Episode Introduction

Speaker 0 0:01

Hey Wits and Weights family, welcome to a quick bonus episode of the podcast. Today I've got a special Q&A dropped from our Facebook group, where we have a monthly Ask Philip Q&A. This is actually from yesterday's live in the Facebook group, which you can join for free using the link in the show notes or look it up on Facebook. One question is about walking for fat loss and the other is whether you should tweak your macros on heavy lifting days. And if you're not already in the group, again, go to the link in the show notes and you can ask me questions and get a very specific, contextual answer for your situation. It's free, lots of support. You can get direct answers from me and the community and maybe even get featured on a future episode like this one. All right, let's get into it. So we've got two questions today, the first from Jasmine and the second is from John, and if you want to see all the details behind this and my recommendations, jump into the Facebook group. If you're watching this video outside the group or I share this elsewhere, come into the Facebook group. For those of you that are here already, just go check out the Ask Philip thread to see some of the details.

Speaker 0 1:06

So we're actually going to start with Jasmine's question here. And Jasmine asks Hi, philip, I've been on a fat loss roll since February, without formal training, just walking daily and following a hormone-aligned nutrition approach. That's working really well for me. I've read that walking helps keep stress low and supports fat loss, especially for women. My question is how long can I realistically continue seeing fat loss results with walking alone and when do I decide to start strength training? How would you recommend easing into it in a way that supports my cycle energy and doesn't backfire on my progress? And I just realized nowhere here and nowhere in my notes did I address the question of training for your cycle. But I'll say you guys should follow Lauren Colenso Semple of Mass because she's constantly posting about the misinformation in the industry about training for your cycle, where most women don't have to do anything differently and it's very individualized to your specific energy response and your needs both for food and for training. So that's all I'm going to say about that is, I generally don't have to recommend anything specific because women are going to respond individually, just like men respond individually, and that's what the science supports.

Speaker 0 2:17

But let's talk about the conversation that we had and what I recommend and you would share that. You're a working mom, you're juggling toddler life, you walk daily, you know all this stuff is down here. I'm not going to go into the details. You've seen progress. You bought some resistance bands, you're thinking about adding strength training into the mix and then we mapped out a realistic plan to get started one gym session on the weekend, one to two short workouts at home after your toddler goes to bed.

Strength Training Importance

Speaker 0 2:46

And the first thing I want to say is I just love the way you're approaching this. I feel the intention, I also feel the flexibility and you're giving me context as to what your current limitations are. And that's the mindset that leads to results is making the attempt, finding a way. Sometimes it's making the time. And I want to take a quick tangent on the making the attempt, finding a way. Sometimes it's making the time. And I want to take a quick tangent on the making the time thing, because we'll often get I'll often get comments on some videos where people and it's excuses, let's just admit it, excuses People say I just don't have the time.

Speaker 0 3:15

Or, in response to the recommendation to make the time, they'll say well, that's, that's, that comes from an area of privilege. You know it's. It doesn't work for people who have two jobs or single moms or whatever and I'm gonna argue against that because I've helped a lot of people exactly in those situations and oftentimes it's not a zero sum game. It is not trading one thing for another. It's not saying well, I have to work out three hours in the gym every week, so three hours of something else has to go away. It's not always that, because there's elements of efficiency and there's trade-offs and there's um. You know you can exchange a half hour and get an hour elsewhere.

Speaker 0 3:51

A good example of that is training in the morning. It tends to help people be more consistent, come up with a consistent sleep schedule Sometimes you end up going to bed a little bit earlier, if you can and then, more importantly, the productivity you get from it and the consistency actually gives you more energy and capability and confidence for the rest of the week. Also, it leads to things like more opportunities in your career and job. So maybe you do get more income as a result, which gives you more time and or money, right? So I never want to think of it as a zero sum game and, jasmine, you have the right mindset to this. But I wanted to mention that because sometimes people make excuses when I say, look, ideally you've got to be training probably three days a week with access to some decent equipment. You know whether that's barbell, dumbbells, machines um, often it's not body weight and bands beyond a certain point, because you're just too strong for those to really challenge you sufficiently.

Speaker 0 4:40

So in that context, I want to answer your original question for everyone watching this live, for you as well, of course, and that is that, first of all, walking is fantastic. I love walking, not just myself, but the idea of it. It helps manage stress, it supports your recovery. It even increases your calorie burn in a very sustainable way. Right, I had someone reach out. Actually, it was the man from the Philippines whose questions I had, whose question I answered on the podcast about spot reduction. He actually just got back to me and said you know what? All I did was I added some more steps. He was getting like 5,000 steps. Now he's getting 10, which takes intentionality for sure. And he said, all of a sudden, this fat stop started flying off, right, because for him he was just kind of at that threshold where he wasn't moving enough. And it's often a gateway habit, right. Sometimes we think of that as a bad thing, but this is a good thing, a gateway habit to get yourself moving and being active and thinking of your life as you know, a functional, active human.

