Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 280: 9 Fitness Myths Keeping you Fat, Immobile and Weak.

Episode Date: April 18, 2023

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Hey, folks, welcome in to another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. As always, I'm your host, Danny Matranga. In this episode, I'm going to be discussing nine pervasive myths and misinformed takes in the health, fitness and wellness space that are keeping you overfat slash overnourished, less flexible and immobile, and weak. These are myths that have been around for way too long and are still very much pervasive. We will break them down. Everything from protein and kidney health, carbohydrate and insulin sensitivity, creatine and DHTht balding specific things lifting and inflexibility cardiovascular exercise and its ability to decrease muscle growth how hormones do and don't play a role in fat loss how much work you really should be doing in the gym whether or not it's true that you can outwork

a bad diet and if there is actually any rationale for stretching whatsoever. All of this and more coming up next on the episode. Okay, folks, before we get into the episode, I have a giveaway winner to announce. In fact, two of them. The first is S Morgan VA 15, who left a review on the 3rd of April. And the second is Crimson Catholic, who left a review on the 27th of March. And the second is Crimson Catholic who left a review on the 27th of March. If you want to win free full-size products from our amazing sponsors, this month's winners are getting full-size products from our electrolyte sponsor Element. All you have to do is leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify with a username you'll

remember. That way when I say, hey, you won at the beginning of an episode, you know all I need to do is email danny at coach dannymatranga.com to claim my winnings. So folks, again, if you want to win free swag for listening to one of your favorite health, fitness, wellness, and productivity podcasts, all you need to do is leave a five-star rating and review, and I will be hooking many of you up over the course of the next year with some awesome product, and you will be helping me grow the podcast. Thanks so much, and enjoy the episode. Okay, folks, so jumping in here to what I believe to be one of the more damaging and pervasive myths that could be a contributor to increased body fatness, things like diabetes, being under-muscled, something that, quite

frankly, is affecting us at a population level. And this is the idea that ingesting too much protein or a high-protein diet is harmful or particularly harmful for the kidneys. Now, I think it's worth noting that if you already have existing kidney damage or renal issues, you should be talking to your physician before you change your diet or adjust your diet parameters in any context. And I think that's pretty obvious. But for those of us who have healthy kidney function, healthy renal function, there is enough evidence out there to support a high-protein diet being good for not only helping to regulate body mass in having more muscle and

less fat, but it also appears to have limited to no long-term health complications. So the idea that a high-protein diet is somehow bad for you or harmful for your health just doesn't seem to hold up. And it will place additional stress on the kidneys to ingest a substantially higher amount of protein than you are used to because the kidneys are responsible for filtering the blood and the nitrogenous byproducts of protein metabolism are part of that filtration. So if you're already having impaired filtration, it might make sense to minimize the excessive intake of protein. That's very understandable. That makes a lot of sense. Okay. But for people who have otherwise healthy kidney function, it appears that not only are high protein diets correlated with leanness,

more muscle, better recovery from exercise, we know that protein can be uniquely satiating, we know that many of the common sources of protein in the diet, be it dairy, be it meat, be it even some of the plant-based options, not only do these yield a considerable amount of protein, but they also are loaded with unique micronutrients. So incorporating more high protein foods into the diet, whether they be from animals or plants, is probably a really good idea if you have any semblance of desire to live longer with better body composition while minimizing the risk of developing some of the diseases that are really plaguing society. Now, this doesn't mean that increasing your red meat intake to increase your protein won't

also increase the potential correlational development of cardiovascular disease, right? Like we know that you don't want to eat massive amounts of red meat and processed meats, oftentimes cured meats. But if you can diversify your quote unquote protein portfolio, get protein from a variety of different sources, occasionally using, you know, red meat in the mix, I think you're going to be more than fine. And I think the trade-off there is probably very worth it. I think being consistently under on a protein target, which I think for the general population could be anywhere between, let's say, if you're 200 pounds, anywhere from 100 to 200 grams a day. Obviously, if you have a body

composition specific goal, you'll need to make some adjustments. But for the most part, I think a high protein diet is safe, and I think the idea that it is inherently bad for you or bad for a specific tissue can be problematic. Not quite as problematic as the second myth, which is that carbohydrates are inherently fattening because they raise a hormone known as insulin. This whole theory is known as the insulin model of obesity. The idea that obesity and body fatness is very tightly regulated by the hormone insulin. It's interesting because when you look at this new classification of weight loss drugs,

