Wits & Weights | Fat Loss, Nutrition, & Strength Training for Lifters
For skeptics of the fitness industry who want to work smarter and more efficiently to build muscle and lose fat. Wits & Weights is one of the best fitness podcasts for evidence-based nutrition and fitness strategies. We cut through the noise and deconstruct health and fitness with an engineering mindset to help you develop a strong, lean physique without wasting time.
Evidence-based nutrition coach Philip Pape explores efficient strength training, nutrition, and lifestyle strategies to optimize your body recomp and metabolism. Whether you're focused on weight loss, muscle building, or both, you'll get simple, science-based, and sustainable info from an engineer turned lifter (that's why they call him the Physique Engineer). This show serves both women's fitness and men's health goals, with special attention to strength training over 40 and hormone health.
From restrictive fad diets to ineffective workouts and hyped-up supplements, there's no shortage of confusing information out there. Getting in the best shape of your life doesn't have to be complicated or time-consuming! By using your WITS (mindset and systems!) and lifting weights efficiently, you can build muscle, lose stubborn fat, and achieve and maintain a lean physique through sustainable body recomp.
We bring you smart and efficient strategies for movement, metabolism, muscle, and mindset. You'll learn:
- Why fat loss is more important than weight loss for health and physique
- Why all the macros (protein, fats, and yes even carbs) are critical to body composition
- Why you don't need to spend more than 3 hours in the gym each week to get incredible results with proper hypertrophy training
- Why muscle (not weight loss) is the key to medicine, obesity, and longevity
- Why age and hormones (even in menopause) don't matter with the right lifestyle
- How the "hidden" psychology of your mind can unlock more personal (and physical) growth than you ever thought possible, and how to tap into that mindset
If you're ready to separate fact from fiction, learn what actually works with evidence-based training and nutrition, and put in the intelligent work, hit that "follow" button and let's engineer your best physique ever!
Popular Guests Include: Mike Matthews (author of Bigger Leaner Stronger), Greg Nuckols (Stronger by Science), Alan Aragon (nutrition researcher), Eric Helms (3D Muscle Journey), Dr. Spencer Nadolsky (Doc Who Lifts), Eric Trexler (Stronger by Science), Bill Campbell (exercise science researcher), Jordan Feigenbaum (Barbell Medicine), Andy Morgan (Ripped Body), Karen Martel (hormone optimization expert), Steph Gaudreau (women's strength and nutrition), Bryan Boorstein (hypertrophy coach)
Popular Topics Include: hormone health, metabolism optimization, hypertrophy training, longevity and healthy aging, body positivity, best protein powder selection, strength training over 40, women's fitness, men's health, muscle building, body recomp, macros and nutrition tracking
Wits & Weights | Fat Loss, Nutrition, & Strength Training for Lifters
AI Coaching for Building Muscle Over 40 (Launches This Week)
Get early access to the app AND the Black Friday pricing by joining my list (if you're already on my list, ask for the “secret link”):
https://witsandweights.com/email
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Get a first look at Fitness Lab, my new AI coaching app that turns your daily signals into clear guidance on food, training, recovery, and progress.
Built for lifters over 40, it adapts plans in real time with low-stress tracking, meal pattern analysis, conversational training feedback, and daily/weekly check-ins to keep you consistent and accountable.
Then it gives you daily activities related to what's most important to you, whether that's lifting, sleep, hydration, eating habits, protein, steps, and more, tailored to your current goal of fat loss, muscle gain, body recomp, or maintenance.
It's not another "logger". Much more than that, Fitness Lab is a coaching intelligence layer that adapts to YOUR recovery, YOUR data, YOUR life.
This Tuesday, November 18th, Fitness Lab goes live with Black Friday pricing, which means it will be 20% off through November 28.
If you want early access to the app AND the Black Friday pricing, join my email list
📱 Get Fitness Lab - Philip’s science-based AI app for fat loss, muscle building, and strength training for people over 40. It adapts to your nutrition, recovery, and training to improve body composition without guesswork.
