Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 373: AG1 + Organic *SCAM*?, Losing The Last Few Pounds, Squat Depth + More

Episode Date: June 26, 2024

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Welcome in everybody to another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. As always, I'm your host, Danny Matranga. And in this episode, episode 373, I'm going to be answering your questions as well as diving into some of my favorite summer activities for staying in shape here in the Northern Hemisphere. We are heading into summer enjoying the wonderful weather and outdoor activities that come with it. Some of my favorite things for putting my health, fitness, and productivity first are actually activities that get me outside that promote better behavior long-term. Being outside is huge for me. I think it'll be huge for you. We're talking all about weight loss, particularly stubborn fat loss, as well as improving squat form, water retention while taking creatine, as well as some key terminology around understanding water retention better. I'm going to give you my opinion on athletic greens and Organifi and similar products, as well as talk about calorie restriction kind of maximums in terms of the most intense dieting strategies one could deploy.

All right, guys, 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 Alimenti 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,

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Okay, folks. So getting into the kind of first portion of the episode, I want to talk about some of my favorite activities that you can use and kind of, you know, add to your schedule during the summer to get out more, to move more, to encourage more creativity. There's definitely something amazing that happens when we spend more time outside, more time in nature, when we get a little bit of sun. And I live in California, so I'm very spoiled. We have access to this kind of stuff most of the year. But a lot of you live in climates that are more seasonal. And from you know, from spring into early fall, you get that really nice weather where you can get outside and really enhance, you know, being in shape. One of the best things about pursuing health or being in good health

is the ability to take it outside. Gyms are very cool, but some of my favorite things to do to get in shape and stay in shape over the summer include getting outside. I really like walking, especially walking with friends, walking with the dogs, or walking places that are outside. This can be things like parks. This can be things like outdoor markets. We have a number of places here where I live in Sonoma County where there's a lot of places to kind of get out and walk around with your dog. And there's places to grab a bite to eat or get a glass of wine, very outdoorsy. So opting into doing stuff like that on the weekends, in place of maybe streaming a show or binging a couple episodes, opting to get outside, get moving, moving with my family, moving with the dogs. Another thing that you can do this time of year that I absolutely love

is to take advantage of hiking, backpacking, or rucking. These are all forms of kind of walking in essence that add a degree of load and incline and some rugged terrain. Hiking is essentially hiking with bare minimum. Rucking is adding weight strategically to a hike. And backpacking is backpacking with the required things to camp or to eat or make camp while hiking. These three things all burn a tremendous amount of calories. They give you access to some of the best nature in your area, especially if you have proximity to things like state or national parks or nature preserves where hiking is allowed. You know, two, three, four, five mile hikes sound rather daunting when compared to like running the equivalent distance. and through nature can make these things less arduous. And again, it gives you the chance to get off your phone, to get additional movement, to get exposure to the outside world, which tends to be something super, super positive. Another thing that I absolutely love, I definitely

recommend this for clients who are older or anybody who just wants to generally improve their mobility is to include some swimming. Swimming is great for the core, for the hip flexors, for the lats, for the core, for the hip flexors, for the lats, for the glutes. It's a very, very demanding form of aerobic exercise. If you are not good at swimming, simply engaging in like a little bit of lap swimming will absolutely torch you in terms of how many calories you burn due to the inefficiency. Great exercise, always, always nice to do when it's warm outside. If again, the weather is permitting. Other things that I really like to do that are quite active are things like botanical gardens, museums, and art galleries. Typically you will get a lot of steps as you peruse different exhibits

and look at different things in museums, galleries, etc. It's cerebral. It gets your brain thinking. Again, it gets you off of your phone. You'll notice a theme here. It's something you can do with your family. It's something you can do with your partner. It's something you can do as part of or a date all on its own. I think that things like museums and national parks and art galleries kind of get forgotten about in a very tech-centric streaming feed me content culture. But having just returned from Washington DC about a month ago, I can tell you those things are really pleasant. And while those are some of the best museums in the world, you might have cool stuff right around where you live, whether that again is a national

park, maybe it's a state park, maybe it's a museum, something where you can get out and walk around compared to so much of the activity we do from home that is restricted. I find all of these things are amazing to do in the summer and oftentimes I even plan trips or travel around being active. During this time of year, I like to specifically find ways to take advantage of the weather and during the time of year, I like to specifically find ways to take advantage of the weather. And during the times of year where the weather's not so good, I often travel where the weather is good. I just love being outside and taking advantage of the natural world around me. I think it is one of the best ways to encourage staying in shape long term.

