Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 282: The Best Way to Lose Fat + Is Reverse Dieting B.S? With Jimmy and Aram

Episode Date: April 25, 2023

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Hey guys, welcome into a special episode of the dynamic dialogue podcast. As always, I'm your host, Danny Matrenga. And in this episode, I'm sitting down with my good friends, Jimmy and Aram of the other side lifestyle podcast. These are coaching friends of mine who I met many years ago at an event in Chicago, and I will be speaking at Aram's event, the Real Coaches Summit in 2024 in Las Vegas. So if you'd like to take advantage of seeing me there in 2024, I've actually attached the pre-sale list for the event in the link in the show notes. So just scroll down there. Same thing with Jimmy's

Instagram and Aram's Instagram. Jimmy is at Jimmy Nutrition. Aram is at Four Weeks to the Beach. These are two legit, very, very good coaches. More importantly, very, very good dudes. So sit back and enjoy this discussion from a guest spot I did on their podcast. sit back and enjoy this discussion from a guest spot I did on their podcast, and I can't wait to hear what you guys think. Enjoy. This episode is brought to you in part thanks to some of our amazing partners like LMNT. LMNT makes the best electrolyte product on the market. In fact, I've actually started drinking my LMNT each and every morning before I have coffee so as to optimize my circadian biology, make sure that I'm hydrated, and make sure that I'm getting ahead on my water intake

throughout the day and not reliant on stimulants, but instead being somebody who's reliant on hydration and the proper balance of minerals and electrolytes. If you want to feel your best all day, mentally and physically, it's imperative that you stay hydrated. LMNT provides a balanced ratio of sodium, potassium, and magnesium to support brain and body hydration. This combination of electrolytes improves health, performance, body and brain performance, mind you, helps to reduce cramps and soreness and get you more hydrated. There's no sugar. LMNT is sweetened with stevia. It's perfect for exercise and perfect for the sauna because the flavors are natural, tasty, delicious, and not overpowering. And if you're like me,

you'll use them multiple times a day across your training sessions to get hydrated early, to replenish after sauna use. And again, it's not just me. LMNT is the official sports drink of Team USA Weightlifting, and it's used by athletes in the NBA, NFL, Major League Baseball, as well as athletes like you and I looking to take your fitness to the next level. My favorite flavors are definitely the raspberry and citrus. When I put a box together, I try to load up on raspberry and citrus. And when you put your box together, you can get a free sample pack containing all of Element's amazing flavors like mango chili, citrus, raspberry, orange, and more. To get access to this free gift with purchase, scroll down to the show notes and check out using the special

link for Dynamic Dialogue listeners. Welcome back to The Other Side Lifestyle with Jim and Aram. Today, we have a very special guest who almost has more followers than Aram. Aram is huge on the internet. Everybody knows him, especially the people overseas who want feet pics from him today we have danny montraga on class of 2019 nci chicago alongside me and iram and we're going to talk about the way he expresses himself sexually that's right guys this is what you came for can you imagine being a 48 year old woman driving in your car like in south philly and hearing us three people talking about how danny expresses himself sexually and she's like i thought i signed up for a fitness

and nutrition podcast and like it's sex is fitness absolutely or if you're one of my students or my 73 year old mother listen we're gonna be canceled so fucking soon it's not even we keep trying we keep i'll i'll i'll introduce danny kind of with the little little bit of knowledge that i have we're going to be canceled so fucking soon. It's not even funny. We keep trying. We keep trying. I'll introduce Danny kind of with the little bit of knowledge that I have. He, him. Correct. We were all in the same certification class in 2019 in October in Chicago. I LLC'd my business literally the week afterwards.

Danny had already, I think you had already been in the space for a while doing virtual and online for quite some time at that point. So you were not a novice to this stuff. I think you were just coming in there. I recognized him. I was like, oh, that's Danny Mantraga. I follow him. Can you pronounce his name right?

He's got an N in it. Yeah, there's a name. Mantraga. Mantraga would be the- Oh, I'm saying that I'm putting the N before the n before the t it's okay dude it's a hard one to say and most people just call me danny m so matranga matranga anything like that will will be more than sufficient danny m i like that so yeah so we were all in the same class we were all at different points of our career and i think we've all kind of converged onto this. I would consider us to be

non-influencers and the anti-bullshit space, which is the space that I love to be in. So I think there's no better person to advocate for the non-bullshit side of fitness and nutrition than Danny. So Danny, welcome aboard. Thanks for coming on. And thanks for sharing your time with us. Gentlemen, it's a pleasure. I appreciate any opportunity to talk fitness. It's still kind of a dream come true to just be able to get paid in any capacity doing or discussing the things that I love. So this kind of stuff is fabulous. I love working as a coach.

I love talking to other coaches. Like, this is the best. Thank you. Awesome. Well, listen, I'll start off by saying that I had gone through a bunch of your podcasts over the last couple of weeks just doing a little bit of research. And the one that really struck to me was the episode that you did with Eric Trexler talking about the illusion of reverse dieting. Now, I got to admit, when I started listening to it, my butt puckered up and I got a little butt hurt.

