Philip Pape: 0:01

If you are daunted by the thought of force-feeding yourself to bulk for muscle, but fear gaining fat or aggressively dieting to cut for fat loss, this episode will give you a new perspective. The question we're asking is can you lose fat and build muscle at the same time, without gaining or losing weight, but instead by eating at or maintenance calories to achieve the holy grail of body recomposition? My guest and I will break down what's possible and how to adjust your diet and training, and you'll learn about the realities of body recomp at maintenance and how to create an environment to get the results you want. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering and efficiency. I'm your host, philip Pape, and today I've got something special lined up with my friend, jeff Hain, host of the Mind Muscle Connection podcast. Jeff and I decided to tackle body recomposition, which is your ability to build muscle and lose fat at the same time, but from two different angles, on our two shows. So today, on Wits and Weights, you're going to hear us focus on the maintenance approach. Can you transform your body without drastically changing your calorie intake? And if you enjoy this conversation, make sure and follow Jeff's podcast Again, the Mind Muscle Connection, where I jump on as a guest to discuss body recomp, but using slight surpluses and deficits rather than maintenance.

Philip Pape: 1:43

Now, if you guys don't know Jeff, he's been on the show a few times. We've collaborated for a long time. He's a great guy, a really honorable authentic fitness professional out there, and he's helped lots of clients probably hundreds, probably thousands at this point transform their bodies with evidence-based methods. His knowledge in body recomp has made him kind of a go-to expert for people looking to do this. So that's why I thought this would be valuable for you guys. So I want you to listen carefully today to learn what you can and cannot do at maintenance to maximize your results, regardless of your experience level. All right, jeff, thank you for coming on again and welcome to the show. Let's get into it.

Jeff Hoehn: 2:18

Yeah, man, I'm looking forward to chatting about this and having both of these angles here.

Philip Pape: 2:28

I think it will be super uh interesting for the, for the listener. Yeah, we were joking, as we prepared for this, that, um, maybe we're going to disappoint people because everyone wants the holy grail body recomp. And you hear, like a lot of marketing around this like, yeah, just build muscle, lose fat at the same time. Um, I even hear some of the big names like, um, uh, holly baxter, you know she's actually gonna be on the show man, if, if you can believe it, holly Baxter is big into like let's just stay near maintenance and you can build a ton of muscle and lose fat. So what I want to address first is, like, what does the science say behind that? In general, can you lose fat and build muscle at the same time? And then we can get into like, who and what situations can work at maintenance or not work.

Jeff Hoehn: 3:03

Yeah, yeah. So, like you said, you know, it's kind of a misconception, right, that that you can't, you know, do both at the same time. And you, and you certainly can, Um, you know, and the research does back this up. I know there was a study from Bearcat a couple of years ago and they looked at advanced, you know, people that had been training for a little while and they were able to gain muscle and lose body fat, right, you know, there's kind of that misconception that you need to if you want to build muscle, you need to be in this like large surplus to do that.

Jeff Hoehn: 3:28

And again, we'll, I'm sure, throughout this we'll, we'll dive into the specifics of where that might be, you know, feasible at and where that makes the most sense. But you know, a lot, of a lot of people have I tell people this a lot of people have a lot larger of a runway to do this than they, than they think. Um, you know, I think a lot of people just say, oh, you know, I've been training for a couple of years, I can't do it. But, um, again, as I'm sure we'll get into, there's a lot of things that go into it that people are not maximizing, um, where they're going to be able to. You know, see this, this simultaneous fat loss and muscle gain, Um, but again, it is that kind of holy grail is going to depend. It's going to be in the right situation and I think our inputs are going to be super important as well in that process.

Philip Pape: 4:10

Yeah. So I really want to get right to the what you probably hear and I hear as well People that haven't gone through this before, haven't cut, haven't bulked, maybe aren't even attracting their nutrition and they're like I don't want to gain a bunch of weight because I'm going to get fat and I don't want to have to diet because that sounds miserable and I've tried it before. I really want to gain like 15, 20 pounds of muscle and I want to do it at maintenance, like is that even possible? And again, we can break down from there, like the situations and scenarios behind it.

