Wits & Weights | Evidence-Based Fitness & Nutrition for Lifters

601 episodes

She SMASHED the Raw Squat World Record at 515 lb with THIS Training Program (Steph Mager) | Ep 436
06/2/2026 | 57 mins.
Get Fitness Lab, the #1 adaptive coaching app that adjusts to YOUR recovery, YOUR schedule, and YOUR body. Build muscle, lose fat, and get stronger with daily personalized guidance.
Now 20% through February 17. Take the free 2-minute quiz to see your custom plan before you buy.
—
How does someone smash a 515-pound raw squat at 181 pounds bodyweight?
What separates elite strength training from the way most people lift weights? And are deloads quietly sabotaging your body recomp progress?
Body recomp, strength training, and lifting weights look very different when world-record powerlifter Steph Mager joins me on this episode. Steph holds the all-time raw squat world record at 181 pounds bodyweight, and she breaks down how a personalized conjugate system helped her build muscle, protect her metabolism, and avoid burnout.

We unpack why most lifters misunderstand deloads, how evidence-based training balances max effort with volume, and how nutrition and macros shift between off-season and meet prep.

We also dig into women’s fitness, hypertrophy, recovery, and mindset, including how elite lifters manage stress, fuel muscle building, and approach weight loss without sacrificing performance.

Tune in to learn more.
Today, you’ll learn all about:

0:00 – World record squat context
2:35 – Athlete mindset and ego
9:02– Conjugate training explained
11:58 – Max effort vs dynamic work
26:01 – Deloads most lifters misuse
38:53 – Nutrition and protein targets
50:39 – Learning from failed meets
54:06 – Developing an athlete mindset
Episode resources:
Instagram: @stephm.fit

📱 Get Fitness Lab (now 20% off) - Science-based coaching app for fat loss, muscle building, and strength training over 40. It adapts to your nutrition, recovery, and training to improve body composition without the stress.
🎓 Join Physique University - Evidence-based nutrition coaching and strength training to help you lose fat, build muscle, and master your metabolism with support + accountability (FREE custom nutrition plan with code FREEPLAN).
👥 Join our Facebook community - Free fat loss, muscle building, and body recomposition strategies for adults over 40 who want practical, science-backed fitness guidance.

👋 Ask a question or find Philip Pape on Instagram
5 Signs You're Building Muscle (Even When the Mirror Says Otherwise) | Ep 435
04/2/2026 | 31 mins.
Upgrade your sleep and recovery with Cozy Earth's bamboo pajamas and blankets. Temperature-regulating, lightweight, and designed to help you fall asleep faster. Go to witsandweights.com/cozyearth
--
You're training consistently, eating enough protein, doing everything you're supposed to, but when you look in the mirror or step on the scale, nothing seems to be changing.
Or worse, you look softer than last week. What's going on?
The mirror and scale are terrible short-term indicators of muscle growth.
They're influenced by glycogen levels, water retention, inflammation, and your nervous system, none of which reflect actual changes in muscle or fat tissue. If you're judging progress by how you looked this morning vs. last week, you're setting yourself up for frustration and bad decisions.
Learn the 5 reliable signs that you're actually building muscle. You'll also hear the common scenarios where feedback gets confusing (deloads, building phases, body recomp, and post-diet maintenance) and exactly what to expect during each one.
Plus, we answer a listener question about what to track during a deload week.
Whether you're focused on strength training over 40, working on body recomp, or just trying to build muscle without the mental games, you'll get a framework to trust your process.
Timestamps:
0:00 – Why the mirror and scale are misleading when building muscle
3:28 – How glycogen and water create short-term visual fluctuations
5:32 – 5 reliable signs you're building muscle
10:48 – Strength progression and recovery as leading indicators
14:32 – Changes in your clothes and performance
18:10 – Biofeedback markers (sleep, energy, hunger)
20:29 – Sleep and recovery tools for better adaptation
23:07 – What to expect during a deload week
28:20 – Reading your data correctly early in a building phase
31:23 – Body recomp and post-diet maintenance pitfalls

📱 Get Fitness Lab (now 20% off) - Science-based coaching app for fat loss, muscle building, and strength training over 40. It adapts to your nutrition, recovery, and training to improve body composition without the stress.
🎓 Join Physique University - Evidence-based nutrition coaching and strength training to help you lose fat, build muscle, and master your metabolism with support + accountability (FREE custom nutrition plan with code FREEPLAN).
👥 Join our Facebook community - Free fat loss, muscle building, and body recomposition strategies for adults over 40 who want practical, science-backed fitness guidance.

