Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 343: Monster Q and A (fitness, nutrition, supplements, training)

Episode Date: December 7, 2023

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Welcome in everybody to another episode of the dynamic dialogue podcast. As always, I'm your host Danny Matrenga and today's episode is a rapid fire Q&A episode. We're going to be talking about all things fitness, nutrition, performance and productivity. And I will be answering your questions in rapid fire fashion. These are questions that I've pulled from over on my Instagram. We've got questions about fasting, stubborn fat loss, protein sources, building muscle at maintenance, or in a calorie deficit, whether or not you should be using weightlifting gloves. Should you expect weight gain or weight loss when you begin working out? What supplements I would take if I could only take two to three? My thoughts on juice cleanses, my thoughts on training with your husband or wife, whether or not I'm a big fan of protein rich waffles and pancakes, whether I count the calories from fruits and vegetables and what I recommend for my clients, guidelines for sugar intake, pre-workout supplementation for youth and teenage

athletes, what my go-to gym list would be for Christmas gifts, what I might recommend to gifting the gym rats in your life, as well as several other questions about creatine, probiotics, fat burners, and more. Should be a fun episode that I promise to be succinct, yet evidence-based in all of my answers. So you'll get a little bit of what I've seen in practice, as well as what I believe the evidence says. So you can take this with you and run with it. Enjoy the episode. This episode is brought to you in special part thanks to our awesome partners over at Ice Barrel. If you're like me, you want to get the absolute most you can out of your fitness and out of what it is that you're doing in life. I like to make sure that I'm recovering well and

prepped for hard workouts. I like to make sure that my cognition is sharp and I like to make sure that I'm doing what I can to maintain my long-term health. And cold water immersion is a phenomenal tool I use and have used for a while to help me do this. Cold water immersion or taking ice baths is a great way to improve your recovery and performance. Just a few short sessions a week can really make a difference in how you recover. It can increase and improve your heart rate variability. It can enhance performance. Just a few short sessions a week can really make a difference in how you recover. It can increase and improve your heart rate variability. It can enhance performance. It improves mood and brain function. It also provides an awesome boost of energy and focus because when you hop in an ice bath and you get this amazing vasoconstriction effect and your body starts releasing epinephrine and norepinephrine, it kind of lets you reenter the world awake,

energized, excited, and enthused. And I would much rather take an ice bath in the mid-afternoon, especially if I had a hard training session in the morning, than consume more caffeine. Ice Barrel allows me to do this in a super sleek, aesthetically pleasing packaging. It's a beautiful barrel that comes with a matching lid for keeping the ice cold and water inside clean, a nice step-up stool, a cover. It's portable and durable, and it comes in a beautiful matte black and a gorgeous tan. I have the matte black out on my patio, and I absolutely love the way it looks with the fencing I have around the yard, but you can put this inside, outside, on the front porch, on the back

porch, in the side yard. It's quite portable. It's very durable. Like I said, the design is super, super sleek, and it's very easy to drain to make sure that you are only getting in to cold, clean water designed to help you improve your performance, improve your recovery, enhance the way your brain feels and functions throughout the day. This is an amazing one-time cost tool that once you have it, you use it a couple of times a week. It is one of the best investments you can make in your health. And again, if you want to improve your cognition and performance, and you have those midday lulls, or you want to be more present for your family or for your friends when you get off of work and you don't want to caffeinate, temperature modulation like ice baths or cold

exposure or sauna heat exposure can be really valuable for increasing that subjective sense of wellbeing and bringing you back to a place of alertness and a really chaotic world. It's also great for just cultivating resilience. I find I'm much tougher. Again, this is a more anecdotal thing, but I find that I am much tougher, ready to face the day's tasks when I am consistently exposing myself to the elements. Call it bromeopathy, call it anecdote, but I will tell you one thing is for sure, cold water immersion has made a huge difference for my health and well-being in just a few short sessions a week. And Ice Barrel is the sleekest, best looking, cleanest, and most affordable way to do it reliably. You can head over to icebarrel.com slash Danny to take advantage of their

