Recently, I interviewed Philip Pape, and we dug into the deeper reasons why so many people struggle with fat loss, muscle loss, and long-term consistency, especially when thyroid health or chronic stress is part of the picture. We talked about protein needs, the role of strength training as we age, why fasting isn’t a magic solution, and how undereating can work against your goals. If you would prefer to listen to the interview you can access it by Clicking Here.
Dr. Eric Osansky:
I am super excited to chat with Philip Pape. We are going to be talking about building muscle mass, losing weight. Just really excited about this episode. Whether you’re a woman or man, you will benefit from this. Most of my audience consists of women. I’m a guy. I had thyroid autoimmunity, so I’m sure there are some guys listening to this, too.
Let’s dive into Philip’s bio here: Philip Pape is a certified nutrition coach and the host of Wits and Weights, a top 25 nutrition podcast, for people who want to build muscle, lose fat, and transform their health with evidence-based strategies. Through his coaching and podcast, Philip helps busy professionals cut through confusion around food and fitness, so they can finally look, feel, and perform at their best, especially in their 40s and beyond. Welcome, Philip.
Philip Pape:
Thanks so much. Excited to be here, Eric.
Dr. Eric:
Excited to have you. This will be a conversation that applies to most people. Not everybody is looking to lose weight, but a lot of people are looking to build muscle mass, and some are looking to do both.
Let’s start with your background. How did you start helping men and women build muscle mass, lose weight, transform their health?
Philip:
It actually started with the podcast back in 2021. If we just rewind a tiny bit, I was already in my 40s at that point. I had spent the previous 20 years of my life, like many people listening, trying to figure out what worked for improving how I looked, how I felt, how I performed.
As the dad bod started to creep up, and I had kids, I tried CrossFit for eight years. That was a whole experience we could get into if we needed, but it didn’t quite get me the results I wanted either. Nor did lots and lots of diets, restricted dieting, carb cutting, all the things we could get into.
As the pandemic hit, this was just timing. It wasn’t intentional this way. I was starting to focus more on strength training. I say that that way as opposed to just going to the gym or doing exercise because I started to consume podcasts and books and videos about what the evidence said about how our bodies respond as we get older with our hormones, with body fat versus muscle, body composition. What is all this stuff? How does it work? I started opening my mind beyond just ideas of losing weight and exercising more and similar tropes we are all familiar with.
Throughout 2020 and 2021, it was a huge personal journey of experimentation, building my own home gym, lifting weights, lifting heavy for the first time, using a barbell, getting into nutrition, with this idea of flexible eating. It took me a while to get to that point. We think we know what works. We find out it’s quite the opposite sometimes.
By the end of 2021, I was so excited, having gone through a muscle building phase as well as a fat loss phase and felt like I was finding control and I could do this. I wanted to help others do the same.
I started Wits and Weights as a Toast Masters project. Toast Masters is the public speaking organization. I started that in 2021 as a passion project. Over the next 6-8 months, it didn’t really go anywhere. You know how podcasts are.
One of my first guests was a power lifter who I’d worked with. My background is as an engineer, where a lot of my thinking comes from. She said, “Hey, would you mind coaching me when my contract expires? I like how you explain how this works. You seem to understand the science. I think you can be helpful.” I said, “Yeah, I’ll figure it out.” I went and got a certification that year. This was 2021-2022. I started coaching her and seven other clients for free. I figured out how to build my business system while also educating myself and others. That led to more and more coaching and an expanded ecosystem.
The podcast itself is my passion. That’s how I got into it. That’s why I help others.
Dr. Eric:
You mentioned a few things. You did CrossFit. For how long?
Philip:
Eight years.
Dr. Eric:
You also mentioned the importance of food, which we’ll definitely get into. You mentioned flexible eating. The million-dollar question. So many women and men struggle to lose weight, and I guess to some extent build muscle mass. I guess both are issues. I think more are still focused on the losing weight part, not that they’re not struggling to build muscle mass.
I work with a lot of people with hyperthyroidism and Graves’. That tends to accelerate loss of muscle mass. The people I work with are well aware of this. On average, a lot of people are not thinking enough. It is different with your clients, too.
Why are people struggling in this day and age? With everything out there, and people doing GLP-1s, why is it such a challenge to lose weight and gain muscle mass?
