Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 371: Lean Bulks, Non-Animal Proteins, Losing 100+ Pounds + MORE!

Episode Date: June 12, 2024

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Welcome in everybody to another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. As always, I'm your host, Danny Matrenga. And in this episode, episode 371, we're going to be discussing a variety of different health, nutrition, and performance topics fielded directly from your questions. We have questions about calorie intake specifically in terms of times of day. Is there anything wrong with eating at night? Does eating at night affect body composition? We'll also talk quite a bit about sourcing protein. If you're somebody who eats a more plant-centric diet or even a vegan diet. We'll talk about massive amount of weight loss. So this is losing weight for people who have over a hundred pounds of weight to lose.

We'll talk more about traveling and staying fit while traveling. There'll be some discussion about the kind of fortification and development of a home gym space. Lots of great topics on the episode today. I'm sure you'll enjoy it quite a bit. Thanks so much for tuning in and enjoy. This podcast has some awesome partners. And one of my favorite, of course, is Legion Athletics. Legion is my go-to supplement manufacturer for what I like to call my big rock supplements. This would be my protein powder, my pre-training formula, my post-training formula and creatine, and my kind of ancillary vitamins and micronutrient

protection. So why do I like Legion so much? What sets them apart? It's quite simple. Legion uses all natural ingredients. All the formulas include natural coloring and natural sweeteners. No artificial sweeteners, just stevia. And every single formulation, be it a pre-workout or a vitamin, contains clinically effective dosages of ingredients shown to work in humans in clinical research supported by robust trials. No filler, just legit ingredients in each and every formulation proven to work. The whey protein isolate is so light. It's fantastic. It mixes in water. It tastes amazing. And I drink it every day, even as somebody who's lactose intolerant. That's just how high quality this whey protein is.

And it's sourced from Irish dairy cows that are raised well, eat their natural diet and packaged in climate friendly packaging. I love their plant protein too. For those of you who like something that's a little on the thicker side and you aren't a fan of animal products. Also, I love Legion's pre-workout, but specifically the pre-workout that does not contain caffeine. That would be their stim free pulse. I'm a huge, huge fan of beta alanine and L-citrulline, but I don't like taking in wildly high amounts of caffeine. So if you are somebody who likes pre-workout with caffeine, you can try Pulse. Or if you like it without caffeine because you maybe want to enjoy your morning coffee or monitor your caffeine

consumption, try the Pulse Stim Free. My favorite flavors there for sure are the New Grape and the Amazing Amazing Tropical Punch. As for my creatine, I get that from Legion's Recharge, five grams each and every day. I take it on the days I train as well as the days I do not, because Recharge also contains L-carnitine, which can help with promoting muscle recovery and decreasing soreness, as well as some ingredients to help with creatine utilization. And of course, my favorite supplements for my ancillary micronutrient health are Legion's multivitamin and Legion's greens powder. Not only do these two products contain a ton of high quality vitamins and minerals, they

also contain unique adaptogens like KSM 66 ashwagandha and reishi mushroom, which I like to take each and every day to promote my health. If you want to cover all your bases with a high quality protein, creatine, post-workout, or the ancillary micronutrient health stuff like greens, powders, and multivitamin, I encourage you to go over to legionathletics.com and check out using the promo code Danny. That'll save you 20% on your first order, and you'll rack up points that you can use the same way as cash every time you use the code, and you'll also be supporting the show. Okay, guys. So getting into the episode, first order of business. If you would like to have one of your questions featured on this very podcast, all you need to do is make sure that

you're following me over on Instagram. The easiest way to do that is to just put my name into Instagram. You'll find all of my content there. You'll also find quite a bit of content of mine over on X threads, uh, YouTube, where we're posting a ton of new content, which I like quite a bit more because it's much longer form. You can actually work out with me. Um, I film a few workouts a month over in the studio. Tons of different stuff for improving squat depth, fat loss, nutrition, grocery hauls, lots of fun stuff over on the YouTube. But if you want your question featured here, the best way to do it is to follow me on Instagram. And every once in a while when I throw up a question box, you can have your question

