Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 191: Women's Weight Loss, "Cankles", How to Gain Strength (Q and A)

Episode Date: May 9, 2022

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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'm going to be answering your questions. These are questions I've fielded directly from my Instagram. That's probably the social media platform on which it's the most easiest to access me, and I always throw up question boxes on my Instagram story to make sure that I'm fielding questions that I believe are relevant to the people who listen to and engage with my content. So these are questions directly from my Instagram, just kind of a little bit of what you can expect in today's episode. We're going to be talking about workout's episode. We're going to be talking about workout playlists. We're going to be talking about creatine and urination rates after creatine, water retention after taking creatine, digestive stuff after taking creatine. We're going to be discussing when might be a good time to increase your calories, getting back into training after an injury,

amongst many other questions. There's lots to get through today here, guys. Stuff that I think will be pretty interesting, pretty fun, pretty insightful, grabbing from fitness, nutrition, hypertrophy training, a lot of different areas. So sit back and enjoy this episode. lot of different areas. So sit back and enjoy this episode. The first question comes from Kyle Grangs. Kyle asks, any questions on why I have to quote unquote piss like a racehorse after taking creatine? Pretty simple explanation here, in my opinion. And this is just generally what I have seen with creatine supplementation. Generally speaking, when you take creatine, you do retain more intramuscular water. You also drink more water. You're instructed to drink more water directly on the packaging for most creatine supplements. So anytime you increase

your water intake, you're likely to increase your excretory volume, meaning you're going to pee more to compensate. It works the other way too. Oftentimes bodybuilders will start to increase hydration going into a show. This is a more old school tactic. A lot of fewer coaches are doing water manipulation tactics just because they're so hit and miss. Um, but a lot of bodybuilders would pound water going into a show to kind of get in the habit of peeing a lot, uh, and then pull water out. But that excretory response seemed to anecdotally speaking anyway, stay elevated for a couple of days so they could flush water, look drier, et cetera. Um, you know, that thinner skin look, that drier look, that more conditioned look that oftentimes people associate with just really severe dehydration. Um, and a lot of people used to

do that, but point being, when you start drinking more water, you can expect to pee more. Um, and creatine, I think goes hand in hand with that. Next question comes from Denise skates. Question is drop your workout playlist. So a lot of people, um, in probably the last couple of years have asked like what genre of music I like to listen to. Um, and I, I would have to say it's probably going to more often than not end up being rap. Um, I do like most new rap, um, which I know is probably like what many people would think of as like the lowest hanging fruit of, of workout music selection. Like it is pretty ubiquitous and, uh, pretty commonplace to listen to rap when training, but that's kind of

what I tend to like more often than not though, that I'm listening to music. I ended up listening to podcasts, which I think kind of kills the whole ability for me to like share music preferences. Cause it's like, yeah, I really like rap. Like I like Roddy Rich, Lil Baby, DaBaby, Drake, pretty much everybody, um, that you would find on like Apple's, uh, rap A-list playlist, um, or Spotify's top hip hop playlist, whatever. Um, but I listened to a lot of podcasts for non-specific things. Um, while I'm training, I also listened to audio books while I'm training and I find it doesn't particularly distract me much. I'm training. I also listen to audiobooks while I'm training, and I find it doesn't particularly distract me much. I'm still able to train very much on feel. I'm still very much able to focus on my workout, oftentimes to the detriment of whatever audio I'm consuming,

but I do listen to a lot of podcasts related to various things politically, economically. I really enjoy sports, so I listen to a lot of sports-specific podcasts, things like that. So my workout playlist is pretty boring. It's not necessarily ever handpicked. It's usually just some quick access Apple or Spotify playlist for whatever today's latest rap songs are. All right, this question comes from Cam Clark photography. The question is what are some signs it's time to bump up your calories? So I'm going to assume that the person asking this question is in a deficit, right? Cause they're looking to, to probably bump up their calories. I'm assuming they're in a deficit. Um, so some signs that you can, let's say, be

aware of or things you can be on the lookout for if you are in a deficit with a goal of fat loss and wanting to make sure that your access to energy and your energy availability through food isn't getting into the danger zone. There are some red flags that you can keep an eye out for. One of which perhaps the most obvious is extreme One of which, perhaps the most obvious, is extreme lethargy, lack of energy, lack of drive in the gym, feeling worn down, right? That's usually a very good sign that you might be pushing it a little too hard. Feeling much hungrier than normal. A little bit of hunger, I think, tends to be fine on a diet.

