Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 269: Should you train on your period? best carbs for fat-loss + more

Episode Date: March 14, 2023

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Hey, everybody, welcome in to another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. As always, I'm your host, Danny Matranga. And in today's episode, we're going to be discussing a number of different things specific to health, fitness and human improvement. We're going to discuss how one should approach training around the menstrual cycle. Are there things you need to be aware of? What may be worthy of adjustment if you need to adjust anything at all? We'll also talk about the whole 10,000 steps a day thing. Where did that come from? How much credence should we give it? And whether or not it's something you can work around. We'll talk about my favorite carbohydrate sources to eat when trying to lose body fat so that you stay nourished and energized.

And I'll talk a little bit about some personal stuff. So sit back and enjoy the episode. This podcast has some awesome partners. And one of my favorite, of course, is Legion Athletics. Legion is my go-to supplement manufacturer for what I like to call my big rock supplements. This would be my protein powder, my pre-training formula, my post-training formula and creatine, and my kind of ancillary vitamins and micronutrient protection. So why do I like Legion so much? What sets them apart? It's quite simple. Legion uses all natural

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eat their natural diet, and packaged in climate-friendly packaging. I love their plant protein too, for those of you who like something that's a little on the thicker side and you aren't a fan of animal products. Also, I love Legion's pre-workout, but specifically the pre-workout that does not contain caffeine. That would be their Stem Free Pulse. I'm a huge, huge fan of beta alanine and L-citrulline, but I don't like taking in wildly high amounts of caffeine. So if you are somebody who likes pre-workout with caffeine, you can try Pulse, or if you like it without caffeine because you maybe want to enjoy your morning coffee or monitor your caffeine consumption, try the Pulse Stem Free. My favorite flavors there for sure are the New Grape and the amazing,

amazing Tropical Punch. As for my creatine, I get that from Legion's Recharge, five grams each and every day. I take it on the days I train as well as the days I do not because Recharge also contains L-carnitine, which can help with promoting muscle recovery and decreasing soreness, as well as some ingredients to help with creatine utilization. And of course, my favorite supplements for my ancillary micronutrient health are Legion's multivitamin and Legion's greens powder. Not only do these two products contain a ton of high quality vitamins and minerals, they also contain unique adaptogens like KSM-66 ashwagandha and reishi mushroom, which I like to take each and every day to promote my health. If you want to cover all your bases with a high quality protein,

creatine post-workout or the ancillary micronutrient health stuff like greens, powders, and multivitamin, I encourage you to go over to legionathletics.com and check out using the promo code Danny. That'll save you 20% on your first order and you'll rack up points that you can use the same way as cash every time you use the code and you'll also be supporting the show. We're going to start today's talk off speaking a little bit about female physiology and how to train around the menstrual cycle. This question was inspired by a question asked on Instagram by at choose.words.wisely. And the question is, is it true that you should not work out during your menstrual cycle? And the short answer is, it depends.

It depends on the individual. While there are some pretty reliable hormonal fluctuations that we can observe and track over time consistently in a way that would allow us to make some pretty good predictions about our training readiness and how we can navigate the cycle, there is no single expert on female physiology in the context of your training who's in a better position to make the call than you. You're going to have to kind of pay pretty close attention to your cycle. You're going to have to monitor it. And I think after a while of doing this, you'll know whether or not you can train and how hard you can train during your menstrual week,

when you are on your actual period. I've been coaching for 10 years and I'd say more women than not can train while they're on their period. Some women get very, very, very intense symptoms and it actually makes these symptoms worse introducing a stressor like resistance training or challenging training. So there are things you can do to dial it back, but I would actually say that more often than not, women can train while on their period. In fact, I think, and I have found that many of them can train quite hard, but it does depend on the individual. There's also a lot of other factors that can come into play that could help us determine whether or not we should train. One of them is the external

stressors, right? So if you're on your period, you're at essentially a hormonal disadvantage compared to when you are, say, ovulating, where all of those female hormones and even testosterone are right where you'd like them to be. So training during your period, you should probably temper expectations. I wouldn't expect to go in and hit a ton of PRs while it is possible. And I wouldn't expect to be as fatigue resistant, meaning you might feel fatigue and lethargy begin to set in a little earlier. This is an awesome opportunity for lower volume work. If you can pair a deload with this time of the month, knowing that you might need one and you

