Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 333: 75 Hard, Sweet Cravings, High Frequency Training + More!

Episode Date: October 31, 2023

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Hey, everybody, welcome in to episode 333 of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. As always, I'm your host, Danny Matranga, and this is a Q&A episode. In this episode, we'll be discussing high-frequency training, managing sugar cravings, carbohydrate intake, 75 hard, as well as body fat measurements, scales, et cetera, things that will help you with managing your health and fitness. These are all questions I fielded from over on my Instagram. So be sure to follow me there and on every other social YouTube, TikTok, X, et cetera, threads as well. You can find me by just simply searching for Danny Matrenga.

Without further ado, let's get into the episode. This podcast wouldn't be possible if it wasn't thanks to support from our awesome partners, one of whom is Vivo Barefoot. Vivo makes the best barefoot training shoe on the market. For years, I stayed away from barefoot training shoes, despite knowing the benefit of low cushion, wide toe box shoes for the health of our feet, the intrinsic musculature that helps support everything that we do. I stayed away from these shoes because I thought they were ugly. But that was until, of course, Vivo started producing some absolutely gorgeous barefoot training shoes. These are low cushion, lightweight,

breathable trainers that have a ton of bend, a ton of flex, low cushioning to provide for optimal stimulation of the proprioceptors at the bottom of your foot. Fun fact, 70% of the proprioceptive cells in your body, the cells that tell your body where it is in space to help you be coordinated, to help you create movement, balance, stability, all of these things. They're located on the bottom of your foot fighting to make contact with some kind of surface so they can get the tactile feedback they need to help you optimize and coordinate movement. That's why when you're barefoot, you probably feel more stable and more connected to the ground. And I have never found a shoe that feels better to train in, not just train my clients and stand around in for eight hours a day, but literally train in.

Tons of fantastic mobility out of my toe box, the ability to spread my toes, all in one beautiful climate-friendly package. I'm a huge fan of the Primus knit lights. I have them in obsidian. I have them in bright white, and I absolutely love this shoe. I have been raving about it for three or four weeks straight. I've never had a better training shoe in my life. You simply can't beat these. They feel great. They look great. My fiance even said, wow, those shoes. And I quote, make it look like you know what you are doing, which that's all I need to hear. Not sure exactly what that means, but I'm guessing it means good things. All the trainers and coaches at my studio said they make my calves look great. And I think this is because when you're wearing a barefoot shoe, you're using more of the intrinsic muscle of your foot and ankle complex that is so imperative

for movement. Trust me when I say you've never had a better pair of training shoes than you will when you try Vivo Barefoot. You can't beat these. And Vivo is offering listeners of this podcast a special 10% off order by using the code DANNY10 onivoBarefoot.com. You can just scroll down to the show notes and grab a pair, but these shoes are fantastic. They're beautiful. They train incredibly well. They're durable. And I promise they'll be the best pair of shoes you've ever had in the gym. Again, that's VivoBarefoot.com and check out using the promo code Danny10 to save 10% on the best pair of shoes you've ever owned. Okay, so getting into our first question, this one comes from K Mish. And the question is, I've been waiting to start 75 hard. Do you think it's a good way to start my fitness journey? So let's break down 75 hard.

I'll actually pull things up here on the computer so I don't misrepresent all of the components of 75 hard. But for those of you who are not familiar with 75 hard, it is a health and fitness slash let's call productivity challenge that's been around for quite some time. It was popularized by Andy Frisella. Andy Frisella is the owner of the supplement company FirstForm. And if you kind of take a look at the, let's call it the mission statement of 75 hard. Um, I think it has a lot more to do with discipline, a lot more to do with consistency and a lot more to do with commitment than it does with getting in shape. It's completely free. Uh, you don't have to pay for it. I'm not going to bash it. I actually really like a lot of the kind of central tenants in 75 hard. You pull up the website, they say 75 hard. We'll show you how to 100 X traits like confidence, self-esteem,

self-worth, self-belief, fortitude, grittiness, all good things, all things I think people could use more of. And, you know, quite frankly, I think it's popular amongst fitness professionals. I think it's popular amongst, you know, trainers, coaches, et cetera, to find these things like a 75 hard that might be more of a lifestyle challenge than they are a fitness challenge and bash the imperfect fitness components of the protocol. So, you know, the 75 hard protocol is simple. You have to follow a diet of any kind without cheating and without drinking. You have to do two 45 minute workouts. Now the key here is one of those has to be done outside. That's the rules. Drink a gallon of water, read 10 pages of a nonfiction book, and take progress pictures.