And I think a lot of people expect to be able to lose weight without feeling hungry, which is unfortunate because the truth of the matter is part of the reason weight loss is so hard is because of some of these hormonal and appetite regulators that kind of go haywire when you are adding weight, when you're changing weight, when you're changing your food and eating habits, right? We have psychological things that come into play with how we, you know, our food interplays with our mood and our food interplays with our stress, but also we literally have different hormones at play here. So long story short, you can very quickly begin to feel moderately hungry when you change your diet. But if you have been dieting for a very long time and you are chronically hungry, extremely hungry constantly, that's probably a very good indicator. Poor sleep might be a good indicator. Immune system

dysregulation, getting sick more frequently is something I tend to see happen more often in clients that have been in a deficit for perhaps too long or just in a deficit in general. Typically for women who tend to diet on smaller women on lower calories, you can often end up in a situation where that woman will have a hard time getting adequate nutrition and just general nourishment, right? Like if your calories are 14, 1500, that really limits your food selection and it could limit your access to various micronutrients depending on how you use the very few calories you have to work with. So point being there, there are a few kind of big rock physiological things. I'm sore, I'm hungry, I'm not feeling too well, my energy's low. Another thing you

could take into account here, another actual kind of fundamentals human physiological system is your reproductive system. For women, are you experiencing relative energy deficiency syndrome or hypothalamic amenorrhea, where you lose your period for extended periods of time, you get menstrual dysregulation, late periods, dysregulation to what would normally be a consistent period. That can be a very good sign for women. For men, lack of libido, low erectile quality. These are all things that I think can be closely associated with dieting too intensely or perhaps too long. So what you can do to avoid this, and this is what I do with a lot of the clients that I work with, you just monitor your bio

feedback over the course of, basically you're going to do this over the course of the entirety of your diet, whether you're bulking or not. I think monitoring your sleep, stress, hydration, soreness, recovery, all of these various metrics. I think that monitoring them makes sense if you're going to the gym, period, but especially if you're dieting because you want to see how your physiology is responding to the stressor that is a deficit. Okay, this question comes from Navalak underscore. Is being in a calorie deficit going to get rid of cankles, or is that genetics struggling over here? So this is actually an interesting question, and I picked this because I think it unpacks just a lot of the general misconceptions about genetics, body fat,

circumference of various places of the body, etc. So just kind of unpacking this slowly. Cancles refers to just like having a cancle or an ankle, I should say, that kind of blends into the calf in a way that many people think is unflattering. It's often an ankle joint that almost looks like it just kind of becomes the calf. A lot of people have this because of a genetic predisposition for storing body fat in that area, or they just have swelling. They have poor circulation. They might have larger actual skeletal anatomy of the ankle joint. The actual aesthetic and cosmetic of each one of your joints is going to probably be influenced by all the same factors. But I think the ankle might be a place where it might look more unflattering than other

places based on what many people's expectations of what the body should look like. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with having cankles. I just know that many people who complain about them find them unattractive. Um, and so if in theory, you know, the tissue is some percentage of fluid as is all tissue, uh, some percentage of fat, right? Some percentage of, you know, skin in theory, if you were in a calorie deficit and you lost body fat from all over, you might also lose some water as well. That could probably create a difference and some difference in the aesthetic of your ankle slash cankle region, right? But the truth is there are

