Wits & Weights | Strength Training & Fat Loss Over 40

This is another "Science Says" episode, where we break down a single recent article relevant to the fitness (lifting, nutrition, health) industry and strategies you can apply right away based on what the science says. Today's article is "Reduction in obesity and related comorbid conditions after diet-induced weight loss or exercise-induced weight loss in men. A randomized, cont...

Whether you’re trying to lose weight, get healthier, increase strength or performance, or just look and feel better in your body, improving your body composition is the path to overall health. Body composition refers to the percentage of muscle versus fat in your body, which determines how “lean” you are. The lower your body fat percentage (or higher your muscle percentage) relative to your weight...

Eric D’Agati joins me to talk about training. Eric has spent over 20 years in the fitness industry as a coach, trainer, and instructor. Each year, he travels around the world teaching and speaking to trainers, coaches, and therapists as a lead instructor for Functional Movement Systems and guest speaker for prestigious organizations including Mt. Sinai Hospital, New York University Medical, the Na...

Today I am joined by Louise Valentine to talk about how to achieve sustainable fitness goals by doing less rather than more, how to work WITH our physiology and not against it, how to optimize health for women 35 and older, and actionable tips you can start applying right away to unlock your best health despite age, a busy life, or obstacles. Louise is a Physiologist, best-selling author, avid run...

What if you have significant weight to lose—around 30 pounds or more? Most people have no problem losing weight . . . in the short term. What usually follows is a rebound, usually because calories or the diet itself were so restrictive that they were impossible to maintain for more than a few months. In this episode, we discuss a completely different approach. Instead of “weight loss,” we want to...

This is our first "Science Says" episode, where we break down a single recent article relevant to the fitness (lifting, nutrition, health) industry and strategies you can apply right away based on what the science says. Today's article is "Evenly distributed protein intake over 3 meals augments resistance exercise–induced muscle hypertrophy in healthy young men" by Yasuda,...

If you could be in a calorie surplus for three-quarters of the year and constantly get leaner, would that appeal to you? Today’s topic is something that ended my many, repeated unproductive cycles of crash dieting and changed my mindset to one of abundance, performance, improved body composition, a better relationship with food, and sustainable results. You’re going to learn how to periodize your...

This episode is all about achieving LASTING results: finding that place where you no longer have to yo-yo diet, jump from one program to another, or feel like the only way to success is severe calorie restriction, excessive cardio, or short-term transformations. If what you’ve tried before just has NOT worked, maybe it’s time to engage the help of another person. Someone who can hold you accountab...

How do you know when you’ve reached your goal? If you’re trying to lose 20 pounds, do you just instinctively change your eating behaviors and eventually magically arrive at your target weight? If you’re trying to build muscle, do you go to the gym without a program and randomly hit up different weights and machines, rep ranges, rest periods, and muscle groups? Chances are, when you’re committed to...

In this episode, we’re talking about what to do with your carefully-honed, consistent, so-far-successful training and nutrition plans when you go on vacation! Summer’s here, and despite exorbitant gas prices and airfare, we can’t help but get away from it all, even for just a week or even a long weekend. Vacations are the perfect time to shut off those devices, relax with a drink in your hand, and...

Today we have another special interview guest! Ken Caputo is a lifelong athlete who eventually found his way to strength training in his late 30s—something he and I have in common! From an early age, he competed in swimming, track, cross country, and even pole vaulting and spring board diving at the University of Connecticut, eventually becoming an expert in martial arts. I invited Ken on today be...

Today’s topic may not seem exciting, but it could be the critical missing ingredient to your nutrition and recovery, whether everything else is dialed in or not. I’m talking about sleep: too little sleep, low quality sleep, irregular sleep, and poor sleep habits. Many people suffer from insomnia or a sleep disorder, and a lack of sleep can lead to terrible consequences like medical errors and car...

