Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey Wits and Weeds family, Philip Pape here dropping another special bonus episode, and today I am sharing a replay of my recent appearance on the With Passion podcast hosted by Josh Taft. Now Josh and I had an incredible conversation that really gets into cutting through the noise. It's something that we give a lot of lip service, but we legitimately talk about the difference between sources you can trust and everything else. We also get into why strength training is absolutely essential for longevity and how to approach your health and fitness journey with a mindset that allows it to be sustainable and evidence-based. We covered everything from the psychology of goal setting to why muscle's literally your retirement plan, and I think you're going to get tons of value from this discussion, because Josh is a great interviewer and he asked questions in a way that brought out some insights that I don't always get to explore, even on this show, even after this many episodes, After you listen.

Speaker 1: 0:57

I would encourage you to check out Josh's podcast With Passion wherever you get your podcasts, or click the link in the show notes. He's doing some really great work with conversations about personal growth and I think you're going to enjoy his content, so I'm going to include a link to his show in the show notes. All right, here's my conversation with Josh Taft.

Speaker 2: 1:15

The following conversation is with Philip Pape. Philip is the host of the Wits and Weights podcast, and he has spent years uncovering and sharing some of the most valuable and important information surrounding your health and fitness, and so in this conversation, we covered a range of topics like what are some common misconceptions in the health and fitness industry, what is important to consider when we're designing a program for diet and training, and why strength training is the most important thing for you to do to ensure your longevity. I loved this conversation. It's not often you get to sit down with someone with such breadth and depth of understanding of a topic like Philip, and a lot of what he spoke about has made me rethink my approach to health and fitness and it's been really, really valuable and I'm super grateful for his time. And so, without further ado, my conversation with Philip.

Speaker 1: 2:07

So, as part of your mission statement on the Wits and Weights podcast, you mentioned cutting through the noise of the with my fitness and nutrition, and it's one of the biggest pain points and biggest problems for people today, as social media expands exponentially, is that there are a lot of gurus and know-it-alls and people with MD behind their name, people, PhD behind their name, guys like me, you know. Who do you trust? Who do you even start to uh listen to and trust and or give them your time? Because, especially a format like a podcast right, we have potentially 30, 45 minutes In your case. You have nice chunky podcasts, episodes, and people are demanding you're demanding their time. Uh, what do you do with that?

Speaker 1: 3:00

So to me, the noise is not just the actual volume of content out there, but the fact that there are lots of motives for why the content is out there that leads to incorrect, false misinformation, disinformation, unintendedly bad information or a small sliver of accurate information. And so that was my intent was like look, I'm an engineer, I value skepticism, I value science and I also have a PhD, not in this field, but I have a PhD years ago where I learned to read research papers, and at that time I realized that it's easy to be swindled and it's also easy to follow something that seems well-meaning and that quote unquote works for people and it doesn't actually work for you. So long story short, the noise is all of that and helping you get some clarity.

Speaker 2: 3:51

What do you think is the because I wonder about this. As you mentioned my podcast, I don't know how much of the responsibility of me to provide accurate information is because, also, you know, in this format at least it's's a conversation. I'm well aware that I'm going to say completely inaccurate things that do not apply to most people, but they apply to me. So what do you think the responsibility if someone's sharing information may be related to health and fitness is?

Speaker 1: 4:17

you make a great point in that, depending on the medium and depending on the claim, right? Like? What level of trust are you trying to assert or match from somebody who's listening or watching? And I suppose it comes down to whether you're asking them to believe you on something or not, or whether you're just saying this is my opinion, right, like that's the fundamental difference with humans when you talk and if you watch the news today, I mean, I'm in the US and of course, things have gotten very political Even the idea of truth is in question from all sides, from from multiple areas of of the, the political, political sphere, and so, um, I think, I think it really comes down to N equals, one like as the most trusted sources yourself first, and experimenting and testing and trying things out, we can get into my systems-based kind of philosophy of how I approach nutrition and training, but then I think it expands up from that.

Speaker 1: 5:10

It's like, okay, now you have your close confidants, maybe a trainer, maybe a family member, somebody you work with, who you talk to as a human, maybe face-to-face, if you're lucky these days and you kind of develop a rapport and they give you referrals, don't they? Or they send you off to read this book or watch this podcast and you start to develop this whole network of information. And then, from that, the way I do it, at least, is I'm constantly checking against other sources and starting to filter out the things that seem to not make sense. But that's hard, man, josh, that is hard to do. It's very hard to do. So there's no easy answer, right? There's no easy answer.

Speaker 2: 5:46

Yeah, it's certainly hard to do Like if you've got someone who is betraying themselves as such, like a all knowing person. It's kind of hard to be like wait a second, I should check that myself. You know, not everyone has the time for that, so that's why people rely on people like you online to do the research for them and kind of tell them what it all says and then they can make their own minds up from there. You mentioned briefly just before that you were kind of finding your way prior to a certain stage and I know that you said you tried all these different trendy diets like keto and intermittent fasting. What was your experience with those?

Speaker 1: 6:23

Be more specific when you say experience, because there's a lot there.

Speaker 2: 6:28

Okay. So, for example, intermittent fasting how did you feel that impacted you in terms of achieving your goals, your energy and your just overall lifestyle at that point?

Speaker 1: 6:38

Yeah, that's a great example, because any method for anything could work for a person. In my opinion, just about any method right. Any specific tool or method can work, and a method can work for somebody at one point and not for another. Also, it can work for one goal and not another goal. So what I'm getting at is there's a lot of nuance behind it. Before I answer the exact direct question, I want to go back a little bit to how you tell something is trustworthy, and to me it's. If somebody is saying that there's one true way to do something, that is where the skepticism radar should go up. And if somebody says, look, it depends and there are caveats and there's assumptions, that is a more nuanced way to communicate. And if someone's saying that on a podcast or something else, it's going to be confident. Either way, either they're lying to your face confidently or they're being nuanced confidently, right. If they're not confident, we tend to not trust them at all. That's kind of just how our minds work.

Speaker 1: 7:41

So, with something like intermittent fasting, there was some really good information out there in the lean gains community, for example, and all sorts of you know famous people doing fasting and healthy people doing fasting talking about on social media. And when you get right down to it, what is fasting? Fasting is just not eating for a certain amount of time, right? And then you can say, okay, well, what does that do for you? Well, it helps you, maybe control your meal schedule, maybe it controls your hunger signals so you eat less during the time when you're eating. And maybe and here's where it gets, it gets.

Speaker 1: 8:14

I get skeptical. It does does all these other claims that we've seen start to be communicated over the years, like cleans out your cells and improves your hormones, and helps your mental clarity, and and and and helps your mental clarity, and, and, and, and right. And so you take all of that and you say what's the goal? Well, when I did lean gains, the goal was I was trying to lose weight.

Speaker 1: 8:31

I didn't even understand fat loss, body composition, building muscle. I didn't understand all that and I was just trying to lose weight. And so it was actually a very good tool at the time because, guess what, I could eat two meals from 11 am to 5 pm, feel satisfied. My body got adapted to the fasting window, and so to this day, I tell people it's a tool. So my experience may be different than yours, but if you're relying on it for the wrong goal or you're the wrong person to do it, you only know by actually trying it out and gathering the data and closing that loop and then seeing what needs to be adjusted actually trying it out and gathering the data and closing that loop and then seeing what needs to be adjusted. But the I guess the asterisk to all of that is making sure it actually is doing the thing you think it does.