Speaker 0 5:38

When it comes to body composition, however, and fat loss, walking alone has a ceiling for sure, and that is because walking is not going to do anything to stimulate or preserve muscle mass. You know, beyond going from sedentary to walking, it's not going to do anything. When you're in a weight loss phase or a calorie deficit and you're not resistance training, you're going to lose fat and muscle. So it's not even a fat loss phase, and that could be some of what you're experiencing, in that you've lost some of the fat, but you probably also lost some of the muscle. In somebody who's excessively overweight, who just starts getting moving and walking, it actually could still be net beneficial, right, you could still net benefit, have an improvement, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and. You'll have a lower number on the scale. But the problem is very quickly you're going to start losing muscle and you're going to have a higher body fat percentage.

Macro Adjustments for Heavy Lifting

Speaker 0 6:29

You know, like skinny fat is one of the terms we use, and that's not the goal, right? The truth, the truth is here that strength training is non-negotiable and I think you understand that, jasmine. But just to answer the question in general, if you want to lose fat, if you want to keep a strong, healthy physique, if you want to keep a strong, healthy physique, if you want to improve your insulin sensitivity, your metabolic rate, your bone density, your hormonal health the list goes on and on your inflammation, especially the older we get, after 30, after 40, 50, especially for women, in many cases during the menopause transition, et cetera all of these things mean strength training is non-negotiable and the question is how do you ease into it without draining your energy? And so, consistent with kind of the recommendation that I gave you, um down in the comment, and we can see it here together. I'm not going to go into the details, um, but at a high level.

Speaker 0 7:15

Start simple, start where you're at start, with what you can do. One full body session per week is fantastic when you were doing zero, and that one full body session has to be very efficient and powerful. So I recommend, in compound movements, squats, presses, deadlifts, rows, pull downs, things like that, prioritizing good form, you know, low to moderate reps, progressive overload, gradually increasing weight. The challenge you're going to run into is you may not be able to increase weight at a certain point because of the lack of frequency, because of the lack of frequency. And so then I said, well, use your resistance bands or, if you can get heavier dumbbells midweek for the other two sessions, the shorter sessions. They can reinforce the movement patterns, right, the squatting, the hinging, the pushing, the pulling, and at least try to maintain your muscle and strength until the next session where you can potentially push for new maximums, right, and continue to push it, um, and. And initially that might work just fine. And there are arguments for, you know, single training session a week, uh, approaches, there really are. So if it works for you, awesome.

Speaker 0 8:17

I would say that that's a starting point. Starting small, working with your schedule, being realistic about your bandwidth, absolutely is going to build consistency, and then, once you start doing that, your results are going to accelerate, your body's going to start changing and you're probably going to find yourself wanting to lift more and find a way to do it, not just like fitting it in. And so I get this mindset shift a lot where people are like, well, I have to work out or I need to work out. I heard Philip say it was so great, so I'm going to do it. He's a decent guy that I think I trust. I don't know, I'm still figuring that out and usually you get the bug when you see the results, when you're doing it the right way.

Speaker 0 8:52

And actually Nick Delgadillo on my podcast just talked about the fact that that initial phase is usually very motivating, but there will come a time where a lot of people don't just want to lift for its own sake, and so then they're going to use their newfound strength in other things that are fun outside the gym, whether that's a sport or other activity like hiking or biking or something Right. So think about all of that, jasmine, and anyone watching or listening about eventually getting to a consistent gym schedule, ideally three days a week. For many of you with you know really solid goals for body composition, it might be four days a week. For many of you with you know really solid goals for body composition, it might be four days a week once you get to the intermediate phase. Uh, and then you're going to do great. But you know, don't beat yourself up for starting small, because it's a far, uh large. It's a large improvement from where you were. So I hope that answers the question, jasmine, and we're going to go to the next question by John, and John is a consistent poster in the group.

Speaker 0 9:48

I really appreciate all of his questions and I love this one. I love this one. It's a nuanced macro, split, slash training, slash energy question. His question are there days when you would increase fat or protein over carbs for lifting, performance and recovery? And I know why you're asking this question because you know how much I love carbs.

Recovery and Carb Benefits

Speaker 0 10:08

The scenario I'm thinking of is a more nervous system, taxing day, such as deadlifts for six sets of low reps, two to three reps the main portion of that day's lifting isn't going to need a ton of carbs to help performance, I think from experience. Hold that thought, john, because there's some truth in what you say, but it's not the whole story. Continuing, however, after I'm much more beat up than a day where the main focus is on squat oh, after that sorry, go after that deadlift session I'm more beat up than a day where the main focus is squat, with similar or more reps and sets. I'm sure there's a person by person difference here, of course, along with if someone's in a deficit maintenance, surplus of calories. I'm curious if you've seen cases like stated or others, where you might have someone eat more fats or protein to recover or perform better, while lowering their carbs to keep calories the same and I had a very short reply where I'm like carbs are almost always more helpful. But I want to get into some of the details behind this and the science. So let's tackle it all right.