So let's take the 10 pages of nonfiction out. Big fan of that, big fan of reading, big fan of nonfiction reading, if you can believe it or not. Even though I'm a big Harry Potter fan and I've recently reread all of the books as well as rewatched all of the movies with my now wife. I'm sitting here no longer calling her my girlfriend or fiance because we got married 10 days ago. But you guys probably wouldn't know that because everything you've been listening to on the podcast feed for the last month was prerecorded. But I love to read and I love to read nonfiction. So that's a component of this that I love. I love drinking a gallon of water. I think that's good. I think most people are under drinking water. I think that also helps keep you full. I love following a diet. I do not

love some of the rigidity here. But most of this is good stuff. I also really like the progress pictures. But the question here from K Mish is, I've been waiting to start 75 hard. Do I think 75 hard is a good way to start your fitness journey? I do and I don't. And let me explain why I do. I do because of the disciplinary components of 75 hard. I like the fact that you have to read a book. I like the fact that they encourage drinking water. I like the fact that you have to follow a strict dietary protocol. And I like the part about encouraging daily workouts.

But what I don't like about 75 hard is inside of that 75 days, you're asking a, in many cases, deconditioned unfit person to work out 150 times, twice a day, double days, 150 workouts in a 75 day timeframe. That is simply unsustainable for the large majority of people who are going to embark on a fitness journey. So I don't know if 75 hard is the best for somebody who's never trained before, but I do like a good chunk of it. I like the discipline. I like the commitment. I like the daily habits, but if I were to adapt 75 hard, which isn't my job, but if I were to adapt it for a novice, what I might change is actually fairly simple. I think I would just aim for 75 consecutive days of movement, some type of walking, hiking, training, lifting, running,

swimming, you name it, and just make it once a day. If you did that, I'm actually a big fan of a lot of what 75 hard preaches. The only thing I might pivot to off of as well is just like tweak the nutrition so that you don't have to go 75 days without food you enjoy. I love 75 days without alcohol. I think that might be more reasonable, but just include a little more of what you like. But as a complete novice, I don't know if it's the best place to start, but I certainly wouldn't sit here and bash you and tell know if it's the best place to start, but I certainly wouldn't sit here and bash you and tell you that it is a bad place to start because quite frankly, I'm quite a big fan of it. Okay. Second question comes from Nessa X. And that question is what's your top recommended

vitamins and supplements for women? Uh, One thing the fitness industry has done a remarkable job of is convincing women that they need markedly different supplementation and nutritional strategies than men. Now, I'll be the first person to tell you, physiologically speaking, women are not just small men. And the menstrual cycle specifically makes female physiology substantially different from male physiology, especially when it comes to small, nuanced things around training and nutrition. But when it comes to supplementation, for the most part, a lot of what works for men also works for women. The supplements with the largest evidence base showing that they work, like protein,

omega-3, vitamin D, magnesium, and creatine, are safe for both genders to supplement with. When it comes to enhancing health and different female-specific markers of physiology, one of the more common and prevalent things that women need more of are things like calcium, things like vitamin D, things like iron, things specific to bone health. Now, I'm not going to sit here and tell you that you need to supplement with calcium, vitamin D3, and iron just because you're a woman. I would actually go so far as to say that in many cases, the best supplements for men in improving their health and improving their performance are quite ubiquitous and they're going to work for women as well. I think there are a lot of

companies and a lot of Instagram, TikTok influencers right now who are trying to make a killing off of essentially communicating that from a physiological level, women and men are completely and entirely different. When the truth of the matter is, there's certainly some variability between men and women, but when it comes to training, lifestyle, nutrition, and supplementation, there's small amounts of nuance, but what works really well for men tends to work really well for women. And what tends to be negatively impactful for a man's health oftentimes is negatively impactful on a woman's health, but maybe even more. So for example, let's say, you know, a crash diet, that's going to hurt anybody, but it's particularly negative for female

physiology because it would appear in my understanding and based on what I've seen, that women do not do as well with extreme forms of caloric restriction. So that's really what we're looking to avoid is anything extremely, extremely intense, extremely, extremely damaging to the physiology for a male or for a female. Those things I truly believe across the board are pretty much the same. I think women pay more for rigorous exercise. I think women pay more, and this is in terms of the penalty and the cost on their body for crash dieting. I think they pay more for extreme stress. the cost on their body for crash dieting. I think they pay more for extreme stress. So if you are a woman and you are training very hard, you have a lot of stress,

all of those same supplements that help with training, recovery, stress management, you might want to take those in the same way that a man would. But the dosages might need to be tailored a little bit differently for your body size. Now, I think there are also really important discussions to be had around supplements that may be worth avoiding as a woman, like, hey, what do I maybe not want to take that a man would take? I think the first thing that comes to mind are some of the more dubious, dark corner of the internet supplements like prohormones and SARMs and peptides. These are things that, you know, become more popular for improving male performance, aesthetics, and physique, but they do have oftentimes a hormonal modulatory effect, meaning they do change things at the hormonal level. I'd recommend staying away from those for men, and I'd recommend