100% satisfaction guaranteed with again, a 30 day money back guarantee and save 125 bucks on your ice barrel using the promo code Danny. So again, icebarrel.com slash Danny and check out using the promo code Danny to save 125 bucks. Okay. Getting into your guys's questions and a reminder for any of you who are new to the podcast, if you'd like to have your question featured on the show, the best way to do that is by following me on Instagram. My username is danny.matranga. And once or twice a week, I will drop a story with a question box wherein which you can drop your question for me. Some of them I will answer there. Many of them I will answer here. I try to get to as many of them as possible. And on the topic of social media, before we get into it, remember,

I am on X, I am on YouTube, I am on TikTok, I am on Facebook, and I am on Instagram. Content across various platforms, all of which is designed to help make fitness, health, performance, and productivity a little bit easier and more accessible for you. So first question is from underscore Tara Ann Jones underscore. And the question is, been doing IF, that stands for intermittent fasting, which sends me to the gym fasted. Duh. Those days I feel so energy depleted. So how can we manage feeling depleted or low energy in a fasted state, especially when you are training in the morning? This is something I do often. So I feel inclined to maybe give you some tips when it comes to early morning training. If you are going to be training fasted, it can

be pretty hard to feel like you have what you need to perform at a high level. Many of you will feel flat. You will feel like you maybe have a hard time getting a pump. It can be very difficult to feel like you are training in your peak state. And oftentimes it can just feel like a slog. There are three tips I have for this specifically. The first of which is to have your largest meal of the day in the evening before your training session in the morning. So fasted morning training equals big dinner the night before, more fuel, better glycogen repletion or

storage, better opportunity for a good pump. The second is you are probably a prime candidate to use a pre-workout supplement. This is a supplement that will contain caffeine or stimulants. This helps a lot in the early morning and when you are fasted and getting things like beta alanine and L-citrulline can help you get a pump and feel less flat. Lastly, again, with the supplements, I like to include an electrolyte when I'm training fasted in the morning. These are not for everybody, but I do like a stick of LMNT. You can use pink Himalayan salt, Himalayan salt, I should say, you can use pink Himalayan salt, any electrolyte you like in water to enhance hydration and again fight back against that flat, low pump feeling that we often get when we train fasted. I'm shocked sometimes at how muscular I look, how full I look, and how pumped I look when I train in the

mid-afternoon, when I've had a couple meals in me, because quite frankly, most of my training is done in this exact state, fasted in the morning. So I can empathize a lot with this, but I think what you do the night before and what you do pre-workout plays a big role here. Next question from Ange Jacobson. Do you like yogurt? And if so, what brands? Hard to choose and confusing marketing. Thanks. So I am a big fan of yogurt. I like mostly Greek and Icelandic style yogurts. Icelandic style yogurts are called skir. These are yogurts that are fermented in such a way that the fat and sugar contents are lower. The protein contents are often higher. The protein to calorie ratio is very good, meaning per 100 calories, you're almost always getting 10, 12, sometimes

even more in terms of total grams per protein, which is something I look for in all snacks. And I do like my yogurts to be lower in sugar and lower in fat for the caloric density purpose of like, I want a snack that is filling high in protein and not loaded with calories. Additionally, those two types of yogurts are high in quality gut bacteria or bacteria that are good for your gut. I think a lot of the sensationalism around dairy or staying away from dairy or being afraid of dairy is overblown. I'm a big fan of Greek and Icelandic style yogurt. You can get these at most grocers. The brands I like, no affiliation. Again, I'm going to pick things you can find at most grocers. Oikos, Faye, Chobani, and Icelandic Provisions. Those are the ones I look for. Trader Joe's has

some great options that they have branded with their branding. There's also some nice protein enhanced brands like Ratio that I find also make a very good product. Okay, from T-Lav and Rob, the question is how to lose the last bit of stubborn fat. So to get to your absolute leanest and lose that last little bit of fat, it is very likely that you are going to have to pull out all the stops. This means tracking every macro. This means playing around with adding cardio to increase caloric expenditure. This might mean playing

around with other forms of caloric restriction to help enhance, or I should say decrease, caloric availability in the diet. This could be fasting. This could be protein sparing modified fasting. Supplements like caffeine, yohimbine might be helpful, but truthfully, you're going to have to use a lot of different tools to get that last little bit off. The first bit of fat should come off easily. Then as you get leaner and leaner and leaner, you're likely going to have to pull out more and more stops. A question from Martin underscore H__huang is, binging after a long cut likely due to fatigue, time to start reverse diet or continue my cut. When it comes to reverse dieting or attempting to do a reverse diet, when you are already binging or you're already overeating, I think you have to ask

