Unlocking Fat Loss With Biofeedback Signals

Philip Pape 0:01

If you track your food , your weight , a few other things , but you still feel stuck with fat loss and you wonder is there something I'm missing ? This episode is for you . Most people focus just on the scale or a few other metrics beyond that , but your body is complex . It is constantly sending feedback that could speed up your progress if you know where to look . So today I'm sharing my complete 610 biofeedback system that I use with clients to show you how to learn about those signals that can unlock faster progress , to create sort of a dashboard for fat loss . Most importantly , you'll learn how to stop flying blind and start making Welcome to Wits and Weights , the show that blends evidence and engineering to help you build smart , efficient systems to achieve your dream physique .

Philip Pape 0:57

I'm your host , philip Pabe , and today we're taking your fat loss game to a new level . We're going to harness the power of biofeedback , not just the basic tracking although we will establish that but a complete system used to organize and act on crucial data , especially when you're not quite sure what's going on from that top level surface feedback . Picture a pilot with all of his gauges or her gauges and instruments flying through the sky . I actually have a pilot's license I haven't flown in years , but we were taught to look at multiple instruments . I think there are at least six that we looked at , not just airspeed or altitude , and we're doing this because we want to trust the instruments but also correlate them and ensure a safe , efficient flight and kind of understand okay , if this instrument's broken over here , we can trust these other three to tell us what's going on and your body is similar , right , the scale is one of those many instruments your food , your lifting performance just a couple of those instruments . And when you know how to track and interpret all the other signals , especially the biofeedback during fat loss , that is how you unlock the knowledge of what's going on , the confidence of what's going on with your body , so you can make faster progress , and then that's what allows you to get through the plateaus and have fewer setbacks .

Philip Pape 2:13

Now , before we get into it , if you want some help implementing what we talk about today and just chat about your situation and what's holding you back and where you want to go , book a free 15 minute rapid nutrition assessment with me . It is not a sales call . Anybody you ask and I could give you references knows that all I do is try to help you on the call , give you some clarity , send you on your way with some actions , and it's up to you . If you want to implement or if you want to reach out for more help , that's fine . Or go to our Facebook group or join our Physique University , I don't care . As long as I'm helping you go from this lack of clarity to a little bit more clarity and steps you can take . So if you book that call it's called a rapid nutrition assessment we can identify what metrics from today's episode you should focus on first and then help you create a clear action plan . If that's something you want to do , just click in the show notes to schedule your call , or go to witsandweightscom and click the giant button in the top right . All right , that's enough plugging for today .

Philip Pape 3:10

Let's get into today's episode and break it down into three segments . First , I want to cover the core six biofeedback metrics that I recommend everybody track , no matter what . All my clients use this in our check-in forms and it's kind of that essential minimum foundational knowledge for fat loss . If you're not even tracking these , that is huge low-hanging fruit for you . Second , I'm gonna introduce the what's called balanced scorecard framework , something I learned in my engineering career and show how it helps you organize your tracking into some different lanes or different perspectives and make the data actionable for you . And then we're going to look at the 10 advanced metrics that can accelerate your progress when you strategically and that means you don't need them all you may not need any of them , but in some cases , individual circumstances call for pulling out the big guns , and that is why I'm putting these all together today six , 10 , the six that everyone should track and 10 that you may want to consider for more advanced situations . All right , so let's talk about the six foundational signals that everyone should track during fat loss , and you , as an individual , might track other things beyond this . That's totally cool with you . This is what I want everybody to track as a start .

Biofeedback Metrics for Optimal Fat Loss

Philip Pape 4:31

Number one stress your overall stress level . A scale of one to 10 for pretty much all of these could be helpful . Some of these metrics we talk about will have other ways to measure them or we'll have multiple sub measures that you could potentially use , but not to make it complicated , we're just going to go through each one . So stress high stress is one of the biggest saboteurs of fat loss . It ramps up your cortisol . It makes um fat , you know . It makes you store belly fat . It slows down recovery . There are so many reasons . Stress is the number one thing on this list because high stress is going to prevent fat loss , no matter how hard you cut your calories , how how hard you train , how hard you do anything else . So stress is number one .

