Why more exercise backfires

Philip Pape 0:00

You're training five, maybe six days a week, showing up to the gym, putting in the work, and yet the scale hasn't budged. So you add more cardio or you push the sessions longer, and somehow you're hungrier, more tired, and still stuck at the same weight. What nobody tells you is your body has a metabolic thermostat, and the harder you push your training, the more aggressively it compensates. Not because something is wrong with you, but because your biology is doing what it evolved to do. Today I'm talking to an exercise physiologist about why exercise is one of the worst tools for fat loss, how your body actively neutralizes extra training before you even leave the gym, and what you should be doing with your workouts instead if you actually want to change your body composition after 40. Welcome to Wits and Weights, where in every episode we put a popular piece of fitness advice under the microscope, find the hidden reason it doesn't work, and give you the deceptively simple fix that does. I'm your host, Philip Pape, and today we're gonna put one of the most persistent beliefs in fitness under the microscope. That exercising more will make you lose more fat, lose weight, lose fat, whatever you think it's going to do for you. My guest today is Ben Brown. Ben holds master's degrees in both exercise physiology and clinical nutrition. He's consulted for professional sports teams, including the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Golden State Warriors. He's a professor of kinesiology at Arizona State, and he now runs Body Systems, an online coaching company that has worked with over a thousand clients. He has spent two decades in the exercise science trenches. And now he often tells people they need to train less, not more. Today you are going to learn why your body compensates for increased exercise. It can reduce your calorie burn, it can do other things, and how that compensation sometimes gets worse as you age and why higher quality, focused strength training, among other things, will do more for your body composition than simply training or exercising more. We're also going to get into some of our favorite controversies, including perhaps GLP1 drugs and muscle loss and the nuance behind calories in, calories out. Ben, it's good to see you again and welcome to the show.

Ben Brown 2:14

Thanks for having me, Bud. Great seeing you. Glad to be here.

Philip Pape 2:16

I'm going to ask a very simple but very difficult question here. What is the point of exercise?

Ben Brown 2:23

You know, that is a seemingly simple yet complex question, but I think exercise is necessary for life. I mean, it's part of what contributes to cellular function and metabolic function. And so I would say the point of exercise is to live.

Philip Pape 2:47

Okay, mic drop. Okay, so now let's take it one level deeper. Already the idea that exercise, and we need to define what that is, what type of exercise, or how do we want to define exercise for this discussion?

Ben Brown 3:01

Yeah, again, a really good question. And so, I mean, listen, let's look at physical activity in general. And and I it perhaps it's the classification between overall just physical activity and and just generalized movement, and then exercise as potentially being something that has what could be contributed or uh considered like a higher intensity level. Candidly, like I don't know what how we would necessarily differentiate. And I'm sure we could kind of dig into the literature to get clarity around that, Philip. But at the end of the day, I would say that if we're classifying the two, if we look at just generalized physical activity, that's probably more like activities of daily living and things that we would just do, right? Like walking to and from the house and the car and to work and getting up and getting down and you know, picking up the kids and all of those obligatory things that we need to live versus exercise as being actually something that's intentional, that's strategic, that's in some way, shape, or form structured, right? Around like I am intentionally going out for a walk, or I'm intentionally going to the gym and I'm going to lift weights. And of course, that comes with a different amount of volume and intensity and time. And so exercise in that respect, as we're hashing it out here, I would say comes with some sort of quantification and qualification in terms of the volume load and intensity.

Philip Pape 4:32

That's great. And it also sounds like there are different modes. You you alluded to daily activities and you alluded to intentional structured exercise, which then leads me to think of all the types of fitness or the terms that people use, especially when you, I'm sure working with coaching clients, hear things like mobility, strength, flexibility, athleticism. And there's, you know, it can get overwhelming, it can get confusing. So people think about losing weight and being fit and healthy. They think of things like calories, calories in, calories out. They think of maybe now they're wearable or what the machine is telling them in the gym tells them that they're burning. And there's a lot of misconceptions around that. But where does the math begin here when we start with energy balance, calories in, calories out, and how it links to exercise? And we can set that as a foundation for maybe talking about constrained energy expenditure and all that other fun stuff.