Philip:
I think you hit on it already. You suggested that not everyone knows muscle is important, or why they do what they do. In other words, losing weight, in my opinion, is never really someone’s goal. Even if you’re listening and say, “I have 50 pounds to lose. I look at myself in the mirror. I have a muffin top and feel ashamed,” all these narratives we have for our own bodies, which is perfectly okay to think whatever you think, as long as you give yourself some respect and decide what you want to do about it.
I think the obesity problem is not as much about body fat as about body composition, which is a combination of your muscle and fat. Once you understand that, and that’s where my podcast comes in. Maybe my clients know this. They only know it because they took the time to find sources like ours and really learn the information. Then they come to me saying, “How do I implement that for myself and personalize that?”
A lot of people are changing the wrong levers, the wrong constraints. They either undereat, trying to lose weight, and then it backfires because it lowers their metabolism and stresses their bodies. Excessive cardio does the same thing. They’re not doing resistance training, the very thing your body needs to thrive as a human being in a physical world.
They don’t recover. The older we get, the harder it is to recover, both because of the loss of muscle mass and also life. You know, Eric, we have kids and parents to take care of. We have stressful jobs. We have money issues. We have politics and news and all the scary stuff in the world happening. We get stressed out.
To me, it’s like not understanding metabolism and strength and how body composition and building muscle itself makes the fat loss and the “losing weight” part follow from that.
I think it’s a combination of energy balance and the composition of what you eat and the micronutrients in terms of how you feel, combining all that together with resistance training is where it’s at. It’s a lot to learn and personalize. I get people’s frustration.
Dr. Eric:
You mentioned a few times stress. Besides of course eating well, if someone is in a chronic state of stress, it will also be very difficult to lose weight.
Philip:
When we say, “chronic stress,” I think of it as an allostatic load. For the listener, context, homeostasis being your body’s desire to remain stable at energy balance, where you’re not gaining or losing weight, where your hormones are adequately regulated, everything is firing average, like it should. Versus allostasis, which is away from that.
Trying to lose weight is one stressor. Having too much chronic stress is another stressor. Not getting enough sleep is a stressor. Too much alcohol. All of these stressors. Plus, if you have thyroid dysregulation, that compounds it. That’s your metabolic regulator, if you will, to simplify it.
When you’re dieting, we know that if you go into a 500-calorie deficit, which is a pretty reasonable deficit, your thyroid on average drops 6% in terms of production. That is in an otherwise healthy person; that is not a dysfunction.
When you take that into account, undereating calories, undereating protein, and you’re not resistance training, what happens when you lose weight? You lose lean mass, you lose muscle mass, and your metabolism slows even further. It’s a vicious cycle.
People on GLP-1s, we’ve heard about the muscle mass issue. It’s not because GLP-1s cause you to lose muscle mass; it’s because they cause you to diet very aggressively, and you’re not training to hold onto your muscle mass, so you lose it.
Dr. Eric:
Can men and women lose weight and gain muscle at the same time? Do they need to focus on one or the other?
Philip:
In body composition, it’s the holy grail: gain muscle and lose fat at the same time. I used to be in the bro science camp that said not really, unless you are new to training, returning from training, higher body fat.
The more I have worked with clients, the more I think anybody can build muscle and lose fat at the same time, understanding that it’s not the fastest approach to recomposition for your body. In other words, it’s not the most efficient timewise, but it may be more efficient psychologically and practically. It might take you two years to get the body you want instead of a year and nine months, if you do cuts and bulks, but it’s absolutely possible.
The problem is people do it the wrong way. A lot of people do it from a dieting perspective, for example. In my opinion, there is a way to do it where you are fueling your body with at least what it needs. That’s at least your maintenance calories while training, but you have to be consistent. A lot of people have problems with patience and consistency. We can get into the mindset stuff. But it’s absolutely possible.
The way it works, to build muscle, your body has to have adequate calories and protein. If you’re dieting, chances are you don’t because your body is trying to make up for the lack of resources. Of course, it won’t put those into your skeletal muscle tissue. That’s way too expensive. If you’re eating a sufficient amount and lifting weights, you will slowly build that skeletal muscle tissue over time. If you’re maintaining your scale weight, by definition, your body is probably drawing a little from your stored fat. That’s the simple answer.
The way that I work with a lot of people is they want it all, but I have to educate them that it’s okay to go into a big surplus and build muscle and then go into a fat loss phase and build fat. You’ll see the change faster that way, but you have to have some tradeoffs. I’m okay gaining a little bit of fat when I gain muscle, and I’m okay being a little bit hungry and less than optimal when I’m losing fat.
