Framing The Midlife Hunger Problem

Philip Pape 0:01

If you're over 40 and you feel like hunger has become harder to manage, like your body is actively fighting against fat loss, you're not imagining it. Today I'm covering three things. First, the biological shifts in hormones, muscle mass, and appetite signaling that change after 40, and why these shifts make calorie deficits feel harder even when you're doing everything right. Second, the practical realities of midlife that compound this problem, from recovery changes to a decline in neat to sleep disruption that sabotages your appetite. And third, targeted strategies that address these specific mechanisms so fat loss becomes manageable and not so miserable. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering, and efficiency. I'm your host, certified nutrition coach Philip Pape, founder of the Fitness Lab app, and today I'm speaking to those of us who are in our 40s, 50s, and beyond, where you've noticed that fat loss feels different now, that hunger tends to hit harder, that cravings tend to show up more often, and the things that worked maybe in our 30s or in our 20s do not work anymore. It's not just about the weight loss, it's not just about the hormones. There's a system, systematic level of things happening with age that are important to acknowledge. And once we understand that, we could do something about it. Now, you've probably heard that your metabolism, well, okay,

Metabolism Myths And Muscle Loss

Philip Pape 1:36

let me do two things. First, you may have heard metabolism crashes when you get older. I think that's a lot of the fear marketing. In reality, your metabolism stays stable between the age of 20 to 60. When accounting for muscle mass, that is a true statement. But what actually happens, and this is why people think it's crashing, is that most of us are experiencing lower energy expenditure because of the loss of muscle mass and the changes in our life that cause our total daily energy expenditure to decrease from stress, from lack of movement, and things like that. And so if we can connect that to how we eat, to our cravings, to our hunger, we can find out exactly where the problem is so that we can address it. And I've supported hundreds of clients, I'll say at this point, if not thousands, through the podcast as well, who have been able to conquer what was always, you know, binge restrict cycles, emotional eating, uncontrollable hunger with just some simple tools and understanding the science and engineering their own physique around that. And that's what we're going to address. So this is episode five in our January appetite series of eight episodes, where we're connecting the dots between everything we've covered hormones, sleep, protein, fiber, metabolism, and we're applying it to what happens specific to aging and appetite, right? So after 40, what is really going on? And 40 is just an arbitrary number. 35, 45, doesn't matter. This inevitably happens to all of us, but we can do something about it. And then stick around to the end because I've got a simple swap based on brand new research that can improve your fullness without changing what you eat, just how you eat it. So stay tuned for that. Hey, this is Philip, and today's episode is sponsored by Calocurb. If you've ever been in a fat loss phase and felt like hunger was working against you, Callocurb's GLP1 activator is a game changer. Calllocurb is a natural appetite support made from amerisate, a patented bitter hops extract that activates GLP1 and other gut signals to help you feel fuller, faster. Clinical studies showed a 40% reduction in cravings and a 30% reduction in hunger within one hour. If you want to try it, go to witsandweights.com slash calllocurb for 10% off your first order. The link is in the show notes. That's witsandweights.com slash calllocurb. All right, so what actually changes as we get older when it comes to appetite?

