Introducing the Weight Loss Wars

Philip Pape 0:02

your co-worker drops 40 pounds in six months on ozempic and suddenly everyone's questioning whether your two years of lifting and tracking macros really counts . Meanwhile , people are secretly microdosing glp-1 drugs , trying to hack their appetite without admitting they're using medication . And then there's the underground resentment brewing between those who did it the hard way and those taking what some see as pharmaceutical shortcuts . Today we're discussing the psychology behind what I call the weight loss wars , why fat loss has become a battleground of moral superiority and how a systems thinking approach can help you navigate this mess without losing your sanity or your gains . Welcome to Wits and Weights , the show that helps you build a strong , healthy physique using evidence , engineering and efficiency .

Philip Pape 0:57

I'm your host certified nutrition coach , philip Pape , and today we're going to tackle one of these emotionally charged topics in fitness at the moment , and that is the social and psychological warfare happening around the GLP-1 drugs . You know them Ozempic , manjaro , all of them . This isn't about the medications , though . This is about how we assign moral value to different paths toward the same goal , and why understanding the systems behind our judgments can free us from both the envy and the guilt . So , if you're considering these drugs , if you're avoiding them on principle , if you're secretly resenting someone who uses them . I think today's episode will give you a framework for thinking clearly about tools , outcomes and what drives sustainable change . And before we get into it , if you've been nodding along already and thinking , yeah , I need to stop second guessing myself , focus on myself and just build a system that works for me , crowd out the noise , forget about all the nonsense and the distractions . I don't want you to just listen and binge my content . I want you to take action inside wits and weights . Physique university is where you can do that . You'll get the tools to train more intelligently , to eat more flexibly and with clarity , to stop getting caught up in other people's methods and hopping around and getting overwhelmed with all the craziness in social

Get a Free Nutrition Plan When You Join Physique University

Philip Pape 2:18

media .

Philip Pape 2:18

And we've worked with many , many people who are on these drugs and , again , you may not be taking them . You may not wanna take them . Today's episode , I think , covers a lot of areas of the psychology around this , but we've definitely worked on people , with people on drugs like terzepatide , helping them build the foundation they need to eventually transition off of them while maintaining the results . Not that you have to do that , but a lot of people want to do that . So if you want a framework for this we just relaunched at a much lower price , more accessible to so many more people . Used to be 87 a month , now it's 27 a month and I still have my exclusive link in the show notes . If you use it , I'm also going to throw in a custom nutrition plan that I build for you . The link is in the show notes . I'll see you there .

Philip Pape 3:00

But let's talk about today's topic , what we're actually dealing with , because the conversation is already happening . It's happening everywhere . It's on social media , it's in the office , it's in person , it's everywhere . But I think most people don't have the language for what's really going on because it's so new and we're so emotionally charged

The Psychology of Ozempic Envy

Philip Pape 3:19

with this stuff .

Philip Pape 3:20

So I came up with a phrase called Ozempic Envy . I haven't even Googled it . Maybe it's trademarked , I don't know . It just came to my head one day , and ozempic envy is what I'm calling the emotional and the social tension between people who lose weight using these drugs the GLP-1 receptor agonists , right and those who do it through what we traditionally think of as lifestyle changes . What I'm all about on wits and weights well before these drugs came around , but I think it's more complex , it's more nuanced . It's not just the jealousy we're talking about here , because on one side , you have people who've spent years trying to do the quote unquote right thing , the lifestyle changes , mastering their nutrition , grinding through all the roadblocks along the way , learning to to love vegetables , like I did , building the discipline from following a process to hit the gym consistently , to train consistently , to , to do all the behavioral changes involved , and they see that their identity is at least partly built on that effort . Right , that that's like a transformation story . Many of you are going through that right now . Many of you have in fact said , hey , I'm not , I want to do this , naturally , I don't want to go on drugs , right , and it's that mentality and I'm not judging anyone on any side of this equation . Please stick with me . You're going to see where this comes out the other side .

