Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 190: Losing Body Fat (+ Building Muscle) When Busy

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome in, everybody, to another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. As always, I'm your host, Danny Matranga. And in today's episode, I'd like to share with you some of my favorite tips, tricks, tactics, and behaviors that you can implement to help with your body fat loss, body composition changes, or muscle growth goals, regardless of how busy you are. I've learned a number of these tips and tricks from in-the-trenches training with real people over the years who tend to be busy professionals. Perhaps they're busy parents. Perhaps they do both. And they need to find ways in which they can adhere to their diet and adhere to their training that are sustainable and do not rob them of the energy they need to get through their busy days. Additionally,

Starting point is 00:00:50 I have been quote unquote cutting or dieting down with the goal of losing body fat since about April and just in April 1st and just an update on where that's gotten me over the course of the last three weeks, I have lost about six pounds or two pounds a week using some of these tools. So these are tools, tactics, and tricks that are evidence-based. They've also shown to work quite well with my clientele. And I'm super happy to share those with you today. For the sake of this exercise, I'm just going to assume that you guys already know that to lose body fat, you need to be in a calorie deficit for an extended period of time. And in many cases,

Starting point is 00:01:34 staying in a calorie deficit for an extended period of time can be challenging unless you eat high volume satiating foods and optimize for exercises that help with muscle and metabolism preservation, right? So if you're listening to this with the goal of building muscle while busy, do stay tuned. I have a ton of tactics and tricks in the second half of the episode, but we will start first breaking down some things that I think have worked really, really well for me and my clients as it comes to, or as it pertains to body fat loss when you are busy. So to start this one out, I just kind of want to share with you where I'm at right now. So you can get a little bit of a gauge as to what my lifestyle looks like. And these are the habits that have worked really well. So first thing I

Starting point is 00:02:21 think you guys need to know is that I'm opening a gym, I'm moving houses, and I just launched my training app, The Core Coaching Collective, through Train Heroic. So those are three pretty big, relatively intensive things that have taken a lot of time. The studio is 1,600 square feet. There was 10,000 pounds of equipment that needed to get installed. I'm moving about 15 minutes across town town and the app required multiple video shoots, all of which were layered into my existing responsibilities of training about 30 to 35 in-person personal training sessions a week, managing about 15 online clients and three online coaches through my coaching company, Core Coaching Method, and all their clients. So I have been very, very busy. This stuff works pretty well for me, and I would assume that it

Starting point is 00:03:10 will work pretty well for you. So here is my number one tip when it comes to losing body fat, building muscle, or just extending and enhancing your performance when you're busy. And this is not rocket science. This is one that I have no doubt you have all heard before, but it is prepare your meals in advance. This is so, so helpful. This is such a difference maker at the end of the day. I think a lot of our intellectual and emotional bandwidth is constrained with the various tasks and various relationships we have to interface with on a day-to-day basis. And having to make one more decision about what to eat, when to eat it, where to go, can oftentimes be exhausting and add a little bit more stress to

Starting point is 00:03:57 your plate than you probably need to deal with, especially if you're in a deficit. And having those meals prepared in advance is just such a time-saving thing in addition to the fact that it reduces stress and reduces the decision-making criteria of where you might eat. Additionally, you have a lot more control over food that you prepare yourself as it pertains to the nutrient breakdown, whether that be the micronutrient or macronutrient breakdown. When you prepare a dish yourself, you're starting from the ground up. You get to choose what's in there. And if you have allergies, sensitivities, or foods you don't generally agree with, this is a no-brainer thing to do. It also ends up saving you quite a bit of time, even though

Starting point is 00:04:44 you do have obviously some cooking and some cleaning stuff to deal with. I'll talk a little bit more about what I've done specifically this time around to kind of even get around that stuff. But for most people, preparing at least a few meals in advance can make a huge difference. I also generally recommend having some meals be the same every day. We'll talk more about that when I get to the fifth tip on this list. But for me, I usually will have a shake that is comprised of one scoop of collagen protein, one scoop of Legion's Whey Plus, about a quarter cup of blueberries, about a half a cup of strawberries, and then a couple handfuls of spinach. Put that in the blender, blend it all up. That is my first meal of the day. It's got a ton of protein. It's got a ton of fiber. I do pulverize that fiber in the blender. So some of it is a little bit less valuable perhaps than if I were to chew it. And I generally don't recommend drinking your calories when you are dieting. But for me, I find this shake to be very filling and it gets me to my second and third meals, which I will usually prep in advance.