heard and I might answer it there. But the really good ones I answer here. This question I like quite a bit because it opens the door for a lot of different avenues of discussion in nutrition. And the question comes from G Fearless Fit. Question is, lean bulk, is it bad to eat most of your calories slash carbs at night? So two things here, there's the discussion of lean bulking and then carbohydrate backloading or having carbohydrates at night. So two things here, there's the discussion of lean bulking and then carbohydrate backloading or having carbohydrates at night. So let's first define terms. Lean bulking is a great way to put on muscle mass. And really what it refers to is it refers to putting the body

in an optimal position to gain tissue, specifically muscle tissue, while minimizing the likelihood of accretion of fat tissue, aka what is the right amount of calories to bulk on so that I gain mostly muscle and hardly any fat? Now this is really hard, and the answer is probably less than you think, because muscle growth is a very slow process, especially in intermediate to advanced lifters. So if we know we can only build muscle very slowly, it probably doesn't make sense to have a ton of additional calories, because only so much of that caloric surplus will be used and partitioned to develop muscle. A good surplus should allow fuel for enhanced training, enhanced recovery, and increased protein or nitrogen availability. But I think for many

years, people have done gigabulks or dreamer bulks, so to speak, where they go way over on their caloric intake. Oftentimes, you'll hear these referred to as dirty bulks, where somebody uses a lot of what would metaphorically be called unclean foods or dirty foods, usually junk food and fast food, to jack up caloric intake paired with rabid intense training to drive enhanced gains. But what often happens with these dirty bulks is people gain way more fat and not really any more muscle than they would have gained if they just ate a little bit less. In fact, new research is showing that really only a few hundred extra calories are needed. So when it comes to lean bulking and what I do with my clients, what we do with the clients we work with in our studio,

online, and throughout the clients who are in our app-based programming, what we would recommend is probably only a surplus of 200 to 300 daily calories above maintenance coming from a fusion of carbohydrates and protein. This is going to give you the fuel that you need to recover, and it's also going to give you the fuel that you need to train. Now, when it comes to getting most of your carbs or most of your calories at night, this is another kind of old fitness kind of misconception that's been perpetuated by what many people will call diet culture for years. The idea that somehow eating carbohydrates in the evening is particularly dubious because

they're a compound that's used for creating energy. And if I'm not using energy in the evening, eating carbs at night will make me fat. And if I don't eat carbs at night, I'll get leaner. What happens, many people have ascribed to the notion that, hey, you know, if you want to lose weight, cut out carbs after dark. Well, a lot of times people's caloric intake is hovering or getting close to maintenance right around the time it gets dark. And so, you know, a lot of the damage gets done after the sun goes down, people eating late into the night. So that directive is probably generally going to lead to caloric restriction or weight loss. if you say don't eat anything after six o'clock. Don't eat fats, don't eat carbs, don't eat sugar, don't eat fruit. You're going to

impose some form of caloric restriction. I think for people who are looking to gain a little muscle and add a little extra calories, being afraid of carbohydrates in the evening might make it hard to get enough fuel in. You have to spread these calories out across the day so that your body can acclimate to the additional intake and you can benefit from the additional energy that is available. So I would not worry about eating carbs at night if I were lean bulking. And in fact, I would not worry really about eating carbs at night at all. I think that the total number of carbohydrates you get, and this is true of protein, fat, fiber as well, is way more important than when you get them. If one macro specifically needs to be spread out

across the day for muscle growth and physique, it's probably protein. If one macro needs to be spread out across the day for energy, cognition, it's probably carbohydrates. If you, you know, one macro needs to get spread out across the day to make sure that you have good regulation of your nervous system and whatever, that your food's palatable, that you're not lethargic from like huge fatty meals, probably fat. If you want to be able to be regular, you probably want to spread your protein out. All of these things probably are better spread throughout the day evenly than partitioned into the AM PM with the exception perhaps of, you know, people who are working on a shift and maybe have, have no choice, but to eat in that way. Um, I think it's okay to eat