And I was like, you know what? I'm somebody who believes in this. And I'm somebody who's an advocate for this. And how dare Danny start talking badly about this? Or how dare Eric, who's fucking been a researcher in this space for way too long. But the longer I listened for, the longer I was able to put my own belief systems aside, which is what most people are unwilling to do, it started to make a lot of sense. And it's not that I think either one of you was

discounting the potential efficacy of reverse dieting. It's that it's not this magic, amazing pill that people make it out to be online. So let's talk about that. And let's start off by saying, why has it gained the level of popularity that you think it has gained over the past five years, I would say? Yeah. So I think that's a really thoughtful preface. And I think that my opinion on reverse dieting is fairly aligned with what you just said, which is that while it's not my preferred method for reintroducing calories into somebody's diet after a deficit, I don't think it is without warrant in certain circumstances. I think it can work really well for certain individuals. Let's start with the popularity question,

because I think that knowing where something came from and how it became what it is now is really important for unpacking how we use it. And I used to use reverse dieting a lot in my coaching practice because it seemed to me to be a really evidence-based, thoughtful way to reintroduce calories after a diet to hopefully minimize the accretion of additional body fat. That's the goal. Let's add it in slowly because my goal is to gain the least amount of body fat I possibly can. And if you went through a meaningful, challenging cut, who the heck wouldn't want that on the back end? It makes a ton of sense. And so I've used it. I've deployed it over the years.

And I've been pretty effective with it in the sense that the clients that we use this strategy to get back to maintenance didn't gain a ton of body fat. But when I started hearing other people talk about it and saying things like, well, if you just put them right back to maintenance, they don't gain that much body fat either and they suffer for substantially less. And if they are dealing with any of the negative implications that come from prolonged dieting, periods of prolonged dieting, what you'll tend to see is they go away a lot faster if you just go back to maintenance. So if a client's struggling with their health and their well-being and feeling their best, slowly just kind of adding.

And a lot of times with reverse diet, it's like, oh, here's 10 carbs. Here's five fats. That just might not be enough to get that person back to feeling good fast enough by my current standards. And it's not to say, because I don't want to bash on reverse dieting, but I really think it came from two primary places. Clients who have a disordered idea of what they can expect after a dieting phase and what they should expect their body to want to do after a prolonged deficit. And I also think it got really popular

because coaches just want to hold on to their clients a little while longer, or they don't want to tell them the truth that you're probably going to gain some fat. You're probably going to see the scale go up because at the very least you'll hold more glycogen in water. And I don't think that that means you don't use reverse dieting. I don't think that that means it doesn't have credence. I just think it means if a client's not looking you dead in the face and saying, I'm concerned about adding all that food back at once, I'd like to take a slower and more thoughtful approach because that's what works well with me. Then the trade-off that they would be getting isn't worth it. I would rather, at this point,

bring them closer to their maintenance more quickly so they can get back to feeling better, have some of those satiety signals regulate a little more quickly. And after talking to Eric a couple of times about this, it just seems that a lot of the metabolic maladaptations that occur from really intense deficits go away more quickly when you just go back to maintenance. And that's what I was concerned with. It's okay. We're right here trying to juggle slow fat regain or minimal to no fat regain post diet versus being careful with metabolic maladaptation. And I'm more concerned with metabolic maladaptation. So I'm going to use reverse dieting more sparingly. Now I have clients go to maintenance more quickly. I think depending

on who you're working with in the person though, it really depends what you want to do. I just don't think that it's this magical gateway to gaining no fat. And I used to even think when I first started training guys, I literally followed this dude who said like, Oh, I eat 8,000 calories a day. And I like literally started eating like 200 more a week. And now I eat nothing but garbage and I'm shredded. And I was like, so stupid. I was like, fuck this guy's like, I didn't even know what PEDs were. So like, I thought homeboy was natty and he was just lifting hecka heavy and eating a little bit more each week.

And that was the trick to just infinite metabolic expansion. And his TDEE was 8,000. It never once crossed my mind that maybe this influencer is one lying about what they're eating to stay as lean as they're eating. And I think that that really made reverse dieting a lot more popular too, which are the fitness professionals who say things like, look at all of the things I can eat while maintaining this incredibly lean physique. It's because I just slowly added food in over time and my metabolism adjusted. And that's what initially made me question the belief system I had,

which was very similar to yours. And that's a challenging thing for coaches. And I know for a fact that I've transacted with people whom over the years I had convinced that this was the way to do things. And it wasn't until learning more later, I realized, well, I didn't necessarily fuck that person over, but I didn't do as good of a job as I would have done today. And so that's kind of how I got to this opinion on reverse dieting. That's essentially like, yeah, it's a tool, but it's a tool I wouldn't use very often unless a client really asked for it. Can we establish when we're talking about this, the idea of reverse dieting and somebody is doing an aggressive cut,

are we assuming when we even mentioned the word reverse dieting, that this person has metabolically adapted to the calories of the diet? So I think sometimes people are dieting and they they're not metabolically adapted. There's no reason to slowly add calories. So let's assume that there's a person and we're everything is under the assumption that we're believing them and that where they're actually eating what they're eating so let's just say they're dieting at whatever 1500 calories they get to that point you know maybe they're at their goal and they and they're still eating 1500 calories and they have not lost any weight for an extended period of time for whatever reason