Speaker 2: 9:10

Yeah, no, I also tried intermittent fasting for a while and it and it worked. It helped me lose weight, but I was always skeptical, like I don't know how much of it is just the fact that I'm eating less over a short period of time, because, you know, like obviously I got used to the kind of hunger part of being between 5 and 11. Um, I think I did 6 and 11. I gave myself a little extra hour there, um.

Speaker 2: 9:36

But then, yeah, I see all these videos and I think it again goes back to that truth thing where there's so many people posting about kind of half truths where they're like, if you have a bit of lemon water in the morning, it does this for your cells and detoxifies all this.

Speaker 2: 9:50

And then you kind of, if you actually dug into the science a little bit more which, granted, I don't do an awful lot, but anytime I have where it's kind of like, well, this is a bit of a half truth, you know it can do you some good for this reason and this reason. But the way they're portraying it is slightly warped and shifted and I think that kind of speaks to the online space of fitness and health where you kind of have to make these big statements to, to get attention and and to get a following. So how do you kind of navigate that space online when you're talking about health and fitness, knowing that the big statements in these, you know, life-changing things is how you're going to get attention, but you're trying to stay true to the science.

Speaker 1: 10:30

This is. This has come up a lot lately in that you sometimes have to grab the attention with um, a bold claim, a clickbaity statement. You know it's marketing. It's marketing 101 is get the attention, then deliver the goods and make sure there's not too much of a chasm between what you're saying you're going to deliver and what you actually deliver. You talk about intermittent fasting. I was just looking through my catalog. Episode 254 from December 2024 is called 10 Intermittent Fasting Myths that Need to Die right and it's like kind of clickbaity. It gets your attention.

Speaker 1: 10:58

You're like what that, I recall clearly is one of the maybe 20 episodes I've done. That got tons of YouTube comments, primarily from people wanting to defend intermittent fasting because it's like a trigger. It's like you're in that tribe, you're in that group and no offense against people who want to belong to a group and do something together. I totally get that. It's more of don't just assume something's right for everyone all the time. Have the nuance behind it. So I know how to go after that boogeyman pretty well by now. Like I had an episode last week called my Escape from Low Carb Diets, like Keto and Carnivore and oh man, the hater comments on YouTube. I mean it was one of the highest viewed videos of the last few months.

Speaker 1: 11:43

Because what happens is YouTube says people are engaging and then you get more and more views but, like 90% of it is is kind of haters. And then I have to do I engage with them or not. And I love engaging with them, not in a not in a super um, you know aggressive way, but I do want to defend the point and try to be nuanced. So I, I'm okay when someone wants to get the attention using marketing tactics, as long as they're delivering authentically and honestly to what they're implying. That you're, you're, you're, you're giving them, like I, I, I have an episode coming out as a result of the comments, called something like is fiber unnecessary? The carnivore diet thinks so.

Speaker 1: 12:23

And it's like you know, you're going to get people coming in who are like well, I do carnivore. It makes me feel great, it solved all my autoimmune conditions, I've lost weight, I don't have any fog anymore and my gut is fine and you don't need fiber. You don't need fiber on carnivore and I take exception to that because I think there's. If you just stand back and say I don't care about the diet, I want to look at the body of evidence.

Speaker 1: 12:45

What did the meta-analysis say of studies, of studies on humans, not just on rats over time and we see over time, time and again, that a diverse diet, plants and animals tends to have the best health outcome, In fact, leaning slightly more toward more plants and I'm a big meat eater, but definitely not carnivore there's issues when you compare saturated fat to seed oils. Seed oils win people like believe it or not, even though they're highly vilified on by the YouTuber in the grocery store saying look at this bag of chips, it's got seed oils, it's going to kill you, Right? So I don't know if that answered your question, but that's what came to mind.

Speaker 2: 13:21

Yeah, no, I think that's a good balance. You've got to get their attention, but then as long as the information's good, I think that's where your responsibility lies. You mentioned that you kind of hit 40 and your kind of approach to your own health and your own fitness kind of changed. You built your home gym, you started looking into the science and everything. I'm curious, what kind of was your view of health and fitness before that point and how did that change?

Speaker 1: 13:48

When you said hit 40, I thought of this meme where this guy falls on his face on the concrete and it says even when you fall on your face, you're still moving forward. Right, so analogy, because that's essentially what my life is and I'm proud of that. I encourage people to experience many things, test many things, try many things and assume. You don't know if it's going to work until you try it. Which is relevant to your question, because for my 20s, all the way through my 30s, that's what I did. I was always reading books about lifting, I was always going to the gym, trying things and trying all sorts of crazy diets. I mean going back to Atkins and Slim Fast in college, through to all the low carb stuff, and I did a weird diet man for my wedding. This was back in 2006. And all I could remember there was like 12 foods on a list and that's all I ate, and I mixed and matched those foods Okay.

Speaker 1: 14:42

Horrible, like sliced deli meat was one of them. Like apple was, you know, like super crazy. So people get desperate about this stuff because it's our health, it's our physique, it's all those wrapped up in our body image and our self-worth. So, from my 20s to my 30s, by having gone through all those and realizing they didn't work, it wasn't until um, the pandemic, which was when I was 39, turning 40 that year, that I discovered the muscle and strength pyramids by Dr Eric Helms and Andy Morgan and starting strength, which is a very, very well-known program and book. Um, and in fact I just interviewed the CEO of starting strength from my show. I was super stoked about that. So check that one out when it comes out. Um, but uh, I man, your question was like I don't know what your question was.

Speaker 2: 15:31

Just so, that was your kind of approach was just experimenting, trying new things. Yeah, what, what kind of occurred? So obviously the pandemic came and everything. What inspired you to kind of look into the science and the background of the health and fitness? And how has your approach changed now?

Speaker 1: 15:48

Yeah, that year, because of the pandemic, I had to start working out at home. I had done CrossFit for about eight years and my trainer at that gym himself had sort of moved away from CrossFit more toward just traditional strength and conditioning. So, lucky me, he wrote for me a home-based program. He did it for all his clients, for free, for the pandemic. Really nice guy, you know, thinking, hey, we're all going to come back in the gym and talk good things about him. Really good businessman, um. And so I had some dumbbells and uh bands, just hardly anything. But he said, look, you've got to focus on strength, you've got to progress over time and you've got to uh, see your numbers go up and you've got to eat and sleep. So I said, well, this is actually kind of new to me because I never thought of it that way. I always thought conditioning, cardio, um, lots of reps, you know things like that. I I didn't have a structured approach, so that got me to look into that, which is why I came across. The books I mentioned, as well as a whole bunch of podcasts, got me really into podcasts, um, as a listener, and I had a. I had probably a hundred in my feed. I probably still do.

Speaker 1: 16:49

And that year I said, okay. Well, if the way to strength as a beginner is to use a barbell which is kind of the the thing I had come across that seemed to make sense. I need a gym, a better gym in my house. So I hustled to get a rack and a plate, the plates and a bar and a bench, and then I just started doing a novice linear progression is what they call it right, three days a week squat, press, deadlift, heavy, you know, three by five, one by five, that's it.