Dr. Eric:
Makes sense. You mentioned a few times someone is really restricting calories. Do you see a problem these days with intermittent fasting? I have nothing against it, but I do see that some people are extreme intermittent fasters. Even some people might not be ready for a 16-8 fast, but I’m talking more like an 18-6 fast or a 20-4 fast, doing it day in, day out.
Philip:
My thoughts on fasting, which I think is well informed by the science, and there is a really recent analysis that looked at fasting. I think the conclusion is there are no net benefits to fasting for anything other than practicality. In other words, autophagy and cell turnover and having a clear mental state and all these things are either symptoms of fasting that have nothing to do with the physiology, or they’re actually signs that your body is trying to compensate because you’re fasting. On the net, it’s a negative.
Long story short, if you’re in a fat loss phase and down to 1,500 calories, and fasting helps you tighten the feeding window a little bit and helps keep you consistent, perfectly fine. If you can train fasted, and you’re adapted to it, and you eat protein within a couple hours and eat some carbs and have overall the calories and protein you need, that’s fine, too.
Don’t fast because you think it provides you a net benefit unless it’s the best thing for you practically. That’s it. The long and short of it, 99% of my clients don’t even think about it. They don’t fast. They just spread their meals out throughout the day. It’s practical. Get enough calories and protein, and move on.
Dr. Eric:
You answered another one of my questions. I was going to ask you about whether or not it’s okay to fast before working out. For example, if I’m working out later in the morning or afternoon, I won’t fast the whole day and then work out. Even in the morning, 8-9am, I usually have something before working out. For example, this morning, I went to the gym at 5:15am. I didn’t eat before working out. I just brought my stainless-steel water bottle and went to the gym. Is that okay?
Philip:
Yeah, it’s okay. I wouldn’t even waste money on EAAs. A lot of people, the old lean gains community, say you have to have your essential amino acids because then you will miss out on the protein synthesis spike. Don’t overthink it. If you want to fast train regularly or just ad hoc because you have to on a given day, don’t overthink it. Have some food shortly thereafter. Hit your totals for the day, and you’ll be fine.
Someone in the space, Lauren Colenso-Semple of Mass, she’s really good lately at pushing back on the misinformation here for women. There is a lot of talk on how you should never train fasted. I was almost in that camp in the past. Now, I’m much more nuanced about it. I think nuance is where the reality lies for most people. She pointed to evidence that showed comparisons between two groups. As long as someone is adapted to it, and they get their totals, it’s fine.
Dr. Eric:
It sounds like it’s fine.
Philip:
It’s okay to do it, but don’t chase it for some autophagy or some crazy claim on social media about fasting’s benefits.
Dr. Eric:
I heard on another podcast that women should have protein, if you’re working out in a fasted state, quicker after working out compared to men. A man might be okay for a few hours after working out, but a woman wouldn’t want to do that.
Philip:
That very specific mechanism, I’m highly skeptical of. Any of these differences between men and women on that level, there is usually more variance on individuals than between genders. Let’s put it that way.
Here’s my thought though: Always be experimenting. When I work with clients or have a group program, and they come to me with the question, “Should I X?” I ask them, “What do you think? Try it. Get back to me. Then we’ll know the answer to that question. I don’t know. I am not an omniscient being who knows your response.”
I don’t say that sarcastically. I say that to empower everyone listening that if you’re wondering if fasted training is good for you, do fasted training for two weeks, and then eat a banana and whey protein for an hour before you train for two weeks, and you tell me. There are a lot of people who will find massive increases in performance when they eat before they train. I generally recommend that anyway. There are some people who maybe they’re taking thyroid medication and are told they can’t eat for at least 30 minutes but want to train at 5:30am. Fine. You can do that. It’s fine.
Dr. Eric:
How frequently do you incorporate resistance exercising?
Philip:
My training schedule?
Dr. Eric:
How many days a week?
Philip:
Right now, I’m doing a five-day. I’ve gone everywhere from 3-6. Really depends on my recovery needs, the goals, how much sleep I want to get because sometimes I need that extra day off, if it’s a lighter time in my schedule. I might play tricks with myself. Right now, I’m on a five-day program, specifically because I know I can lop off the fifth day if I need to to adjust my schedule.
Maybe the question you’re asking is what should people do?
Dr. Eric:
Should you train every day or every other day? If you’re alternating upper body or lower body, it’s okay to do back-to-back and do it 5-6 days a week? I don’t do it that frequently. I usually go four days a week. Just curious on average, how frequently should people work out?