I have the honor of hosting a very special guest, Tyla Serro, for the first ever interview on this podcast. Tyla is not only an engineering colleague of mine—we work for the same aerospace company—she finds time to train and compete as a raw powerlifter, placing second this March in the 2022 USPA Connecticut state championship in her weight class…and only missing first in a close tiebreaker agains...

Last year, I went under the knife for a microdiscectomy, a type of minimally invasive spine surgery where a portion of a herniated disc is removed using microsurgical tools. In this episode, I share my story of what happened, how I dealt with low back pain in the context of health and fitness, the surgery and recovery process, and lessons I learned along the way. I hope my story sheds light on som...

Let’s say you’re a busy, working professional, perhaps in your 40’s with a family, a mortgage, and a high-stress job. But you want to improve your health through lifting and nutrition. That’s why you’re listening to this podcast! The last thing you want is a one-size-fits-all training program that has you lifting six days per week with 90-minute-long sessions. Something so out of whack with your c...

As a follow-up to the last episode on losing weight without losing muscle, I want to address the frustration many of us have experienced with either not being able to lose weight or hitting a plateau, usually in the form of scale weight no longer going down. This is a complex, nuanced topic that ultimately comes down to understanding the root cause behind being unable to lose weight and taking bac...

The last episode covered why gaining weight while training hard is an effective way to get lean by packing on muscle, increasing metabolism, and making it easier to lose fat later. Today we’re tackling the “losing fat” part of getting lean. If you haven’t listened to episode 12, go back and do that first. If you’re a newer lifter who is not extremely overweight, your best gains will come through h...

It seems that everyone wants to get “lean” these days. There’s almost an obsession with six-pack abs, visual muscularity, and thinness if you’re to believe the legions of fitness influencers who appear ready for an instant photo shoot on any given day. I’ve got nothing against maintaining a healthy weight, and in fact this podcast is all about finding a sustainable way to get stronger, build muscl...

You decided to get stronger, improve your body composition, and become more healthy. You selected a simple but effective barbell-based strength training program and committed to consistent training. During your first year of lifting, there will be many new things to learn, habits to develop, and temptations to lead you off your chosen path. After going through the process myself and talking with h...

Sometimes advice from the fitness industry can be overwhelming. There are so many ways to program your lifting, eat your food, and meet your goals that we often get lost in the small details. At the end of the day, it’s the BIG details, applied consistently, that contribute the most to your progress and result in sustainable habits of success in getting big and strong, losing or gaining weight, an...

Today I share some helpful and sometimes counterintuitive things I’ve learned over the last year about fitness and nutrition that either changed my mind or were completely new to me. As a forty-something-year-old lifter who has only been training seriously and effectively for the last few years, I used to believe a lot of nonsense—ideas, myths, preconceptions, assumptions, whatever you want to cal...

One of our big goals on this podcast is sustainability and consistency, and the whole process of going to the gym is a huge barrier for many of us. The hassle of preparing your clothing, gym bag, nutrition, and then factoring in drive time, weather, convenience within our schedules, compounded by access to random equipment at the gym, sharing a rack or barbell with other members, and sometimes dea...

I had the pleasure of being on another podcast a few months ago called Finding Your Strength Radio Powered by Romeo Athletics, where I was interviewed by Andrew Romeo. He’s an excellent host, experienced coach, and the owner of my long-time gym, Romeo Athletics. He asked me a ton of great questions about my journey to fitness, how I got into lifting and strength training, different movements and p...

Today we wrap up our foundational series by diving into some practical strategies, tools, and life hacks to set your fitness and nutrition habits on autopilot. If you’re at all familiar with the autopilot in an airplane—and as a side note, I used to fly small planes years ago and still work as an engineer in the aerospace industry—you know it’s a tool to eliminate constant manual intervention by t...

Today is the DIET and NUTRITION episode, one of my favorite topics. Although this IS a podcast focused on lifting and getting strong, what you eat—and more importantly, HOW MUCH you eat—plays a huge role in your ability to lose fat (while preserving muscle) or gain muscle (while limiting fat gain). You can’t have one without the other—and I’m going to assume you’re here because you want to get str...