Jeff Hoehn: 4:37

Yeah, so I think so. So let's, because I kind of, before we talked about this, we kind of had an outline planned out when we were talking about you know, my approach was we were going to talk about the maintenance side of things and you said, you know, lose fat and build muscle. I'm like I kind of said, hey, I didn't want to ruin that episode right away by just saying, hey, being at maintenance, the downside with being at maintenance is you're probably not, probably you're not going to really lose any amount of body fat when you're truly at your maintenance. You know calories and again, we can talk about what exactly maintenance calories is, but that's going to be the one downside. However, you the question you specifically asked was hey, I want to gain, you know, say, 15 to 20 pounds of muscle. Can I do that at maintenance? And I believe you can totally do that at maintenance calories right now and saying that this is where it gets a little confusing. But you know, if you're gaining tissue and again, via, via muscle, you are going to you probably see your body weight trend up.

Jeff Hoehn: 5:28

So it's going to get a little confusing in terms of, like you may not actually keep your exact same body weight, right. So that's where things can get a little bit kind of confusing. If you're just looking at numbers and based off of of body weight, Right. But if we're talking specifically, hey, you're at maintenance calories and you don't want to gain a ton of body fat, you can certainly do that, um, and again, I I'll go into this. But I guess the thing that you could do, though and this is where maybe some people get confused is you know you could theoretically lose by, like your body fat percentage could decrease by kind of taking this approach, right, um, because, again, you're increasing your, your lean body mass, um, and you know, again, if your weight's not really trending up a ton, you know you may see your, your body fat percentage decrease a bit here, uh, in this process. So I don't know if I answered your specific question on that, but you did and you, you hit the nuance on the head right there.

Philip Pape: 6:17

There are a couple different subtle scenarios near maintenance, one of which you just said is you can build muscle, you may even gain weight, you're kind of at maintenance or slightly above, but your body recomp is changing without losing fat necessarily. But your, you know your body fat percentage goes down. It's just numbers. If you have more muscle as a percentage of your body, you have lower body fat percentage and that is recomp. So I think people need to understand that. But you also said that you can't like lose meaningful fat in terms of just pounds of fat, unless you're in a deficit, which is a whole different situation. So when people understand that if they have like 20 or 30 pounds to lose fat, is it the most efficient approach? And this leads me to the question of who is it right for, who can benefit, who should waste the time at maintenance let's call it when they should be in a deficit, versus those who would like really maximize the results this way?

Jeff Hoehn: 7:08

Yeah. So, like you said, I mean, you're not going to get, you know, you're not going to have this crazy amount of of body fat loss here at this, right. So to me, who would benefit the most from this? Well, this is going to be somebody who maybe you're quote, unquote skinny fat or you've, like, done a ton of diets in the past and you've just always focused on like weight loss in the past. And you just always focused on like weight loss in the past, right, and? And usually that approach is going to lead to somebody not really ever focusing on like hypertrophy style training. It was usually, you know, the the kind of avatar I'm thinking of as someone who, like, cuts out all their carbs, go super low calorie, just does a ton of cardio, right, and again, that's probably not going to be great from a muscle, lean body mass standpoint. So I think that person who's like yo-yoed in the past and always focused on just weight loss and like just being their small self, that's somebody who I think could benefit from being around their maintenance calories and really focusing on on adding muscle in that process, right, you're not actively trying to see your body weight go down. Maybe it comes up a little bit, but you're again like we said. You're, you're decreasing your body fat percentage and, um, again you're kind of getting rid of that. That skinny fat, look right. So that's one person that I think would benefit the most from that.

Jeff Hoehn: 8:13

And then another person that would benefit would be someone who, again, muscle is. You want to add a ton of muscle, but you're also not necessarily as lean as you want to be yet, right. And so again, this kind of comes around to someone who's again always kind of fat loss dieted, or maybe you just don't want a fat loss diet right now, right. And again, adding more muscle is super important to you.