Speaker 1: 17:15

And I started eating a lot, drinking a lot of whole milk, just eating anything, not really checking it. I didn't know how to track macros, anything like that. I just gained a ton of weight, and I'm glad I did, because it let me see how gaining weight can massively put on, you know, strength and size, um, even though you gain fat along the ride. So that that got the catalyst going for me. A year later I figured out I needed to cut some weight because I had gained too much fat, and that taught me about flexible dieting, which is actually a term in the industry. I think Alan Aragon invented the term, but it goes back to probably as early as the 60s, but really in the 90s, they started studying flexible versus rigid approaches to dieting and really noticing the difference for sustaining your results and adhering to your diet and enjoying your diet. And I said this is a lot more fun than the 12 food diet that I did for my wife.

Speaker 2: 18:08

That must have got so boring so quickly. That's insane, you know people will do anything.

Speaker 1: 18:13

Josh, you know this, people will do anything sometimes. So when I realized, look, I could eat animal products, plant products. I could eat seeds, nuts, fruits Nothing's off limits. Carbs aren't off limits, desserts and snacks aren't off limits. But I need to have guidelines and guardrails and structure around the quantities and around the composition of my meals so that it served my goals as a lifter, and also the energy balance so I could know to gain or lose weight. Because you mentioned intermittent fasting. It's like why does that work? Because of energy balance, you eat fewer calories and you might cut out a bunch of processed foods in the process. So that's when I got into it and then late 2021 is when I started my show and eventually got into coaching from the show. So I did it all backward.

Speaker 2: 18:52

Were there any kind of misconceptions that you now realize are misconceptions that you you may have held in those years coming up Because you talk about cutting through the noise and everything, and I think I've personally seen a lot of content online where I'm like, if that just can't be true, you know, and it's just kind of a commonly held belief and everything. So is there anything where you realize, huh, I've been thinking about this all wrong.

Speaker 1: 19:15

Yes, everything, just about everything. When it comes to training and nutrition, what, let me ask you, what's something that comes to mind? That's like you hear all the time.

Speaker 2: 19:24

Um, I think to be, to be honest, my general approach to to train. I remember when I started training and I started with the very basic stuff and I just got more and more and more and more technical as I went on. I was trying to do all these different isolation exercises, achieve certain angles and all this kind of thing, and you know, I made progress and everything. But at some point I kind of realized that I don't need to be doing all this. As long as I'm working hard in the gym, I'm eating my protein and I'm sleeping, I will make progress. And that kind of realization just made the whole thing easier for me, because I was like I don't need to spend all this time doing all this research and, you know, timing everything and making sure that I'm being optimal in every single way. As long as, as long as I'm doing those three things, then that kind of that will push me forward and help me make progress.

Speaker 1: 20:14

And what was the cat? What was the um Eureka moment where you realize? So, in other words, did you test, backing off and finding that it didn't hurt you?

Speaker 2: 20:24

did you test backing off and finding that it didn't hurt you? Yeah, I went consistently to the gym doing all these things and then I just got so sick of it and bored of it I took time off. I went back, did the basic things again and I was like, oh, this is great, like I don't have to think so much and all I'm doing is just lifting, lifting stuff and putting it back down again.

Speaker 1: 20:41

Yeah, I feel like so many people can relate to that, myself included. Putting a bit back down again yeah, I feel like so many people can relate to that, myself included, because I used to overthink everything as well. I'm definitely a. I love data. I love it now analyzing everything and whether it's protein, timing, and now you know you could just eat your total protein is is 95% of the equation for the day.

Speaker 1: 20:59

It doesn't matter when or how much per meal or everything, unless you really care about optimizing to that nth degree, doing too much cardio. So when I work with clients where a lot of women I'll say two-thirds, are women, but there's men as well there's definitely myths around fat burning, for example, that are misunderstood, like all the activities to burn fat, or training, fasted or low-carb, et cetera. That all has to do with misunderstanding with energy systems in the body, and when you realize that and you understand metabolism, you realize that your body is going to adapt to what you do with it. So if you're doing a lot of cardio, you're going to become a very efficient cardio machine, which means you're going to burn a lot fewer calories because your body wants to conserve energy. If you're lifting weights, on the other hand, your body's going to adapt to grow larger sarcomeres in your musculoskeletal cells right, just to get technical which just means you'll have more ability to produce force and have bigger muscle mass.

Speaker 1: 21:56

So on the one hand, you got to understand the basic science to do the right things. On the other hand, you don't have to do that much, like you said, if you just lift seven or 8,000 steps a day at least and you track your nutrition so that it's within some reasonable range of protein and calories. Yeah, that like covers 80, 90% of it. Of course there's recoverability, like sleep and stress management, where the older you are or the more complex your life, the more you might be, you know your metabolism might respond to those things. If you're a woman, you know hormones and peri and postmenopause are also going to have an impact. So there's a lot of other things like that. But if you're doing the basics, you're going to mitigate largely a lot of those concerns.

Speaker 2: 22:39

Yeah for sure. I mean yeah when I when I say that I want a caveat saying I didn't have any injuries, I don't have any particular hormone issues or anything I had to think about. So yeah, I'm the kind of box standard gym goer that just.

Speaker 1: 22:52

It's okay. It's a good place to start, man. Yeah, I mean, it was great Good place to be.

Speaker 2: 22:57

It was great you did mention about cardio there. What's your ruling on cardio when you're trying to build muscle or lose fat as well?

Speaker 1: 23:06

Yeah for sure. So what's your priority? What's your goal? Right? If your goal is, I want to be strong, I want to be fit and have more muscle mass, I want better body composition, lower stress and better longevity, you're probably going to want to prioritize strength training. So then you have to say what else can fit into your week that supports strength training but also supports your other goals, like cardiovascular health, right, and I'll say that, like, strength training alone will make a massive difference in your health.

Speaker 1: 23:34

People don't understand that. It's not about muscle, it's insulin sensitivity, it's nutrient partitioning, it's, you know, your muscles become a glucose, a sink for glucose, so you can eat a lot more food, you burn more calories. Musculoskeletal health, bone density I mean, there's a huge list. You know better. Hormones like testosterone, growth hormone, estrogen, progesterone all of it right. And if that's your goal, then think about recoverability versus the stress. So the stress is every time you lift weights. That's a stressor. Anytime you move your body outside the gym, it's a stressor to an extent. Walking is not really a stressor. Running is extremely stressful and other forms of cardio that don't involve what's called the eccentric part of the motion, which is the downward part of the motion where you're loading against gravity. So, for example, biking does not involve eccentric loading against gravity. Running does. Every time you slam the ground, you're absorbing the gravity right. So running can cause some micro tearing, it causes recoverability issues when people do too much of it, it raises cortisol and it tells your body you need to adapt for endurance rather than anabolic strength, whereas walking low-grade walking you can walk till the cows come home and it's great for recovery. So I like lifting, I like walking, any other cardio. You either do it because you enjoy it like a sport. You know if you're into jujitsu or pickleball, or you know surfing whatever javelin spirit I don't know. Or, um, if you want to like, do cardio.

Speaker 1: 25:06

I'm a big fan of sprinting. Now, josh, um, I talked to Brad Kearns. He is a uh coauthor with Mark Sisson of a book just came out called born to walk, and the argument there, which is pretty well supported by now, is that, um, we're not born to run, like someone claimed. We are born to walk. We humans can walk. I just spoke to a guy that hiked like halfway through Connecticut and hiked like 50 miles in one day. You know, no big deal. Good luck trying to run a lot without breaking down and getting injured, which is often what happens. So sprinting, though, is anabolic. It is short, it is a high localized stress, acute stressor, but it's not a chronic stressor and it's very recoverable. So I do have a whole sprinting protocol I use now with clients. So that's your answer is basically lifting, walking and a little sprinting or fun cardio.