Ben Brown 5:24

Yeah. So we we need to look at it. Um, if I'm understanding the question, is is is basically you're saying what's the difference between or how are we looking at exercise in terms of energy expenditure, right? In terms of expenditure, right? And and so while it is valuable, right, we know when we exercise, we expend calories and there's different forms of exercise, and therefore, and there's different intensity levels, and therefore there's different amounts of expenditure over different periods of time. That's all good and well and valuable. But when we take that model, right, and we take that the physics of caloric expenditure and we apply it to the physics of caloric intake and weight loss, and we all understand, and this is the crux of it, Philip, right, is that we understand the value of calories in, calories out, right? However, when we take that model and we apply to say, well, if I just offset my intake with my output, then theoretically things should come out in the wash. And unfortunately, that's not the way that the human metabolism works for a myriad of reasons.

Philip Pape 6:32

If I burn 400 calories on the treadmill, how much of that shows up as additional expenditure or my metabolism at the end of the day? How does that affect the equation?

Ben Brown 6:42

Yeah, so I think when it comes down to it, it's significantly less than even 50% of what we perceive that caloric expenditure to be. And that's where, you know, the human metabolism functions and the beautiful thing about the human metabolism, right? And so that's the most important component for people to understand when they're undergoing a weight loss program, as an example, of not trying to just leverage physical activity as the prime modality of caloric control. And that's why we always talk about around the value of your intake, not only the amount of food or the amount of calories that you're consuming, but of course the quality of the food and the implications therein, right?

Philip Pape 7:27

Yeah. So you you said something very powerful of not using physical movement as the main lever of calorie control. Very, very important. But just on the calorie out side, right? On the output side, where does that compensation primarily come from?

Ben Brown 7:40

Yeah. So essentially what's happening is we we have these pushback mechanisms at play. It's like, yes, we are earning these calories, but what essentially happens is what's happening the rest of the day, right? And how are our behaviors influenced by virtue of that caloric expenditure? In other words, right, is how does our intake change? How does their physical activity change through the rest of the day? How does our hormonal patterns change? And how do those influence, again, like I said, the amount of caloric expenditure and caloric intake through our daily patterns. So do we end up eating more? Do we end up exercising less? Do we crave more food? Do we experience more hunger? And this seemed to be the primary metabolic mechanisms in terms of how it influences that physical expenditure.

How metabolic compensation happens

Philip Pape 8:38

That's very interesting, you know, listing those things because I know when I first got into this and learned about it, you know, we all subscribe to this additive model, right? The more you move, the more you burn. And then when I started to learn about it, I learned about hormones like you mentioned and cellular compensation. But you mentioned you might move less, you might walk less, you might, you know, exercise less because you exercised, et cetera. Uh, you talked about eating, maybe you eat more, you're hungrier perhaps, or you're eating things that aren't you know serving you as well. And then even what comes to mind to me is things like sleep. You know, I've talked about the impact of cardio on sleep when it's too intense or too much volume. It could reduce your sleep and then lead to a vicious cycle as well. So, should people even consider not exercising a certain way to avoid that? And that's that's ultimately what we're trying to get to is some sort of prescription for living and moving. What are your thoughts there?

Cardio as a strategic lever

Ben Brown 9:29

So here's the deal is you know, mechanistically we can break this down a bunch of different ways, and we could obsess over the X's and O's of well, it says I burned 500, but I only burned 250. And, you know, how does that correlate to this, that, and the other? At the end of the day, it's like I think what most people need to understand, and that's most the biggest takeaway, is like exercise is necessary. Like I said, it's life, man. It's beautiful, it's healthy, it's warranted, we need it. We should be infusing it in some way, shape, or form every single day in multiple different modalities between walking and you know, and strength training and things that we enjoy. So we just need to first and foremost stop thinking about it as offsetting calories. It's valid, but it's not that valid in the grand scheme of things unless we're really in the far reaches of a caloric deficit. And so, you know, when we're having these conversations for people who are maybe hitting plateaus or their significant level of leanness, and we need to use that as a as a switch, right? As a trigger or a lever to kind of really move the needle because we can't get calories a lot lower, sure. But for the vast majority of people that are looking like, I just want to look better, I want to feel better, I want to be healthier, want to have more energy, I want to optimize more hormonal function, great. Like, let's figure out ways for you to exercise every single day. And then beyond that, is like, and now if we're if we're really making a concerted effort to lose body fat, first and foremost, let's figure out what your caloric intake looks like and let's set the precedent that you're going to be training in some capacity, right? Whether we set, you know, say, listen, you're you're going to be getting 8,000 steps a day, you're going to be training three or four days a week. And maybe we won't touch cardio just yet. We'll use that and maybe we'll save that, Philip, as a lever that we apply, right, at some point if and when we need it. Because I think one of the best strategies that we can use over the grand scheme of health and fitness and wellness, especially for fat loss, is to, okay, well, where's the caloric intake need to be to get the needle moving? And then how do we leverage calorie intake and calorie output from exercise? I hope that frames it appropriately.