staying away from those for women. I'm just not a huge fan of, I guess you could say, going out of your way to include more things that may or may not cause damage to the actual chemistry or physiology, if you will, of the body. That's something that just worries me a little bit. So for women and for men, stick to the evidence-based supplement protocols, stick to what we absolutely know works. And the list of evidence-based supplements that work is small. It's mostly protein, creatine, omega-3, various forms of individual vitamins from, you know, vitamin C, vitamin D, could make the argument for just a blanket multivitamin. And always practice skepticism when somebody is marketing you a supplement specifically for women,

especially if it has or advertises an acute effect on your hormones. Those are things that I generally like to stay away from for men and women because it is very, very hard to trust supplement companies when they say they're putting something on the label unless they have third-party testing. And more often than not, I would just like to kind of stay away from that. 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. Okay, next question comes from Leanit. They want to know, advice for a lifelong debilitating sweet craving, even when I'm not dieting, sweet and carb craving. So this person is saying, you know, my whole life I've had a huge sweet tooth. I love carbohydrates, even when I'm not in a deficit and I'm looking to manage the amount of sweets and carbohydrates that I am

eating. So this is challenging. I'm going to speak to this personally, not as a coach, but just as a consumer of food, as an athlete. I also have a high proclivity to enjoy carbohydrate. I think of all of the macronutrients, protein, carbohydrate, and fat, the ones that I enjoy eating the most fall into that category of carbohydrate. the ones that I enjoy eating the most fall into that category of carbohydrate. And when it comes to managing cravings, when it comes to managing sweet cravings and carbohydrate cravings, I have a very unpopular take on this that probably does not sit well with most fitness influencers in large part due to the fact that I don't believe they have a particularly strong grasp on the research. But I like diet soda. I really like diet soda for managing a sweet tooth. I'm not saying to have like 20 diet sodas a day, but the literature to me looks pretty clear on artificial sweeteners.

And even though they don't sit well with everybody, I have found that most people can enjoy one, even two diet sodas a day with no effect on their health, at least no negative effect on their health. And that's going to give you a tremendous sweet kind of craving kicker. Diet sodas taste quite good. They have zero calories. They have zero sugar. They crush a sweet tooth. And I think if you're somebody for whom managing your sugar cravings and your sweet cravings is very difficult, and if you get started, you have a tendency to overeat, a sweet calorie-free option makes sense. And I don't think it is a bad idea whatsoever to occasionally include something like a diet soda based on my understanding of the literature, and I think a lot

of people overblow the dangers of artificial sweeteners because they simply do not understand that just because something is quote-unquote artificial, that does not mean it is bad. And of course, just because something is natural, that does not mean it is good. High doses of sugar are dangerous. High doses of artificial sweeteners are dangerous. But the amount of artificial sweeteners required to make a diet soda is very small, and the amount of sugar used in a standard soda is quite large. So I would always opt for the artificially sweetened option, even though they are not using real sugar. And when it comes to managing your cravings for carbohydrates specifically,

if you're trying to go lower on carbohydrates, I'm a big fan of fruit. Fruit is not only sweet, it's also a form of carbohydrate. Duh, most sweet things are, but fruit contains fiber, contains micronutrients. It has a very satiating effect on the consumer. So eating a bowl of refined grain cereal, for example, might not have as satiating an effect of eating a bowl of very sweet watermelon. Both are carbohydrates. One has more fiber, the fruit, one has more water, the fruit, one has more nutrients, the fruit. And one is quite frankly, more likely to help you on your health and fitness journey in that it contains more micronutrients, more polyphenols, more of the things associated with health, and a lot of the refined grain carbohydrates that we love so much that are

hyperpalatable, that are ultra-processed, that are easy to overconsume, they don't contain a lot of nutrition. They don't contain a lot of fiber. So what I would recommend you do if you struggle with a sweet tooth and you struggle with carbohydrate cravings is to include sweet foods that do not have as much sugar, do not have any sugar. In fact, you could choose these quote unquote diet foods, these artificially sweetened foods. Keep those on a kind of break in case of emergency basis. Like I always keep a 12 pack of zero sugar A&W for me and a 12 pack of zero sugar Canada dry for my wife. Very rarely do we get through those