Speaker 2: 25:57

And when you're kind of designing a program or helping someone out, what kind of things are you considering? When you're giving them, say, a sprinting protocol, or when you're saying, do this specific exercise or this kind of diet, what kind of things are you thinking about?

Speaker 1: 26:14

before we even get to any of that, I want to understand where the person's coming from, what their history is, um, what equipment they have, what their lifestyle looks like, their job, how many days per week they have to train, right, it's like all the things that make you you and that you know better than me. So, um, before we, before we get into the weeds, right, there's beginners, there's intermediate, there's advanced trainees. You know, there's some of my, some of my clients come in, having lifted for 20 years. They know how to train, they need maybe a little bit of guidance there, but they want to lose belly, belly fat, right, they've gained excess fat, um, others, maybe they never lifted properly in their life and they need real basic guidance, they need form checks, they need a beginner program, et cetera.

Speaker 1: 26:51

So it's very hard to answer that question other than to say, in generalities, the principles are is it recoverable? Does it fit within your life? Does it meet the principles of of basic strength training and diet, kind of like we talked about earlier? Um, and then, are you doing it consistently? Because, man, josh, that's the you, even if you have the most basic program, doing it consistently is going to give you massive results, but not doing any program inconsistently is not going to give you results, right, feel me so. So I don't want to complicate anything.

Speaker 1: 27:24

So, um, that's what it starts from. It's like an intake, understanding the client, their equipment, blah, blah, blah, and then, um, putting together a plan. Now, the first two months of a fitness kind of transformation, if you will, should not be trying to lose weight or even gain weight. It should be trying to find your true maintenance calories and your peak level of energy for where you are right now and getting all of those habits dialed in based on habit. Uh, habit, what am I trying to say? Uh, habit principles, like James Clear, you know. Um, and then also dealing with any psychological issues, cause if you're not ready, you're not ready to fat loss. If you have emotional issues with food, you know. Or if you binge, or if you don't know how to plan, meal plan, meal prep and all of those things, there's a whole bunch of skills that you have to develop.

Speaker 2: 28:08

That's a really important. I never really thought about that. Approaching it from a psychological perspective first, because I mean you know there's so much of weight loss or gain isn't really to do with what you do in the gym, like it's so much about your diet. Maybe you could talk on that just for a minute, like how, how much of it is your diet compared to what you do in the gym or how many steps you're walking.

Speaker 1: 28:32

I thought you. So it's funny. I thought you were going to say it's so much about your mindset, but now I see where you're going. Now I see where you're going is the because, the psychology of the food side of the equation as it's such a massive sabotaging your, your fitness, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 28:46

Um, I mean, I guess I'm going to challenge that a little bit, just to say that the psychology is everywhere, like it's individualized, right, like even with the training, um, and it's all tied together. So I have a. I have a client just signed on a couple of weeks ago. He's extremely shredded, like coming to me he's very shredded, did it on his own. He eats very what's what people would call clean. Right, he eats very clean. He also is afraid of gaining an ounce of weight. Okay, and he's, he's, I mean, he's like 6% body fat, all right. If you saw a picture of him you'd say, yeah, you could probably get him ready for a bodybuilding show pretty quickly. You know what I mean.

Speaker 1: 29:22

And yet I can tell he has a lot of fear, anxiety, uncertainty about all of this food and training, um, even though he's done a lot of it what you would think is successfully he feels it's not sustainable and he feels like it's like he couldn't keep living that way. And you see this a lot. You see disorders, disordered eating, you see orthorexia, which is the obsession with clean eating, you know. And so with him, my goal has been to take his attention away from scale weight and toward flexibility. Right and to me. That's how I help him get, get to a place where he realizes he can do things he used to be afraid of and they don't cause the sky to fall like he has to prove it to himself through doing it, getting the data adjusting. Doing it, getting the data adjusting. And he happens to be the type that needs to ask me 10 questions a day and I'm cool with it. I say that a little jokingly, but he to ask me 10 questions a day and I'm cool with it. I say that a little jokingly, but he'll send me 10 questions a day and I, patiently. You know, the more questions he sends, the longer I wait to respond. That's my way of putting in boundaries, but I still. I love it because he's learning a lot. He's like, yeah, I want to learn 10 to 12 things from. He'll send me things like man, I see the scale weight going up. Are you sure we're doing the right thing? Are we at the right calorie level? And I'm like all right, let's look at the logic Scale.

Speaker 1: 30:40

Weight is driven by a number of factors the glycogen in your muscle and liver, your fluid intake, your body fat change. You would have to over consume by 3,500 calories to gain a pound of fat. So if, in a week, your scale weight went up by three pounds, you either overconsumed. By what is that? Over 10,000 calories for the week, even though we're keeping you at a very reasonable calorie level. It's probably lower than you need right now, based on his data. Or guess what? It's the creatine. You're taking the testosterone replacement.

Speaker 1: 31:10

You just started the fact that you're training the right way, with more recovery. Instead of going to the gym seven days a week, we're only doing four days a week. See to your thing about volume, okay, and you're eating more carbs than ever before. Like that was one of his fears is he wanted to work with me so that he can learn to eat carbs again. So I said, look, all of that is fluid. It's fluid, it's glycogen, it's inflammation, it's all the things from what's going on. I guarantee you that in a few weeks we're going to see that you really burn 3000 calories a day and you've been actually under eating this whole time and everything's going to stabilize and you're going to feel and look great. And he already is telling me how like he's been going to the gym, having his banana before his workout, which he never used to do and he's like feeling stronger and getting more reps. You know what I mean. So yeah, psychology is massive and diet, training, body image it's all important.

Speaker 2: 31:59

I'm glad you brought up that example actually, because you know, rightfully so, people very much want to support the one side of the people trying to lose weight and and you know it is really tough and I'm in no way saying it's not, but as someone who I wouldn't say I've struggled with my body image but it's, it's something that takes up a lot of my mental capacity, is how I'm looking, and not in an egotistical way at all, I'm not looking in the mirror and going, oh, I could work on my deltoid a little bit more and try and puff that up.

Speaker 2: 32:30

But you know, like I think, as someone who's been in sports their whole life and has been to the gym pretty consistently, it's sometimes it is there is a lot of pressure to look good on yourself and I'm glad you brought up the example on that end where someone who does, by most people's measure, look good and and they should feel good about themselves and and they also, um have their own difficulties when it comes to body image and diet and whatnot. Um, on a personal question actually, does creatine cause I mean I know it causes more water retention? Does that mean that you're gonna weigh more? Because I weighed myself yesterday and it was upsetting because I was like, oh my god, I'm weighing so much, but I've also just finished my loading phase of creatine, so I'm thinking maybe that's part of it 100%.

