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If you've done a weight loss challenge, lost weight, and then gained it back once it was over, this episode is for you.
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Today I'm evaluating weight loss challenges.
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Do they work and what happens after they end?
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You'll learn why you can win a weight loss challenge, but still come out worse in the end, plus the three things that I would track instead for fat loss over 40.
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Welcome to Wits & Weights, the show that puts a popular piece of fitness advice under the microscope, finds the hidden reason it doesn't work, and gives you the deceptively simple fix that does.
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I'm your host, Philip Pape.
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I'm a certified nutrition coach, and this episode is for men and women.
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And it is October, as this is coming out.
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A lot of you are getting invited to challenges right now, or you're thinking about how do I end the year successfully through the holidays before we get to the whole New Year's craze.
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I personally just came back from a family vacation.
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We went to Europe for 12 days.
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It was amazing to celebrate our 20th anniversary.
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I didn't track, I enjoyed my food, lots and lots of bread in France, let me tell you.
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And, you know, I'm also thinking the same thing.
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Like, how do I end the year successfully, especially with, you know, a plan, protocol, people to support me, all the right things that we need to succeed.
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So maybe your gym is running a challenge, maybe your work has one, maybe you have a friend that's putting together something where everybody puts their money in.
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You know, it's it's college football season, so you've got pools for that.
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Maybe you've got pools for weight loss.
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I don't know.
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The idea here is that having a deadline to shoot for and having some sort of incentive, and maybe it is an external incentive like a prize, money, what have you, will give you the push you need to finally do what you've been putting off.
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And for some of you, that might be to lose the weight, but of course, we're going to unpack that statement today.
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If you are on the older side, if you're over 40, like me, and you lift weights, you've probably done a few of these challenges.
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Maybe on social media, there's free challenges, paid, whatever.
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Way back on, or way back, not too far back, on episode 499, I mentioned that a lot of you like challenges because they give you a burst of motivation, uh, but then they end.
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So today I want to look at what happens when they end, what they measure, which is almost always weight loss, but I've been in plenty of challenges that measure a bunch of different things.
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But I do think weight loss is the wrong thing to measure.
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Anybody who's been following the show knows that already, but I'm gonna explain why, because I want you to come out of this healthier, fitter, stronger feeling and looking better than you started.
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Because at the end of the day, that's what we want from any change or any improvement.
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Why suffer through a quote unquote challenge, lose weight on the scale, then you gain it back, or even if you don't gain it back, it didn't really give you what you wanted.
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Now, full disclosure, Coach Carol and I are running a challenge starting October 12th.
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And I'm gonna talk about it in this episode because I have a financial interest in, you know, challenges as well and coaching.
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And I always like to be up front about our ethics on this show.
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In fact, we actually now have an ad ethics policy on our website for sponsors as well.
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So keep that in mind as you listen.
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I'm gonna tell you where the research supports how we set our very different challenge up.
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I'll say it's different, but it's it's very simple too.
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Uh, where it doesn't, because there are definitely gaps where pretty much any challenge doesn't always do what you think it does.
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And you got you want to know all that.
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Then stick around to the end because I always have a little something for you.
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Today, it's one thing that you can do before your next fat loss phase that in one study nearly tripled the number of people who kept all their weight off six months later.
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And it takes one text message.
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Okay.
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So here's our roadmap for today's episode.
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First, I want to look at what the scale is measuring when a challenge uses weight loss as the score, why that's the wrong measure for body composition.
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It's a good refresher for those of you who follow the show and maybe a new concept for those of you who who are new.
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Then I'm gonna look at what the cash incentive studies, as well as a big or some big workplace wellness studies found happens after the end of a challenge.
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After they, you know, they have a lot of people in these challenges, they give some sort of incentive, prizes, points, et cetera.
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What happens afterward?
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That of course includes the biggest loser follow-up, which I'm always gonna be careful with, but I think it's important to mention.
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And then we'll cover what I would measure instead.
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If your goal is to lose fat without losing muscle, and that is really the whole game that we're going for, and probably why you're listening to this show in general.
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All right, so let's start with what the scale is measuring when we think of body weight.
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When a challenge is ranking you on pounds lost or percent of body weight loss, and trust me, this is the vast majority of challenges I still see today, whether it's in a physical gym or online, it is measuring, I'll say, all of your mass at the same time, right?
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Fat, but also water, glycogen in your muscles and liver, the food in your gut, your muscle, some bone mass, right?
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The your scale weight can't separate those things out.
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It's just your total weight, your gravity to the earth.
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So when you reward weight loss, you are definitely creating the wrong incentive.
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Because if you want to win a six or eight-week weight loss challenge, you could definitely gain the system, right?
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The fastest way is cut your calories way down, do a lot of cardio, probably drop a bunch of water and glycogen in the first couple of weeks, definitely if the carbs come down, and then not worry too much about lifting weights because that's not going to affect your weight loss that much.
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And the person, you know, you get these real overachievers who are super involved in the challenge, but they're also, I don't want to say they're gaming it on purpose.
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They're following what the challenge is having you do, and that is to lose weight as fast as possible, usually, or who loses the most weight or whatever.
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And then they win the challenge the challenge.
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But that's not what you're trying to get out of this, I hope.
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I mean, unless you're doing it specifically for the prize and you just want to game a contest to get a prize, that's a different story.
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I think that you want to be leaner and stronger and you want to keep that result for the long haul, don't you?
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Now you might be thinking, okay, Philip, I lost 15 pounds in my last challenge and I felt great.
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Okay, I believe you.
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The question is, was that all body fat?
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Right.
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And we have a good study on this.
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Dennis Villarreal and colleagues published a trial in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2017.
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They took 160 adults over 65 with obesity, men and women, and they put everyone on the same diet.
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Then they split them into three groups: aerobic exercise, aka cardio, resistance training, or both.
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Everybody lost about the same amount of weight.
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It was about 9% of their body weight over six months.
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So that's that's great, right?
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And if it was a weight loss challenge, they'd all be tied, but that's beside the point.
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The aerobic or cardio group lost about 5% of their lean mass.
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The resistance training group lost about 2%.
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Hip bone density went down 3% in the aerobic group and only half a percent in the resistance group.
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So think about that.
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They lost the same weight, but the lifting group kept more than twice as much muscle and most of their hip bone mass.
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And guess what?
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The group that did both cardio and lifting improved their physical function the most.
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And very little of that, if not none of that, shows up on the scale, obviously by definition, because they all lost the same amount of weight, but very different results.
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Then there's a study in post-menopausal women.
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I don't think I've talked about this one before, called the Tempo Diet Trial.
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There were 100 women between 45 and 65.
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One group did a severe diet, it was like a 65 to 75% calorie deficit.
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The other group did a moderate one, about 25 to 35%.
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Now, if you were scoring this along weight loss as the metric, of course, the more aggressive, severe deficit group is going to win.
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Just energy balance, calories in, calories out works every time.
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They lost about twice as much weight at 12 months.
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And to be fair, three years later, 42% of them had kept off at least 10% of their weight compared to 16% in the moderate group.
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So that's a point for faster dieting, which we've talked about this before, fast versus slow.
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And, you know, when should you use one or the other?
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You know, they all can work in different ways.
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But the severe dieting group also lost about two and a half times as much bone density at 12 months.
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And then at three years, it was still double the loss.
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So the group that would have won the weight loss challenge was also the group that had worse results for their health and their body composition.
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They lost the most bone.
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And for a woman after menopause, that is a bad trade-off, in my opinion.
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Okay.
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So that's the first part of the problem, right?
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Weight loss is a big jumbled metric that accounts for fat, water, muscle, bone, as if they're the same thing.
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And just trying to lose weight is probably not the best way to go in general.
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And I could just end the podcast right there and say, like, that's a great lesson to learn.
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But we're gonna continue because I want you to know what to track to be successful.
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And since I told you I have a stake in this, I'm gonna tell you about our challenge coming up.
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It's called the Dialed In fall challenge.
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And it is not, no surprise, it is not a weight loss challenge.
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You are not ranked against anyone else on pounds lost, but stick with me because weight still is part of the data set, okay?
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It's 12 weeks.
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You get direct coaching, Dialed In coaching inside our Eat More Lift Heavy program.
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Dialed-in means that Coach Carroll's your own coach inside the program.
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She's gonna build a custom nutrition blueprint for you, review your data every week, checks your form.
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This is a human being, it's not AI, it's not a course, even though there's lots of education and information behind it.
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It starts Monday, October 12th, and it goes through Thanksgiving and Christmas into the early new year.
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And we did that on purpose because this is when most people take a break, they gain a bunch of weight, maybe not as much as some people claim, but gain a bunch of weight, don't feel great, and plan to start over in January with New Year's resolutions, and the cycle begins anew.
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So here's how it works: you pick three goals.
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That's it.
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One is that at least one is an outcome goal, like your waist measurement or your strength on the lift, or yes, even your trend weight, not your scale weight, but your average of weight over time measured against yourself.
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And the others can be habits like hitting your protein or getting your workouts in.