GLP-1s, they actually raise insulin. So it's interesting that some of the most insulin desensitized people, people who have type 2 diabetes, when they start taking these drugs, they see better insulin response. And interestingly enough with that, these people see incredible rates of weight loss. We also see people in different parts of the world who eat a very carbohydrate-rich diet, a diet that would theoretically increase insulin quite a bit. Remember, insulin is generally going to elevate in response to carbohydrate ingestion. Oftentimes, things like dairy protein can be very insulinemic. But we see these populations, we'll use the Japanese as an example, that have a relatively high carbohydrate diet,

but they have a low prevalence relative to the United States as it pertains to the development of type 2 diabetes and obesity. And I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that the best regulatory mechanism for blood sugar and insulin is movement and body composition. You can lose body fat on a high carbohydrate diet and see improvements in insulin sensitivity and weight and body fatness because none of the macronutrients are inherently fattening, with the exception perhaps of something like alcohol, which even though in a caloric-equated environment isn't going to cause proportionately more or less fat gain than anything else, it does seem to be the only macronutrient that encourages mindless eating and disrupts sleep, which can uniquely disrupt a body composition. So I would say the whole idea

that eating carbs is going to make you fat because carbohydrates raise insulin is an incomplete thought. And while managing your blood sugar and making sure that you don't have chronically elevated blood sugar and poor insulin response is a central tenant of being healthful and avoiding the development of diabetes. It's not necessarily a good idea to just drop your carbohydrates down to zero in the name of blood sugar regulation. Because remember, folks, you want your blood sugar to be stable. You don't want it to be all the way in the moon and you don't want it to be all the way to the floor.

You want your blood sugar to be stable. You don't want it to be all the way in the moon and you don't want it to be all the way to the floor. You want stability. And a lot of the foods that people remove when they're trying to go low carb are not very nutrient dense, snacks, pastries, those things aren't that great. You shouldn't eat too many of them. But if you're also cutting out foods like potatoes, fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, because those are also carbohydrates, you're going to miss out on a lot of fiber and a lot of micronutrients. So this myth has been around for way too long. It's simply way too pervasive to not talk about it. And while I do think many of you are quite aware of this, I do think it's you are quite aware of this, I do think it's important for those of you who aren't as initiated to understand that carbohydrates are not the enemy here. I promise. Okay. The third myth is a newer myth, and it is born from a single study done on male rugby

players who took creatine monohydrate and showed an increase in DHT. DHT or dihydrotestosterone is a hormone that is correlated pretty closely with hair loss. High amounts of DHT can lead to hair loss. This is oftentimes why you see people, specifically men who use anabolic steroids, they're bald or they have very little hair on their head. The conversion to DHT from all the supplemental testosterone increases the rate of hair loss, especially on the head. So what you'll oftentimes see on the Mr. Olympia stage is 90% of the dudes don't have any hair on their head. And it's also pretty common for men specifically to have a genetic predisposition for male pattern baldness anyway. And because hair and hairlines and the way we look and our vanity is central to a lot of what we do and why

we train, especially for a lot of people, the trade-off of, yeah, if creatine helps me get bigger, recover more and be healthier, I'm good with that, but I don't love it if it's going to cost me my hairline. That's a really scary trade-off. Now, here's what we have to acknowledge. There's never been a study that shows creatine consumption causes hair loss. There is anecdote that creatine consumption could cause hair loss, but I wonder how many people who are noticing these anecdotes are also taking other supplements that might, in fact, also have an effect on DHT. Meaning if you are a young male, who's also taking steroids, SARMs, prohormones in conjunction with your creatine,

it might be more convenient to blame the creatine on the hair loss than some of the other compounds lest you have to have a quote unquote, come to Jesus moment about your supplemental and hormone related usage. What I have seen to be quite true in my own time training and having supplemented with creatine for 10 years and had clients do it is that there is no reason for me to believe based on what I've seen in my own use of the product, what I've seen in the use of the product with hundreds of clients, and what I've seen in the literature that the amount of DHT that is increased from creatine supplementation, I don't believe it to be substantive enough to cause hair

loss or hair thinning. Interestingly, I would say that if you're so stressed about it, uh, that you are, you know, constantly perusing the internet for anecdotes about creatine causing hair loss, I think it can cause hair loss. The two times in my life I had stress-induced alopecia, the number one thing that made it worse was looking at it and obsessing about it and researching it. Interestingly enough, the less I focused on it, the faster the hair grew back. So I wouldn't stress about creatine causing balding. I don't think we have enough evidence to go there yet. I think we have enough anecdotal evidence for you to make the decision yourself. I think for almost every single one of you, you'll probably reach the conclusion that it's more than safe and the trade-off is worth it, but that's up to you. But the myth of straight

across translation, you take creatine, you lose hair, that is absolutely not true. Okay. A fourth piece of misinformation that's been quite pervasive is the notion that lifting weights makes you muscle bound, inflexible, and tight. And I understand where this comes from because when people get extremely over-muscled and overdeveloped, it can be hard to move in a coordinated and graceful fashion. If you look at some of the best athletes in the world, they're extremely muscular, but they move with tremendous fluidity. And a lot of that fluidity comes from athletic skills, grace, and gifts that most of us just don't have. But it doesn't seem to me that they sacrifice any of that grace, flexibility, mobility when they add muscle across a training career. I think of athletes like Cooper Cup and Saquon