Speaker 0 11:10

Your deadlift day low reps, high load, very fatiguing on the central nervous system, systemically taxing we'd like to say when you might feel like you don't need carbs during the session because the reps are low, and that's your experience. Right, you might feel that way while you're lifting and you might even I mean, I know people that train fasted, right, I don't recommend it for almost anybody, but some people are like, yeah, I do, fine, and it's tempting to think then what if I shift some of those carbs to fats or proteins instead? And we look at the evidence. Here's what we see. Okay, this is the starting point and then we need to use your personal biofeedback to experiment and deviate from that.

Speaker 0 11:52

Even though low rep strength work doesn't burn through glycogen. Glycogen is what's stored in our muscles from carbohydrate consumption before the workout. Even though it doesn't burn through as much the way like a high volume hypertrophy session or cardio or endurance would, carbs are still very, very important for the recovery. So you're thinking in terms of performance, which is a great start, but then think about, after you work out, replenishing your liver glycogen supporting the recovery of your central nervous system, even blunting cortisol after a hard training session, even serotonin production, which helps with your sleep, which helps with your mood. So there's a lot of subtleties where carbs come into play.

Speaker 0 12:31

I still haven't addressed all of these on my podcast because I keep uncovering a longer and longer list of how carbohydrates are beneficial for human beings, whereas if you had a high fat meal after your lifting session, it's not going to give you the same benefits. It might even delay recovery because it slows down the glycogen resynthesis. We know that fats, for example, slow down digestion and that's what they end up doing. It's why I don't like having too much fat or fiber before your workout either. I want the glycogen to get in your system from. The should always be anchored at a pretty high level anyway, and we definitely know that there aren't really benefits to going beyond, like the one or maybe 1.2 grams per pound of body weight.

Speaker 0 13:12

Now, some people do use carb cycling, right? You kind of are implying something like that where they have more carbs on the training days and fewer on the rest days. But I've looked into the research, I've listened to a lot of shows on this and the experts and really have come to the conclusion, working with clients, that this is not superior to consistent calories, like evenly distributed calories, when the calories and protein are not changing right Like so calories and protein are matched. Should you go up and down with your carbs? It's, I would say, more of a behavioral tool if you need it, right, always comes down to lifestyle more of a behavioral tool and it's not a physiological tool, right? So I like carbs.

Speaker 0 13:53

Think about this, okay, everything I just mentioned about recovery from carbs. Well, when does that happen? Well, it happens after you work out. It also even bleeds into the next day when you don't have a training session, your recovery day, which is one of the reasons I don't like necessarily robbing Peter to pay Paul when it comes to carbs. So I would keep the carbs in right, regardless of your training session.

Speaker 0 14:13

Don't overthink it If you're trying to manage calories, you can shift carbs a little bit down on your rest days and leave them on all your lifting days Heavy light, it doesn't, I don't care. Leave them in on your lifting days around your workout, no matter what. But you can definitely up them a little bit and reduce them on on non uh lifting days. But don't do the extreme like glycogen you know, protein only and then glycogen, super composition and all this crazy stuff you hear about Um, and then, yeah, if you could always bump up protein a little bit. If you are um, if you want it, need it, like it, but don't sacrifice carbs to do it. Is my opinion.

Closing and Facebook Group Invitation

Speaker 0 14:50

Um, now, your observation about deadlift days, beating you up more than squat days, is useful as a, as an individual, because it tells you that your recovery demand is higher. And guess what? Carbs are one of the best tools to meet that demand and you're going to fuel your lifting. You're going to fuel the recovery, both sides of the equation, all right. So I hope that answers the the the question.

Speaker 0 15:11

Um, oh, I guess one more aspect of this is experiment, right, you tell me? I mean, that could have been my first question. If you were my client, I would actually have said hey, let's try it and let's see how you feel and how the recovery is. And you're going to be the proof, and you'll. And if you tell me, if you tell me, that making this big shift away from carbs on these at these times is actually more beneficial in some way, then everything I just said doesn't matter.

Speaker 0 15:38

Does it Right? Like the science is just a starting point. It's just a population average, that's all. It is All right. And those are the questions for today. Big thanks to Jasmine and John for asking smart, nuanced questions and sticking with the follow-ups inside the Facebook group, which is the kind of back and forth that makes our community really so powerful. So if you want to ask your own question, if you want to share your progress or just learn from others on the same path as you, join our free Wits and Weights Facebook group, use the link in the show notes or just search for Wits and Weights on Facebook. Until next time, keep eating smart, training hard, living strong. We'll see you in the next regular episode.