calories and they have not lost any weight for an extended period of time for whatever reason, whether they're doing this on their own or whatever. And so they have met, are we, we're all on the same page that metabolic adaptation is real. Totally real. Totally real. So we take this person who has metabolically adapted to 1500 calories. They're only, their body's only putting out 1500 calories, no matter what they do. They have adapted to this diet. Would you still, from what you're saying, would you jump up to their old maintenance based on what you're saying? Or in that situation where somebody is truly metabolically adapted, you would take a slower

approach? Would it depend on the client's attitude? Yeah, no, I think that's an awesome scenario because that's a good hypothetical situation where we'd be like, wow, okay, so let's say you've been doing 1500 for like two years and you're just, it's gridlock. That means that you've seen maladaptation occur over a two-year period. So I can expect the reversal of that maladaptation to also take a little longer. So maybe a slower and more truncated approach makes a lot of sense. Now, being the semi-pessimistic, cynical coach that I am, I don't believe too many people when they tell me they can't lose fat on 1,500 calories. And it's not because I don't think that there are really short people who are super sedentary and don't have a lot of muscle mass. I think it's just because people suck at counting. And what cued me into this, guys, was fucking reverse dieting. Because I was walking around thinking I had the biggest, baddest galaxy brain on earth

because I'd be like, all right, we're going to reverse diet you from 1500. We're going slow. We're going to start at 1600. And these people go, oh my God, we're going up in calories. Okay. Whatever you say, coach. And so up goes this alarm. And all of a sudden they are auditing calories. Like the IRS came knocking at my fitness pal. Like all of a sudden they're losing at 1,600 calories. And I'm just like, you see, you weren't eating enough. Something magical happened. We needed to reverse diet, instant fat loss. And what it was, was that person had gotten a little lax around 1,500. And a prescription for 1,617, whatever you want to make it, folks, got their adherence

way back higher up to where it was when they were initially seeing success. Now, if you dieted on 1500 calories for two years, I've had a gal who I've been working with for seven months straight. She's lost 40 pounds. I've adjusted her macros twice. So we've only gone down twice and she's lost 40 pounds, but she's like nailing it a hundred percent every day. So if you're not, if you're one of those people, then like, let's say I have like a year and a half of you just being perfect and never missing and things slow down. Sure. I don't, I don't think it's bad to have a slow reintroduction. I really don't. Because you do want to be thoughtful. You want to think, what's best for this client's psychology?

What's not going to drive them crazy? What's going to be agreeable? Because as coaches, we're half science, half art. And a lot of times we make concessions on the science to be thoughtful to the client, as long as we're not deviating too far from the principle. Well, it's fucking customer service too. Like we forget, we forget that we're customer service representatives at the end of the day. And I think a lot of coaches, they want to sit on this, die on the hill of science or

die on the hill of evidence. When in reality, you're not going to keep that client if they're not at least satisfied with their experience to some extent. Like you can still, I know plenty of people that get shitty haircuts and keep going back to the same barber because they're buddies now after seven years or that must be what happened to you right that was a good one good one sorry that's a cheap shot i don't even have any hair i do have a beautiful beard though like it's manicured by me it's okay it's you could have taken a shot at my pube beard there. So thank you.

I was going to leave that till the end, but you know what I'm saying? Like, I think a lot of times coaches think that they, that it's like, well, the client has to trust me because I know everything and I'm the authority figure. When in reality, we have to tiptoe this line of professional, but also please the customer to some extent, not give them all the grace in the world, but at least also make sure that their experience isn't completely dog shit, horrible. Completely true. And I don't think you can just red pill everybody either. Cause that doesn't

work for a lot of people like, Oh, well, you're just not, you're just eating more than you think you're eating. It's like, yeah, that's, that's probably fucking true, but good luck getting. Yeah. That's, that's like the art part of the coaching. I mean, I have a few clients right now where I know they're eating more than what they're tracking. And I'm just going, hey, if this is really... Yep. No, this is what I mean. If this is really what you're doing, then we don't really have room to create a deficit. So we're going to have to go through a reverse diet. Yes. Which I think is a good tactic. Yeah. And it's purely to get them compliant going,

look, wow, you're eating all these calories now. Now that you've really gotten good at tracking and you've really gotten accurate with tracking, now we've created the space for a deficit. So that's the downside is that you're doing that as a tactic. And then that person potentially is going out and telling everybody it was the reverse diet. And then it just perpetuates this myth that we're exactly talking about. So anybody that's listening, it all comes back to that. It all comes back to that, you know, that really be honest with yourself, really, really be honest with yourself. When you hear this conversation, for some people, you might actually be metabolically adapted. For most people, you're probably underreporting. I think that's a really good and concise way to just kind of

put it all into two sentences. And I would not have known to even consider something like that until I talked to some experts. And that means people that know metabolism and understand nutrition more than I do. Because we live in this bubble of coaches where we're borrowing and trading tactics all the time. And I think that a lot of coaches... I don't think reverse dieting is a bad thing. And I don't think that the coaches who use it are making bad decisions at all. I think that a lot of coaches employed it. They told their clients, go eat an extra 100 calories. Their clients tightened up their tracking really fast.

