Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 320: 11 Fitness Ideas that Need to *DIE* In 2023

Episode Date: September 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 this episode, we're going to be discussing 11 fitness and nutrition ideas that linger despite not having too much basis in fact. linger despite not having too much basis in fact. These are myths and things that I think actually hurt people in that it does make it harder to reach your results when you hold things to be true that simply aren't. And that is much easier to do when falsities and let's call them half truths float around for years and years and years. And these 11 things have been persistent, problematic, and things that I would like

to solve moving forward by giving you the tools and information you need to take your training, nutrition, and performance to a high level with less bullshit. Let's get into the episode. 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,

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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. Okay, so the first and perhaps, in my opinion, most dangerous myth that we'll cover today is a newer one. I'd say I started

seeing this pick up steam five to six years ago. And it's a belief that is parroted and communicated mostly by people who fall into the camp or dietary preference of carnivore. This is a ideological way of eating. It's a tribe. It is a borderline political extension of just, it seems to be an almost exclusively male, almost exclusively aggrieved, almost exclusively white, almost exclusively anti-vegan group of dudes who insist that eating only animal products is the way to go. And we talk about this on the podcast a lot. I'm big on animal proteins. I love dairy. I love red meat. I love poultry. I eat a ton of fish. So I'm not anti-eating meat, but I am anti-allowing a diet to become a foundational piece of my identity. And I think what we've seen happen, and we have

to kind of have like an honest post-mortem about veganism for weight loss specifically, like people who follow a vegan diet for ethical reasons are very different from people who follow a vegan diet for health reasons or for weight loss reasons, right? So if you follow a vegan diet in the same way that if you follow a carnivore diet, it'll probably be better for your health than eating the way that most people eat. But in the long term, it's hard to say. One thing that carnivores will often look at is, hey, you know, the vegan diet, it's low and it's deficient in these things. And, you know, I can't help but see that and think, okay, you have the capability to identify the potential B12 deficiency in a vegan diet,

but you don't see the problem with a diet that literally has like no fiber. And that to me is crazy. That to me is what I call mental gymnastics. It's a form of, quite frankly, as far as I'm concerned, unserious back and forthing between these two diets. There's a lot of, you know, back and forth between people who are pro animal protein and who are vegan. And I think that the best diet for most people right now is probably an omnivorous diet where they're going to consume some animal protein because I think as a population, people are obese, but making like a foundational tenant of your diet, your diet, not eating vegetables, not eating fruits, not eating whole grains, because you believe things about these foods that are not really rooted in the evidence. And maybe, and this is true, there are people for whom certain vegetables, certain plants, or even all plants

just don't vibe with their digestive system, right? Maybe you have irritable bowel disease and you are very sensitive to high fiber foods. A carnivore diet might be a better and more comfortable way of eating with limited nutritional deficiencies than eating a ton of plants. All of it's better than the horrible diets people follow or don't follow, just the way people eat naturally in the Western world. However, I think it's really important to underscore that we are having people avoid eating fruits, vegetables, and whole grains at the recommendation of people who their diet is largely built on, at least to me, what looks like to be cherry-picked

science and an ideological attempt at taking down vegans or just being nutritional contrarians. And that is a foundational piece of this diet. And it's why I am so critical of the carnivore diet. I'm not critical of anybody who does it, of anybody who enjoys it. I think I would say I am critical of people in that space who know that they are cherry picking evidence. And if in fact we are on a mission to improve people's health, I think it makes sense to champion as many good and health promoting foods as we possibly can that help fight obesity and metabolic derangement. And when I think about those foods, I think about animal protein. I sure do. That doesn't make me a carnivore. And I think about vegetables,

fruits, and whole grains, and that doesn't make me a vegan, right? Like I am a more omnivorous eater, but this, this myth that, you know, plants are bad for you, man, I am just not seeing that. Yeah, maybe processed grains, but plants being bad for you, dangerous for you, and going out on the internet and telling 300 and there's 340 million adults in the US, 70% of them are overweight. So like 200 million people could potentially stumble upon this, 70% of them are overweight. So like 200 million people could potentially stumble upon this, make, Oh, I'm not going to eat plants. Obviously not, not everybody would see that, but it is a little bit of malpractice in my opinion, to try to move people away from something like vegetables. I think that they would do very well to do. And I've seen this, this is so funny. This is one of

the funny things about the carnivore diet. A lot of the tenant, uh, the, like the proponents have shifted the tenants now to include things like raw honey and raw fruit and raw dairy, all of which contain carbohydrates, all of which contain sugar, um, not vegetables though, because of the defense chemicals. I just think that the whole thing is a bunch of hogwash. And I think that it's better than the way most people eat and it could be good for some people, but we should be encouraging people to eat more fruits and vegetables, probably one you've heard. I've taken a different spin on this. One of the reasons that people say carbohydrates make you fat is because they elevate your insulin. And I completely understand why somebody would say, well, in biology, I learned that insulin is a storage hormone. So if I eat carbohydrates and I turn on this storage hormone, aren't I going to store more

