Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 344; My Favorite Holiday Fitness Tips for a Healthier, Happier 2023 + 2024

Episode Date: December 12, 2023

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Welcome in everybody to a special holiday edition episode of the dynamic dialogue podcast. As always, I'm your host Danny Matranga. And in this episode, I'm going to be sharing 10 of my favorite fitness, nutrition, and spending tips for navigating and getting the most out of your holidays this season. The fitness holiday clash that happens every year where so many of you struggle to manage your fitness goals, aspirations, etc. with the natural inclination to enjoy the holidays and festivities is something that makes me every year feel that it's a good idea to put out an episode with some helpful tips and tricks for navigating the next several weeks as we head into the new year. I think starting the new year with some momentum and some wind in your sails can make a big difference.

So I'm going to be sharing some of my favorite tips for you for navigating the next couple weeks and making the most of your holiday season without falling off track. Thanks for listening and enjoy 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, 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. Elementia 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 Elements' 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.

to the show notes and check out using the special link for dynamic dialogue listeners. Okay, folks. So my first tip for navigating the holiday season and doing the best you can to, you know, strike a balance between having some fun as well as, you know, enjoying family time, enjoying various faith-based holidays, various cultural and traditional holidays, is to remember that there's a difference between the holidays and the holiday season. Now, I know not all of you celebrate Christmas, but let's use Christmas and New Year's as an example. Typically, Christmas and New Year's are celebrated across four days, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. That is four days in total. What happens to a lot of people across that week is that they spend the entirety of the time from the 24th of December to the first or

second of January off the rails, kind of eating whatever they want, maybe not sticking to their routine. And I'll be the first person to tell you, I actually think that's completely okay. Because in the context of a whole year, one of your 52 weeks allocated to being social, being with friends, being with family, enjoying the culture and tradition of the holidays and whatever they mean to you probably won't set you back very much, if at all. But you have 24 days of December leading up to that where there will likely be work parties, holiday parties, and various opportunities to be social where maybe you look to navigate and strike a balance. I'm not saying not to indulge or have fun, you look to navigate and strike a balance. I'm not saying not to indulge or have fun,

but remember for most people, there's an entire week at the end of the year where it's best to just, in many cases, enjoy yourself. So take those first three and a half weeks of December to try to strike a balance, pick and choose your battles, make sure you're staying on track with your fitness, with your steps, with your hydration, etc. So that when you do get to the Christmas and New Year's holidays, you're not burdened with the guilt of like, oh crap, I've been off the rails for a month. And you can just settle in and enjoy the week and whatever comes with it. Now, everybody celebrates different holidays. Many of you probably don't celebrate the holidays. I think that's another thing that oftentimes gets overlooked when we discuss navigating the holidays. And that's that for many people, this can actually be a challenging time of year. If you have tumult in your family, maybe you have a recent loss in your family. Maybe you have

a change in how things have been going due to relationships, due to sickness, due to illness, due to travel, due to work, etc. The holidays are not the quote-unquote happiest time of the year for everyone. I can relate to this myself. So, I think it's important to, again, keep it in context. If it's a time for you to eat, drink, and be merry, then by all means, do so. But if it's a time where maybe your mental health struggles, it takes a dip, or you just kind of feel slightly out of alignment due to things that are outside of your control, that's actually a great opportunity to double down on what I call HPBs, health promoting behaviors, things like getting outside, things like getting some steps in,

things like recharging, catching up on sleep, which we'll talk quite a bit about as we go. But that is my first tip for you. And that is, of course, to remember that there are holidays and there is a holiday season and it is best to truly enjoy those holidays, but to still practice balance during the holiday season overall. Tip number two is to check your gym memberships, particularly if you go to a 24-hour fitness, an anytime fitness, a crunch fitness, Bally's fitness, LA fitness, anytime, or city sports clubs, Lifetime, any of these big monthly gym memberships, maybe Equinox, but this tip is unlikely to apply for the higher to premium echelon gyms. But for many of you who go to low to moderate tier gyms, one thing that has happened, this is a tip that I have for you guys. It's worked a lot for many

of my clients. One thing that's happened since the pandemic is many of the popular low to middle tier fitness clubs have began competing in a race to the bottom. Planet Fitness, Crunch Fitness, Anytime Fitness, LA Fitness, just to name a few, are some of the companies that have shifted to a lower cost per month membership rate. For much of like the 2015 to 2020 time range, various corporations like 24 Hour Fitness, LA Fitness, Crunch Fitness distanced themselves from the lower tier $10 a month memberships that you'll find at Planet Fitness. But after a pandemic and a couple different bankruptcies, many of these companies have shifted their models to lower price per month memberships.