Philip Pape 11:56

It does. It also creates a priority. So I like to think in terms of pyramids or priorities, you know, what's at the bottom. So then people in their mind, they're like, well, cardio is a tool later. What do you mean by that? Why do we do it that way? Why can't we just be having a high cardio lifestyle? What if I love to do cardio? What if I love, you know, my sports and I love my group classes and all of that? Is this just a stacking approach? Like, what's the purpose of taking that approach, Ben?

Ben Brown 12:20

It's the approach of like just physiologically how the body tends to respond the best. And we talked about the compensatory properties at play. And it's just the way the body works. And there's been research, you know, around the energy constrained model uh by Dr. Herman Ponzer and Hadza tribe in uh Tanzania. And essentially it's suggesting listen, the more we move, it's not the more we burn. The Hadza tribe, they're they're taking 20,000 steps a day or walking up to like 10 miles a day. And when they do, you know, their studies and they have them, you know, doubly labeled water and they look at exactly what they're expending, they're not expending more than that essentially the average American couch potato. And so it begs the question of metabolically, well, what's happening? Because of course they're eating a better diet, they're not consuming nearly as many calories. So, what exactly is happening here? And that's this sort of the way that the metabolism works in terms of keeping us alive, which is fantastic and beautiful, but it's also quite frustrating when you're someone who's like, I love running and I want to go out and run every single day. And it would be awesome if my running and the caloric expenditure that came from running would contribute to me looking fight club shredded. And unfortunately, if you've seen runners in general, like that's just not what happens, right? And so we have to look at the stress on the body. And so we know sort of it's like this this allostatic load, the amount of stress and how it adds up in terms of contributing to the metabolic compensation. So if we if we know, okay, well, more stress, more exercise clearly isn't better, then we have to look at, well, what is the right dose for the person in the situation that they're in? And if you think about human evolution, right, and caloric scarcity and perhaps the way that humans again evolved is like we're not going out of our way to do more physical activity. Like we hunt and we fish and we forage and we did these things that we needed to do. Otherwise, we laid around and we created and we fornicated and we played, right? And we weren't intentionally going out for a run to like to get abs. Like it just, you know, from a human standpoint, it doesn't make sense. And that's the way we have to apply those principles to the body composition and health changes that we're looking for. That's where cardio lines up, especially intense cardio or intense and prolonged cardio, and how it lines up with its prioritization, right, in the hierarchy of fat loss. And that's where it's like calories and strength training and just overall movement and then okay, strategic cardio.

Philip Pape 15:18

Um people have higher appetite, it's probably a normal brain that has a higher appetite because that's what how we evolved in the past, and those people would have survived the most.

Ben Brown 15:26

That's right.

Philip Pape 15:27

And yet it fights back against us. So if anything, they're not, you know, a worse-off uh genetics. They might even have superior genetics, just not for today. So two things come to mind. You mentioned the Hadza Tribe and Ponser and his doubly label water study, and that confuses a lot of folks, not just the compensation piece of it, but when they're thinking of, hey, I'm 45 and perimenopause. I, you know, how could I possibly have the same metabolism if I can't possibly lose weight? And I want to get into that piece. But let's just clarify in that research, I believe when accounted for lean mass, the metabolisms were different. Isn't that the case? Like the more lean mass you had for the same body weight.

Ben Brown 16:05

The more lean mass, the more calories and at rest. Yeah.

Philip Pape 16:09

Yeah.