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And your coach, Carol, she's gonna look at these and approve your targets with you to make sure they make sense.
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And you are scored against yourself.
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You're trying to beat yourself.
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The scores are capped.
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So losing more weight faster isn't gonna get you extra points.
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We're not trying to incentivize extremity here.
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We're trying to incentivize improvement.
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And then the prize is you get three months of free coaching plus a private two-on-one call with uh Carol and me, which is a nice little incentive, but hopefully the bigger incentive is the result you get from being challenged and having the support and accountability through what for many is the toughest time of the year.
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I want to tell you about Pauline real quick.
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She's one of our Eat More Lift Heavy members.
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When she started in March, she didn't think that she could stick with anything, especially for six months.
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Okay, that's that's how long our normal program is.
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I know I'm talking about a 12-week challenge, but just hear me out.
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So by week 25, that's almost the last week of the six months, her physical changes were smaller than she wanted.
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She said stress and sleep got in the way.
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Her life had changed, things came up, right?
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Which is reality.
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So, on a weight loss perspective, she wouldn't quote unquote win.
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But she tracked every single day.
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She never missed.
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She trained three times a week, she never missed a workout, and she is now lifting heavier than she ever thought she could.
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She's stronger, has more muscle mass, feels better, eating more food.
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And about the scale, the scale weight, which used to drive her crazy.
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Like many of you, raise your hand.
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The scale drives you crazy.
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She wrote, Oh, yeah, this is what that number is there.
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No biggie, let's keep going.
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I said that very awkwardly as I was reading the quote.
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This is why that number is there.
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No biggie, let's keep going.
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That is the type of person I want to see doing this type of challenge because those are the habits that last long after the challenge is over that will ultimately give you the outcome you want in the long term.
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All right, so this Dialed In challenge, we limit the amount of people joining.
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So I want you to go to witsandweights.com/ challenge for the details and sign up before it starts Monday, October 12th.
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Everyone who's in by then will be in the challenge.
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You'll be able to come up with specific goals, track against them, be in the running for the prize, but most importantly, have that level of oversight, accountability, and support you need to get through the holiday successfully and come out the other side.
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So go to witsandweights.com/ challenge.
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Okay, so that's the first problem, the metric.
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The second problem is what happens after the challenge is over.
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And I want to be fair here because challenges and challenges and incentives, they do work quite well when they exist.
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Like while the challenge is active.
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This is why humans are really good with like setting goals and having seasons and New Year's results.
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I'm not saying we're good with New Year's resolutions, but we we at least use these different points in our life to set goals for ourselves and challenge us to do something.
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Maybe it's a competition.
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A challenge is kind of like a competition, right?
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So we like these things as human beings because behaviorally they get us to do things, they get us to take action.
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Now, the best known study I want to talk about is from Kevin Volp and colleagues at Penn, published in JAMA in 2008.
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They took 57 adults with obesity, almost all men, veterans in Philadelphia.
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One group got a lottery, and one group got a deposit contract.
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And that's where you put your own money in and then you get it back if you hit your target.
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Kind of sounds like a lot of those gym challenges that Hormosy made famous, right?
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Where you would pay money and then you get it back if you win.
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But really, it was kind of scammy because a lot of people didn't make it through, so they just kept your money.
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Okay, so I don't I don't like that, but that's that's how this is structured in a research setting.
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So after 16 weeks, the lottery group lost about 13 pounds and the deposit group lost about 14, compared to only four pounds in the control group.
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So kind of a big difference between the the two experimental groups and the control group.
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But then they checked again at seven months, which is three months after the incentives stopped, the monetary incentives.
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The lottery group was down about nine pounds from the start, the deposit group about six, and the control group about four.
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And the difference between them was no longer statistically significant.
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Then what's cool is the same group ran a follow-up study led by Leslie John in 2011, where they did deposit contracts for 32 weeks.
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The incentive group lost 8.7 pounds, the control group lost one.
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36 weeks after it ended, the incentive group was still down 1.2 pounds, and the control group was down a quarter of a pound.
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So the advantage there was gone after time passed.
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So my point with all of this stuff, I hope I didn't bore you, is that challenges, incentives, they work in the moment, but they don't often last, right?
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They don't often last past that point.
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And this is why a lot of people revert to previous weight gain, for example.
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There's also meta-analysis from just this year, 2026, in obesity reviews.
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This is where they pull a bunch of studies together.
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So this was 29 studies with more than 5,700 people.
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And there was a small effect of the weight loss while the incentives were running.
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And then when they stopped, the effect was zero.
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Fewer of the studies measured what happened afterwards.
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So I wouldn't put as much stock into that finding, but it matches the individual studies.
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Anyway, we also have workplace wellness programs.
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Now I've done some consulting for different companies in terms of wellness, even like mindfulness, even though that's not my bag, I guess, or my expertise.
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But there's a lot of these programs where there's different challenges and they have point systems, you could exchange them for gift cards, all that fun stuff.
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There was, there's, they've studied these, right?
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So the Illinois Workplace Wellness Study randomized over 4,800 university employees.
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There's a BJ's wholesale club study that included 33,000 employees at 160 work sites, and neither one found meaningful changes in clinical health measures after 18 months or more.
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The Illinois researchers found that people who signed up were already healthier and spending less on healthcare before the program started.
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So they effectively attracted the people who needed them least, right?
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Just so you're aware of that.
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And now the biggest loser I have to mention, this study gets misused all the time.
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Kevin Hall's group at the NIH, they followed 14 former contestants for six years.
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They lost 128 pounds on average during the show, which lasted for 30 weeks.
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And then six years later, they regained on average 90 of those 128 pounds.
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Where people misuse this is the metabolism part.
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Yes, their resting metabolism was lower than predicted, but how much it had slowed down at the end of the show did not predict who regained weight.
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The people who kept the most weight off had the most slowing of their metabolism six years later.
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Interesting, right?
00:17:00.960 --> 00:17:12.079
Other research from Katia Martins and colleagues found that metabolic adaptation of about 54 calories a day happened after weight loss and it wasn't detectable a year or two later.
00:17:12.079 --> 00:17:19.680
So this is why I don't buy the metabolic damage idea, which I've talked about on many recent episodes.
00:17:19.680 --> 00:17:26.640
The biggest loser just shows that an extreme contest can be followed afterward by a lot of regain.
00:17:26.640 --> 00:17:27.200
That's it.
00:17:27.200 --> 00:17:31.039
It doesn't really tell us much about metabolism like some people claim.
00:17:31.039 --> 00:17:33.599
Now, there is a study that goes in the other direction.
00:17:33.599 --> 00:17:36.400
Okay, it's from the UK called Game of Stones.
00:17:36.400 --> 00:17:37.359
I love that name.
00:17:37.359 --> 00:17:38.400
It was published this year.
00:17:38.400 --> 00:17:42.319
It had 585 men with obesity, average age of 51.
00:17:42.319 --> 00:17:49.519
They got text messages plus a financial incentive set up as money that they could lose.
00:17:49.519 --> 00:17:54.559
Their targets were 5 and 10% of their starting weight over 12 months.
00:17:54.559 --> 00:18:00.240
Now the incentive group lost almost 5%, or I should say 4.8% of their body weight.
00:18:00.240 --> 00:18:02.559
The control group only lost 1.3%.
00:18:02.559 --> 00:18:10.079
And the researchers saw that there was a meaningful level of maintenance out to two years later.
00:18:10.079 --> 00:18:13.039
But they only had data on like two-thirds of the men by then.
00:18:13.039 --> 00:18:21.119
So in some cases, this this says incentives may last past the point that they end, like in terms of uh maintaining the weight loss.
00:18:21.119 --> 00:18:30.480
But the ones that seem to last tend to run longer and they use targets based on your own starting point, and they include actual support of some kind.
00:18:30.480 --> 00:18:32.000
So we'll get to that in a minute.
00:18:32.000 --> 00:18:37.519
Now you've probably heard people say that paying people to lose weight kills their motivation.
00:18:37.519 --> 00:18:40.480
And there's a theory of psychology behind that.
00:18:40.480 --> 00:18:48.480
But in the weight loss studies that tested this directly, the incentives did not reduce people's own motivation.
00:18:48.480 --> 00:18:54.640
I think that the simpler explanation is the reward went away and you had nothing in its place.
00:18:54.640 --> 00:18:59.440
So now you have this vacuum, and of course, you're going to revert to old behavior in many cases.
00:18:59.440 --> 00:19:00.079
All right.
00:19:00.079 --> 00:19:01.359
So what do you do instead?
00:19:01.359 --> 00:19:03.599
I think a challenge can be a great structure.
00:19:03.599 --> 00:19:05.839
You just have to change what you're measuring.
00:19:05.839 --> 00:19:08.640
Stop using weight loss as the be-all end-all.
00:19:08.640 --> 00:19:14.000
Measure the things that tell you whether your body composition is changing compared to where you started.
00:19:14.000 --> 00:19:17.839
I actually asked this question in our Facebook group and people gave responses.