Jeff Hoehn: 8:36

To me, that's going to be someone who is going to benefit a ton from being at, you know, their maintenance calories and trying to, um, just focus on, on, on that. And again, you're not like super lean either, right, cause the leaner you are, the tougher this is going to be. To build muscle at maintenance, you're going to have to, you know, have a little bit of body fat on your body. So I think, really long story it's going to be most beneficial for someone who's dieted a ton in the past. You aren't super lean, but you aren't. Uh, yeah, you're not super lean, but you also maybe aren't necessarily like super overweight either. Because again, in that situation you probably would be better off kind of going at the approach, you know, more of a fat loss kind of a style approach there.

Philip Pape: 9:12

uh, with that, yeah, it makes sense and again it always comes out to. It depends on what's your training history, what's your dieting history, what is your goal right now? Cause I I'm sure you've met lots of guys who have a little extra fat and they're not ready for fat loss. So what? Here's an interesting thing I've seen come up lately, jeff, and I wasn't really aware of it so much more than like a year and a half ago.

Philip Pape: 9:36

But there are definitely a lot of influencers and some very respected guys out there who lift a lot, who will say you never really need to gain a lot of weight or be in a surplus. You could always be. You could always be in a little bit of a maintenance plus mode, you know, like just just riding just above maintenance and feeding yourself every day, never falling into a deficit, really, and you can get tremendous results, and then you don't have to worry about gaining a bunch of fat. But then we have, like Helms et al right, the, the, the study that came out was it last year that showed we could actually go more aggressively than we thought and not gain fat. So what are, what is your thoughts on maintenance being kind of this Holy grail for building muscle when it's like just above maintenance. You know what I mean.

Jeff Hoehn: 10:17

Yeah Well, again, I mean, the key is going to be you're going to, you know you're going to limit, you know body fat gain in that process. But again, if you're like on the leaner side and you already have a good amount of muscle, again that's probably not going to be the right approach for you. You're probably going to need to be in a small surplus. Um, and again, if you really want to build a ton of muscle, right, like I think that that's another person that, like you're going to probably need to be in a small surplus. But most people don't necessarily want to be bodybuilder style, you know, uh, muscle size, right. So, like for them, to me it makes a little bit more sense to not have to be in this surplus, to then, you know, kind of have to cut it all off later on, right, I just feel like people do a lot of kind of yo-yoing, uh, with that uh approach, right. And again, the big thing being like what we do in that process is super important, like maximizing our training, right, that so it's geared towards hypertrophy, you know, setting up your lifestyle so that you're in a good spot to add muscle, right. And then you know, same thing with nutrition, like making sure those things are dialed in. You know, the more we can get all those things dialed in, the more likely you're going to be able to ensure that you're going to build muscle without, you know, gaining body fat and really not needing as big of a surplus or needing one at all. So again, I think it really comes down to our methods and what we do. That's going to be the biggest thing.

Jeff Hoehn: 11:32

What I see happen a lot of times is people will think that the magic is gaining weight and like that's where, that's where they spend all their time is like just trying to see their scale weight go up. Hey, I'm in a surplus, so I'm just or I'm in a building phase, I want to try to add muscle, so I just want to see my scale weight go up and that, like is this the main thing that they focus on in that process? And they kind of overlook the inputs which ultimately, are going to really be the most important thing to tell your body to add, you know, lean body mass in that process. So hopefully that answers your question there. But that's like the big thing that we're looking at there with that is really your inputs are going to be the big thing, um, and then again, the more muscle you want to build and the leaner you are and the more muscle you have, we're going to have to shift to, you know, being in a surplus.

Jeff Hoehn: 12:13

And I always tell people this too at the end of the day, when we look at the three energy balances that we can be in and when it comes to muscle growth, the best is going to be a small surplus at the end of the day, right? If you want to absolutely maximize muscle growth, you know. If you want to absolutely maximize muscle growth, you know a small surplus is going to be the best in most situations. Second, maintenance is going to be right. There Again, you can still build a ton, a good amount of muscle around your maintenance calories. And then three, a deficit. Right, the larger the deficit, the less likely this is going to be to happen. No-transcript building muscle.

