Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 168: The *Fastest* & Most Dangerous Way to Lose Weight (DON'T Do This)

Episode Date: February 25, 2022

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What's going on everybody? Coach Danny here, another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. This is episode 168. Seems like incredible to me. 168 episodes we've done. Pretty happy about that. And today's episode is going to be a pretty significant departure from the way in which I normally approach some of this stuff, which is trying to kind of communicate to you guys, understanding that most of you fall into the demographic of people who really enjoy exercise or people who are interested in exercise, but almost all of you are trying to take a relatively informed, educated, and long-term approach. I would describe very few of you as reckless. But today's episode is actually going to be a lesson in body fat reduction and weight loss,

the fastest way to lose weight. Now, this would never, ever be something I would implement with a client because I think all the protocols I'm about to share today are a little bit dangerous, but I do think they make for a great kind of informative, fun podcast that we can work through that will basically act as a kind of baseline introduction to the nutrition and physiological stuff that goes into fat loss through the lens of total extremism. And I think it'll make it fun. I think it'll make for a nice little teaching experience. I bet you guys enjoy it. So before we get into it, the reason I am able to bring you this podcast completely for free is because of my awesome subscribers, just like you and our amazing

sponsors, particularly our sponsor over at Legion Athletics. Legion makes the premier brand of sports nutrition supplements in our space using only the best forms of ingredients that have been clinically proven to work in humans. They don't skimp on anything. They include the dosages that we know work. They're sweetened naturally. They taste great and they make my go-to creatine, which is recharge. I love their recharge supplement. It also comes with L-carnitine, which can increase androgen receptor density, which is great for gains. I love that. I love the whey plus and the Triumph multivitamin too. And I kick back the Genesis greens every morning so I can get three grams of reishi mushroom, which I am a huge fan of, and I still can't believe that they include in the product. I think that's just one of the

coolest inclusions in a greens powder. So those are the supplements I take from Legion every day. You can check out using the promo code Danny to save 20% on your first order. Pretty cool. You earn double points as well, which you can use the same as cash. So getting into it, guys, I just want to make sure that you're aware I am not a doctor. I'm not a physician. This is not intended as medical advice in any way, but I've broken down into three categories, nutrition, training, supplementation, right? And we'll also just for shits and giggles, throw lifestyle into the mix here as a fourth category. But I don't think it's particularly important because they're basic stuff we've

gone over, but this is how I would have a client. If they came to me and said, Danny, I've got a million bucks riding on my ability to lose X amount of weight in a very short amount of time. Like let's pick an extreme amount. They say, Danny, I've got a million dollar bet with a friend that I can lose 20 pounds in 10 days. How are we going to do it? Like those stupid, stupid national inquirer ads. And so what we're going to do is we're going to see the ways in which in the nutritional strategies, the training strategies, the supplementation strategiesation strategies that we could implement in a 10-day period to lose the most weight possible and see what we can learn about nutrition and training in that time. So first, let's talk about some of the dietary approaches.

I've got here protein sparing, modified fasts, alternate day fasts, fasting, carb cycling, low-carb, no-carb, keto. Now, we are not talking specifically about body fat. I have absolutely no doubt that in this protocol or any of the protocols I outlined, you'll lose a lot of body fat, but you'll also lose a lot of muscle. Like this approach would be not healthy whatsoever for any human being to ever do. But the ones that I think could work here, if we wanted to lose as much weight as possible, the first was a protein sparing modified fast. So protein sparing modified fasts are essentially days in which you restrict calories to next to nothing, getting only like the only

calories you're getting are coming from protein. So it's basically fasting and then like maybe drinking protein shakes every four to six hours. I mean, you could definitely eat some whole foods protein, but like the easiest way to protein sparing modified fast would be to completely cut out everything and just drink three protein shakes a day. I know that sounds crazy because it is crazy, but in theory you could do this and have some semblance of satiety while being in a massive calorie deficit, the kind of calorie deficit that would shed a ton of weight and likely some muscle. But the protein sparing thing is supposedly going to help mitigate some of that. I don't know how much you can stand to hold on to if you're doing any of the extremes I'm going to

outline here, but like in theory, if you wanted to lose as much weight as possible in the shortest amount of time, and again, wouldn't recommend this, a protein sparing modified fast could work. I have done these with clients on a couple of occasions, and these are, again, for the very short term and for only the healthy adult population. If, in fact, we need to drop a short, in a short amount of time, we need to drop a little bit of weight. I have found that protein sparing modified fasts work really well. If somebody's like, oh, I need to get down to this weight for this military test or this fight weight, you name it, right? Or this protein sparing modified fast, I find can work pretty darn good. The second nutritional approach, and this one's