Ben Brown 16:09

Yeah. I think I think that makes perfect sense. So I so I I think that makes perfect sense. And and I I think there are issues with someone's metabolism when in reality this is the metabolism doing exactly what it's supposed to do. Right. And so your your metabolism quota isn't damaged or broken, and there's nothing wrong with you. And I think actually GLPs are a really good example of how there's actually nothing wrong with your metabolism. You just knowingly or unknowingly were overeating, and we certainly can get into that. But at the end of the day, that's also speaks to you know, the value of lean muscle tissue and the role that it plays in terms of metabolism and function and caloric expenditure and and what have you.

Stress after 40 changes everything

Philip Pape 17:00

Yeah. And so then, you know, to especially like the ladies who are listening, and and you mentioned allostasis or allostatic load. We've used that term here a few times in the past, but just it's kind of the opposite of homeostasis, right? Homeostasis is your body kind of in its safe, regulated pattern, and allostasis is something pulling you away from that, is like I like to think of it. But in say, people in their 40s going through hormonal changes with the lifestyle they have, what is triggering or causing that higher level of allostasis and allostatic load that is then affecting the metabolism?

Ben Brown 17:34

It's such a good question. And it's probably the most relevant thing that people can acknowledge at this stage of life. Um, and it's very much a contributor to why things are different now. They're different in terms of your stressors, your responsibilities, your body weight, your amount of lean muscle tissue, your amount of body fat, which is very pro-inflammatory, your relationships, your social support system, your financial stressors. So your gut health, the environmental toxicity, is that enough allostatic load for you? Right. So, but but that's really important. It's a really important acknowledgement, is we're not 25 with no responsibilities and no kids. We're at a very different stage of life. And with that comes a very different hormonal response, less sleep, more cortisol, which is not a bad thing, right? But it's it's part of how our body functions in terms of stress hormones and the way that all of those contribute to hormonal regulation and blood sugar regulation. And we talked about leptin and ghrelin and brain function and hunger and cravings. Then you take all of that and you compound that, right? You pile all of that on, you say, I'm still an evolutionary brain who thrives off of sugar and salt and fat. And oh, hey, I have all of this food around me that is part of, you know, survival, even though that's not, you know, my main concern from your brain standpoint, it is, especially when you're in a stress response, which we're in 24-7. And this is, you know, it from a 30,000-foot view, this is the major factor at play, you know, for so many of us, that is directly contributing to why we're not responding well in the gym, why more aggressive exercise isn't better, why under eating for an extended period of time isn't serving you. And because of the implications of those things in terms of how it affects your behaviors around alcohol intake, weekend eating, lack of sleep, right? I'm just perpetuating this vicious cycle.

Philip Pape 19:39

Yeah, it's all interrelated. And that maybe is part of the confusion for folks trying to get out of it. So where does someone start thinking about that or prioritizing for themselves, knowing that it's unique, it's a unique thing. It's not everybody, but you as a coach who've coached thousands of people may have seen patterns that emerge time and time and time again. And you could like, you know, hit on the big three that would be most helpful to our listeners.

Ben Brown 20:01

Yeah, well, I think first and foremost, you kind of have to get really clear about what you want and what's holding you back. I had a conversation with a client yesterday. And now she's she's probably about our age. I think she's um early 40s. For her, it very much was like, you know, this is not the trajectory that I see for myself. I'm not happy with what I see in the mirror. I'm not happy with how I feel on a daily basis. And I know that I am in control and I'm the only one who can make these changes. So the first is just the extreme ownership over your situation. It's like, dude, you were in control. It's like if you're unhappy in elements of your life, your social support system, right? Uh the support of your spouse, uh, the way you're showing up, like you have to tackle that.

Philip Pape 20:50

You know, let's sit on that one for uh just a spell. And I think there's that language is is needed, even if it has to be delivered in a compassionate way, right? You're not just gonna say to a new client, yeah, it's all your fault, you're you're you you suck, you need to fix things. It's it's a different type of narrative, but still it's what you're saying. So, what did this client say in her own words to demonstrate that ownership?