later in the evening unless it's you know you have data that informs you that hey this is fucking with my sleep you know like maybe you have one of these devices apple watch whoop aura or you can just use the subjective like how do I feel when I wake up test if eating really close to bed is disrupting your ability to get good, restful, recuperative sleep, it's probably something that I would leave behind. It's unlikely that you're getting served tremendously by the last few snacks you have late into the evening. And so a lot of times having a meal a couple hours before bed is fine. But those few snacks you have like minutes before bed can disrupt sleep quality. So that's really the one thing that I would pay attention to. But

lean bulking, we want to keep our calories under control and carbs at night is generally fine. It's just all about context. And when it comes to fat loss, remember that is a longstanding myth that really just informs us that caloric restriction of any kind is probably helpful. Okay, next question comes from Kay Cantarue. I can't have dairy products. What's a good way to get protein besides meat? So again here, let's break this into two questions. The first is I can't have dairy products. What's a good

way to get protein in? So she says besides meat, which means, you know, hey, look, dairy comes from cows. Cows make red meat. However, dairy is really like milk, cheese and milk products and meat is meat. So, you know So if you can't have dairy products and you can't have meat, I'm going to assume you're vegan. But if you couldn't have dairy alone, maybe you have like a lactose intolerance. So let's just approach what options we have for people who are choosing not to eat dairy. So these would be people who had a lactose intolerance. If I were looking to get protein in and I were lactose intolerant and also looking to avoid meat, I would probably get things like tempeh, tofu, edamame, lentils, beans, split peas, black-eyed peas. And then again, if I were vegan or vegetarian,

let's just say, but no vegetarian, but no dairy, I would add to that eggs. And I would add to that potentially, if I was pescatarian, fish and shellfish. Now, if you don't do meat, you're pretty limited. I would bring this up, and I always bring this up when a client approaches me about dairy. Are we dairy because we're lactose intolerant, or are we dairy because we've heard dairy is bad for us? Because many dairy foods, for example, cultured cottage cheese and plain Greek yogurt, are phenomenal for the body. They're loaded with calcium. They're loaded with vitamin D. They're very rich in protein. Oftentimes, especially cultured cottage cheese, it's very

high in microorganisms that populate the gut and lead to a more diverse community of microbes and help with your quote unquote gut health. These are really good foods. Fermented dairy is one of the more nutrient dense foods and it's particularly good for women who tend to benefit more than men from higher protein and higher calcium foods. Because many times women who are active and even especially women who are inactive struggle with bone and muscle loss. So you need protein and calcium. Now, if you have a lactose intolerance, you can still get some dairy protein in, specifically whey protein isolate. The whey protein powder I like best, Legion's Whey Plus, is awesome because it's a super filtered whey protein. It's a grass-fed whey protein, which is an extra bonus. But one thing that's cool is it's

super duper filtered. So even as somebody myself who's fairly lactose intolerant, I can slam two scoops every day, no problem. My lactose intolerance line begins right around cheese. The harder the cheese, the better. The softer the cheese, the more problems I have. I can't do really ice cream. I can't really do milk. I can do yogurt. I can do cottage cheese. I can do whey protein. Those are the three. I don't include eggs in dairy because while they are found in the dairy aisle, I tend to think of dairy more categorically as milk. But if we just want to throw eggs in there because it's really easy, eggs are awesome. Eggs are rich in albumin, a very bioavailable protein that we can all absorb. And the yolks are extremely high in a variety of good nutrients,

especially nutrients for women who are pregnant. The developing fetus needs a tremendous amount of choline, which we can find in eggs. Just make sure if you're pregnant, you cook your eggs all the way through. So we know eggs are super duper good for us and super duper nutritious. And it's unlikely that you have an allergy to them. However, if you have an allergy to both eggs and milk or lactose, you're going to be pretty much limited to the plant options I mentioned. Tempeh, tofu, edamame, lentils, which come in many colors like French, red, green, and black. Okay, these are going to be very, very rich in protein, but they're also going to be high in carbohydrates. So just keep