Philip:
As we’re recording this, today is November 5. If you check out my podcast on that day, something called the Hypertrophy Hierarchy, where I talk through the five most important training variables.
The first one on there is training volume, which answers your question. Everyone needs a different amount of volume, and a different volume based on what they’re doing at the time, what their life looks like, whether they are in a fat loss phase or not, because they have different recovery demands.
If I were to simplify it to principles, most people need 10-15 hard sets per muscle group per week. What that comes out to be in terms of frequency can vary. You could do three full body days. You could do a four-day upper lower split. You could do a five-day push pull leg back. Whatever. As long as you are getting 10-15 hard sets, we know from the evidence that that is the sweet spot for most people. If you have more time, you can go up to 20. If you’re very time-starved, you can do a minimalist and get down to 5-10, which would look like maybe 2-3 days a week. That’s my thought.
If I were to give a beginner a program, I would say go three days. Do a squat pattern, a deadlift pattern, a press. Go heavy. Lots of rest period. Use the rest of your week to eat, sleep, and walk. You will get massive gains and progress in the next six months. You will get a lot stronger, build muscle. It all goes together for the ride.
When you get more advanced and are into this thing, you can start doing splits, add more volume, add more accessory lifts, add more involved movements.
Dr. Eric:
Interesting. I didn’t know that. 10-15 hard sets per week per muscle group.
Philip:
Exactly. Direct and indirect. For example, a closed grip bench press hits your chest and your triceps. You can count both.
Dr. Eric:
Makes sense. There are a lot of women listening to this who don’t want to bulk up. How heavy should they lift?
Philip:
This was principle #2 in that episode, where I talked about training close to failure. The overriding principle of how your body knows to build more muscle is that you’ve challenged your muscles enough to adapt. To do that, you need to get within 1-3 reps shy of failure. We used to think it was a lot closer. You needed to train to failure or one reps. There were studies that looked as far as 4-5 reps and failure and found. You can get some benefits from there. The sweet spot is 1-3 reps shy of failure.
Your question about heavy, it’s always tricky. It’s almost not the right question, even though I’ve asked it and answered it many times. The question is: Are you getting close to failure and using the rep range that makes sense for your goals?
If you’re trying to build strength, you want to go heavier, which means you will have fewer reps to get close to failure. It’s an inverse relationship of reps to load. It depends on your goals.
For new lifters listening, I prefer a bias toward strength, which would be down in say the 3-8 rep range as opposed to when you get more intermediate, and it’s a mix of that and 8-12, 12-15, even up to 20 reps. We know you can build muscle size and a huge range of reps as long as you’re getting close to failure, all the way down to 30% of your maximum, which is very light. We are talking 30 reps.
To build strength, which is that neural muscular adaptation, the movement patterns, the connection between your brain and your body, and the recruitment of all those muscle fibers, you need to be in a lower regime, where you’re pushing at least 60% of your max, which isn’t that heavy still, if you were to do the math. That could still get up to 8-10 reps.
I think that answers your question. I get into details sometimes. I have another episode about this, one called “Strength Versus Hypertrophy” that exactly explains the difference and talks about the rep ranges and heaviness.
Dr. Eric:
Okay. Definitely need to listen to those. Does it make a difference as far as actually using weights? If you’re trying to work out your chest and pushups versus doing bench pressing, you might have to do more of those reps. Maybe you have to do 50 pushups to get close to that failure compared to 10-12 reps. I don’t know if that makes sense.
Philip:
Yes. It’s one of the first problems we have to solve on this journey. An ideal intake question for a coach, if you ever work with a trainer, should be, “What’s your equipment? How much weight do you have?” If you were at a home gym, is it dumbbells, is it barbells, is it bends? Then you know what your upper limit is.
I just started working with a mom and her 15-year-old, a package deal. The kid is a football player. They have 30-pound dumbbells as the heaviest. I told them he was going to outgrow those in two weeks. It is what it is.
To your point, if you have no other recourse, and that’s all you have, you have to get creative. Go higher reps. Change angles. Get yourself in disadvantageous positions, like a deficit pushup, things like that.
At the end of the day, get the right tool for the job if you can, which would be either access to a commercial gym, or at home, having a rack and a bar with plates and adjustable dumbbells. It gives you a lot more potential to keep growing and challenging yourself for a long time.
Dr. Eric:
Makes sense. I admit I rarely do pushups these days. I am mostly doing weights. It sounds like I don’t need to incorporate pushups and do weights. One or the other is fine.