Philip Pape: 12:56

Yeah, and you pointed out that the training variables absolutely at or near the top right. Like we hear it over and over again, people focusing too much on, maybe, protein and they're not even training hard Like that. That's my problem nowadays is I've talked to people who say, look, I want to lose fat or I want to improve my body composition, I'm not worried about the training part. Tell me about the nutrition. I'm like no, no, they go together and if anything, you need to be training and then the food will follow. So we we've kind of put into buckets the type of person or the scenario you're in where you would find success from body recomp, near maintenance. It sounds like definitely, if you're maybe leaner. If you don't, um, or or no, if you're leaner, you need to build potentially more aggressively. But people have just a little bit of fat to lose or not worried about like massive fat loss. Um, training is important. Progressive overload, you know, protein, all that stuff.

Philip Pape: 13:46

What are the top one or two, I guess, problems people have when they do try to do that Like is it they accidentally fall into diets all the time? Or some lack of consistency, because maintenance you talked about it on my show a long time ago. It can be its own challenge just trying to stay in that realm. So what kind of tracking, what kind of precision, what kind of problems do people have with doing this? Yeah, so you're basically saying, like, what kind of precision, what kind of problems do people have?

Jeff Hoehn: 14:09

with doing this. Yeah, so you're basically saying like, hey, someone is they want to try to maximize building muscle here around maintenance. Like what are the big problems that people end up kind of running themselves into to not maximize this?

Philip Pape: 14:19

You got it, yep.

Jeff Hoehn: 14:20

Yeah, I mean, like you said, the big thing being the not dialing in your nutrition in terms of, like you said, under eating, potentially meal timing being a big one, right, where you know people maybe are skipping meals, maybe they have some days where they're higher calorie because they go out and eat, have you know, they have events, or maybe they just don't really care about focusing on their nutrition on that day, um, and then they have. Then they see their scale go up a little bit and now they you know they're they're like, oh boy, I got to make up for that now, and now I got to go low calorie, right, and so that is the. The trick here with being around maintenance is it does give you a little bit less wiggle room in terms of, like you know you really want to try how often you're skipping meals and like dipping into large deficits, because that is going to be something that can large deficits in the short term, because that is going to be something that over time, is going to impact your ability to add muscle and, you know, not overall body composition. So I guess it would be having unstructured nutrition days where they're either too high or too low, and again one or two here, and they're not going to make or break, but the more often those happen, that's going to lead to suboptimal body composition, uh, in the long run.

Jeff Hoehn: 15:27

And then again, meal timing, like you said, skipping meals, um, not having meals around your training sessions, uh, you know, that's one thing that I think people often overlook is the importance of meal timing around their workouts. Uh, especially in this, when we're trying to do what we're doing here, where we want to add muscle without really adding much body fat, your training is going to be super important, and so we want to make sure we set that up in the best way possible. So, again, whether that be making sure that you you know however you like to structure your meals around your workouts, but making sure you're well-fueled going into your training so you have the best training possible, making sure you're well hydrated going into your training, right.

Philip Pape: 16:03

Define that, jeff? Define that for people, jeff, just so they know that maybe keto is not the answer here, I don't know. Tell me.

Jeff Hoehn: 16:08

What do you mean? What about hydration?

Philip Pape: 16:11

Fueling yourself before your workouts?

Jeff Hoehn: 16:12

Yeah, so, just again, making sure that you're not going into your training like not having eaten for three, five plus hours. Or again, making sure you do get some carbohydrate intake, uh, around your workout, right, um, just again, making sure that we're not just again not going in to it to where you're hungry, and then that's going to impact your, your, your training performance, um, there, right Cause, again, that's going to be something that in the short term maybe you don't really notice it, but over time you take someone who times that, has really good meal timing, around their workouts compared to someone who is just lax around it. Over a year, I guarantee you the person who is on top of their meal timing is going to see much better progress from a body composition standpoint because they're going to set themselves up from a to have good training sessions, which ultimately is the most important thing to send that signal to build muscle. Um, and then also like not getting protein around your workouts either, right, whether that be? Hey, maybe you like to go work out when you first wake up, that's fine. Um, so again, after that, make sure you get some protein in at least around your sometime around your workout. Same thing there. You put someone who nails that versus someone who doesn't.