that in mind. This is also true of lima beans, pinto beans, kidney beans, black beans, garbanzo beans, peas, all the stuff I mentioned. So tempeh and tofu, probably your two best plant based options. But if I were a full blown vegan, you know, and chained to those options, I'd probably load, like I said, mostly up on the tempeh and the tofu. But if I had a little flexibility, I would quickly look to add in pescatarian options like fish and shellfish. And if you don't have allergies, eggs, cultured cottage cheese, and Greek yogurt. Okay. Next question from change in the house. And then it cut off on Instagram. I have 125 pounds to lose. Where should I start? Wow. So that is a great question. First thing I want to do is actually point you in the direction of an episode of the podcast

that aired on March 6th. It's not far down in the feed. It is episode 364, how to lose 50 plus pounds. In that episode, I explicitly go over exactly what I would do if I woke up 50 pounds overweight and had to lose the weight very quickly. Now, the good news is none of you are in this situation. None of you are going to wake up plus 50 pounds, but many of you have been for quite some time carrying around a lot more weight than you'd like, maybe more than 50 pounds, maybe more than 100, in this case, 125. And time is a really big component of this. To gain that weight, you had to go through some type of behavioral transformation that accommodated eating way more calories and your food behavior adjusted. And no matter what you do in the gym, no matter how inspired and motivated you are to exercise, to lose 125 pounds,

you're going to have to undo years of food behavior that has kind of long been entrenched and ingrained. And that is not something that happens overnight. I think a lot of people make weight loss a lot harder by thinking that they need to get it done in a short timeframe, especially when it's a large amount of weight. And many people will diet for years. Most women spend their entire lives dieting unhappy with their bodies. They're always a little further away than they'd like to be from their ideal weight or whatever. But they always try like to chip off. Like if they're 15 pounds away, they're going to try to get that 15 pounds off in a month. If they're, you know, somebody's like

a hundred pounds away, they're going to try to get 100 pounds off in a year. But the thing is, a pound a week, most people would say like, that's way too slow. It's 52 pounds a year. And people who have a lot of weight to lose, if you tell them, oh, two pounds a week, they're like, fuck that. That's too slow. That's 104 pounds a year. That's a lot of weight. Most people I've worked with in the general population, and I've done probably thousands, if not tens of thousands of fitness consultations with novices, especially when I was working at public gyms and doing like multiple a day. You know, you're talking to people and they're like, they have wildly unrealistic expectations

for how fast they can lose weight. So the first thing I would do at 125 pounds is just take a deep breath and acknowledge this is going to take some time. I'm going to have to undo years of habits and behaviors around food that have allowed me to become this size essentially. And I've changed, you know, my relationship with the dopamine pathways in my brain. I use food to assuage baby boredom or emotional stress. You know, I've got the wrong kind of foods in my environment. I'm food to assuage baby boredom or emotional stress. I've got the wrong kind of foods in my environment. I'm going to have to learn about this. I'm going to have to listen to my appetite.

I'm going to have to obviously try to restrict calories and up protein and up fiber. But you've got to stop the bleeding. This is an analogy that I gave in the podcast that I already plugged. The first thing I would do if I were over a hundred pounds is I'd immediately stop the bleeding. 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 are a 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. I would look at it like this. If I had a flood in my basement and maybe I can deal with a certain level of moisture, but at the hundred pound mark, metaphorically speaking, I'm way over the flood line. I'm freaked out. I've got to stop this immediately. I know I'm not going to get the water out of here overnight, but I need to find that fucking pipe where the water's coming from. And I need to cut that thing off right now, like yesterday. We got to walk, find the main line on the house and shut that shit off. And so that means in this case, you need to stop fucking gaining weight. So that