Philip:
You will find I am very flexible about this stuff. I used to be more dogmatic. I started working with more and more coaches. There is a guy I really respect. He is still my coach. Andy Baker, big name in the field. He cowrote Practical Programming, which was the sequel to Starting Strength. He also cowrote The Barbell Prescription. Great books.
He realized later in this career, after doing all power lifting stuff, when he got into these varied movements, including things like pushups, he found they helped develop those weak spots and translated back to increasing his main lifts. There is a synergy between strength and hypertrophy. Plus work capacity and cardio, which is a different topic, that help.
In other words, I occasionally do deficit pushups. I have these rotating handles I put on the ground, so I freely move my arms. I’ll do those for 20 reps as a fourth or fifth movement finisher, just to hit some area that I am not really hitting most of the time.
Dr. Eric:
Let’s talk about food. A lot of people talk about focusing on protein when it comes to building muscle mass. I have listened to some of your episodes, and you also talk about the importance of healthy fats, getting sufficient carbs. You mentioned flexible eating. Can you talk a little bit about the role of food?
Philip:
I can talk a lot about the role of food. I love food. It’s funny you mentioned carbs because I know that’s a boogeyman in the space.
I know your listener is thyroid aware. I have learned a lot lately about the relationship between carbs and cortisol and stress. There seems to be a big helpful moderating effect of having more carbs in terms of helping with your thyroid and your hormones. I know this from working directly with clients, women and men, who have had thyroid dysfunction. Maybe they were on medication or synthetic thyroid or desiccated herbal stuff. Invariably eating more food and more carbs, not just calories, but carbs, seem to help them come out of those troughs of thyroid production naturally.
My take on food is that first and foremost, it needs to be flexible and work for your lifestyle. Then when we get into the nuances, there is a lot of confusion about should I track calories and macros? Should I do calorie deficits?
I like to tell people the first thing we need to understand is our patterns. We need to log our food somehow, whether that’s calorie macros or AI food apps that do it with photos or a piece of paper. It’s understanding your patterns and where to go from there. You may have certain preferences that I don’t want you to throw away because they will serve you when we start to shift in the right direction.
We have calories, we have macronutrients, and we have micronutrients. Where do we start? I used to start from calories. I used to. The bro science, the typical if it fits your macros approach is start with calories because that’s energy balance. That tells us how many calories are coming in versus how many we’re burning. That tells you if you gain or lose weight. Then you move to macronutrients, protein, fats, carbs. Then you move to micros.
I like to flip that around now. If you start tracking your food, the first thing we go after is do you have enough fiber? Do you have enough magnesium? Do you have enough of the nutrients you need? That will make you feel a lot better. That will support your thyroid and hormones.
I’m sure, Eric, you talk about certain nutrients that are associated with thyroid health all the time. Identifying those and not getting them all from supplements necessarily but from food, if you can. Some exceptions. Magnesium is hard to get from food. Starting there.
For example, if I am not getting enough fiber, what does that lead you to do? It leads you to choose more vegetables, fruits, and whole grains. Thinking of all the natural whole foods that fill those gaps.
Then you move up the chain and say, given I have dealt with the nutrient deficiencies that make me feel better, you can focus on the composition of foods you have for your goals. If you are trying to build muscle and improve body composition and have energy and recovery, you need a lot more protein than most people get, but it’s not an ungodly amount of protein. We are just so protein deficient in this country. We eat 5% protein; we should be eating 15%. When I tell you 15%, does that sound like a lot in terms of ratios?
Dr. Eric:
No.
Philip:
When you look at it in grams, it does seem like a lot more than most people eat. We want to target .7-1g per pound of protein, which is what evidence says is the sweet spot. For a 150-pound female, that’s going to be around 100-150g of protein. I guarantee most women in that range are eating 50g or 60g or 70g. You have to be intentional about it.
You get your fiber and micronutrients. You need to shift your protein now. Lean meats and dairy products and eggs and oats and quinoa, whatever you like that has protein that can fit in that, which is very nutritious. Most sources of protein have a lot of nutrients.
Given all that, you are eating things you like. It’s balanced. You’re feeling great. You’re giving yourself the best chance of building muscle and losing fat. How much should you eat? That’s an easy solution. You just have to scale what you’re eating. Your weight is drifting up over time. That’s not the direction you want to go. You’d rather maintain or lose. You scale things down.