energy and won't that be stored in the form of fat? True. And carbs, a lot of the carbs people like are very easy to overeat, especially processed carbohydrates. This is one of the things that carnivore dieters will stay away from and probably a huge reason that there are mild health benefits to that way of eating for the average person compared to the Western diet. It is very easy to overeat refined carbohydrates that are typically produced with added oils that enhance their flavors. But some of the most nutritious foods on the planet are carbohydrates, fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes. All of these things contain

a lot of nutrition, a lot of fiber. Some of them even contain protein and yes, they are carbs. So if you are avoiding carbs in the name of fat loss, it might be that it's helpful because you eliminate a high percentage of your processed foods that are very high in calories and very easy to overeat. But it could be the case that you're not eating some of the foods that make fat loss the easiest because they are carbohydrate, right? Like you do not have to go zero carb, low carb, or no carb to oblige the insulin fairy who is not a particularly important component of the weight loss process the way you might be thinking. Insulin plays a big role in appetite regulation and energy regulation and in storage, sure. But you can reduce your insulin markedly and your blood sugar markedly, and I guess you'd be

increasing your insulin sensitivity by just reducing your total caloric intake. You don't have to eliminate carbs. Okay, the next item is that you need to get in shape to hire a coach. I see this a lot, especially at the studio in person still. I saw it a lot more when I was working at corporate gyms and people would come in and it was like very apparent that the best thing for them would probably be to get started with a personal trainer.

It's like, okay, look, you have the disposable income, you have a very serious health goal, and you have zero experience in the gym. So for safety and education sake, it would probably make a huge difference to start with a personal trainer to a certain degree compared to starting solo. to start with a personal trainer to a certain degree compared to starting solo. And one of the things I would hear a lot is, I want to get in shape first. And I even hear this about going to the gym in general. So this myth is the myth that you need to get in shape to get a coach or a trainer, or you need to get in shape before you go to the gym. That is silly, folks. you need to get in shape before you go to the gym. That is silly, folks. You can start at absolute zero. And if you have a coach or a trainer in mind who can't meet you where you're at,

unless you are quite literally physically debilitated due to an illness, they have no reason to try to intervene with it outside of their scope. A trainer should be willing to meet with you and assist you in your fitness journey at pretty much any level. Whether you're on the decline, whether you're struggling after an injury, whether you're overweight and have literally no conditioning, you're completely deconditioned, out of shape and weak, a good coach will meet you right where you're at. And I see a lot of people who don't get help because they think they need to make some progress on their own first. And I see a lot of people who don't get help because they think they need to make some progress on their own first. And I respect that.

I don't think it always comes from a bad place, but I do think it could be a little bit of a delay tactic in that it's certainly true that anything worth working on is worth working on right now. And if you do think that you should get a coach or a trainer, but you're telling yourself you need to get in shape first, then get the heck in shape. It's always worth it whether you have a coach or not. Okay, this next tip is, or myth, is this notion that if you go on a low calorie diet for a considerable amount of time, you kind of get stuck and can no longer lose weight in the future if you don't go back to that low number. This is certainly something that came from the

competitive bodybuilding world, the idea of metabolic damage, which is to say like, oh, I ate 1200 calories a day to get ready for my bodybuilding show. And I got super lean and then I gained all the weight back. And now that I am trying to lose weight again, I just can't seem to do it unless I go on to lower calories. And this is known as metabolic adaptation. And that can take a while to reverse. It can be the case that you have to try to diet or attempt to diet on lower calories if you had a period of extreme dieting that lasted a long time. But one thing that's cool about the metabolism is that it is resilient and it is capable of bouncing back.

It just takes some time. So if you've had a really tumultuous, challenging dietary history with lots of restriction, lots of punishment, lots of extreme dieting. Try eating at maintenance for a while. Try getting a good amount of protein. Try doing a reasonable amount of exercise while you manage your stress and sleep and give your metabolism time to do its thing, to bounce back on its own, to become more robust. Don't feel that you need to do any reverse dieting. You know, that's just a big part of this is I think reverse dieting is kind of phony baloney. I think if you're really feeling metabolically beaten up from periods of prolonged dieting,

you should determine your maintenance and get right to it and stay there for a while. Maybe even as long as you were dieting, like let's say you did three shows in a year and you spent 38 weeks dieting. You did like, or I'm sorry, 48 weeks dieting, 16 week diets for each show. You had like a week off in between. I know that's not typically how people compete, but I'm giving you like a nightmare scenario. Like, oh, you got a one week at maintenance and right back into a deficit and you're just staying shredded all year. These like nightmare scenarios where people, usually women do tons of shows in a year and they're just constantly dieting, starving. 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. I don't think it's a bad idea to consider a refeeding period or a period of increased calories that is at least the duration of the diet. And if you do that, I think your metabolism is going to be perfectly able to quote unquote repair itself or just