multiple components at play here. So yes, a calorie deficit will help get rid of body fat globally, perhaps in that area. But do your genetics play a role in that? Absolutely. Some people store more fat on their arms, on their midsection, in their breasts, in their butt. Of course, there are probably some people who store more body fat in the lower limb, albeit less than other areas of the body, because it just generally doesn't make a ton of sense. But you understand probably at this point what I'm getting at, which is the calorie deficit's only going to help so much because there are likely multiple things at play here. Okay, this question comes from Daniel underscore 25 underscore UNM. He asks, are bodyweight exercises just as effective as weights

at building muscle? I'm going to say no, if only for the reason that most people don't have access to mobility and general fitness. I would say levels of general fitness that would allow them to fully challenge their body with bodyweight exercises in a way they could with weights. And I'm assuming that means machines as well. But truthfully, like, yes, there are some amazing bodyweight exercises that you could take very close to failure and get a very strong hypertrophic stimulus with pushups, pull-ups, split squats. But there are just some ways in which, you know, thinking about how mechanical tension influences muscle tissue, that it's pretty damn obvious you need to start

to load skeletal tissue externally because its ability to, you know, handle the load of just the weight of the body can get absurd, right? And like you see how big gymnasts can get, and that might be an indicator of like, hey, that's about as big as the human upper body can get with upper body training. But it's definitely not the limit, especially for people who lift weights. They can develop even more impressive upper bodies naturally or enhanced because they're using external stimuli. So I think there's anecdotal proof in the pudding here, but also like, I don't want to bash body weight exercises. I think they're very effective and can be very effective for building muscle if they're

done properly. But weights just give you so much more to work with. They give you so much more versatility in how you load these tissues. They give you the ability to load tissues, I think, more effectively at different positions in their contractile range, be it shortened, be it lengthened. They give you the ability to do sets that are extremely heavy and fatigue your muscles by, say, five reps or eight reps in a way that oftentimes with so many of the popular bodyweight exercises, you need to do countless more reps. And again, I'm not bashing them.

I just think that there are other ways around this. Okay, this question comes from Susan MCK87. She says, protein-heavy breakfast ideas other than eggs. So I oftentimes will cheap out here and take the shortcut of having a protein shake. I will oftentimes take just two scoops of whey protein and water in the morning to get about 50 grams. Sometimes I make a shake with one scoop of whey, one scoop of collagen, one scoop of greens powder, one half cup of Greek yogurt, a little bit of kefir, a little bit of hemp seed, spinach, strawberries. I blend that guy up. I pound it back. That has a little bit more calories, not a ton, probably closer to 500, whereas the two scoops away is

closer to 250, but it also has a ton of additional nutrition, a little bit of fiber, a little bit of omega fat, a couple of things of fermented food. That's a quick breakfast shake that I often have. Additionally, I will do things like overnight oatmeal, obviously yogurt on its own. If I'll have it in a shake, I'll often have it plain. Those are some of my go-tos. Okay. This question comes from Daniel Meza. One, he says, best way to reintroduce resistance training after a back injury. I had a herniated disc. So my initial prescription here would be to see a qualified physical therapist or medical practitioner who specializes in diagnosing back pain, assessing back pain, and get a protocol for actually working to target and strengthen the tissue that may be damaged, or at least getting a clear-cut diagnosis. I find a lot of people

diagnose themselves with a disc herniation without truly even knowing if that's what's going on at the actual low back. So it can oftentimes be most helpful to just get the diagnosis up front from a qualified professional. I'm not assuming you haven't done that either. I just think that this happens a lot. So I always like to throw that red flag out there if in fact I run into a situation where I think, hey, look, we don't even have a diagnosis here. This person's saying they have something we don't know they have. A herniated disc is very different from something like, say, non-specific low back pain or a bulging disc. There are things that there's a grade here and it's best to know where

you're at. How I would reintroduce myself after I've been cleared, I'd work on a lot of extension work. I'd work on strengthening the glutes, strengthening the intrinsic intrinsic core, strengthening the lats. I would try very much not to load my lumbar spine. Uh, assuming this is a lumbar spinal herniation in a careless way, I would pay very close attention to rebuilding and reconstructing how I squat, how I lunge, how I hinge. And eventually when you're able to do these movements at, you know, scaled back level, starting to reintroduce load to the bench, to the, or not the bench, but the press, the pull, the squat, the lunge, the hinge, you know, I would probably front load core stability training over say flexion and extension stuff, just to be able

to create a, not like a sling-like effect, but additional stability in and around that spine without training flexion and extension. Let's say, obviously you could get away with some of it, but it's probably the most aggravating form of core training if you're talking about a lumbar disc issue. But, you know, I would focus more on core stability up front. but you know i would focus more on core stability up front so you know off the cuff that's probably how i would address that question 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 the probiotic space and the gut health space in general is