00:19:17.839 --> 00:19:21.119
I said, if if you had to track something other than weight loss, what would it be?
00:19:21.119 --> 00:19:22.079
And I had some good answers.
00:19:22.079 --> 00:19:26.640
It was like body fat percentage and lifts and things like that, all thinking the right thing, right?
00:19:26.640 --> 00:19:33.279
And even then, you you have to evaluate like if I want to track body fat percentage, is that really what I want to track?
00:19:33.279 --> 00:19:39.279
Or do I want to track a proxy or a direct measurement that affects body fat, like my waist measurement, for example?
00:19:39.279 --> 00:19:44.480
So I want you guys to think through like what's the most direct, easily measurable thing.
00:19:44.480 --> 00:19:47.519
So first, you're gonna compare yourself to your own starting point.
00:19:47.519 --> 00:20:04.880
Almost every incentive study that resulted in long-term maintenance of their results used targets based on each person's own baseline, like 5% of your starting weight, 10%, a pound a week, whatever, as opposed to competing against others or absolute numbers, if that makes sense.
00:20:04.880 --> 00:20:09.920
Okay, now there is not a study that directly compares that approach to ranking people against each other.
00:20:09.920 --> 00:20:17.839
So this is more of a consistent pattern from what we have seen, not you know, total proof, which is very hard to get in science, especially nutrition science.
00:20:17.839 --> 00:20:22.400
Second, you should have more than one goal and make at least one of them an outcome.
00:20:22.400 --> 00:20:23.599
Now, why is this important?
00:20:23.599 --> 00:20:32.880
Okay, there's a 2023 study called Firework that looked at 668 lower income adults, 80% of them were women, average age of 48.
00:20:32.880 --> 00:20:40.880
One group got paid for losing weight, one got paid for hitting behavior goals, and one group just got the resources.
00:20:40.880 --> 00:20:52.160
Six months later, 49% of the weight group lost at least 5% of the body weight compared to 39% of the behavior group and only 22% of the resource group.
00:20:52.160 --> 00:20:56.000
And then at 12 months, the two paid groups were at about the same, around 41%.
00:20:56.000 --> 00:21:07.599
The 2026 meta-analysis found that incentives worked better when they targeted more than one thing, and worse when they only targeted habits.
00:21:07.599 --> 00:21:11.759
So I would have habits in there, but not only habits.
00:21:11.759 --> 00:21:13.759
You want to have at least one outcome.
00:21:13.759 --> 00:21:17.519
So we're talking outcome-based goals and habit-based goals.
00:21:17.519 --> 00:21:20.799
At least one of each, I recommend a total of three.
00:21:20.799 --> 00:21:23.119
That is actually how our challenge is set up because it's simple.
00:21:23.119 --> 00:21:25.680
Three is a nice round number, gives you a little flexibility.
00:21:25.680 --> 00:21:31.759
And also, if you don't do as well on one, you can kind of make up for it on the others and still get that psychological win.
00:21:31.759 --> 00:21:38.720
For body composition, the outcomes that I would use are your waist measurement, your strength on a main lift.
00:21:38.720 --> 00:21:43.039
It could be multiple lifts, but I would pick one you're really focused on, like your squat, deadlift, whatever.
00:21:43.039 --> 00:21:50.559
And your trend weight, which is your moving average over time, which is much more representative of body fat than an individual number.
00:21:50.559 --> 00:21:53.680
And I don't mean like just take it once a week and average it.
00:21:53.680 --> 00:21:54.960
I mean do it daily.
00:21:54.960 --> 00:21:57.680
Here's why the scale isn't enough on its own.
00:21:57.680 --> 00:21:58.160
Okay.
00:21:58.160 --> 00:21:59.680
The SWAN study, the famous Swan.
00:21:59.680 --> 00:22:04.720
Study we've talked about that followed more than 1200 women through the menopause transition and used exascans.
00:22:04.720 --> 00:22:06.400
Their fat gain doubled.
00:22:06.400 --> 00:22:17.680
Lean mass started to go down, but body weight didn't really change because or any faster than it was changing, because the fat gain and the muscle loss canceled each other out on the scale.
00:22:17.680 --> 00:22:20.640
Now I talked about menopause weight gain in episode 501.
00:22:20.640 --> 00:22:21.200
Check it out.
00:22:21.200 --> 00:22:22.319
I won't go through it all here.
00:22:22.319 --> 00:22:24.640
If you want to check that out, it's episode 501.
00:22:24.640 --> 00:22:28.240
And and guys, men, gentlemen, it works the other way for you too, right?
00:22:28.240 --> 00:22:34.559
If you're if you're lifting and eating enough protein, you can lose fat and gain muscle while the scale stays the same.
00:22:34.559 --> 00:22:38.880
So measuring only weight is gonna sell you short when it comes to this.
00:22:38.880 --> 00:22:46.319
And you also got to think about like when you do a challenge, you may not even be trying to lose fat per se, anyway.
00:22:46.319 --> 00:22:56.319
Like if your goal is body recomp, you may not even want to have your scale weight or trend weight as a goal because it's not gonna change on purpose, right?
00:22:56.319 --> 00:23:06.480
So using your waist, your strength, your trend weight together for outcomes, if you were to do this on your own and have multiple measures, that's my recommendation as like a coach.
00:23:06.480 --> 00:23:07.039
Okay.
00:23:07.039 --> 00:23:09.599
No study has tested all these combinations.
00:23:09.599 --> 00:23:15.519
We have very poor research on like the overall coaching experience and tracking and measuring lots of things together.
00:23:15.519 --> 00:23:20.319
But look, if your waist is going down and your lifts are going up, you're losing fat and keeping muscle.
00:23:20.319 --> 00:23:23.279
It's that simple, even if the scale isn't moving much.
00:23:23.279 --> 00:23:30.240
Now, if the scale's dropping fast and your lifts are dropping, that to me is also a red flag, anyway.
00:23:30.240 --> 00:23:34.400
Like just because you're losing weight fast, but you're getting weaker and losing muscle, that's not good either.
00:23:34.400 --> 00:23:41.279
So that's that's the second thing is the, you know, having more than one goal, making at least one of them an outcome.
00:23:41.279 --> 00:23:43.599
Other ones can be habits, like we mentioned before.
00:23:43.599 --> 00:23:46.559
I'm not even going to get into the details on that here, but you know what I mean.
00:23:46.559 --> 00:23:48.960
It could be steps, it could be uh protein.
00:23:48.960 --> 00:23:49.920
There's lots of habits.
00:23:49.920 --> 00:23:52.000
The third thing is to cap the score.
00:23:52.000 --> 00:23:53.039
Now, this is interesting.
00:23:53.039 --> 00:24:03.759
If you get, you know, if you're giving yourself more points for doing something faster, you're back to the original problem where going more extreme, it doesn't mean more of a good thing.
00:24:03.759 --> 00:24:04.720
Does that make sense?
00:24:04.720 --> 00:24:08.240
Like it's got to be realistic within the time frame.
00:24:08.240 --> 00:24:10.400
And so you set your goals based on that.
00:24:10.400 --> 00:24:15.279
And that's why, like in our challenge, we have a coach looking at it with you and saying, This makes sense or this doesn't make sense.
00:24:15.279 --> 00:24:16.400
Here's what makes more sense.
00:24:16.400 --> 00:24:20.640
Because we don't want you losing the challenge just because you have unrealistic expectations either.
00:24:20.640 --> 00:24:29.359
Fourth, this is the last point I'm making in this section, is have someone who knows what they're doing look at, approve, sanity check your targets.
00:24:29.359 --> 00:24:32.160
Kind of what I just mentioned that we do in our challenge with a coach.
00:24:32.160 --> 00:24:45.119
We we know that the 2026 meta-analysis I talked about, incentives paired with active support, where someone is working with you, perform better than incentives paired with passive things, like a handout, like education or something.
00:24:45.119 --> 00:24:47.359
That's that's the closest evidence I have.
00:24:47.359 --> 00:24:55.839
It's indirect evidence, but I think it makes intuitive anecdotal sense as well that having support versus not having support is going to make you more successful.
00:24:55.839 --> 00:24:57.839
I mean, just seems logical.
00:24:57.839 --> 00:25:00.880
Now, with all four of these, you keep lifting weights.
00:25:00.880 --> 00:25:07.839
You keep lifting weights because we know adding resistance training helps you preserve your lean mass, helps you get the result you want, helps you get the body composition you want.
00:25:07.839 --> 00:25:11.519
If you take one thing from this episode, keep lifting, even if you go into a deficit.
00:25:11.519 --> 00:25:22.079
And if you're one of the folks that reach out to me that's new to my list or the show, and you just have this thing, this allergy to lifting weights, and I've seen it in some, I've I've seen it like very direct, like, well, I'm not gonna do that.
00:25:22.079 --> 00:25:23.039
So what else can I do?
00:25:23.039 --> 00:25:26.000
And it's like, I'm sorry, you have to be lifting weights.