They lost weight. They're like, I totally have something here. And it was just a collective psychological moment in fitness where all the coaches tried it. A lot of the coaches had good results. And then the productization of it or building your whole coaching business around it became popular. And of course, the idea of eat more and still lose fat or look at how much all my clients eat and still get lean, that's really sticky. That's going to work. it. And I think for me, just based on the success that I've had since using it less and realizing that it wasn't a big make it or break it for my business thing, I don't really pitch it to clients. A lot of times clients or potential clients will come to me wanting to do a reverse. And I have a discussion with them, not dissimilar to the one we're having right now, which is, hey, if you want to reverse because you're cold all the time, you can't sleep and your hair's falling out and you want to do that 50 calories at a time because you don't want to gain a pound of body fat, you're asking me to

trade off health for body composition, which I would have done for you in 2018, but that's not where my values are aligned as a coach at this moment. I'd rather prioritize your health because I bet I get your body composition where you want it faster that way. Is that why Aram lost his hair? Because he did the slow reverse? Aram could have reversed faster and saved himself a whole head of hair. Every problem I have is because I did it the wrong way for too long, and that's why I'm in this business. But I think the biggest consideration that folks miss out on is the activity portion of this. Like we have a pretty good idea of energy input. That's something that we can track.

Now granted, exactly, it's not 100%. There's different tactics on weighing and measuring cooked versus raw, blah, blah, blah, like all these different things. We have no fucking idea how to measure energy output whatsoever, but the proof is in the pudding with the people that are walking around with largest amounts of muscle mass. That's why the pursuit of muscle mass is such an important

pursuit across all of this stuff. And you can't, as much as I hate using the terminology of earn your calories, but this is something like uh paul aquin used to talk about all the time he wanted his fucking professional athletes to earn their carbs and earn their calories and it was because he he understood the value of the different oxidative and glycolytic and atpc systems and he understood energy systems to the point that he was just a genius at it and he knew knew how to manipulate them properly. Mrs. Jones, who's lifting in her basement with three pound dumbbells twice a week, isn't warranting the reverse diet calories that you're trying to put her on. She just needs to get her shit together with her meal prep.

She needs to get her shit together with her quality of food. And she needs to just start lifting a little bit heavier to at least feel what that feels like and get slightly uncomfortable. And she needs to just start lifting a little bit heavier to at least feel what that feels like and get slightly uncomfortable. And then maybe we push a little bit more carbohydrate on her because now she's doing the work from an output perspective to warrant it. Totally. I mean, you can red pill that all the way and be like, yo, almost every person who's obese or morbidly obese could fucking take a protein shake and a multivitamin for every meal, lift weights and

chip away at a massive amount of that body fat while they mobilize enough fat tissue to probably not have to eat a solid meal for like three to fucking 12 months. They've literally put people in the hospital on a banana bag and not fed them for a year when they're morbidly obese. And for some reason, those people emerge 200 pounds lighter and they don't need to reverse diet. I'm not saying that it's like, these are examples of, they're obviously extremes, but I think for most people, it's like, okay, your weight, your stagnated weight loss probably has a lot less to do with the fact that you need to eat more and a lot more to do with the fact that you need to move more, build some tissue, eat some protein, and track your calories the way you track your credit card

or something else. You need to take the nutritional intake accounting a lot more seriously because it is so much harder to offset it than it is to be mindful of the food before you put it in your mouth. Now, do you have any tactics as far as, I don't want to say bulletproofing food tracking because I don't think there really is a way to bulletproof it. I mean, I think other than just practice and experience, are there any tactics that people can deploy to start to get better at the tracking part to become more confident in the numbers that they're actually reporting and seeing? That's a good question. I'll give you something that works well for me. I don't necessarily know it would work well for everybody. I know a couple of coaches that do this, but

it's kind of just breaking things down into their smallest piece. And we talk a lot about like, okay, when Mrs. Jones, for example, starts a fitness plan, am I going to put her on a super advanced training protocol, a super restrictive dietary protocol and upend her whole lifestyle? Probably not. I'm probably going to be like, yo, can you lift three days a week and stop eating fast food? You start with small. And so the first thing I usually tell people who are like, oh my gosh, I'm completely overwhelmed by the idea of tracking my macros or tracking my calories. I'm like, hey, can you eat this many grams of protein a day and have veggies on every plate? That's like my total beginner place to start because what happens for most people who have

no idea how many grams of protein they're eating, and then you give them a protein assignment that let's say it's 0.6, 0.7% or 0.7, 0.6 to 0.7 grams per pound of body weight. So somewhere around 1.4 to 1.5 kilos. And you're like, okay, Mrs. Jones, you had no idea how many grams of protein you're eating. You're 150 pounds. You want to be 120 pounds. I want you to eat 110 grams of protein a day. Track that diligently. They come into their next session or they come into their next coaching call and they're like, I am so full. 110 grams of protein is huge. And that doesn't even count the serving of veggies I have to have on every plate. And I give them something small. I have them track one thing. I have them track the protein.