Ben Brown 21:11

I think for her, it very much was like, I'm not happy in my skin, I don't feel confident, I don't believe in myself. And for a lot of women, they've been perpetuating this dieting cycle, you know, for their entire life. And it's, you know, their mother was hard on them, and they never had this self-confidence. And so they kept turning to sort of like the weight being the end-all be all of your self-worth. And that's a real deal, man. This is real stuff. So I think once she started to experience the benefits of losing weight, feeling better, looking better, believing in herself more, then it's just the next domino and the next domino. And then it becomes well, we continue to move the goalposts. Like, what's getting in the way of your success? And I think for a lot of people, they Just don't acknowledge. They take the obligatory steps around the X's and O's and say, oh, it's not working for me. But it's not working because you're miserable in other areas of your life and it's contributing directly to the level of stress that's compounding your gut health, your food behaviors and decisions, why you can't quote unquote stick with the diet, all of those things, right?

Philip Pape 22:21

Yeah. And then it sounds like you connected this ownership to awareness, to action, to self-motivation or intrinsic drive, which is the beautiful thing about all of this, because that is the empowerment at the end of the day. Do you find that people who do that are then unlocking a new level of thinking as they go? In other words, there's a level that is a skill base in and of itself, that ability to become more and more aware of certain things that they would never have had a clue about before.

Ben Brown 22:50

I think that that's the most important element of this journey is developing the skill to be able to do that. Right. I think it's developing the skill to constantly be assessing your circumstances and putting yourself in the best possible position to make a better decision. Right. It's it's this just level of forethought that becomes present as you start to go down this road of like what comes next and what comes next, and how am I navigating these circumstances and situations? Right. And that's the the attribute of someone who is changing their identity and genuinely is going to be quote unquote successful, whatever that looks like, because we know that this is one long perpetual journey. You know, we're all dealing it, we're all in different, different layers and and uh places along the road.

Philip Pape 23:46

Yeah, it strikes me as a far more useful skill than just the losing weight or whatever short-term outcome you might have been going after in the first place, because it unlocks any outcome.

Ben Brown 23:56

Yeah, any outcome. And that's what's cool is like that's where we talk about how it permeates over into every area. Because then it's like you start to think differently in business. You start to think differently in terms of the conversations with your kids and how you're teaching your kids to be owners and make better decisions. And it translates into who am I surrounding myself with and what are the types of conversations that we have and what do they do and what are their behaviors relative to what I want to be in my values? And is it something that's worth investing time and energy into?

Philip Pape 24:26

So we well over half of our audiences are right now talking about one of the most powerful tools in the industry, and that is the GLP1 drugs. This is a totally natural segue here, Ben. 100% because it is a something that clearly works physiologically for weight loss, if that's what people are trying to achieve with it. It also seems to impact lots of other things, definitely the brain-related genes, for some people, addiction mechanisms and other things uh related to the liver and metabolism that we're not even quite understanding yet. Given all of that, given that it is a tool or is it a tool versus, you know, some might argue it's something else, where do GLP wands fit into this? Because I would say that that's like an extreme version of any other type of tool that shortcuts the process for better or worse, like say, taking anabolic steroids or like many, many other tools that I'm not saying are right or wrong. If it's right for you and you choose to do it and it's part of the process, but you did a whole episode about this called, you know, why GLPs work until they don't. So I know you have a lot of thoughts on it.

Ben Brown 25:27

I do have a lot of thoughts. And I have a lot of thoughts in terms of, you know, the good, the bad, and the ugly, right? In terms of I've interviewed experts, I have clients who are using them, I have clients who have used them and come off of them. And I think that there's certainly a time and a place. What's most important is that people are informed about and again, just along the line of ownership and take responsibility over the outcomes of utilizing these drugs. And experts who are leveraging GLPs, just not at like clinical doses. So there's a lot of conversation around like microdosing GLPs as being best practices, right? And the reason being that these GLP drugs at clinical doses are completely sabotaging our hunger signals, our you know, the the leptin, the ghrelin, the hormonal signals. And to what end is that potentially uh detrimental around, yeah, around just one, the delayed gastric emptying, never being hungry, and in terms of the role that hunger plays in a healthy diet, right? In a healthy eating environment, in terms of planning and preparation and portion control. It's like you can't do it without acknowledging levels of hunger and cravings and all of those things. And so my one of my big concerns is around what happens when people come off the drugs. We're seeing from the research that there's significant weight gain within the first several months, but the vast majority of weight coming back within 18 months of people coming off of these drugs. And if you consider that a lot of people using these drugs are not strength training and they're not eating enough protein. And so they're likely losing a significant portion of lean muscle tissue along the way. And we know that muscle tissue is a metabolically active and beneficial organ, right? And it's very anti-inflammatory in nature. Uh, and so by losing lean muscle tissue, we're putting ourselves in a very uh metabolically disadvantageous position, to say nothing of what happens when we gain all of that weight back, but as body fat, you know, then it's we've got significantly more pro-inflammatory tissue. So if we can acknowledge that, then you know, what is the question around, well, what is actually effective dosing? If we do just more like uh micro dosing, and it's just skimming the surface of like the metabolic benefits, the hunger benefits, the food noise benefits, the motivational benefits to help you make better decisions, then perhaps is that better? I can't say yes or no, but I do think it's a very important part of the conversation to say it doesn't have to be all or nothing, but perhaps there is a effective dose for the person depending on what they're trying to do.