And a lot of people just go to the gym and leave and they never read the signs on the door or the walls or pay attention to the ads that you see on the internet. So if you are going to one of these gyms and still paying $40, $45, $50 per month, which was common in 2012, 13, 14, 15, I would strongly encourage you to check with the membership team or go online and see if you can get a lower rate. I know a lot of people who were paying $40 to $50 a month to go to 24-hour fitness, who now is offering that same membership for like $200 a year or less than $20 a month. This depends on where you go, but if you are just a set it and forget it type of person who's been locked into the same membership at the same health club for a very long time,

you can do one of two things. Check and see if there's a cheaper option to prepay for the year, or better yet, see if that monthly rate has come down quite a bit since the pandemic. I bet you'd be surprised to find that it may well be the case that the monthly rate you've been paying at your health club is more from a different time or a different era when the $50 a month moderate to your health club was kind of a thing. And I found, at least today, that's kind of a relic of the not-so-distant past. The third tip I have for you actually has to do with a credit card. And I'm not a huge advocate

for credit card usage or racking up debt. I think that financial fitness is a very important part of fitness overall, and that making good decisions and good choices with your spending is a big part of your total health overall. You don't want to be burdened with a ton of credit card debt if you can avoid it because it's just additional stress. However, if I've learned one thing about fitness people, it's that they tend to have excellent discipline and self-control. These things that you cultivate in the gym definitely lend themselves to other avenues of your life. So if you are in a regular fitness routine, you manage the foods you eat so as to improve your health and longevity overall, there is a very good chance that you are making decisions that are consistent with being disciplined. And that can

apply to your spending. And if you are somebody who, like myself and like so many of the fitness fanatics I know, you are inclined to engage in things like grocery shopping and eating out at healthy eateries, like be it Chipotle or Sweetgreen or any of these places where you are going to go out and grab a meal out that you know is healthy or high in protein and you shop for a lot of your food at the grocery store, I would recommend applying for the Amex Gold credit card. This is a credit card that I've gotten recently, and it does come with a $295 annual fee. And mind you, this is not an ad. This is not any form of plug. Nobody is paying me to say this. I have been using credit cards to accumulate miles and points for over a decade. And it's a big reason why I'm able

to travel and enjoy the world without paying out of pocket for every flight, every hotel, etc. Now, the cool thing about this Amex Gold card, even though it does come with a $295 annual fee, I actually believe it's $250 now going up to $295 down the road, is that it is the only card I have found that gives four times points in two very important categories, groceries and meals out, which for fitness people or people who are interested in fitness, I have found tends to be the two biggest categories of spend. Most of the fitness people I know, when you ask them, hey, what do you spend the most money on? They tend to say it's food. And so if you're somebody who's going to Chipotle a few times a week or Sweetgreen, and you're constantly going to the store to buy groceries and protein-packed foods and

vegetables and fruits, imagine your entire grocery budget and eating out budget, let's say it's $500 a month, multiplied by four times points. That's 2,000 points or 24,000 points a year, which will offset that annual fee. And most of you spend a lot more than that. So making sure that if your primary spending categories across the year are things like eating out and buying groceries, that if you're somebody who's already has multiple credit cards, which I know a lot of you are in that category, and you're getting 1% cash back at the grocery store, or maybe two times points with a Capital One or a Chase card, that you consider the Amex Gold because yes, there's a fee, but the points you get at the grocery store add up very quickly. I've been using this card a lot

at all my trips to the grocery store. The one place I don't use it is Costco because it does not apply there. The best credit card for Costco is still the Costco card itself, but a wonderful credit card for those of you who buy a lot of healthy food, who rack it up at the grocery store, who eat out at healthy eateries and want to be rewarded with the opportunity to turn that spend into travel. Again, I'll just let it be said, I don't think that you should engage with any credit spending if you don't have financial discipline or you already have a lot of credit card debt. Just forego this tip. But for many of you, this will be the top credit card in your wallet moving forward based on the categories of spend I find to be most common amongst fitness