Speaker 1: 33:17

Probably two to five pounds for most people. They're going to have a scale weight bump and that's all fluid being held in the muscles, glycogen in the muscles. It's all goodness. That's the again I was telling my client that I'm like this is all good, you want this If you respond to it. You want it Even if you don't respond to it, which 20% of people don't. There are studies now that show cognitive benefits of taking creatine, especially if you take excess to like 15 grams a day or even 20 grams a day. I'm pretty sure within a few years we're going to see more and more recommendations for everyone to take creatine. But yes, you will gain two to five pounds. It will stabilize. Your body will adapt to the water. You might retain a little less water. It might be even a little drop once that happens and then you're stable.

Speaker 2: 33:59

Okay, great, that makes me feel better because I stepped on the scales. Oh God, where's that come from? I thought I was losing weight, but, you know, I really appreciate your approach to it. I think, especially in this kind of podcasting world that we're living in, even not just in relation to health and fitness, but in so many things like productivity and business growth and everything people are forgetting that they should just try things, you know, they should just experiment with things. I think that they're hearing all these people that you know probably do have a lot of knowledge and scientific background and whatnot you have an engineering background and they're taking it as gospel and forgetting the fact that something that works for one person may not work for the other person.

Speaker 2: 34:44

And I think my kind of general approach to things now, not just health and fitness is more is more just, for example, with money, I'm trying to save money and save for the future and not invest, but invest in myself and that kind of thing. And instead of worrying about the finer things and investing in this stock and this stock and having this ratio of savings to spendings and stuff, I'm just adopting a mentality that it's like just try and save. You know, do what you can and just bear that in mind when you're making decisions and everything and I think that kind of you know applies to health and fitness as well it's keep your goal in the back of your mind when you're making decisions, saying, okay, if I want to lose weight, should I do this. Or actually is it better if I do this and not worrying too much about the kind of finer details, if that makes any sense. Sorry, I went on a little bit of a tangent there no, it makes.

Speaker 1: 35:39

It makes a ton of sense. It's like the, the pareto principle right 20 of the effort will produce 80 of the results. You know the golden ratio we have all these like analogies for that which is don't try to change too many variables at once, don't get caught in the 1%. Focus on the 80% down here, which for most people is going to be something like they're not training at all and they're not doing it consistently and honestly. I would put that before diet, because I think you kind of asked that earlier. I never quite answered it, but I would almost put strength training consistently before quote unquote fixing your diet only because it's an excellent catalyst for a fitness oriented lifestyle where the diet then follows and supports it.

Speaker 1: 36:20

But anyway, um the the thing with trying stuff out is then you run into more psychological avatars, right. So there's the avatar where of impatience, and that's very common. I'm a perfectionist myself. I get impatient about certain things and you are not going to get a result in one instance of trying something. Almost that that's a universal rule, like I mean again, james Clear and Atomic Habits talked about, I think, 21 days to establish a habit. You know um the compounding effect. I mean, we do podcasts and I know you're getting started and you're being consistent. It's going to pay off.

Speaker 1: 36:57

I started four years ago. My first year, I had like maybe 10 episodes downloads an episode for the first year, you know and then it started to take off, like the, you know, exponentially. And when it comes to trying things out, let's say here's an example Someone reached out to me with a very long message. She joined my Facebook group. She says I've been listening to your podcast and I'm just struggling and she gave me this very long message. Now, if you know anything about marketing, a long message is a hot lead right.

Speaker 1: 37:23

Like that's a hot lead. That's somebody who you know is already trusting what you're saying, because they're seeking help and you want to help them but you don't. You can't like give them all their coaching in one day and nor do you want to. That can be really dangerous because they're going to be all overwhelmed, like where do I go from here? Um, but she said, look, I tried this, this and this, cause I heard you suggested before, but and then it was some excuse about like I got frustrated so I deleted the app. I got frustrated so I stopped the next day. And that immediately goes to my head of the avatar of the impatient person. I'm like, okay, so you kind of know what to do, and you even started, but you just didn't continue, and so that was an easy thing for me to guide her and say, okay, I think you want to go back and do that, uh, and and stick with it and get back to me in three weeks, you know, and if you need guidance, I'm here for you, et cetera.

Speaker 1: 38:09

So there's the, the impatient avatar, who just doesn't give it long enough time. Then there's the person who changes too much at once, right, or tries to do too much at once where you're. I'm going to start a new diet. I'm going to start training. I'm going to change my step count, I'm going to change when I go to sleep, I'm going to, you know, do meditation practice. And then it all falls away because it's unsustainable, right? And I could go on. There's other. I'm literally pulling these out of my ass right now. Josh, I don't have any avatar framework, but these are legitimate.

Speaker 2: 38:38

Oh, you tricked me. I was thinking, oh, this guy knows what he's talking about.

Speaker 1: 38:44

No, but they are. They are Because I, because I see it every day, you know I talk, I talk to it every day, I do episodes on it. Seriously, people just struggle in their own way, whether it's perfectionism, impatience, what have you. But, like you said, just keep it simple. Pick one thing, spend some time with it, gather the data and you got to know what data to get right, what you can't manage, what you don't measure, et cetera and then feed it back and say, okay, the data tells me this. Therefore it worked, or didn't you know?

Speaker 2: 39:10

it's funny you say that I I'm someone who sometimes falls into that category of trying to change everything at once. I'll wake up one morning and I'll go. You know what? This is it. I'm changing my life, I'm my sleep schedule is being so, I'm taking ice baths every day, um, and sometimes, you know it, it does work sometimes.

Speaker 2: 39:29

I just moved to New Zealand and, um, you know, I was in australia beforehand and my diet and my fitness was kind of slipping. And I got here and I was like, okay, fresh start mentally, physically, I'm gonna, I'm gonna change a lot and my habits have been better and my diet has been better. But I think that's maybe because I've done it before, so it's a bit easier to kind of fall back into it, um, if that makes sense. But it brings up the idea of, you know, like new year's resolutions, where some random turn of the world, people decide that everything's going to change and they're going to become a better person, whatever that means, or they're going to fix their diet and they're going to do all these things and it's like, okay, well, give yourself some leeway.

Speaker 2: 40:10

You know, and the way I've personally tried to kind of rearrange my goals is step by step and being honest with myself, you know like, for example, I wanted to get better at using my phone. I for a while I got a little bit hooked on it. I wasn't super bad, but I just wanted to get better and initially I was like maybe I should just stop using it. And then I took I kind of took a step back and I was like that's just not realistic, you know. So I just made a list of times I could and couldn't use it, like can't use it on the toilet. That was like the the first one, that was the first step to reducing my phone time, and did that for like a week. And then I added another time and then another time, and that was how I was able to kind of get more control over my phone use. So how do you help your clients set goals in a in a kind of realistic way that they're actually going to be able to follow?

Speaker 1: 41:01

Goals are. Goals are important, uh, in a number of ways that come to mind. So what you kind of alluded to there was realistic expectations. Right, people will have some thought that they could accomplish a certain amount in a certain time and then, when they fail to, that's where the feedback loop is broken and you're discouraged, right, and then you maybe don't want to try it again. But you can instead map it out from today going forward, meaning if your goal is to lose fat, don't think about losing all the fat, think about optimize, optimizing the process for that. But then that focuses you here and now, on that process, right? And is what does the process get you in terms of psychological wins on a micro basis, on a hourly, week, daily, weekly, whatever makes sense, which, like going to the gym and having done your workout, can be a huge win for people just doing it Right. And I might have a client where they're just so inconsistent I said I just want you to go into the gym, try the workout and tell me that you went right. For others it might be no, I'm going to actually hit my numbers and you know there's some more advanced goal that they have. So goals will evolve over time Most of my clients, when we start, if on the training side, it's going to be something like we're going to focus on strength and just the micro wins in the gym, they're going to come fast and furious and then we're going to learn so much from that process and what we have to do that you're going to be not even thinking about anything else, which is great, because that's kind of, as humans, how we like to be.