yourself the question, what is the purpose of the reverse diet? Well, the purported purpose of reverse dieting is to reduce fat accumulation after a diet. The thing is though, I don't think you can really do that if you're binging. So if, you know, aiming to eat like 200 calories more, uh, or, you know, a hundred calories more every week for five weeks is just leading to more and more binging. I would say, don't even attempt to reverse diet. The rationale for reverse dieting is not strong enough. In fact, I don't think it does much of anything. Just go back to whatever you believe your new maintenance to be estimate what your new maintenance to be, estimate what your new maintenance would be after your change in body fat percentage, and try to eat there,

eating more protein, including more fiber, and maybe having some more balanced carbohydrate rich meals to hopefully reduce the risk of binging. I think this is a great example of what happens when you are stepping over dollars to pick up dimes. You're so concerned with not accumulating fat in the post-diet window that you're doing a reverse diet that is clearly not aligned with getting you back to feeling good, your appetite's dysregulated. Just add some more calories back in, go to maintenance. You'll probably reduce the overshooting and the binging, which is better in the longterm for your aesthetic goals. Next question comes from Julie underscore Fern underscore. Can I gain muscle in maintenance

or do you need to be in a surplus? No, you can absolutely gain muscle and maintenance. It's important to note the longer you've been training, the higher your training age, the harder this is. I'll give you an example. A novice who's never touched a weight before can gain a ton of muscle in a deficit because of their sensitivity to the training itself. However, somebody who's extremely well-trained, maybe they've been training for 10 years, the likelihood of them gaining muscle, even with progressive resistance in a deficit, particularly an extreme deficit, is much, much lower. And the rate of muscle gain will be so slow, it will probably feel negligible. And any slip-up could lead to a loss in muscle mass due to caloric restriction. So I think your

best bet as an intermediate to advanced lifter is to try to gain pain and at least build muscle at maintenance, if not a small surplus. If you are brand new and you have a lot of body fat to lose, you can just engage with resistance training in a high protein deficit and expect some muscle growth to coincide with that. Okay. I love this question from Slange. And the question is how to always say no to unhealthy food being offered by office colleagues when I'm on a diet. Okay. So you are at work, you have colleagues or coworkers who are encouraging you to, you know, let's say deviate from your diet, you know, come out with us, have a little lunch, live a little, how can you

respectfully and without sounding like a kind of pompous trite, you know, I'm, I'm better than you person. How can you respectfully decline the offer? Uh, my favorite tool for this is to simply say, hey, I packed a lunch. I don't want to be wasteful. I have a tendency to do this where I pack a lunch and then I don't eat it and then I throw the food away. And you guys know I'm working on my fitness. So why don't I take my lunch and have it with you? It's very respectful. It's not a holier than thou kind of thing where you're like, no, I'm not going to have that. I'm on a diet. And I think a lot of people give you pushback when you say no, because to them, it is an opportunity to reflect on the fact that, hey, well, here I am going out for tacos for the third time this week. And they can actually get a little

bitter and a little resentful. So make it, don't make it about them. Don't make it about your diet. Just make it about practicality, not being wasteful. And quite frankly, eating the food you've already spent money on. And that will make these things kind of just diffuse naturally, like nine times out of 10. It works in almost every work environment. It's worked really well for clients of mine who work in situations like education or healthcare, where you have communal settings, where you take your meals and breaks.

I really like this approach. Uh, next question comes from Vina underscore runs. The question is love your content and positive vibes. Why do I get blisters when doing lap pulldown? So when you do a lap pulldown, when you do a heavy deadlift, when you hold the bar and the fat pad beneath your fingers gets kind of caught up in the knurling of these bars, which is the kind of raspy textured finish that helps you actually improve your grip. Sometimes the friction there will cause calluses to form or even blisters. And this is a great opportunity to use a tool like wrist wraps or even gloves if you do not want those things to happen. For men, you'll find a lot of times they're averse to using weightlifting gloves

