The Fat Loss Roadblock Explained

Philip Pape 0:01

If you feel like your fat loss is going too slowly or stalled out , or it's harder this time than it was last time , this episode is for you . I recently faced the exact same situation during a mini cut . Despite doing everything right , or so , I thought , my progress was slower than in previous cuts , and then I realized what was causing it and I thought let me talk to the listener about uncovering the thing that's holding you back , the one thing that could be what's called the critical path . It's a concept from engineering and project management where , if this one thing isn't right , everything is going to take longer . So , while , yes , I will share my critical path , I'm also going to teach you to identify your own so you can have much more success going forward . 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 we're looking at a real-world case study . It is my own , my own recent fat loss journey . It was a seven-week mini-cut , and I thought it'd be a great example of how I am not perfect and how I still can run into my own roadblocks , even as a coach and someone who's done this for a long time using a powerful engineering concept that I've used for many years , especially when developing schedules , and it's called critical path . And don't worry , we're not going to talk schedules , we are going to talk about how to use this concept to uncover the thing holding you back .

Philip Pape 1:33

Many of you know that I love data , I like to track religiously . It's part of my engineering mindset and recently I noticed that , of all the variables in my fitness data , the one thing that changed , and changed quite significantly , was my average daily step count . Now , I kind of knew this inherently and intuitively because I track it every day and I'm like you know , over the over the last year and a half , I'm like man , you know , I've really got to get back to that 12,000 steps I used to have and it's been more in the eight to 9,000 steps a day and I thought , well , it's not a big deal , it's still plenty of steps . I'm still active , I train , I do all the things I eat well , et cetera . But that's a 25% reduction in my NEAT , in my non-exercise activity thermogenesis , and you would think , okay , it's not a big deal , but it actually has a big impact on your fat loss and that's just one thing .

Philip Pape 2:22

I don't want to make this episode about walking specifically . I really want to make it about how a seemingly minor change in one variable and I know again , 4,000 steps you may say , well , no , that's actually a pretty big change , but kind of drifted over time and I didn't really give it another thought as to how big it was impacting my results . But you may have one variable that had has essentially become what engineers call the critical path in your fat loss approach or your journey , and I'm gonna break down what that means , why it matters , how identifying your own critical path could be that breakthrough you need . And I think it's important because you might be saying , well , no , it's obvious , I know why . You may not know why , and there's a way to kind of analyze what that might be Now , before we get into it .

Philip Pape 3:05

If you have found yourself stuck in a fat loss plateau , or maybe you're in there one right now and you think you're doing everything right and again by think , I'm not trying to gaslight you , because I was there as well I thought I was doing everything right Um , and sometimes you just need a little bit of insight , a little bit of a extra third party perspective . So , if today resonates with you . If this episode is valuable , I just want you to text it to a friend . That's all I'm asking today . I'm not trying to pitch you anything else . I want you to text this episode to a friend who is struggling with their progress . Anything , I don't care how they , what language they use , if they say it's weight loss , if they say it's their diet , if they say it's their mindset , with all of this said with all , with all of this , with emotional eating , whatever , text this episode to a friend and support them and say , hey , here's a fresh perspective on how to kind of think about this . And and you know , if you're not convinced yet , listen through the whole episode and then I'll ask you again to text it to someone if you liked it . But , like sharing , sharing knowledge is one of the most

Critical Path: An Engineering Approach

Philip Pape 3:59

powerful ways that we can help each other succeed . That's what this show is all about , and I hope you will join me in that mission of just texting this episode to a friend . Go , hit the share button in your podcast app , or you could take a screenshot , tag me in social media and share it that way . However , you want to do it All right .

Philip Pape 4:14

So let's get into today's topic and define what we mean by critical path . So in project management , in engineering , the critical path represents the sequence of dependent tasks . Okay , so the things you have to do , like if you're building a house , it might be buying the material , laying the foundation , et cetera , et cetera , and it's that sequence that determines the minimum time needed to complete a project . So , again , if you're building a house , the concrete is absolutely needed before you can build the foundation , but the windows aren't needed till much later . So the windows are not going to hold you up at least early on . They might hold you up later on . And so any delay in the tasks along that critical path again the sequence of things that determines the minimum time you need from start to finish . Any delay is what is obviously going to delay the whole thing . It's going to make the project take longer . And then all the other tasks that are outside that critical path have some what we call float or slack , meaning they can delay a bit , they can be a little bit off or less than perfect or less than ideal , without impacting the overall timeline .