🎓 Try Physique University - Evidence-based nutrition coaching and strength training to help you lose fat, build muscle, and master your metabolism with support and accountability (free custom nutrition plan with code FREEPLAN).
👥 Join our Facebook community - Free fat loss, muscle building, and body recomposition strategies for adults over 40 who want practical, science-backed fitness guidance.
👋 Ask a question or find Philip Pape on Instagram
Hey, wits and weits family, another quick one today because there is a lot going on. This week on Tuesday, November 18th, I am launching Fitness Lab, an AI coaching app I've been building for the past few months. And I wanted to give you a quick preview today of what it is, how it works, and what to expect when it goes live because I've been getting lots of questions like, what does this do? I want to start with what it's not, uh, because that's really important. It is not another spreadsheet style food tracker. It's not my FitnessPal chronometer, macro factor. If you're using those to track your macros, feel free to keep using those, although, although you may find that this app makes those unnecessary. So that's that's part of the caveat here. This is not replacing it one for one, but it may give you a different approach that allows you to stop using them. Because Fitness Lab is a coaching intelligence layer. That's the best way I can describe it. I haven't seen anything else like this on the market. There are lots of AI-based apps, but a lot of them are very one-dimensional, I'll say, or they're focused on like on solving one specific problem. With Fitness Lab, here's how it works: every day, you wake up, all the activities have been generated for you overnight based on what you've been doing, saying, what's it's been observing based on your data, and you get personalized coaching briefings based on what's happening with your body, with your measurements, with your training, with your recovery, right? So it's it's like a human is there looking at all this stuff and giving you advice. You know, you track these things in different ways. There's sure there's weight tracking in there, and it smooths it out for you. But from a food perspective, you upload just one meal photo per day, and there are lots of more qualitative prompts around that. And then the AI is gonna spot patterns and coach you on those patterns. And yes, it's looking at macros and micros and fiber and micro, you know, color and balance and all that, but it's only looking at one meal, but it's it's actually figuring out your patterns based on some of the other questions and conversation. So it it's really cool. It's a very low stress way to do it, but still get intention and still get a form of tracking that you might find unique and innovative. You also get on the strength training side, this is the other big piece, adaptive strength training sessions. And the way it works is when you onboard, you say, Hey, I either want you as the app to create my program or I'm following my own program or working with a trainer. And then it can fork off into two different directions. If you tell it that you're using your own trainer, it's going to have a quick conversational check-in on the days that you say that you train. And by the way, you can move those around. You can say that you didn't train, you can say, I don't even want to use this feature anymore. And the app will update for you based on that conversation. So it'll say, hey, what were your lifts? You know, what what challenges did you face? Did you have any issues? You know, things like that. There's some qualitative and uh questions. If, however, you want it to program for you, it will take my philosophy, the evidence, the concepts behind strength training that we talk about, hypertrophy, based on your goals, your days per week, your equipment, and it will program that for you. And it will have a conversational way to log. So again, it's not like Boost Camp or Strong where it's like sets reps load. It's more qualitative. Like, how did that feel? Did you push your max weight? Did you get a PR? Things like that that a human coach would use to then suggest what to do next time. Should you push harder? Should you add more reps? In my opinion, it is actually a more natural way to do this. That's just two of many features in there. You're gonna hear more as I roll this out. But I specifically built this app for people in their 40s and beyond, my demographic and older who are tired of all the generic programs, the things that don't take into account hormonal situations, recovery capacity, the fact that we have all these demands in life. And I'm like, how can an app account for all of those? So this is just the tip of the iceberg of what this thing can do. There's a lot more in there related to education and feedback and progress and body composition and keeping you on track and talking to an AI version of my brain, et cetera. But I didn't want this episode to be too long. So if you know, when you join the app on Tuesday, you take a short onboarding quiz, it's gonna already start to figure out who you are and what you do. Are you taking GLP ones? Do you have hormonal symptoms? Are you on HRT? Those kinds of things, in addition to when do you want to train? Right? Lots of questions like that. What does your life look like? But it only takes a few minutes. Then it's gonna build you a very detailed personalized plan