Okay, so we're going to dive into some questions now, guys. These questions were all fielded over on my Instagram. So if you'd like to have your question featured here on the podcast, what you can do is head over to my Instagram, danny.matranga, give me a follow, and make sure that you pay attention during the week for my stories. I regularly will drop a story where I have a question box where you can ask your question of me for the pod. You can also send me a DM, but you're way less likely to have me see it than if you wait for that question box. I screenshot a lot of the good ones and save them right here for the show. I also, every once in a while,

will turn one of them into a YouTube video, and that ends up being a very educational opportunity as well. So do go ahead and check out the YouTube. Okay, so this question comes from Fit45x2, and the question is, I'm so close to my goal. The last three pounds won't go away. What to do to get past the last three pounds won't go away, what to do to get past the last three pounds. So let's first just kind of expand this range to talk about like maybe the last three to 10 pounds that many people struggle to lose when they start a weight loss journey. Many people come to me saying, hey, you know, I want to lose 30 pounds. I would say in general that the first 20 are easier than the last 10.

And it might be the case that the first 20 are equivalent to the last 10, meaning it's as easy to burn the first 20 as it is to burn the last 10. That's with an example of 30 pounds. So I can empathize with this. I see this a lot in my coaching practice. And I think there's a few different reasons why this happens. Let's talk about the first one, the elephant of the room that is metabolic adaptation. This is the body's natural adaptation to restriction of calories. When you restrict calories for a long time, and I mean long time, I really want you to think when I say long time, multiple weeks of consistent dieting that is tracked, not multiple weeks of kind of being on a diet. What we can see in the literature

is that when people who are certainly on a diet because of these quite literal, you know, experimental parameters, we need to examine these people. When they've been in a deficit for long enough, there is downregulation of metabolism, which is a fancy way of saying people start to burn less calories. We'll talk in a minute about where that comes from and how the body makes those decisions, executively what it cuts, so to speak. But there is downregulation after some time in a deficit. The good news is it's not massive, and things like movement can offset this big time. But many people are concerned that if they've dieted for a long time or have a history of dieting, that their metabolism might adapt quickly when they go into

a deficit and resist fat loss. This does not tend to be the case for most people, but for people who do have severe metabolic adaptations, some time at maintenance or even in a slight surplus can allow some of these metabolic constrictions to ease, shall we say. Now, if you'd like to learn a little more about this physiology specifically, I would definitely encourage strolling through the episodes of this podcast that I've done with Dr. Eric Trexler. Dr. Trexler and I have spoken a few times specifically on the topic of how the metabolism responds to chronic dieting. And I think you guys will find that very fascinating. But there is, of course, some validity to the fact that if you've been losing weight, your metabolism likely has constrained slightly.

But I think we can get three pounds or 10 pounds or however much off if we look at this a different way. So let's talk about typically what happens as people diet long term in terms of adherence. One thing we see for sure is there tends to be a loosening of adherence around things like weighing food, tracking food, and doing kind of the small, granular, nitty-gritty things that drive success. It is a little bit unfortunate, but it's definitely the case that many people start a diet with a ton of excitement and they're really amped. They're attacking it in their way and everything, and they're really amped. They're attacking it in their way and everything, and they're getting great results. But then life kind of pops up and they maybe take a day off or a meal off here or there. There's a loosening that occurs over time. And this is normal. And I'm sure many of you are listening like, yeah, that sounds like me. I'm hot for like

two to three weeks. Now, for many of you, what happens over time is the loosening becomes, you know, a little bit too pervasive. Maybe the food scale goes away. Maybe the mentality of, I know how many calories in this kind of starts to eke in. And the problem is your body and your brain are kind of going to want to overfeed you anyway. And all the evidence we have about people's ability to guess tends to point us in the direction that people are just awful at guessing. So if your last three pounds are going to be more difficult for a variety of reasons, I would say one thing you can do immediately to get control of this

is to ask yourself the question, am I tracking with that same level of intensity I was before? The answer to that is no, I would get back to doing that as quickly as possible because it can make a huge, huge difference. Now, something else that is worth considering is where do these constrictions in metabolism come from when we are on a deficit for a long time? And I like to look at some of the work done by James Krieger, who's thrown weighted vests on folks after they've lost a little bit of weight and said, hey, you know, if somebody loses 10 pounds and their metabolism constrains, we throw that 10 pound weight vest on, we see their