Philip Pape 5:23

Now , when we apply this concept to physique development , especially fat loss , we are essentially looking for the limiting factor , the element in your system that is constraining progress , right , it is preventing you from moving forward , regardless of how well you execute everything else . And so for lots of people , myself included , we tend to focus heavily on the things that we think matter most , like our calorie intake , our deficit , our training , but sometimes the critical path actually lies elsewhere . In my case , I track every day . I track my food , I track my measurements , I track my training , I track my steps and I plan everything out and I make sure to really hit the targets pretty darn closely . I don my training , I track my steps and I plan everything out and I make sure to really hit the targets pretty darn closely . I don't mind doing that , I love doing it . I have a very stress-free way of doing it . It only takes me a few minutes a day . I use meal prep , all the things Always hit my protein , always maintain my training , and if I have to miss a day , I'm going to shift it to another day . I get adequate sleep and there's an asterisk on that because I've always gotten around six and a half to seven hours of sleep , which for me , for my HRV , for my stress , for my performance , has been steady state If I got seven and a half or eight . Would I perform that much better ? Potentially , potentially , but it's always been like that . To me , that is not a variable that has changed . I manage stress reasonably well by really all measures .

Philip Pape 6:50

I was executing my fat loss phase across the board , the way it needs to be executed , and I've done multiple cuts in the past . Under this situation where I had just come out of a bulk , I spent like I don't know six , seven months in a bulk and then I say , okay , I'm going to switch over to fat loss phase . I'm not even going to go to maintenance first , I'm just going to switch because I know how to do it and I'm going to do it . However , my progress was slower and the problem is I wanted I had a timeline , which is also a different issue . We could talk about it in another episode . I had a timeline because we're going on a vacation and I wanted to just trim off some of the fat that I gained . I was aiming for about 15 pounds . I ended up getting about 10 . Okay , it's still 10 pounds . I'm thrilled with that . I'm thrilled that I could do that , that I still have control over my physique ,

My Personal Fat Loss Plateau

Philip Pape 7:31

all the things that we talk about .

Philip Pape 7:32

It just wasn't as fast as I anticipated because my body didn't respond as aggressively or as well as it had in the past . And when I looked at everything and I said , man , is there anything that's vastly different , I said , you know , it's the step count . It's the step count because the last time I did a cut I was averaging 11 , 12,000 . Now I'm like eight or nine and sometimes I have some even lower days than that .

Philip Pape 7:53

You know I'm a busy guy . This is not an excuse . I'm relating to you as the listener . I'm busy , I work all day . Uh , I'm flitting around from call to call meeting to meeting . I'm oftentimes having to sit in front of my computer like an actual desktop to get stuff done , and I do have a standing desk . So if I use that I get more steps . Sometimes I get so immersed in my work I don't do that . So there's a lot of opportunities here , easily , I'm going to say , for me to get back to 12,000 on average . In fact , recently I've had multiple 12 , 13 , 14,000 days and it didn't take much effort . It just took some intentionality , which is often what we are missing or we get off track .

Philip Pape 8:29

Anyway , that's what I noticed . A big difference was about three to 4,000 steps fewer per day than the last time I did my fat loss phase . Now let's put that in perspective 3,000 steps right , just being conservative , that represents about 150 calories of reduced daily energy expenditure . That's a little over a thousand calories a week . That's 4,500 calories a month . That's more than a pound of potential fat loss each month . That may not happen , all things equal , simply because of the reduction in daily movement . Now it was probably more than the 3,000 when we look at the delta . Furthermore , I have found that when you are a little bit less active with your walking , you seem to burn even fewer calories than expected from that inactivity .

Philip Pape 9:14

I'm not going to dive into why that might be and also everyone's different , but when you think of even one pound a month and I'm talking about a seven-week mini cut that's two pounds . Well , that's two pounds . I didn't account for not losing . Now I told you I lost 10 instead of 15 . Okay , we're talking about a five pound difference . There's water and glycogen differences . There's all sorts of little things in the noise .