00:25:26.000 --> 00:25:35.200
If you want better health, better function, better aging, longevity, lower insulin sensitivity, easier fat loss, the list goes on and on.
00:25:35.200 --> 00:25:35.680
All right.
00:25:35.680 --> 00:25:40.559
The last thing to do is to plan out what happens after the challenge before you start the challenge.
00:25:40.559 --> 00:25:44.480
These studies all show that the results tend to fade when the incentives go away.
00:25:44.480 --> 00:25:52.880
So if you can decide on day one what you're gonna continue afterwards so you don't have a big gap, okay, that is gonna help you a lot.
00:25:52.880 --> 00:25:56.000
For some people, that's continuing on with the coaching that you signed up for.
00:25:56.000 --> 00:25:58.319
Like if you join our challenge, you're welcome to continue.
00:25:58.319 --> 00:26:01.599
And whoever wins the challenge will get their next three months free anyway.
00:26:01.599 --> 00:26:09.440
But all right, before we wrap up, I told you I'd share one thing that nearly tripled how many people kept their weight off, involving a text message.
00:26:09.440 --> 00:26:15.039
I'm gonna get that to us to a second, but just a last reminder about the challenge, because this is really important, guys.
00:26:15.039 --> 00:26:27.599
If you want this kind of support and accountability and a challenge set up the exact way I described in this episode with three goals, a starting point, cap scorers, someone to look at it, make sure it's the right challenge to give you guidance along the way.
00:26:27.599 --> 00:26:40.079
And most importantly, each week help you make the adjustments needed to be successful with your training, your nutrition, your sleep, your stress, all of it through the holidays, through Thanksgiving, through Christmas, go to witsandweights.com/ challenge.
00:26:40.079 --> 00:26:43.119
It starts Monday, October 12th, goes for 12 weeks.
00:26:43.119 --> 00:26:48.960
The prize for the winner is three months of free coaching plus a private two-on-one call with me and Carol.
00:26:48.960 --> 00:26:52.079
But you win anyway by getting the result because of the support.
00:26:52.079 --> 00:26:55.119
So go to witsandweights.com/ challenge.
00:26:55.119 --> 00:26:59.759
All right, before your next fat loss phase, here's the tip I have for you.
00:26:59.759 --> 00:27:02.000
Decide who you're gonna do it with.
00:27:02.000 --> 00:27:04.799
Okay, now this is a very open statement.
00:27:04.799 --> 00:27:08.000
Do I mean having one accountability partner who's a family member?
00:27:08.000 --> 00:27:08.480
No.
00:27:08.480 --> 00:27:09.920
This is a very open statement.
00:27:09.920 --> 00:27:16.480
All right, there was a study by Wing and Jeffrey with 166 people in a four-month weight loss program.
00:27:16.480 --> 00:27:23.279
Some of them joined alone, others joined with three friends or family members and got social support strategies on top.
00:27:23.279 --> 00:27:27.680
Of the people who joined alone, 24% kept all their weight off for the next six months.
00:27:27.680 --> 00:27:32.480
In the group that joined with friends and got support, 66% kept all of it.
00:27:32.480 --> 00:27:42.720
So before you start your next challenge or goal or whatever, text one person and ask them if they want to do it with you and check in with each other with each other once a week.
00:27:42.720 --> 00:27:45.920
It's a it's a classic accountability partner strategy.
00:27:45.920 --> 00:27:47.200
Family counts.
00:27:47.200 --> 00:27:50.559
And of course, if you're in our challenge, you're going to have that by default.
00:27:50.559 --> 00:27:54.000
You're gonna have a group that starts the same week and you're gonna have a coach.
00:27:54.000 --> 00:27:59.839
You're gonna have the community support and you're gonna have the coaching support, which means you will be successful if you put in the work.
00:27:59.839 --> 00:28:02.160
Um, if you can bring a friend along, even better.
00:28:02.160 --> 00:28:05.200
All right, until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights.
00:28:05.200 --> 00:28:07.920
And remember, weight loss is just one number.
00:28:07.920 --> 00:28:11.200
It often doesn't tell you what you're truly achieving.
00:28:11.200 --> 00:28:15.440
Things like your waist, your strength, your habits tell you a lot more about what's happening to your body.
00:28:15.440 --> 00:28:19.680
I'm Philip Pape, and I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits & Weights Podcast.
00:00:00.160 --> 00:00:05.839
If you've done a weight loss challenge, lost weight, and then gained it back once it was over, this episode is for you.
00:00:05.839 --> 00:00:08.880
Today I'm evaluating weight loss challenges.
00:00:08.880 --> 00:00:11.519
Do they work and what happens after they end?
00:00:11.519 --> 00:00:20.480
You'll learn why you can win a weight loss challenge, but still come out worse in the end, plus the three things that I would track instead for fat loss over 40.
00:00:20.480 --> 00:00:33.520
Welcome to Wits & Weights, the show that puts a popular piece of fitness advice under the microscope, finds the hidden reason it doesn't work, and gives you the deceptively simple fix that does.
00:00:33.520 --> 00:00:34.880
I'm your host, Philip Pape.
00:00:34.880 --> 00:00:38.479
I'm a certified nutrition coach, and this episode is for men and women.
00:00:38.479 --> 00:00:41.200
And it is October, as this is coming out.
00:00:41.200 --> 00:00:51.840
A lot of you are getting invited to challenges right now, or you're thinking about how do I end the year successfully through the holidays before we get to the whole New Year's craze.
00:00:51.840 --> 00:00:54.320
I personally just came back from a family vacation.
00:00:54.320 --> 00:00:55.759
We went to Europe for 12 days.
00:00:55.759 --> 00:00:58.560
It was amazing to celebrate our 20th anniversary.
00:00:58.560 --> 00:01:03.679
I didn't track, I enjoyed my food, lots and lots of bread in France, let me tell you.
00:01:03.679 --> 00:01:06.400
And, you know, I'm also thinking the same thing.
00:01:06.400 --> 00:01:15.519
Like, how do I end the year successfully, especially with, you know, a plan, protocol, people to support me, all the right things that we need to succeed.
00:01:15.519 --> 00:01:22.480
So maybe your gym is running a challenge, maybe your work has one, maybe you have a friend that's putting together something where everybody puts their money in.
00:01:22.480 --> 00:01:25.920
You know, it's it's college football season, so you've got pools for that.
00:01:25.920 --> 00:01:27.359
Maybe you've got pools for weight loss.
00:01:27.359 --> 00:01:28.000
I don't know.
00:01:28.000 --> 00:01:40.799
The idea here is that having a deadline to shoot for and having some sort of incentive, and maybe it is an external incentive like a prize, money, what have you, will give you the push you need to finally do what you've been putting off.
00:01:40.799 --> 00:01:46.400
And for some of you, that might be to lose the weight, but of course, we're going to unpack that statement today.
00:01:46.400 --> 00:01:52.959
If you are on the older side, if you're over 40, like me, and you lift weights, you've probably done a few of these challenges.
00:01:52.959 --> 00:01:56.239
Maybe on social media, there's free challenges, paid, whatever.
00:01:56.239 --> 00:02:06.640
Way back on, or way back, not too far back, on episode 499, I mentioned that a lot of you like challenges because they give you a burst of motivation, uh, but then they end.
00:02:06.640 --> 00:02:15.039
So today I want to look at what happens when they end, what they measure, which is almost always weight loss, but I've been in plenty of challenges that measure a bunch of different things.
00:02:15.039 --> 00:02:18.159
But I do think weight loss is the wrong thing to measure.
00:02:18.159 --> 00:02:27.680
Anybody who's been following the show knows that already, but I'm gonna explain why, because I want you to come out of this healthier, fitter, stronger feeling and looking better than you started.
00:02:27.680 --> 00:02:31.599
Because at the end of the day, that's what we want from any change or any improvement.
00:02:31.599 --> 00:02:39.599
Why suffer through a quote unquote challenge, lose weight on the scale, then you gain it back, or even if you don't gain it back, it didn't really give you what you wanted.
00:02:39.599 --> 00:02:44.719
Now, full disclosure, Coach Carol and I are running a challenge starting October 12th.
00:02:44.719 --> 00:02:51.120
And I'm gonna talk about it in this episode because I have a financial interest in, you know, challenges as well and coaching.
00:02:51.120 --> 00:02:54.479
And I always like to be up front about our ethics on this show.
00:02:54.479 --> 00:02:58.879
In fact, we actually now have an ad ethics policy on our website for sponsors as well.
00:02:58.879 --> 00:03:00.319
So keep that in mind as you listen.
00:03:00.319 --> 00:03:05.680
I'm gonna tell you where the research supports how we set our very different challenge up.
00:03:05.680 --> 00:03:08.240
I'll say it's different, but it's it's very simple too.
00:03:08.240 --> 00:03:15.199
Uh, where it doesn't, because there are definitely gaps where pretty much any challenge doesn't always do what you think it does.
00:03:15.199 --> 00:03:16.639
And you got you want to know all that.