Barkley, who added substantial muscle mass from their college time in division one football to their extremely productive careers in the NFL. They've both added a substantial amount of muscle, but appear every bit as graceful, quick twitch, have all the ability to get in and out of breaks, have all the ability to make guys miss in the open field while still being high velocity athletes, highly muscled athletes. You also look at athletes like gymnasts and wrestlers and jujitsu slash grappling specialists. And these are athletes for whom a training career or a competitive career can last 10, 12, 15 years, and they are adding muscle, adding strength, and maintaining mobility the entire time. And I think that's because full range of motion resistance training paired with any type of dynamic movement

or dynamic sports specific movement will preserve mobility. What's going on guys, taking a break from this episode to 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 updated every single week, the sets to do, the reps to do, exercise tutorials filmed by me 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. Remember, half of every lift is a weighted stretch with the exception of isometric. So as long as you have a concentric contraction where you're flexing, you should have an eccentric contraction where the muscle is lengthening. And when muscles lengthen under load, they don't respond by getting tighter and more muscle bound, right? They might if all you ever did was the concentric contraction, but that's not how people lift. And what I have found for most people is that full range of motion resistance training totally increases and enhances mobility, not just flexibility. We'll talk about that in a minute. Okay. the fifth myth is that there are negative adaptations to metabolism

when you do cardiovascular exercise. Your metabolism slows down and you lose muscle. This is a myth that has been popularized by people like myself who want to promote resistance training, but you have to do that in a way that does not scare people away from cardiovascular exercise. I love lifting. If I were going to say the hill that I'd like to die on right now, it's the hill that I think resistance training is as close to a panacea as we have for meeting the obesity, diabetes, and mental health crisis. I think all exercise is good for this, but I specifically think resistance training is good

because not only does it help develop muscle, does it metabolize blood sugar extremely well, does it promote mobility, does it promote strength, more insulin sensitivity, it also helps people cultivate discipline and face hard things. There is something extremely beautiful about hitting a PR in the gym, whether it is your very first body weight pushup or a 300 pound bench press. It doesn't matter. That carry over to life is incredible. I'm a huge promoter of resistance. And in doing this and in becoming this person, I turned away from cardio thinking that they were somehow adversarial in their connection to one another. You have to pick. And the truth is you don't. And the amount of cardio that you have to do to lose an appreciable amount of muscle is considerable. Okay. Very considerable. Going back to Cooper Cup and Saquon Barkley,

two high level athletes, one plays wide receiver, one plays running back. Both of them move a lot. Both of them run a lot. Both of them have probably very well-adaptive aerobic metabolisms. Neither one of them has shown any loss of muscle. And this tends to be the case for people who engage in a variety of cardiovascular-rich forms of activity. It's only on the extreme ends, on the absolute margins, where we tend to see muscle loss. I want you to think about things like marathon running or ultra endurance races, triathletes. Those are people for whom carrying around a substantial amount of muscle is probably a bad idea. That's where we might see the interference effect occur,

where the body simply has no choice but to reduce some of the muscularity so as to be able to survive the incredibly high training volumes. But keep in mind, folks, because this is really important. Just because you're developing aerobic adaptations doesn't mean you're going to suffer a loss in anaerobic adaptation. And if you simply do the 150 minutes a week or 200 minutes a week of zone two cardio, which would be like a brisk walk or a light bike ride, something where you could still talk, that's probably going to actually enhance your ability to grow and develop muscle because you'll have better redistribution of nutrients to working tissue, better vascular health, and better wellbeing. So I don't think cardio kills your metabolism. I think it's

fantastic for your health. I think it's fantastic for your metabolism. And I think you have to do a ton for it to become detrimental to your body composition and to your metabolism. a ton for it to become detrimental to your body composition and to your metabolism. Okay, so let's talk about the sixth myth that I think is really destructive. And this is the idea that you reach a hormonal breaking point with age or at any point really where your results just stagnate. A lot of people complain about insulin, estrogen, low testosterone, thyroid problems. estrogen, low testosterone, thyroid problems. And the truth is a lot of these things are actually regulated and positively modulated by exercise. So I'm not saying hormone problems don't exist. I'm not saying that hormone dysregulation doesn't exist. What I'm saying is if you haven't gone to the doctor and gotten a specific prescription or diagnosis for your specific hormone condition, the likelihood