Hormones, Appetite, And Aging

Philip Pape 4:06

All right. So let's talk about muscle mass and metabolism, metabolic capacity. Because starting in your 30s and accelerating after 40, you lose roughly 3 to 8% of muscle mass per decade if you're not actively resistance training. You may have heard the stat before. This is called sarcopenia. And it's not just about the muscle mass, it's the function that goes along with that muscle mass. And so it creates a cascading problem. Muscle tissue, it's not just sitting there looking pretty, right? It's very metabolically active. It affects how well you store glycogen, how your body responds to your carbs and insulin, how quickly you feel fueled versus depleted after meals. Yep, you heard that one right. Less muscle means you have a smaller G tank, smaller tank of energy. And so you get hungrier sooner because your capacity to store and utilize fuel has decreased. Think about that. Normally I talk about muscle mass as this like gas-guzzling engine, but it's also kind of a storage mechanism for nutrients, where if you don't have as much muscle, you might get hungrier more frequently and sooner. So just having more muscle can make you less hungry. Isn't that interesting? It's very interesting. It's why some of us who actually gain a lot of muscle have trouble sometimes not being able to eat enough sometimes because we don't have as big of an appetite. So the reality is that when you're losing muscle, it reduces your BMR, it increases your hunger, and your total output drops because there's less tissue. And so this is the biggest variable as to why your metabolism really isn't stable, because we say stable relative to muscle mass, but you've lost muscle mass. So this is one of the things that's misleading for people. And then it gets compounded for certain situations like the drop in reproductive hormones for women and the overall reduction in movement in general, that we're going to address a little bit later in the episode. Now, on the hormone side, for men, testosterone declines around 1% a year after 30. And we know lower testosterone correlates with less muscle mass, increased abdominal fat, worse insulin sensitivity, and the swings in blood sugar that result can drive more hunger. I'm gonna say it over and over on this podcast: spikes in blood sugar aren't the problem. It's what those spikes in blood sugar can drive in terms of hunger and energy crashes, and your long-term blood sugar based on your insulin sensitivity and your overall health. Healthy people who lift weights and have muscle can have large blood sugar spikes throughout the day, and it's no big deal. That's my point. So these are important to understand. For women, perimenopause and menopause shift estrogen and progesterone, also testosterone, but those are the big ones in ways that disrupt the leptin signaling, your insulin sensitivity, your mood regulation. And this leads to more hunger, more intense cravings, especially for carbs, and then body fat redistribution toward the midsection. Um, just as a side tangent, you're gonna love my conversation with Dr. Maria Sophocles in February, which is all about estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone for women. Okay, and then the other piece of the hormones here is the thing we've been talking about a lot lately, the hunger hormones. So when your body fat goes up, especially your abdominal or your visceral fat, your belly fat, your leptin sensitivity goes down. And then your brain thinks that you are running on empty even when you're eating enough food, supposedly, right? You you're supposed to be eating enough, but your brain doesn't think so. And this is one of those disconnects people have. And, you know, your GLP1 and your PYY, which are hormones that tell you you're satisfied after eating, also show reduced secretion or sensitivity. So you feel hungrier and feel less satisfied from the same amount of food. Now, none of these changes I just talked about are inevitable. They are inevitable if you're not doing certain things, but we're gonna do the right things, aren't we? We're gonna give you the right inputs for this, you know, aging body that we have. We can't help what we can't control, but there's a lot of things we can control. So I want to now talk about some of the practical realities of being older. That many of our 20-year-old brethren are the boys and girls out there, I'm sorry if that belittles you. Um, if you're younger and listening to this, please keep doing so. You're gonna learn a lot to be prepared for when you're in your 30s and 40s beyond. But there are practical realities, guys. This is no surprise to those of you listening to this show. The first one is that recovery takes longer, period.

Practical Realities: Recovery, NEAT, Sleep

Philip Pape 8:38

Your ability to recover from training is not what it was at 25. Okay, this affects your appetite management because if you can't recover, you're more stressed out, and that affects your cortisol, that affects your sleep, and it just gives you a higher level of systemic stress that tells your body we need to get more energy somewhere, so I'm gonna make you hungry. And so if you're trying to train with the same volume and intensity that you used in your 30s, and yet you're feeling more fatigued and you can't recover and the sleep's not there, you're probably creating a stress load that is making appetite harder to manage. So keep that in mind, okay? Those of you doing all the cardio, keep that in mind. Okay, the next thing is that the decline in NEAT, non-exercise activity thermogenesis, tends to drop, or I said the decline tends to drop, but neat tends to drop in midlife. And a lot of this is just our lifestyle, right? Career demands, family obligations, more time sitting at a desk. Part of it is also biological. Your body naturally moves less as you age unless you're consciously counteracting it and being active and walking and getting up off your butt and going in strength training. And all of this matters for your appetite because lower neat means you're burning fewer calories. And that just means tighter margins when you're in a deficit, and then everything feels harder because you can't eat as much and that buffer is not there. This is why I always tell people an extra thousand steps is gonna be a lot easier than cutting another 50 calories for most people. And then finally, not finally, I'm gonna say the next thing is sleep disruption. We covered this in episode 426, but it bears a quick repeat in that sleep quality often declines as we get older. And a lot of us have specific issues like night sweats, hot flashes. We have the extra stress that keeps us up, and you know what, you know that those thoughts on your mind that keep you up. Some of us have insomnia, some of you have sleep apnea. By the way, if you suspect at all you have sleep apnea, definitely look into it, get a diagnosis, and consider a CPAP machine. That's been a game changer for a lot of folks. Even if you're of a healthy body size, you may have a little extra muscle around your neck that's causing sleep apnea. And then all of this, the sleep deprivation increases your ghrelin, decreases your leptin. Right, we talked about all that in the last few episodes. I'm not gonna hammer it again. But but the important fact we discovered from research is that you may consume up to three to 500 calories more unconsciously just because you lacked as much sleep. So if you're waking up unrested most mornings, your appetite management is absolutely compromised before you even start to think about the food side of the equation. The last thing here about our practical nature of us old folks, older folks, because I know many of you are far older than me and you're crushing it, is the life complexity. This is just natural as we get older. We have our career demands, parents that are getting older. A lot of you have parents who, you know, maybe in a nursing home or you're trying to care for them. Teenagers, financial pressures, trying to think about running your business or get ready for retirement or just pay the bills. Each of these adds what I call behavioral noise to the food noise. And then they exacerbate each other. Because then the mental bandwidth required to stick to a deficit gets even smaller, but the demand gets larger. So your ability to like to push through stuff is just so small, but the demand to do it is getting larger because of the other factors. And that's a resource allocation problem. Again, it comes down to math. You guys know I'm an engineer, I always bring it down to the numbers. That's ultimately where it comes down to. Now, before we continue, I do want to tell you about our sponsor for the episode. I hope you guys caught Friday's interview with Sarah Kennedy. It was phenomenal, all about the genes in our gut or the not the gene, well, genetics as well as hormones in our gut and how that affects appetite. Because everything we've been discussing today, leptin resistance, blunted GLP1 signaling, appetite dysregulation that makes fat loss harder as we get older, over 40. Callocurb, who's sponsoring this episode, addresses these mechanisms directly in a tool that is really, really powerful. And I would say falls between doing nothing and doing it all through lifestyle and something like the GLP1 medications. So if you're looking for a 100% natural supplement that can really help here, give Callowcurb a shot. It uses what's called a marisate. It's a patented hops extract. And it was developed with the New Zealand government, okay, not a profit-making enterprise, but actually funded by the government in New Zealand over 15 years, $30 million in research, randomized controlled trials. And they were looking for a plant extract that could naturally activate your gut brain signals. And they found one in bitter hops. It activates your natural GLP1, right? These are the same things that become blunted as we get older and are related to food noise and, of course, are tied to the weight loss meds that we've heard so much about, so that you can feel full, faster, and stay control in your appetite,