00:03:16.639 --> 00:03:19.439
Then stick around to the end because I always have a little something for you.
00:03:19.439 --> 00:03:31.039
Today, it's one thing that you can do before your next fat loss phase that in one study nearly tripled the number of people who kept all their weight off six months later.
00:03:31.039 --> 00:03:33.919
And it takes one text message.
00:03:33.919 --> 00:03:34.479
Okay.
00:03:34.479 --> 00:03:37.120
So here's our roadmap for today's episode.
00:03:37.120 --> 00:03:44.479
First, I want to look at what the scale is measuring when a challenge uses weight loss as the score, why that's the wrong measure for body composition.
00:03:44.479 --> 00:03:50.159
It's a good refresher for those of you who follow the show and maybe a new concept for those of you who who are new.
00:03:50.159 --> 00:04:00.159
Then I'm gonna look at what the cash incentive studies, as well as a big or some big workplace wellness studies found happens after the end of a challenge.
00:04:00.159 --> 00:04:05.280
After they, you know, they have a lot of people in these challenges, they give some sort of incentive, prizes, points, et cetera.
00:04:05.280 --> 00:04:06.560
What happens afterward?
00:04:06.560 --> 00:04:11.919
That of course includes the biggest loser follow-up, which I'm always gonna be careful with, but I think it's important to mention.
00:04:11.919 --> 00:04:14.319
And then we'll cover what I would measure instead.
00:04:14.319 --> 00:04:23.120
If your goal is to lose fat without losing muscle, and that is really the whole game that we're going for, and probably why you're listening to this show in general.
00:04:23.120 --> 00:04:28.160
All right, so let's start with what the scale is measuring when we think of body weight.
00:04:28.160 --> 00:04:43.920
When a challenge is ranking you on pounds lost or percent of body weight loss, and trust me, this is the vast majority of challenges I still see today, whether it's in a physical gym or online, it is measuring, I'll say, all of your mass at the same time, right?
00:04:43.920 --> 00:04:50.639
Fat, but also water, glycogen in your muscles and liver, the food in your gut, your muscle, some bone mass, right?
00:04:50.639 --> 00:04:54.560
The your scale weight can't separate those things out.
00:04:54.560 --> 00:04:57.439
It's just your total weight, your gravity to the earth.
00:04:57.439 --> 00:05:03.759
So when you reward weight loss, you are definitely creating the wrong incentive.
00:05:03.759 --> 00:05:08.319
Because if you want to win a six or eight-week weight loss challenge, you could definitely gain the system, right?
00:05:08.319 --> 00:05:20.879
The fastest way is cut your calories way down, do a lot of cardio, probably drop a bunch of water and glycogen in the first couple of weeks, definitely if the carbs come down, and then not worry too much about lifting weights because that's not going to affect your weight loss that much.
00:05:20.879 --> 00:05:30.399
And the person, you know, you get these real overachievers who are super involved in the challenge, but they're also, I don't want to say they're gaming it on purpose.
00:05:30.399 --> 00:05:38.240
They're following what the challenge is having you do, and that is to lose weight as fast as possible, usually, or who loses the most weight or whatever.
00:05:38.240 --> 00:05:40.480
And then they win the challenge the challenge.
00:05:40.480 --> 00:05:43.120
But that's not what you're trying to get out of this, I hope.
00:05:43.120 --> 00:05:49.360
I mean, unless you're doing it specifically for the prize and you just want to game a contest to get a prize, that's a different story.
00:05:49.360 --> 00:05:56.240
I think that you want to be leaner and stronger and you want to keep that result for the long haul, don't you?
00:05:56.240 --> 00:06:01.040
Now you might be thinking, okay, Philip, I lost 15 pounds in my last challenge and I felt great.
00:06:01.040 --> 00:06:02.240
Okay, I believe you.
00:06:02.240 --> 00:06:04.560
The question is, was that all body fat?
00:06:04.560 --> 00:06:05.040
Right.
00:06:05.040 --> 00:06:06.879
And we have a good study on this.
00:06:06.879 --> 00:06:12.480
Dennis Villarreal and colleagues published a trial in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2017.
00:06:12.480 --> 00:06:19.519
They took 160 adults over 65 with obesity, men and women, and they put everyone on the same diet.
00:06:19.519 --> 00:06:26.800
Then they split them into three groups: aerobic exercise, aka cardio, resistance training, or both.
00:06:26.800 --> 00:06:29.120
Everybody lost about the same amount of weight.
00:06:29.120 --> 00:06:32.720
It was about 9% of their body weight over six months.
00:06:32.720 --> 00:06:34.399
So that's that's great, right?
00:06:34.399 --> 00:06:38.160
And if it was a weight loss challenge, they'd all be tied, but that's beside the point.
00:06:38.160 --> 00:06:43.360
The aerobic or cardio group lost about 5% of their lean mass.
00:06:43.360 --> 00:06:46.160
The resistance training group lost about 2%.
00:06:46.160 --> 00:06:53.279
Hip bone density went down 3% in the aerobic group and only half a percent in the resistance group.
00:06:53.279 --> 00:06:54.160
So think about that.
00:06:54.160 --> 00:07:00.959
They lost the same weight, but the lifting group kept more than twice as much muscle and most of their hip bone mass.
00:07:00.959 --> 00:07:02.079
And guess what?
00:07:02.079 --> 00:07:07.279
The group that did both cardio and lifting improved their physical function the most.
00:07:07.279 --> 00:07:17.920
And very little of that, if not none of that, shows up on the scale, obviously by definition, because they all lost the same amount of weight, but very different results.
00:07:17.920 --> 00:07:20.079
Then there's a study in post-menopausal women.
00:07:20.079 --> 00:07:23.680
I don't think I've talked about this one before, called the Tempo Diet Trial.
00:07:23.680 --> 00:07:26.959
There were 100 women between 45 and 65.
00:07:26.959 --> 00:07:32.399
One group did a severe diet, it was like a 65 to 75% calorie deficit.
00:07:32.399 --> 00:07:35.519
The other group did a moderate one, about 25 to 35%.
00:07:35.519 --> 00:07:44.480
Now, if you were scoring this along weight loss as the metric, of course, the more aggressive, severe deficit group is going to win.
00:07:44.480 --> 00:07:47.680
Just energy balance, calories in, calories out works every time.
00:07:47.680 --> 00:07:50.800
They lost about twice as much weight at 12 months.
00:07:50.800 --> 00:08:00.079
And to be fair, three years later, 42% of them had kept off at least 10% of their weight compared to 16% in the moderate group.
00:08:00.079 --> 00:08:05.600
So that's a point for faster dieting, which we've talked about this before, fast versus slow.
00:08:05.600 --> 00:08:08.879
And, you know, when should you use one or the other?
00:08:08.879 --> 00:08:11.120
You know, they all can work in different ways.
00:08:11.120 --> 00:08:16.879
But the severe dieting group also lost about two and a half times as much bone density at 12 months.
00:08:16.879 --> 00:08:19.680
And then at three years, it was still double the loss.
00:08:19.680 --> 00:08:28.000
So the group that would have won the weight loss challenge was also the group that had worse results for their health and their body composition.
00:08:28.000 --> 00:08:29.279
They lost the most bone.
00:08:29.279 --> 00:08:33.120
And for a woman after menopause, that is a bad trade-off, in my opinion.
00:08:33.120 --> 00:08:33.600
Okay.
00:08:33.600 --> 00:08:35.679
So that's the first part of the problem, right?
00:08:35.679 --> 00:08:42.720
Weight loss is a big jumbled metric that accounts for fat, water, muscle, bone, as if they're the same thing.
00:08:42.720 --> 00:08:46.879
And just trying to lose weight is probably not the best way to go in general.
00:08:46.879 --> 00:08:50.399
And I could just end the podcast right there and say, like, that's a great lesson to learn.
00:08:50.399 --> 00:08:55.440
But we're gonna continue because I want you to know what to track to be successful.
00:08:55.440 --> 00:08:59.360
And since I told you I have a stake in this, I'm gonna tell you about our challenge coming up.
00:08:59.360 --> 00:09:02.080
It's called the Dialed In fall challenge.
00:09:02.080 --> 00:09:05.360
And it is not, no surprise, it is not a weight loss challenge.
00:09:05.360 --> 00:09:12.320
You are not ranked against anyone else on pounds lost, but stick with me because weight still is part of the data set, okay?
00:09:12.320 --> 00:09:13.759
It's 12 weeks.
00:09:13.759 --> 00:09:18.399
You get direct coaching, Dialed In coaching inside our Eat More Lift Heavy program.
00:09:18.399 --> 00:09:22.080
Dialed-in means that Coach Carroll's your own coach inside the program.
00:09:22.080 --> 00:09:27.519
She's gonna build a custom nutrition blueprint for you, review your data every week, checks your form.
00:09:27.519 --> 00:09:34.399
This is a human being, it's not AI, it's not a course, even though there's lots of education and information behind it.