Philip Pape 9:35

Who knows exactly the point is . I know for a fact that my walking had a big difference . I just know because in the past it was easier and nothing else has changed . Now this wasn't conscious , right . It kind of happened gradually and unconsciously as my work patterns changed more desk time , more online meetings , fewer reasons to move throughout the day and I didn't have , let's say , a fully developed system in place to keep the step count high when those things change .

Philip Pape 10:02

I've talked before about how your environment changes a lot and we can't just sit on our laurels and assume that our current system will apply exactly the same . The principles apply , but the methods and the triggers and the habits may have to shift . And because my step count had declined gradually in a sense , right , if I look at my curve over the years , it's like average of 12 , then 11 and a half , then 11 , then 10 , right , it just kind of drifted . I hadn't registered as a significant change . It's like the I hate this analogy but the frog in the boiling water . You start cold and you gradually heat it up and the frog doesn't notice it and then it boils to death . I know , terrible , gruesome , but you get the idea .

Philip Pape 10:38

So here's where the concept of critical path becomes really , really powerful and effective , despite what I'll call I hate to use the word perfect , but dialed in execution , on my nutrition and training and everything else . My walking habit had become a limiting factor in my overall fat loss equation . Right , because it directly affects my metabolism , how many calories I burn and thus how much I can eat to be in the same deficit , and I assumed that to get into that deficit I could eat X , but instead I had to eat X minus whatever

Why Your Body Adapts to Dieting

Philip Pape 11:14

calories I now wasn't burning , and because I wasn't , of course I didn't lose fat as quickly . Now , no matter how well I executed all of this , the reduction in energy was setting a constraint or upper limit on my potential progress , and so this realization made me think about this and why I'm doing this episode that you know , in a fat loss phase , the critical path isn't fixed right . It could actually shift around between different variables , depending on your circumstances , like if we look in engineering , when I deal with like big , complicated schedules , the critical path can change . Because what if some other task all of a sudden becomes three times longer than you expected ? Right , some supplier says oh , I'm sorry , the part won't be in for three months , we thought it was going to be two weeks , and now all of a sudden , that becomes a critical path .

Philip Pape 11:59

Same thing with our fat loss . You know , nutrition might be your critical path . Maybe sleep becomes your critical path If all of a sudden work gets really stressful and your life is hectic and all of a sudden you can't get enough sleep right . Stress , same thing . The intensity of your training , your ability to train , where you train right . There's so many things and it's kind of like they jump around like whack-a-mole and hopefully you can do fat loss in a time when things are relatively stable , which is why I like timing your fat loss and muscle gain and maintenance with the seasons of your life and the seasons of the year and finding a relatively quiet time to do fat loss when you can reduce all of this variability . So let's talk about , I guess , why this all happens . Right , our bodies are very complex and they adapt . Our bodies are adaptive .

Philip Pape 12:46

We've talked about metabolic adaptation or , if you're new to this podcast , it is the idea that your body will respond to the effect of everything that's coming in and it does so to try to maintain homeostasis , stability , survival , right . And when you're in a fat loss phase , you're doing what ? Well , you're creating an energy deficit . You're burning more energy than you consume and you do that from either or decreasing what you eat , which is inevitably gonna have to happen , and or increasing your energy expenditure , with the caveat that you're not doing it in a stressful way like running , where it could actually backfire and reduce your expenditure . We're talking about general movement , walking , not sitting as much , et cetera .

Philip Pape 13:26

Now many of us focus on the intake side because that is , like , seems more controllable , right ? We track our food , we count our calories , we hit our macros and for many of you , this has been the problem for your whole life when you've tried to diet , is you do it on the calorie side ? You try to . I don't want to say crash diet Not everybody does that , but everybody tries to cut something . You restrict something . You're like I just got to get those calories down , that's what's going to do it . Or and or you make it even worse by running more and more stress to your body . Now what if I told you that for most people , especially if you've been dieting for a while , the expenditure side is probably your critical path right now . Okay , not the intake side . I can take anyone and just show them that , with tracking and a little bit of planning assuming you don't have some massive emotional eating issues to deal with , which is a separate topic .

