Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 200 - Q & A: Deficit "TIPS", How hard to train + MORE!

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome everybody to another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. As always, I'm your host Danny Matranga. And this episode is the 200th episode of the show. It's been a nice ride. I started this podcast at the infancy of the pandemic, which if you looked at probably like a, I don't know, graph or graphical representation of when most podcasts that are actively being, you know, fed to the various podcast outlets started. You'll probably see more of them clustered around the pandemic than any other time. And I did it because I wanted to connect with you guys, my audience on social media in a way that allowed me to more deeply provide you with value, right?

Starting point is 00:00:45 Like social media is so shallow, everything's so quick. It's all about quick bait. You've got to have, you know, snappy titles, short texts, limited caption space. And podcasts really allow you to go deeper, form a better connection, and really provide people with more value and information. This is probably more similar to how I would talk to clients than it is how I would talk on social media. And I just want to thank each and every single one of you for being along or following along with me over the course of the last two years,

Starting point is 00:01:17 getting me to 200 episodes, and hopefully we can have a nice consistent ride to the next 200. This episode is going to be a Q&A. I'm going to work through questions that I'm answering directly from Instagram that I have fielded directly from you guys. So we'll try to get through a good number of them from a variety of different kind of categories. We're going to talk a little bit about calorie deficits and habits to optimize, make them a little bit easier. We're going to talk about how many days in a row you can work

Starting point is 00:01:48 out before taking a rest day. We'll talk a little bit about consuming too much protein and what can happen if you do that. We'll talk about how to know whether or not you're lifting heavy enough to potentiate gains. We will talk about a variety of things today, including what I mentioned, but we'll get into question number one here, which comes from Kaylee underscore Blaze 74. And her questions are, what are some basic tips that we need to know

Starting point is 00:02:18 when we are starting in a calorie deficit? So first thing I would say is go back and listen actually to episode 199 or queue it up so that it just plays immediately after this, because I talked a lot in that episode about what I would recommend for anybody who's looking to lose body fat and get lean. So of course, all of that is built under the assumption or built into the assumption that you're going to be following a deficit. So there's a lot of tips in there. But some of the best tips I can give you on the front end would be understand that the larger the deficit, the faster the rate of weight loss and the faster the rate of maladaptation. When

Starting point is 00:03:01 you lose body weight and you lose tissue, you might lose a little bit of muscle and your metabolism will effectively attempt to adapt to that constrained energy intake. So if you go from 2000 calories to 1000 calories, and you're eating 1000 calories every day, which is a very low amount, this is not advice, but you're eating 1000 calories every day. And metabolically, let's just say your body had found a way to run all of its various processes and, you know, be comfortable around too, it will attempt to adapt downward closer to its new intake. So one thing to remember always is the more intense the deficit, the faster the rate of weight loss and the faster the rate of adaptation. For most people, I think 500 calories below total daily energy expenditure or 500 calories less than you need to maintain your weight or a 500 calorie deficit, there's a bunch of different ways to communicate that, is the

Starting point is 00:03:57 sweet spot. For more advanced dieters working on a time frame or a time crunch, you can go a little higher. For smaller dieters who maybe are already working on a constrained time crunch, you can go a little higher. For smaller dieters who maybe are already working on a constrained energy model, you can go a little bit lower, maybe 300 if you give yourself a long enough runway. Tips I'd recommend are when you're calculating your macros or you've established your deficit, do prioritize your protein over any other macro. Not that fats aren't essential and carbs aren't important, but protein is going to be valuable for the maintenance of muscle tissue because you don't want to lose too much muscle in a deficit.

Starting point is 00:04:33 Another tip I would give you is to make sure that you're actually calculating the right number. So you're not looking to calculate your resting metabolic rate or your base metabolic rate, you're looking to calculate your total daily energy expenditure. You want to calculate that or estimate or approximate that and then reduce your intake below that number. Your total daily energy expenditure is approximately your maintenance calories. Eating less than that will be the deficit. Load up on vegetables would be another tip that I would recommend. And if you are planning on being in a deficit for say, you know, you're looking to lose 20 pounds at a pound a week. So you're looking to be in a deficit for 20 weeks. I might take a diet break where you have a week at maintenance or a week

Starting point is 00:05:20 with a intake that more closely resembles your total daily energy expenditure. I might recommend a diet break that's four to seven days long every six to eight weeks just to keep those adaptations from setting in, to give yourself the opportunity to stay sane and all the chaos and the kind of mood swings and the irritability and the training decreases that can oftentimes be associated with a deficit that is too intense. Okay, next question comes from K. Rodrillo or Rodrillo. Yeah, probably K. Rodrillo. Why am I having a hard time going D into the roll R? Rodrillo. well, fuck it. Okay. Is it bad to work out four days in a row if I need to? And my answer to this question is almost assuredly no. I think it's going to be fine. I've done this many times. I've trained much more than four days in a row. I program all the time