Jeff Hoehn: 17:13

The person who nails their protein around, their workout, to me, is going to have better results. You know, when you expand out, uh, their hydration, again, even a small amount of dehydration which you can't even really notice, can potentially impact performance. So, again, we want to make sure what we're hydrated, uh, there, right. So from a nutrition perspective, those are the big things. And then, obviously, like you said, you know training is super important. But if we're not on top of our like protein, and when I mean protein, like overall intake and even timing, to an extent I think you're going to uh potentially impact your, your, your muscle gain, um, and therefore your body composition over the long run.

Philip Pape: 17:50

Yeah, and, by the way, you guys, if you're listening, if you don't follow Jeff's show, follow it, because he he constantly goes into these details and like what to do under different scenarios. So we're not, we're not going to like dive into how much protein you need and all that fun stuff today, even though we both could do it for hours. What I really want the listener to understand is is this right for me? Two more things come to mind in that context.

Philip Pape: 18:12

One is how do you track this in a way that still motivates you? Because I could see you, especially if you have a new client. Do you ever get a new client that comes to you and it's like you know, I want a better body and I want to just like be a maintenance. I mean, that to me doesn't sound sexy or like something anybody would ever say, um, so like, is this a? Is this the best protocol for someone who's just doing it for the first time? Because I could see a lack of motivation from a feeling like a lack of direction. How do you address that?

Jeff Hoehn: 18:38

Yeah. So you know, again, I think it is important to see where, where the client is at and what they want to do when they when they come in. Right, because, again, if somebody is super like, again, knowing what the client wants I think is super important, right. So, again, like this if somebody is like, hey, ultimately I want to lose body fat, and we look at their history and they and they haven't dieted recently, okay, well, hey, maybe we are going to push you into a small like a deficit is going to be something that's probably going to be better for you now. But let's say, somebody wants to add muscle and like this is what they want to do that. And we look at their body composition. I'm like, hey, we could sit here and we can put you into a surplus and have you gain weight, but do I think that's going to be the best for your long term body composition? Because I think if we just focus on scale weight, that's where you're going to kind of get yourself caught up and think that you're just kind of not making progress. So it's looking at other aspects, right, and what I mean by that is, yes, you know, progress, pictures, measurements, but again, even those probably aren't going to be like this drastic change, you know, in a two, three month span, just by what we're doing here with this approach, right, so it's more so like hey, you know, training performance, like tracking that, seeing that improve, like kind of you know, connecting the dots there with the training performance. Also how they feel as well, too, right, like that's something that I'm consistently like trying to check in with clients on of like, how do you feel? Like, if you're feeling better, you're feeling strong, you just feel more flexibility, you have more energy from day to day, uh, whatever that is for the person, better libido, whatever it is like those are things that we're really going to hone in on, because I feel, like, at maintenance, you can really dial those things in. Um, so, really kind of connecting the dots there, uh, to show them improvement from that perspective, I think is is, uh, it's huge.

Jeff Hoehn: 20:20

And then again, if you take blood, like if you get your blood work checked, you know, looking at that, um, you know, those are the things that I always try to connect to, like looking at those things versus just scale weight and then explaining to them hey, if we can nail this down to where you know, we can get your habits in place here.

Jeff Hoehn: 20:36

Um, get your lifestyle habits in place. Um, you're getting stronger, you're adding some muscle. Like this is going to set you up for more effective and efficient fat loss. When we, when we get there, um, or maybe you don't even need to do that, maybe you decide like you love this and you feel soup, like your, your body composition continues to improve and then maybe you feel like you don't ever really need to fat loss diet. Or maybe you do this and then now it's like it makes fat loss um something that you just do for a very short amount of time throughout the year, just to kind of clean things up a little bit, versus like being in this endless yo-yoing where, like every time you get into fitness, you only focus on dropping weight, don't really build any habits, and then you and then it's just this kind of vicious cycle on there. So connecting the dots there with that, I think, is super important too.