Philip Pape 5:06

Number two is sleep , so almost as if not more important than stress for a lot of people , both the quantity and the quality . And again , for my clients , I ask them to rate on a scale of one to 10 , but I talk about both . Are you getting enough sleep ? Are you getting enough quality sleep , restful ? Some clients will go to a deeper level than that and track their , you know , with an aura ring and track REM and deep sleep and stuff . But just start at the top . How is your sleep in general ? Because that impacts your hunger hormones , that impacts your recovery , your cognitive performance , your muscle building , everything All right ?

Philip Pape 5:40

Number three is hunger . So again , you can rate this one to 10 , and when you are not in a deficit , hunger should be rated pretty high , as in you're not very hungry . One here is very hungry . A 10 is not hungry at all and you can tell if your deficit is too appropriate or too aggressive . Too appropriate is appropriate or too aggressive based on sometimes based on this alone . If I see a client's hunger trending downward , it's a proactive signal that we're about ready for a refeed , a diet break , or to let off the gas a little bit on the deficit . And it would behoove you to be very aware of that as you move forward , so that you can be successful and modify how you eat , what you eat and the dieting itself , all right .

Philip Pape 6:27

Number four is energy . Now , energy is kind of a vague term , right , but what I'm referring to here is your energy level throughout the day , especially around workouts . Now , we all have that 3 pm . Well , many of us have that 3 pm crash . Right , it comes from cortisol and you're tired and you're working all day . But we want to distinguish the fluctuations in energy levels from the baseline and try to understand what is causing it to go up and down . Right , low energy signals , maybe too large deficit , not enough carbs , not enough food around your workout , you know , training too hard or too often All of that can be helpful . Too hard or too often , all of that can be helpful .

Philip Pape 7:07

Number five is recovery . So I look at this as a corollary to energy , but frankly it's a corollary to sleep and stress as well . They're all related right . Hence my pilot metaphor earlier . These are all part of system . So recovery is how well you're bouncing back from training , how much or little soreness you have . I don't want people to be chasing soreness . Once you get into a program and you're consistent with it , you shouldn't have a lot of soreness and you should be able to recover and bounce back to the gym and really go after the next session .

Philip Pape 7:36

Poor recovery means something with volume , something with nutrition . It could be because of a lack of sleep or too much stress . So again , it's all tied together . It could be because of a lack of sleep or too much stress . So again , it's all tied together . And then the last one here is digestion . Gut health is so crucial for nutrient absorption , for revealing food intolerances , for whether you have enough fiber . Are you eating a diverse variety of foods ? There's a lot of things that our gut can tell us , and so when I say digestion , it's at a very high level . Are you bloated ? Are you gassy ? How are your bowel movements right , things like that . And then you can drill down from any of those . So it's pretty simple .

Philip Pape 8:14

But a lot of you probably aren't even tracking these at like a weekly level and all you have to do is , on a scale one to 10 , track these . That's what I , we want to be able to kind of organize and interpret all this data . Because it's one thing to have the data , that's step one . It's another thing to know what the heck to do with it , right , and what is important versus what is temporary . Let's say , for example , if you've got all your family over this week and your whole routine has changed and your whole food situation is different , it's going to affect all of your biofeedback measures , and yet it all may be irrelevant because the context , the environment , has changed for that brief moment . But if something becomes more chronic , that is more of an indicator . Similarly , something might decline , like hunger , might get worse during a dieting phase , and yet it's perfectly normal , or it's a trade-off that you're willing to make , right . Or if I'm your coach and I see hunger goes from no hunger at all 10 , to a seven and it stays there , I'm not that worried , right . But if you start getting into six and five and four territory , okay , then we have to have the conversation of what needs to change .