can look ahead a little bit, that can be a great opportunity. Some people can train, like I said, completely unencumbered, but it is very, very individualized. I've also found that different forms of hormonal birth control can influence an individual's response to training during their cycle. So if I've trained a woman for a long time, and she was using hormonal birth control versus a woman who is not using hormonal birth control and is cycling naturally, there oftentimes tends to be a little bit more ease for clients who have a hormonal birth control protocol in place compared to those who are cycling naturally. And that has a lot to do with the ways that the hormones in hormonal birth control kind of, not in all cases and not

with all pills, kind of even out some of those hormonal fluctuations. It's for this reason that a lot of young women are actually given birth control in the first place, not because they're sexually active and looking to prevent pregnancy, but because it has an almost evening out effect. And for women who experience really aggressive PMS symptoms and even symptoms of PMDD, the inclusion of a form of hormonal contraception is oftentimes recommended by physicians because it's a fairly effective intervention for treating that. Now, this isn't me signing off on the disbursement of hormonal birth control. I think actually I'd like to get an expert on here to talk about hormonal birth control specifically as it pertains to female physiology. But what you have

to know is there's a lot of variables here. And if you don't know a little bit about the pill that you're on, if you're on one, if you don't know a little bit about your menstrual cycle and how you deal with, you know, what kind of fuel you might need, what kind of fatigue you can tolerate, you'll probably always be guessing. But I would say if you were going to guess i'd lean towards training at a lower intensity okay lower than you might train around ovulation so assuming you have a 28 day cycle if the first five days of that cycle are your period and then you spend the next five to seven days ramping up as you accumulate more of those hormones, it'd probably be between days 10 to let's say 17. You'd have a week there where you're

really kind of vibing and peaking. That's where I'd stack the heavy work. But I think more often than not, even worrying about this can kind of be silly because I've just seen far too many women who are able to train pretty damn hard throughout their entire cycle with very few drop-offs. Okay. This question from Jim R. Namb asks, do we have to reach eight to 10,000 steps daily to lose weight. How can we replace that? So this is a good question. And I think it's a question about 10,000 steps as a figure, whether it's arbitrary or whether it's specific. And then I think it's a question about how we can move more and find ways to fit in more movement. So is there something magical about the 10,000 steps number? Yes and no. I say yes in that it is a nice round number that an adult human who is

paying close attention to their activity, probably using some form of wearable, and who has found a way to gamify and find a slightly challenging but reachable target could absolutely trick themselves into moving way more. I know so many intelligent people for whom having a 10,000 step goal and a little Fitbit quite literally helps them move two to three times more than they would normally. That's where there's magic. Is there magic in the number exactly relative to fat loss? Meaning, at 9,999 steps, if you stop, do you not quite get the dosage required to initiate some incredible untapped fountain of fat loss, if you will. Not at all. It's the movement that matters. Could you replace the 10,000 steps with 30 minutes on a recumbent bike? Most likely. 15 minutes on a

row machine? Most likely. A 12-minute jog? Most likely. What we're looking to do by having a goal of getting 10,000 steps a day is to take a person who is otherwise likely to be sedentary and encourage a large enough goal that they have to move more often, which if we're talking about solving the crisis of obesity, and if we're serious about making a dent in the crisis of metabolic illness and even cardiovascular disease, we need to be louder and we need to be more aggressive in the messaging that all movement is good. And I don't mean this to say that there's not some types of movement that are better. You've heard me on this podcast many times outline how big of a fan I am of resistance training specifically as a means to encourage muscle growth and discourage metabolic

illness, right? Two of the biggest problems we face as a society are being under-muscled, over-fat, and way too insensitive or desensitized to the effects of insulin, leading to elevated blood sugar and illness like type 2 diabetes. And then obviously with elevated blood sugar and with too much body fat, we see increases in cardiovascular problems. And you can offset that with weights better than anything, but we need to find ways to encourage people to move and giving them a step goal is an extremely encouraging thing to do.