It flips everything on its head, from restricting and fitting in your Kit Kats and ice cream and pizza to the macros. By the way, am I getting enough fiber? You get it. It feels more natural, I’ve found, to flip it around and start down at micros and go up to calories.
Dr. Eric:
Interesting. Putting you on the spot, as far as your diet then, it’s not like you’re eating a paleo diet 100% of the time. You do sometimes have your Kit Kats or pizza. Maybe not Kit Kats, but you do have some fun food, some healthier processed foods.
Philip:
100%. The rhetorical question: Could you survive on 100% whole foods or clean foods or whatever label you want to use for the rest of your life? If you do it and enjoy it, go for it. Most people are flooded with a western food environment, and we want to work within that, hence the success of GLP-1s, trying to combat overconsumption and appetite dysregulation.
If you take the approach I just took, it’s an additive approach. You’re adding in the things that make you feel good, build muscle, look good, and give you the weight you want. Then you have room to say, “Okay, with the remaining 10-20%, whatever goes is fine.”
Your body has one of the best detoxifiers in the world, your liver and some other organs. As long as you’re not imbibing on tons of alcohol and tons of ultra processed food, which by definition you can’t if you started with these other things. That’s the approach I take: flexible dieting or nutrition.
It started in the macros and body building world. They said, “All right, can I eat this?” The question was, “If it fits your macros.” In reality, if you go the other direction, it’s not so much about macros as it is performance and goals and health and body composition.
I think I answered your question. Yes, you can have fun foods. It’s not about “can” or “allow” or those terms. It’s more, “I choose to have this because I enjoy it.” I like a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup occasionally. I like ice cream. I even enjoy a glass of wine. I’m not a big fan of alcohol anymore from a health perspective. Even I will have a glass of beer every now and then. It won’t hurt you if your overall context and dietary pattern is nutritious.
Dr. Eric:
Makes sense. I was going to ask you about protein powders. Based on what you’ve said so far, I’m thinking your answer would be try to do as much as you can through food, but if you have to get some protein from protein powders, as long as it’s a healthier type of protein powder, I assume that would be okay.
Philip:
Yeah, that is okay. It’s a hot button issue. Even the word “healthy” is.
Dr. Eric:
It’s not a whole food source, but still. If you have grass-fed bone broth protein or a good quality whey protein, compared to, I don’t want to knock soy protein. There are some unhealthier types of protein.
Philip:
Where I was going with that actually is even the term “healthy” versus “unhealthy,” it can be subjective. If you have someone over here who takes two scoops of protein powder a day. It’s processed that you get on Amazon. It’s cheap because that’s what they can afford. It has artificial sweeteners and other things.
Then you have this person over here who has mostly an ultra-processed food diet. In relative terms, this person over here is doing better. They are doing better in terms of their dietary pattern. That’s the approach I take.
If you get 2,000 steps a day, I won’t ask you to get 12,000. I will ask you to do 3,000. Take those baby steps and improve. You have to judge for yourself if you’re at a place where you can sustain that, and you want to, or if you want to keep optimizing the health piece.
Protein is tricky. It depends on how much you consume. It depends on the source, how it’s filtered. Protein powders generally, most of them are decent. The more you pay generally, the fewer ingredients they’ll have, the more quality it will be. Not always though. You have the birthday cake flavors. You know they put other stuff in there. It’s the quantity, right?
There is plant versus whey. This big study that came out recently about all the metals in protein powder. It went viral. There is a lot of misinformation about that. The first big piece of misinformation is it’s not all protein powders. It’s plant-based protein powders, not animal-based. Secondly, the amounts were slightly higher than the prop 50, whatever that is in CA, but far less than what can be detoxified in the body. It depends on your comfort level though.
For people with thyroid dysfunction, I’m sure you talk about this. There may be less tolerance for some of that stuff. Everyone is different. You might be allergic or intolerant. You might respond to something negatively. Others, like myself, are like a trash can. I could eat anything and be okay and feel okay. That’s not always great because my body doesn’t always give me the signals of I should reduce that.
Very nuanced and flexible is my approach. Start where you’re at .
Dr. Eric:
Very cool. Your thoughts on creatine monohydrate?
Philip:
It’s great. It’s the safest, most studied, ergogenic aid performance booster we know. It is one of the few things that moves the needle for a lot of people. It boosts strength, lean mass. It can potentially boost cognitive function based on some new studies. It’s simple to take. It’s dirt cheap. You take 5g a day, and it saturates in your body. You can take it forever.
