gym, so now I'm, like, triple habit stacking, or I will just be, like, okay, I'm not gonna sit and do this because I can easily walk and do this. Yeah. Walking, if you're trying to burn fat, like walking is one of the best ways to burn fat.

Ali Shapiro [01:00:33]:
It is one of the best things you can do for your health, like hands down in so many ways.

Philip Pape [01:00:38]:
For your metabolism, for for even your energy systems, it, like, teaches your body to better utilize fats and carbs, which means that when you go to build muscle or lose fat, you're gonna build or lose more of the thing you want to build or lose. It's incredible.

Ali Shapiro [01:00:50]:
Yeah. Alright. So you have just shared so much with us. I do wanna bring up some questions because I do have some clients who are on GLP ones. And so some people come to me already on them. Some people are considering them. So I have some clients who I'm helping. I obviously don't prescribe, but I've really been a big advocate in them microdosing them, you know, doing much slower so they're not on that crash diet.

Ali Shapiro [01:01:13]:
And that's been working well for, like, oh my god. The results have been great. But for people coming off of them, because most because eventually, like all medication, they probably will stop working. And and at least with my clients, like, they're doing all the things. Right? Like, they're lifting, we're working on their emotional eating, like, all that stuff. What you've talked about and just to, like, emphasize this again, what GLPs do so well is they make people feel satiated. Okay? And what Philip and I have been talking about today is there's natural ways to do that. Get protein, build muscle, walk, sleep, manage your stress.

Ali Shapiro [01:01:45]:
I know it feels like a lot.

Philip Pape [01:01:47]:
Eat fiber. Yep.

Ali Shapiro [01:01:48]:
Eat fiber. Yeah. Eat fiber, nurture your microbiome, all of these things. So part of why when I'm working with clients and they're they're asking for my opinion and we're they're starting to go on them, and I say, like, hey, just, like, start at the lowest lowest dose and think of it more as a supplement instead of, like, the magic bullet because as or some people wanna start on them and then do these other things in the meantime as a bridge. So I'm sharing every this with everyone because what you're trying to do is bridge the gap that the chasm between what the drugs are doing and what you can do naturally so that when you come off of them, oh, I just feel a little less satisfied than, oh my god. I was doing all of this work. Right? So you we had talked about when I was when I wanted to have you on, I'm like, hey. You're working with clients, some who are on, some are.

Ali Shapiro [01:02:36]:
But how do you advise clients to come off of them? Because that's something that, like, I feel is I've been saying to my clients, like, we can we wanna start adding some calories, but slowly because you don't you wanna kindle your metabolic fire, but you don't wanna, like, put it out. So how do you navigate helping clients get off of them once they have everything else dialed in?

Philip Pape [01:02:57]:
Quick little story first in that. One of my earliest clients, she was in her sixties. She never lifted before, and I helped her start using a barbell and lifting, and she's, like, super into it. She's, like, four times as strong as ever in her sixties. Okay? And eating right, tracking, blah blah blah. And then we went into a fat loss phase, and she was taking Ozempic for diabetes because and I wasn't even familiar with it at the time. This was, like, 2022, well before any of these drugs came out. And she would always rate her hunger as a 10 out of 10, as in, like, no hunger because I I have scales of one to 10 for biofeedback.

Philip Pape [01:03:33]:
And I remember not thinking too much about it early on because I didn't know about the drug. And then I researched it at the time and said, woah. This thing is for diabetics, but the reason it helps is because it reduces their appetite. And her it was like 10 out of ten, ten out of 10. And we were on a pretty aggressive diet, you know, like within the range that I would take a client, but even more aggressive than I would think that she could handle because of this drug. And I'm like, this is incredible. But she said, I'm gonna go off of it with my doctor's advice because the doctor saw how she was now no longer so she was pre diabetic. She wasn't diabetic.