If you were completely averse to the notion or the idea of going to the gym and lifting weights, completely just reviled at the thought of running or going out for a jog, but you're receptive to going on some small walks, a 10,000 step goal can be a life-saving amount of movement. And so I would say for anybody who's interested in feeling optimized, moving 10,000 steps a day is kind of a minimum. I get 15 to 20 and that's having the dog and walking them. I know that probably helps a lot. And then I work on my feet quite a bit still when I'm in the studio. But if you are trying to get the most out of your entrepreneurial venture, your academic venture,

your fitness venture, whatever it is that you're doing, you want to live longer, you want more clarity. We know that walking and walking outside specifically have the ability to not just positively modulate the mood, but also increase creativity. Okay. So these are things that are highly beneficial. All the while, you're chipping away at this 10,000 steps, which will get you up more, probably keep you out of pain more, probably prevent and decrease the likelihood of developing cardiovascular and metabolic illness. So I don't look at 10,000 steps a day as a magic number for fat loss. I look at it more as a multivitamin for fitness and wellbeing because I don't think that the human evolved over 200,000

years to abruptly begin sitting on its ass for 10 to 14 hours a day inside of the last 1% of our existence on this planet, like even one 10th of a percent. So for 200,000 years, we were moving, moving, moving, moving, moving, moving. And it wasn't really until I would say the early 2000s and the advent of kind of sitcom gather around the TV culture and the introduction of additional technologies that can distract us, like cell phones, video games, and computing, once there became an ability to interface with multiple technologies at once, meaning on the phone while watching TV and enjoying something like eating, the amount of movement humans get across

the day just plummets. We spend so much time in front of these screens because in digitizing our lives, we are interfacing with these technologies, the same technologies that are allowing me to reach you with fitness advice about whether that be on a platform like this, whether it's Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and you're hearing me digitally, this is because of computing. So we're always in front of screens and we're always either creating or consuming. And that is 90% of the time done in a seated position. Yes, sometimes you might be in listening to a podcast at the gym, but a lot of times it's while driving, right? So we've found ways to use technology very much to our own advantage, but it has cost us and it comes at the cost of a shit

ton of sitting. And you need to have a plan to offset that. And I think a 10,000 step goal is a fabulous, fabulous way to do it. And I used to be a lot more calloused about this. And then I realized how practical and gamified it was. So I totally sign off on the 10,000 steps a day thing. And I would really encourage if you're not gonna do that, that you find an alternative movement practice that encourages slightly

elevating your heart, getting some quote unquote blood moving. And I think you'll feel a lot better both cognitively and at a, obviously from a health standpoint, you'll be increasing a variety of different metrics in the longterm, in the aggregate. You have to stack this for many, many months because it is a small thing, but it will elevate your baseline fitness. All right. I really like this next question. This one's from I am Julie Hillard. And the question is, what is the best starch or carb for cutting? Now, cutting is a bodybuilding term that we used descriptively to essentially denote cutting body fat. Get rid of body fat, body fat, body fat. Cutting, like, okay, losing weight means I want to weigh less. Cutting usually means cutting away body fat and mostly only body fat.

We want to hold on to as much muscle as possible. So that's a really good question. And I think a lot of people have been told, and this has been a fitness industry trope for a very long time, a health misinformation trope for a very long time, very long time, that in an effort to lose body fat, to get thinner, to lose weight, they need to cut carbs. They need to reduce their carb intake, eliminate all of the carbs. And these are understandable in that people kind of accumulate a mosaic of what they believe about fitness, largely from what they hear and see on the internet and from people who have engaged with fitness, most of whom have done so unsuccessfully. And so it's very hard to not fall into these tropes. And then you have some kind of sticky things that remain with you when you do them. Like when you eliminate carbohydrate,

sticky things that remain with you when you do them. Like when you eliminate carbohydrate, you lose weight, not fat, faster usually because of the associative water loss. Remember, we hold 400 grams of carbs, larger dudes, and about 300 grams of carbohydrates, normal sized adults, and between two and 250 for small adults and teens and adolescents of carbohydrate in our liver, skeleton, and brain in the form of glycogen. What's going on guys? Coach Danny here, taking a break from the episode to tell you about my coaching company, Core Coaching Method, and more specifically, our one-on-, fully tailored online coaching program. My online coaching program has kind of been the flagship for Core Coaching Method for a while. Of course, we do have PDF programming and we have app-based programming. But if you want a truly tailored,