And then after that, I go, oh, you're doing great with the protein. I'm going to give you a calorie cap. And that calorie cap is 1800. So you're going to have 1800 calories. I don't care where you get them, but you got to get 110 grams of protein. You got to get three servings of veggies. Well, then that opens up the discussion. I'm having a little bit of a hard time, you know, getting this and that, or maybe I feel like I could need a little more energy. Why don't we go ahead and add a carbohydrate target? You know, you'll let them slowly build some confidence, giving them one thing to track at a time. That's worked great for me. Yeah, that's an awesome. And I think the reality of that is that a lot of people that are following us have probably tried the MyFitnessPal approach,

and they've probably done all of the at least baseline legwork to try to figure this stuff out on their own and that's probably why they're lost because they're following the eat this much because you burn this much or yes here's your td here's your tde estimate that's coming out and they have that stuff turned on in the app that it takes their exercise and then bumps it up even though they already told the app i'm highly active and then it adds more calories for them to eat because it's connected to the device. And they're like, it's not working. Or they can't hit the numbers perfect. So they're like, that's why it's not working. I can't hit the numbers perfect. I quit. 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. Yeah, you hit a good point too, which is the initial calculation is really important.

A lot of people consider themselves to be highly active and they're not. I don't remember who told me this once, but they said, don't even touch that highly active activity multiplier unless they're working a manual labor job. I told every single person I've ever had a console call with or every single client, I've had one client ever who I would consider highly active, who was a Mason and went to the gym every day. I work out. I'm a phys ed teacher there today. I coach all this stuff. I'll never put myself at highly active. Never. Active at most. And my life is active. Yeah. So I think that that's a huge thing is just when you have the initial conversation around what

people need to genuinely need to eat. I know that for a long time, they were like, 1,200 calories, that's malpractice. Don't you dare get anywhere near that shit. And I understand that because a lot of women have suffered at the hands of some terribly restrictive coaches who have them eating way too few calories. But there's also this camp of people that are like, oh, I'm a woman and I maintain 10% body fat at 3000 calories a day. And if you're not, your coach is trash. And it's like, okay, let me tell you something, sweetie. The number that most women need to eat to maintain a well-muscled lean physique that won't predispose them to metabolic illness across their lifespan is a fuck ton closer to 1200 than it is to 3000. And I bet my ass on it. And that's not

to say that you need to restrict. It's to say that we've become so damn sedentary that I would say 75 to 85% of the US population is at the lowest multiplier tier for activity. So unless you're getting three to four lifts a week and 12 to 14,000 steps a day, you're probably low at sedentary to low active because we were 200,000 year old species. And for 200,000 years, we were moving around all the damn time. And it wasn't until the last literally 50 years where our lifestyles became hyper, hyper sedentary. And most people fall into that category. And I think there's also this misconception of I can sit for 12 hours a day straight, and then I can go and train for an hour or 90 minutes balls to the wall.

Or not. And let's say they are going balls to the wall or not and let's and let's say like they are going let's say they're doing seven crossfit classes a week yep and then they're on the peloton at night sweating away bullets on their floor that still does not make up from a total daily energy expenditure for the loss of just movement throughout the day because you've sat for so god damn yeah just even the point so you think you're highly active because you go balls to the wall for an hour, seven days a week. Yeah,

absolutely. Then what would the person be who is a Mason who is a landscaper and goes to the gym? What would they be considered? Exactly. I mean, you have 168 hours in a week. You,

okay. You move seven, seven of them. Like I said, for two hundred thousand years as a species, we spent approximately. What, seven times eight, say we slept eight hours a night, 56 hours a week. So that leaves you with about one hundred and eight hours and people hunting or gathering. It was one or the other. People spent 108 hours a week on their feet doing shit. And you're out here telling me that you're highly active because you go to the gym four times a week, my ass. And I know that that sounds super condescending, but

these are discussions that I would never have with a client. Like if you were to come to me, I wouldn't discuss this with you the same way I would to another coach. But these are huge issues that cause a lot of confusion and misconception that if we could just get more people to understand, you must move more to make any diet as effective as you'd like it to be, we'd save a lot of time. Yeah. more to make any diet as effective as you'd like it to be we'd save a lot of time yeah i like to i like to talk about like if we went i had to reel about this like if we visited another planet and we saw aliens and they were fucking around on tiktok and sitting on couches watching tv we'd be like these losers these losers they're aliens. They got

these big brains and they're just hanging out, dancing and TikToking and watching TV and surfing the internet. So blind to how we're living our lives now. I'm so vehemently anti-TikTok. It's not even funny. I think that that app specifically has eroded human attention span to a degree that we might not recover from. And you know how it is. In China, they're pushing the technology and education. In America, they push the dancing and the farting. Yeah.

And the hyper-sexualization, anything that would distract. I imagine today what a 10-year-old has to deal with from a stimulation standpoint when they pick up their phone. And it's just like I think our technology and our content has outpaced the human brain's ability to really deal with it. And it's like, okay, I don't want to get geopolitical, but let's say the largest threat to the security of the United States is China. And we are on a political collision course. And they create an app that is so effective at distracting our children and adults that it essentially turns all of our brains to mush. TikTok is essentially the greatest Trojan horse that was ever made.