Philip Pape 28:33

Yeah, you hit on the big points, right? And there's no right or wrong answer, and there's a lot of there's ethics, morality, there's choice involved. The long-term implications might be the biggest unknown or red flag in that as a short-term tool, sure, it works. And then at what dose does it make sense? But when you talked about sabotaging your hormones, maybe we can get into what you mean by that, because I've looked into it too. Like they downregulate your hormones because they're replacing them, right? They're synthetically replacing those hormones. When you come off of it, they come back. Is it no different than then fighting through a deficit and constantly being hungry? And then when you come back and you crave food and you body fat overshoot, or is it more exacerbated because there's like almost a huge rebound effect?

Ben Brown 29:18

That's what I wonder. Right. Honestly, I mean, that that's that's what I'm wondering, and that's what I'm concerned about. Is since we talk about the compensatory effects of exercise, I think it's very much the same thing of like when you quelling this food noise and this hunger by virtue of delayed gastric empty and right for an extended period of time, what is the body trying to do, right? From a brain standpoint, it's like, hey, we want to survive and we've been losing a considerable amount of weight, right? And we have this kind of proverbial set point. And so when you come off, the body wants to do everything it possibly can. And we listen, why is it different than what we see with the biggest loser studies, right? In terms of how quickly these people gain the weight back once they stop white knuckling it. And to their credit, they did all of this stuff without the GLPs, right? But again, why is it any difference once we we stop the you know hormonal disabling, if you will? That's my biggest concern, man. And so if you're using it now and you're seeing benefits, this is your best opportunity. You still have to reinforce all of the foundational principles around physical activity and strength training and resistance training and supporting lean muscle tissue and eating enough protein and right, but even with that, are you eating enough to maintain all of that? Like these are real questions that I think we have to be very objective about. And you should be working with your clinician to be observing lean muscle tissue and doing DEXA scans and actually right taking ownership and responsibility over how are things moving, how much am I consuming? And if I were to come off of this tomorrow, how reasonable would it be for me to continue consuming a thousand, twelve hundred, fifteen hundred calories, eight hundred, whatever it is, probably, you know, would it, wouldn't it? I don't know. But it's what we're seeing that there's a reason people are gaining the weight back.

Tapering GLP-1s and recovery

Philip Pape 31:17

Yeah, is worth thinking about if you listen to our podcasts and are wondering about it. And like you, I've had clients tell me they're gonna start or they want to come off or they want to keep doing it. The question I have for you is with your clients seeing this now, do you have a standard um titration protocol you've seen work? You don't, this is not medical advice here, but like uh you mentioned appetite, you know, I found that people at GeoPo ones or church epidite, all of a sudden they're eating too little. They're like, I can't eat as much as you're telling me, Philip. Like, well, maybe it's time to come down on the dose, talk to your doctor. That's great, right? What is your like titration ramp? Do you get people to come like into maintenance uh as they're doing this or even into a bulk uh to naturally kind of offset it? Like what are your thoughts there?