one-on-one experience with a coach like myself or a member of my coaching team, someone who is certified, somebody who has multiple years of experience working with clients in person online, somebody who is licensed to provide a macro nutrition plan, somebody who is actually good at communicating with clients because they've done it for years, whether that be via phone call, email, text, right? This one-on-one coaching program is really designed to give you all the support you need with custom training designed for you, whether you're training from home, the gym, around your limitations and your goals. Nothing cookie cutter here, as well as easy to follow

macro nutrition programs that are non-restrictive. You'll get customized support directly from your coach's email, or they'll text you, or they'll WhatsApp you. We'll find the communication medium that best supports your goals, as well as provides you with the accountability and the expertise you need to succeed, as well as biofeedback monitoring, baked-in accountability support, and all of the stuff that you need from your coach when you check in. We keep our rosters relatively small so that we can make sure you get the best support possible. But you can apply today by going over to corecoachingmethod.com, selecting the online coaching option. And if we have spots available, we'll definitely reach out to you to see if you're

a good candidate. And if we don't, we'll put you on a waiting list, but we'll be sure to give you the best shot at the best coaching in the industry. So head over to corecoachingmethod.com and apply for one-on-one coaching with me and my team today. Glycogen depletes relatively rapidly during rigorous exercise, but it does deplete more slowly when you reduce carbohydrate intake. It depletes nevertheless, and so does our circulating blood glucose in some capacity, our blood sugar drops. That's why many people recommend a low carbohydrate diet for diabetes. But with that reduction in glycogen and carbohydrate comes in some capacity, our blood sugar drops. That's why many people recommend a low-carbohydrate diet for diabetes. But with that reduction in glycogen and carbohydrate comes a loss of body water. Carbohydrate and water have a very high affinity for one another, just like water and sodium.

Where the carbs go, the water tends to flow. So when you reduce carbohydrate intake, you'll see a rapid reduction in total body weight, usually to the tune of three to five pounds, up to 10, depending on the size of the individual and their hydration status, but it's not body fat. And since most people only stick with diets for a few days and weeks anyway, people will assume that when they cut carbs, they got tremendous fat loss results and it must work, but they didn't stick with it long enough. The truth is, if you're really looking to lose body fat, it makes a lot of sense to engage in a form of exercise like resistance training or something that is glycolytic in nature. And that means you need to engage in a

type of exercise that's probably going to use carbs as its primary fuel source in order to maximize holding onto muscle so that when you do lose fat and you lose weight, you hold on to the most important tissue. You don't want to just lose weight. A lot of people were seeing this now who are using Ozempic and some of these, man, what is it? GLP-1 glucagon-like peptide drugs, these appetite nuking drugs that help people get quite lean. And I'm not so pessimistic about them, actually. I think that we have a obesity crisis and metabolic illness crisis on our hands at this point that is so bad, any intervention is going to vastly, even side effects included, side effects taken into account here, will vastly, vastly, vastly be vastly better than allowing the continuation

of our society's body fat accumulation and letting these obesity metrics get off the charts. I think a lot of people feel that in the fitness industry, we need to push back against these drugs. All I'm going to tell you about them is this. I think it's really hard for people to lose weight. And I think seeing and having access to these drugs and having seen how they work, I can see some utility for certain populations. But a problem we've seen with these drugs is they don't for improving metabolic health because more muscles usually means better insulin sensitivity. So if you want to lose fat, you should probably want to lift, you should probably want to hold on to muscle and you will definitely be, you'll definitely find that it's easier to do that with carbohydrates in your diet. easier to do that with carbohydrates in your diet. Also, you'll probably find it's easier to have consistent energy and perform your best cognitively with carbohydrates in our diet, because unless you're totally keto adapted, your brain's running on glucose. And if your brain's running on glucose and you take all that out, you're going to feel pretty crappy for a little while.