Starting point is 00:06:21 for clients to train four days in a row. The key thing is where is that recovery going to come in on the back end, right? So understand that if you train four days in a row really, really hard and you go for a day five and a day six and a day seven, at some point, at some point, you're going to start to see a decrease in performance because the stress, the impact of that much training kind of bunched together like that will eventually lead to negative performance outcomes. So four or five days in a row is usually what I think to be the limit. But if you're doing like an upper body day and then a lower body day, followed by something like a shoulder and arm day, followed by a glute specific lower body day, maybe polished

Starting point is 00:07:11 off with a chest and back day, you can do five days in a row without too much crossover fatigue and without worrying too much. Now, if you're a complete novice, I don't think there's any reason at all to train four days in a row, let alone four days in a week. If you're just getting started, two to three sessions a week with a day or two in between that you stay active, you don't necessarily need a resistance train, but you keep your body moving, that will be great. If you're very advanced, four days consecutively in a row is not going to be a problem. And I certainly would not label it as bad, right? We're always trying to look at, am I stimulating myself or, oh, that sounds a little weird. Am I providing my tissue,

Starting point is 00:07:53 my muscle with enough stimulation to grow by training hard, close to failure with good technique and intention and execution and making sure that the machines I use are set up properly and that the weight I'm lifting with a barbell is, you know, looking nice and polished. You know, if all that's there and the stimulation is there, then you need to make sure that you have equivalent opportunity to recover, equivalent opportunity for the muscle to heal, equivalent opportunity for sleep, for nutrition, to do the work that the body needs to be done or to get done to actually make the gain. So no, nothing wrong with it if your recovery is dialed and certainly unnecessary for novices, but might be necessary for advanced to intermediates, depending on what your schedule

Starting point is 00:08:36 is unfolding like. Okay, this question is from I'm Just Chillin076. Is there such a thing as overeating on your daily protein intake? So the obvious answer to this question is, of course, you can overeat any macronutrient, particularly we think of like eating too many carbs or eating too much dietary fat, in large part due to the fact that those two macronutrients tend to go together or be found in large quantities in the foods we have a tendency to overconsume anyway. So think about like chips and pizza and hyperpalatable foods like ice creams and cookies. Those foods are loaded with carbs and fats. So people tend to overeat carbs and fats anyway. You could make the argument that the primary driver of obesity is a high availability of hyperpalatable foods that are extremely high in carbohydrates and fats that are easy to overeat beyond what your body needs.

Starting point is 00:09:42 And that's not ideal, right? What I would recommend looking into would be, okay, so we need to know what your protein intake goals should be. So if you are an athletic person with an athletic goal, whether that be muscle gain or strength performance, 0.701 grams per pound tends to be good. If you are in a deficit, you might want to eat a little more to enhance your satiety or to feel fuller because protein is so filling. It's very hard to overconsume protein comparatively.

Starting point is 00:10:16 But you might also be robbing from other macros. So the one thing you want to watch out for, because it's very hard to overeat protein, but if you do, it tends to be favorable for body composition and for muscle gain. But what you want to look out for is, is the filling nature of protein and overeating it or eating too much of it, more than say 0.7 to 1 grams per pound, is that going to make it harder to get enough of those macros that most people in the general population have a tendency to over consume, right? So just because people who might be overweight or obese or over

Starting point is 00:10:54 fat, however you want to frame it, they eat too many calories and they probably get a large percentage of them from carbs and fats doesn't necessarily mean those things are bad. And for people who are performing at the highest level, it's essential that you get enough carbohydrate to perform in the gym and fat to take care of your body's various physiological needs. So it's very, very rare, but there is a case where you can eat too much protein. And what it usually shows up as is you're eating too much. It's filling you up too much for you to get enough of what you need from the other macros. Basically the inverse of what we see happening at the general population level. All right. This question comes from Mike Humphries 80.