Philip Pape [01:04:08]:
So she was no longer pre diabetic, which is incredible, right? But then when she came off of it, the hunger just ramped up like insane. It was like she felt like a dragon, right? Like she could just

Ali Shapiro [01:04:17]:
Was she on the highest dose?

Philip Pape [01:04:19]:
Whatever it used to be prescribed at for diabetics. Although I know Ozempic is a lower dose than some of the later drugs when they turned it into a weight loss drug, then they increased the dose even further. So I said, Hey, it's totally up to you. It's outside my scope. You're working with your medical practitioner, but we could either take you out of the diet, or if you're going back on these, just let me know. And she's like, yeah. I just wanted to try it for, you know, like, a month because the doctor said you gotta let it work out of your system. And she's like, yeah.

Philip Pape [01:04:46]:
I can't handle this. Let me go back on it just for the hunger aspect. So at the time, I didn't, you know, know what to do as a coach about that. Later on, when the drugs came around, I started seeing more and more clients on them, and I figured out what to do with them. This worked for me. I just think of them as inverse curves or lines. You've got the GLP one, and you've got your calories. Right? And so if you're in a dieting phase with the GLP one, which is probably what you are because you're losing weight, right, you you wanna titrate that down as you come into maintenance and do everything over, like, a four week period.

Philip Pape [01:05:20]:
Like, that's the way I've seen work really well is, like, change the dose, four weeks. Change the dose, four weeks. Off, four weeks. Surplus, four weeks. And then see how you go. And so Surplus of calories. A surplus of calories.

Ali Shapiro [01:05:34]:
How many extra calories? Like a hundred or 200? Are you trying to get back to whatever the basic metabolic rate is on the calculator?

Philip Pape [01:05:43]:
Well, when they when they come out of the dieting phase, I set them to maintenance. So we're not going into the surplus yet. So those calories are gonna be whatever we've tracked their real metabolism at that point based on how fast they were losing weight versus what they were eating. So it's their actual metabolism roughly. It's not like a calculator. And And then we have so we have them bring up the calories. So let's say they were in a 500 calorie deficit on Ozempic, and they're titrating down. They're getting used to how the hunger feels.

Philip Pape [01:06:09]:
Their hunger is going up. They're titrating down again. And as we're doing that, we're we're glide pathing in on the deficit. We're going a smaller and smaller deficit. Right? And now they're off. Now we're at maintenance. Right? And then we we monitor we monitor their hunger. If you have a client who is now lean enough where they're willing to do a muscle building phase, I like to go right into that because now it truly offsets the hunger signals for a while to let your brain normalize.

Philip Pape [01:06:35]:
You know what I mean? So it's just kinda like doing the opposite and having it kinda flow together in that sense. You know?

Ali Shapiro [01:06:42]:
If you're listening somebody and you wanna try to think about this, I think what Philip's saying is if you are, you know, losing like, I'm thinking of my client who has stuck to the the the original like, the first dose. Right? So she's losing on average a pound a week after even six months. Right. Which is like a very healthy, healthy amount. So she's essentially at a 500 calorie deficit. So you're saying, okay, have her maybe take the dose every other week, go down to, like, two fifty or something. Right? Like and then Yeah.

Philip Pape [01:07:14]:
When the dose comes down, the calories go up. The dose comes to zero, and then the calories go to maintenance at a minimum. The the surplus piece is more of a bonus if you need it or if you're, like, ready to go in a muscle building phase, you might as well jack up the calories at the same time so that you have, like, a super smooth landing.

Ali Shapiro [01:07:32]:
Yeah. Well, and this brings back to you, like, piqued my interest because, again, this is not this, like, cycling and all this stuff of like, the nitty gritty of weight loss is not, like, my specialty. So you're saying that you think for women who wanna put on muscle, men as well, but a six to nine month surplus? Like, is that what you're saying with both if you're coming off of GLPs, but also if you're not on them and you wanna build muscle, how do you calculate how many calories to eat in order to build muscle? And I'm sure they have to be targeted calories. They can't just be like, we're Super Bowl chili. You know?