probably means getting rid of a lot of the ultra processed foods. Maybe hold on to like 10%. Give yourself a little stash of things that you can go to and maybe reward yourself with, or, you know, cut the boredom with, but frankly, you know, whether you choose to take a more balanced approach or a more militant and disciplined approach, I'm overhauling your environment is the best thing you can do. I would say that it's probably really similar at 125 pounds beyond your goal weight, as it is, you know, in your home kitchen environment, as it is, well, you know, somebody who struggles with substance abuse at a bar. They're not the same, or I should say

alcohol abuse at a bar. They're not the same, but it's harder not to give into your substance of choice when you're surrounded by it. And if food is something you really enjoy, whether it's because it's, you know, assuaging boredom or helping you cope with complex emotions, or it just tastes really fucking good, frankly, you know, some of that shit's got to go. You need to reduce the amount of friction between you and the semi-sobriety effect you're after of like, hey, I'm not going to eat as much of what got me in this situation to begin with. Fucking period. Full stop. I would definitely recommend immediately stop drinking any calories. Um, I would definitely recommend finding some type of exercise you enjoy, um, just to, you know, add some positivity and some movement and to enhance the caloric

expenditure, get your body healthy. You know, you can be healthy and be a little overweight. There's plenty of people who are a little overweight, who have awesome biomarkers, tons of muscle. We love that, right? That's really dope. But pause, pause, pause, breathe, breathe, breathe. We got to focus for a second. You know, exercise ain't going to get this shit done. Exercise, you ain't going to exercise 125 fucking pounds off your body. You're only doing that by starving. And by starving, I mean like controlled starving. And that's literally what a calorie deficit is. You take your body, you're like, it takes 2000 calories a day to maintain a normal person's weight, but like 3500 calories a day to, you know, maintain mine. And like, I got to drop below that 3,500. I got to kind of

strategically starve, quote unquote. I got to get my body a little bit less than it needs. And starving is literally so different from a calorie deficit in actuality. Strategic starvation would have been a less careless thing to say. But you're basically going to figure out, hey, what's my number? How much do I need to maintain this weight? And okay, I'm always going to be below that number by several hundreds of calories. And you do that week after fucking week after fucking week, and it'll go up and it'll go down and it'll bounce around and you'll have great weeks, but you have to be consistent in your habits, which probably looks something like aiming for a good amount of protein every day, a good amount of fiber, restricting your total calories, trying to sleep and trying to move. Okay. MF Glover wants to know tips for staying on track

while traveling internationally. I have another plug from a recent episode. This is 362 from the end of February. How to not lose gains while traveling. Actually, it's how to travel and not lose gains. This is such a popular question, especially during the summer when people are taking off and going places more with their family. But you guys, I want you to just take a deep breath. Remember, I say this a lot on the podcast. I say it a lot on social media. It's pretty damn hard to lose muscle. And it happens pretty slowly, especially when you're sleeping really well and you're not that stressed, which happens to be two things that tend to go together when you're on vacation. Tend to be less stressed, tend to get lots of good rest and recovery. Okay. But you can always

plan ahead. When you're on vacation, you can plan ahead. Maybe there's a gym where you're staying. If not, take advantage of body weight exercises. This works great for me. It works great for my one-on-one clients, whether they're in the like normal one-on-one, you know, online client coaching that we do online or their clients that I've been working with in person for years. These strategies work and they even work for me, who's like pretty advanced, just a couple sets of like hardcore body weight exercises done really close to failure for like 10 minutes. Like I had a client, Pedro, who's gone to Japan now twice. We've done a few other big trips and just using bands and body weight, totally crush it. Another client, Andrew, who I have a couple of times been on vacation and just like, Hey, hammer out two sets of pushups to

absolute failure. One set of close grip pushups for the triceps to absolute failure, like two sets of Bulgarian split squats till the pumps scream in and two sets of hip thrusts till the glutes are pumped. It'll take you 10 minutes, but it'll stimulate the shit out of your body. And as an already muscular active person, that level of stimulation will lead to muscle retention. You're not growing from these workouts, but you are getting nutrition and pump and all kinds of good stimulation going on in those tissues, which if you pair that with good sleep, protein and recovery, you're probably not going to lose muscle after seven, 14 days. It's just, you know, if you were really hungry, really stressed, sleeping like shit, not really, you know, on the kind of vacations people