Starting point is 00:05:50 You can keep protein-rich snack options around, which really, really helps. But preparing your meals in advance is an absolute no-brainer. What I have done this time around, unfortunately, because I am in the middle of a move and a large percentage of my kitchen utensils and cooking technology has already been packed, is I just ordered meals from Chow. At the beginning of last month, I ordered some meals from a new meal prep company, Chow. They sent them out. I thought they were absolutely fabulous. And I have tried a variety of different meal prep services only to be frustrated by really high dietary fat intake contents and what I would describe as extremely

Starting point is 00:06:32 trendy skew towards ketogenic friendly meals. There's nothing wrong with the ketogenic diet, but as a weightlifter who's body composition focused and somebody who wants to lose body fat, I don't want 40 grams of dietary fat in my meal. That's a ton of calories, especially when the fat is higher than the protein content. The thing I love about chow is I can choose small, medium, or large meals, and I tend to choose medium and large meals with a high protein content. The fats usually come in at around 15 to 30 grams, which is a lot better for me. And the carbs are very controlled in between 20 and 40 grams. I can easily add a scoop of white

Starting point is 00:07:13 rice from my rice cooker or a piece of fruit to get the carb totals up. But I love the way the meals taste. They're super, super fresh and they're super tasty. So much so that I actually decided to partner with Chow after just trying about a week's worth of meals and I can extend some savings on to you guys. You can check the link in the show notes below. Check out using the promo code Danny to save 10%. I think these are the highest protein, best tasting meals out there. I love that they're made and prepared by veterans. I think that's really cool. I think that adds a little bit of a nice layer to this. I like to see companies going out of their way to employ

Starting point is 00:07:50 veterans or just employ anybody who needs a helping hand or just needs that level of support. But this time around, just not having the ability to really cook the way I wanted to, to be able to order 15 meals for about 120 bucks. It comes out to about $20 a day, which is good for me when I add these to the shake. And then I can just supplement that with an 80 to $120 Costco run every two weeks to get some staples like lunch meat, chicken nuggets. I love the chicken nuggets that they have at Costco.

Starting point is 00:08:21 Pastured eggs, egg whites, fruit, salad mixes. I really just get my essentials there and then fill in the gaps. I have found that having meals prepared in advance for the years has made a huge difference for me. And for those of you who might even be too busy to do that, outsourcing to a meal prep service like Chow can make a huge, huge difference. My number two tip for losing body fat when you're busy or gaining muscle when you're busy is lean into the fact that being busy can actually help. More time spent on projects, more time spent on other things that matter usually means less time concerning yourself with hunger or falling victim to your hedonistic drive to eat or consume the

Starting point is 00:09:05 many hyperpalatable foods that are around us. If you are busy, hopefully that busyness allows you to stay active or on the go. But even for those of you who are sedentary, I have found that a lot of the reason people tend to overeat is due to boredom and having nothing better to do than to simply eat food. So staying busy or making yourself even busier for those of you who aren't that busy can really help. So this is something that I have found is pretty beneficial. It's not necessarily great for preparing meals and getting your workouts in, sure, but it can be nice to lean into your busyness and just do the things you need to do. Just keep the ball rolling. Just keep pushing forward and know that, hey, when I'm working on my tasks, when I'm working

Starting point is 00:09:50 on my projects, I'm sipping on my water. I'm being diligent, trying to get my steps in. I'm not, you know, raiding the pantry. If you're working from home and extremely busy and like your home office has a direct view of your pantry and your pantry is loaded with hyper palatable foods, that could be really hard. But I do think it's important to acknowledge that where being busy might be a detriment to your ability to prepare foods, clean up after doing so, get to the gym, commute to and from the gym, shower, blah, blah, blah. It usually is actually advantageous on a few other fronts, specifically those related to overeating. So I do find that being busy isn't always bad. Number three tip I have for those of you who are busy, especially busy professionals,