because they associate weightlifting gloves with female lifters. So I understand, you know, and for many men, having calloused hands is not something they're concerned with. But for a lot of lady lifters out there, they're not in a hurry to have calloused hands. So I totally recommend gloves, wraps, grips, anything that helps you minimize the abrasion on the fat pad of your hand when doing heavy pulling exercises with a knurled bar. It will reduce the amount of agitation on that skin and definitely reduce the prevalence of things like blisters or calluses. Next question from Ashley Perkins Fit, it's how to find your maintenance macros. And hey, no dig here at Ashley Perkins Uh, but maybe we don't put fit in the bio until we

know enough about nutrition to calculate our maintenance macros folks. Um, if it's a fitness journey account, I love it. But if you are a serious fitness professional and you do not know how to calculate your maintenance macros, I need to see you at, you know, the real coaches summit coming up in March where, where I will be speaking. I want to see you at the Real Coaches Summit coming up in March where I will be speaking. I want to see you getting your nutrition certification, something before we throw fit on the bio because your maintenance macros are very easy to calculate. I've done it 100,000 times for thousands of clients for over a decade, and I'll give you the complete secret, all the tips, all the tricks right now. This is an insanely common question. How do I figure out my maintenance calories?

And the reason it's so hard is because people are searching for the wrong thing. They think they're supposed to look for their BMR, their base metabolic rate, which is a component of your maintenance calories. But very simply, I'll tell you in five seconds, here's how to find out your maintenance calories. Go on Google, Google TDEE calculator, that's total daily energy expenditure calculator. Type in your height, weight, age, and approximate activity level. And this will generate an approximation of your total daily energy expenditure. This is the total sum of how many calories you probably burn or close to it in a day. And this is guesstimated by figuring out your BMR, base metabolic rate, how many calories you burn lying on a couch doing nothing, your

TEF, thermic effect of food, how much you probably burn consuming food. Your NEAT, your non-exercise activity thermogenesis, and your EAT, your exercise activity thermogenesis. And a calculator can't guesstimate or nail those four subcomponents. So it's going to give you an approximation. You try to eat that amount. If you eat that amount and gain weight, it's too high. If you eat that amount and lose weight, it's too low. And you'll probably be within one to 200 because most of these calculators are decent. However, none of them are perfect. So try not to stress too much about finding a perfect one. Just get a TDE calculator and you'll figure out your maintenance or get pretty darn close to it,

but you'll never actually be perfect. What's going on guys? Coach Danny here, taking a break from the episode to tell you about my coaching company, Core Coaching Method, and more specifically, our one-on-one fully tailored online coaching program. My online coaching program has kind of been the flagship for core coaching method for a while. Of course, we do have PDF programming and we have app-based programming. But if you want a truly tailored one-on-one experience with a coach like myself or a member of my coaching team, someone who is certified, somebody who has multiple years of experience working with clients in person online, somebody who is licensed to provide a macro nutrition plan,

somebody who is actually good at communicating with clients because they've done it for years, whether that be via phone call, email, text, right? This one-on-one coaching program is really designed to give you all the support you need with custom training designed for you, whether you're training from home, the gym, around your limitations and your goals, nothing cookie cutter here, as well as easy to follow macro nutrition programs that are non-restrictive. You'll get customized support directly from your coach's email, or they'll text you, or they'll WhatsApp you. We'll find the communication medium that best supports your goals, as well as provides you with accountability in the expertise you need to succeed, as well as biofeedback monitoring,

baked-in accountability support, and all of the stuff that you need from your coach when you check in. We keep our rosters relatively small so that we can make sure you get the best support possible. But you can apply today by going over to corecoachingmethod.com, selecting the online coaching option. And if we have spots available, we'll definitely reach out to you to see if you're a good candidate. And if we don't, we'll put you on a waiting list, but we'll be sure to give you the best shot at the best coaching in the industry. So head over to corecoachingmethod.com and apply for one-on-one coaching with me and my team today. Question from Worsta, does raw dairy make you gain weight? No, raw dairy does not make you

gain weight. Too many calories makes you gain weight. It truly is that simple. Here's the thing with raw dairy though, because raw dairy is not processed. It is often full fat. It is a very high calorie food. It is nutrient dense and yes, it may cause salmonella or some other bacterial issue that is not associated with pasteurized dairy, which is why I'm not a huge advocate for slamming a ton of raw dairy, but hey, you do you. Next question again from the same person. Thoughts on TRX effective or waste of time? Super effective. I love TRX. Okay. Question from Aaron A. Collins. Should I expect weight after upping weight training? Oh, okay. So the question is, should I expect an increase in scale weight after upping weight training?