Speaker 1: 42:28

We like to feel like we're making progress. Diet gets a little harder, right, because, yes, we can track our food log, our food plan prep and so on, but the change takes time, right, the change takes longer. So that's where we have to focus on the other wins that are like the non-scale wins in the short term. That's what I would tell people is like find all the things that you know will change every day. That gives you a check in the box for you, like, whatever your level of OCD is around habit streaking, you know get it down to that level and then, when you set up, when you've done that for a few months and now you're ready to go after something more aggressive, and that's where something like a fat loss goal or muscle building goal comes in after maybe six to eight weeks. Then you go more aggressive. And this then ties to the thing you talked about, where New Year's resolutions people try to. They want to solve everything because it's the new year.

Speaker 1: 43:20

I love seasons, I love holidays. I love seasons, I love um holidays. I love these points in time like new year's that push you. I love those. Actually, you can take advantage of them, take ownership of them. But then you've got to be super realistic.

Speaker 1: 43:31

So when it comes to fat loss, I say not how much you want to lose, but how fast can you go where it still feels sustainable and it's not that hard?

Speaker 1: 43:39

And you can make tons and tons of mistakes along the way, like very conservative, and then do the math where does that get you? That's that's what's. That's what you're going to do. Like you want to lose 20 pounds but in reality you're going to lose seven over the next four months. But you're going to do it and you're going to do it successfully and at the end of it you're going to say, wow, that actually wasn't so hard and I still got to have my ice cream and pizza on the weekend and I still got to go out to eat and do all the things I love, whereas every time I did it in the past, I tried to lose 20 pounds and I either crash, dieted my weight at 20 pounds, suffering and miserable along the way, binged it all back, wasn't training and I actually am fatter than I was before in terms of body fat percentage, or um, I had fits and starts along the way and I never even lost anything Right had fits and starts along the way and I never even lost anything, right?

Speaker 2: 44:27

these sound familiar, josh. Yeah, for sure, I really like um. I like again that you mentioned that some the the idea of seasons right. I've been thinking about this a lot where people talk about balance and sustainability, and rightfully so. If someone's uh, a very extreme end of health and fitness and they need to move to the middle, perhaps it's going to take a longer period of time. So sustainability is important. But for someone perhaps that has more specific goals, they can go through a season where it's not sustainable.

Speaker 2: 44:57

I remember when I was so I went traveling to Mexico.

Speaker 2: 45:00

When I was there, it was about three months I lost so much, much weight, like you could see the kind of bones, my cheekbones, coming through. And I got home and I was like, okay, I went down to the weight I was when I was 17 at the time I was 23, I think, so you know it's a pretty significant weight loss and I was like, okay, for these next few months I'm just gonna ham out the protein, like a ridiculous amount of protein every day. I was hitting the gym, working really hard and it was not sustainable, but for those three months I managed to put on 10 kilogram mostly of muscle and get back to a more healthy weight. So in my head that was the season for that, if that makes sense. And it wasn't balanced and it wasn't something I'd want to do for a long period of time, but it got me to where my goal was and then I was able to kind of take a step back and and kind of relax a little bit in the whole process.

Speaker 1: 45:49

Yeah, what you're saying. That's genius actually, because that's the essence of periodization, which is a common technique in both training and nutrition, and for most people they don't have to worry about it. With training, Don't talk, don't even look at block periodization or anything like that until you've just basic lifting program for like six months to a year. But with nutrition it makes a lot of sense again, which is why and I don't always communicate it clearly, but it's why I have this kind of um, pre-diet or priming, you know, stabilization phase first, followed by the more aggressive and when I say aggressive I just mean you're going after it. The aggressiveness depends on you.

Speaker 1: 46:24

Like you said, how can't, how extreme can you go? Where you can get through it? And it feels like you've learned something and you've, you've applied skills in a way that allows you to come out of it sustainably, because they're right and wrong way to do the extreme Right. Um, because if you make your body worse off by crash dieting and losing a ton of muscle, that's not going to do you any favors just because you lost scale weight right and then, coming out of that, it's okay. How do we maintain our results? Because that's where 95% of people fail, Like. That's not a made-up number, it's 95% after five years of people who lose weight gain it all back.

Speaker 2: 46:58

Wow, 95.

Speaker 1: 47:00

Yeah, it's massive. It's 90 to 95. So 95 sounds better, but yes, it's 95%. Speaking of, you know marketing and truth telling, but, um, yeah, so coming out of it is really important. But the coming out of it is often a function of the part where you lost the weight and you didn't do it the right way, that's, if you do it the right way, coming out of is actually quite, quite straightforward. Um, but it's funny you mentioned extremes, because right now, like in my group program now, we do challenges every month.

Speaker 1: 47:28

The current challenge is rapid fat loss, and rapid fat loss is something like I almost make you sign a contract because there's so many caveats before someone does rapid fat loss. Rapid fat loss is effectively two weeks with four days in a very aggressive like half the calories you need diet, followed by a refeed where you eat a ton of carbs and come up to your maintenance. You do that again, another refeed and then one more time. So it's 14 days with 12 days of extremely aggressive dieting and if you do it right, you're going to probably lose between three and seven pounds of body fat in two weeks. And so people hear that. If I just said that and I stopped people listening to your show they're like, oh, let me get. Let me get that program right now. But there's all these caveats. You've been lifting consistently. You haven't been dieting. You know how to track your food. You've been sufficiently eating enough protein for for a while. Like, there's all these caveats before you do that. But aggressiveness can be incorporated at times with the seasons. I totally agree.

Speaker 2: 48:29

Yeah, I think one of the reasons I was able to do it is because I do have experience in, you know, like tracking calories and going to the gym and everything.

Speaker 2: 48:33

I definitely would not recommend that to someone who was new to the process, because it wasn't that fun.

Speaker 2: 48:38

I mean, in a way it was because I got to eat a lot. But also, mentally, you know, you're're really hyper focused on this one goal and it's it's not, as I said, it's not sustainable, um, but I think something important for people to know that when they're going on a diet or when they're starting, and you don't have to, it's not, it doesn't have to be forever. Of course, if you have a goal, you don't want to be part of the 95 90 percent that put the weight back on and everything. But like, for example, if you are adopting a more aggressive approach, as you said, it doesn't have to be forever, but as long as you have an exit plan. I knew that when I got to a certain weight well, actually, it was when I hit a certain weight on the bench that I was like okay, when I get there I'll kind of taper it off a little bit, but as long as you have an exit plan and a way to make it sustainable after a certain time period.