So what carbohydrates are best when you're looking to lose body fat? Those that keep you full. So a lot of these are going to be whole grains. I really like oats and I really like rice. The reason for it is they're both really easy to cook. You can cook rice in a rice cooker in the morning and have it available all day. It'll just stay warm. You can literally put rice in a rice cooker right when you wake up, turn it on, and scoop up fresh rice for like three meals a day. It's very filling. It has protein, scarce amounts, but brown rice has more. It has fiber. It has good vitamins. It tends to be pretty easy on the stomach. If you're really, really sensitive to things that have phytic acid, too much brown rice could bug your stomach. But for the most

part, it's one of the best grains. Oats are very similar. You don't know if you can cook them in a rice cooker. I wouldn't be shocked if you could. But oatmeal is something that you can cook pretty darn easy. You can have it for breakfast almost always. Very fibrous, contains a good amount of nutrients. It's going to keep you full. One I absolutely love is potatoes, and that includes white potatoes. But potatoes tend to be very filling. They tend to have a tremendous nutrient profile, especially potatoes that have a lot of different colors. There's so many different species and colors of potatoes that you can kind of have fun with it, but you can always cook potatoes in a very low calorie nutrient forward way. You can cook them with or without fat. If you want to use fat, you can use

healthier forms of fat, like all of an avocado oil. And you can feature things like herbs when cooking potatoes. You can roast them with herbs that not only impart a lot of flavor, but a lot of additional nutrients, which are quite valuable when you're trying to lose fat because you need to be in a calorie deficit. But potatoes, rices, and oatmeal tend to be my go-to carbohydrates because one, they're easy to use. Two, they're easy to portion out and to track because I know about what is in a cup of each or in a certain number of grams of each. I tend to find that they go extremely well with a plethora of

different proteins. So you can really kind of mix these around like eggs and the various breakfast proteins like yogurts tend to go very well with oats. Pretty much every animal protein I enjoy goes well with both rice and potatoes. So a lot of versatility, a lot of ability to keep you full and a very, very challenging thing to overeat if you prepare these intelligently. What I mean there, of course, is you can turn a potato into a potato chip and into a French fry, which would make it much harder to not eat more than you ought to when dieting. Okay, last question. And I'm answering this because I think interacting with people that we are attracted to in gym culture is becoming increasingly treacherous, dubious, uncomfortable for both men and women. Not a lot of people know how to handle it

respectfully and appropriately. And I think that maybe you guys can learn a little bit from my story. But the question is, how did you meet your fiance? And how long have you been with her? This question is from Mad Bod Scam. So we've been together almost two years now, but we met about a decade ago. It was shortly after I moved to the area at the gym. I would always see her at the gym. And this was when I was working at that gym as a personal trainer. So one of the things I wanted to do a really good job of was minimizing any opportunity I had or any opportunity that would put me in a position to kind of lower my reputation in the gym. So no matter what I thought of a girl when I was working there, and this was in my like early twenties. So the temptation is there. Like no matter what I thought

of a girl, if I was a member or a client of the gym, I would do the best I could to not ever go outside of the bounds of what's acceptable at the gym. And I think a lot of men try to do this. And I think a lot of men don't, and it makes women really uncomfortable. And I think we have a better culture and a better understanding of what is and isn't appropriate at the gym in terms of interacting and walking up to strangers. But it's still, you still see horror stories and terrible videos of men mostly who just don't get it. And so this is kind of one, I think for the guys who are listening and maybe you're, I'm sure most of you were all good dudes. You're wondering like, if I, if there's a girl at the gym who I see, um, who I am interested in maybe pursuing romantically, uh, is, is that the

time or place? Is there a way to play this right? And appropriately, um, that one won't jeopardize my reputation, get me kicked out of the gym and two is going to one respect this woman enough that she'll actually accept my invitation. And so our invitation on a date or whatever. I'd say more often than not, the gym is just genuinely not the time and place. And I know that that's like probably like crap. Well, you know, where, where am I going to get my opportunity? And unfortunately that's kind of the hard part, right? But I'd say more often than not, the gym is just not the time and place, especially if you're going to have to like go out of your way to interrupt somebody who's probably on a time crunch or enjoying their workout. It's not the same or the best footing.

I do think if you are well-intentioned and mature in approaching people, like generally with smiles, with positive body languages, with just nodding and a general acknowledgement, people have a way of communicating back to you whether they are receptive. So I'll give my gym as an example. I go super early in the morning and everybody who's there means business. 80% of them, you give them a nod and a head shake when you walk by just to, hey, what's up? We're all here working.