12 cans in between the two weeks where we go grocery shopping. So 12 cans lasts 14 days, which is less than a can a day. And then we load the house with fruit and carbohydrates that are nutrient dense. I still have some of those processed refined carbohydrates lying around, but my pantry is not full of them. I don't go to places where that's kind of the central and focal point of the food production. And I keep them to a minimum and I indulge those sweet cravings intelligently, in my opinion, while making an effort to minimize my intake of hyper-processed carbohydrates. This question is from CMVR3. And that question is, do you think training six to seven days a week

can be counterproductive? So another potentially unpopular opinion is I don't think most people have any business whatsoever training six to seven times a week. I've heard it said before that if you can train six to seven times a week, that you're simply not training very hard. And I tend to believe that for most natural lifters, three, four, five sessions in the gym as more than sufficient time and offers more than sufficient opportunity to stress your tissue. And if you can't do it in three, four or five sessions, I'm not inclined to believe you can do it in six or seven. What I think happens around session six or seven is the fatigue and volume accumulation

associated with that much training starts to wear you down. And the actual stimulus when you're in the gym, the actual training you're doing just keeps getting worse. Most of the people I know who train six to seven days a week get worse results than the people I know who train four to five because sustaining effort, output, and execution consistent with making gains, building muscle, et cetera, becomes way harder when you have to do it every single day. And most people aren't built for that. They don't have the nutritional framework set up to support that. They're not using performance enhancing drugs to support recovery. So I don't recommend six to seven day training for almost anybody. There are a few people who

I work with who compete at a high level, who maybe use performance enhancing drugs, who maybe have their nutrition absolutely dialed, and who quite frankly, are serious about competing in high levels of strength and physique sport. For those people, those six to seven day a week protocols, they might make sense. But for most people, these protocols do not make sense. They lead to incurring way too much fatigue. They lead to stress. They lead to poor training quality. And they oftentimes put people in this kind of stagnation cycle where they're never recovered enough to train hard, which sucks. They never train hard enough to make gains. And they actually get a little bit of a pathological thing going, kind of an addiction to training. They feel very

guilty when they're not in the gym. They feel stressed. They have negative self-talk if they take a day off. They can't actually pull themselves out of the gym. If that sounds like you, this is a really, really good reason to avoid training six to seven days a week because I think it promotes a negative cycle mentally around your training and actually pulls you out of a position where you can make progress. It's counterintuitive, I understand, because in so many things, more is better. We talked about this a little bit earlier when we answered K. Mish's question about 75 hard. I just think that volume of training is too damn hard for most people. So I'd recommend keeping it chill, keeping it relaxed, aiming for four to five days of intentional challenging work

and save that six to seven times a week for the real freaks, the people who have the time, the people for whom this is a profession. Do not use six to seven day a week training protocols very often unless you absolutely have a guarantee that you can recover from them. Okay. This question comes from Theo Delay and it is fancy scales. Are they legit? Never really believe the percentage breakdown. So Theo is specifically talking here about bathroom scales. So you've probably seen these scales, the bathroom scales that have the little metal foot pad on them. And when you step on that little metal foot pad with your feet, it is supposed to tell you your body fat, not just your weight. Those metal foot pads take advantage of a technology known as bioelectric

impedance, which is essentially an attempt at figuring out how much body fat is in you by sending a signal that is impeded by that fat. So you send a signal through one foot pedal to the other, and it will be impaired by body fat. The more you have, the more it's impaired, and it will estimate how much body fat you have in the whole system based on this bioelectric impedance. What we know about bioelectrical impedance is that it's pretty shitty at estimating body fat. And so all of those scales, those home bathroom scales with that foot pad that estimate your body fat, maybe even muscle mass, et cetera, we have to be very skeptical about the accuracy of these technologies. It's very unfair to use the single day data of what you weigh, of your approximate body fat,

your approximate muscle mass from one of these scales, and get an accurate reading. I'd say the more you use it, the better chance you have at getting data that really matters. But at the end of the day, what you weigh is substantially more reliable than your bioelectrical impedance data from one of these scales. So a lot of that fancy data, I'm not a super huge fan of because I don't think it's all that helpful due to the inaccuracies associated with the technology. If you use it daily, maybe you can monitor trends, but even then, I think what you weigh is substantially more accurate on one of these scales than the best bioelectrical impedance you're going to get in a $40 target bathroom scale. So not a huge fan of those additional metrics. I think they leave a lot to be desired and I would tend to stay away from

them if I could. Okay, folks, that does it for the episode today. I want to thank you so much for tuning in and listening and remind you, if you have not already subscribed on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, please do. Leave a five-star rating and review. So more people can find the podcast and send it to somebody who you think it might help. Those are all ways that you can help me reach more people on my mission of helping as many people live a healthy life as possible. Thanks so much for tuning in and I'll catch you on the next one.