probably quite obvious, is going to be fasting, particularly some form of 24 hour or alternate day fasting. So some people will do alternate day fasting where they eat nothing for one day, then they eat the next day, then they eat, don't eat the following day, right? These are again, going to create extreme deficits that I don't think are sustainable in the long run, but mechanistically that's what's driving fat loss. So if you need to lose weight rapidly, um, or body fat rapidly, and we'll talk a little bit more about the nuances here when we get to the low carb stuff, but when you need to lose body fat rapidly, um, you know, being in an extreme deficit is important when you need to lose body fat rapidly, you know, being in an extreme deficit is important when you need to lose body weight rapidly, particularly water weight, going low carb,

trying things like fasting, and just going low calories can help. And that's why so many people get confused. They go, I went low carb and I lost so much weight. It's like, well, you probably lost a lot of water too. And so, you know, a lot of people think low carb is the best for weight loss and it's pretty effective for weight loss. But if you just go into the same amount of deficits for like a variety of different diets, you're going to lose the same amount of body fat, right? So like a 500 calorie deficit eating a normal diet versus a 500 calorie deficit eating like nothing but low carb, the low carb person probably loses more weight, but, um, both groups lose the same amount of body fat because the deficit is the same. Hopefully,

that makes some sense. Okay. Then you've got carb cycling, which is now, so we're getting into a form of caloric undulation or caloric adjustment that's kind of like fasting and that on the days you have the highest carb intake, you're going to have more calories. On the day you have the highest carb intake, you're going to have more calories. On the day you have the lowest carb intake, you're going to have lowest calories. So it's a lot like alternate day fasting in that different days have different caloric intakes. Hopefully all of these days would be in a deficit, but you could do something extreme where you went like, okay, my high carb day, I have 150 carbs. My moderate carb day, I have 50 or I have 50 to a hundred carbs. And then I have a day where I literally have no carbs. And I repeat that like every three days while being in a deficit, but keeping my carbs like

so low that I'm also going to be losing a lot of fluid because my ability to just maintain my glycogen stores is kind of impacted by my physical activity and my low carb intake. And a lot of fluid is, you know, held onto by stored carbohydrate. So not replenishing that or repleting that, you're going to lose fluid. So carb cycling would be an option as long, again, you're looking to be in a deficit here as well, but a carb cycling thing might work here if you're trying to lose as much weight

in the shortest timeframe possible, which brings me to the final option, which would be low carb, no carb keto. Also, again, maintaining a deficit, but probably eating a little bit more dietary fat, eating a substantial amount of protein and trying to keep carbs at next to nothing. Now this would probably be a bad thing for performance. You'd probably suffer what many people call the keto flu. You definitely would need to be taking electrolytes if you ask me for pretty much every single one of these

approaches because dehydration is going to be a feature of dieting that's this extreme. And then again, keto, low carb, no carb, you're going to be losing additional water weight. And so a lot of these diets probably sound like crash diets and like celebrity fad, national inquirer, try this crazy diet, you know, and that's because they are. And I wouldn't recommend anybody do these in pretty much any context unless you needed to lose weight for something really important. And you'll probably know what that is better than I would. But if it's aesthetically speaking, I do think that every single one of these is suboptimal for physique. Like you're going to lose muscle. You're probably going to perform and feel like shit. And your body, even if you lost a

good amount of weight, probably wouldn't look and feel that good because none of these are particularly nourishing or healthy at all. In fact, like I've said many times, they're quite extreme, but this is the stuff that would work to take the weight off the fastest. So let's talk about training options and what one could do for rapid tissue and body fat reduction. So in, in normal contexts, I'd say don't stop lifting ever. Um, like that's probably the best exercise when you're in a deficit because it sends a stimulus to the body to maintain muscle. Like the mechanical tension tells the body, Hey, hold on to some of this. Comparatively speaking, if you take somebody, put them in the same deficit and don't let them move, they're probably going to lose quite a bit of muscle too. I mean,

think about what happens when people are immobilized in the hospital. That's the whole reason that we have blood flow restriction training actually, as we know it. It was originally developed in hospital settings to help people who were in comas and incapable of moving their bodies maintain muscle because you need some form of stimulation, whether it's metabolic or mechanical. Mechanical is probably better, meaning like actual load, but you want to hold on to as much muscle as possible. Now, if you only have a limited time to exercise and you want to drop as much weight as possible, you might be better off doing something with the highest caloric expenditure. So things like walking, jogging, cardio in that fashion would be good, but you will be losing