that probably takes you out to the next three to five months. So if you're trying to lose fat, trim up, get lean, get a six-pack, whatever, it's gonna account for that and make it fit into the right length of plan with the right phases that accelerate your education along the way. So then from day one, what you're gonna see is some other prompts and conversations to gather a little more information without too much stress. And then every day you're gonna have some metrics that it wants in the morning. You're gonna be able to connect to Apple Health. By the way, this is iPhone only right now. I'm sorry for non-iPhone users. In the future, it might be on Android, but starting on iPhone, there's gonna be a coaching briefing, and then you'll have the meal activity, you may have the training activity, you may have a movement activity, and then an evening reflection. It's gonna look at things like your sleep, your energy, your biofeedback, and then every Sunday there's going to be a check-in. Now, if this sounds like a lot, it's actually very simply done. It probably will just take you three to five minutes a day, probably. And the really cool thing about the app is it adapts to you, it evolves with you. If you had terrible sleep based on either the ratings that you enter about your sleep, or if you have Apple Health connected, it's gonna pull in those metrics. It may suggest changes to your training. If your protein has been consistently low, the briefings are gonna start focusing more on protein. If you told it on day one, I'm just having so much trouble with sleep, it's gonna focus on that. It's going to be super personalized, almost more than a human can be because it's so responsive. Let's say your progress stalls for two weeks, you were in a fat loss phase, and it's like, hey, we haven't been losing fat. It's gonna say, we know all the potential reasons. Let's systematically troubleshoot that. We're not just gonna tell you to try harder, we're gonna suggest what it might be. So I think what makes this very different and very unique in the space is that the vast majority of the apps are giving you data or letting you track data, and that's the extent of it. This truly gives you coaching, the thing that many of you want. Some of you can't afford, you know, to hire a one-on-one coach, or frankly, don't want to deal with all the other things that come along with hiring and working with a coach if you can even find a good one. You know, a a food logger, even one as good as MacroFactor, it's gonna say, hey, here's here's what you logged, here's some proxy data, like your expenditure based on that, and we can give you some guidance based on that at the most. Fitness Lab tells you, hey, your protein's been on point, but your weekend eating is a little bit higher than your weekdays, and it sounds like you've been struggling in the afternoon, you've told me you've had these emotional issues. Oh, by the way, your stress is high and your sleep is low. Let's tie all that together and come up with a simple plan for what to do next. On the workout side, again, generic apps or even good apps like Boost Camp will have our program built in, but Fitness Lab is gonna ask you, how did that feel? Was it easier the same or harder than last time? Along with a bunch of other qualitative questions that a human coach might use, and then use that to decide if you're ready to, for example, add weight or you need to delo you need to look at some different method of programming for where you're at. So I think the app can work alongside other apps, or it can potentially replace it altogether. We're gonna see. I promise you that those who start using it on day one and providing feedback, we and the development team behind this are going to rapidly iterate on a constant basis to make it amazing, better, definitely fix any bugs, and give you really what you want and need to succeed. All right, so remember Tuesday morning, November 18th, Fitness Lab goes live with Black Friday pricing, which means it will be 20% off through Black Friday. That gives you about what, 10 days? And I'm gonna be transparent on the pricing. There's gonna be a quarterly and an annual price. If you want the three-month, it's gonna be 147, but for Black Friday, dropped 20%, so that's$117.60. This is in US dollars. I don't know how that's that translates internationally. I'm sorry. There'll be an annual price that's uh quite a good value,$440. Black Friday pricing will be$352. It's the only discount I'm offering this year. And tomorrow on Monday, I've got a full solo episode about why most fitness apps actually fail people, especially when we get over$40 and we have lots of other very personalized issues that crop up. And then what actually works to set up the context for why I built this app the way I did. And then Tuesday morning, you'll get another short bonus episode walking through a little bit more about how the app works. And I say this for the end of today's episode, but if you want early access, join my email list at wits and weights.com slash email and then reply to the email and say, hey, I want early access, and I'm gonna send you a secret link where you can get the app right now. If you're on my email list already, reply to one of my emails, same thing, and say, I want early access to your new app. And I'll send you that secret link. I'll talk to you tomorrow.
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