Philip Pape 9:26

So the engineering framework I'm going to bring into this today is called the balanced scorecard , and it's just a way to track performance across multiple dimensions . In the aerospace world we had something called the control tower , right , funny ? You know fancy names , silly names for these things . Just imagine pillars or columns . If you're a spreadsheet person , you could just imagine these as being different columns of things that you measure and then the rows are the specific metrics . Okay , that's all I'm going to talk about spreadsheets today , I promise

Four Pillars of Health Metrics

Philip Pape 9:57

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Philip Pape 9:57

So why don't we apply this ourselves to fat loss ? And we can use four scores or four perspectives , four pillars , let's say . The first pillar is your physical health . These are your direct physiological markers . The second is your mental and emotional well-being , that's , your psychological state , because that is very telling . The third is your recovery and adaptation . This is how well your body handles the stress . It's a little different from the physical or the physiological . And then the fourth one is your sustainability and your progress . These are factors that affect your adherence , which so many programs and people and podcasters neglect when they talk about things like weight loss is adherence . So if we have a framework like that . We can not just focus on one thing and get obsessed with it and neglect others . We think of it as a system and we can organize our thoughts .

Philip Pape 10:52

So guess what I'm gonna do for you ? I'm gonna share with you the 10 advanced metrics that I thought about as the ones that I most likely go to with clients beyond those six that you would find helpful . There could be 20 beyond this that I might reach to in advanced situations , but I think these 10 are very important and I'm going to break them down by the four pillars that we just talked about . So let's start with physical , and I'm going to give you three advanced metrics here . The first one is bloating and GI distress , and this is distinct from the digestion that we talked about earlier . This is actually a more advanced tracking of your meal timing , the combinations of food that you eat , and then the stress responses , all of which trigger discomfort . So you're really creating a correlational tracking mechanism to track , potentially , food intolerances and food combinations and whatnot .

Philip Pape 11:50

And I've had clients who have advanced conditions where they can't handle certain types of foods . They need low FODMAP diets , low histamine diets , something like that , but rather than just restrict everything or go through a random elimination diet . We can actually go the other direction , so to speak , and actually start tracking what happens with your response as you eat what you eat , to really dial in on what might be causing the discomfort . So that can be helpful . I know it sounds kind of vague , but it is an advanced metric to identify hidden intolerances , to optimize your meal composition , your balance , for whatever the issue is for you . It might be nutrient absorption , right . It might be your gut health , it might be an intolerance or a condition that you have , so bloating and GI distress . Tracked against timing , food combinations and stress responses that trigger them . All right .

Philip Pape 12:43

The second one , under physical , is your skin health . If your skin complexion changes or you have acne patterns or skin dryness , these can and they come out of nowhere . These can reveal some sort of systemic inflammation , autoimmune conditions , nutrient deficiencies , hormonal shifts , something like that . And oftentimes people will go to a band-aid for that , like I'm just going to have collagen protein or something . But we really want to understand when something changes with our body that there could be something going on . But we really want to understand when something changes with our body that there could be something going on .

Philip Pape 13:15

And the third advanced metric here is hydration , not just the you know yes , you should drink sufficient water and monitor your intake but also look at signs like the color of your urine , your thirst patterns , your skin elasticity , and so that's why I bring this up along with skin health back to back , because your skin can also tell you a bit about your hydration . And , of course , hydration impacts your other top level biometrics hunger , energy recovery . So if we're having an issue there and all the other things are checked off , I'm going to look at hydration . And hydration can sometimes be more complicated than just the amount of water you eat . It could be what you drink . It could be what you're eating , your source of electrolytes when you're eating and drinking this stuff . Some people they might drink , quote unquote enough , but they do it all at one time of the day . There's a lot that goes on there .

