The Advice to "Just Move" is NOT Enough for Health and Body Composition | Quick Wits

Transcript

Philip Pape: 0:00

Just move more. You've heard it a million times as the cure-all for getting in shape, but is this generic advice really enough to transform your physique? Tune in to today's QuickWits as I expose the truth about why just moving will not give you the lean, muscular body you're after and what you should be doing instead. Welcome to the Wits and Weights podcast. I'm your host, philip Pape, and this twice-a-week podcast is dedicated to helping you achieve physical self-mastery by getting stronger, optimizing your nutrition and upgrading your body composition. We'll uncover science-backed strategies for movement, metabolism, muscle and mindset, with a skeptical eye on the fitness industry, so you can look and feel your absolute best. Let's dive right in. Welcome back to another Quick Wits, where we cut through the fluff. We get straight to the good stuff when it comes to building your best body, living your best life, and today I want to talk about a piece of advice that always drives me absolutely crazy, and you see it in newspapers, magazines, internet articles. It's usually these listicles and these fluff pieces, and they give you their top seven tips for getting in shape and the idea that if you want to get lean, you want to get tone, you want to get healthy and strong, all you've got to do is just move more, like that's the key to health. Just move more, right. Just get up and don't sit around all day and move more. And while it's great to move of course we talk about it all the time this advice is not helpful and it's also insufficient, right? It's the kind of quote, unquote, well-meaning advice you get from your doctor, right, who says just gotta eat less and move more. And we're not talking about eating less, moving more per se. We're talking about the advice specifically to just move more, and I love things that allow you to get more steps and get off your butt parking further from the store, taking the to overall movement, and we get it. We live in a society that's largely sedentary, so it makes sense that the message would be let's just get people to move their bodies more and move in that right direction. But the problem is this is that typical, generic, one size fits all advice, and it completely misses the mark when it comes to actually changing your body composition and not only building the physique you're after the lean, muscular physique but staving off muscle wasting and you know the loss of bone density and all the things that come with aging as well. Just simply avoiding that. Because if the goal is to burn fat or shed fat, to build muscle, to improve your strength, you know, let's be real, moving more is not going to cut it at all, because you're not using your muscles, you're barely using them. Let's say you're using them just kind of as a hoping not to lose them, if you're lucky. And the problem is, the muscle loss with age is accelerating much faster than your ability to keep it on. If you are not strength training, it is just scratching the surface. So to really make a difference in your physique, you have to be engaging in regular strength training with progressive overload.

Philip Pape: 3:10

Now those listening to this show are like yeah, I know that. Why are you telling me another quick? What's about the obvious? Well, because some of you aren't doing it right. Right, or some of you have been going to the gym for years Maybe you're on the older side, maybe you're not and you've been lifting the same weights. You haven't been increasing some uh measure of intensity volume, what have you? And so you really have not been stimulating growth.

Philip Pape: 3:32

And the older you get, the more important this is, and I'm sorry, but no amount of you know. Walking in the parking lot or walking after lunch is going to give you that same muscle building effect. You know, even if you are running and doing, you know, biking and things like that that are athletic kind of pursuits. So let's just be totally clear At the end of the day, just moving, just moving more is, is not, not, might not, it is not enough to get you the body you want. It may get you off the couch, but it's not going to get you the body you want.

Philip Pape: 4:01

For that you have to be willing to do the hard work to push yourself to keep showing up and lift those weights, even when it's not easy and for many of you it may not be something that you're used to. It may be difficult at first, it may be difficult for a while, and for many of us who really want to push ourselves constantly to grow, it's never really easy. But you learn to love the process and the process itself becomes easy in terms of consistency, if not necessarily execution, because it's a hard thing to push our muscles to grow and that's the secret to transforming anything, especially your physique but also your life, right? Not just moving more, but good, old-fashioned effort, consistency. Um, not just moving more, but good, old fashioned effort, consistency, a relentless commitment to becoming stronger, becoming fitter, becoming the the most incredible version of yourself.

Philip Pape: 4:47

So next time you read somewhere and it says just move more, you could just smile, nod like I do, you know, a little bit of a sneer if you will, but know that deep down you are on a different path. You are in the 1%, the 0.1%, let's say. It's this path of purpose, of intensity, of unwavering dedication and growth, personal growth, physical growth, all of it. And with that fire in your belly right, with the let's be poetic here the iron in your hands, there's nothing you can't achieve when you have that mindset, and I'm hoping today's episode is inspiring you beyond just lifting weights, but really to go out and everything you do, show out, show the world what real transformation looks like, right? One rep, one set, one training session at a time, both physically and metaphorically, whatever you're doing.

Philip Pape: 5:33

So that's it for today's diatribe. Another unfiltered episode of Quick Wits. Until next time, keep forging that unbreakable strength, both inside and out. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Wits and Weights. If you found value in today's episode and know someone else who's looking to level up their wits or weights, please take a moment to share this episode with them, and make sure to hit the follow button in your podcast platform right now to catch the next episode. Until then, stay strong.