Starting point is 00:11:40 It is 5 a.m. wake up 530 strength training strength training. What food or sups should I try to take? So very good question to ask me because I have been a 5 a.m. trainee forever. I've always had a tendency to work out very early in the morning. I'm an early riser. And if I'm not working with a client at 5 a.m., there's a very good chance I'm training. So here's what I have a tendency to do. First thing in the morning when I wake up, I take my seed symbiotic prebiotic. I like to make sure that I have that on an empty stomach so that I have the greatest uptake and assimilation of that product because I really believe in what it does for my skin, my heart, my gut, and I want to make sure that I do everything that I can to digest it properly. I think it's the best probiotic on

Starting point is 00:12:31 the market. I don't see any reason not to follow the label claim. So that's the first thing that hits my stomach right away. And for those of you who are interested in taking a little bit greater care of your gut health and maybe reaping some additional benefits, go to seed.com, check out their product. It's unbelievable. There's strains that are clinically proven to enhance digestive health, gut barrier integrity, immune function, cardiovascular health, dermatological health, as well as the synthesis of various micronutrients such as vitamin B9 or folate, which tends to be synthesized in its most bioactive form in your intestines. So very much interesting. I'm a big, big fan of it. And quite frankly, your gut microbiome is not your only microbiome, right? You actually have a

Starting point is 00:13:21 dermatological or skin microbiome and seed reinforces a healthy gut skin access that I just think is pretty badass. You can check out using the code DANNY15 to save 15% off of your seed order. That's a big deal. I love it. Definitely check it out. So I start with seed. Then I have a huge 42 ounce flask of water. And in that flask, I mix one packet of another partner, uh, uh, LMNTs electrolytes. I'm a big, big fan, especially with these hot sweltering summers we've had out here in California of getting ahead as much as possible. Um, with my hydration, right? Like that is really, really hard to do for most people to just get enough water throughout the day. So I like to start my day with a big, big, big 42 ounce flask of water. And I mix one packet of LMNTs electrolytes in there,

Starting point is 00:14:20 which yields a thousand milligrams of sodium, 200 milligrams of potassium and 60 milligrams of magnesium, which for those of you who train early in the morning, you're probably really well aware that you get shitty pumps compared to when you train in the afternoon and you're well fed and you have enough sodium. You can train like extremely, extremely well. Um, like you just get better pumps in the afternoon, but in the morning you look a little flat. You don't get the same pumps. You don't get the same contractile quality. I found that an electrolyte supplement does help me quite a bit with this. And you can scroll down to the show notes. I have an exclusive offer for anybody who wants to try Element. You'll get a free sample pack with your order. My favorites are grapefruit, citrus, raspberry, and orange. They're all really tasty. They're

Starting point is 00:15:03 salty. They only have 10 calories. And I don't mind having that in my stomach to start the day. Like if you have a sensitive stomach, like, you know, pounding something back first thing in the morning has a tendency to agitate it. Like this has never done that for me. So I always start with seed and element and the seed does nothing to interfere with my workout or send me to the toilet. So I always start with that. And then I get right into my session during that session. I tend to drink the same exact, uh, uh, like I'm drinking the electrolytes in the water. I'm making a point to get hydrated in before my training and during my training, I don't love to eat. If I, especially if I were waking up at five

Starting point is 00:15:44 and training at five 30, that's just not enough time for gastric emptying for that food to get through and, and, you know, absorbed. I feel like it would always just sit too heavily in my stomach. So I will opt for a post workout protein shake with a large serving of carbohydrates after I finished training to make sure that I can recover, uh, or a large meal for me, I'm always on the go jumping back and forth from my house to the studio. Um, so I'm a kind of big proponent of a protein shake with some cereal, something that's quick, easy, and that I can just kind of use to hit those macros that I think are most important, especially after fasted morning

Starting point is 00:16:20 training. I like to be sure to get that stuff into my system. And so more important than anything, I'd say is that post-workout window in this specific context. Like if you're training midday, it doesn't matter so much if you're already fed, but if you're fasted and you, you know, went to bed late at night, maybe your last meal was at 7 p.m. and you're waking up at 5 and training hard, your last meal was at 7 p.m. and you're waking up at 5 and training hard. I do think that there's good rationalization for that, for that post-workout meal. So that's how I've approached 5 a.m. training, you know, for the last several years. And this question's from Mike Humphries, 80. I don't know if I called that out at the beginning, but I thought it was worth throwing the name in there. So this one comes from Christine 14 and she asks, how do you know if you're lifting heavy

Starting point is 00:17:11 enough through your sets? So this is interesting and it's very much goal dependent. If your goals are hypertrophy, because you can build muscle with like anything from five to 30 reps or one to 30 reps, really, um, your weight can fluctuate. Like what you might use on an overhead press one rep max might be very different from what you might use on a 30 rep set of lateral raises to failure till you get that juicy pump, right? Both of those can be stimulative, perhaps a one rep max, not so much as something that's going to get you close to that true, uh, true failure where the muscle just completely fails the target tissue rather than just being simply unable to coordinate to move a massive