people. 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, tip number four. And for many of you, you've already struck gold in this category with Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but there are a ton of year-end supplement sales. Here's a little gimmick I have found to be relatively true across the health and fitness industry, and that is that Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals typically just end up leaking into the entirety of December and into the new year. Most fitness companies realize that there's a fantastic opportunity to capitalize on New Year's resolutions, not just on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but in fact, into the entire end of December and early parts of January. So I would keep your eyes out for supplement companies you're already purchasing from that you are already engaged with or looking at and seeing if you

can stock up and really stack some savings. This could bootleg nicely with a tip I gave earlier, but it's the kind of thing where if you know that you go through two pounds of protein a month and you find that there's a year-end sale where protein is buy one, get one half off, you could buy four months worth of protein and essentially get two months for free, taking care of six months worth of supplementation. And for many of you, things like protein powder are a staple. powders pre-workouts creatine these are staples you're going to take them forever because you see the value vitamins omega threes etc so making sure that you are paying attention to any year-end opportunities to stock

up and cash in on some savings can be a really good way to do this it's something that i used to do well before I was sponsored by supplement companies. So again, I'm aware that there is some privilege here, but a really good opportunity for you at the end of the year to cash in on some savings that don't necessarily stop on Black Friday or Cyber Monday. And if you have a card like the Ame that has a signup bonus and believe it's 6,000 over six months, you can knock out a big chunk of that there. And that 60,000, 75,000, whatever you qualified for signup bonus will probably return a pretty substantial travel reward in the amount of like 700 to a thousand bucks. So there's some opportunity to stack the third

and fourth tips, but don't worry if you feel like you missed some of those Cyber Monday, Black Friday sales in the fitness space. I promise they will keep going through the end of the year and into the new year. Tip number five, maybe it's time for that deload you keep putting off. Many of you know the value of a deload week. You know the value of taking some time away from training and just chilling out and relaxing, but so few of you are actually able to do it. I have found that very few people are unaware of the benefits of a deload, but it is quite difficult for them psychologically to take one. They struggle with finding the time to maybe step away from their training and disconnect from that because it's such a crystallized piece of identity that when you take a week to either not train or train at less than

your max, you find that you're straddled with guilt and feelings of being lazy, and it's really kind of unhealthy. So many people know they should deload, but never do. And I have found the holidays to be a great opportunity to do that. If you take your deload week between the 24th of December and the 1st of January, that's not to say you don't train. It's just to say that maybe you train in an abbreviated fashion, cut the sessions a little shorter, practice a little lower intensity. Maybe you enjoy some extra calories, God forbid, and just make the most of the holiday season. So many of you have been telling yourselves, I need to deload, I need to deload, I need to deload, but you never take it. I would say as

we head into the beginning, middle part of December, look ahead and see if you can find time for that deload to close out the year. So you start 2024 with some momentum. The sixth tip I have for you is to sit down and outline your fitness goals for the year now. It's never a bad time to sit down and evaluate what it is that you'd like to accomplish with your goals, but it's always a good idea to get clear when you get that new kind of clean slate opportunity, that tabula rasa effect. Tabula rasa, of course, means clean slate in Latin. So you get this new opportunity at the beginning of the year to start fresh, which is why so many people are big, big fans of New Year's being a time to start a fitness goal or a fitness journey for most of you.

Remember, most people don't work out at all, but it might be a good time for you to put a bow on what you've accomplished this year, set some goals for yourself in the new year. Maybe you'll finally get started with online coaching or hiring a trainer or competing in a bodybuilding competition or a powerlifting lift, a meet, or, you know, getting an app program, getting on an app program, you know, finally getting started with running or hiking or whatever those goals are. But knowing that that clean slate is coming, even if you're already a fitness person and maybe you laugh at these resolution people, which you shouldn't do, by the way,