I'm freaking out. So yeah, you totally should expect to gain weight after upping weight training. I'm freaking out. So yeah, you totally should expect to gain weight after you begin weight training. The key is though, not body fat, but weight. Yes, for sure. If you have not been weight training, if you are deconditioned and you begin loading skeletal muscle tissue and training hard, a few things are going to happen that are going to lead to weight gain. The first of which is that training is going to cause inflammation. When you damage tissue, that tissue gets inflamed, but that's only a small percentage of the weight you're likely to gain. The largest weight gain is going to come from glycogen and water. Your muscles hold carbohydrates inside of them. That's the same fuel that those muscles turn to after the first 10 seconds of exercise.

The first 10 seconds are fueled by creatine stored in the muscle, after which your body starts to burn through blood sugar and start breaking down this glycogen. And glycogen is a carbohydrate that binds to water. The more you lift, the more your body stores glycogen and the more your body stores water in the muscle. So for a lot of you, when you first start training, you're going to have more inflammation in the muscle, going to have more water in the muscle, more carbs in the muscle, and you might even build some muscle. So you'll see the scale increase unless you are truly accurately bang on in a deficit. And that's nothing to stress about. It actually is a good thing because your body is preparing for more and more hard training over time, and I would strongly recommend not to let

initial weight gain dissuade you from sticking with a lifting routine. I see it all too often. Okay, next question from Boxing Pony. What do you think about the juice cleanse? So, I get questions all the time about juices and juice cleanses. And I'll tell you this, I actually really like fruit juices, especially things like orange juice, apple juice, because they taste really good. And taste is something that quite frankly matters a lot to me and my food selection, but they do have a ton of calories. So I don't include them very often. Another juice I like are all of those vegetable juices that are like $10 or $11 and are wildly expensive, but if you can afford them, they're a great opportunity

to enhance your nutrient availability. If you're not going to eat beets and you're not going to eat parsley and you're not going to eat kale, but you'll drink the juice, shit, go for it. You'll get some new nutrients. The drawbacks with the juices are you miss out on the very, very valuable fiber and the marketing behind the cleanses make no fucking sense at all. It's bullshit. Your liver and kidneys are going to do most of the cleansing for your body. These juices are just very expensive forms of essentially drinkable multivitamin flavonoids and plant compounds. And if you're like me and you live in Sonoma or Marin County where ritzy people drink shit like this all the time and you enjoy it, by all means, go for it. I do. I just don't expect

these to do anything and I certainly don't expect them to cleanse me. I just look at them as an expensive form of drinkable vitamin. Okay. Question from Lopsy Pops is if you could only take two to three supplements for the rest of your life, what would you choose and why? So to put it simple, if I could only take three supplements forever, uh, you know, the old deserted island question, if you were stuck on a deserted island forever and you can only have three supplements, what would you take? I can answer this very simply. The first is definitely a high quality protein supplement. I like dairy protein. I think it is the best supplemental form of protein. And if you're not sensitive to dairy, a good whey protein is going to be tough to beat. The second of which

is creatine. That's the second supplement I would take. Creatine has a ton of evidence supporting that it improves strength and physique outcomes. It also is potentially quite good for the brain, particularly in older adults. And I think the last one that I would take would be a multivitamin just to cover my bases in that deserted island situation, assuming I could get fish in the water on my island. If maybe I couldn't, I might pick an omega-3. Those are the supplements that I would pick if I could only choose three. Next question from Laura Liz DeLeon. How long is it safe to be in a calorie deficit if obese? Need diet breaks. Great question. How safe is it to be in a calorie deficit if you're obese? I would say a pretty