Speaker 1: 49:27

Um, I think that's really important, you know yeah, I'm gonna aggressively agree with that, in that the duration is inversely proportional to the aggressiveness. So the more aggressive you are going to be, the shorter it has to be. And I mean has to be, because the human mind is susceptible to fatigue, emotional fatigue, physiological fatigue too. I mean we can talk about adaptation and all that, but even if you white knuckle it through that, like bodybuilders do, right, when they're prepping for a contest season, the emotional fatigue just keeps climbing and the more aggressive you go, the more it's going to be, and it's tied to your physiology. So that's the irony of the whole thing it's psychological and it's physiological and it plays off each other, meaning your body is becoming more and more resource deprived and is screaming to eat food and to get back to a better state of health and homeostasis, and at the same time, you're mentally playing all these games to avoid eating food and have more fiber and have more vegetables and do all these tricks for hunger, and you know, you know what I'm saying. Like all those things, can you be more success? So you're more successful if you keep it short, or at least keep it short and break it up with breaks. You know diet breaks. Take diet breaks for two weeks a month, two months, four months, whatever. If you have to lose a hundred pounds, you're probably not going to do it straight. You know as one straight shot you're going to go in two, three, four phases.

Speaker 1: 50:52

Now if you have some extra support whether that's an accountability, partner training, partner, coach, you know community, something like that, looking over your shoulder it's a different game, because now your emotional stress can be shared by someone else is the way I'd put it. Like I look at my number one job as a coach is to be a vessel for your emotional stress. Honestly, like that's part of what I do, um, and my personality lends itself to that, because I personally don't stress out too much, I'm kind of chill, and so you can freak out on me and it's fine, I'll listen. And that's helpful when you have a coach, because then it's like you're going to freak out at some point.

Speaker 1: 51:30

And the other thing, josh, is if life isn't smooth, sailing, right, like you're going to have all sorts of unexpected things come up, especially when you're older or you have a family. You know, the older you get, the more people have illnesses and injuries and life stuff that comes up and just all sorts of problems, financial things, you name it your job, your house, the economy, everything goes and those are going to interrupt your life and that's okay. What's your plan? To adapt around those and be resilient to those, not try to white knuckle and be perfect and stick to your plan all the time.

Speaker 2: 52:02

Yeah, I was thinking about that while you were talking. I've had personal trainers that I've known help me out with a few things or write a plan for me at a specific time, but I've never had it over a long period of time. What do you think your role is as a personal trainer? After the stages of setting goals and writing a program and showing them kind of how to do everything, what do you do after that point?

Speaker 1: 52:27

Eventually I want you to fire me, like I'm totally honest about that, like I'm a nutrition coach, just to be a dick about it. Like a nutrition coach as opposed to a personal trainer, that's all. There's a subtle difference, subtle difference. But I'm proud of my ability to help people with their training and their form and technique and I will write programs, but oftentimes I will recommend existing templates that I have programs or even third-party programs, because I don't think any of that's as important as doing the thing and getting it adjusted for you and having proper technique and progression. So I think the plan is step one. Plans go out the window by day two, meaning the data is going to become the plan. The data of you is going to become the plan. So my job as a coach is to say, all right, you're doing all the things. I also want you to measure all the things and I want to see all of that data as we go. And I'm going to be available for not only reaction meaning you can reach out as problems come up but also proact. You know only reaction meaning you can reach out as problems come up, but also proact. You know proaction. That's not a word.

Speaker 1: 53:28

Is it being proactive in that, um, let's say, every two weeks is the cadence.

Speaker 1: 53:31

You know every coach works differently.

Speaker 1: 53:32

I might have a two week uh check-in cadence where you're going to send me your food data, your expenditure, calculation of your metabolism, like all this stuff that we collect, your step count, your biometrics, uh measurements, your photos, um, a whole bunch of things, sometimes hormone panels and blood work too and I will then look at it all, do a screen share, analyze it and say, okay, here's the two things you need to work on this week, or three things, right, not not 20 things.

Speaker 1: 53:58

Here's one or two or three things to work on based on everything I just said, saw. But I also want to educate you. I want you to get like a nutrition certification level education by the time we're done working together. If you're open to that, if you don't care, if you just want me to tell you what to do which I have clients like that as well Fine, um, I think you'll get more out of it if you try to learn why, so that you can fire me and do it yourself. But hey, if you want to work with me for three years or forever, that's fine too. I'll, I'll, I'll take your money and you'll still be good better off for it.

Speaker 2: 54:26

Yeah, that's a yeah. I guess not everyone wants to know 10 new things a week, um right.

Speaker 1: 54:32

Exactly.

Speaker 2: 54:33

Um, so you do a lot of your work with, um, I almost said older people, but I didn't mean that old, I meant 40 plus, but I don't want to call call people old or anything 40 plus, but I don't want to call people old or anything. What's the difference when you're working with someone who is older compared to a younger person?

Speaker 1: 54:52

Recoverability is the big one, and that's because of age, because of how you've lived your life and also because of the circumstances of being older. So what I mean is most people haven't been living a very healthy lifestyle, let's be honest. And so it starts to catch up with you metabolically, you know, with your, with your metabolism, with your hormones, uh. But also you've lost some muscle mass and you've probably got, you know, other little niggling issues, maybe with your joints or something like that. Depending on the age If we're talking forties versus seventies there's, you know, it gets more exacerbated with age, um, and that's going to cause, give you some constraints that you just have to work around. The principles are going to be the same, josh, no matter what age you are, the principles are the same. You know, get stimulus, you adapt, you manage recovery and energy balance and protein. I mean, it all is the same. But you may need more rest period between your training sessions. You may need more food believe it or not, or more carbs. You know women, peri-postmenopause, tend to need more carbs, despite the advice out there of, like low carb dieting for, you know, postmenopausal women. That really drives me crazy because I think a lot of women are being done a disservice. So recovery ability is one, the life circumstances are another. The older you get, the more you have obligations, you know. Your job gets more stressful. You have more family. You might be a parent, spouse all of that you know. Your parents might be facing health issues. You know, I'm seeing that now in my forties, both of my wife and my parents with their issues. Um, and now I can see how that becomes. I hate to say it this way, but it becomes a burden for their kids, right? Because now, if you're in your forties and fifties and you have parents in your seventies or eighties, you're going to spend more time helping them out. That then affects your health and your life, right? Um, and and so we? That's the general sense of it.

Speaker 1: 56:39

I'm trying to think if there's something else the only other thing I can think of is hormones, right, hormones. Testosterone drops, you know, for women, estrogen progesterone starts to drop. But hormones aren't necessarily the root cause of all your issues. So that's important to understand, because that a lot of gurus sell their programs based on the fear of, you know, hormones being the cause of everything. We need to fix your hormones, we need to balance your hormones, hormone correcting diet, blah, blah, blah. I'm a big fan of hormone replacement therapy, don't get me wrong there. If you need that, that's great, but a lot of times the the lack of training and proper nutrition is causing many of the hormone issues. So it's not, it's bi-directional. Is what I'm saying? So long story short. Guess what? If you train, eat your protein, sleep and manage recovery, you're going to be successful and you could build muscle and metabolic health well into your 80s and 90s. I mean, you could be just thriving to the end of your life, have a great health span. That's really what we're going for.

Speaker 2: 57:37

Yeah, well, I think there's been a weird shift in the health and fitness. I mean. I haven't been around that long but, speaking to my dad, for example, he was and still is a very fit individual, like he did, I think, 13 ironmans. He's done a bunch of triathlons. He's now like representing uh, great britain in like, uh, aqua bike because his knees ruined, um, but he, his mentality was just train, train, train, train, train, train until you can't stop training and then your, your body will adapt. And I've tried to speak to him about doing kind of resistance training and and because his knees, as I said, he's his joints are just absolute from years and years of running and cycling and well, I suppose, more the running than the cycling, um, for someone who is getting on and they want to work on their health and their fitness, why is it so important that strength or resistance training is included in their routine? Why isn't it just going out losing a bit of weight and kind of just trying to eat healthier and whatnot? Why is resistance training so important?