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tell you a little 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

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podcast description below. Can't wait to see you in the core coaching collective, my app-based training community. Back to the show. 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. I also love to sip on my recharge when I'm on the golf course or especially when I'm in the

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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 drinklmnt.com. They'll send you every single flavor in an individual packet. You can try them out completely free. Just pay shipping. drinklmnt.com. Get your sample pack today completely for free. Just pay shipping. Back to the show. Okay. This question comes from Yahel underscore I. She says, how can we burn fat as women? The good news is you can burn fat the same way as men. Although I do think it's worth noting, women generally are smaller than men and have less muscle mass than men. So metabolically speaking, they tend to have a lower output from a caloric expenditure

standpoint. They use less calories, which is, I think, for many of you, going to be an easy way to draw a line to, okay, so then they have to eat less calories. That's correct, right? If you use less calories across your day, your total daily energy expenditure is lower than that of a man or that of a larger individual or a more muscular individual or an individual who moves more. You'll probably have to eat less. And you'll have to eat less than your TDEE, which for many women tends to be lower than a male of similar size stature. And then just generally men are larger and more muscular. So they tend to be able to lose fat on lower calories. So I think part of this question, how can we burn fat or lose fat as women comes down to just understanding that, okay, first and foremost, you'll probably have to approach your diet differently based on how your body and body

composition and body size and lifestyle movement, all these things come together. So you'll have to get into a deficit and that deficit will have to be below your total daily energy expenditure. And you'll probably have an easier time adhering to that deficit two to two and a half months or weeks out of the month compared to the other two weeks out of the month because women who are menstruating or women who are in the portion of their life where they're menstruating normally have some pretty wild hormone fluctuations that can really influence a variety of different things, specifically body weight, due to things like water retention. And guys, I won't dive too much into it

because I've recorded several episodes with experts who can speak substantially better to these points than myself. Those are with Lyle McDonald, Kyle Gillette. You can go and check back in on those. But point being, you do have a little hormonal symphony going on in the background of everything that you do that most men don't. And those two things, like having to usually eat less calories than a man and having to deal with these weight-specific fluctuations, have a lot of women thinking that they have to do something special. The truth is you have to be patient. You have to stick to it. You have to monitor those biofeedback metrics like we talked about earlier. And you have to set a rate of weight loss that's reasonable. For a smaller individual, you might have to eat

less than perhaps a guy, and you might have a couple weeks out of the month where you hold a little bit more water and have a harder time sticking to your diet because of some cravings and appetite dysregulation paired with higher stress. But overall, I think you'll be able to lose weight probably at a slower level than a larger human being by virtue of just being smaller. So there's so many ways to unpack this without knowing exactly where you're coming from. But truth is, you're going to be able to lose weight just fine. But many times for women, you have to wait a little longer just because of generally slower rates of weight loss for smaller individuals. This question comes from Hot Girl Fit.

Hot GRL Fit. Family's taking me out to dinner for Mother's Day. Will a few drinks hurt my progress? Okay, assuming these are your children and you are the mother, have as many drinks as you want because truth of the matter is the day is all about celebrating you. And I don't think that any level of fitness and any health metric is going to be so wildly disrupted by enjoying yourself with your friends and family that you'll regret it. I don't think a few drinks will hurt your progress much at all. Could it influence your sleep for one night? Sure. Could it dysregulate your appetite the following day? Sure. Could it elevate some various enzymatic markers of liver damage on a blood test? Sure. Is it going to really hurt you? No. Come on. I think you're resilient enough as a human being to know you can have a few drinks and