And I, I, I totally believe that. I don't disagree. And in the documentary Fed Up, they talked about if a foreign country did to our food system what we're doing to our food system, we would go to war to protect our kids. Yep. Yep. Exactly. Exactly. And you know what? The parents are too busy on TikTok to even know

what's going on because it's not just kids. But they're TikToking with their kids. So it's like a bonding thing. I don't think you understand, Danny. It's bringing families closer together. And that's the value of the app. And I forget that social media is a place of entertainment for most people. I go on social media purely to support the people that I that i collaborate with to try to spread positive information to people to try to be a conduit for at least some positive change i forget that there's an entertainment aspect of it because i entertain my ways myself and other ways like drugs and you describe them yeah in detail though but drugs and prostitution that's like. But that's the oldest and best formats

and the most effective formats of entertainment, in my opinion. It's been around since the dawn of time. It's the healthiest way. I'm old school. What can I say? I'm old school. You hit on something with social.

TikTok is explicitly less social than all the other social medias because when you open Facebook, you're shown a feed of people you follow. When you open Instagram, you're shown a feed of people you follow. When you open YouTube, you're generally shown an algorithmic curation of the accounts you follow. When you open TikTok, you actually add Twitter now. And my Twitter has gotten unbelievably toxic since Elon created the For You page. But the For You page of TikTok and Twitter are essentially an algorithmic curation specifically designed to get and evoke the greatest emotional response possible.

I never see people I follow on my Twitter or my TikTok. It's just garbage that makes me mad. You have to actively go over to the following section. Yeah, so those apps are for entertainment and distraction. And they're not social media. I don't even want to call it fucking entertainment. Aram's super social on social media. He's clearly trying to engage with people, share content, make connections.

TikTok is the opposite. It's like plug in and swipe your finger until you realize you wasted 40 minutes, you can't get back. It's not social at all. Yeah. And that goes to the degradation of our lifestyle from an activity standpoint. It goes to the degradation of our minds from a productivity standpoint. And how many people are we getting that are telling us they can't get to the gym or they can't meal prep or they can't walk for 10 minutes after. And I, and I've, and I've challenged people. I said, open up your phone, go to that setting where it shows you your screen time and just show me, just give me like, I have to be on it for an

hour and a half to two hours a day. Cause it's part of my job, but I'm going to, I'm going to bet that if you're working as an accountant, you don't need to be on TikTok or Instagram for an hour and a half of your day. So if that 90 minutes can get dedicated to your health and well-being, shame on you for not doing it. And here's your little, if you're addicted to TikTok, you love it. It's your escape. How about you set a rule? I can only watch TikTok when I'm walking. I can only watch TikTok when I'm on the treadmill. And then you can combine this horrible habit with a good habit and allow yourself to continue to watch distracted garbage.

A little temptation bundling as James Clear was. I don't know if you guys heard of James Clear. He wrote this book called Atomic Habits. Have you ever heard of Atomic Habits? I've heard of it. I've heard of it. It's only been a New York Times bestseller for seven years consecutively. Does he stack the habits? I've heard not only does he bundle temptations and stack habits, but they're particularly small habits such as that they might even be atomic in nature. I'm going to write a book called Microscopic.

Would that be bigger probably than atomic? I was thinking of molecular habits. Somebody's got to figure this out. Nuclear, like the nucleus of the atom. There you go. Nuclear habits. I wanted to shift the discussion away from the actual nutritional portion

and plug into the exercise portion just since we have you. Yes, please. We have, so now that we've created this idea that, okay, cool. Calories in is measurable. Calories out is hard to measure. So aside from just quantifying calories out by way of activity, like obviously I think steps are huge. It's a very easy way to quantify activity. It's hard to quantify intensity while working out, right? We have RPE and RIR scales. We have these things, we have these tools, but even those things are missing the mark on individual perceptions of

those concepts, right? Like what a 10 RIR or a 10 RPE is to me is going to be much different than it is to Mrs. Jones because we have different pain thresholds. Is there a tactic? We love Mrs. Jones. She's the reason why I have a roof over my head. She's on every goddamn episode. Hey, she's real. I also use Mrs. Jones. So is there a way that we can maybe explain it in a way that becomes understandable and

applicable to the individual so they can ratchet their intensity up or understand how to ratchet their intensity up. That's it. It's an awesome question. And it's something like having my own studio and I have a physical therapist in there, three other really great trainers, clients coming and going all the time. So you get the ability to watch people train at a different intensity and you get a variety of different people. And what is pretty clear is saying like, hey, make this an 8 RPE or a 2 RIR looks wildly different depending on the lifting acumen and the ability for that lifter to really challenge themselves. You mentioned pain sensitivity and tolerance. That's a huge component to it. Perception of when something's getting hard. Like if you're new to training, the first rep is hard. If you've been training for a while, the first 10 don't even count. So how do I get somebody there? And I think what it looks like, I'll use my in-person training as an example,