Philip Pape: 21:17

For sure, and you, you talked about kind of this magic of maintenance when you were on the show before that. It can be used as a tool in in before you ever diet, you know just to dial things in after you've gone through fat loss to sustain. Now we're talking about using it strategically to potentially improve your body recomp long-term as a mode to be in.

Philip Pape: 21:35

It's hard for me to understand, Jeff, because I just so love change and like constantly seeing things happen and but some people are totally cool with it. Some people are like I don't want the, maybe the fatigue of constantly trying to add more or reduce more. So when we do talk about staying in maintenance and not looking at the scale, there still is a scale component in that maintenance, by definition, is staying right here in this like narrow range. How do people do that in terms of using the scale, or do they? Are there situations where they don't even need to? Because if, if you weigh yourself today and then six months from now you're roughly the same, hey, you're kind of at maintenance, right, I don't know what are your thoughts on that.

Jeff Hoehn: 22:14

I personally, like I try to get everyone to use the scale just as a as a tool, and like try to educate them around it, right? So, like, cause I do get some people are like, oh, you know, I just stopped using the scale Cause it gets in my head. It's like, well, I want to work on that because we need to like figure that out. This is just data at the end of the day, right, so I like to make sure somebody takes, you know, their, their scale weight there, cause I just think that, again, it's a great way to kind of learn what's actually going on, because, at the end of the day, we do need to take that, because that's going to tell us the energy balance that we are in, uh in, in that process, right, so I think it's super important as far as, like, what, what I'm looking for on the scale. Again, this is, as I've said, with everything so far, it's going to be very context dependent on the person, but you know what I mean by that is, if you just got done with the fat loss phase and now we transition you to your maintenance calories, you're going to see this kind of weird stabilization of your scale weight. So that's just all kind of noise, in my opinion, right. So there's that. But from there, biggest thing I'm looking for is just not seeing any trends in a short amount of time, to me as maintenance, right. And so what I mean by that is if we're consistently seeing, when we look at your average weight for the week and we see it trending either up or down, that you're in either a surplus or a small deficit, and then from there it's like, well, you know, if we're finding that, hey, you're feeling good, your body composition is really changing, maybe we can kind of continue on that trend, no-transcript plus or minus, and then again, over time, maybe it is drifting in.

Jeff Hoehn: 23:57

So just for example, um, my, my last fat loss phase ended in uh 20, the end of 2023 ish, like October ish timeframe. I was one 55, spent the next couple of months purposely gaining a little bit of weight, you know, letting things kind of stabilize a little bit, uh, and then from there I gained up to about one 62 and then really over the last like 60 ish weeks. You know it's been between one 63 and one 66 and it's kind of slowly trended up that way. Now somebody could be like you know it's been between 163 and 166 and it's kind of slowly trended up that way. Now somebody could be like, well, dude, you're in a small surplus, but really it, to me it's. It's maintained, really over time, right, so we're talking maintenance is not going to be this exact number of like oh hey, you're 166.6. Now, you're going to stay there every single time you go in. Right, you may see it trend one way or the other, just a little bit, but it's those short-term trends that we just don't want to see there.

Philip Pape: 24:45

This is a very important point, Jeff, I think for people, because if you're thinking of maintenance as literally an exact number all the time, you could be setting yourself up for failure because you could be dipping into deficits. And I don't know about you. When I think body recomp, I rarely think of it as a very tiny deficit, Like. To me that's kind of inefficient, right, Because your body will adapt and keep you at maintenance, but then now you're not eating as much as you could, so you're just never quite fully recovered and you're not really losing fat either. So is what you're saying is maybe the best, maybe one of the best or efficient approach is to kind of be a little bit on top, like almost have that upward drift, because three to six pounds in a year or two, it really is nothing. And and and frankly, if you're going to build muscle and that's a denser tissue, like you said earlier, you're probably going to want to have a little extra weight anyway. Is that? Is that where the thinking is?