be just fine the next day, especially if it's celebratory and it's bringing people together. There's such a positive health component to getting together with the right people and celebrating important things that I do think you have to make room for some stuff in this life. But I also am one of the most quote-unquote hardcore people when it comes to discussing what I believe to be the very real ramifications of chronic alcohol consumption. I think that there are a lot of people in this world, particularly in America, who are completely deluded about how deleterious alcohol is to their health. I think we're always looking to make comparisons and we're always

looking to be like, oh, is it worse than weed or is it worse than cigarettes? And I think that, weed or is it worse than cigarettes? And I think that, you know, quite frankly, that oftentimes just pulls us away from the fact that multiple things and multiple behaviors can be worse or bad at the same time. And I do think that alcohol in general is uniquely bad because of how prevalent it is, how normalized it is, how you can get it everywhere. And just generally the chronic trajectory for people's usage from their early age, oftentimes late adolescence to early 20s, all the way into their adult life, the use of this drug tends to compound. So I do speak relatively honestly, I'd say, about what I believe to be the negative impacts of alcohol on your

health. But I don't think in this context, it's unhealthy. I think that worrying about a few drinks ruining your progress to the point that it might influence your ability to enjoy yourself on such a special occasion is actually worse. Okay. This question comes from Dan Zarech. She asks, proper etiquette when you want to use a machine after somebody. So this is at the gym. I love this question. And I think it's a very, let's say, it probably depends on who you are and who you are asking as to like, how do I standardize for my desired outcome of getting this person to tell me I can have the machine after them without infringing upon the code, the etiquette of the space. As a guy, if I see another guy or another bro on the bench,

I will very quickly go up to them and I will reference towards my headphone as if to give a warning shot of like, Hey man, I'm trying to maybe get your attention. Like I'm pointing at my headphone and it's like overly exaggerating that I'm pulling it out. So you might do yours. Uh, and I'll be like, how many more you got as you still listen with the other headphone? You'd be like, Oh, I got two more. And it's like, not a big deal. Or I'll just point and I'll be like, I'll literally just walk up and point at the machine and I'll go, I'll like make like a one, two, three on my finger. Like how many sets he got left. Um, and oftentimes the response is like literally a specific number because that person knows where they're at.

Uh, if it's an older individual who perhaps is just kind of going at their own pace, I oftentimes don't ask. And I know that that might seem like, why would you, that's ageism. Why wouldn't you ask? I just generally feel uncomfortable acting as though I might be pushing somebody who's older along. I have a lot of older clients, so I'm particularly sympathetic about this, or empathetic, I should say, about the pace that they might need to move at compared to the pace that I need to move at. So just as a general respect for my elders and older individuals in the gym, I generally don't ask. I try to improvise in that situation. When I talk or see a woman, oftentimes I know women just get really uncomfortable with dudes walking up into

their space at the gym or talking to them at the gym. So I do the point method where I'll just be like, I'll point and I'll try to ask them maybe how many just by referencing all my hands. I'd say that works about 75% of the time. And then the other 25% that oftentimes I find, they just take out their headphones and answer the question normally and smile as I go along with my day. that oftentimes I find they just take out their headphones and answer the question normally and

smile as I go along with my day. Never really had a negative experience in the gym making somebody feel uncomfortable like that. So I do think that it really just depends who you are, how you feel comfortable approaching people. I don't think there's anything outside of the code and etiquette, literally asking. I think that's still very much within the boundaries of etiquette. It just depends on what your, I think, personal level of investment in getting that piece of equipment is. If you really want it, you should be able to ask

with pretty much all impunity if you ask with a decent amount of respect. You're just like, hey, just curious, how many sets did you have left? So that's kind of my two cents on doing that. This question comes from D Boy Nguyen. Is eating vegetables important to building muscle? So in theory, you know, muscle's generally built with, you know, resistance training stress that's adequate enough that it stresses the tissue to grow. And you must use various different things to repair said tissue, most specifically the macronutrients, protein, and carbohydrate. And vegetable yields mostly fiber and micronutrients and water. It's not necessarily loaded with starchy carbohydrate and protein. So people often think, hey, how important really