👋 Ask a question or find Philip Pape on Instagram
Stop Blaming Menopause for Muscle Loss (Here's What's Really Happening) | Ep 434
02/2/2026 | 41 mins.
If what worked in your 30s isn't working anymore, it's not your fault. Your body and life have changed. The Fitness Lab app adapts to your sleep, recovery, and stress so you can actually build muscle and lose fat over 40. It also now syncs with Apple Health (iPhone version only).
Podcast listeners get 20% off at bit.ly/fitness-lab-pod20
--
Does menopause cause muscle loss or make it harder to build muscle?
The fitness industry loves to blame hormones for everything. Wellness gurus want to sell you special programs, protocols, and supplements for perimenopause and postmenopause.
But the research shows that postmenopausal women build muscle and gain strength with resistance training just as effectively as younger women. The stimulus-response relationship doesn't break after 50 (or 40).
So what's really happening?
Learn why the "menopause steals muscle" narrative is mostly a timing coincidence, and what's actually driving the decline.
We break down the 5 factors that "drift" during midlife, where hormone replacement therapy (HRT) fits into the picture, and specific strategies that work for women over 40 regardless of hormonal status.
If you've felt like your body stopped responding, this episode offers both the evidence and the practical framework to test that assumption. Building muscle after menopause isn't about fighting your biology, it's about adjusting your inputs.
Episode Resources:
Take the free 2-minute quiz to see if Fitness Lab is right for you
Timestamps:
0:00 - The dangerous menopause muscle loss narrative
3:50 - What the research shows about strength training after menopause
7:30 - Life changes vs. hormones (correlation vs. causation)
10:52 - 5 factors that actually drive midlife muscle loss
18:45 - How to train for muscle building over 40 (not just "staying active")
22:10 - Protein targets and meal distribution for women over 40
24:55 - Why sleep and recovery become non-negotiable in midlife
28:05 - The body composition feedback loop and metabolism myths
31:15 - Where HRT fits
38:15 - How negative messaging creates the outcomes it predicts
41:20 - Weekly training structure for building muscle

📱 Get Fitness Lab (now 20% off) - Science-based coaching app for fat loss, muscle building, and strength training over 40. It adapts to your nutrition, recovery, and training to improve body composition without the stress.
🎓 Join Physique University - Evidence-based nutrition coaching and strength training to help you lose fat, build muscle, and master your metabolism with support + accountability (FREE custom nutrition plan with code FREEPLAN).
👥 Join our Facebook community - Free fat loss, muscle building, and body recomposition strategies for adults over 40 who want practical, science-backed fitness guidance.

👋 Ask a question or find Philip Pape on Instagram
Can Electrical Stimulation Build Muscle and Speed Recovery? (Garrett Salpeter) | Ep 433
30/1/2026 | 1h
Get Fitness Lab (20% off for listeners), the #1 coaching app that adapts to YOUR recovery, YOUR schedule, and YOUR body. Build muscle, lose fat, and get stronger with daily personalized guidance.
—

If you train hard, want to build muscle, and still lose fat, how do you actually recover faster without breaking yourself down? Can electrical stimulation really support body recomp and strength training, or is it just another shiny gadget?
Garrett Salpeter joined me to connect the dots between neuroscience, rehab, and performance. We break down how early strength gains are driven by neural adaptation, why pain and restricted movement are often software problems not hardware ones, and where most recovery tools fall short.
You’ll learn why traditional TENS units underdeliver, how direct current stimulation works differently, and what the research shows for muscle building and rehab without excessive joint stress.

If you care about evidence-based fitness, smarter recovery, and training hard without burning out as you get older, this conversation will challenge how you think about recovery. Tune in to learn more.
Today, you’ll learn all about:
0:00 – Electrical stimulation myths
3:49 – Nervous system and strength
7:10 – Pain, protection, adaptation
15:08 – Fatigue and central governor
20:19 – Direct vs alternating current
31:40 – Muscle growth without load
35:45 – Real-world bodybuilding results
40:12 – Clinically designed recovery tools
50:40 – Regulation and real-world use
Episode resources:
Website: neu.fit
Instagram: @neufitrfp / @garrett.salpeter
YouTube: @NeuFit

📱 Get Fitness Lab (now 20% off) - Science-based coaching app for fat loss, muscle building, and strength training over 40. It adapts to your nutrition, recovery, and training to improve body composition without the stress.
🎓 Join Physique University - Evidence-based nutrition coaching and strength training to help you lose fat, build muscle, and master your metabolism with support + accountability (FREE custom nutrition plan with code FREEPLAN).
👥 Join our Facebook community - Free fat loss, muscle building, and body recomposition strategies for adults over 40 who want practical, science-backed fitness guidance.