00:09:34.399 --> 00:09:40.320
It starts Monday, October 12th, and it goes through Thanksgiving and Christmas into the early new year.
00:09:40.320 --> 00:09:54.080
And we did that on purpose because this is when most people take a break, they gain a bunch of weight, maybe not as much as some people claim, but gain a bunch of weight, don't feel great, and plan to start over in January with New Year's resolutions, and the cycle begins anew.
00:09:54.080 --> 00:09:56.639
So here's how it works: you pick three goals.
00:09:56.639 --> 00:09:57.360
That's it.
00:09:57.360 --> 00:10:10.080
One is that at least one is an outcome goal, like your waist measurement or your strength on the lift, or yes, even your trend weight, not your scale weight, but your average of weight over time measured against yourself.
00:10:10.080 --> 00:10:14.320
And the others can be habits like hitting your protein or getting your workouts in.
00:10:14.320 --> 00:10:19.039
And your coach, Carol, she's gonna look at these and approve your targets with you to make sure they make sense.
00:10:19.039 --> 00:10:20.799
And you are scored against yourself.
00:10:20.799 --> 00:10:22.240
You're trying to beat yourself.
00:10:22.240 --> 00:10:23.679
The scores are capped.
00:10:23.679 --> 00:10:26.480
So losing more weight faster isn't gonna get you extra points.
00:10:26.480 --> 00:10:29.039
We're not trying to incentivize extremity here.
00:10:29.039 --> 00:10:31.120
We're trying to incentivize improvement.
00:10:31.120 --> 00:10:49.759
And then the prize is you get three months of free coaching plus a private two-on-one call with uh Carol and me, which is a nice little incentive, but hopefully the bigger incentive is the result you get from being challenged and having the support and accountability through what for many is the toughest time of the year.
00:10:49.759 --> 00:10:51.600
I want to tell you about Pauline real quick.
00:10:51.600 --> 00:10:53.279
She's one of our Eat More Lift Heavy members.
00:10:53.279 --> 00:11:00.159
When she started in March, she didn't think that she could stick with anything, especially for six months.
00:11:00.159 --> 00:11:02.399
Okay, that's that's how long our normal program is.
00:11:02.399 --> 00:11:05.039
I know I'm talking about a 12-week challenge, but just hear me out.
00:11:05.039 --> 00:11:12.000
So by week 25, that's almost the last week of the six months, her physical changes were smaller than she wanted.
00:11:12.000 --> 00:11:14.399
She said stress and sleep got in the way.
00:11:14.399 --> 00:11:17.360
Her life had changed, things came up, right?
00:11:17.360 --> 00:11:18.639
Which is reality.
00:11:18.639 --> 00:11:23.759
So, on a weight loss perspective, she wouldn't quote unquote win.
00:11:23.759 --> 00:11:25.440
But she tracked every single day.
00:11:25.440 --> 00:11:26.320
She never missed.
00:11:26.320 --> 00:11:32.240
She trained three times a week, she never missed a workout, and she is now lifting heavier than she ever thought she could.
00:11:32.240 --> 00:11:36.000
She's stronger, has more muscle mass, feels better, eating more food.
00:11:36.000 --> 00:11:39.440
And about the scale, the scale weight, which used to drive her crazy.
00:11:39.440 --> 00:11:40.720
Like many of you, raise your hand.
00:11:40.720 --> 00:11:42.159
The scale drives you crazy.
00:11:42.159 --> 00:11:45.519
She wrote, Oh, yeah, this is what that number is there.
00:11:45.519 --> 00:11:47.279
No biggie, let's keep going.
00:11:47.279 --> 00:11:50.159
I said that very awkwardly as I was reading the quote.
00:11:50.159 --> 00:11:51.600
This is why that number is there.
00:11:51.600 --> 00:11:53.279
No biggie, let's keep going.
00:11:53.279 --> 00:12:05.200
That is the type of person I want to see doing this type of challenge because those are the habits that last long after the challenge is over that will ultimately give you the outcome you want in the long term.
00:12:05.200 --> 00:12:08.720
All right, so this Dialed In challenge, we limit the amount of people joining.
00:12:08.720 --> 00:12:16.080
So I want you to go to witsandweights.com/ challenge for the details and sign up before it starts Monday, October 12th.
00:12:16.080 --> 00:12:19.039
Everyone who's in by then will be in the challenge.
00:12:19.039 --> 00:12:30.480
You'll be able to come up with specific goals, track against them, be in the running for the prize, but most importantly, have that level of oversight, accountability, and support you need to get through the holiday successfully and come out the other side.
00:12:30.480 --> 00:12:34.320
So go to witsandweights.com/ challenge.
00:12:34.320 --> 00:12:36.799
Okay, so that's the first problem, the metric.
00:12:36.799 --> 00:12:40.559
The second problem is what happens after the challenge is over.
00:12:40.559 --> 00:12:49.919
And I want to be fair here because challenges and challenges and incentives, they do work quite well when they exist.
00:12:49.919 --> 00:12:52.000
Like while the challenge is active.
00:12:52.000 --> 00:12:57.279
This is why humans are really good with like setting goals and having seasons and New Year's results.
00:12:57.279 --> 00:13:05.759
I'm not saying we're good with New Year's resolutions, but we we at least use these different points in our life to set goals for ourselves and challenge us to do something.
00:13:05.759 --> 00:13:07.200
Maybe it's a competition.
00:13:07.200 --> 00:13:09.440
A challenge is kind of like a competition, right?
00:13:09.440 --> 00:13:14.320
So we like these things as human beings because behaviorally they get us to do things, they get us to take action.
00:13:14.320 --> 00:13:22.000
Now, the best known study I want to talk about is from Kevin Volp and colleagues at Penn, published in JAMA in 2008.
00:13:22.000 --> 00:13:27.279
They took 57 adults with obesity, almost all men, veterans in Philadelphia.
00:13:27.279 --> 00:13:32.000
One group got a lottery, and one group got a deposit contract.
00:13:32.000 --> 00:13:36.639
And that's where you put your own money in and then you get it back if you hit your target.
00:13:36.639 --> 00:13:40.159
Kind of sounds like a lot of those gym challenges that Hormosy made famous, right?
00:13:40.159 --> 00:13:42.799
Where you would pay money and then you get it back if you win.
00:13:42.799 --> 00:13:47.759
But really, it was kind of scammy because a lot of people didn't make it through, so they just kept your money.
00:13:47.759 --> 00:13:52.639
Okay, so I don't I don't like that, but that's that's how this is structured in a research setting.
00:13:52.639 --> 00:14:01.360
So after 16 weeks, the lottery group lost about 13 pounds and the deposit group lost about 14, compared to only four pounds in the control group.
00:14:01.360 --> 00:14:07.200
So kind of a big difference between the the two experimental groups and the control group.
00:14:07.200 --> 00:14:15.120
But then they checked again at seven months, which is three months after the incentives stopped, the monetary incentives.
00:14:15.120 --> 00:14:22.000
The lottery group was down about nine pounds from the start, the deposit group about six, and the control group about four.
00:14:22.000 --> 00:14:26.159
And the difference between them was no longer statistically significant.
00:14:26.159 --> 00:14:35.759
Then what's cool is the same group ran a follow-up study led by Leslie John in 2011, where they did deposit contracts for 32 weeks.
00:14:35.759 --> 00:14:39.919
The incentive group lost 8.7 pounds, the control group lost one.
00:14:39.919 --> 00:14:46.960
36 weeks after it ended, the incentive group was still down 1.2 pounds, and the control group was down a quarter of a pound.
00:14:46.960 --> 00:14:50.799
So the advantage there was gone after time passed.
00:14:50.799 --> 00:15:00.080
So my point with all of this stuff, I hope I didn't bore you, is that challenges, incentives, they work in the moment, but they don't often last, right?
00:15:00.080 --> 00:15:02.399
They don't often last past that point.
00:15:02.399 --> 00:15:06.639
And this is why a lot of people revert to previous weight gain, for example.
00:15:06.639 --> 00:15:11.200
There's also meta-analysis from just this year, 2026, in obesity reviews.
00:15:11.200 --> 00:15:13.039
This is where they pull a bunch of studies together.
00:15:13.039 --> 00:15:16.720
So this was 29 studies with more than 5,700 people.
00:15:16.720 --> 00:15:21.919
And there was a small effect of the weight loss while the incentives were running.
00:15:21.919 --> 00:15:24.720
And then when they stopped, the effect was zero.
00:15:24.720 --> 00:15:27.519
Fewer of the studies measured what happened afterwards.
00:15:27.519 --> 00:15:31.200
So I wouldn't put as much stock into that finding, but it matches the individual studies.
00:15:31.200 --> 00:15:34.159
Anyway, we also have workplace wellness programs.
00:15:34.159 --> 00:15:42.159
Now I've done some consulting for different companies in terms of wellness, even like mindfulness, even though that's not my bag, I guess, or my expertise.
00:15:42.159 --> 00:15:49.120
But there's a lot of these programs where there's different challenges and they have point systems, you could exchange them for gift cards, all that fun stuff.