Ben Brown 32:00

So what we're working on with clients that are on it andor coming off of it is essentially again, least effective dose is uh we'll work with their clinicians to one, start titrating down. So if they're coming in at high doses of you know, trzepatide is a good example, then it simply becomes all right, can you go down in dose andor can you extend the existing dose, right? So if they're on like 10 milligrams per week of uh trzepatide, and maybe you know the doctor's not ready to take them down, or you know, they're committed to that 10 milligram dose or whatever, then it's like can you extend it out for a period of time? So we can start to observe what's happening with hunger and satiety in the later stages of the week, right? And we can start to understand and observe those feelings and appreciate and start to acknowledge and get comfortable with those and what those are like, and then start to titrate on uh on dosing, titrate down. But essentially the the objective, my objective for what it's worth is to get people on the lowest possible dosage while being able to effectively control for calories. And then at the same time, yes, like you said, is okay, but are they where they want to be from a weight and body composition standpoint? And the crux of that, as you as you're well aware, is like, hey, if they're undereating, we're gonna have a really hard time maintaining, if not improving, lean muscle tissue. So how do we get them starting to build up their calorie intake? This is essentially just working up to maintenance, right? How can we get them as close to maintenance as we possibly can while still seeing, you know, some body recompositioning going on? And it's really just playing that game. But with that, is we are seeing some nice changes in terms of continued body composition changes and lean muscle tissue, especially as they train the right way and as they start eating enough.

Philip Pape 33:52

That makes sense. And it also makes sense that the population of people would want to bulk and that that population would by definition be small, given that they were on the GLP1s in the first place to drop weight. And I only ask, is that, you know, oddly enough, the men in my group tend to be experienced lifters with a lot of muscle, like two different populations for the men versus women. And some of them, you know, they used it to kind of get rid of that excess belly fat, that stressed fat that they couldn't, they just had trouble with. And that, and then they're at a point where, you know, they're they're ready to build back. There is one of the little pop corner case that I've noticed, and that is, at least for men, kind of the the super stressful guys, uh, the executives or the guys with the jobs who with the business who like because of the stress, their metabolism is so suppressed, and yet they want to lose weight. So then they go on these drugs, even if they are lifting weights, and it's kind of put you in that window of, man, they're eating like 1200 calories or something. You know what I'm talking about.

Ben Brown 34:49

I do. It's such a great observation. Um, and it's really challenging. You know, this is where I think it really speaks to like, okay, well, what are the stressors at play? How do we control for those as much as possible? And, you know, how do we wean you out of this metabolic dumpster fire, for lack of a better term? That you're that's the scientific term, by the way, uh, that you are currently in by virtue of making sure you're eating enough of the right things. So making sure you're getting a nutrient-dense diet, you're getting enough vitamins and minerals, making sure you're getting enough protein, making sure you're managing your blood sugar levels. This also tends to lend itself to hormonal disruption. And so we definitely do want to look at blood sugar. We want to look at lipid profile, we want to look at sex hormones like testosterone and free testosterone and sex hormone binding globulin and make sure that those are actually being optimized for. Of course, you know, sleep comes into play here. And my experience is that by really starting to shift the focus around those things, then we can start to kind of build back better, if you will. But it's a challenging milieu of stress and pressure and type A personalities and all of the things that go with that.

Cardio for longevity and health

Philip Pape 36:06

Yeah. And you know what came to mind is the your comment earlier about acknowledging the problem and the aware, having awareness of it and maybe having to make some hard decisions in your life, like quitting the job or changing your job or like some massive uh decision in your life. Maybe it's not, maybe it's not. But um a metabolic dumpster fire. Yeah.

Ben Brown 36:24

Like you said, there's absolutely zero judgment. I don't think if you're having a hard time going down this road and you're doing your diligence, and this is something that you feel like is going to be, you know, a positive contributor to the change that you say you want to make, like, why wouldn't you go down that? And to be devil's advocate for GLPs, right, is that the environment that we are in now is very different than humans have ever been in, right? And with the what we're exposed to, the light, the stress, the lack of sleep, the environmental toxicity, physiologically and metabolically, it is very different from what we're meant to thrive in. And if you take that into consideration, then I don't think it's unwarranted to have the candid conversations around how medical intervention can help with this process because there's a lot of people that can't control that food noise, that have unsubstantiated um levels of leptin and insulin dysregulation despite their best efforts, right? And it's not to say you can ever forego the foundational principles that will always reign supreme, but listen, it doesn't have to be one or the other. And the two can absolutely coincide.