muscle, particularly if you're doing high amounts of aerobic work with no mechanical tension work. So in a perfect world, you do the lifting, but in a world where we're creating an extreme scenario by which we're like saying, okay, we're obviously throwing health and metabolism to the wind here. We're going to trash everything on our way to losing as much weight as possible for this million dollar hypothetical bet. Um, I would say that cardio is probably your best option, uh, high amounts. And so that kind of ties into what I've said many times. Like, I think cardio gets unnecessarily trashed. Um, when it comes to aerobic fitness, like people are like cardio, people do too much cardio. It's bad. It's like, no, it's not. It's great for your aerobic fitness. And it's really good for effective fat loss and it's, you know, creating more caloric

expenditure. A lot of bodybuilders do cardio when they get close to their shows and they ramp it up even more. But if it's the base of what you're doing, you're going to burn out quick and you could lose a lot of metabolically active muscle tissue. And you have a lot of weight to lose. Like you're not just trying to lose in as much as possible in 10 days. Let's say you have 50, 60 pounds to lose. You want to keep the muscle. It's so, so important. So the cardio options here are like low intensity cardio, like walking, maybe the Stairmaster or just hiking, or high intensity interval training, or you have bouts of more intense cardio paired with recovery periods of

lower intensity cardio, often done back and forth in a sequential manner. And both of those are going to be pretty good. Something I love and that I tend to recommend for people who are trying to lose weight, even in a healthy fashion, is to buy a weighted vest and wear the weighted vest on your walk. And as your weight goes down, add more weight to the weighted vest. This is something that I got from James Krieger. He has a research review weightology and I follow his finance Twitter stock wonk. It's a really interesting guy. He's both into day trading and I've seen that he actually does quite well, which is rare. Most people don't, but he's also really, really intelligent fitness and science communicator. And so James had a client once and he experimented on

him by having him, I hope I'm remembering this correctly, wear a weighted vest and increase the weight. So if he lost five pounds, it would be a five pound vest. If when he got to 10, they go up to 10. When he gets to 15, they go up to 15. So as the weight drops, the weight of the vest increases so as to maintain the mass that the body had at the beginning of the diet and hopefully stave off metabolic adaptation.

Obviously you'll expend more calories walking with a weighted vest, probably not like a massive amount, but it would be a cool way to just add an additional layer. And if we're talking about like a 10-day window where you're doing everything in your power to lose as much weight as possible and you're willing to go to extremes,

I think that the weight vest thing would be worth throwing in there. And even if you're not and you just wanna generally improve fitness, like wearing a weight vest on a walk, kind of a neat idea. Wearing a weight vest. I think when you go on a hike, kind of, kind of hardcore, but not a bad idea. Like, I think that weighted vest training is like traditionally thought of as being like exclusively reserved for people training for like OCR obstacle course racing and like paramilitary things. Uh, I think that weighted vest training is pretty cool.

Like I wouldn't wear a weighted vest, like when I do every exercise in the gym,. Uh, I think that weighted vest training is pretty cool. Like I wouldn't wear a weighted vest, like when I do every exercise in the gym, but like, I love to throw a weighted vest on and do walking lunges. I love to throw a weighted vest on and do Bulgarian split squats. I love to throw a weighted vest on and do pull-ups. They're fucking cool. They're really versatile. Um, and you can, if you use them correctly, they can have a decent effect at impacting metabolism for the work of Krieger, in my opinion. And so I don't hate that idea. 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. So let's talk about supplements because there aren't a lot of things that can effectively help with that off supplement. So a lot of things that can effectively help with fat loss supplements. So a lot of what I'm going to tell you today is stuff that's probably not legal and you should never put in your body. I don't want to say probably not legal. It's definitely legal.

Just depends on the ways in which you go about getting them and how you plan to consume these things. And we're going to go from least extreme to most extreme, starting with caffeine, which obviously is completely legal. But caffeine is a pretty effective tool for increasing training output and like fatigue management. So if you're in a crazy deficit, like caffeinating, like crazy before exercise might help. Um, I've heard that caffeine can help with mobilizing fat tissue, but I don't know how true that is. It's something that I probably wouldn't lean too heavily on for doing much more than providing a stimulant effect. It's something that I probably wouldn't lean too heavily on for doing much more than providing a stimulant effect. But I do think that if you want to lose as much weight as possible, leveraging the power of caffeine can be helpful. Now, what's funny about this is all of these habits are quite