Starting point is 00:10:34 is to try to habit stack as much as possible with anything related to phone calls. So if you are busy and you are looking to lose body fat, I don't think if you can walk, you should ever take a phone call that you don't take walking. Even if that means pacing in your living room, pacing in your home office, walking around the neighborhood, walking around the building, right? Wherever you're at, take your phone calls on the move. I would say I spend between 60 and 90 minutes a day on the phone, whether that be with online clients, potential online clients, my coaches talking to them about their clients, my builder, the inspector at the actual site that I'm building the gym, I'm always on the phone. And I think because of my ADHD and my slightly anxious tendencies, I've always had the habit of being a pacer when I am on the phone. I rarely sit still when I'm on the phone unless somebody asks me to, which is usually indicative of something bad. But if I can, I like to take my meetings on the go,

Starting point is 00:11:34 especially if they are not Zooms. Obviously, with Zoom, we like to be in front of the webcam, which can be tricky. But if you can take the phone calls that busy up your day or those moments that busy up your day that are on your phone and simply make sure that you are moving while you do them, you will get in a ton of additional steps, a ton of additional movement. And I find that this can be really, really valuable for busy professionals. Taking a little break from the action here to tell you about our amazing partner, Seed. Seed makes the best probiotic supplement on the market, bar none. I'm very confident with that because I think that

Starting point is 00:12:10 the probiotic space and the gut health space in general is filled with people who have no idea what they're talking about or who are looking to make a buck. This isn't to say your gut health isn't important. In fact, it's probably one of the most important and most intriguing developments we have seen in modern medicine and modern physiology. Our relationship with our guts is critical. It's crucial. And taking care of that by eating a lot of different plants, a lot of different fruits and vegetables, getting a diverse array of fiber and resistant starches can go a long way, but so can supplementing with a high quality probiotic. Seed makes the best probiotic on the market with 53.6 billion active fluorescent units. These are organisms that are going to be alive and helping transfer a variety of different benefits to the human host. All these things are actually proven to work in humans.

Starting point is 00:13:02 These strains work in humans, not rodents. Seed is not cheaping out here by providing you with any random strain. They're providing you with strains that help with digestive health, gut immunity, gut barrier integrity, dermatological health, cardiovascular health, micronutrient synthesis, as well as many other things. They're vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, soy-free, nut-free, shellfish-free. So very friendly for those of you who may have a variety of different allergies and who are looking for a supplement you can take that can enhance a variety of different things. I have a very, very good track record over many, many years of having to deal with things like eczema and having to deal with things like

Starting point is 00:13:39 psoriasis on occasion, especially when the weather changes. And I swear to you, since I started taking seed, I have noticed substantially less of that. And there's four strains included in Seed shown to help with things like atopic dermatitis. So there you go. Not to mention the plethora of strains for the health of your gut. If you're looking to take your gut health to the next level, you can go to seed.com. Subscribe for their daily symbiotic. You can take one or two a day. You can share it with a partner. Sometimes you can do that. But it goes a long way. It's the best probiotic supplement on the market. I absolutely love it. And you can use the code DANNY15 to save. Back to the show. What's going on, guys? Taking a break from this episode to tell you a little

Starting point is 00:14:22 bit about my coaching company, Core Coaching Method. More specifically, our app-based training. We partnered with Train Heroic to bring app-based training to you using the best technology and best user interface possible. You can join either my Home Heroes team, or you can train from home with bands and dumbbells, or Elite Physique, which is a female bodybuilding-focused program where you can train at the gym with equipments designed specifically to help you develop strength, as well as the glutes, hamstrings, quads, and back. I have more teams coming planned for a variety of different fitness levels. But what's cool about this is when you join these programs, you get programming that's updated every single week, the sets to do, the reps to do, exercise tutorials filmed by me,

Starting point is 00:15:03 with me and my team. So you'll get my exact coaching expertise as to how to perform the movement, whether you're training at home or you're training in the gym. And again, these teams are somewhat specific. So you'll find other members of those communities looking to pursue similar goals at similar fitness levels. You can chat, ask questions, upload form for form review, ask for substitutions. It's a really cool training community and you can try it completely free for seven days. Just click the link in the podcast description below. Can't wait to see you in the core coaching collective, my app-based training community. Back to the show.