Philip Pape 37:43

To end on a positive note, you know, people ultimately want to have a lifestyle that is enjoyable. They want to do this for the rest of their life. You know, when we talk about the S-word sustainability, let's say they've now gone through this process to an extent. They're lifting weights, they are uh finding that minimum effective dose for all the things, not just, you know, uh pharmaceuticals or their schedule or their stress, but also their training, doing what you said, and that is kind of dialing back first and then seeing where you are using things strategically like cardio. Where does the long-term thinking here on not fat loss, not short-term, not weight loss or body composition, but maybe specifically, where does cardio fit into that? If it does, what is a longevity-based lifestyle look like, in your opinion?

Ben Brown 38:29

Oh no, I think absolutely cardio fits into the equation fundamentally in terms of how it influences blood vessel health and aerobic fitness and the role, right, the how important that is in terms of longevity and health. So let's not suggest for a moment that cardio is not important for health and longevity. I'm simply right, cardio oftentimes is sort of questionable with respect to the fat loss process. But in terms of health and longevity, right, this is, you know, we absolutely want to be getting, you know, moderate to intense physical activity every single day, you know, three to five days a week, if not every single day in some way, shape, or form, and figuring out the ways that work best for us. And so that's where we can get a massive benefit in terms of health, terms of blood work, in terms of blood pressure, uh, by ramping up just our cardiovascular fitness. In fact, for you know, some of the guys that I start working with, that's the first place that we start is just adding in some structured, whether it's zone two cardio, whether it's zone three, depending on the time that they have and what we would be paying attention to, obviously, is objectively, like what's happening on scale, but more importantly, like what's happening with blood pressure, with blood sugar numbers, with lipid numbers. And then subjectively, we see massive changes in terms of energy, uh, recovery, sleep quality, uh, brain cognitive function, emotional well-being. And I think that's what people need to be to looking for and leveraging in their health and fitness and exercise journey is like what is the combination that works for them? But are we basing that on not just what feels good, right? And not just what fits within their schedule, but also challenging them to objectively look at the parameters around uh biometric markers, right? Blood work, blood pressure, uh weight, even if it's like VO2 Max, can we make a concerted effort to improve VO2 Max? Like all those things are very valuable for longevity.

Philip Pape 40:38

And that's what this nuance is all about. The right combination that works for you. I think that's well said the right combination that works for you. Uh, let's figure it out together, guys. I want you to follow Ben on his podcast, The Smart Nutrition Made Simple Show, because he's got fantastic episodes. I'd say one of the most aligned guests we've had on the show in terms of the nutrition science. So love your stuff. Is there anything we didn't cover you wished we did cover before we start talking about where people can find you?

Ben Brown 41:04

No, man. It's just uh always, you know, great conversation. We're gonna have to do it again. I appreciate the way that you approach health and fitness. I appreciate the level of education and science and rigor that you apply to your guests and the questions that you ask and the information that you provide. So it really is a pleasure and I'm honored to be here.

Philip Pape 41:23

Likewise, man. And it's always good to have someone with a great mic and a good voice to come on and go back and forth with and chat, you know, maybe next time we'll we'll get more controversial and even challenge each other in some way if we can't. Uh, but I think we agree on most things. So um with that, I know you've got a lot of things going on. Um, what's the next best step we can send listeners to? You know, we'll throw your Instagram and contact information, but like uh, do we have a webinar or resource we want to include?

Ben Brown 41:50

Yeah, so uh we we certainly will have uh some upcoming webinars. Um that's something I'm focusing more on this year. So make sure you follow my social media at Body Systems Coaching on Instagram. And then I've got a couple good resources that perhaps your your audience would be interested in. And you can find those on our Instagram as well, specifically like a 30-day fat loss reset that I put together that applies some of these foundational principles, but it also assesses kind of like the mindset aspect of like what do we strategically want to get done? And how do we start to move the needle without having to or feeling like we need to adhere to just like only eat this, exclude all of this stuff, start killing yourself in the gym. It's a very modest and realistic but effective way of crushing your first 30 days to fat loss.

Philip Pape 42:42

All right. So go to Instagram, Body Systems Coaching. We're gonna throw that in the show notes, and from there you can go to the um you can throw it in there.

Ben Brown 42:51

It's body systems.com slash 30-day dash reset. Yeah, appreciate it.

Philip Pape 42:56

All right, man. We'll throw the 30 day reset in there. And thanks again, Ben, for coming on and sharing your wisdom with us. It's a blast. We'll definitely have to do it again and stay in touch.

Ben Brown 43:04

Pleasure, my friend.