Philip Pape 4:39

So that's , on one side , people who've been trying to make the lifestyle changes , and then on the other side , you have people taking the medications inject themselves with some aglutide or trisepatide or one of these , and they might drop 15 to 20% of their body weight in a year with what the outside sees as minimal effort . Right , and we know about the research . The data is there . This is quite a miracle drug . At this point the STEP trials are referenced all the time , step that show an average weight loss of about 15% with semaglutide versus maybe 2% with placebo right . So it helps a lot of people who have been struggling , even when they're trying to lose weight , lose fat , get healthy . And it's obvious why people might need , want , be prescribed , desire whatever adjective or is that an adjective verb you want to use for these drugs .

Philip Pape 5:31

Where I think it gets interesting about this whole Ozempic envy thing is I don't think the envy right and envy comes from different groups here . It's not about the weight loss , but the story that comes with the weight loss . About the weight loss , but the story that comes with the weight loss . When someone loses weight through what we'll call the traditional methods , right , they're not just doing the thing they're , they're gaining some sort of narrative and identity shift . Like I'm the type of person who can make choices and stick to hard things , I've overcome my impulses . Let's say I've , I've earned this , I've earned this body , and then that becomes part of their identity . Now I'm not saying there aren't equally as many unhealthy identities that have come along when someone has lost weight , I'll say the through through behavioral methods , but not necessarily the right way .

Philip Pape 6:18

And that's where it gets really complicated . And I'm not even talking about the drugs when I say that . I'm talking about crash dieting . Right , crash dieting detoxes all the things that are not sustainable that we talk about , and then when someone gets results of weight loss and they've done the medication , it can feel like that story gets devalued for them , even if they are in parallel doing the lifestyle changes . And honestly , I believe it's a crime for a doctor to prescribe the medication and not give any guidance or advice or direction on the weight training or the lifting weights to hold on to muscle , to eating protein , to making sure you don't eat too little , because I've seen this problem where you just don't have an appetite and you really under eat and it doesn't help you . You crash diet , you lose weight fast , but then it's not sustainable unless you stay on the drug .

Philip Pape 7:10

And so I want to help everybody through this message . And yet somebody who's used the medication , whether or not they've done it the quote unquote right way supporting themselves with lifestyle , they can feel like their story gets devalued and that their effort doesn't matter as much as someone else . And that's where all this friction comes from . It's like jealousy all over the place . The envy is everywhere , on all sides , right ?

Philip Pape 7:28

So I want to start there as the premise and then I want to touch on some side topics related to this that I see in the industry right now and a big one right now

Microdosing GLP-1 Drugs

Philip Pape 7:36

is microdosing . Okay , microdosing and it gets fascinating here because I see a lot of rationalization going on and when you think of behavioral engineering , this is a good story . Some people are microdosing these drugs and all that means is you're taking a lower than prescribed dose of the medications and it's not because you can't afford the full dose , right , it's because you , you're deliberately doing that to help with your appetite , your appetite awareness . Maybe you are the type of person who feels like I I want to split the difference , I don't want to go all out , all into the drug , but I want to try it and see if it helps my appetite and get that nudge toward better eating habits while improving the lifestyle . Okay , again , no judgment on that , but I'm but . So the but .

Philip Pape 8:19

Here is what I think people are doing in some cases . Not everyone is maybe trying to hack their own psychology just a bit , right , it's kind of that building that safety net of reduced hunger , but then they don't want to override their natural signals . So I understand that . I understand the trade-off and compromise they're trying to make . They're trying to engineer this middle ground between pharmaceutical intervention and , I hate to say , willpower , because we all know we can develop healthy eating habits without willpower . That's what we do here when we talk about the tools to change your behavior .