Philip Pape [01:08:07]:
Well, that's chili's a good I like chili, actually. I used to make a really spicy beanless chili back in my the day when I didn't eat beans. It was really good. And and I had some cocoa in there too, you guys.

Ali Shapiro [01:08:19]:
Oh, wow. Fancy.

Philip Pape [01:08:21]:
Red bell peppers. Good stuff.

Ali Shapiro [01:08:23]:
Yeah. Mine had red bell peppers and corn. It was actually my dad loved it. It was so good. I was thinking sour cream and cheese, but I was like, probably not a ton of dairy.

Philip Pape [01:08:32]:
My wife loves the Mexican stuff, like the beans and corn and stuff. I I'm just not a big fan of those. I like I like meat and vegetables, you know, like green vegetables, onions. But yeah. If we can share an episode with your audience, episode two fifty seven. If we share nothing else, I wanna share that episode with your audience. It's two fifty seven. It's called the most underrated fat loss secret making you fatter and sabotaging muscle gain two.

Philip Pape [01:08:53]:
Nice clickbaity title. But spoiler alert, it's all about gaining and why you probably need to gain and how how to do it. So but at a high level, step one is you have to know your maintenance calories. Right? You have to know so if you're gonna go in a building phase, you've probably been tracking for some time and, like, kinda know what you're doing a little bit. At least you've gone through fat loss and maintained your weight or something like that. You're also strength training. You're also eating enough protein and walking. Always walk.

Philip Pape [01:09:20]:
Even in a gaining phase, you don't slow down and become a sloth. Then the calories are gonna be so think of it this way. In fat loss, like, you had mentioned 3,500 calories for a pound of fat. Right? Yeah.

Ali Shapiro [01:09:33]:
Yeah. I thought you were gonna say eat that many. I was like, thanks.

Philip Pape [01:09:35]:
No. No. No. No. So I'm just normalizing for people. So when we calculate fat loss, we calculate 300 3,500 calories per pound. Right? When you calculate muscle gain, you gotta remember that you're gaining some muscle and some fat. So ideally, you're gaining at least a half, maybe two thirds of it as muscle when you're more of a beginner, and then like a third of it as fat.

Philip Pape [01:09:55]:
So, if you assume fiftyfifty, the number to use is 2,500 calories per pound. So, just a simple rule of thumb, and I actually did a podcast just about that a long time ago, saying, look, just start with 2,500 calories. And that way for every pound you're going to gain, just use that number for your calories, for your surplus. Right? So if you want to gain a pound a week, it's going to be 2,500 divided by seven, whatever that is, as opposed to 3,500 divided by because then you're going to go too fast. And the reason for that is because muscle's denser than fat. So when you do the the mathity math, you get you get 2,500. You know, you get a little bit less energy per the volume than you would when you're losing because of the denser muscle. So it it's I use an app with my clients that calculates it for them, so I don't even have to calculate it, to be honest.

Philip Pape [01:10:43]:
But what then you can do is if you're going if you're gaining too fast or gaining too slow, you can then just modify it, right, based on how your your, metabolism responds. I think that's all you were asking about is the calories, and I just took a long time to answer that.

Ali Shapiro [01:10:56]:
Right. But so if but if someone's adding in 2,500 calories a week, it mostly should be protein if they're trying to build muscle. Right? Or or should it be the same?

Philip Pape [01:11:03]:
Okay. Okay. So this is a good one. Protein is roughly the same whether you're gaining or losing. So it's roughly about that gram per pound.

Ali Shapiro [01:11:12]:
Oh. Oh, that's right. Okay. That's right. Right. Right. Yeah.

Philip Pape [01:11:14]:
Yeah. And so then the fats are gonna scale a little bit. So I usually peg fats to, like, a percentage of a calorie. So I like to say 30 as a ballpark. If you come from the keto world and you like a lot of fat, you can go up to 40. If you're more of a low fat person, you can go to 20. But, you know, anchor it on some percentage, the rest is carbs. So when you do that, like, you said that you diet on 1,800, Ali, so you probably would gain on, like, 25 or 2,700 or something like that.