Starting point is 00:15:39 What's going on, guys? Taking a break from the show to tell you about our amazing partners over at Elemental Labs. Elemental Labs makes a flagship electrolyte product known as LMNT Recharge. Recharge is amazing. It's got bioavailable forms of sodium, potassium, and magnesium, which can really help you train, contract your tissues, and get hydrated. I love having it in the morning before my fasted training because oftentimes I wake up without an appetite, but I want something in my stomach so I'm not flat, I can get a pump, and I can get hydrated in the gym and still perform my best.

Starting point is 00:16:15 I also love to sip on my recharge when I'm on the golf course or especially when I'm in the sauna. The more you sweat, the more likely it is that you will need to replace valuable electrolytes like sodium, magnesium, and potassium. And while if you have high blood pressure, you might not necessarily be a candidate for electrolyte supplementation, many athletes and active adults need more salt and more electrolytes in their diet than they currently get, especially if they sweat, live in warm climates or humid climates. I found a bunch of different ways to use my recharge, but like I said, I love using it before and during my training, whenever I do something active outside or my sweat rate increases, or when I'm in the sauna. And you can actually try

Starting point is 00:16:54 it completely for free. All their best flavors that are totally free of sugar have only 10 calories. They're sweetened naturally, and they come in amazing flavors like raspberry salt, orange salt, citrus salt. My favorite is the mango habanero or mango chili and the leban habanero, which I take in the sauna. There's flavors for everybody and you can check them out by going to drink element tea slash coach Danny. They'll send you every single flavor in an individual packet. You can try them out completely free. Just pay shipping. DrinkLMNT.com slash Coach Danny. Get your sample pack today completely for free. Just pay shipping. Back to the show. My fourth tip, and I already alluded to this a little bit talking about that shake, is to attempt what I call a protein sparing modified fast. If you are super, super busy and a protein sparing modified fast essentially refers to a fast that is designed to spare muscle protein. And usually what this means

Starting point is 00:17:54 is eating a bunch of protein and mostly only protein. So like a protein sparing modified fast could be as simple as I only drink whey protein shakes for 24 hours. It's not technically a fast, but it's a fast from all things that aren't protein sparing theoretically. I'm not asking you to do that. What I'm asking you to do instead is to try to have a super high protein breakfast and then put off your next meal as long as you can comfortably. I'm not saying to overly restrict. I'm just saying put it off as long as you can comfortably. And how long that might be is going to be different for each individual. And it's probably going to depend a lot on how much protein you have for that first meal. But to use myself as an example, if I have

Starting point is 00:18:34 that shake that has somewhere between 60 and 70 grams of protein at around 10 a.m., I'm not going to be hungry again until at least one or two. And so that buys me some additional time. And if I wake up at five, I have my shake around nine or 10, and then my next meal around one or two. That means from about five in the morning to one or two in the afternoon, I've only had one meal, which means from two to when I go to bed at 10, I have an eight hour window in which I can fit usually two pretty good sized meals, a couple of snacks and still be in a deficit. I never like playing catch up on protein or water when it comes to my daily intake goals. So I will start drinking water immediately upon

Starting point is 00:19:17 waking, have that first meal when I'm hungry, making sure it's high in protein. Getting ahead on those two gives me a lot of flexibility in the back end of the day where things tend to be a little bit more chaotic. And especially for those of you who have kids around that three, four in the afternoon threshold where you start to pick them up or where you have to kind of get them situated or where maybe you're coming home from work, that can oftentimes be where the bad decisions, the chaos and the limited number of things you can do to flexibly kind of work through a situation that that's where things get tough. That's where the bottlenecks start to happen. So having more flexibility on the back end because of how you handled those