often take, maybe you're just not training for a long time. Yeah. That'd be tough. But a lot of times when people are on vacation, they're sleeping good. They're eating more than normal. They're not stressed. Those are, those are things that environmentally tend to be conducive for muscle growth. Um, another thing, just relax, relax. You only get so many vacations. You probably train like 40, 42, 43 weeks a year. I was looking at the programming I do for the app and it's like, okay, for elite physique, it's five days a week. For home heroes, it's four days a week. And for forever fit, it's four days a week. I train four to five days a week because I basically do forever fit plus one extra day. Most of my clients who I train online train three, four, or five days a week. So that means

pretty much everybody in my orbit, the trainers who are at my studio train even more than I do sometimes. But like they're training, and this is crazy, like on the low end, five months a year. Some of them are training six months a year. On average, they're training seven months a year. Some of them are training six months a year. On average, they're training seven months a year. Some are training as much as eight to nine months a year. That means that you're doing like probably 180, 200, 220 freaking weightlifting sessions or exercise sessions a year. That's a ton. That's a ton. That's like every week you're going five for seven, four for seven, three for seven, a week where you have a zero for seven or two or two weeks in a row where you have to zero for 14 because you didn't train in the long run isn't going to really

hurt you. It's really hard because it's like, how do I do this so frequently? Not doing it for so many days in a row kind of fucking irks me. I get it, but it's not going to be an issue. As far as traveling internationally goes, just be sure to call ahead, take advantage of the internet, find out where the gems are around you. It doesn't need to be any more complicated than that. I have found that in almost every country I've traveled to, even countries where I don't speak the language, you know, getting around to gyms, learning how to use the gym, learning how to, uh, you know, take care of myself appropriately, given the culture, you know, not all gyms are like America, for example, like in Japan, um, you can't just like whip off your shirt and fucking throw up a tripod and make like Sigma

edit TikTok videos. Um, it's not particularly culturally sound, but like in Mexico you can literally like walk in the gym and they have like the day pass right there. You like give them the day pass money and there's not, I've, there's no fucking even waiver sometimes to fill out. So every country is totally different. And like in most, I've found most countries day passes for gyms kind of like here in America are a little steep. Um, but between local gym day passes, TRX body weight and bands that you can pack with you, or just taking an all out break, I promise it's not something to stress about. Okay. Matthew Demuisen wants to know a simple, easy plan for parents of young ones who have a

hard time finding a chunk of time for working out. Okay. I love this. So this is for the busy people. This is not just apply to parents, but let's just say you don't have time in your day for like a full dedicated trip to the gym. I think we all have time to work out, but I do agree with the notion that we might not all have time to make a trip to the gym. These are two things that we need to disconnect. Movement is medicine. Movement is going to check the box. Can be walking, can be hiking, can be pushing the stroller, right? So if you are pushing babies around in the stroller and you throw a 20 pound weighted vest on, boom, in my book, you're exercising. So that right there turns something you have to do into exercise.

So that takes advantage of the James Clear Habit Stack. So this for people who are like stuck at a desk job, this is the walking pad or the below the desk cycle or taking your meetings on a call or like a call-based meeting while you walk. First thing I would do if I knew I wasn't getting enough exercise is inject fitness or exercise into the things I'm already doing that it's conducive for. So I love, for example, if I'm pushing the young ones around in the stroller, I'm going to add an appropriately sized weighted vest to enhance the kind of challenge on my body. A second thing I love is a concept. This is more new, but it's not super new. It's been around for a while, but I just really like