Philip Pape 14:16

Most people can get into some decent control of their food , which is great , because many of us don't even have that right . However , it's not enough , because when we diet , our bodies naturally try to conserve energy , and it does so in multiple ways . First of all , you're losing weight , so you're just carrying around less mass , so you're going to burn less . Secondly , it downregulates your hormones . That's called metabolic adaptation . You can't do anything about that . And then , thirdly , the big thing you can do something about is non-exercise activity thermogenesis .

Philip Pape 14:45

And guess what ? When you diet , you oftentimes do less of this unconsciously , not just less walking , but less movement in general . And so this goes back to my theory , which is pretty well supported by working with so many clients , and what the evidence says , that during fat loss , you're going to move less . And even if your step count is the same , you might be moving less , but if your step count drops , you might be even moving less , less . So kind of what I mean by that is you get in a mode of just you're not as active , it's not as fitness oriented , versus when you walk more , like think about it when you lace up your shoes or when you walk around a lot throughout the day . You just have this mindset of like , moving , of being active , even if you're working . If you're doing , it's like no , I got to get up and get moving , and it's just this thing , right .

Philip Pape 15:33

If you're , if you're down from 12 to 8,000 steps or down to even 6,000 steps , and you have some really low days , like three or four , where you're just sitting all day at the computer , you're not in that same mental state and you actually start to downregulate your other movement , your , your fidgeting , your not unconscious movement , the things you don't really count as steps but they might count as steps on your watch , whatever , and all of this is kind of an adaptation to conserve energy , um , and and you're you're basically reinforcing that by your , by moving less consciously , if that makes sense . So simply by moving less , you're almost telling your body like we don't want to be moving here , um , and that's , that's an adaptation . So if you're tracking your food , and let's say you are tracking your movement but you're not trying to change it right , or it got worse since the last time you did a fat loss phase and your body's compensating for the reduced intake , reducing energy expenditure that could definitely be causing a stall , right , and that's what happened to me . And again , that's specific to walking and NEAT . But it's because NE is such a powerful lever and sometimes your habits can shift without you realizing it . Now , the good news is , once you could identify that and , by the way , if you're listening to the show right now , I would like you to do that Like , identify what your critical path is .

Philip Pape 16:47

It could be something having nothing to do with movement . Your critical path could

Finding Your Critical Path

Philip Pape 16:51

absolutely be , on the nutrition side One , for example , many people are very inconsistent with their intake . Even if you're hitting the intended calorie intake for the week , the average daily intake if your intake fluctuates a lot let's say it's 500 up and 500 down day to day in terms of calories , that could cause your body to reduce its expenditure . It's fascinating , right ? It's like you're eating the same amount of food as if you distributed evenly , but because of the way you're eating it , your body actually might burn fewer calories , thus putting you in less of a deficit than someone else who ate in a very consistent way , right ? How about your sleep patterns If you're not going to bed and waking up at the same time every day , but you used to , even if you have the same hours of sleep , that could cause your body to conserve energy , to ramp up your hunger hormones , et cetera . Something is going on that's causing your expenditure to be lower than it was in the past or , for those of you doing this for the first time , just be aware of these affect your expenditure period and could be the reason you're stalling out . Right , it's nothing wrong with the principles , it's just identifying the critical path and then taking action to address it . And so for me , this is okay .

Philip Pape 18:00

Now I'm gradually , intentionally increasing my daily step count back to closer to my baseline of 12,000 . That is my target . And now every day , if I'm less than half that by midday , I know for sure . I want to get a walk-in Again if I can . If not , I'm going to get creative . I'm going to get creative . I'm going to use my standup desk with the treadmill or I'm going to pace a lot for my next call . Whatever I can do in a way that feels fairly natural and enjoyable , that keeps me moving , I'm going to do Um , and so that's walking again . I'm focusing kind of on my situation , but I'm giving you inspiration to do this , for yourself to say , okay , what is my critical path and what am I going to do to put in place a habit so there's less friction to do it and I'm not telling myself I just have to do it ? No , you want to make it where it's almost automatic , right For me .

Philip Pape 18:52

When I do any calls that are on my phone rather than on a computer , I'm going to walk around period , like that is just a thing I do . I don't even think about it Like oh , I got a Zoom call coming up and this is the kind I don't need to share my screen or anything . I'm going to go on my phone and I'm just going to walk around on it . Right , movement snacks that's another way to do it . When it comes to walking , like always taking breaks and just kind of walking around and just thinking about being on your feet for the vast majority of the time and you know , sitting far less than you're standing and walking . And then there's all the other things that I'm not going to get into related to walking specifically .