Starting point is 00:19:55 earlier hours in the day where many people have a little more control, I find that tends to work well. So this tip is to have a super high protein breakfast and then push off that next meal as far as you can to buy yourself some time and flexibility on the later half of the day. Another tip that works well, this is like a go-to tip for clients. It's almost so easy. I'm sure you've heard it before, but it is to have one extremely large salad every single day. So this could be your lunch. Think about how easy this would be to have that big shake for breakfast and then that lunch and then either a meal prepped meal that you've bought from a meal prep service or a meal prep meal that you have prepared yourself

Starting point is 00:20:34 before going home and ultimately having a lot of flexibility with perhaps dinner. But ideally having that large salad as your second meal is going to do a few things. It's going to provide you with a lot of fiber, a lot of satiety. There's always the opportunity to add in additional vegetables or even fruits or even nuts or even seeds or whole grains or protein to your salad to make it more nutrient dense and tailor it towards your goals. But when it comes to fat loss, when you're in a deficit, it's likely that you're going to experience hunger and you're going to reduce your overall intake of food.

Starting point is 00:21:06 So oftentimes what happens is you lose out on some nutrients and you spend quite a bit of time being hungry. And the cool thing about a salad is it kind of helps you get around both of those. Salads can be very nutrient dense. Obviously, mixed greens and leafy green vegetables are very healthy and nutritious, but you can add many other things to your salad to add additional components and layers of nutrition to support your goals without a ton of calories. The biggest mistake people make on salads is including far too much

Starting point is 00:21:35 dressing or high fat, high calorie dressing options. So try to opt for things like vinaigrettes or lower calorie dressings, but having a salad baked into your day, no pun intended because who'd bake a salad, but having a salad as a staple meal every day is a really good way to have a calorie controlled, highly filling, very nutrient dense meal that you don't have to think about or really apply a lot of energy into preparing. Salads can be very easy to make. In fact, for most of you, you'll be able to make these in advance, just putting your dressing off to the side. My next tip is to remember that your sessions do not need to be long. They just need to be challenging. I think three to five sessions a week tends to be a sweet spot. An analogy I like from Dr. Andy Galpin,

Starting point is 00:22:23 somebody who I really look up to is the three to five method, three by five method, which is three to five workouts a week, three to five sets or three to five exercises per workout, three to five sets of each exercise, three to five reps of each exercise, which I think you could skew a little bit more towards say eight to 12 reps per exercise. If your goals are body composition specific, three to five would be better if they're more strength performance specific, but you don't have to lift so heavy, especially if you're in a deficit. Although I think that idea of three to five weekly workouts, three to five exercises,

Starting point is 00:23:00 three to five sets between three to five or eight to 12 reps, you know, is going to work really, really well for most people. You certainly do not have to work out every day. That's something that I've talked about ad nauseum on social media and on the podcast before, but I would recommend at least three lifts. I think four to five is the sweet spot. That's why for my training app, the core coaching collective, we've got home heroes, which is a home program, which is dumbbells and bands. That's four days a week. And we have elite physique, which is our female focused bodybuilding program, which is four times a week with an optional fifth day for those of you who tend to be overachievers or want that additional stimulation. All of the programs I've ever written, whether it's female physique one and two power build power lift. And

Starting point is 00:23:42 most of the programs I write for my online clients, very rarely do I ever have six sessions a week unless it's specifically requested by a high level client. 85% of the people I work with train four days a week. I think most people can commit to that. I think if you can set aside four hours, right, you have 168 hours a week, you set aside four hours, you have yourself 15 minutes of commute time with a 45 minute workout, you can do just fine with that. For many of you, you'll have more time to give. I'm not telling you not to give a little more time. I'm just saying, don't think you need to have the hardest, most epic training protocol in the world to lose body fat when you're already busy. My last tip here is that supplements and cardio can help

Starting point is 00:24:26 and they can speed things along. I gave you the kind of idea of getting more steps in when you're taking phone calls, but specific cardio sessions like running, jogging, hit, walking, hiking, all of those things can be awesome, especially if you can do them in nature. But those things can help. The supplements that can help with body fat reduction, in my opinion, are caffeine by raising energy expenditure and helping with energy going into sessions. Creatine, which can help with recovery and help muscles perform better. Yo-Himbine, which acts as another stimulant and would be something that I would only recommend for advanced lifters who are very experienced with stimulant usage like caffeine.