is this stuff? So much of my focus on my diet kind of revolves around these other big factors. Is protein really a big player here? Is this something that I should, or I should say are vegetables really a big player here? your gut and intestinal microbiome. It's important because you get access to a lot of different micronutrients, whether that be vitamins, minerals, polyphenols, antioxidants, through plant foods, specifically fruits and vegetables. And while they don't necessarily have like a specific, you know, place that one might go like, aha, that's the way it helps with muscle growth directly. You know, there's indirect things like access to those micronutrients, nitrates and leafy greens that can help with expanding vessels and allowing for better blood flow. Fiber, which you might be able to use to manipulate your diet if you're trying to maintain muscle while dieting down.

So to say whether or not vegetables are important for building muscle, I'd say yes, but they're extremely important for health. So my answer there would then be like a double yes, because you'll always build more muscle when you're nourished and healthy and have access to all the different micronutrients that you need a day. This question comes from LadyPilot80616. She asks, if you want to lift a heavier weight, what's the best way? I've been told various methods. I'm confused. So the best way is to gradually apply the theory of progressive overload to your training. And I generally think that straight sets of linear periodization following a progressive overload driven model make the most sense. The TLDR too long, didn't

read version of what I just said is each week, try to add a little more weight to the bar, doing the same fewer or more reps over time. So if you want to get stronger on any lift, what you should do is gradually look to increase weight on that lift. And you can make accommodations for yourself to do that by lowering the number of reps. So if you can do five reps for 100 pounds, do five reps for 100 pounds. The next week, try to do three reps at 105. The week after that, try to do two reps at 110. And then the week after that, try to do one rep at 115 or 120. Then restart the cycle at whatever it is that you can do for five reps again. That sounds so unscientific and

obvious, but that's a pretty damn foolproof way to get stronger and be able to lift heavier weights over time. And that stuff shows up very easily and very simply in, you know, how most coaches program. Um, and so I think my better answer to this, my more actionable answer to this is to follow a program. So find a resistance training program that's aligned with your goals. And more often than not, it's going to have a strength component that is designed to help you develop strength over time. If you want to kind of get an idea of what long-term progressive resistance programming should look like, you should check out the training app and the Core Coaching Collective. My coaching company, Core Coaching Method, has one-on-one online coaching customized to your exact specifications. We build a program for you,

but we also have app-based group programming where you can hop into a group of other people who are pursuing a similar goal. In your case, it sounds like you'd like to build strength. We have Elite Physique, which is a women-specific bodybuilding-focused program designed to help you develop the glutes, hamstrings, upper back, shoulders, and that's all done week to week. So you should constantly be making micro-progressions on your strength, hypertrophy, conditioning. We try to really make sure all aspects are there. And the large-scale theme of the programming updates every month with small adjustments every week, you get access to me and my coaching team and you can try it literally for

free for a week. We also have a home program that allows you to do all the same stuff from home with just bands and dumbbells. Pretty darn cool. And again, you get access to me and my coaching team through amazing chat features, cool user interface. And then after that, it's less than the cost of your daily cup of coffee, literally 37 bucks a month to have full tutorial sets, reps, cues, the ability to ask me any questions, form review, all kinds of awesome stuff. And for the guys, we will be getting a male specific program up on train heroic. We still have foundations, which is my kind of vision of what I think effective CrossFit training might look like for stability, strength, and aerobic conditioning. We also have power build, which is just kind of a foundational, you know, focus on the big list with some accessory hypertrophy work.

And we have PDFs programs for the girls on there too, you know, but I would say more often than not, the app probably would be a little bit better, especially if you do well in a group setting. But if not, there's female physique one and 2 all on corecoachingmethod.com. I want to thank you guys so much for listening to the podcast. If you haven't yet, leave me a five-star rating and review on iTunes or Spotify. It helps more people find the podcast and helps me keep getting my message out there. Thanks so much for tuning in and I'll catch you on the next one.