Philip Pape 19:24

The point is that the relatively small changes that help , that cause my expenditure to drop , are the same small changes that can I get them back up to my previous baseline without some major overhaul in my schedule or lifestyle and in the engineering world , when we'd have a critical path that would start to be threatened or extended , we'd say , okay , what's a big low-hanging fruit ? Can we talk to a supplier and negotiate a different approach so that they can get us the hardware sooner right ? Or can we go get this more skilled resource or person over here to add to the project , to help shorten our timeline on the software development or whatever it is ? So what is that for you ? How can you apply this concept to your own physique development journey ? Well , I'm going to give you some prescription , prescriptive steps here . The first step , of course , always is data collection and tracking . You know I would say this , but even um , let's see , I had .

Philip Pape 20:14

I had a guest on recently . I don't know if her episode has come out yet , oh yeah , it did . Christina McClurkin right , she was on talking about how her clients don't even track macros , but they track their meals and like how they feel with their meals and how much protein and fiber they're getting . So they're still tracking . At the end of the day , you still have to collect the data somehow . The way you do it is going to be , is going to have to fit with your style and desire , and again , with me and my clients and our physique university .

Philip Pape 20:41

It's very straightforward . You know macros , calories , uh , body measurements , daily movement steps , biofeedback , like sleep and stress levels , perform , performance , recovery , energy , hunger . I know I'm listing off a lot of things . I'm just rattling them off Progress photos , training , performance , recovery , et cetera . We make it really easy to do . I make it very simple for my clients to do , but for you it's like what do you need to track that you're not tracking now that could be causing issues with your expenditure or your food and your intake that you're not aware of , because if you're not aware of them , you can't even go to the next step .

Philip Pape 21:14

Now , once you're collecting data across the variables that you want , you'll be better equipped

Working Smarter, Not Harder

Philip Pape 21:19

to identify the factor . That's your current critical path , and maybe you're listening to this episode thinking OK , that's where I'm at . I've been tracking my data . Now what do I do ? Well , next you're going to look for anomalies or changes in your data . No-transcript .

Philip Pape 21:41

Go into Apple health or Google whatever it's called Google health . Go into your spreadsheet , go into your macro factor , like wherever you have graphs or data , and just stretch out the time period back to the right duration and see what the difference is . Actually , apple health has this cool feature where it automatically will notify you hey , we've noticed a trend change in your weight or your steps . It will actually tell you that , but it's just kind of ad hoc . You kind of want to do this yourself . You could even look at secondary factors like resting heart rate .

Philip Pape 22:10

I mean , if your resting heart rate has jumped by , let's say , five or 10 beats a minute versus where it used to be and you haven't gained weight so that's the caveat , because gaining weight can cause it to go up that could be that you're not getting as much movement as before and it may not be obvious from your step count . It may be the type of movement . Maybe you're just taking a lot of casual walks and you used to do more brisk walks or wear rucksack or something like that right , or you used to go on an incline or live in a hilly area . Now you live in a city in a flat area . Very cool insights you can draw from this stuff Sleep quality . If you have an aura ring or you wear some sort of tracker or wearable , you might see changes in HRV or body temperature or core body temperature , right , of course , step count we've talked about that's a very easy one to track Stress levels . That's like the resilience , the HRV .

Philip Pape 22:59

Anyway , the critical path is sometimes where you don't expect it . It's kind of like hiding in plain sight in the data and you're just not looking at the data or paying enough attention to it or you haven't noticed consciously that it's shifted over time . And I help people with this all the time , like again and not to pitch our program all the time , but in Physique University , one thing that we have is a post that says here's how to post all your data so we can help you . And it says make sure to have your metabolism , your calorie intake , your expenditure , your deficit over time , whatever some key things your weight trend , and based on that , we can then look at your data and see what's hiding in plain sight that you might be missing . And then , when you said , aha , eureka , I found it right . Now you can test your hypothesis with an intervention .