Philip Pape [01:11:40]:
Right?

Ali Shapiro [01:11:40]:
Yeah. That's a lot of food.

Philip Pape [01:11:42]:
Yeah. Well, what's your what's your, like, maintenance calories? I

Ali Shapiro [01:11:44]:
mean, I think my maintenance is, like, around 2,100.

Philip Pape [01:11:47]:
20 one. Okay. So you'd probably be at, like, twenty two fifty or something like that.

Ali Shapiro [01:11:51]:
Oh, God. Okay, that's not that much more.

Philip Pape [01:11:53]:
Yeah, it's not as much as you think. Although, some people don't push enough, especially women who are afraid of gaining too much fat, and it's a whole thing that I cover when I talk about this topic, is if you go too slow you're just gonna keep hitting a wall and you're actually going to gain the muscle. You're just going to kind of hang around there. So, it's got to be aggressive enough and aggressive enough is I would recommend 0.4 to 0.5 of your body weight a week. So if you kind of do the math, if you weigh one fifty, that's three quarters of a pound a week. So that comes out to be about three pounds a month ish. And then you would do that for six to nine months. So six months would be 18 pounds.

Philip Pape [01:12:36]:
So it's probably gonna be less than that for a woman, to be honest. You probably are gonna gain 10 to 15 pounds over six months. And then of that 10 to 15 pounds, at least seven to 10 is gonna be muscle first time you do it. So So think about it. If you gain 15 pounds, seven and eight let's say eight is muscle. That means seven of it is fat. Now you just have if you just lose seven pounds of fat, you're gonna be heavier than you were, but you're gonna be leaner. That's what I love about the whole that's what I love about the whole thing.

Ali Shapiro [01:13:04]:
So that's why you have to really understand body composition, not just weight. Like how I landed that plane?

Philip Pape [01:13:09]:
You landed it. Pick pick any female, like, athlete or somebody you aspire to look like who looks fit and lean and tone, whatever words you use, other than, like, a massive powerlifter or something, like an athlete, they weigh probably 20 to 30 pounds heavier than you think they weigh because of the muscle. That's why scale weight becomes meaningless eventually. Yeah. Going back to our very first topic.

Ali Shapiro [01:13:32]:
Yeah. You're saying all this, so I'm like, this sounds like a lot of work. Like, if you wanna do this, go work with Philip. Have someone, like, do the mathy math for you and tell you what to do. I'm like, I this is where I'm like, peace out. Like, I'm fine.

Philip Pape [01:13:47]:
I look. I have my own coaches because I get stuck. It's like, yeah. You need it definitely helps to have someone guide you even if you just do it one time and then take suck in all the education, and then you could do it on your own. You know?

Ali Shapiro [01:13:58]:
That's true. Yeah. Yeah. So where can people find you? We'll link to your website in the show notes, but tell people where where do you like to hang out and and where can people find you? Yeah.

Philip Pape [01:14:06]:
I would say Instagram as far as socials, so at wits and weights. But other than that, if you follow my podcast, there's, like, so many ways to contact me there, and I would I would encourage you to just do that and, like, suck up the education. And then when you're like, hey. I gotta do this. Then you reach out to me, and we can work together.

Ali Shapiro [01:14:21]:
Sounds great. Thank you so much. I learned so much, and I'm I'm so glad that we spent so much time about walking. Go out and take a walk, everyone. Hopefully, you're walking while you listen to this.

Philip Pape [01:14:30]:
Such great questions. I love talking this stuff. That I'm glad you didn't just ask me about my story because I love digging into these details instead.

Ali Shapiro [01:14:39]:
Yeah. Thank you so much, Philip.

Philip Pape [01:14:40]:
Thanks, Ali.