there's certainly a psychological effect that is tethered to the new year. And I think the end of the year when things are a little quieter and maybe you're taking that deload, you can sit down, really examine where you're at, take a look at what you'd like to accomplish as you head into a new year and really, really get going. Now, tip number seven is actually the inverse of this, and it is for those of you who have not yet really crystallized that fitness journey. Maybe you're on and off, but I would say this is the best time to start a fitness program. I have noticed that the summer months and the end of the year tend to be the quietest time in most gyms. So it's a great time to go in and get a

membership, get a little momentum going and get some wind in your sails while the rest of the world kind of quiets down and unplugs. At the time of recording, it's December 3rd. So there's 28 days left in December. That's exactly four weeks. If you go to the gym three times a week for the next four weeks, you'll have gone to the gym 12 times going into 2024. And that's 12 votes for becoming the person you ultimately want to become. Put differently, you have so many opportunities to develop and build a habit. And technically speaking, the new kind of psychology of 2024 is a powerful window for that because it's that clean slate. But this quieter time of the year, this kind of more silent, low-key section of the

year, oftentimes people have a little less work. They even maybe have time off work. They have the opportunity to be at home. They have the opportunity to get away. Now this isn't true for everybody, but if the holiday season for you is quieter at work, it's a little more low key. You can step away. This can actually be the best time to start your fitness journey. Like I said, if it is, let's say December 3rd, that means you have four weeks left of the year. That would give you the opportunity to go to the gym. If you went three times each week for the next four weeks, 12 times, I'd rather have 12 sessions under my belt going in to 2024, then show up on January 1st with a completely clean slate and

no momentum. There's nothing wrong with starting a fitness journey on the 1st of January. Too many people bash people for starting new year's resolutions. It's silly. Everybody should get started at any point they can and try to keep it going. And even if you failed in the past or you failed this time, just keep getting up and keep trying. Because eventually, finding a fitness routine that works and getting it to stick over a long enough time horizon, that's the only thing that matters. All the times it didn't work for you really don't matter. What matters is trying and trying and trying until you get it to stick. And I'm of the impression that if you start in December

and get some momentum going, get some wind in your sails, get a few sessions under your belt heading into the new year, you'll be that much more likely to succeed with a January fitness goal. The eighth tip I have for you guys has to do with hydration. One thing that happens oftentimes in the winter months is when it gets colder is we neglect hydration. We forget to drink water because it's cold out and we're not sweating and we're not hot. And I'm sitting here recording this talking to you and I can feel my lips actually chapped, dry. I know for a fact I haven't drinking enough water, but it's raining outside, it's cold outside,

and I've kind of just been focused on work today. On a summer day where it's hotter and warmer, I always tend to get a little more fluid in. So I've noticed that in the winter months when it's colder and it's less hot, the amount of water I drink across the day goes down. So be sure to pay attention to that and make sure you're hydrating enough. The ninth tip I have for you is to take advantage of these quieter times to maybe catch up on some much needed sleep. The end of the year is a great opportunity to catch up on sleep, especially with the holidays and many of you having some time off work. For most of you, fitness, nutrition, health, longevity matter, but you're really not succeeding in one of those key categories, which is, of course, sleep. Not that you can catch up and

bank a ton of sleep, but getting a few nines of eight to nine hours of sleep can make a big, big difference in setting your health up for success in the short term, feeling energized, and being able to stick with your fitness goals throughout the holidays. So take this opportunity to catch up on sleep, get an extra hour or two, and really make the most of the quietest time of the year. Lastly, my final tip is to not sweat if you have to kind of step away from your traditional gym routine. If you're traveling home to visit your parents and maybe they live in a small town where they don't have the gym you have, or there's no way to get to the gym, or you're going to have to do body weight workouts, or you're going to have

to make some adjustments, don't sweat it. Find ways to get your family involved, to get some steps, to do some body weight training, to go on a hike, and give yourself some grace. It's okay to miss a few pre-scheduled workouts in the gym. And if you find a way to lead by example and maybe get your parents going or your families who are in town going and do things together, it can make being active really fun and wholesome. And again, it's not going to break you to miss a little bit of time here and step away from it all so you can enjoy this time and really head into 2024 with some momentum. All right, folks, I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, consider leaving me a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts as well as Spotify.

Hit the follow and subscribe button and share this by tagging me and posting the podcast, your Instagram story. I see all that stuff and would love to say thank you. I really appreciate you tuning in and I'll catch you on the next one.