Increase Natural GLP-1 By 600%

Philip Pape 13:36

especially when you're in a fat loss phase. The studies are really powerful. They show that callocurb reduces cravings quite a bit. 40%, hunger by 30%, and average calorie intake by 18%. If you take it at least an hour before you eat. And I like that it doesn't require prescription. It's very simple, it's just oral capsules. And I think it complements the strategies that we're covering today really well, rather than replacing them. And I'm going to be using this myself for my upcoming mini cut. If managing appetite has become the hardest part for you when it comes to fat loss, especially now that you're over 40 and this is just getting harder and there's a lot of stress in your life, I think Calo Curb is worth trying to take the edge off and help along the way. Go to wits and weights.com slash callow curb for 10% off. That's witsandweights.com slash calllocurb. That's C-A-L-O-C-U-R-B. The discount should apply automatically. Link is in the show notes again. Go to witsandweights.com slash calllocurb. All right, so now let's get into some of the strategies that work. And again, I just talked about our sponsor, but I think it's important to understand that lifestyle along with tools can be a really powerful combination. So given everything we've covered, what actually helps? I'm gonna give you four tips. Tip number one, resistance training is non-negotiable, which is something I say constantly because it's the foundation. And if you're new to the podcast, welcome. Sear this into your brain. If you're not new to the podcast, continue to keep it seared in your brain. It's not just about building muscle, guys. It's protecting your entire metabolic and insulin and appetite regulatory