Starting point is 00:25:09 And I like protein shakes, greens, and multivitamins to add into the mix just to make sure you're getting enough of your macro and micronutrition when you're busy. So those are kind of my foundational tips for losing body fat when you're busy. The first is to always prep your meals in advance and outsource to a meal prep service if you have to. The second is to just remember that being busy can work to your advantage and it oftentimes keeps you distracted from a lot of the habits that are kind of born out of boredom. Number three is to try to habit stack movement whenever you're on a phone call or doing a project that doesn't require you to be stationary. Number four is to try to have a lot of water and a lot of protein early in the day to give yourself flexibility on the back end. Number five is to have at least one meal a day that's comprised of a salad or a very, very large serving of vegetables.

Starting point is 00:25:55 Number six is to remember you don't need a ton of sessions to have effective program. You just need an effective number of sessions with good programming. So that might be something that you could look to our app and say, hey, I want to do one of these two programs. You can go to the website, check those out. You can work with us directly, or you can just try to get to the gym three to five times a week following something like that three by five method. And then there are some supplements and things that will help. Cardio, of course, will speed things along. But overall, if you are busy, your diet is going to be doing most of the work. So what about for those of you who are busy and want to build muscle? Well, one thing we know for sure is that you can build muscle more efficiently at maintenance or in a surplus of calories than you can a deficit. So one of the things you'll

Starting point is 00:26:41 have to do is be sure that you are getting your meals in. So preparing your meals in advance certainly still applies. I would also recommend having four meals a day that are going to contain at least 30 grams of protein. The literature seems fairly clear that spacing your protein out across the day seems to be what's most effective for stimulating the accretion of more muscle tissue. So be sure to do that. One of the best ways to make sure you get more calories in is to use things like shakes and smoothies. You can always mix in fruits, full fat yogurt, avocado, protein powder, peanut butter,

Starting point is 00:27:19 almond butter, chia seed, hemp seed, all of the things that I put in that other smoothie, but you can add even more calories and really just spread those into like, you know, one or two shakes that you add to a meal, one big shake that you have as a meal, one shake you have right before bed. Just make sure that you're getting four 30 gram servings of protein a day at least. And if you can, and you really have a hard time finding time to have big meals, leverage the power of a high calorie smoothie. Again, just like I said before, you're going to want to train hard, but particularly at a level that you can recover from. For those of you whose goals are muscle growth, I would definitely say you're going to probably want to train a little bit closer to failure, and you're

Starting point is 00:28:01 going to want to be really selective with your exercise selection. You're going to want to make sure that you're skewing and biasing volume towards the muscle groups that you most want to develop. Your sessions might need to be a little bit longer to get to a volume that's really stimulative, but overall, we're not needing to kind of rewrite the wheel. What is it? We don't need to rework the wheel. Reinvent the wheel. Rewrite the wheel. Yeah. What the hell was I doing there? We don't need to reinvent the wheel. Hard training, four to five sessions a week with plenty of time to recover. And just like I would say, for fat loss, it's really important to get your sleep. For muscle growth, it's just as if not more important.

Starting point is 00:28:39 You need to sleep. You need to recover to build tissue. So there you have it, guys. Some tips and tricks that you can take with you to change your body composition, no matter how busy you are. Thank you all so much for tuning in too. If you enjoyed it, please do me a favor, leave me a five-star rating and review on iTunes. Helps more people find the podcast and helps me share my mission with as many people as I can. Thanks for listening and I'll catch you on the next one

Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 190: Losing Body Fat (+ Building Muscle) When Busy

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