I take 15-20g. I am hoping to get ahead of the curve on some of the cutting-edge studies that suggest high doses may have some other benefits. It gets excreted if it’s too much, just like Vitamin C.
For women, for people with lower energy, lower muscle mass, you may notice a difference. It gives you that extra burst of ATP when you go to the gym. What that results in is every lift you do, you feel like you can get an extra rep or two. You feel like you have more in the tank. You feel less winded by the end of the session. That’s how it gets you extra performance. It may speed up things a little bit.
Dr. Eric:
Anything else you recommend taking, or you personally take? Any amino acids, supplements, anything else to help with performance?
Philip:
I have a very short list of minimums for most people that most people need. Multivitamins are on there. The kind where you are taking six or eight pills from a good company. Legion Athletics is one I trust. They might have ashwagandha that has been studied.
Fish oil. Most people don’t eat enough fatty fish. We know that’s a huge anti-inflammatory.
Magnesium, I mentioned earlier. That and Vitamin D, a lot of people are deficient in. We know Vitamin D from a hormonal profile for people with thyroid issues is very beneficial, as well as magnesium.
There is Vitamin C. I am a big fan of high dosing Vitamin C. That’s more experimental. Doesn’t work for everybody. Some people haven’t gotten sick in two years; I think it’s the high dose Vitamin C. I don’t know. It’s anecdotal. There is evidence that supports Vitamin C.
Probiotics. I am always on the fence about them. If you eat a lot of fruits and vegetables and fermented foods, your body does a good job of creating its own gut environment for prebiotics and probiotics. Doesn’t hurt to take Seed or a high-quality probiotic.
Dr. Eric:
I agree with everything you said. I take a probiotic regularly. I take a fish oil regularly. If you could test your Omega-3 index, if you’re not eating fish regularly, which there is controversy over that. Should we be eating fish regularly with all the toxins? But the truth is, most people aren’t. It’s usually not because of the microplastics and heavy metals, but just because people don’t like it or just don’t eat it.
If you’re not eating fish a few times a week, 2-3 times a week minimum, you are probably deficient.
Vitamin D. Try to get as much through the sun. Most people aren’t getting enough through the sun. Some people can’t, just because of genetics or certain factors.
Philip:
A guy like me in New England?
Dr. Eric:
There you go. How long have you been taking the higher dose of creatine monohydrate?
Philip:
Probably a year or so.
Dr. Eric:
15-20g?
Philip:
Yeah. If you took 30g, it would probably not hurt. This is not medical advice. Your body would just get rid of it. You may notice your bloodwork, creatinine and BUN and some of the kidney markers might concern your doctors just a tad sometimes when you’re lifting weights and taking this stuff. Lifting weights puts byproducts into your blood that can appear like kidney dysfunction because of the inflammation and cytokines and all that.
One last thing, going back to the food thing, starting from micronutrients. Do you know Sarah Ballantyne?
Dr. Eric:
Yeah, she’s been on the podcast a couple times.
Philip:
I’ve only had her on once. She is really good. She is one of the ones who inspired me to think about food from that perspective. You don’t have to go crazy with it.
I asked my wife. She is going grocery shopping today. “We are really low on berries. I’d like to get back up to two cups a day.” I used to eat berries more. I have a misconnected tissue thing. I have an esophageal autoimmune condition I’ve had for many years. I take medication for them, but I’d like to manage things with food as well.
When we think of inflammation, it’s not that foods are inflammatory, so much as some foods are anti-inflammatory. I like to think that side of the ledger more. I think lifestyle has a bigger impact on inflammation.
Being smart about what you’re deficient in, saying, “Do I need oysters? Brazil nuts for selenium? Berries for fiber and polyphenols?” You can get a nice variety of foods that might be perfect for you to address some of these besides just supplementation.
Dr. Eric:
She switched gears over the years. I am very familiar with Sarah because she had Paleo Mom, which is still up. Talking a lot about AIP. She came out with her book Nutrivore, which is more on nutrient density.
Tracking. You mentioned there are now AI trackers, AI apps that can track your food, where you scan your food. Are there any specific apps or anything else to help people track food, their macros?
Philip:
I will give you a couple answers here. One is an app I use. I basically require all my clients to use it. I have something called Physique University, my group program. When they go through onboarding, get this app, MacroFactor. I am an affiliate, full disclosure.