is I want that person to feel the tissue that they're targeting in the exercise. So let's use a squat. And it's going to be mostly quads. There's going to be some adductors. There's going to be some glutes. If I can take a novice through that squat and I can get them to a point where they start to feel a sensation in the muscle and a burn in the muscle, I'll get them to a point where they start to feel a sensation in the muscle and a burn in the muscle, I'll encourage them to do a couple more while being sure that they're feeling it in the right place. I don't think there is a better way to calibrate your proximity to what would be considered effective reps, which are the reps that are going to build muscle, the reps that are going to build strength, then getting a trainer, a training partner, or using a machine that allows you to safely train

to failure. And I'm not saying a one rep max. I think a really good place for this is like a 12 to 15 repetition set that might include one drop set. So maybe the first 10 are hard. You drop 15%. You do another one. But you need to feel what it feels like to train close to failure. And for anybody listening who's like, that's psycho. I'm not doing it. And I'm knocking on wood as I say this. I've had four trainers and a physical therapist in my studio this year alone probably trained 1,500 one-on-one sessions minimum with lots of clients training close or all the way to failure. And we have not had one person get hurt.

And so I think a lot of people here training close to failure or training to failure means I'm going to get hurt. It is if you're picking like squats and fucking deadlifts. But if you're picking machines that are stable and that are easy to place back down, or you can learn, oh, that's what a hard set looks like. That's what those reps are supposed to feel like. I really think that the shortcut here for knowing what good effective resistance work looks like and quantifying what good effective resistance work looks like is taking yourself to failure on a couple exercises where it feels safe,

remembering what that shit feels like, and making sure that when you do your other sets, you're somewhere in that ballpark. Not all the way there, but somewhere there. But if the target tissue is not burning, there's no loss in velocity. I'm big on velocity loss. That's a big one to watch that. Yeah. Some of my background is in sports performance coming from an athletic background and originally being really focused on that. Like velocity is a huge metric by which you can gauge an athlete's essentially their decline

in performance. And if you're training an athlete for maximum speed or maximum power, any deceleration means the set is over because we're no longer training max speed. If you're showing signs of deceleration, now we're transitioning to a different energy system and I'm not training max speed. I'm training something different. But for general population resistance training, people who want some combination of size and strength, any concentric velocity loss is like, okay, here we go. Now I'm focusing as a coach. I'm seeing these reps slow down. If your sets, if you never get

like a rep, that's even close to slowing down, you got a little more in the tank. The first time I ever hit three 15 on bench, I had it on video. It took me 14 seconds to get it up. bench i had it on video it took me 14 seconds to get it up yeah i'm not even kidding that's that's a set of seconds so i would have if it was a squat i would have bailed at three seconds uh there's no doubt about that on a bench press i'll keep i'll keep pushing if the weight's not coming backwards well and this is this is why i think it's so important to see yourself and take video like if you're working with an online obviously i love absolutely adore your model that you have going on because you have the, the,

the in-person factor, which I think is never going to be replaced. We're personal trainers for a reason. And that's how I cut my teeth. I spent 15 years on the floor with my hands on people and in very appropriate ways. Now tell us about your training experience. It's typically me behind.

We've moved on from the drugs and prostitutes. So I think you have a very unique and awesome way to, to, to work with people because you're doing the online thing and the in-person thing. What I think we need to have more of is we need to have more videoing. And now that I've been, I've, I finally hired a coach. I've been working with him since Sunday. I send him little, uhjis every time he posts a story of him working out. I'm like, it's about time. And the best part about me working with a coach and having to submit videos of my working sets is he wants me to do two top sets to three top sets of every exercise. So for anybody who doesn't understand what that means, that means he wants me to do two to three all out failure, like balls to the wall. This is not going to go up on the last rep

set, but he wants me to preface that with at least one to three warmups sets prior to that working up to my top set. So essentially that's six sets of work of physical work, but then really the labor doesn't begin until set four, five, six. And then if I'm doing a seven, so what I'm showing him is I'm showing them first top set and it's already misery. And I'm now that I'm posting these videos into my Facebook group with my clients and I'm showing people what failure looks like. They're like, Oh, and I bet my bottom dollar that if you started filming yourself train,

you would start seeing how much you have left in the tank. Because yes, it's misery in the moment, but it's not anywhere near ugly. It needs to look fucking ugly at some point. Now, the form doesn't need to break down completely, especially like you said, on a squat or a deadlift, there's a risk of injury there. But if you're on a machine chest press or a lat pulldown or a machine tricep extension,

go the fuck to the point where you can't get your next rep to come back down again. And if you have to cheat to get that rep, you probably got there. Yeah. I think that's a, I think that's a really good point, dude.

I like, I can't tell people enough. Like the more you start looking at weightlifting and resistance training, the way you look at any other sport, the more you start at any other sport, more you start to take it seriously for the athletic endeavor that it is. I use golf as an example all the time. You got fucking a bunch of different clubs in your back and some of them you can just rip. And then some of them you cannot hit where the shit. So what do you do? You go to the driving range and you're supposed to break out the clubs you

suck at and get better at them. But you break out that big driver and you're like, fuck it, I hit bombs. So it's boom, boom, boom. If you only do what you're good at, you'll stay exactly where you're at. And a lot of people pick exercises that are comfortable and that they're good at. If you find exercises that are challenging and you film them and you develop the skill and you develop the ability like with a golf club to hit that ball flush the way you're supposed to hit it, you start to realize really quickly, like, oh my goodness, simply sitting down on a machine and doing 10 reps is not the same as sitting down, putting my feet in the right position, bracing my core, controlling the way down, pushing it back up. And if you don't have a visual for this, you'll never calibrate it. You gotta, you gotta have a way to watch it.