Jeff Hoehn: 25:35

Yeah, pretty much too Right, Like artificially low maintenance, like this artificially low maintenance calories, where their their body's adapted to that and now you know, they don't feel as good, right, their body's just not thriving at that point. So what I suggest is at that point, hey, you're going to increase your calories a little bit and you may see your weight again kind of stabilize a little bit, but you're feeling good. And then you know, again, we're not necessarily trying to push weight up, but if it turns up a little bit over say a three, six, 12 month span, as long as you're feeling good, body composition still looks good. You know, based on all the things that we're tracking, performance is good. I'm not, I'm not concerned about your weight, not like coming up, you know, a couple of pounds, right? So again somebody could argue of like, oh, hey, that's not maintenance, then that's a, that's still technically. You're not trying to push scale weight up every single time you weigh in or over multiple weeks, right? For?

Philip Pape: 26:37

sure, especially when the goal is body recomp. The goal isn't to be at maintenance, that's just a route to get there right.

Jeff Hoehn: 26:44

Really, at the end of the day, what we're trying to do here is we're just trying to fuel your body enough, okay, to make sure that you're giving it the micronutrients it needs. Um, you know, when we're at maintenance, everything just flows much better, right? When you're giving your body enough fuel, uh in in in that process, right? So, again, libido is going to be in the best uh position. Um, there, uh, again, you're going to feel your best here, uh, in this right, bio, your, your uh blood work and everything should be in a good spot. As long as, again, as long as we are continuing to do all these things outside of, like, like the sleep stress, solid nutrition, um, training, right.

Jeff Hoehn: 27:19

I always tell people, just because your scale weights, if your scale weight isn't trending down and you want it to, but you're doing all those things, you're going to see a different body composition over time, um, by by doing those things, right.

Jeff Hoehn: 27:38

So I always try to frame it as that. And again, our body needs this, this period of time, to be around these, these calories, and my whole thing on this is if somebody, let's say somebody, they they do this fat loss, they do muscle gain, but they still have some body fat they need to lose. This is the perfect position for you to be for, say, six, nine months out of the year, because you're putting your body in the best position to to feel good where it's at, you're continuing to build your habits. Um, and you know, that beats somebody who still has body fat to lose and they're. They're losing body fat, but then they try and go into a large surplus and gain weight. Um, over time, right, but again, not to confuse people, it's okay If you see your weight come up a little bit during that period of time. The key is to just not try to push it continuously going up, right, that's where people gain body fat and that's where I think people get themselves stuck long-term in that process.

Philip Pape: 28:19

For sure, yeah, unless you're doing it on purpose, right, like I just gained 15, 17 pounds and it's like, and I got to pay for it by fat loss, dieting the other way. But so just very specific tip for folks then, if they're working with a coach who gives them a target, or they're using a tracking app and they have a target, that where they think their maintenance calories are at this point, um, do you recommend slightly overshooting on a daily basis? Is there a, like, a mental strategy you recommend to make sure you're in the right spot?

Jeff Hoehn: 28:44

Yeah, this again, I hate to say this, but it's going to depend on the client, right, like again, if they are super, like, if they're a little bit on the leaner side, they really want to maximize muscle growth, I'm going to say, hey, it's okay If you go a little bit over, right?

Jeff Hoehn: 28:57

If someone is maybe a little bit more, um, uh, I don't know the word I'm kind of looking for here they, they, they really want to be careful with gaining body fat mentally. You know I can just tell, right, but we're going to pair that with their biofeedback and everything like that, and I want to, I want to see how they're feeling there and then obviously again continuing to monitor their, uh, their body composition, because that's going to, to me, that's going to be the the biggest indicator, because I think where you want to be careful with is people are very good at under reporting their, their caloric intake, right. So this is where it comes into like, okay, in theory, in theory, in a perfect world, maybe we do kind of have them push slightly above what their quote, unquote, maintenance calories are, whatever, whatever that is for that person. But in practice, this is where, like you kind of, I like to rely on like, okay, here's what I've seen. I know that people tend to underestimate their caloric intake. Let's, maybe you can be a little bit lower than that, right.