I use it every day. I love it. It’s the only food logger that has an algorithm to calculate your dynamic metabolism every day based on what you’re eating and what you weigh. I don’t know why MyFitnessPal and others haven’t done that yet. I suspect because it’s a little bit sophisticated to do it in a way that doesn’t overreact and come up with weird scenarios where your expenditure jumps.
MacroFactor, the guys behind it are stronger by science. Very well respected. Dr. Eric Helms and Dr. Eric Trexler. All these names in the industry. I have been using that since launch. I recommend it for people who like tracking and data and want not just the awareness but to get targets for their goal. It will give you evidence-based targets. Very similar to what I teach. It does it for you.
As a nutrition coach, it sounds anathema to be like, “You don’t give your macros to your client?” Why would I when a computer can do it better than me and in real time? I’d rather help you with the psychology, consistency, and personalization. That’s where coaching comes in.
I mentioned AI earlier. I am actually coming out with an app called Fitness Lab that’s AI-driven. The problem I faced was we don’t want AI to replace everything. We also don’t want to try to replicate tools that already exist, like food and workout loggers.
The approach I took with the app was from a meal perspective, how would you help somebody? If you were linked to somebody at the hip as their coach and could look at what they were eating all day every day, how would you help them build muscle or lose fat without counting calories?
I always do that thought experiment. Is that possible? Of course it’s possible. Lots of coaches coach that way. You have to track something. You have to have an awareness.
Where I came to that conclusion was what is the minimal, least stressful solution? Look at one representative thing you eat every day, and make a qualitative judgment as to the things we’ve already talked about. Are there enough nutrients represented? Are the macro balances represented right? I am not going to worry about the amount. We will see, based on your body change, whether you’re eating too much or too little.
To what I was saying earlier, we just go up or down in an amount. If you’re grazing from your kid’s plate, if you have trouble at restaurants, if you overconsume, those patterns, when you understand them, that’s where the trouble spots are. You can shift more and more toward what you need and a good eating pattern.
That’s my thought. MacroFactor is a good tool. If you don’t want to pay for an app, there are free food loggers. They just won’t give you targets. They will help you track. It’s up to you to figure out what you need to eat. There are other cutting-edge tools coming out that are pretty amazing, too.
Dr. Eric:
Fitness Lab, when is that coming out? That’s your app.
Philip:
November 18, it will be out.
Dr. Eric:
That’s my oldest daughter’s birthday. Cool.
Philip:
I think the link will be Studio.com/Philip. We’ll see. I’ll send it to you.
Dr. Eric:
Thanks. This has been great, Philip. A lot of awesome information. Before we wrap things up, I know there is a lot more that I’m sure you could talk about. Anything burning that I should have asked you that I didn’t ask you? Anything else you want to say?
Philip:
I know a lot of people listening want to lose weight, lose fat, improve their body composition. A lot of the principles we talked about today with eating enough and training and fueling yourself, especially when there is thyroid dysfunction, are really helpful.
Usually, when I work with someone who wants to lose weight or fat, if you spend six weeks dialing in the routines that you need—strength training, sufficient sleep, managing your stress, and getting your nutrition on point—it puts you in a good position psychologically and physiologically to go into that calorie deficit for 6-12 weeks as a good range for most people, and then go after it in a very deliberate way. That’s the approach I take and recommend.
Any other approach, that is really fast weight loss. I do have a rapid fat loss phase, but it’s more of an advanced technique. Really fast weight loss.
Even if you are on GLP-1s, you should still take this lifestyle approach, so you could eventually potentially come off of them. If you have to be on them for life, you can still have the lifestyle dialed in. That’s the approach I would take. It’s a patient, sustainable, flexible approach, but it will pay off for the long term.
Guess what happens? 95% of people who lose weight regain the weight. We don’t want to be in the 95%; we want to be in the 5%. That’s how you can do it. It’s something you can live with forever as your lifestyle, not just a diet.
Dr. Eric:
Well said. Thank you again. This was amazing. Where can folks find you? Remind them of your podcast and wherever else you want them to be directed to.
Philip:
Absolutely. Go check out Wits and Weights. Three episodes a week, including one guest episode a week. Eric, you’re coming on soon. Go to WitsAndWeights.com. For anything else, you can reach me on Instagram. Check out the podcast. I’ll be happy, and you’ll learn a lot.
Dr. Eric:
Thank you so much, Philip. I learned some things that I didn’t know, and I’m sure the listeners did as well.
Philip:
Thanks for the questions and the opportunity, Eric. Appreciate it.
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