bounce back, become resilient once again, reduce some of those adaptations, widen the bottleneck. I do not believe in metabolic damage that is permanent. And I do not believe that you need to reverse diet to increase your calories after a diet. I think if you're seeing these negative effects, you should just go right back to maintenance. Another myth that I'm seeing a lot is, you know, this fear about women lifting too heavy, adding quote unquote bulky aesthetic. And I've kind of taken a new look at this because I've discussed this with my female clients. I said, well, what are you worried about getting big and bulky? Is it your butt? No, not really. Is it your hamstrings? No, not really. Is it your shoulders? Oh yeah. I definitely don't want to get like

big and bulky shoulders and go, okay. So the, the, when you say you don't want to get big and bulky, what you really mean is you don't want to be big and beefy through like the midsection and the upper back. And they go, yeah, yeah. And I go, okay, cool. Well, and now this is what I've been saying. Cause I think this really helps kind. Well, and now this is what I've been saying, because I think this really helps kind of back away from the notion that lifting weights will masculinize the physique. That's really the myth here. Like if I lift weights, am I going to get shoulders and traps that make me look manly? And I tell women all the time, look, if we do rows, if we do pull downs, if we do overhead press, if we do heavy carries, if we do deadlifts,

we are going to work those muscles. But men have a lot more androgen receptors than women. And most of those are located in the upper back and shoulders. That's why when men take steroids, those muscles grow so disproportionately. In fact, one of the best ways to tell if somebody's using PEDs is to look at their shoulders and their neck relative to the development of the rest of their body. Typically, you'll see extreme development here. And this is true even in natural men. They will develop their shoulders and traps generally more due to the androgen receptor density of those tissues. And there are certainly movements like cleans, hang cleans, deadlifts, shrugs, and loaded carries that will

work the hell out of those upper traps. And if you want to build your body, you can build it how you want to. You don't have to develop the upper back and shoulders. So a little bit of a tip here. If you are worried about gaining muscle, that's probably going to hurt your health in the long run. And it's probably not going to be as masculinizing as you think. But if you're worried about a certain region getting too muscular and it happens to be your shoulders and upper back, you just don't have to train those as hard. Okay. A newer one, again, kind of on the back of the carnivore crowd is this myth, this idea that all seed oils are bad. And, you know,

one of the things that I, you have to look at is typically when seed oils are compared in the literature, they are compared to saturated fats or, you know, sometimes they're compared to trans fats. You might be, you might be comparing vegetable oil to a beef fat, to butter, to some hydrogenated oil. It's hard to say. But what I have come to learn is that writ large, in general, these plant oils aren't amazing, but they're on average a little bit better than things like butter and a lot of saturated fat. And that's another kind of component of this carnivore dieting. It's, yo, load up on, on saturated fat and cholesterol. It'll just turn right into testosterone. It's like, first off, that's not true. Second off, you know, just don't, if you eat a ton of fat, whether it's from vegetable oil, seed oil, plant oil,

fucking motor oil, or cholesterol rich butter. It's probably going to make you gain weight because fat's so calorie dense. And so what I would say is if you're eating a lot of seed oils, you're probably eating a lot of processed food. And if you're eating a lot of processed food, you're probably messing up your health. And when I say processed, I mean ultra processed, like Twinkies, cakes and shit, you know, that like really for like fluffy, duffy, you know, yummy, yummy, crappy junk food. You know, those things are loaded with these oils. And you know what?

It's just because it's less expensive. If they could make them with butter, they probably would. And a lot of those pastries and tasty good things that you like, they have butter and these seed oils. And so I think the real problem here is just if you're eating a lot of food with a lot of added fat, be it from seed oils, be it from animal products, you're probably going to gain weight. You're probably going to be in a calorie surplus, which is hyper inflammatory long-term. It's hard to eat a lot of these foods or eat them regularly and maintain a lean body composition. And so it's not

that I'm saying like seed oils are good. I have my preferred oils to cook with and it's usually olive oil and avocado oil. I do occasionally cook with butter and I also occasionally cook with vegetable oil, but I usually cook with olive and avocado. And I try to stay away from processed foods and I try to stay away from things that have a ton of fat in them in general, unless it's like an omega-3 rich fat, because those things tend to be bigger rocks and longer levers when it comes to your health overall. Okay. The next myth is like artificial sweeteners are bad and artificial sweeteners aren't bad. So this is like a two for one here. So the myth that artificial sweeteners

are bad typically revolves around the notion that they cause cancer. And then you had, I think it was the WHO come out and be like, yo, they're totally good. Or maybe it was the CDC. It was either the CDC or the WHO. One of these institutions came out and says, yo, artificial sweeteners, totally bad. And another one comes out and says, artificial sweeteners, totally innocuous. And I think the truth's right down the middle. And we're going to get through this a little faster because we're going to combine these. But the idea that artificial sweeteners cause cancer is typically one that's built on this kind of foundational aspartame and rodent data. You give rodents a lot of aspartame, they get cancer. Well, the cool thing is for people, that amount of aspartame and rodent data. You give rodents a lot of aspartame, they get cancer.