Philip Pape 8:53

But I feel like some people you know they're frustrated . They feel like it does take willpower and , I'll be honest , it takes action . There is action that is required , like getting the cookies off of your counter into your drawer that takes action . There is action that is required Like getting the cookies off of your counter into your drawer that takes an action to change your environment right . Those little things , those are all actions . That is true . And whether you want to argue that's willpower or not , I'm talking about the white knuckling like in the moment . Stress is high , emotion's high and then I'm going to all of a sudden , just for the first time ever , choose not to eat the cookies , right ? We know that . That's not how it works , so it's understandable .

Philip Pape 9:27

People want that little bit of a nudge and from a like , a systems design perspective , thinking like an engineer , with data and tools . It makes perfect sense , like , if your goal is long-term behavior change , you want the minimum effective , the most efficient intervention that still allows you to build skills and habits . If you have too much of that intervention , like the full dose of the drugs , you're probably thinking okay , I'm going to become dependent and I'm not really going to learn the thing because I'm getting miswired signals to my brain , right , just by virtue , by definition of how it works . But if I have too little like or none at all , I don't get the results . I need to build momentum .

Philip Pape 9:55

So I want a little bit of a kick in the pants for my brain related genes , my appetite , and I guess I guess the challenge here is , right now we don't have clinical data on the microdosing you know to , to know how effective it is really , although we could extrapolate and we could use basic math and like okay , well , if I take half the dose , I might have to have the result , but we can't oversimplify , right ? So people are essentially running experiments on themselves and then we have anecdotal reports , we have Instagram posts , we have podcasters , we have whole programs built around micro dosing and again , I don't want to sound judgmental toward that , I haven't tried it myself . Heck , if I did it today , if I started it , would I find that , oh , this is actually an amazing tool . Now , when I do a fat loss phase , maybe I can micro dose . It takes away the appetite and I can more easily control myself , and I can more easily control myself . But then the other side of me says no , I really want to inherently build it in to my system , right , not through willpower , but hey , I plan my meals out to have more fibrous foods , knowing that fiber gives me more volume , knowing that that's gonna help with my hunger signals , and then it allows me to eat in a way that I wanna eat for the long term . Right , and can you do that while microdosing on GLP-1s ? Yes , and I also help people do that while they're on there so that they could transition off of them is kind of the point .

Philip Pape 11:10

But , but , but and I'm going to keep saying but , because I want to hedge myself here and there when it comes to psychology and when it comes to judging people , because I want to zoom out and look at why this creates the emotional reactions that we have A lot of . It is about us . A lot of it's about us as individuals , not about you , not about others . By you I mean the other right At its core . It's not about Ozempic , it's how we assign moral value to different types of effort , because we have a deeply ingrained belief we're all human beings that the human struggle , the

Struggle vs. Efficiency: Moral Value

Philip Pape 11:40

struggle , equals virtue . Right Sisyphus , pushing the rock up the mountain from Greek mythology struggle equals virtue , that the harder path is the more noble path .

Philip Pape 11:50

And admittedly , I talk about doing hard things all the time . But I'm also talking about being efficient and minimum effective dose . So do these reconcile with each other ? And so if I'm an engineer and I said let's go with this more complicated solution because it's going to be automatically better than a simple one , because it's harder , that's nonsense . That's not how optimization works . So it's always tricky when I use language on this show we talk about like smarter , not harder . Well , maybe , maybe not more efficient , maybe it might be hard . It might be hard in a different way than something else . Is hard like hard beating yourself against the wall , cracking your skull , not getting a result , is worse than a hard that moves you forward by leaps and bounds . And so when someone says , like I did it the hard way . What they're really saying is I want credit for the difficulty of my method , not just the outcome . Right , and that makes sense psychologically , because effort justification that's a cognitive bias . We value things more when we worked harder for them . Yes , but we've got method and we've got outcome . And what are we actually trying to optimize for ? So I'm going to go back to the whole engineering thing about optimization .