Philip Pape: 29:52

No, no, I agree. Like different yeah, Different people have different mental framing around targets and, and you know, like some people want to hit the target right on Cause they're kind of robotic about it, like you know, I love hitting my targets Others always have to be in one direction or else they feel like they fail every day. Not that we want to have them in that mental state, but it depends. Like you said, it depends. So, um, we, we covered a lot of the go ahead.

Jeff Hoehn: 30:15

Well, I was just gonna say, hopefully that gives somebody an idea of like, hey, where you know you're kind of at, that gives you a better idea of where you should, should kind of focus on. And then again, looking at your trends, where's that trending at over time, if you're slightly seeing your body weight trend down, someone who pushes it a little bit higher, um as well to there.

Philip Pape: 30:32

So this is why I like to talk to guys like you, jeff, because we all have slightly nuanced takes on this. Like I would probably fall in the trap on my podcast of saying just always go over a little bit if you're trying to be a maintenance, cause I've seen too many people diet under. But then I recall the clients who need to be careful because they're they're trying to avoid gaining too much. So again, whatever resonates with you, you got to go with that. Is there any last tip or pitfall that we didn't cover related to body recomp at maintenance you want listeners to know about.

Jeff Hoehn: 31:02

Yep. So, again, like I said, I just think people tend to overly focus on, hey, surplus, gaining weight, losing weight, when we need to focus on the training stimulus that we're sending, because that, ultimately, is going to be the most important. People overlooked that just because you're training doesn't necessarily mean you're doing that in the most efficient way. There again, nutrition obviously not only calories and macros, but like quality of food that you're bringing in, making sure you get enough protein. And then the couple that I see people commonly overlook are going to be their lifestyle. They're again setting up their environment right, whether that, again, that's your relationships, that's your environment in terms of your work, what you, you know, what you're around all the time.

Jeff Hoehn: 31:39

Sleep is a huge one as well, too, and not only, hey, just get eight hours of sleep, but sleep quality, like making sure we're setting ourselves up for good sleep, and you can kind of put in your circadian health and circadian rhythm into that.

Jeff Hoehn: 31:49

And then and then stress management, right, and stress management being not only, oh, hey, I had a stressful day at work, but again thinking about all the stress that we're putting on our body, uh, and thinking about it from that standpoint and balancing that out to where. Hey, you know we want to have a good balance of parasympathetic, sympathetic inputs and making sure we're balancing that out and we're not letting it get too far on, say, the sympathetic side of things, right? So, again, that's going to look different for everybody what that is, but figuring out what you're doing to your body, that's adding stress, and trying to bring that down, those are going to be things I think people often overlook and can make the world of a difference and really allow you to get more out of every calorie that you put into your body. Um, it's probably the best way I could. I could put that.

Philip Pape: 32:28

Yeah, it's a great way to put it because smart, efficient, you know doing it the right way. Otherwise you're kind of wasting time, um, and you've got some really good content on this. I know you do these workshops occasionally, these free workshops on body recomp, that kind of go through the big pillars. So if you guys are interested in learning more, definitely reach out to jeff. And if you enjoyed this conversation where we talked about body recomp at maintenance, um, as I mentioned earlier, we recorded a companion episode right now in Jeff's feed the mind muscle connection. Go follow the show, download it, listen to it. That's why we're keeping these a little bit shorter.

Philip Pape: 33:00

Today, where I interviewed Jeff about, or no, where he interviews me, I get confused about using, um, what we're calling a near maintenance approach. So that's more. When you want to step the gas, step on the gas pedal, go maybe a little more aggressive, but still get body recomp, as opposed to necessarily going all out in one direction, and we're going to get deep into that there. So click the link in the show notes or go search the mind muscle connection on your favorite podcast app. Check it out. And Jeff, thanks, as always, man, for collaborating and coming on the show.

Jeff Hoehn: 33:30

Yep, this is super fun dude.