long time, and this is going to probably hurt some feelings, but it beats the alternative, right? The alternative, of course, being that being obese is a pretty terrible state to occupy chronically. It's quite bad for the body. And while hyper-restrictive dieting certainly sets you up in the long term for its own set of problems, any state that, you know, gets you out of obesity, any state of nutrient and calorie restriction, be it fasting, be it keto, be it, you know, just a straight macro counting deficit is substantially healthier than chronic obesity. And that's a hot take in 2023 because, you know, we've kind of apologized for obesity. Unfortunately, we have made obesity a personal failure when it's clearly systemic, it's clearly multifactorial, and we have attached morality to the state of obesity when we should be looking for solutions. And there's nothing wrong with trying to lose weight. There's many cases in which caloric restriction is actually multiple different forms of nutrient dense food

is not going to hurt you if you're obese or morbidly obese because you have the energy availability in your body in the form of stored fat. So I'm a pretty big fan of doing anything that helps you, you know, reduce the time in which you spend in a state of obesity. reduce the time in which you spend in a state of obesity. Okay. Question from Diane three, does your wife train with you? My hubby exercises a lot. I just ignore him when he does. Um, so yeah, my wife trains with me here and there. Um, she's not as into it as I am. She goes to F 45 a few days a week, which I pay for because it's really important for me to support her. And, um, I think when you really think about it, it's all about, uh, supporting your partner, helping them find things that are going to work for them,

helping them find things, um, that are going to make them feel seen and heard and respected and supported. And when she comes to train with me at the gym once a month, that's awesome. If she works out at the home gym, that's awesome. If she goes to F45, that's awesome. I would never ignore him for doing something that's improving his health. I think your husband would probably love to feel respected, to feel validated, to feel acknowledged for the effort he's putting in on his health. Do you have to go with him? Hell no. But I would recommend reciprocating because the truth is,

men want their partners to acknowledge their effort. I think this is very true for most men. I can't speak generally, but, you know, or I can only speak generally. I can't speak for everyone. I think most men thrive when they feel validated for their effort. And, you know, a great way to show somebody that you're acknowledging their effort is to reciprocate and lead or to follow in their footsteps to show a mutual interest. I think that's good for enriching the partnership. So I would recommend, you know, if you're not interested in working out with him, find ways to work out that will, you know, enhance your own health and acknowledge the work that he is doing because it is certainly better than having, you know, no connection to your partner in that way. Laura Edith 90 wants

to know, do I speak Spanish? So I speak Spanish un poquito, right? Like just a little bit. When I visit Mexico, I speak Spanish substantially more than I do here. I train in Spanish very rarely. I live in a community that does have a lot of Hispanic adults, a lot of Mexican adults. So I have trained plenty of people in Spanish and my training Spanglish is decent enough to get by. When I traveled to Mexico with my boys, I do all the talking, but my wife speaks fluent Spanish. It's actually her first language. Her parents were born and raised in Mexico. So it's much easier to let her take the reins, especially here or definitely down there. And it's interesting

if I spend like two or three days in Mexico, by the time I leave, my Spanish is at like probably a fourth, fifth grade level. But if I don't practice very often, it regresses to probably that of like a second to third grade level. So I definitely don't speak Spanish, but I know enough to get by and train clients in person in Spanish. BG111 wants to know, is there any value in just randomly doing a few reps of something on non-training days? I think so. I think you could do little baby feeder workouts, little micro workouts, little pump workouts for lagging body parts for mobility, uh, you know, for certain physical properties that will have an effect and will actually positively enhance training response. So I'm not against that at all.

Uh, Amy joy X two wants to know my thoughts on Kodiak protein waffles and pancakes. I like them. I think they're good options, but I would rather just have normal pancakes and waffles with like a Greek yogurt, something like that. Mary Maria Alexander Nunez wants to know, I see changes in body composition, but the weight and the body fat percentage on the scale isn't changing. How is that possible? So you're probably gaining muscle and losing fat. You're probably seeing changes in fluid balance and the scale is staying the same and the body fat percentage on the scale is unreliable.

So trust your eyes on this one for sure. Life with cat. Do you count calories from fruit and vegetables in a deficit? You always count calories in a deficit from everything. I do think fruit makes the most sense of the two. Green vegetables, probably not such a big deal in my opinion. I believe that most of them are so low in calories and so high in

fiber that the energy that you need to digest and assimilate them kind of makes them worth not tracking. Okay. From Sondy Gardner, are pre-workouts important? I think they can enhance performance. I really like Legion's Pulse and their Stem Free Pulse. So I'm all about that. Sandy also asked what my favorite protein supplements are. Again, big fan of Legion's Whey Plus and the plant one isn't that bad. Okay. Justin walks 45 minutes, says, talk to me about sugar. How concerned should I be about my sugar intake? I'd say you should monitor your sugar intake the same way you do maybe your alcohol intake. You could remove it entirely, like remove added sugar entirely, but that's a pretty puritanical approach that's going to affect your ability to be social and enjoy life.