it as I kind of softened on what I think is acceptable and really leaning more into like encouraging just, Hey, we got to encourage everybody to move. So let's not be prudes about what's good or not good. Okay. And this is the concept of exercise snacks, which is like, Hey, any like one set, two sets, three sets is good. Three minutes, five minutes, 10 minutes is good. Grab some dumbbells, a kettlebell, some bands, just get a small collection of fitness equipment together. And if you have five to 10 minutes and you can break out like, Hey, I'm going to do 30 seconds of dumbbell curls, take a 30 second break, 30 seconds of overhead press, take a 30 second break, 30 seconds of goblet squat, take a 30 second break, 30 seconds of banded pull aparts,

and then take a 30 second break. That's going to take me four minutes. And I'm going to do that three times a day. It'll take me 12 minutes. Well, you just added 12 sets of resistance training, even though those sets are only 30 seconds and they might be novice level sets that aren't designed to be done particularly close to failure or with extreme intensity or anything like that. They're just kind of, you know, this, this theory, this kind of, shall we say, technique of exercise snacks is better for newbies. That will be awesome for a newbie. Even the, you know, this really piggybacks nicely off the example I gave you of the efficacy of low-level body weight work when traveling. These are stimulative workouts.

You can take advantage of other time-saving techniques like circuits where you do like three exercises in a row, like sit-ups into push-ups into pull-ups, right? You could do supersets. I love these. I love antagonist paired supersets where I do like a push right into a pull. And for somebody who's like an exercise snacker, maybe you're at home with the kids. Maybe you throw a band around a door and you're like, hey, or a TRX, you're going to be like, I'm going to do one set of TRX rows to failure. That takes maybe 45 seconds. And one set of pushups to failure. Maybe that takes 30 seconds. And I'm going to do that back to back eight to 10 times in the next two to three hours while I'm home watching the kids.

You could spread 16 really hard, effortful sets of two very simple exercises across time that you're literally working from home with the kids. Maybe you're on the laptop, you get the kids and you're like, okay, I found, I can sneak 30 seconds. Gonna get these pushups. Boom. I can sneak another 30 seconds. Gonna get these rows. Okay. I'll come back to it 10 to 12 minutes later. Yes, it will feel very differently. An exercise snack workout from a normal workout where you're locked in the whole time, but it beats the shit out of doing nothing. And remember, you probably don't need nearly as much as you think if you're brand new to this. And I think this just speaks to the value of building a home gym space.

You know, my wife and I, we want to have kids and it's something that I've always known was in the plan. So I have a lot of fitness equipment at home that I have, I used to train during COVID. And you know, when we opened the studio, we got new equipment for the studio, but what I have at home is basically what I need. I have a pull up bar. I have cable machine dumbbells that go up to 80. I have a couple different sets of them. I have a pull-up bar. I have cable machine dumbbells that go up to 80. I have a couple different sets of them. I have adjustables and regulars. I have bands. I have TRX. I really have more than I need, frankly. I have a barbell bike, et cetera. But one thing that's cool is I know when that day comes where it's like, hey, we're going to have this family

now. I know because I have so many clients. It's harder when you have kids. And so this gives me the ability to have less excuses. It's not gonna, it's not the case that like, I'm never going to have a problem getting to the gym or working out again, far from it. I would be full of shit if I thought that simply having a home gym meant I would get in shape. I mean, we learned this during COVID. Everybody got a home gym during COVID. Do you know how much home gym shit is available for like pretty much nothing on the internet? You can get home gym equipment for so cheap. So cheap. People are giving it away because they bought it during COVID. They thought they would use it. And just

like every other piece of home gym equipment, they don't. That doesn't have to be you. It doesn't have to be you. You can get some stuff and use it. And even if you go through periods where you don't use it, having it can be amazing if life changes and it's a great amenity for your guests. But I like to have a little bit of stuff at home at all times, especially as we get closer to kind of planning for a family. All right, guys, I hope you enjoyed the episode. If you did, be sure to subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, leave a written review, and I hope to bring you more fitness, nutrition, health, and productivity focused content down the line. Be sure to follow me

across various socials, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Threads, X, all of them, and engage with me by sharing this to your Instagram story, tagging me, telling me that you liked it. I will happily say thank you myself. Have an awesome day and enjoy. you