Philip Pape 12:59

If the goal is sustainable fat loss and improved health , the quote unquote best method is the one that achieves that goal most reliably for the individual , with the fewest negative side effects , at the lowest cost . Not just financial costs , time costs , stress costs , opportunity costs , all of it . And if you're not sure what I mean by opportunity costs , that's the cost of not making a choice , that's the cost of having chosen something different . So for some people that might be GLP-1 medications this is my point . For others it might be structured nutrition and training and for many people guess what ? It might be a combination of both , at different levels of both , including microdosing . And so the judgment comes in when we start conflating the method with our character , with our identity , when we start thinking about how the way you lose weight says something about who you are as a person . So they're all tools , is my point .

Philip Pape 13:47

If I'm going to give you the TLDR here Now again I mentioned , if you're on a medication like this GLP-1 , or you're considering it long term , you're going to need more than the drug to create lasting change . I mean you could be on the drug for the rest of your life . I suppose That'd get pretty darn expensive and I don't think anybody wants to depend on anything like that the rest of their life period . I take a what do you call it ? Biologic for a condition I have and I technically have to be on that the rest of my life because there's not really a way to deal with it Otherwise . I don't want to do that , but I kind of have to , barring some extreme or some new cure that comes along .

Join us in Physique University

Philip Pape 14:22

But when it comes to this stuff , we can work with you . You can listen to the show . You can put in basic principles of food planning , meal planning , meal prep , tracking , food volume right and be successful . But sometimes you need others to help you do that and you need ideas from people and you need to crowd out the noise . We do this in Physique University . I just want to mention that one more time . We've helped a lot of folks in there do this exact thing . I can hook you up with some individuals who are on , for example , teresapatide and have come off , and there's a strategic way we do that . By the way , that's not just hey , come off and you're done . It's how do we align that with the calories you're eating and the phases of training and physique development ? So , physique university 27 a month used to be 87 . Now it's 27 .

Philip Pape 15:07

I've got an exclusive link in the show notes where if you use that link , I'll get triggered , not triggered , I'll get notified and then I'll know to give you a custom nutrition plan for free , instead of the add on . Like , if you go through the public link you have to pay for it . So it'd be free and I don't want you to just say , like , throw up your hands and say I need to rely on these meds forever If you want to come off , if you want to build your system alongside it for your lifestyle , but still stay on it for a while , or microdose or whatever , we can help you do that . So use the link in the show notes for that . So how do we think about this more clearly . Well , I want to propose a framework that focuses on your system , on designing your system , rather than moral judgment . And I first need to be clear about something . Okay , if I haven't been already I absolutely support people who choose to use , or need to use , glp-1 drugs .

Philip Pape 15:55

If you have significant weight to lose for your health , if you've spent a lifetime struggling with appetite regulation , emotional eating , which can be genetic , brain-related genes I had Stephan Guine on the show quite a while back talking about that it can also be the result of years of I hate to say , damage , but years of suppressed metabolism and fat gain due to yo-yo dieting and restriction . For that type of person , these medications can be life-changing tools . There's no shame in using every tool available to improve your health and quality of life , but and this is crucial the medication is one component of a larger system . You still need the lifestyle foundation to make the results sustainable . Even individuals like Dr Spencer Nadalsky , who praises these drugs , says it's the drugs and the lifestyle . It's not just the drug . Could it be just the lifestyle ? For sure , but some people benefit from having the added tool of the drug , and so , if you think of the whole compendium of fat loss tools , right , your whole toolbox .

Philip Pape 16:58

They're all different components in a system . You have the behavioral components habit formation , meal planning . You've got physiological components , like the strength training , like eating your protein . You have the psychological components , like managing your stress , like eating your protein . You have the psychological components , like managing your stress or how you perceive your stress , like sleep , optimizing your sleep , but from a psychological perspective . And you've got and I don't , that's a whole separate episode and now you've got the pharmacological components . So behavioral , physiological , psychological , pharmacological and each component has trade-offs . That's what it comes down to . The behavioral components require your time , they require developing skills , but they do build long-term resilience and capability . Pharmacological components are going to work faster but may create dependency if you don't pair them with skill building . So I want to help you build your skills , whether or not using these other tools at the same time .

