Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 101 - 10 (Non-Tracking) Fat-Loss-Habits!

Episode Date: May 6, 2021

In this episode, coach danny outlines the fundamentals of body fat loss and shares TEN of his favorite habits that you can implement TODAY to make fat loss easier.---Thanks For Listening!---RESOURCES/COACHING: I am all about education and that is not limited to this podcast! Feel free to grab a FREE guide (Nutrition, Training, Macros, Etc!) HERE! Interested in Working With Coach Danny and His One-On-One Coaching Team? Click HERE! Want To Have YOUR Question Answered On an Upcoming Episode of DYNAMIC DIALOGUE? You Can Submit It HERE!Want to Support The Podcast AND Get in Better Shape? Grab a Program HERE!----SOCIAL LINKS: Sign up for the trainer mentorship HEREFollow Coach Danny on INSTAGRAMFollow Coach Danny on TwitterFollow Coach Danny on FacebookGet More In-Depth Articles Written By Yours’ Truly HERE!Support the Show.

Welcome in everybody to the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. As always, I am your host, Coach Danny Matrenga, and today we're going to unpack some stuff in the nutrition space, specifically as it pertains to helping you, your clients, your family members, your loved ones, lose those unwanted pounds that so many people are struggling with, whether it's just unwanted weight that we've been carrying around for years, or maybe it's weight that we've put on recently as a result of some of the lifestyle changes many of us had to make with the pandemic. One thing's for sure is that you certainly know or even are somebody who probably wants to change their body composition. And I know most of you are probably aware that to do that, to lose body fat, to change body composition requires creating a calorie deficit and being patient. But for a lot of people, and a lot of us have very restrictive lives, restrictive schedules, only focusing on the, you know, kind of very mundane and very restrictive things such as tracking your calories and tracking your exercise can get really, really boring,

really, really quickly. And a lot of people fall off the wagon. And other than like the mechanistic things that drive weight loss, like I said, that being of course a calorie deficit. Today, I want to share 10 non calorie tracking, fat loss habits, things that you can implement, whether you want to count calories or not, whether you are counting calories already, whether you're just somebody who's totally new to this, and you just want to maybe lose a few pounds. These are what I would describe as habits that will help you do just that. And there are things that you can implement today. Every single one of these things

is something that you could implement today. Whether that's, again, in your own life, with your clients, wherever you're at with this, I think that these are going to be very digestible. Now, before we get into that, as always, I just want to remind you guys, if you haven't already and you're listening on iTunes, please leave me a five-star rating and review. That helps other people just like you find the podcast, and they are unbelievably valuable

to me. And if you leave me a review, you send me a message, I'll thank you personally if I see it. So those things really mean a lot to me, as does sharing the podcast, your Instagram story, sharing it with your friends. If you're listening and you haven't yet subscribed, please do consider subscribing, whether that's on iTunes, Spotify,

or wherever you listen to your podcasts. So getting into these 10 habits, we need to do a little bit of groundwork. We kind of talked about it earlier, but we know that energy balance and a calorie deficit are the kind of mechanistic pieces earlier, but we know that energy balance and a calorie deficit are the kind of mechanistic pieces that drive fat loss. Meaning all of these habits are going to support keeping you in a calorie deficit and keeping you in that energy balance space that you need to lose body

fat, but they're not tips related to tracking. They're not trips, tips really related to tracking. They're not tips really related to exercise or fat loss specific supplementation. These are things that I think are really easy to implement habits and habit changes and even habit stacks, and we'll get to that in a minute, that you could implement today. And so starting off with habit number one, we are talking about cooking more of your own meals. we are talking about cooking more of your own meals. And here's the big reason why. Number one, it gives you a lot more ownership over what you put into your body. Okay? When you go out to eat at a restaurant, at least here in America, you're going to see that portions are really kind of dialed up to satisfy, to make you feel like you're getting a good value, not necessarily with anything related to energy balance in mind.

So portions are huge when you tend to eat out. If I'm not mistaken, the average, and I looked this up not too long ago, but the average restaurant dish has around 1,000 to 1,200 calories. If you were to make the same dish at home, it might have quite a bit less because restaurants use cooking methods where they cook with really high fatty oils, things that are rich in calories to add flavor to the food, and that's what we've come to expect. Big portions of really tasty, likely hyperpalatable foods that are easy to overconsume. And so if you spend a ton of time eating out or you eat out fairly often,

it's quite likely that you're going to consume more calories than you otherwise would. So making the habit change away from eating out more frequently to preparing more of your own food gives you more control. It gives you better ownership over what you're putting in your body. Cooking does burn some calories, albeit very few, but you know, the act of sitting in your car and going through a drive-thru is less calorically demanding than preparing yourself a meal. Again, that's really minutia, but hey, what the heck, we'll take what we can get, right? Another thing, you know exactly what's going into the food. So you can kind of build meals around what you know your body needs if you're tracking

calories. And if not, you know, to focus on, you know, things like nutrient dense vegetables, you know, whole grains, lean proteins, things that are kind of aligned with helping you maintain that satiety to stay in that calorie deficit. And then you also limit your exposure to things that could potentially become a binge or could, you know, open the doors up for what I often like to call a backslide with your nutrition. So the first habit is just cooking more of your own food. The second habit, and this has to do with eating, and I like this one a lot, and this is from Alan Aragon, who's one of my favorite nutrition resources. If you're not familiar with Alan, I strongly recommend following Alan on

Instagram. His name is literally Alan Aragon. You just type that A-L-A-N, Aragon, A-R-A-G-O-N, into Instagram, and I think you'll be very happy with his content. And so this tip is putting your fork down in between bites. And I know that sounds kind of silly, but I want you to think for a second about what it looks like when you sit down to eat a meal. And if you eat like I eat, and I know a lot of us eat like this. We're very rushed. We're on our phones. We're not eating in a mindful fashion. And in many cases, myself included, I'm totally guilty of this. I'm often inhaling my food

and we'll talk more about that in an upcoming tip. But putting your fork down in between bites actually slows down the amount of food that you eat. It can minimize overstuffing yourself. That's something that a lot of us do. We eat until we're stuffed. We don't eat until we're, you know, satiated or eat until we're satisfied. We eat until we're stuffed. And so when you put, you know, your fork to your mouth, putting it down in between bites and chewing your food thoroughly, which we'll touch on later, is really, really important. And it's an awesome, awesome habit

to get into, especially if you're somebody who wants to, like I said, support that energy deficit, make your meals more satiating, you know, you spend a little bit more time being mindful with the food, and you're not literally just shoveling it into your mouth. Because quite frankly, we talk so much about calories in calories out about macros about micros. We forget that there may, in my opinion, be an art to how you eat your food. If in fact, your goal is to eat a little bit less, there are things that you can do to make that a little bit easier. One of them and this is habit number three, is chewing your food at least 20 times. So chewing or mastication,

which again, you want to be a great masticator, is really, really valuable for digestion. We have enzymes in our mouth, amylase being one that most people are familiar with, that when we pulverize food with our teeth and we chew it, we actually start to mix these digestive enzymes in with our food. in with our food, particularly amylase, which I mentioned is valuable for breaking down carbohydrates. It's why if you put like a Jolly Rancher in your mouth, it will eventually dissolve because it's, again, sugar. It's carbohydrate. You don't necessarily have enzymes in your mouth that are as effective at acting on protein. So if you put like a piece of steak in your mouth, it's probably going to be there for a little while. Anyway, I digress. Chewing your food is really important because one, like I said, we mix in those enzymes, which are valuable for enhancing digestive capability of the body. We also increase the surface area of food by kind of pulverizing it into a little bit of a paste or a surface that, or a, I should say a substance bolus with greater

surface area, which will enhance digestion and minimize digestive distress. It's also important to know that chewing, and again, this is splitting hairs does burn calories. That's not really the point here, but chewing works with our brain to communicate with our natural satiety signals. If you don't chew your food, such as something like a smoothie or something like a soda, right, you can pound back a lot of calories and not necessarily have as much satiety. And some of that has to do with the actual weight and the actual, I guess we would call it physical form of the food, like a liquid will go down more easily, but it's also the absence of mastication when we drink our calories. And that's why for almost all of my fat loss clients,

I recommend, and this isn't a habit that we'll talk about today, but we can maybe call it a bonus habit. I recommend eliminating any beverage calories with the exception of things like protein shakes. If you're somebody who really has a difficult time getting enough dietary protein. And again, that's not everybody, right? Most of you probably have no problem getting dietary protein with or without a shake, but I think it's at least worth considering. If you are trying to lose body fat and you want to minimize your caloric intake, if you were to say, eat a smoothie with a cup of strawberries, a cup of blackberries, a sliced banana, a thing of yogurt, right? It would go

down a lot easier than if you were to eat all of those individually, which is why drinking your calories is a really good idea for people who want to gain weight. And it's not the best idea or habit for people who want to lose weight. Okay. So moving on to habit number four, and this is what I call a habit stack. And it's when you combine something you're going to do or know that you're going to do with something that you know you need to do. And so our first habit stack is going on a post-meal walk. And this is to enhance caloric expenditure

and improve digestion. But also, again, getting into the habit of increasing our NEAT, our non-exercise activity thermogenesis. I know what you're thinking, like walking, isn't that technically exercise? Yes, and some people will debate that walking doesn't count as NEAT, it counts as eat.

We're not here to talk about that. We're here to say, hey, look, getting in the habit of going on a 10 to 20 minute walk after you eat each meal is gonna offset some of the caloric load. It's gonna keep you moving. It's gonna enhance insulin sensitivity. It's gonna improve your digestion.

It's gonna do a lot of good things. And it's a great habit to walk and move along if you want to improve your body composition, right? So that's what we're really after here is just creating and installing habits that will help you that don't require you to open my fitness pal, that don't require you to track anything. You just go on a 10 minute walk, throw your AirPods in, do something like that, that can really make a huge difference, which actually takes me to my sixth habit, which is look to

habit stack neat all the time. So not just our post meal walk, right? This is actually by the way, guys, habit number five, I jumped ahead, but being able to stack neat or walking in with things that are already scheduled in your day can be a really valuable way to improve your body composition by enhancing the amount of calories you expend across the day. So for example, if you have a phone call scheduled, or you have an audio book that you like to listen to, or you have a podcast that you're in the habit of relaxing and listening to every day, it might be better to take that phone call on a walk, to listen to that podcast on a walk, to listen to that audio book on a walk, to stack these things that we might have the ability to do while we're moving with some movement is a great way to kind of quote unquote, find some time that

doesn't seem like it's there. Hey guys, just wanted to take a quick second to say thanks so much for listening to the podcast. And if you're finding value, it would mean the world to me if you would share it on your social media. Simply screenshot whatever platform you're listening to and share the episode to your Instagram story or share it to Facebook.

But be sure to tag me so I can say thanks and we can chat it up about what you liked and how I can continue to improve. Thanks so much for supporting the podcast and enjoy the rest of the episode. And again, these aren't huge habit changes. You're already going to be on the phone. So why not just throw your headphones in and take that phone call for a walk? You know, if it's appropriate, right? If it's a work-related call, I get it. Maybe you can't. But these are really powerful tools and habits that you can implement quite easily that are very effective. So this is actually the fifth tip because I skipped ahead of one, but we'll call it the sixth tip. And that's warming up before you train. A lot of us

do not warm up before we train. We show up to the gym, we do a few warm-up sets, and we're good to go. And if you're somebody who takes your warm-up seriously, or your training seriously, I should say, you should take your warm-up seriously as well. And we've talked about warm-ups on the podcast and potentially doing what we would call a phasic warm-up, where we do a little bit of cardio first, then some joint-specific work, maybe some mobility work. Maybe if we have something that's problematic or tight, we address that. If there's something that's weak or inhibited, maybe we look to bring that to the party before we get to our warmup sets. And that's an awesome warmup, but quite frankly, not everybody

has time for that. So if you're going to the gym and you're doing exercise, particularly resistance training, doing like five to 10 minutes of aerobic training to elevate your body temperature is going to actually enhance the quality of your training, which is awesome. But more importantly, it's going to sneak more caloric expenditure into the mix. So if you're going to the gym already, but you're not doing a good warmup and you're just jumping right into your workout, add a little bit of extra time, five to 10 minutes, do an aerobic warmup, get yourself in the position that you need to be in to train smart. But also again, we're creating a habit that's going to enhance your fat loss, not only by making training easier

and by making it easier to train in the long run, but by sneaking in a little bit more caloric expenditure, enhancing the actual output of that workout. Number seven, and this goes back to food, and I love this one, man, this helps so, so much. And that is to pre prepare highly satiating, filling snacks. So that when you have that urge to snack or you need something quick, you have good decisions right in front of you ready to go pre-prepared. And so what this looks like, I would say functionally, is maybe you have some protein prepared in advance. It could be some chicken that you slice up or pull apart. Maybe you have some veggies in the form of something like celery or jicama or a variety

of things, carrots that are fun to grab and easy to chew on. Maybe some fruits that are really high in fiber and that aren't super calorically dense like strawberries or watermelon, blackberries. And just having those prepared, set aside in Tupperware so that if you're like, oh my gosh, I haven't eaten in a while or I'm really craving a snack, what can I grab? You will have an option that's much more conducive to your goals already ready. And that's one of the big problems that we run into is most of our snack options and most of what we're going to be exposed to in our day-to-day lives are foods that are likely not super conducive with maintaining that energy balance, right? Maintaining that calorie deficit.

Because most snack foods tend to be hyperpalatable. They tend to have great mouthfeel. They're crunchy. They're salty. They're hard to stop eating. You know, guilty. One of the things that I have a big problem with is tortilla chips, particularly if there's salsa.

There's salsa. I could eat a whole bag of tortilla chips like it's nothing. So one of the things that I like to do is I just like to minimize how much of that I'm exposed to. And replacing those snack options with snack options that are higher in protein, perhaps higher in fiber, maybe they're vegetables, is a really good option. And it's certainly not the same, right? And I could totally grab those chips, weigh them out and fit a few of them into my macros. But what I found is as far as habits go, having these snacks pre-prepared is one of the best things that I've done. And one of the best

things I've recommended to my clients in terms of supporting their goals with how they want to eat and eating enough to actually stay full while they're in a calorie deficit. So moving on to tip number eight, and this is very similar to the tip that I gave earlier about warming up, and that is adding a mobility, yoga, or stretching session in before bed, particularly if you're somebody who's anxious, has a hard time winding down, maybe you'll toss and turn throughout the night. Some type of a movement-based mindfulness practice like yoga, a little bit of light stretching, even some joint-specific mobility work that might help you really wind down, whether that's foam rolling, like I said, stretching, things like this, again, will burn calories by virtue of them being somewhat movement-based, but they'll also enhance your sleep.

And we'll talk more about that in tip number nine, but you know, we're, we're habit stacking again here. We're taking something that we know is important, which is getting to bed and pairing it with something that we probably want to do anyway. If health and performance is in moving well as on our radar, we probably need to do more mobility. I know most people need to do this stuff anyway, and it's one of the easiest corners to cut. So adding it in before bed is a great way to move a little bit more, but also I find that all of these things,

particularly yoga, can be very, very good at helping you wind down and get into that parasympathetic state that's ideal for getting optimal, deep, quality sleep. Which brings me to tip number nine, which is get as much sleep as you can. Now, this is a weight loss habit, but it's also a health habit. Poor sleep is associated with a lot of comorbidities, and it's far from an ideal way to live your life. It can really impact your mood, your sense of well-being, your performance, your body composition. Lots of bad things can happen if you don't get adequate sleep. And truth be told, five to six hours isn't really adequate

for most people. The research is pretty clear that most of us need somewhere between seven to nine to function optimally. And in addition to sleep improving performance, having beneficial impacts on things like blood sugar, helping with things like mood, if you're up late or you wake up early and you spend less time in bed sleeping, recovering, you know, repairing from the tough life that we all live, that's more time that you can spend eating. So it sounds a little bit silly, but if you get an extra hour or two of sleep, that's one to two less hours that you're going to have to eat food. And if you're particularly like, let's say, a smaller woman, or you're a man and you're really deep into a deficit and calories are at a premium,

because unfortunately, that's just the way the world kind of turns, getting a little extra sleep can help a lot with that. Not just in the indirect ways that sleep enhances health, performance, body composition, but quite literally in that when you're asleep, you're not eating and you're probably not feeling hungry. So that's something that I totally recommend. And that's one of my favorite habits for enhancing your fat loss that doesn't involve any tracking at all. Just working to get to bed about 15 to 30 minutes earlier every night can make a huge difference. And tip number 10, perhaps the lowest hanging fruit of all, is to make sure that you are adequately hydrated. A benchmark that I have for my clients is that they aim to eat or drink half of their body weight in ounces of water every single day.

So that's a pretty big deal, right? That's going to mean for me at 185 pounds, I need to drink a little bit more than 90 ounces of water a day. And that's great for a lot of different reasons. Hydration, of course, being the primary one. And that's great for a lot of different reasons. Hydration, of course, being the primary one. But when you eat food and you expand your stomach, you feel more full. And drinking more water can help you do that too. So if, again, like I said, calories are at a premium, which is the case for most people

who are looking to diet or lose body fat, one of the best things you can do is make sure that you're drinking enough water. And like I said, that half your body weight in ounces per day is my benchmark. I'll often drink more than that. If I do, I like to add some electrolytes so I can replenish what I might be, you know, kind of what's the right word here. I guess you would call it if you drink too much water you might dilute or not have adequate supplies of things like electrolytes because of increased urination so I'll add electrolytes or I'll be extra careful to add things like salt or particularly pink Himalayan salt to my food because that will lend you a few extra electrolytes so guys, just to wrap up, these are 10 non-tracking fat loss habits or

habit stacks that work really well. Number one, cook more of your food, take more ownership of what's on your plate. Number two, put your fork down in between bites. Number three, chew your food thoroughly so that you can increase digestion and actually get that mouthfeel. Number four, add a walk after each big meal. Number five, warm up prior to training. Number six, take your phone calls, meetings, podcasts, audio books on a walk with you if you can and look to habit stack there. Number seven, prepare highly satiating snacks in advance, whether those are lean sources of protein, fruits, or vegetables.

All of those options are fantastic. Number eight, Habit Stack your pre-bed routine with some mindfulness or movement practice like meditation, but particularly things like mobility, work, stretching, or even better, yoga. Number nine, make sure that you're getting at least seven to nine hours of sleep so that you can train hard. Sleeping will also enhance your ability to make good decisions, which is really critical when you're deprived of calories and you're in an obesogenic environment like the world we live in.

And number 10, drink enough water. So those are all habits that you can look to implement today without adding too much of a hiccup to your routine that I think will help you all out tremendously. That will do it for today's episode, guys. Thank you so much for listening. Again, I encourage you to subscribe, leave me a review, follow me on Instagram. Definitely be sure to share this and tag me so I can say thank you. I appreciate every single one of you and stay tuned for the next episode.