metabolism kind of bounce back. Could it, in fact, be the case that some of these constraints are tied to losses in body mass? So that's definitely a huge factor. You weigh less. So in general, you have less energy to expend from a smaller body. Now, another thing that does tend to happen is our non-exercise activity, thermogenesis, our knee, our fidgeting, our tapping, our dancing when music comes on, that stuff, all of that non-planned exercise movement, that gets ratcheted way down too. Our body starts to kind of turn that down. So those are the two ways that our metabolism tends to constrain. And if you have been loose on tracking and maybe doing a little bit less neat inadvertently, adding a weighted vest, some walks, some things like that

can really kickstart it to get that last little bit of weight. You can also consider adding cardio and things that suppress appetite like caffeine or yohimbine. But I would really, really recommend getting as accurate as you can on your tracking first. Okay, this question comes from Britt Kujowski. And the question is, how do you improve your squat form? So most people, when they talk about squat form and wanting a quote unquote better squat, what they're really after is a kind of full range of motion, ass to grass squat, where their glutes travel really far down, like all the way down to the point where they touch their calves. Okay. they touch their calves. Okay. And that is not going to happen for most people, unfortunately,

because one of the things required to have a truly deep ass to grass squat is you have to have a pretty low center of gravity, or you have to have amazingly upright posture and great, you know, thoracic extension. You have to have super buttery mobile hip capsules, probably a short femur, probably just generally be shorter. For certain people who are super tall, have really long femurs, not very mobile ankles, bad T-spine, you know, those are the things to work on. But the best thing you can have for great squat form is to just be short with short femurs and great ankle mobility. What's going on, guys? 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. 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. So what a lot of you are going to have to work on here are the non-changeable variables. You can't change the length of your femur. You can't change your height. So those two things are set. The things that most lifters tend to need to work on to, you know, improve their squat.

I actually talked a ton about this in a recent YouTube video, all about increasing squat depth. We talked about the different architecture, the bony architecture, the ligamentous stuff, the muscular stuff. Definitely go over to my YouTube and check that out. If you want to squat deeper, send that to yourself, watch it later. You'll definitely enjoy it. It's pretty much a perfect breakdown, but I'll give you some of the key points. So one of the main joints to improve the depth of your squat that's worth addressing is the ankle. The further the tibia or the shin can travel over the toe, the better the squat tends to be. Now, if your calf tissue and ankle tissue is really tight, the knee might not travel very far over the toe, which is a problem, okay? But it is worth noting

that if you wear a squat shoe, use a squat wedge, or improve your ankle mobility, you get some artificial transfer from the wedges and the shoes that resembles the mobility, but one way or another, just giving yourself an advantage there by improving that forward knee travel, by mobilizing the joint with something external or with mobility, you'll get a deeper squat from that right there. The second thing to work on is the strength of your T-spine. Can you keep your torso vertical? Can you keep your T-spine in extension so that you can stay upright in the squat? Collapsing in the squat will shoot the hips back and make it hard to get deep.

So you need to have a strong core and you need to have a strong thoracic extensors. I would also recommend having great hip external rotation. This is something that not a lot of people think about when they think of the squat. But when most people squat, their knees go slightly away from the midline as the hips externally rotate and you drop deep into that squat kind of pocket. If your knees are pointed straight ahead the entire time and you don't get any external rotation, yes, you'll get more quadriceps, but you'll probably struggle to get very deep in your squat. So having strong external rotators and mobile external rotators is a great way to improve

your squat. I think in general, stronger glutes and stronger quads make squatting deeper easier. One of the main limitations people have when it comes to squatting deep with any impressive amount of weight is they just have a weak ass squat. They're very, very weak and lacking strength in the bottom position of the squat and their glutes and quads need to be strengthened to enhance their ability to get out of said position. Lastly, I would say if you want a great squat, the best things you can do are to just squat more, lunge more, and leg press more. Because a huge thing when it comes to squatting and squat depth and squat mobility is just the technicality of the squat. The actual challenge, the skill of the movement itself. Okay. From Kayla Cochran, we have the question, is water retention in subcutaneous tissues common