Starting point is 00:17:50 weight. But quite frankly, what you want to be calibrating off of isn't necessarily how heavy you are lifting, although I do think you can make the claim that having a substantial amount of weight on the bar will make a big difference. You don't want to, you know, be weak sauce and selecting weights that are consistently lighter than your previous weights or consistently the same as your previous weight. You always want to be striving for small incremental progression on every lift in the weight department. I don't think that's going to hurt most lifters. In fact, it's probably a good keystone habit, but what you should really be calibrating off of is, are my sets looking good? Film your sets. Look at them. Look at the technique. Look at the execution. Am I controlling the entire range of motion? Am I feeling the target tissue? Am I taking it close to failure, right? For muscle growth, that's really, really important. if you're always doing this stuff with light weights, you'll get some gains, right? But if you consistently do these things with greater weight, week in and week out, you'll make

Starting point is 00:18:48 phenomenal gains. And you know, that's really at the core of how I do all of the programming for all of my clients. It's even how I program for my app based group training groups, I don't change the movements each and every week. You know, I think it's actually really important to keep them by and large the same. And even when we change blocks to try to change to analogs of those movements because that gives people time to rehearse really dial in the movements, dial in the technique, dial in the execution get to where they need to be from an effort standpoint and from an output standpoint because that stuff makes a big, big, big difference. If you are constantly jumping

Starting point is 00:19:28 around and trying new things, you are going to make very, very little progress. You need to do things similarly enough with good form and execution that you can add weight or add sets or add reps, right? So there's more things to focus on than just making sure you're lifting heavy enough. But over the course of your training career, consistently look to add five to 10 pounds every couple of weeks or every couple of sessions to a variety of your lifts specifically on those compounds. And that is going to make a huge, huge difference for you. Okay, last question comes from the LA hairstylist. She asks, okay, started weight training three months ago,

Starting point is 00:20:14 haven't seen any physical progress, why? So simple answer is that it takes longer than three months to see change, especially because you see your body every day. If you saw somebody for the first time in three months, I change, especially because you see your body every day. If you saw somebody for the first time in three months, I bet you they noticed a difference. But when you see yourself every day, it becomes much, much harder, much, much harder to make real-time, accurate assessments of your physique. It all kind of blends together. So first thing you need

Starting point is 00:20:42 to understand about how your body changes when you start resistance training. The first changes are increases in neurological efficiency. You move better. You become more coordinated. You increase something called intramuscular coordination. So the ability of your muscles to work together, like your lats to work with your rhomboids, to work with your biceps, et cetera. So a lot of the adaptations in the first couple months are specific to just becoming more coordinated and getting better at the various movements that you're performing. And as you become better at those, you can have high enough outputs to develop new tissue. You can train closer to failure with substantially better recovery. Like good things happen after your first couple months, but your first couple months are

Starting point is 00:21:24 all about establishing the foundational movement patterns and efficiency to do things correctly. You're not going to get insane progress with fat loss even in that timeline. So assuming you're, you're, you know, you're doing this program while simultaneously watching your nutrition, like three months is enough time to see some results. But for most people, when they're just getting started months, one to three are all about troubleshooting and figuring out how not to make the same mistakes. So I would say definitely keep pushing. You know, we talked a lot about what your training should look like in the last question, but if you are three months into training, not seeing results, a solution I

Starting point is 00:22:05 might have for you is to try my group training program on the train heroic app. You can try it free for a week. The links are in the show notes. We have elite physique, which is a four to five day a week gym program for women looking to develop their glutes, back, shoulders, arms, lats. And then of course we have home heroes, which is bands and dumbbells accessible for everybody. You can do it at home in 30 to 40 minutes on a lunch break. Don't need a ton of space. Don't need a ton of equipment. But those programs are progressive.

Starting point is 00:22:30 They're adaptive. And they're designed to keep you moving. And for many people, you need structure to see success after your first couple months and years because you can really get by with just showing up. But honestly, after the newbie gains fade, it becomes harder and harder to see results. And if you're not seeing results three months in, I wouldn't panic. But getting on the structure train and getting on a program early is something that I wish I had done. So I think you'll see better results with that kind of structure.

Starting point is 00:23:02 So guys, that does it for today's Q&A. We will definitely be touching base later. I want to thank you all again for subscribing and downloading and listening and sharing and reviewing the podcast. We are 200 episodes in and I couldn't be more thankful for each and every one of you. Thanks a ton. Catch you on the next one.

Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 200 - Q & A: Deficit "TIPS", How hard to train + MORE!

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.