4 High-Leverage Strategies

Philip Pape 15:16

system. When you lift weights, you improve insulin sensitivity. That means less blood sugar volatility, ups and downs, fewer hunger spikes. You improve leptin sensitivity because you shift body composition toward more muscle and less fat, and you release myokines, which are signaling molecules that come out of your muscle tissue and they communicate with your brain and your gut. A study in 2024, so this is just a couple years ago, in the journal of the Endocrine Society, found that high-intensity exercise also suppresses ghrelin significantly more than moderate exercise, and that women may be overly responsive to this effect. And so when we say high intensity, though, we want to balance it out with the negatives of certain types of exercise. And so strength training and heavy compound lifts actually fit this role. They are doing all these things for you, killing two, three, four birds with one stone. They're helping you build muscle. They're also suppressing appetite because they meet the qualification of high intensity in this context because of the myokine signaling. And they really, really help with hunger. I mean, they it really does. People that I've worked with who lift weights find that it tremendously regulates their hunger signals. Whereas those who do a lot of cardio find they are a lot more hungry and they eat more. They overeat very often. So if you're over 40, if you're not doing progressively progressive overload-based resistance training, right? Strength training, lifting weights at least twice a week, but ideally three, if not four, this is your highest leverage intervention. All right, tip number two is protein timing. Now, you'll hear a lot of stuff online that, well, we know that the amount of protein is more important than the timing. And that is true from a muscle protein synthesis perspective. But from a hunger perspective, having protein at every meal can be extremely helpful. Okay, from a practical standpoint, it's going to reduce hunger through multiple mechanisms with the hormones that we've talked about in the last few episodes. But just for a quick rundown, it suppresses ghrelin, stimulates GLP1 and PYY, and it has a higher thermic effect, right? It burns a few more calories. But the other thing we talked about was front-loading your protein to improve your appetite because GLP1 secretion tends to be stronger in the morning. And this aligns with circadian biology, right? Your day-night cycle. And for a lot of people, it sets a better tone regarding your hormone regulation for the rest of the day. It may not be foolproof for everyone. You've got to experiment with these things. But I would aim for at least 30 grams of protein at breakfast to get started as my tip for today. Okay, that's like four eggs or you know, Greek yogurt with protein powder, something like that. Tip three is really about sleep. If sleep is your biggest problem, whether it's from the hormones, from stress, from poor habits, from sleep apnea, as we mentioned, I think fixing this will do more for your appetite than anything else if you're already like training and you're already eating well and eating protein. I would say, like for women in perimenopause, dealing with things like night sweats. Okay, I hear it, ladies. I know the night sweats of hot flashes can be brutal. Just talk to your doctor or your, you know, specialist, functional doctor, whatever, about the options. It doesn't necessarily mean you need hormone replacement. There are, you know, there are ways to deal with the symptoms of hot flashes and night sweats. There's a lot of options, both over the counter and supplement. There's even some interesting devices like the ember bracelet, stuff like that. And so for everyone, no matter your man or woman or whatever age, having consistent, I think we talked about it before, a consistent wake time. Bedtime, yes, but wake time is super important. A cool dark room, limiting screens before bed, all that stuff is gonna help. All right, and then strategy four or tip number four is really about your neat. If you are not getting a decent amount of steps, this is another high leverage piece. Where if you're getting like three or four thousand steps, that's a huge red flag. You've got to jack that up to at least seven or eight, and ideally in the eight to ten range. I'm sorry, I've seen comments on YouTube. Somebody's like, well, not everybody can get that many steps. And I've talked to clients who are like, my life is too difficult to get that many steps. You know what? We find a way. We find a way, there's ways to do it where you're multitasking, or you make the steps a little harder, so you don't need as many quantity of steps, right? But you still get the benefit of the steps. You know, there's there's stand up desks, there's walking treadmills, there's treadmills in your house, there's pacing around, there's, you know, I can go on and on. You know, finding the time, getting up a little earlier, tacking it on to workouts. I could do whole episodes just about how to get more steps. All right. Just a quick tangent. If you're listening to this and you're thinking, I really want to implement. A fat loss phase and have better hunger management. I love everything you're saying. What do we do about it? All

Get Lean in 45 Days (6-Week Mini-Cut)

Philip Pape 20:07

right. I wanted to tell you this because it's happening tomorrow. This episode comes out January 19. Tomorrow, January 20th, I'm hosting a workshop called Get Lean in 45 Days. It's a live workshop, but a replay will be available. So you can get the recording. If you can't make it live, but you have to register. I'm going to walk you through exactly how to drop 8 to 12 pounds of body fat in 45 days, but doing it the right way, managing your hunger the right way, including some interesting tips in there about refeeds and flexibility. So you can, again, do it without feeling as hungry. So if you sign up at live.witsandweights.com, you're going to get the guide, you're going to get the workshop, the replay, a week-by-week execution roadmap, the training template I talked about earlier this week called Chisel. Look for that in your feed if you didn't hear if you didn't see that. It's very, it's like a five-minute episode about my fat loss workout program. Troubleshooting frameworks for plateaus, hormones, life, all the stuff we've been talking about in the series. And then here's a surprise. As of this week, I've also dropped a companion guided course that goes along with the workshop. It's actually going to come out, actually, no, it's today. It's live today. So if you're in there, if you sign up, you'll get instant access to that and chisel, as well as the workshop itself to support the cut. All right. The workshop is tomorrow, January 20 at 12 noon, and spots are limited, so go to live.witsandweights.com to grab your spot. Link is in the show notes. Go to live.witsandweights.com.