Well, the cool thing is for people, that amount of aspartame you'd have to consume in a day to get to that kind of danger zone is more than likely not something you're ever going to deal with. We're talking like north of 15 diet sodas in a day. I don't see you doing that. So that's a win. And I think people look at that and they go, well, then artificial sweeteners are totally off the hook. But that's not necessarily true, folks, because just because something has zero calories doesn't mean your body's going to love it when you eat it. You know, I'll give you an analogy I've been using a lot. Hot sauce has a lot of hot sauces have zero calories and a lot of hot sauces will fuck up your stomach. And this is actually true in my experience with these artificial sweeteners.

Some people get a lot of gas, a lot of diarrhea, a lot of loose stool when they eat too many of these artificial or calorie-free sweeteners, even natural calorie-free sweeteners like allulose, or that's really a kind of designer carbohydrate rather, but, uh, you know, things like stevia, they can upset certain people's stomachs. Definitely see this with high consumption of diet soda and artificially sweetened items for some people. It just messes with their stomach. It makes them, you know, unfortunately have to go to the bathroom a lot. It can be really disruptive on the bowels. So when it comes to artificial sweeteners, I think the thing you have to look at is like, all right, you know,

the long-term kind of big, scary health effects, you know, there's a gray area there. There's some people that think they're really bad. There's some organizations that think they're really bad. There's some people that think they're fine and other organizations that think they're fine. that think they're really bad. There's some people that think they're fine and other organizations that think they're fine. There's also a very high likelihood that one or more of these is going to probably dysregulate your stomach or make you feel a little bit uncomfortable or make you go to the bathroom if you drink or eat too much. There's a product that you can find at Target. They sell it right by the checkout. It's like a low calorie gummy bear and it's made with allulose, which is a designer carbohydrate that's high in fiber and low in sugar. And you would be shocked at how many of my clients have grabbed a bag, eaten the whole thing because it's so low calorie.

I've been like, dude, I've been fucked up with my stomach for three days. And I'm like, well, a lot of that has to do with the designer carbohydrate, the lower nutrition content, keeping the calories low, and some of the sweeteners. And look, for most people, one to two diet sodas, like an artificially sweetened pre-workout, all that stuff is going to be fine like a couple days a week. But if you're just slamming diet soda, and I've had this happen to me, it can really mess with your gut because of the artificial sweeteners, because of the carbonation. You got to be thoughtful. So whatever products you're using that contain artificial sweeteners,

I think it's okay to take a deep breath and don't worry about giving yourself cancer. And if I find new data that changes my opinion, I'll let you know, but don't overdo it. Be thoughtful and try to select the ones that don't mess with your stomach if you're somebody for whom that can be a bit of a problem. All right, another one, this is one that just sticks around, is that one diet is like magically better for fat loss. That's definitely not the case, and it's never been the case. All diets that work, work because they create a calorie deficit, and some of them are better than others for some people. Like for some, fasting is great. For others, it leads to binging. All you need to do is find some dietary protocol that allows you to get a good amount of nutrition from a variety of different foods, and then you can go from there. Okay, the final myth that I'd like to dispel, number 11, as we've worked through this list, is that you can spot

target fat loss. I still hear this all the time in the gym, even from clients I've been training with for a while, this aspiration to spot target fat loss. And it just, it doesn't work like that, folks. I saw a video the other day on Instagram of a guy saying, look, this is what trying to spot target fat loss looks like. And he had like a bucket and he dips a ladle in the bucket and he goes, okay, I'm going to scoop water from this part of the bucket. And he scoops it out. And of course the water levels. And he's like, well, that's weird. That hole isn't there. It just leveled out. And he does it again on another side of the bucket. Well, that's weird. It just leveled out. That's kind of how body fat loss works. It's all coming out of one bucket and you can't really

pick where it comes out of, but it comes out if you stay in a deficit. All right, folks, these are some of the tips and perils and things to watch out for. Definitely myths and ideas that I'd like to go away in our space. I hope you found value. I hope you learned a little bit through this discussion and I hope to catch you on future episodes of the podcast. So if you haven't yet hit subscribe, be sure to share this to your story and tag me, leave a five-star rating and review, and I will catch you on the next one.