00:15:49.120 --> 00:15:51.200
There was, there's, they've studied these, right?
00:15:51.200 --> 00:15:56.159
So the Illinois Workplace Wellness Study randomized over 4,800 university employees.
00:15:56.159 --> 00:16:09.279
There's a BJ's wholesale club study that included 33,000 employees at 160 work sites, and neither one found meaningful changes in clinical health measures after 18 months or more.
00:16:09.279 --> 00:16:16.799
The Illinois researchers found that people who signed up were already healthier and spending less on healthcare before the program started.
00:16:16.799 --> 00:16:20.480
So they effectively attracted the people who needed them least, right?
00:16:20.480 --> 00:16:22.000
Just so you're aware of that.
00:16:22.000 --> 00:16:25.840
And now the biggest loser I have to mention, this study gets misused all the time.
00:16:25.840 --> 00:16:30.399
Kevin Hall's group at the NIH, they followed 14 former contestants for six years.
00:16:30.399 --> 00:16:35.200
They lost 128 pounds on average during the show, which lasted for 30 weeks.
00:16:35.200 --> 00:16:40.480
And then six years later, they regained on average 90 of those 128 pounds.
00:16:40.480 --> 00:16:43.600
Where people misuse this is the metabolism part.
00:16:43.600 --> 00:16:52.720
Yes, their resting metabolism was lower than predicted, but how much it had slowed down at the end of the show did not predict who regained weight.
00:16:52.720 --> 00:16:59.360
The people who kept the most weight off had the most slowing of their metabolism six years later.
00:16:59.360 --> 00:17:00.960
Interesting, right?
00:17:00.960 --> 00:17:12.079
Other research from Katia Martins and colleagues found that metabolic adaptation of about 54 calories a day happened after weight loss and it wasn't detectable a year or two later.
00:17:12.079 --> 00:17:19.680
So this is why I don't buy the metabolic damage idea, which I've talked about on many recent episodes.
00:17:19.680 --> 00:17:26.640
The biggest loser just shows that an extreme contest can be followed afterward by a lot of regain.
00:17:26.640 --> 00:17:27.200
That's it.
00:17:27.200 --> 00:17:31.039
It doesn't really tell us much about metabolism like some people claim.
00:17:31.039 --> 00:17:33.599
Now, there is a study that goes in the other direction.
00:17:33.599 --> 00:17:36.400
Okay, it's from the UK called Game of Stones.
00:17:36.400 --> 00:17:37.359
I love that name.
00:17:37.359 --> 00:17:38.400
It was published this year.
00:17:38.400 --> 00:17:42.319
It had 585 men with obesity, average age of 51.
00:17:42.319 --> 00:17:49.519
They got text messages plus a financial incentive set up as money that they could lose.
00:17:49.519 --> 00:17:54.559
Their targets were 5 and 10% of their starting weight over 12 months.
00:17:54.559 --> 00:18:00.240
Now the incentive group lost almost 5%, or I should say 4.8% of their body weight.
00:18:00.240 --> 00:18:02.559
The control group only lost 1.3%.
00:18:02.559 --> 00:18:10.079
And the researchers saw that there was a meaningful level of maintenance out to two years later.
00:18:10.079 --> 00:18:13.039
But they only had data on like two-thirds of the men by then.
00:18:13.039 --> 00:18:21.119
So in some cases, this this says incentives may last past the point that they end, like in terms of uh maintaining the weight loss.
00:18:21.119 --> 00:18:30.480
But the ones that seem to last tend to run longer and they use targets based on your own starting point, and they include actual support of some kind.
00:18:30.480 --> 00:18:32.000
So we'll get to that in a minute.
00:18:32.000 --> 00:18:37.519
Now you've probably heard people say that paying people to lose weight kills their motivation.
00:18:37.519 --> 00:18:40.480
And there's a theory of psychology behind that.
00:18:40.480 --> 00:18:48.480
But in the weight loss studies that tested this directly, the incentives did not reduce people's own motivation.
00:18:48.480 --> 00:18:54.640
I think that the simpler explanation is the reward went away and you had nothing in its place.
00:18:54.640 --> 00:18:59.440
So now you have this vacuum, and of course, you're going to revert to old behavior in many cases.
00:18:59.440 --> 00:19:00.079
All right.
00:19:00.079 --> 00:19:01.359
So what do you do instead?
00:19:01.359 --> 00:19:03.599
I think a challenge can be a great structure.
00:19:03.599 --> 00:19:05.839
You just have to change what you're measuring.
00:19:05.839 --> 00:19:08.640
Stop using weight loss as the be-all end-all.
00:19:08.640 --> 00:19:14.000
Measure the things that tell you whether your body composition is changing compared to where you started.
00:19:14.000 --> 00:19:17.839
I actually asked this question in our Facebook group and people gave responses.
00:19:17.839 --> 00:19:21.119
I said, if if you had to track something other than weight loss, what would it be?
00:19:21.119 --> 00:19:22.079
And I had some good answers.
00:19:22.079 --> 00:19:26.640
It was like body fat percentage and lifts and things like that, all thinking the right thing, right?
00:19:26.640 --> 00:19:33.279
And even then, you you have to evaluate like if I want to track body fat percentage, is that really what I want to track?
00:19:33.279 --> 00:19:39.279
Or do I want to track a proxy or a direct measurement that affects body fat, like my waist measurement, for example?
00:19:39.279 --> 00:19:44.480
So I want you guys to think through like what's the most direct, easily measurable thing.
00:19:44.480 --> 00:19:47.519
So first, you're gonna compare yourself to your own starting point.
00:19:47.519 --> 00:20:04.880
Almost every incentive study that resulted in long-term maintenance of their results used targets based on each person's own baseline, like 5% of your starting weight, 10%, a pound a week, whatever, as opposed to competing against others or absolute numbers, if that makes sense.
00:20:04.880 --> 00:20:09.920
Okay, now there is not a study that directly compares that approach to ranking people against each other.
00:20:09.920 --> 00:20:17.839
So this is more of a consistent pattern from what we have seen, not you know, total proof, which is very hard to get in science, especially nutrition science.
00:20:17.839 --> 00:20:22.400
Second, you should have more than one goal and make at least one of them an outcome.
00:20:22.400 --> 00:20:23.599
Now, why is this important?
00:20:23.599 --> 00:20:32.880
Okay, there's a 2023 study called Firework that looked at 668 lower income adults, 80% of them were women, average age of 48.
00:20:32.880 --> 00:20:40.880
One group got paid for losing weight, one got paid for hitting behavior goals, and one group just got the resources.
00:20:40.880 --> 00:20:52.160
Six months later, 49% of the weight group lost at least 5% of the body weight compared to 39% of the behavior group and only 22% of the resource group.
00:20:52.160 --> 00:20:56.000
And then at 12 months, the two paid groups were at about the same, around 41%.
00:20:56.000 --> 00:21:07.599
The 2026 meta-analysis found that incentives worked better when they targeted more than one thing, and worse when they only targeted habits.
00:21:07.599 --> 00:21:11.759
So I would have habits in there, but not only habits.
00:21:11.759 --> 00:21:13.759
You want to have at least one outcome.
00:21:13.759 --> 00:21:17.519
So we're talking outcome-based goals and habit-based goals.
00:21:17.519 --> 00:21:20.799
At least one of each, I recommend a total of three.
00:21:20.799 --> 00:21:23.119
That is actually how our challenge is set up because it's simple.
00:21:23.119 --> 00:21:25.680
Three is a nice round number, gives you a little flexibility.
00:21:25.680 --> 00:21:31.759
And also, if you don't do as well on one, you can kind of make up for it on the others and still get that psychological win.
00:21:31.759 --> 00:21:38.720
For body composition, the outcomes that I would use are your waist measurement, your strength on a main lift.
00:21:38.720 --> 00:21:43.039
It could be multiple lifts, but I would pick one you're really focused on, like your squat, deadlift, whatever.
00:21:43.039 --> 00:21:50.559
And your trend weight, which is your moving average over time, which is much more representative of body fat than an individual number.
00:21:50.559 --> 00:21:53.680
And I don't mean like just take it once a week and average it.
00:21:53.680 --> 00:21:54.960
I mean do it daily.
00:21:54.960 --> 00:21:57.680
Here's why the scale isn't enough on its own.
00:21:57.680 --> 00:21:58.160
Okay.
00:21:58.160 --> 00:21:59.680
The SWAN study, the famous Swan.
00:21:59.680 --> 00:22:04.720
Study we've talked about that followed more than 1200 women through the menopause transition and used exascans.
00:22:04.720 --> 00:22:06.400
Their fat gain doubled.
00:22:06.400 --> 00:22:17.680
Lean mass started to go down, but body weight didn't really change because or any faster than it was changing, because the fat gain and the muscle loss canceled each other out on the scale.
00:22:17.680 --> 00:22:20.640
Now I talked about menopause weight gain in episode 501.
00:22:20.640 --> 00:22:21.200
Check it out.