that whatever you think you have would be positively modulated by semi-regular exercise and a half-decent diet is really high. So if you're just assuming you have hormonal problems and that's a reason why you aren't engaging in exercise, you're using that as a, let's be honest, cop-out. Oh, I can't lose weight. I have a bad thyroid. I have dysregulated insulin. I'm menopausal. There's no point. I'm just going to eat like crap and not exercise. It's like if you have not gone explicitly to the doctor, gotten a diagnosis about your hormones, and that doctor has not said specifically that you shouldn't engage with exercise or a nutrient-dense form of eating, it's probably very much the case that whatever dysregulation you think, keyword think,

might be happening would be wildly, positively modulated and influenced by exercise. So do not use hormonal dysregulation that has not been assessed by a physician, has not been diagnosed by a physician, has only been, let's be honest, put in front of you most likely by social media, and you've made the assumption, you've noceboed yourself into thinking you have this. And again, I'm not a physician. I'm telling you, go talk to the damn doctor. Go get the damn blood work done. Stop using boogeymen that may or may not even be real as an excuse to not take care of your body because you'll probably manifest this dysregulated hormone profile by virtue of being a sedentary fuck who doesn't eat well. This is just like,

this is one of those things. There are very few forms of hormonal dysregulation that would dissuade you from wanting to make good decisions with food and exercise. So before you cast your boat off into the ocean of perpetual sorrow and lack of results and no point in trying, why don't you try and get the labs done? See what happens. Get assessed before you make a mess. Okay. The seventh myth that really does hold people back is the idea that fitness influencers and healthy people are constantly perfect all the time and they never make mistakes. This is a myth. This is not true. Influencers and fitness professionals and trainers and athletes, they all take breaks. They all take time in their day to decompress. They all take time to recover. They all eat meals. They enjoy. They might not post them. They might not post them, but they're happening.

I want you to know that right now, folks, a lot of what you see on the internet is baloney. You can have your health, you can have your wellbeing, and you can have a body you're proud of while also having rest days, enjoying meals out and being social. I promise that is a myth. That is a myth. And quite frankly, it's like a huge caricature of what it means to be healthy. And it just really holds people back. It just really holds people back. The eighth myth is that you can't outwork a quote-unquote bad diet when it comes to fat loss. You can never outwork a diet that is devoid of nutrients in the name of staving off disease and living well. You have to be nurtured and nourished to live well and feel healthy. Okay? That's really important. You are not going to feel well and feel healthy if you are not eating enough of the right nutrients. Now, here's the thing that's really interesting. A lot of people

say when it comes to fat loss, you can't outwork a bad diet. Meaning if you eat like crap, you'll just be doomed to be fat. And this is very true. Very, very true. Okay. For people who are sedentary, but for people who are very much active, it can actually be hard to maintain body mass without eating foods that are quote unquote unclean. If your goal is weight gain, if your goal is muscle gain, and you are a very active adult who moves a lot, you might actually have to incorporate high calorie foods. Now, if your activity is still super high, even if you ate 4,000 calories a day of garbage, you could maintain or even lose weight. So the truth here is you can't really outwork a bad diet if you don't

move much. But if you move a lot, you actually have a tremendous amount of cushion. Okay. The last myth, this one kills me as the idea, and this is a newer one, that stretching is useless. And I'm not going to say it's useless in the sense that I do believe there are better things you can do to increase mobility. But stretching can be a really valuable tool for gaining access to new ranges of motion and tissue resilience. And while I wouldn't recommend doing it before you train, doing it after or doing it in the sauna while you're performing nice nasal breathing that helps you pull oxygen into the areas where you need it most can help you own and develop fitness in new positions to develop resilience and adaptability in new

positions. And I think stretching, reaching and range, moving into different and unique positions and shapes can be beautifully valuable for the increased resilience we all want from our tissue as we age. I'm not saying to stretch before you lift. That's never a great idea. Do a dynamic warmup instead, but a post-workout stretch or a sauna stretch or yoga can be wonderful. Do not throw stretching out with the bath water just because some of the new research says lifting can get you all the same benefits. I've seen it. I love it. I'm a lifting aficionado. Okay. But let's be real here. Stretching still has a place. All right, folks, that does it for today's episode. I want to thank you all so much for tuning in and remind you,

share this episode on your Instagram story, tag me, leave a five-star rating and review if you can. I absolutely love seeing that kind of stuff. It makes a huge difference and helps more people find the podcast. Thanks so much for tuning in and I'll catch you on the next one.