Fat Loss as an Engineering Problem

Philip Pape 17:54

And the question isn't which component is morally superior ? Right , that's like there's no good or bad foods . We talk about that . The question is what combination of components creates for you the most robust and sustainable system .

Philip Pape 18:08

So if you've been dieting for decades yo-yo dieting and you've developed a dysfunctional relationship with your hunger cues , a GLP-1 drug might provide stability , to learn proper portion control and food selection so that the hunger cues aren't so utterly distracting that it prevents you from doing that . It's not a crutch , it's more like scaffolding right , when you see scaffolding on a building it's going to go away , but you can build everything and support everything while you build the building . But you still have to build the building . You still have to build the skills . The medication is not going to teach you how to eat for satiety . In fact it overrides those signals , which makes it a little bit more challenging . But it gives you the time , the space , to build that skill .

Philip Pape 18:53

In fact , I mentioned microdosing Many clients I have . They've reduced the dose as they've increased the food volume and their hunger starts to go up slowly , while their ability to naturally manage hunger signals also goes up at the same time . So the skill is going up , up , up up , the dosage coming down , down , down , down . Eventually the dose is gone and the skill is at its max . That make sense . Hopefully you can visualize that right . And so there's your training , there's your sleep and stress , there's all the lifestyle things right , and the medication is not going to create those habits for you .

Philip Pape 19:28

So yeah , I get the envy or the jealousy for people who've just taken the drug , lost a bunch of weight . They don't do anything else and they're walking around like look at me , I get the envy for that . I also think who cares Like don't worry about them , it's not going to work out for them in the longterm unless they also do the skills . And if you're one of those people listening to me , no moral judgment to you . If you've never built the skills and weren't even sure you had to , or didn't know where to go , come talk to us , join us at Physique University . This is the positive lens that I'm trying to share here is I'm not going to judge you , I'm going to help you . So the reframe for this episode is fat loss is not a moral issue , it's just an engineering problem . It's a an engineering problem . It's a biological engineering problem .

Philip Pape 20:12

You have inputs like food , activity , training , stress , sleep , genetics , hormones , medication yes , medication , that's an input , right ? Because guess what ? We're all on all sorts of medications beyond GLP-1 drugs . You might be on a statin , you might be on HRT , whatever . Those are the inputs . It's data . You have the outputs your energy level , your body composition , your health markers , your performance , your training , progress , et cetera . Your job or our job with you , if you want . The help is to design that system that reliably converts the inputs you can control into the outputs you want .

Philip Pape 20:43

And some people need more tools or different tools than others . Period . Some people need more scaffolding . Some people need more intervention and more support . It doesn't make them weaker . It doesn't make them weaker . It doesn't make them less disciplined , it just makes them different . That's it . That's it okay .

Philip Pape 20:58

So when you see someone losing weight on Ozempic , instead of thinking that's cheating , try thinking that's an interesting solution to a complex problem . I wonder what are the components that they are using to make it sustainable ? That's an objective way to frame this Kind of maybe clumsy way to say it too . For those of you who are more concise writers than me , feel free to rephrase . So when you see someone who's putting in a lot of effort over , say , a two year period to transform themselves , with tracking their macros , with using fat loss and muscle building phases , going to the gym four days a week , you know , instead of thinking , okay , that's the only way to do it , just say , look , that's impressive dedication , you know . I wonder what internal and external support systems made that possible . Yeah , okay . So

Sustainable Systems for Long-Term Success

Philip Pape 21:49

I want to . I want to .