literally the opposite of what I would recommend if somebody wanted to lose fat and keep it off. If you wanted to lose fat and put it all back on, this is probably what you're going to do, because this is as dumb and extreme as it gets. But just pounding caffeine is going to create dependency. Caffeine's a drug. And I know that I've had many people before be like, no, it's not. And I've even had people like call me out on it. And I'm like, listen, it is literally a chemical that influences your brain directly and has a effect that after a certain amount of use will create a dependency. Meaning when you do not have it, you feel worse. When you have it, you feel better to the point that some people, you can't even interact with them until they've had coffee because they're very, very dependent

on caffeine. Um, but it would definitely be one to work in there. Another one is yohimbine or yohimby. I believe it is. I don't, I've always called it yohimbine, but yohimby is a herbal supplement. It started, uh, as a medicinal kind of, I don't, it's not Ayurvedic cause it's not Indian, but herbal way to treat and improve sexual performance actually out of West Africa. So it's been around for a really, really long time in the supplement space, probably at least as long as I've been interested in supplements. It's not a new fat loss supplement, but it's usually the bark of the yohimbine or the yohimbi. That's going to bother me. I'm going to keep mixing those two up, but just bear with me. So people are after the bark and it supposedly helps with weight loss. The evidence is fairly mixed. One study examined the effects of yohimbine on 20 obese females who

consumed a 1,000 calorie diet for three weeks. The women taking the yohimbine lost significantly more weight than those taking the placebo, 7.8 pounds versus 4.9 pounds. Yohimbine was also studied in elite soccer players and was found to decrease body fat by 1.8 percentage points over the course of three weeks. No significant changes were found in the placebo group, blah, blah, blah. So the evidence, in my opinion, leans generally in favor of yohimbine. Some studies have found that taking yohimbine leads to greater weight loss and decreases body fat. However, other studies found no effect. More research is needed to evaluate if yohimbi is effective as a weight loss supplement.

So the biggest issues you'll find with, in my opinion, Yohimbi are it's a pretty heavy stimulant. So just like caffeine, it can definitely make you feel like a little bit anxious. Your blood pressure can increase. Your heart rate can increase increase it can make you like have to go to the bathroom really bad but i've used it and i've used it to prepare for like vacations to hawaii so i can like drop a little bit of body fat and i have definitely felt the increased anxiety i've definitely felt the increased energy and i have in my opinion i believe i've noticed a little bit of the effects and i was taking a relatively high dose. I don't want to tell you the dose that I was taking because I don't want you to take it. It's not the most dangerous thing in the world. Trust me. We'll get to some stuff that I think is a little more extreme.

But yeah, I do think yohimbine is effective as far as fat loss supplements go if you're using it in the short term and you're using it in high doses, doses, but I do not believe that the trade-off is worth it. So I would probably stay away from it. Um, in general, um, the next one is going to be a Fedra, which is a banned substance. Um, it's not something you can buy over the counter. It was around over the counter for a while. Um, it's sold in a product called bronch aid, which is a, uh, I believe it's a bronchodilator and asthmatic style drug. Um, but ephedrine does increase metabolic rate and enhance the rate at which fat burning occurs. Um, definitely not something I would use again. You can't just go buy ephedrine, um, very easily. It's, uh, not something that you're going to just be able to get your hands on in a supplement shop.

Again, it's found in a product called broncade most easily, not most easily. You could probably find ephedrine on the internet. And it acts synergistically with caffeine, which is pretty interesting in that the two really work well together. Caffeine and ephedrine work better together than the two do alone, but it is pretty heavy stimulant. So taking both of those things at the same time might not necessarily be the best idea. There's plenty of side effects that come along with ephedrine supplementation, even though the dosages tend to be pretty low. But I would stay away from it because even without any serious side effects, like psychiatric issues, heart attacks, several deaths have been linked to ephedrine supplementation. It's not like ephedrine will guarantee that these things happen,

but the fact that it's even on the tables, like, eh, no thanks, I'll pass, kind of dangerous, definitely not something I would stack with all the other stuff. But these are things that people do. And these are things that may work. Uh, if we're talking about extremes, the next one, of course, is clenbuterol, which is a beta two receptor agonist. So these are full blown bronchodilators. Um, and I think that ephedra acts similarly as well, and that it's probably more of a, given that it's in bronchate, I'd imagine it has a similar effect. That's not my maximal area of expertise though. But, and again, clenbuterol is something that you've probably heard of celebrities using

because they do use it. It's not approved for use in humans, which I think is interesting. A liquid form of the drug is approved by the FDA for treatment of airway obstruction in horses. So maybe it's another, what's it called? Ivermectin all over again. But researchers have observed that clenbuterol stimulates muscle growth and repair while