Philip Pape 14:02

So bloating , ngi , distress , skin health and hydration are three advanced metrics you could consider for physical , for mental and emotional . The first one here is a big one and some coaches I know have this as a top line metric . I actually have it as a slightly more advanced metric because and let me just tell you what it is it's mood and mental clarity , and I think a lot of times my clients will talk about this anyway as part of their wins , their challenges , their roadblocks , their energy , their recovery , and there's no need to ask yet . Another separate question about mood is what I used to have it in there and I actually got rid of it because of that reason . It was kind of redundant . But for some clients and for some of you listening , tracking things like your level of focus , your alertness , your emotional stability throughout the day you know that are that aren't correlated with things like a menstrual cycle or any other condition . Sudden mood changes , brain fog can signal that your nutrition plan is affecting what's going on , or your training or what have you before things stall and you can do something about it . And then the next two you're going to understand why these are all part of mental and emotional and some of these can be interrelated

Key Metrics for Successful Fat Loss

Philip Pape 15:11

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Philip Pape 15:11

The next one , which is the fifth advanced metric , is body image perception . Uh , yeah , you can track that . You're . It's . It's your subjective view of progress , like how your clothes fit and how you look in the mirror and your progress photos and all of that how you feel about your body . You can track that . Now be careful , right this if , if you have , um , an existing issue with body dysmorphia or some unhealthy emotional patterns around body image , that's outside my scope of practice . I'm strictly talking about a self-rated perception to kind of get awareness on that and reveal whether that's tied to your patterns , like your eating patterns , and that's really all I'm going to say about that , to be honest . But it is something worth tracking .

Philip Pape 15:54

And then the next one , under mental and emotional , is your cravings . Now , this is important because I just had a back and forth with a client the other day and we were talking about hunger and she kept saying , well , it's not hunger , it's not hunger , it's cravings . And I said , okay , I get what you're saying . There is a distinction there , absolutely Thank . Thank you for clarifying the language we want to use , because hunger , desire for something that's not necessarily food , that could be a craving , even though it could be food , so intense desires for foods or tastes for example , salty , sweet but also a desire for something to reduce the stress that you have , right , whatever the trigger might be . And this can indicate an emotional need that needs attention . It could also indicate the need for a strategy , a simple strategy in place , some level of tracking or pattern , interrupt or changing up your environment or having a food swap . I mean , there are a lot of different strategies for this . It's a whole separate topic , and I think I might even do a upcoming episode that goes through my hunger scale and diary to dive into the difference between physical and psychological hunger , which falls in this category . And then we get to the third pillar here , which is recovery and adaptation , and I have three here as well . So this brings us to overall number seven of the ten heart rate variability , hrv .

Philip Pape 17:14

For those of you who wear a watch or a ring , you can measure your HRV , which is effectively a measure of your nervous system's recovery state . Low HRV can sometimes predict that you're going to have stress from overtraining before the performance actually drops , and so what it could tell you ? And it's funny because your ring might actually say , hey , we noticed your HRV is low , you may not be in a great state to train Now . I take those with a big grain of salt , because the last thing I want you to do is you feel great , you've got energy , you're good to go , and your ring says , man , maybe you shouldn't train today , and then you don't train . That's the last thing I want to do it's more of correlating this with the other indicators of potential overtraining or excessive stress . And if you know , you've just been pounded into the wall by life stress , by chronic stress . It's good to be aware of that proactively , to see if you need to modify your training in some way to accommodate that , not necessarily skipping your training session , but modifying it in some way . And that's where a good coach can really help you figure out what that might look like .

Philip Pape 18:20

Number eight , which is the second one in recovery and adaptation , is your libido , your sex drive , your sex function . And again , I used to have this as one of my main metrics , but it's very situational . Let's just say it's a sensitive topic , right , and sexual drive and function are an indicator of hormonal health , right ? Testosterone , for example . And your stress load too . If you have too much stress or you're excessively dieting , you're getting burned out . That's going to affect your libido and it's tied to other things like energy recovery and so on . So it's a good thing for some of you to track . Many of you don't even have to . You know , uh , you know it kind of intuitively , but you can do it objectively .