I actually don't drink, but I do enjoy sugar and things like cannabis, even though I haven't smoked in like multiple weeks. And I've been pretty low, if no THC for at least a couple weeks, but we're always making trade-offs. And so I think you ask yourself this question, Justin, you know, where are my other habits and behaviors at? And, you know, if your sugar intake is like less than 50 grams a day, um, you're, you know, say you're lifting, you're walking, you're not drinking a ton of alcohol, you're getting protein, you're getting nutrient dense fruits and vegetables. You're not seeing any, you know, dysregulated blood sugar markers when you get your labs done. I wouldn't be super concerned. I think it's all about context. Okay. Coluccio underscore G is it harmful to drink a lot of water during meals? Absolutely not.

I literally answered this for someone the other day. I think it's ridiculous. Whoever's telling Coluccio underscore G, is it harmful to drink a lot of water during meals? Absolutely not. I literally answered this for someone the other day. I think it's ridiculous. Whoever's telling you this shit, you can literally go online. There'll be hundreds of fact-checking things saying that this does not affect quality digestion, not something I would worry about. Coluccio G also asks, gym life staples to ask for for Christmas. Love this question. I would definitely recommend a new gym bag, straps, chalk, pre-workout supplements, maybe for your gym membership to be paid in full for the year if you're paying monthly, a couple of personal training sessions,

online coaching, app training, app access. Yes, I'm plugging a lot of my stuff, but still, these are great options for what you might put on a Christmas list if you want to get the most out of training. New lifting shoes, knee wraps, a lifting belt, running shoes, a treadmill, a bike, rower, a little bit of equipment to stock up a home gym, bands, TRX to travel with, so many options. Might have to make a blog post about this. Penzevu asks, pushing the sled with arms at full extension or bent? I definitely prefer full extension. Favorite protein and creatine? I love whey protein. And the only creatine I'll take is creatine monohydrate. That one was from Brook, Brookie cookie lifts. Uh, Aaron Wolfer says I

usually program 15 hard sets per workout, three to four sets between four to five exercises. Is this good? Absolutely. This is quite literally what I do for our elite physique women's body building app. I think that's exactly where most people who are physique focused should be. Um, D says, asks, what's a good way to divide up calculate macros for fat loss percentage of carbs, protein, fat. I like the 40, 40, 20 ratio for fat loss, 40% of calories from carbs, 40% from protein, 20% from fat. I also like 40, 30, 30. Um, okay. Let's pick one more good one here. Um, this question is from Caroline fall. Is it important to cycle creatine? I do not think so. I think it's safe to take every day. I think the

literature shows us this as well. Float 11, trying to up my protein intake. Don't want to just rely on protein shakes. Ways to keep fat intake down. Again, going back to the yogurt question from earlier, huge fan of low fat dairy. I think it's a great option here. And then one last one. I like this one because it's a little bit higher level this one's from the big baz wolf if creatinine levels came back high on blood work should i discontinue using creatine so a few things that will be dysregulated on your labs if you eat a high protein diet take creatine and engage with resistance training are glomular filtration rate, GFR, BUN, blood urea, nitrogen, and creatinine. So be sure to share

with your physician whenever you get blood drawn, if you take protein or you take creatine or you eat a high protein diet, that you are doing these things. That way they are not alarmed as these things are much more likely to occur in these states. Okay, folks, that does it for today's episode. I want to thank you so much for tuning in and listening and giving me your valuable time. I hope you learned something. I hope we were straight and to the point and gave you tools that are worthwhile for you and helpful for you. And if you enjoyed the episode, the best thing you can do to help me grow the podcast is share it, leave me a five-star rating review, hit that subscribe button. All of these things make a

huge difference and will help me better connect with more people and help more people find the show. Thanks so much for tuning in and I'll catch you on the next one. you