00:22:21.200 --> 00:22:22.319
I won't go through it all here.
00:22:22.319 --> 00:22:24.640
If you want to check that out, it's episode 501.
00:22:24.640 --> 00:22:28.240
And and guys, men, gentlemen, it works the other way for you too, right?
00:22:28.240 --> 00:22:34.559
If you're if you're lifting and eating enough protein, you can lose fat and gain muscle while the scale stays the same.
00:22:34.559 --> 00:22:38.880
So measuring only weight is gonna sell you short when it comes to this.
00:22:38.880 --> 00:22:46.319
And you also got to think about like when you do a challenge, you may not even be trying to lose fat per se, anyway.
00:22:46.319 --> 00:22:56.319
Like if your goal is body recomp, you may not even want to have your scale weight or trend weight as a goal because it's not gonna change on purpose, right?
00:22:56.319 --> 00:23:06.480
So using your waist, your strength, your trend weight together for outcomes, if you were to do this on your own and have multiple measures, that's my recommendation as like a coach.
00:23:06.480 --> 00:23:07.039
Okay.
00:23:07.039 --> 00:23:09.599
No study has tested all these combinations.
00:23:09.599 --> 00:23:15.519
We have very poor research on like the overall coaching experience and tracking and measuring lots of things together.
00:23:15.519 --> 00:23:20.319
But look, if your waist is going down and your lifts are going up, you're losing fat and keeping muscle.
00:23:20.319 --> 00:23:23.279
It's that simple, even if the scale isn't moving much.
00:23:23.279 --> 00:23:30.240
Now, if the scale's dropping fast and your lifts are dropping, that to me is also a red flag, anyway.
00:23:30.240 --> 00:23:34.400
Like just because you're losing weight fast, but you're getting weaker and losing muscle, that's not good either.
00:23:34.400 --> 00:23:41.279
So that's that's the second thing is the, you know, having more than one goal, making at least one of them an outcome.
00:23:41.279 --> 00:23:43.599
Other ones can be habits, like we mentioned before.
00:23:43.599 --> 00:23:46.559
I'm not even going to get into the details on that here, but you know what I mean.
00:23:46.559 --> 00:23:48.960
It could be steps, it could be uh protein.
00:23:48.960 --> 00:23:49.920
There's lots of habits.
00:23:49.920 --> 00:23:52.000
The third thing is to cap the score.
00:23:52.000 --> 00:23:53.039
Now, this is interesting.
00:23:53.039 --> 00:24:03.759
If you get, you know, if you're giving yourself more points for doing something faster, you're back to the original problem where going more extreme, it doesn't mean more of a good thing.
00:24:03.759 --> 00:24:04.720
Does that make sense?
00:24:04.720 --> 00:24:08.240
Like it's got to be realistic within the time frame.
00:24:08.240 --> 00:24:10.400
And so you set your goals based on that.
00:24:10.400 --> 00:24:15.279
And that's why, like in our challenge, we have a coach looking at it with you and saying, This makes sense or this doesn't make sense.
00:24:15.279 --> 00:24:16.400
Here's what makes more sense.
00:24:16.400 --> 00:24:20.640
Because we don't want you losing the challenge just because you have unrealistic expectations either.
00:24:20.640 --> 00:24:29.359
Fourth, this is the last point I'm making in this section, is have someone who knows what they're doing look at, approve, sanity check your targets.
00:24:29.359 --> 00:24:32.160
Kind of what I just mentioned that we do in our challenge with a coach.
00:24:32.160 --> 00:24:45.119
We we know that the 2026 meta-analysis I talked about, incentives paired with active support, where someone is working with you, perform better than incentives paired with passive things, like a handout, like education or something.
00:24:45.119 --> 00:24:47.359
That's that's the closest evidence I have.
00:24:47.359 --> 00:24:55.839
It's indirect evidence, but I think it makes intuitive anecdotal sense as well that having support versus not having support is going to make you more successful.
00:24:55.839 --> 00:24:57.839
I mean, just seems logical.
00:24:57.839 --> 00:25:00.880
Now, with all four of these, you keep lifting weights.
00:25:00.880 --> 00:25:07.839
You keep lifting weights because we know adding resistance training helps you preserve your lean mass, helps you get the result you want, helps you get the body composition you want.
00:25:07.839 --> 00:25:11.519
If you take one thing from this episode, keep lifting, even if you go into a deficit.
00:25:11.519 --> 00:25:22.079
And if you're one of the folks that reach out to me that's new to my list or the show, and you just have this thing, this allergy to lifting weights, and I've seen it in some, I've I've seen it like very direct, like, well, I'm not gonna do that.
00:25:22.079 --> 00:25:23.039
So what else can I do?
00:25:23.039 --> 00:25:26.000
And it's like, I'm sorry, you have to be lifting weights.
00:25:26.000 --> 00:25:35.200
If you want better health, better function, better aging, longevity, lower insulin sensitivity, easier fat loss, the list goes on and on.
00:25:35.200 --> 00:25:35.680
All right.
00:25:35.680 --> 00:25:40.559
The last thing to do is to plan out what happens after the challenge before you start the challenge.
00:25:40.559 --> 00:25:44.480
These studies all show that the results tend to fade when the incentives go away.
00:25:44.480 --> 00:25:52.880
So if you can decide on day one what you're gonna continue afterwards so you don't have a big gap, okay, that is gonna help you a lot.
00:25:52.880 --> 00:25:56.000
For some people, that's continuing on with the coaching that you signed up for.
00:25:56.000 --> 00:25:58.319
Like if you join our challenge, you're welcome to continue.
00:25:58.319 --> 00:26:01.599
And whoever wins the challenge will get their next three months free anyway.
00:26:01.599 --> 00:26:09.440
But all right, before we wrap up, I told you I'd share one thing that nearly tripled how many people kept their weight off, involving a text message.
00:26:09.440 --> 00:26:15.039
I'm gonna get that to us to a second, but just a last reminder about the challenge, because this is really important, guys.
00:26:15.039 --> 00:26:27.599
If you want this kind of support and accountability and a challenge set up the exact way I described in this episode with three goals, a starting point, cap scorers, someone to look at it, make sure it's the right challenge to give you guidance along the way.
00:26:27.599 --> 00:26:40.079
And most importantly, each week help you make the adjustments needed to be successful with your training, your nutrition, your sleep, your stress, all of it through the holidays, through Thanksgiving, through Christmas, go to witsandweights.com/ challenge.
00:26:40.079 --> 00:26:43.119
It starts Monday, October 12th, goes for 12 weeks.
00:26:43.119 --> 00:26:48.960
The prize for the winner is three months of free coaching plus a private two-on-one call with me and Carol.
00:26:48.960 --> 00:26:52.079
But you win anyway by getting the result because of the support.
00:26:52.079 --> 00:26:55.119
So go to witsandweights.com/ challenge.
00:26:55.119 --> 00:26:59.759
All right, before your next fat loss phase, here's the tip I have for you.
00:26:59.759 --> 00:27:02.000
Decide who you're gonna do it with.
00:27:02.000 --> 00:27:04.799
Okay, now this is a very open statement.
00:27:04.799 --> 00:27:08.000
Do I mean having one accountability partner who's a family member?
00:27:08.000 --> 00:27:08.480
No.
00:27:08.480 --> 00:27:09.920
This is a very open statement.
00:27:09.920 --> 00:27:16.480
All right, there was a study by Wing and Jeffrey with 166 people in a four-month weight loss program.
00:27:16.480 --> 00:27:23.279
Some of them joined alone, others joined with three friends or family members and got social support strategies on top.
00:27:23.279 --> 00:27:27.680
Of the people who joined alone, 24% kept all their weight off for the next six months.
00:27:27.680 --> 00:27:32.480
In the group that joined with friends and got support, 66% kept all of it.
00:27:32.480 --> 00:27:42.720
So before you start your next challenge or goal or whatever, text one person and ask them if they want to do it with you and check in with each other with each other once a week.
00:27:42.720 --> 00:27:45.920
It's a it's a classic accountability partner strategy.
00:27:45.920 --> 00:27:47.200
Family counts.
00:27:47.200 --> 00:27:50.559
And of course, if you're in our challenge, you're going to have that by default.
00:27:50.559 --> 00:27:54.000
You're gonna have a group that starts the same week and you're gonna have a coach.
00:27:54.000 --> 00:27:59.839
You're gonna have the community support and you're gonna have the coaching support, which means you will be successful if you put in the work.
00:27:59.839 --> 00:28:02.160
Um, if you can bring a friend along, even better.
00:28:02.160 --> 00:28:05.200
All right, until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights.
00:28:05.200 --> 00:28:07.920
And remember, weight loss is just one number.
00:28:07.920 --> 00:28:11.200
It often doesn't tell you what you're truly achieving.
00:28:11.200 --> 00:28:15.440
Things like your waist, your strength, your habits tell you a lot more about what's happening to your body.
00:28:15.440 --> 00:28:19.680
I'm Philip Pape, and I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits & Weights Podcast.