Rethinking Deficits: Build Capacity First

Philip Pape 21:38

All right, let's bring this all together now. Okay. The conventional approach to fat loss looks like this. You create a deficit, you battle some hunger until you reach your goal. Honestly, that's what it is. And if you listen to some of the best of the best, you listen to the RP guys, if you listen to Mass, if you listen to, you know, Stronger by Science, all those guys, arrowchelms, they'll say, look, when we work with physique competitors, they have hunger. Like you can't get away from hunger. It's the amount of hunger and what you're doing to mitigate it so that it's reasonable and you're not just relying on, you know, willpower or resisting your hunger or just feeling ravenously hunger all the time. Right. And most of you listening are not trying to compete in physique sports. You're just trying to lose some fat. So when you are hitting these walls, right, you tend to do these cycles, the yo-yos, the losing weight, the regaining it, losing to get regain it again. And because a lot of you aren't holding on to your muscle and you're losing muscle, that also makes you hungrier. The better capacity is to, or the better approach is to build your capacity to handle a deficit before you use or at least maximize the actual deficit, right? And so that means building muscle first. It means optimizing your sleep and stress, using protein, fiber, all these tools, these evidence-based tools, even appetite suppressant if you need it, before relying on just, okay, I'm going to gut it through. So in the in the next episode, just as a teaser, we're going to dive deep into this concept, why building muscle first makes not only fat loss easier, but it actually helps with your appetite. Again, we're going to this is this is an appetite series. For now, I want you to understand that the difficulty of fat loss that you're going through, it's not primarily about your metabolism. It's about how you're regulating literally every day as you live life. What do I mean by that? It's your system that governs how much you want to eat, how satisfied you feel after eating, how much willpower is required to maintain a deficit. Those things, to me, if you can figure them out, right? Then it gets around issues with your metabolism because the metabolic issues are often a result of these issues. I hope I didn't just ramble too much on that. All right. Before I share my closing thoughts, I did promise you a simple swap based on new research that can improve your fullness during a fat loss phase. And it's a really powerful, simple idea, but you may not have thought of it. That's coming up right after this. Hey, this is Philip. And a quick reminder about today's sponsor, Calocurb. If hunger has been the hardest part of your fat loss phase, even when everything else is dialed in, check out CalloCurb. It's a natural GLP1 activating supplement with clinical data showing 40% fewer cravings and 30% less hunger within one hour, leading to 18% fewer calories, so you can stick to your fat loss plan. Go to witsandweights.com slash calllocurb for 10% off your first order. Link is in the show notes. That's witsandweights.com slash calocurb. All right, here's that bonus

Bonus Tip Backed by Research

Philip Pape 24:44

I promised. It comes from research published just last year. Scientists at Trinity College in Dublin discovered something that explains why liquid calories make fat loss harder. They found that solid foods trigger a surge in a molecule called LACF. That's L A C P H E. And it's a natural appetite suppressant that your body produces. If you eat sugar-rich dates, for example, there might be an immediate and large LACFE surge. But if you drink a sugar-rich beverage that has the exact same calories, we don't see that surge. And so this could explain why liquid calories drive overeating independent of the fact that they are processed. Does that make sense? Like I my argument has always been, well, liquid protein, it doesn't take as much to digest, so it's not going to fill you up as much. But that's not the only mechanism that's going on. This this surge in this molecule that normally would suppress your appetite is not getting triggered when you're having a liquid version of food. So the practical tip here is just to, especially during a fat loss phase, look for places to swap your liquid sources for solid equivalents. And for many of you, that's your liquid protein shakes. All right. And from that might be your whey protein, or it might be a more complicated, like whey and yogurt and this and that, all blended together. So instead of that, think about a hard, solid food option. By hard, I mean as soft as something like yogurt or cottage cheese, but it could also be some chicken or eggs or something like that. And make sure you're looking at the fat in the eggs and having some egg whites. So instead of a pre-workout shake, for example, have some lean meat. Now I know that might take a little extra prep, a little extra thought, but I would just experiment with that for like four weeks. The same exact calories and the same macros, but swapping out liquid for solid during a fat loss phase and see what happens. I just want you to try, even try for one week. Notice if you feel more satisfied between meals. If you come back and you're like, I didn't notice a difference, fine. But I've had clients who do this and they're like, oh my God, that's the exact change I needed because I've done all the other things. I've increased my fiber, I'm eating plenty of protein, I'm pretty much eating whole foods, but changing that liquid shake to solid protein, you know, maybe it's shrimp. All right, there's so many ideas I can come up with. You can use AI to figure it out too. You get the idea. All right, and that's my tip. That's my tip. Try it out. Until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights. And remember, your body just needs the right inputs for where you are now. That's the thing you can control. This is Philip Pape, and I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights Podcast.