Philip Pape 21:50

I want to share something , just one last thought with you here , because I think the people who are people who are most successful with these drugs long-term are often the same people who would have been successful with traditional methods if they never did the drug and they had the support earlier . I truly believe that . I truly believe that I think , having said that it might've been extremely difficult to do so , I'm believe that I think , having said that , it might've been extremely difficult to do so . I'm not saying that , I'm not saying it's not difficult , and I don't think they're using the medication to avoid doing that . I think they're using it to make building those habits easier while they address what are oftentimes very serious health concerns or years of appetite dysfunction . Come on , guys , let's have some empathy for people . I'm sick of all the moralizing and the judgment out there . Just stop it . And if you're following somebody on Instagram who's just hammering these people , unfollow them . Just unfollow them .

Philip Pape 22:51

Emotional eating since childhood , who tried every diet imaginable , and for them , the GLP-1 meds were not a shortcut . They were a lifeline that gave them just a little bit of breathing room to learn what normal hunger and satiety , feel like I can think of two or three clients right off the top of my head . One person , a woman , who never lifted in her life . She was in her 60s taking Ozempic . We got her training , we got her eating more food volume , really loving to throw in vegetables to her lunch and dinner , and it didn't take a lot , but it was enough to get her body recalibrated to where it needed to be so she could come off those drugs . It's incredible .

Philip Pape 23:19

Now the flip side that might maybe it surprises you even more is some of the people who are most vocal about doing things naturally are using their struggle as a form of identity protection . They are so invested in being the person who can do hard things that they'd rather suffer than admit a tool might help . So there's a difference between doing hard things in a productive way and doing them in a way that's just I don't wanna say stupid , but it's holding you back . And both patterns reveal the same underlying truth of the universe that sustainable change requires external tools and internal development . You can't inject new habits out of nowhere , but you also can't will away decades of biological and psychological programming and so , I think , a really robust system , which is what we're about ?

Philip Pape 24:25

Wits and weights . That's what we're about . It combines the best of both . They use whatever tools are available behavioral , pharmaceutical , technological , social that they're comfortable . They're about identity , about effort , about what we think we deserve credit for , and the fact that I use the word wars intentionally , because we don't want to be dealing with wars .

Philip Pape 24:44

Do we in this space right ? It's a systems design problem

Moving Beyond Judgment and Moralizing

Philip Pape 24:50

. It's not a moral judgment contest , and then the conversation can shift and you can hear a little bit of emotion and passion with me today , and hopefully it's not directed in a negative way , but more in a positive of think of how many more people , think of how many more people we can help if they just understood that it's okay to combine tools and process together like this to to get their result . And it's not whether somebody earns it , it's whether you build the system , you can maintain and develop the skills . That's it . It's skills . It's skills . Guys , you know , some people are gonna do that with the drugs . Some people will do it with macros and progressive overload . Many are gonna do it with a combination of a bunch of tools that we haven't even thought of yet . Right , there's more to come . Who knows ? Maybe , maybe , uh , what is it called ? Myostatin blockers are going to become a tool in the future and people everybody's going to be jacked . I don't know right . Your job isn't really to judge the tools . I think your job is to engineer the system that works for you . Forget all the noise , forget judging other people . Be supportive of people , empathize , right . If you need something , you need something . Stop keeping score of who's doing it the right way . Just do it . Just do it for you , have fun , reach out , join Physique University .

Philip Pape 25:57

And if you enjoyed this episode which I admit is a complex issue and I hope I gave it the nuance it deserved I want you to check out a different episode called Eat More to Lose Weight the triangle . Sorry , I butchered that Eat more to lose weight the iron triangle of fat loss . It's episode 204 . I'm gonna link to it in the show notes , and that episode is about how you can't optimize for everything at once and have to make smart trade-offs , which I think is really apropos for what we talked about today . So , episode 204 , eat more to lose weight the iron triangle of fat loss . Until next time , keep using your wits lifting those weights and remember the best tool is the one that gets the job done sustainably . This is Philip Pape , and you've been listening to Wits and Weights . I'll talk to you next time .