Philip Pape 23:45

That's the next step is experiment on it . If you suspect your reduced movement might be the factor , increase your step count for two weeks by a decent amount , you know . Increase it by like , I want to say like 4,000 steps a day let's say that's a couple miles while keeping everything else constant . Treat it as an experiment , or a challenge , if you will , and monitor the results . Now , it may not change things immediately , there might be a lag , but it might be enough for you to say , hey , I think this is the reason why . Um , I've seen that when I go up , my step count goes up . About a week later I start to see it . Relieve my expenditure a bit . My expenditure starts to climb back and again .

Philip Pape 24:21

Remember , critical path is not static . It can change as your circumstances change , because what limited you six months ago or a year , that last time you did the fat loss phase , may be totally different than what's limiting you today , and that is why you have to always be tracking and always be reassessing and always be experimenting . All right , and the cool thing about this whole thing listen up . Listen up . Sometimes the thing you need to change requires a lot less thinking , willpower , effort than what you thought you had to change . So , like for me , adding daily steps is not that hard .

Philip Pape 24:51

If I had to go ahead and drop another 300 calories a day on my food , that'd just be a slog . I'd be like , no , I'm not doing it . And in fact , guess what happened during my mini cut , as my expenditure was dropping faster than I expected . Of course my calories would have to come down to keep me in my intended deficit . I just didn't want to do that . I didn't want to eat that low amount of calories . It would not be good psychologically for my energy , for anything . And so I compromised . I said you know what I'm going to eat , more like what I would normally eat in fat loss phase , which for me is like 1800 to 2000 calories , when I'm going pretty darn aggressively Cause I burned , say , 2800 , 3000 at maintenance . And I said I'm just going to keep it there and just take the results as they come and work on my step count instead , right , and toward the end of the fat loss phase actually started to pick up a little bit , which was a good indicator that it was working .

Philip Pape 25:39

And this can go for any goal that you have , like any leverage point that allows you to get better results with less effort or more efficient . Effort is a good way to put it . Is is a game changer , isn't it Like ? Think about that . Most people attempt to improve everything and then they spend all their willpower and attention across the board where they're getting very little for each bit of effort . It's that 80-20 rule . Instead of focusing on the 20% , that gives you 80% of the results . They focus on like 90% of things and put all their effort into that and they still only get a small improvement . So if you can understand critical path , you can be much more targeted and efficient .

Philip Pape 26:20

And in my case , the you know the walking more wasn't just easier than eating less , it was healthier , it was more sustainable . There were other benefits . It was like no , this is the energy flux thing that we talk about , where let's eat more to move more . Let's not eat less and move more . Let's not eat less and like run ourselves in the ground trying to lose fat and restrict and all that . Let's try to live a higher energy life , moving and training .

Philip Pape 26:43

Not moving in a stressful way , but moving in a very healthy way , like walking , some sprinting , doing your chores , doing things by hand , doing stuff you enjoy , doing hobbies and stuff . Reduce your stress , enhance your cardiovascular health , enhance your mental health and cognitive function , have better mood . Like get all the benefits of the thing that you're doing to improve your metabolism rather than cut more calories , which just has negative consequences across the board . So you're going to track data , you're going to identify the critical path and then you're going to focus your effort , very efficiently and targeted , on a positive , healthy change that addresses your critical path not more restriction , not more cutting . And this mindset teaches us to look for leverage points in what seems like a very complex system because it is . But then you can vastly simplify it by identifying places where small inputs create large outputs . And then you apply this efficiency thinking to your physique development and you're going to achieve much better results and be less frustrated . It's going to be more sustainable and that's what we're all about .

Philip Pape 27:47

So , to wrap up , if today's concept resonated with you , I have a simple request Please text this episode to a friend who might be struggling with something in their lives . It might be fat loss , it might be something else . Maybe they are doing everything right quote unquote and just need a little bit different perspective . Sometimes a solution isn't working harder right , it's working smarter , more efficiently , by identifying the critical path in your system , and sharing knowledge is one of the most powerful ways that we can help each other , and this might be something that someone in your life needs to hear right now . So text this episode to a friend . That is all I ask . Until next time , keep using your wits lifting those weights and remember sometimes the biggest breakthroughs come not from working more , but from identifying the critical path in your system and working more efficiently

Final Thoughts and Takeaways

Philip Pape 28:36

. This is Philip Pape , and you've been listening to Wits and Weights . I'll talk to you next time .