preventing atrophy and mice and rats. And livestock, studies have indicated that increases in muscle growth occur at the expense of fat tissue, which is pretty unbelievable. So that's the repartitioning effect at work, which we very rarely see. So this one is pretty exceptional. Again, not something I'd recommend taking, but of the two, ephedrine and clenbuterol, I think you're probably going to be seeing a more marked effect from clenbuterol, but the side effects oftentimes are like racing heart, sleepless, anxious. I think that this one is pretty

well known for the side effects in the bodybuilding and physique community. And the last one, by far the most extreme, is DNP, which is 2,4-dinotropophenol. And basically, it's an illegal weight loss supplement that's sold on the internet. It's extremely dangerous and it can be lethal. It's oftentimes used as like a plant fertilizer. It causes a rapid increase in metabolic rate and temperature, which can lead to things like organ failure. Nobody should be putting this into their body at any point, but people do it.

According to WADA, DNP is usually sold in the form of a yellow powder, but it comes in capsules and creams. When ingested, it acts on structures inside of the body. It literally manipulates the mitochondria. So your mitochondria start to convert calories from food into energy called ATP, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. 2015 study shows that DNP makes energy production in your mitochondria less efficient. That means your body needs to burn calories to produce the same amount of ATP. So basically it fucks with your mitochondria, which is a massive hell no from me. I would stay away from that. That is again, the most probably extreme thing on this list. But if in theory, somebody came to me and was like, in 10 days, I need to lose as much weight as possible, or I'm going to

lose a million dollars. But if I can lose this amount of weight, I'm going to win a million dollars, whatever. Put a million dollar bet on myself to lose 20 pounds in 10 days. How are we going to do it, Danny? I'd probably do some form of protein sparing modified fat. I, I, I full disclosure, not a doctor. This is dumb. Don't listen. Like, let's say I am allowed to kill this person in the process. I'm allowed to try to kill this person in the process. Um, probably would have them pounding electrolytes, pounding like water, but also like only enough water that wouldn't add additional water weight. So making sure they got electrolytes and as little water as we need to keep them hydrated, picking between a protein sparing, modified fast, fasting, carb cycling, low carb, no

carb with extreme deficits, probably doing a pretty good amount of cardio. We don't so much care about their metabolism. So maybe some lifting, maybe not. Then some combination of caffeine, bronchade or ephedrine, caffeine and ephed lifting, maybe not. Then some combination of caffeine, bronch aid, or ephedrine, caffeine and ephedrine, maybe clenbuterol, probably wouldn't need the other two if we did the clenbuterol, and then DNP, which I wouldn't use because, well, if I'm allowed to kill them, why not? Let's just try it. But this is probably far and away the most ridiculous way to lose body fat. You're guaranteed to put it back on. Crash dieting almost never works. So

what should you do instead? A slow, controlled calorie deficit with small, occasionally built-in off-ramps where you eat at maintenance, a high protein intake with a focus on eating mostly whole foods, lifting somewhere around three to four days a week, trying to get about 120 minutes of zone two cardio in a week, which could easily just come in the form of a nice 20-minute walk after each dinner. That's what you should be doing. Maintain the calorie deficit, lift weights to preserve the muscle, take the slow road. It will be easier to maintain it because your habits and behaviors will change in the process. You'll learn a lot more about it. And it's just generally safer on your body than a lot of this extreme shit. And even what I said today, being like enough and extreme to like probably kill a person, you would be shocked what I have heard people have done to their bodies.

They come to work with me and my coaching team. We don't just work with extreme cases, but every once in a while, like I get an application and I'm doing an intake call with somebody and the stuff that they have tried or the stuff that coaches have had them try is pretty extreme. And so you've heard me today say that none of these things are sustainable. So if you're working with a coach and they're focused on having you incorporate things like ephedrine or clenbuterol, or they're focused on having you do all these crazy cycling protocols, carb cycling, massive keto restriction, low carb, no carb, all in the name of getting you

short-term weight loss, unless your goal is short-term, I'm not saying question their methods, but try to maybe communicate to them that I would prefer a more long-term approach. And if you have, and they're still pushing this stuff, it's probably better to find a new coach or find a new source of information. All right, you guys, thanks so much for tuning in. If you haven't yet, you can leave the podcast a five-star rating and review on iTunes and Spotify. It's unbelievably helpful for helping more people find the podcast. So if you wouldn't mind taking like one or two minutes to do that, it would mean the absolute world to me. And I want to thank you all so much for tuning in and I'll catch you on the next one.