👋 Ask a question or find Philip Pape on Instagram
The Body Recomp Advantage for Appetite and Fat Loss After 40 | Ep 432
28/1/2026 | 34 mins.
Try Calocurb, a 100% natural appetite support supplement that activates your body's GLP-1 signals to reduce cravings by 40% and hunger by 30% within one hour. It's a helpful tool for your next recomp or fat loss phase. Get 10% off at witsandweights.com/calocurb
--
If you're over 40, cutting calories to lose fat can backfire.
Why? Because if your approach is too aggressive or your stress is too high, your hunger spikes, training suffers, and you often regain everything you lost when you increase calories again.
Body recomposition (losing fat while building or preserving muscle simultaneously) can avoid this. It's not just a physique strategy but also an appetite strategy.
In this finale of our 8-part appetite series, you'll learn why body recomp avoids the hunger cascade that derails most fat loss attempts.
Discover my Recomp Ladder framework that prioritizes your levers in the right order.
Get 3 ready-to-use body recomp plans: aggressive maintenance for efficiency-focused recomp, small deficit recomp for faster results without hunger, and the build-then-mini-cut approach for breaking plateaus.
You'll also learn who recomp works best for (hint: if you're over 40 with an inconsistent lifting history, you're in the sweet spot), the 5 most common recomp pitfalls, and a simple 2-metric check to know if your recomp is actually working (no scale weight required).
Timestamps:
0:00 - Do you actually need a deficit to lose fat?
3:20 - What body recomp really means (and what it's not)
5:22 - Recomp as an appetite management strategy
7:10 - 3 reasons recomp works better after 40
11:32 - Who body recomp works best for
14:43 - When recomp gets harder (and what to do instead)
15:53 - Appetite support during recomp
18:05 - The Recomp Ladder (5 levels)
21:42 - 3 specific plans for body recomp
25:04 - 5 common recomp mistakes and how to fix them
30:35 - Bonus: Quick 2-metric body recomp check (hint: NOT the scale)

📱 Get Fitness Lab (now 20% off) - Science-based coaching app for fat loss, muscle building, and strength training over 40. It adapts to your nutrition, recovery, and training to improve body composition without the stress.
🎓 Join Physique University - Evidence-based nutrition coaching and strength training to help you lose fat, build muscle, and master your metabolism with support + accountability (FREE custom nutrition plan with code FREEPLAN).
👥 Join our Facebook community - Free fat loss, muscle building, and body recomposition strategies for adults over 40 who want practical, science-backed fitness guidance.

👋 Ask a question or find Philip Pape on Instagram

More Education podcasts

Trending Education podcasts

About Wits & Weights | Evidence-Based Fitness & Nutrition for Lifters

Wits & Weights is a strength and nutrition podcast where in every episode I put a popular piece of fitness advice under the microscope, find the hidden reason it doesn't work, and give you the deceptively simple fix that does.For skeptics of the fitness industry who are tired of following the rules and still not seeing results. If you've been lifting weights, tracking macros, and doing "all the right things" but your body composition hasn't changed, you're probably overcomplicating it. This is the fitness podcast that shows you how to build muscle, lose fat, and achieve a real body recomp by focusing only on what the evidence actually supports.Evidence-based fat loss coach Philip Pape brings an engineer's approach to strength training, nutrition, and metabolism. Instead of another generic program or meal plan, you get specific, science-based strategies for optimizing body composition, whether you're focused on building muscle, losing fat, or both. The focus is on strength training over 40, hormone health, perimenopause and menopause, and longevity.You've seen the conflicting advice. One expert says cut carbs, the next says eat more. One says train six days a week, another says three is plenty. Building the body you want doesn't have to be this confusing or time-consuming. By using your wits (systems + identity-based behavior change) and lifting weights, you can build muscle definition, improve your physique, and maintain your results for life without rebound weight gain.You'll learn smart, efficient strategies for movement, metabolism, muscle, and mindset, such as:- Why fat loss matters more than weight loss for both your health and your physique- Why all the macros, including protein, fats, and yes even carbs, are critical to body composition- How just 3 hours a week of proper hypertrophy training can deliver better results than most people get in twice that time- Why building muscle is the single most powerful thing you can do for metabolic health, longevity, and aging well- Why perimenopause and menopause don't have to derail your progress when your training and nutrition are dialed in- How shifting the way you think about fitness can unlock more physical (and personal) growth than any program aloneIf you're ready to learn what actually works with evidence-based training and nutrition, hit "follow" and let's engineer your best physique ever!Popular Guests Include: Mike Matthews (author of Bigger Leaner Stronger), Greg Nuckols (Stronger by Science), Alan Aragon (nutrition researcher), Eric Helms (3D Muscle Journey), Dr. Spencer Nadolsky (Docs Who Lift), Bill Campbell (exercise science researcher), Jordan Feigenbaum (Barbell Medicine), Holly Baxter (evidence-based physique coach), Laurin Conlin (physique coach), Lauren Colenso-Semple (nutrition researcher), Karen Martel (hormone optimization expert), Steph Gaudreau (women's strength and nutrition), Bryan Boorstein (hypertrophy coach)Popular Topics Include: hormone health, metabolism optimization, hypertrophy training, longevity and healthy aging, nutrition tracking, best protein powder selection, strength training over 40, women's fitness, perimenopause, menopause, muscle building, body recomp, macros and nutrition tracking

Podcast website

Education Health & Wellness Fitness Nutrition Self-Improvement

Listen to Wits & Weights | Evidence-Based Fitness & Nutrition for Lifters, The Observer Effect: Conversations with Researchers and many other podcasts from around the world with the radio.net app

Get the free radio.net app

Stations and podcasts to bookmark
Stream via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth
Supports Carplay & Android Auto
Many other app features

Open app

Get the free radio.net app

Stations and podcasts to bookmark
Stream via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth
Supports Carplay & Android Auto
Many other app features

Wits & Weights | Evidence-Based Fitness & Nutrition for Lifters

Scan code,
download the app,
start listening.