Yeah. It's so important, man. And I think it's, uh, and not that I ever, like, obviously we, we have to plug coaching to some extent. I think there's a lot of good coaches out there, but it's amazing to me that when, when I have clients that are coming to me from other coaching groups or these massive coaching conglomerates with like 15 or 20 professionals on their team and they're getting feedback on lifting videos seven days later or five days later by the time they're already doing that movement again you're not doing these people any any justice whatsoever

they're not learning and you're almost creating an experience for them that's so bad that they don't even care they're not even invested in this anymore whereas for me this like i'll be i'll be literally doing something. Somebody will send me like a training video and I'm, I'm reviewing it like on the spot because I want to make sure that they're getting that feedback so they can immediately start implementing it. Because by the time they're not, their acumen is not to our level. So they don't care and they'll forget.

So if they have to do legs again in three days, you think they have any idea of what hack squats felt like on Tuesday? If they're doing them again on Saturday? Fuck no. No shot. That's already been gone out of their head because they've had 95 other stressors in those four days between their job, their kids, and their house that they're worried about. They're not worried about their fucking knee angle on a hack squat, nor do they give a shit.

So we have to create that understanding and that buy-in and preach that importance because when you're that connected to movement and you're that connected to your nutrition, that's when the magic happens. And that's when you're going to start to get progress. I agree wholeheartedly, but I will challenge this. And this is where I've been the most focused with my content, with my career, and with what I want to do in this space. And it is finding a way to take all the shit that you said that matters, which it totally does, to the clients that are paying us good money to work with one-on-one, which is what they should expect, right? But consolidate it in a way that we can disseminate it to the people who don't have that access. How the heck can I make somebody who's 50 pounds overweight, they've got the body composition of an infant, they've never been anywhere near a gym and they eat mostly processed food. How can I make

them find a way to enjoy eating protein and vegetables, load their body three to four times a week and get some more steps because it's very hard to get to where we're at. And I know when people are paying for coaching, the receptivity to the many nuances that go into the resistance training, the nutrition side of things, the lifestyle stuff, they're super receptive to it. So many people aren't. This has been my biggest challenge, gentlemen. I'm working on it as we speak. But I want to try to find a way to take the stuff that's complex and important and simplify it. It's my biggest struggle. Because we know that you have to go. We know that you have to go. Is there one thing that you would say to that person that you just described?, and we talk a lot about identity and mindset and like, we have to change that narrative in our head of how we're identifying.

And that's a huge aspect. Yes. There's somebody that wants to take these steps or whatever towards, I want to start enjoying protein. I want to start being able to get underweight three days a week as your final statement. Cause we know you got to be places. Sure.

Sure. Yes. Is there anything, I know that's a you got to be places. Sure, sure. Yes. Is there anything? I know that's a lot to put out there. There absolutely is. One simple question. There totally is. And it is start simply, but simply start.

I heard that from a trainer that I worked with at a studio like three or four years ago, and it really hit home. You got to start with something because getting in shape is a big stone wheel and it's a stone wheel that does not want to budge. And you got to push on that wheel and shove on that wheel and jam on that wheel. But the minute you get that thing to move even a little bit, it's hard to stop because it's heavy and it'll keep rolling and keep rolling and keep rolling. And I promise you, it's going to feel difficult to get that wheel to budge at first, but you got to keep pushing and you got to start with something.

So whether it's being mindful of your protein, going on a walk, getting a few lifts in, your life will be so much better if you find a way to reduce the likelihood of disease, to increase your strength, to expand the way you look at food, to include not just what you like, but also what's going to nourish you. It will make your life better. It'll be the best decision you ever made, but it won't be easy, but it'll be worth it. Yeah. I always tell people because people think it's not enough. I got to do more. I got to do more. Of course. Do more. I got to do more. And if you're not currently doing it, not too little.

Yeah. It'd be like if somebody said, currently doing it, not too little. Yeah. It'd be like if somebody said, oh, I'm not going to invest in my retirement because I can't. I'm not going to put any money into my Roth because I can't max it out. It's like, well, you can still put money into it. And even a dollar is going to be way better than nothing. So always start, guys. Start with something. Coming on, man.

I appreciate it. Good luck with the venue hunt. Always start, guys. Start with something. Coming on, man. I appreciate it. Good luck with the venue hunt. If you need to start like a crowd funder and OnlyFans for the wedding, we'll make sure to plug that for you.

Thank you guys so much. It is so good to see both of you. You both look extremely handsome, chiseled, fantastic beards. I hope that one day I can get a beard on this level. My friends, thank you. I really appreciate it. And I promise the next time we do this, we'll give you, I'll give you the full two hours. Love it. I've said that to a few too many women before. Thanks, man. All right, boys. Have a good one. So appreciated.