An acknowledgement of existence, you get that back. And it's an easy to see kind of thing. It's very easy to pick up on. And so if you are regularly in the gym with the same time as a guy or girl that you're attracted to, and you're ever in a position where you're walking by them, and it's important to note, you should not orchestrate these things. You should let them happen organically because you'll have a tendency, I'd bet, if you're trying to force these interactions to trigger kind of people's subliminal, yo, what is this fucking guy like trying to get my attention? If you're like sitting at the machine across from this person, just like, I hope they

look at me so I can nod my head. It's like, you got to just be chill about it and be normal to the best of your ability and be friendly. And there's nothing wrong with simply smiling and nodding your head. And if somebody who is sharing that space with you acknowledges that and then reciprocates, that is a form of communication. That is a form of saying, yo, I'm interested in communicating with you. Does this mean you approach the person and ask them on a date? Hell no. I think you need to stack up like a hundred of those over time. And eventually you'll develop some level of like, it's like a micro relationship. That person knows you, you know them, you've nodded at each other a few times, you've acknowledged like, hey, we're both in the gym hustling, we're grinding, we're pushing it, I'm friendly, you're friendly.

So if there comes a time for you to approach them, it won't be out of the blue. And I think that's really, really important. I still don't recommend using the gym as a pickup ground just because it's something that is, I think that for, especially for men who are approaching women, um, I think now we've seen it happen enough that if you don't handle that interaction appropriately and you don't have, uh, you know, enough social capital accumulated, you could scare that person off the gym forever, especially if you're a creep about it. So if you don't have good intentions and you're not able to stack these micro, you know, interactions over time, respectfully, I'd say I wouldn't make that a place where you meet people. But if you do that enough and, you know, this ends up becoming a

person that you can actually talk to in the gym. If the headphones come off and they might even invite conversation, go for it. I don't think that women are out here specifically terrified of well-intentioned men. I see one guy in my gym every morning. He's like, I respect the fuck out of him for this. He's like pretty much able to have a legit conversation with everybody that comes in there. Like super smiley, super nice from like age 80 on the dudes to like girls in their early twenties. And he's like, got everybody, you know, super friendly. He's met and interacted with all of them. And like, I think if you could just become that person in your gym, um, and you know, there's a person that you'd like

to maybe see out of the gym. If you just already have a decent relationship with them, you'll kind of know whether or not that is or isn't up for, for grabs. And I just wouldn't make a habit of doing it cold. Cause I think it's kind of sends the wrong message inside of the gym. And so that actually is how I met my partner, met my fiance. I met her at the gym 10 years ago, but I never, ever, ever talked to her because I was so damn afraid. And we would go by and have these little micro interactions where I'd like see her. I think she was really pretty and I'd smile and I'd like run off and I'd run away. And I did this with her from like probably 2013 to 2015.

And then she stopped going to the gym. And I would only ever see her around town on super, super, super rare occasions. And I'd never even talked to her in person until like, let's see if we met in 2013. I hadn't talked to her in person for the first time until almost 10 years later. Okay. So we had just been two people who saw each other at the gym and interacted, but I never quote unquote shoot, shooted or shot my shot until well after. But I knew in that moment, like in those interactions that this was at least somebody who was receptive of me because they were smiling back. And I then heard from a friend that she thought I was attractive. So that made an opera when the opportunity was there,

it made it more appropriate for me to try to reach out than if I was just doing something cold and just like, Hey, I see you're doing squats right now. You look hot. I should definitely ask you out. Like some guys really do think like that. And I don't want you to think that that's going to work for you. Because when I tell people that I met my fiance at the gym, it's not in the way that you would think where I like walked up to her and like schmoozed on her and got her to come out with me. And these are the skills to pick up women at the gym. Like, no, it's literally nothing like that. I met her at the gym because that was like essentially the first time I saw and interacted

with her, but I didn't get to know her until 10 years later out at dating like a normal person. So hopefully that gives you guys some insights as to what I think is and isn't appropriate at the gym. And I've managed gyms, kick people out of gyms for being weird. I just wouldn't sign off on you trying to make that the place that you meet the people that you ultimately would like to date just because it can really cause discomfort if you don't get the signals right. Okay, guys, I want to thank you so much for tuning in to this episode and remind you

if you have not yet hit subscribe and you have not yet left a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, that doing that makes a huge difference, especially for helping me grow in the rankings and reach more people. So I'd really appreciate it if you did that for me. And I want to thank you so much for tuning in and say that I will catch you on the next one. you