Philip Pape 19:00

And then number nine , which is the last one under recovery and adaptation here is your menstrual or hormonal symptoms . So this is men and women . For women , it's your cycle , you know , tracking uh , how regular it is and what symptoms do you have associated with it , either on a regular basis , like as your baseline , which can be helpful for you , or if you're working with a coach , to understand if any modifications have to be made or deviations to that , which is also really important . And then for all clients , for men as well , just monitoring any symptoms that are important to you that would suggest an imbalance with your hormones , understanding that during fat loss you're going to have a down regulation in all your hormones anyway . So again , you have to take it as part of the system . And then the last category here , and also the last metric . The last category is sustainability and progress .

Philip Pape 19:49

And so the metric that I want you to track is lifestyle flexibility , how well your plan adapts to your real life . Now , I don't actually track this as a number with clients . I don't have clients tell me oh , I was an eight this week on lifestyle flexibility . We can tease that out from the other metrics and their reporting of how their week went and how we discussed their check-in . But when you do this yourself , why don't you create a separate metric on its own that scores you for that week and says based on following my plan , this is how easy or difficult it was to stick to the plan , given my life right Social events , dining out without anxiety , travel schedule disruptions , family meals , celebrations , work , stress , deadlines . And what's interesting about this is it's kind of flipping it around , isn't it ? It's saying , okay , I have my plan , I believe it's the best plan for me , but this week it was like a three because life happened .

Philip Pape 20:47

If your plan was a lot more flexible than when life happens , the plan may be rated higher than that , and so when you get a three or a four and if you get periodic or repeated versions of that low score , it tells you your plan is simply not flexible enough for you . Instead of trying to fit your life to your plan , try to fit your plan to your life . So that is the last metric . And what's super fascinating about all of this and again , I hope you don't feel overwhelmed like you have to use all 16 of these metrics . Use the first six to start and then get inspired by the other 10 and you may have your own that you want to use , but the goal is to reveal a solution to a plateau before you hit the plateau , like when my clients , when their hunger or cravings are increasing , or their recovery is increasing , or their recovery is declining or their energy is low and by low I just mean like one or two ticks lower than last time . It gives me a clue .

Philip Pape 21:44

Now we might not have to change things , but there's a good chance . I'm going to say you know what , let's ease off on the calories or let's take a refeed or let's take a diet break . And oftentimes what happens is my clients tell me before I tell them , because they check in and they say you know what , based on having you know , you made me score this stuff and I noticed that all these numbers have ticked down . I didn't quite realize that that was the case . Maybe it's time for a little bit of a break . And then you come back stronger and you continue losing the fat while others crash into a wall and kind of beat their head into the wall over and over . And that's the power of having multiple data points that describe your overall body , your system , organized in a way that shows you how they connect . You're proactive instead of reactive with your fat loss All right .

Philip Pape 22:28

So when we talk about physique engineering , that is what we mean Not guesswork , but being data driven . Not hoping what you're doing works , having concrete , specific data showing you what's working and what needs to adjust . If you're like that's too hard , well , you're just not going to get the result you want . There's a little bit of effort involved . You could also reach out for support . You could join a community like our free Facebook group . You can reach out for coaching . You can join our physique university , which is a more budget friendly group version of coaching for a lot of you who may not be able to afford or want to work with a one-on-one coach .

Philip Pape 23:03

And the first place to start is just reach out for a 15 minute rapid nutrition assessment , because that is a call . That is not a sales pitch . Or we're just going to get on the phone . We're going to talk about the weather , and then we're going to dive in too , because that's what you always start with , right , and then we're going to dive into hey , which metrics or what data or what form of tracking or what kind of nutrition or training approach might you be missing ? That will help you make progress . A simple , I'll say , two or three step action plan . That's it . I want you to click the link in the show notes to schedule that , or go to witsandweightscom and click the link in the top right and we'll have that call and you'll get some clarity . All right , until next time , keep using your wits lifting those weights and remember your body is always giving you feedback . The key is knowing how to listen and respond . All right , I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast .