Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 125: Q&A - Stress, Sleep, Supplements + MORE!

Episode Date: September 16, 2021

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Welcome in everybody to another episode of the dynamic dialogue podcast. As always, it's me, your host, Danny Matranga. And wow, getting this episode to you guys has been almost impossible. It is September 15. This is the second time I've sat down and tried to record this podcast. The first time I did it, I had a huge audio malfunction. It's kind of funny. I use something called a Rodecaster. And a Rodecaster is basically just a piece of kind of technology that can allow you to link sound effects, has multiple buttons, you can monitor audio, you can hook your microphone up to it. And then I plug that into my laptop where I record the podcast. And I use an adapter and I plug the adapter into my laptop, but I didn't plug the Rodecaster in. So I was just recording the episode you're about to hear today,

which is a Q&A episode on my laptop. I used my laptop's microphone. So the audio quality was horrible. My audio engineer was like, dude, I can't, I can't post this. You got to rerecord this. So what we're going to do today is we are going to answer an entirely different slate of questions from this same Q&A. All of these questions were fielded from my Instagram. So if you're a podcast listener and you have not followed me over on Instagram at danny.matranga, that's my username, please do that because you'll get a lot of these questions answered there. And that's where I field a lot of the Q&As for the podcast. So

if you haven't followed me over on Instagram, the link to do that is in the show notes, or you can just look for danny.matranga on Instagram. But if you listen here, I'm sure you do. So without further ado, guys, getting in to the Q&A, our first question comes from Annie MPG. And Annie MPG says, do you have any tips on reducing stress and increasing sleep? And I do. And so let's start with stress. And when we talk about stress, a lot of times what we're talking about is something called the allostatic load. And the allostatic load is just

the cumulative amount of stressors an organism is kind of managing on any given day. These can be physical stressors, like recovering from an injury, or perhaps the physical requirements of exercise. They can be emotional stressors, like going through a breakup or having stress at work. They can be psychological stressors, like driving in traffic or working against a tight deadline or being really busy. And so all of these different stressors play a role in that allostatic load. And so when we talk about reducing stress, we really have to look at all the different ways stress enters the system. And so what I like to recommend is doing a little bit of what I call a lifestyle review and going, okay, I'm going to

write down the 10 most stressful things I deal with consistently, or the 10 most consistent causes of stress in my life. And I'm going gonna see where I can reduce stress inputs, right? So there's inputs and outputs, and there's a lot of things we can do to reduce our stress. And most of the time I find people are like, okay, I need to take this supplement. I need to do this lifestyle hack. I need to do X, Y, Z.

First things first, look at where stress is input. Look at where stress is entering the system and try to reduce those things. So if you have hyper stressful situations, reducing your exposure to hyper stressful situations is job one. But I understand that not everybody has the flexibility to just up and change their lifestyle altogether. So what are some things that you can do to reduce your stress? Well, obviously meditation, mindfulness, breathing practices. Those are things you've probably heard of. They're all the rage right now. I was actually listening to another podcast that's sponsored by Headspace, which is one of the more popular meditation apps.

And they said that Headspace has over 60 million downloads and 600,000 five-star reviews. I'm not using this as an endorsement to say, oh, go download Headspace, but 60 million downloads and 600,000 five-star reviews. I'm not using this as an endorsement to say, oh, go download Headspace, but 60 million downloads. Obviously this is a global company, but 60 million downloads is like one sixth of the United States population. So if it was only available in the US, one sixth of the population has tried downloading one meditation app in the name of probably reducing stress and helping with sleep, right? So meditation, mindfulness, breathing are two, three things that you can do right away to reduce the acute stress sensation. Get your head right and make sure that you're where you need to be.

Guided meditation apps like Calm, Waking Up, or Headspace are all pretty good. And a lot of them actually set little reminders to kind of just say, hey, check in, do a five-minute meditation. So that's definitely something I recommend. Another one is reducing caffeine intake. Now, this will help with sleep too, particularly if you drink caffeine late into the day.

But caffeine can be something that enhances our feelings of anxiety and stress and angst. And if you're already stressed, you're already anxious, if you add caffeine to the mix, are feelings of anxiety and stress and angst. And if you're already stressed, you're already anxious, if you add caffeine to the mix, it's likely to compound those effects. So I tend to recommend if you're overly stressed, try to be more mindful, right?

Try to be more mindful of your caffeine intake. And the last piece is to make sure you're hydrated and getting enough fuel. Being in a calorie deficit is a stressor. So maybe the best time to diet isn't when you're working on a huge project for school, or you have a big work trip coming up, or you're dealing with all kinds of crazy stuff on your kid's schedule. And a lot of times I find people are chronically in a deficit. They just, they eat a certain way, they follow a pattern, they have these beliefs about food, what they can and can't eat. And so they're chronically in a deficit. And that will really bump the allostatic load up quite a

bit. Constantly needing more fuel than you're giving your body is a one-way ticket to being excessively stressed. So make sure you're getting enough food and you're nourished if you're hyper-stressed in other areas. And if stress is just so, so much, it might be worth reconsidering when you should actually try being in a deficit. As for meaningful ways to improve sleep, I'm going to tell you a few things that I do that I think are evidence-based that tend to work really well for me, my clients, my family, my friends, people that I've shared these tips with. The first is being really mindful of the temperature of your sleep environment, right? So we want our sleep environment to be cooler, closer to 55 to 65 degrees than say 75, 85 degrees. So if you live in a hot climate, get a window fan, turn on the air conditioner, sleep naked, do what you need to

do to be cool while you are sleeping. Allowing your temperature to drop and sleeping in a cool environment is a really, really good way to improve the quality of your sleep and maybe decrease the number of times that you wake up. So that's not necessarily going to increase sleep duration, right? Because this question is tips on reducing stress and increasing sleep, but it will increase sleep quality. As far as increasing sleep duration, you have two options here, really. Go to bed earlier, right? Or wake up later. And I tend to recommend going to bed earlier. Another tip, make sure that you are eliminating your exposure to blue light. Blue light tends to be the light emitted from devices like phones, laptops, and televisions.

And when it hits the retina, it really, really interacts with this thing in our brain called the suprachiasmatic nucleus. And to put it simply, when we're triggering activity in the superchiasmatic nucleus, we can disrupt our circadian rhythm. Too much blue light makes it really hard for your body to tell it's time to go to bed. So getting a pair of blue light blocking glasses, like the kind you can get on Amazon for about $20, or even using the technology that's built into a lot of your devices, like, for example, my iPhone and my laptop both allow me to set a night shift mode

that actually limits or completely eliminates blue light from being cast from the actual display. And so that will help quite a bit. Going more in alignment with that light exposure, make sure your room is super dark. So things like blackout curtains, or if you have little devices, like for example, in my room, I have my PlayStation five, I have a surround sound. I have some fish tank stuff. I have some stuff that I use for my garden. All of these things have little tiny lights. And so taking a small piece of like black electrical tape, covering those lights, getting some blackout curtains so that my room is super dark and super cool really helps a lot

with my sleep quality. As for supplementation and stuff like that, you'll often hear melatonin thrown around. Melatonin can help you get to sleep. CBD is often thrown around. I find that CBD might be helpful for anxiety and it could help with sleep. Zinc and magnesium tend to be things that aren't uncommon to be deficient in and those can help with sleep. So those are all different avenues you might consider as well as something called glycine. I find that glycine can help quite a bit with sleep too. So those are really the things that I would recommend doing to reduce your allostatic load, your stress, and to get better sleep. But overall, make sure you're getting adequate amounts of exercise, you're well nourished, you're going to bed at a reasonable

time, aiming for seven to nine hours of hopefully unbroken sleep. Those are the big rocks. So this question comes from Ange for Leg Life, and she asks, I'd like to get on a bike or treadmill two times a week. Is the best time to do them on my leg days? So this would depend on the type of cardio that you're doing. Now we know you're using the bike and the treadmill. So that really narrows it down. If you're doing things like walking or low grade cycling, where it's not particularly intense, or maybe you're walking on a small incline, I really think you can do that whenever you want. If you are running or you are doing hard cycling where you're really pushing or something like HIIT or interval training, it becomes much more important when you do these. Doing them before leg day would be really unwise.

I actually don't recommend that my clients do things like the Stairmaster even before they train legs because it can be pretty fatiguing. Same thing with walking on a really high incline or running on a treadmill or pounding it out on a bike. If you wanted to do that after your leg training, you would also have to acknowledge that the fatigue from the leg training itself, the actual resistance training for your lower body is going to affect your output on the cardiovascular end if you do it later. So if it's not super low intensity cardio, I wouldn't just avoid doing it before leg days. I'd avoid doing it after leg days as well. And so then we have a couple options. We can say, okay, well, what about the days that we train upper body? I think that that cardio positioned

after you train upper body is probably the best time to do it. Now, if you have the luxury of being able to do it on a separate day, I would do that. Again, it oftentimes comes down to the intensity of the cardiovascular exercise that you're going to be doing. So the more intense the aerobic demands, or even if it becomes anaerobic and you're doing something like interval training, sprinting, rowing, assault bike intervals, things that are very anaerobic in nature, they require a lot of power, a lot of output. Those do not have a lot of business being on the days that you've already scheduled a lift and that you're working on progressing or progressive overload, right? Those are going to tax the system. And it really will make a

difference in the long run where you position this stuff if it's particularly intense. If it is not, I think it's fair to say that you could pretty much do it wherever you want this stuff if it's particularly intense. If it is not, I think it's fair to say that you could pretty much do it wherever you want, especially if you're not super concerned about building the absolute most amount of muscle possible. As for how much cardio I tend to recommend for clients, I usually say somewhere between 60 and 90 minutes a week. The lower intensity that aerobic work tends to be, if it's like more towards the edge of like walking, I might go 90 to 120. If it's something towards the edge of walking, I might go 90 to 120. If it's something like jogging, running, rolling on a bike, row machine, I might go closer to 60 to 90.

But you want to get those aerobic training sessions in to keep your heart health, your vascular health, your pulmonary health in check. It's also very good for recovery, particularly if it's low intensity. So there's benefits to it, but where you position it really does make quite a big difference. This question comes from Yale Natalie, and she asks, maintenance to bulk. So she's going from maintenance calories to bulking. How much and how often should I increase my calories for a three-month bulk? So what I would do is I'd say, okay, I'm at maintenance. I know I'm at maintenance.

I'm going to start with a small calorie surplus of about 200 to 300 calories a day, mostly from carbs, maybe a little bit from protein. Okay. So go to the gym, do what you're doing, apply the concepts of progressive overload, follow a program, something like maybe the programs I have over on my website, corecoachingmethod.com, female physique, foundations, power build, female physique to advanced, all of those things, right? If the nutritional strategies are in place and the extra calories are there, and you're following a program that is designed to help you build muscle or help you build strength or help you apply progressive overload. This is what I do with my online clients basically is, okay, I'm going to build a program out for you

that fits your situation. Some of my clients work out from home. Some of my clients work out at a gym. Some of my clients do a little bit of both, but making sure that each week is subsequently more challenging as we transition from training block to training block so that they're applying these progressive overload principles and asking a little bit more of their muscles. If you're doing that and you have a little bit of extra food left over that your body can apply to performance, recovery, and building muscle, you should see small incremental gains. Now, how much are we looking for here? That depends a lot on your size. But in general, I would say if you're gaining between half to 1% of your total body weight per month, you don't need to make any changes. If you're gaining less than a half a percent of your total body weight per month, add an extra 100, 200 calories. But what I have found is for most people, I have a client who comes to mind big time when I say this, I won't say their name, but we did a lean bulk and we like increased calories maybe once or twice, but we really

nailed the number the first time when we did the calculations, set her up for success. She just went to the gym and dominated. She didn't gain hardly any body fat, but she gained a ton of muscle. We were actually just messaging the other day. We don't work together any longer, but we have a good relationship. And she was, I had answered a question about cellulite and she was like, well, I actually noticed my cellulite decreased after I did a lean bulk. And I'm not saying that doing a bulk is going to decrease your cellulite, but having, you know, full musculature that's loaded with glycogen, hydrated, not gaining a ton of additional body fat, filling out a little bit in the way you do with a bulk and oftentimes have positive body compositional things happening. So

it's important to pay attention to that too. Like if you just look at the scale and you're just looking for those percentage numbers, you might miss some stuff and there's some potentially positive things that might come from a slower bulk. So pay attention to how you look, look for a half to 1% of your total body weight gain per month. If not, you can add a little bit more calories, but I tend to find there's no super hard and fast rules that when it comes to bulking, a slower approach is often better. And a three month bulk, just plain and simple might not be enough for you to gain a massive amount of muscle. 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. Next question comes from multiple underscores Yelly. She asks, why does my back hurt when I do

barbell squats? So barbell squats, much like barbell deadlifts, require a lot of spinal stability because you are loading your spine with a bare-ass fucking barbell. And that requires a lot of recruitment from the core musculature. Not just the muscles of your rectus abdominis, right? Not just your six-pack, but your obliques and some of the smaller core muscles, like the transverse abdominis, the muscles of the low back, the erectors, your spinal extensors, even muscles like your glutes and core play some role. And a lot of times what I find when people are performing deadlifts or squats in their back hurts, it's a technique issue, plain and simple. They just don't know how to do the fucking movement properly. Don't overcomplicate it. A lot of trainers will be like, oh, you have an

overactive this and an underactive this. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Before we even talk about that, let's look at that movement and ask ourselves the honest question. Does that look the way it's supposed to look? And if not, we've got to fix that first. So anytime you're doing a movement that loads your back, there's potential for you to feel it in your lower back. If you do, check your technique first, if your technique is off, fix that and then return to square one. Okay. If your technique is nails, it's perfect. It's awesome, right? We can check that box. You don't have to worry about it. Then there's another thing that I tend to look to that really jumps off the page. And I've said, once you've got technique checked, if, if the back is still present, there's like two really big things and the first one is like 70

percent of the time and that's bracing so you're not actually very good at contracting your core creating tension creating intra-abdominal pressure this is why people wear things like weightlifting belts to increase their ability to create intra-abdominal pressure the belt doesn't necessarily support your back so much as expanding into the belt with your breath creates more pressure and stabilizes the spine better. So if it's not a technique problem, it's almost always a bracing problem. And then if it's not a bracing problem, it could be that you have maybe a low-grade back issue and you should see a physical therapist and check that out. Or you're just simply squatting too much weight to be able to brace against it and you need to regress a little bit, drop some weight, work on that technique. Maybe try alternative modalities for hitting muscles

like your quads and glutes, because that's usually what people are trying to do with squats. So yeah, it's not often that complicated. Okay, so this question comes from Active Nikhil, and he asks, thoughts on the Whole30 diet. And so Whole30 is a dietary trend. You could call it a fat diet. Pretty easy to understand. You're allowed to have meat and seafood. You're allowed to have eggs. You're allowed to have fruits and vegetables. You're allowed to have natural fats. They call them things like coconut oil, olive oil, avocado oil, and a lot of herbs and spices, which you are not allowed to have on the Whole30 diet. No added sugar, no alcohol, no grains, no legumes, and no dairy. Okay, so let's

think for a second. Why would a diet like this be helpful for somebody who's obese, wanting to be in better shape, or wanting to feel better? Okay, well, what are you allowed to have? Meat and seafood, okay? Very high in protein, very high in micronutrients. Eggs, very high in micronutrients, healthy fats, and protein. Fruits and vegetables, very high in fiber, micronutrients, and polyphenols. Natural fats, okay? They call them natural fats. Things that are generally higher in perhaps the fats that we want. Herbs and spices, often yielding a lot of nutrition. Okay, everything there was nutritious, high protein, or high fiber. So things that will keep you full, keep you satiated, and keep you generally well nourished. What are you not allowed to have? A ton of added sugar, okay? No alcohol, okay? That's probably two things that most people at a population level could stand to have a pretty reduced intake of and be much better for. No grains, no legumes, no dairy. Those are the three that I think are a little iffy because I do think

you get a lot of nutrition from grains. I don't think there's any problems with legumes. Some people really freak out about them and most people can handle dairy and I think it's a phenomenal source of protein. But here's why diets like this work for fat loss. The foods you are allowed to have, like I said, meat, seafood, eggs, vegetables, fruits, natural fats, herbs, and spices, all very satiating, all fairly low in calories, all very high in protein. The foods that you're not allowed to have, right? If you can't have any sugar, that's going to really restrict the amount of processed food you can eat. If you can't have any alcohol, that's going to limit the exposure you, uh, or the amount you expose

yourself to other bad food decisions because alcohol's ability to reduce inhibitions, um, or I think people refer to it as alcohol relieves you of your inhibitions, right? You're less likely to be like, Ooh, I don't want to do that. You're more likely to try things you wouldn't otherwise try. Uh, alcohol reducing your inhibitions around food is one of the biggest reasons people overeat when they're drinking. So you get the pass from, I'm not eating anything with sugar, which is, you know, so many of the high calorie, hyper palatable foods we consume. I'm not drinking alcohol, which is a huge reason calories leak in and no grains, no dairy. Oh my gosh. We're talking about no ice cream, no breads, no pastries, no cookies, no chips, all of this stuff, right?

These are all things that people get a tremendous amount of calories from. So when you can't have those things, you're going to lose a lot of weight. When all you have left to eat are high-protein, supersatiating things like meat, seafood, eggs, vegetables, and fruits, your dietary intake pattern is going to change. Your calorie intake level is almost certainly going to drop. I mean, yes, you could do something like Whole30 and theoretically gain quite a bit of body fat, but it seems very, very difficult or it seems very, very unlikely that if you took the traditional standard American diet and said, okay, you can't eat a lot of these things. You can't eat most of these things. Instead, eat all these unprocessed, highly satiating, high protein foods that you would see some movement on the scale. People would lose weight. Their general caloric intake would

decrease. They'd feel better, right? A lot of the stuff around Whole30 about it being like super anti-inflammatory, you're not eating this, that, I don't subscribe to a lot of that. I think that's mostly overkill. I think the most anti-inflammatory benefit of the whole 30 diet is losing weight. So, you know, I don't think it's a bad thing at all. I think there's quite a bit of, um, you know, flexibility within that framework, but not being able to have dairy, not being able to have grains is a, makes it a no from me, but maybe it's something you can try. Maybe it's something that might work well for you if you prefer to follow dietary approaches that are really rigid. If you do well with things like keto, vegan, intermittent fasting, et cetera,

then maybe you'll do really well with something like a Whole30. But if you struggle with things that have a lot of rules and a lot of rigidity, and I tend to think most people do, that's why I don't recommend that for my coaching clients, then it's probably not for you. Okay. All right. So next question comes from Chloe Fife. She asks, what creatine do you recommend? My favorite creatine right now is the Legion Recharge Strawberry Lemonade Creatine. I love it. It tastes so good over ice, especially in the summer. And it comes with some other awesome ingredients, one of which is L-carnitine tartrate, which I like quite a bit. So if you want to support the show and also hit your daily creatine target, which I recommend my clients get five grams of creatine monohydrate a day, you can head over to legion.com, buy some recharge, check out using the code Danny,

and that helps support the show and the podcast. Okay, next question comes from Dave Rev, and he asks, what are some good reading materials to begin to get a grasp on dietary stuff and supplement needs? So in general, when it comes to diet, I have a blanket recommendation that I give most people. I do think you need an audible membership to access this, but you can get a free trial if you don't want to pay for an Audible membership or support Amazon, but I do quite like Audible. And it is a audio book called Nutrition Made Clear, and it's from The Great Courses. And The Great Courses are basically undergraduate courses and lecture series combined into audio

material and so you're going to be getting with this basically an entire semester of undergraduate nutritional coursework where you learn about vitamins minerals macronutrients all of the micronutrients fiber alcohol hydration this is a audio book and it's free with an audible membership, or at least it was when I got it. It's all evidence-based. It's delivered by a phenomenal speaker, phenomenal professor who does a wonderful job. And so if you want something really, really insightful, educational that I think covers a lot of bases and will really give you a well rounded and nuanced look at nutrition, I would definitely recommend checking out the great courses, Nutrition Made Clear. And the reason that I like this is because it also is going to answer a lot of your questions

about supplementation. There's some supplement stuff in there too, but within the nutritional framework, you're going to learn a lot about vitamins, minerals, and why they're important. So you'll actually learn a lot from that with regards to supplements. But my number one resource for learning about supplements is the Stronger by Science podcast with Greg Knuckles and Eric Trexler. Eric Trexler has been a guest on the show. We met in 2020 to talk a little bit about metabolic adaptation. So if you have questions about metabolic adaptation, what happens when I diet? why does my metabolism slow down? Why am I maybe suffering from what many people call quote unquote metabolic damage? Definitely go back and queue up the episode I did with Eric Trexler. It's the most downloaded episode other than the

episodes I've done with Lyle McDonald, which of course everybody loves Lyle, but really insightful episode. But I love their podcast and I love their research review as well. And so mass monthly application and strength support is Eric Trexler, again, guests of the show, Eric Helms, guests of the show, Greg Knuckles, hopefully soon to be a guest of the show. And Mike Zordos also hopefully soon they work together to kind of peruse the research, look at what's new in strength, conditioning, strength supports, body composition, supplementation, read through the literature and review them in such a way that you get these nice distilled, easy to read articles about different scientific studies. So you don't have to read the studies. There's also audible audio round tables. So you can listen to them, discuss the studies if you're more of an audio person. And they talk a lot

about supplements on their podcast, Stronger by Science. And they talk a lot about supplements on their podcast, Stronger by Science. And they talk a lot about supplements in mass. And those are the two resources that I go to most often to learn more about supplements. Another really good resource is actually just the Legion product pages. Again, it might not seem like, okay, well, why would I go to a supplement website to learn about supplements? A lot of the supplements that they sell, all of the supplements that they sell are clinically dosed with ingredients that are proven to work. And you can go to the ingredients tab and actually click through there and see the studies and read a little bit about

what these ingredients are supposed to be doing and then click through and read the study and learn a little bit about them. Because supplements tend to be the wild west, it's a little bit harder to know what's legit but legion is some uh a source i trust quite a bit or i wouldn't work with them and so if you're if you're like okay i want to learn a little bit more about creatine you know you can google and learn about creatine from resources like healthline healthline and examine.com are other really good ones but there's a lot but i would tend, okay, like a Legion has good resources for the supplements that you might already be interested in buying that will point you in the right

direction. Monthly application in sport science, stronger by science will be great. If you want to learn more about maybe supplements, you're not yet taking examine.com is my favorite for, if I'm curious about what the evidence says about a supplement, examine will generally aggregate all of the scientific evidence about a topic and kind of say, okay, uh, D aspartic acid, the evidence for D aspartic acid increasing testosterone is super weak based on nine studies. Uh, fish oil, the evidence for fish oil decreasing inflammation is super high based on 273 studies. Those are really cool. And you can actually click through and see the correlation, right? There's a strong correlation between fish oil supplementation and reduced risk of heart disease. There's a weak correlation between fish oil supplementation and increased

testosterone. And that's all on examine.com. And so examine.com is awesome. And then if you just want to learn a little bit more about supplements and maybe how they work at the most base level, Healthline is actually a really good website. Everything's peer-reviewed. So, well, I should be a little bit more, I guess, peer-reviewed in that it would usually be written by somebody with a nutritional background and then reviewed by a medical professional or PhD. Oftentimes when you think of scientific peer review, there are multiple peer reviewers. So I do think it's important to have some clarity there. Not all the Healthline articles have multiple peer reviewers, but Healthline is a source I trust and I go to pretty regularly. Last question comes from Happily Lauren Marie, and she says, I can't eat

dairy. Having a hard time meeting my daily protein tips and tricks. So we talked a little bit about meat, fish, poultry. Those are my go-tos. Things like shellfish, shrimp, salmon, whitefish, all great. Poultry, chicken, turkey, right? Red meat for some people is something that they don't like a ton of, but red meat's also a great source of protein. And you can have plant-based proteins like yegums. Whoa, I said that like Spanish, two Ls. Yegums, no. Legumes. Legumes. Wow, here we go. Now it doesn't even sound like a real word. Legumes, nuts, seeds, tempeh, tofu, plant-based protein powders, right? There's a lot of options even if you can't do dairy. The one thing to always be mindful of though when you're talking about the plant-based protein options is they tend to have more associative carbohydrate and sometimes they come

with more associative fats. So for example, nuts and seeds will yield a lot of carbohydrates and fats and protein while it's present, isn't always the primary nutrient. So if you have a weight loss goal, plant-based protein sources, given that they yield a lot of additional macronutrients and with that, they often yield a lot of additional calories, it's worth being careful because you might end up eating more than you'd like calorically to meet your protein needs. So sometimes supplemental protein, whether it be for you, because you can't do dairy, a plant-based protein, you might be able to get a little more protein bang for your buck there and that you don't have as much associative carbs and fats than if you're just eating things like nuts and seeds. Now, things like tempeh and tofu, I find to be pretty low in calories, pretty high in protein. So those are generally good options. But if, you know,

body composition is important and you want to keep those calories low, animal protein, lean animal protein is probably the best. All right, you guys, thanks so much for tuning in. Again, crazy week with some technical difficulties, but bear with me. I'm still committed to getting you one more podcast this week. I know that might be challenging. If not, hopefully you get three next week. So stay tuned. If you haven't yet, that subscribe button, please leave me a five-star rating and review on the iTunes store. If you're listening on your iPod or iPod, who the hell listens on an iPod? If you're listening on your iPhone, um, that makes a huge difference. It helps people find the show. I appreciate every single one of you who listens and subscribes, share stuff to your Instagram story. Every single one of you makes a huge, huge difference. I'm super appreciative.

Thanks so much for tuning in. Have an awesome day and stay tuned.