Speaker 1: 58:43

Because muscle is your retirement plan. It's muscle and money, those are the two parts of your retirement plan. I can't stress enough how strength and then muscle and there's a huge corollary between the two will protect you against just about anything that ills older individuals today, that we can think of Every metabolic disease. You know type 2 diabetes, heart disease, right, the biggest killer of heart disease, which ultimately is just a disease of obesity. When you step back, you know one chain in the cause and effect Joint health, right, achy joints, fragility from lack of bone density and lack of muscles supporting those bones. All of that's going to pay dividends and because we know you can add to your strength and muscle at any age and the body will respond hormonally to do so, you will literally avoid the burden that we talked about on your kids and on your family and you'll be able to do far more than just get off the toilet, which is honestly an aspiration of many people who can't even do that Right, which is sad, I mean there's, there's.

Speaker 1: 59:52

I mean, nursing homes are a huge industry and that makes me very sad because I've been in a number of them over the years for different people close to me and in my head. You know you can't help but have a little judgment now that I know what I know of if only, right, if only they had been a little more active. And resistance training, and that's the thing you're kind of getting at, is like you can't just be active, you can't just walk. Every time I hear, well, at least they're active, at least they're moving, I'm like, yeah, compared to what? Like compared to nothing, sure, and sitting in a bed, sure, and sitting in a bed, but it's like sedentary, active. And then strength training is way over here on the spectrum in terms of functional and metabolic capability for the rest of your life. So I know I'm not getting into a lot of like the details on physiology and science. We can go there, but you got to do it Like it's essential.

Speaker 2: 1:00:38

Aside from just you know, your regular strength training and everything, is there much you can be doing as a younger person to kind of prepare for those changes that come about in your body when you get older.

Speaker 1: 1:00:49

I mean just do, just do it. I mean so okay, are you asking about longevity in that, like, if you start young and do this, you don't want to do it in a way that injures yourself or like causes issues down the road. Is that what you're thinking?

Speaker 2: 1:01:05

Yeah, um, like my dad, he trained his whole life, but he's still faced with these issues with his knees and everything, because he didn't do certain protocols, he didn't work on his flexibility, strength training, that kind of thing.

Speaker 1: 1:01:14

Yeah. So it's a really good book on the subject, to be honest, especially if you're younger, because normally younger people don't buy this book. It's called the Barbell Prescription by John Sullivan, and he talks about the sick aging phenotype, and it's phenotype just means like an expression of your genes, based on your lifestyle. It's like epigenetics. Right, You've lived this way, therefore you've become this. And if you want to look into the future, right, kind of like in Scrooge, right, what is that Christmas Carol where you know the guy says here's your future, right, Exactly, If you want to get really depressed, read it, because he lays out the biology of the human body, energy systems and how the decline occurs. And he calls the book the barbell Prescription because the prescription is loading your spine with training and you know he uses barbells as a tool. So do I as like the primary, I'll say, most efficient tool for the job.

Speaker 1: 1:02:12

But there's other tools. There's free weights, there's machines, there's even body weight in bands Loading against gravity, in some way to tell your body hormonally that it needs to adapt and become stronger and bigger. Body hormonally that it needs to adapt and become stronger and bigger. If you ever look at a cross section of a thigh on an MRI, MRI or X, no MRI, um, for the same person, from the time they're 30 to the time they're 60, what you'll see is that the, the diameter tends to stay the same, but the muscle mass drops massively toward the bone and the what's filled in is body fat. So you see this like complete flip in the ratio. Or when you're younger, it's like kind of half and half. You know, you see all this muscle tissue and you see the little bit of fat on the outside. And then you see a 65 or 70 year old and it's like muscle tissue fat, right, Just tiny bit of muscle. And that's what happens. So now imagine what is that doing for your, for everything, for your posture, for your fragility, for your ability to just move around.

Speaker 1: 1:03:07

So if you're young, um, now's the time to start and you don't want to beat yourself up with too much cardio, Like you said, too much running or something it does. Now I don't want to scare people away from being an endurance athlete. If they want to be a Ironman or triathlete, awesome. I would actually read Born to Walk, to be honest, the book I mentioned earlier. I would read that because that is written by two guys who are elite endurance athletes who have taken the lessons away from that and what the science says, so that you don't beat up your body and you do train the right way.

Speaker 1: 1:03:37

And when you talk about doing less, not more, I've talked to some endurance athletes who put in, you know tons of miles every week. Athletes who put in, you know tons of miles every week and most of them today that the really smart ones that are training the right way for longevity will have way less volume than they used to have, like way fewer miles than they used to have, and they still remain competitive. So if that doesn't tell you something, then then then nothing will.

Speaker 2: 1:03:57

Well, listen, I, I, I've really loved everything you're coming at me with um, especially your approach to, just, in general, just trying things and being consistent, um, being understanding of everything you've kind of got going on in your life and, um, I think it's really valuable for people. One thing I like to ask, just as a kind of round off question, because when I listen to podcasts I I hear so much value and so much information and I just want to retain it all and I think sometimes I feel a bit pressured and I'm like, oh God, what did that person say about this thing and this thing and this thing? So I like to ask what is one thing, if someone is listening up to this point, one thing that they can take away and think about and really reflect upon? What would you say to them?

Speaker 1: 1:04:43

There's so many things right. Um, well, since we ended talking about muscle, I would say you know, building muscle and strength training, going to the gym, this isn't just a thing for bros, this isn't just to look good, this isn't just, you know, for aesthetics. This is your most underrated organ for living a long life, for aging better, for staying independent, for staying independent all the things we just touched on, and yeah, everything else we talked about is great, but all I want you to do is figure out when you're going to the gym, like if you're not training right now. Make it as easy as possible. Forget the new year's resolution, forget trying to lose X number of weight pounds, forget trying to have any particular program, just like, literally pick where you're going and what day you're going to start this week and build from there.

Speaker 2: 1:05:29

Yeah, great Listen. Thank you very much and, again, I love what you're doing. I think you're providing so much value to people. Um, and yeah, I think I think you're helping a lot of people and just want to say thanks for that. Uh, thank you for coming on as well. Um've really enjoyed it and, yeah, I hope to speak to you soon.

Speaker 1: 1:05:46

All right, and that was my conversation with Josh Taft from the With Passion podcast. I hope you found as much value in that as I did having it. I absolutely love going on other shows and sharing the knowledge, and Josh himself really does have a gift for asking the kinds of questions that get to the heart of what matters most when it comes to building that sustainable approach to health, to fitness for the long game. If you enjoy the conversation, check out his show with passion. The link is in the show notes.

Speaker 1: 1:06:15

And, speaking of not missing great content, make sure you hit that follow button right now, if you haven't already, because Monday we're dropping episode 344, seven fat loss tips from 70 years of research. It's going to be packed with evidence-based strategies that have stood the test of time. I guarantee you're going to walk away with real things that you can implement immediately. Until then, keep using your wits, lifting those weights and remember, as we discussed today, your approach to fitness should be sustainable, science-based and focused on the fundamentals that move the needle. Talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights Podcast.