with creatine use? So good question. Let's talk about subcutaneous water for a second and how that might be different than say intramuscular water. We hear a lot about intramuscular water retention with creatine, and we hear the term, let's say, you know, bloat thrown around a lot. You hear a lot of this stuff, GI. So when it comes to water retention from creatine, are we retaining water in our gut? Are we retaining water in our muscles? Or as this user asks, or this follower asked, are we retaining it in our subcutaneous

tissues, meaning mostly under the skin, between the interstitial space, between our fluids. And with creatine, thankfully, the extra water that we're holding from creatine, that is going to be stored in our muscle cells, which is exactly where we want it. is going to be stored in our muscle cells, which is exactly where we want it. We want to have fuller muscles. We want to get better pumps. We want to have more ATP in our working muscles. And creatine specifically pulls water into our muscle tissues. Now, other things like salt can cause retention of subcutaneous water. You guys are probably familiar with feeling bloated or feeling like you're quote unquote holding a lot of water. Some things can do this. Surprisingly, even being dehydrated can cause water retention in certain areas of the body, such as the GI tract.

But for creatine specifically, we're talking about retaining that extra water in our muscles. Specifically, we're talking about retaining that extra water in our muscles. So that's good. And that's what we want. All right. This question, why do I not have the name for the person who asked this question? Hold on. I am going to find it. While I find it, just know, folks, this was the Athletic Greens question.

Okay. This is from KH Shill. What is your opinion on green powders, AG1, Organifi, et cetera? So I like greens question. Okay, this is from KH Shill. What is your opinion on green powders, AG1, Organifi, et cetera? So I like greens powder. I take a greens powder. The one I take is called Legion Genesis. The reason I like Legion Genesis is because Legion uses a transparent label, and they include some really nice ingredients that I like. The main two are spirulina and reishi mushroom. Now, before Legion sponsored me, I paid to take this greens powder. I like adding it to smoothies.

I think reishi and spirulina are amazing. And when I've priced them out separately, they are very, very expensive in the doses that I like to take. So Legion's Genesis is giving me three grams of reishi mushroom. That's a lot. When I buy reishi on its own, it's pretty expensive to take three grams a day, okay? I also get five grams of spirulina, which is a full protein, which is pretty badass. So I get five grams of algae protein plus all the incredible benefits of spirulina. It also has matcha, dong chi, and astragalus, which could be good for arthritis. But here's the thing. I really only take it for those two ingredients. It has a bunch of other cool stuff in there, but I'm taking it for those two things that are on the label in the doses they are in.

Things like AG1 and Organifi have other items on their label, but the problem is we don't know how much. And that's where my big gripe comes from as a quote unquote health and fitness enthusiast, influencer, whatever you want to call me. I think companies like this who make so much money should certainly disclose to their customers how much of these ingredients they're using. I think that these companies could do us a solid of telling us how much we are getting of these products. Because if I can get five grams of reishi mushroom or sorry spirulina or three grams of reishi I'd be taking athletic greens I'd be taking Organifi but what I tend to see is a lot of different things too many things and the likelihood of these ingredients meeting that dosage shown in research to be effective is quite low because I can just look at some of the key ingredients and go, well, I would need three grams of that, four grams of that, five grams of that,

and the scoop doesn't even reach that. I also saw a really good video recently from Tony Bloom, Tony Blom, Train Bloom, Blom. Anyway, awesome creator, makes great videos. He compared AG1's vitamin profile to the vitamin profile, or shall we say micronutrient profile of a Walmart multivitamin. And for the most part, the vitamin had a better micronutrient profile. So it's like Athletic Greens is a pretty average to below average multivitamin with some plant additives that could be health promoting, but the company is not telling me how much I'm getting and for what I would pay, for what I would be paying to use that product, I want to know. I want to know what I'm getting. So I'm pretty big on that. And I think they should tell you guys as customers, Because one of the things I tend to think when I see that specific or explicit

type of labeling, what we would call proprietary blend, where they're hiding the dosage, they're not telling you, they put an asterisk next to it. I always think that that has to do with the company wanting to withhold information, which I personally don't love. And I would want to stay away from the price. But I do think in general, if you eat enough green vegetables, you can probably skip the greens powders altogether. One of the best ways to do this is to just add a little bit of kale, a little bit of spinach into a smoothie that you would make with like protein powder, fruit, banana, whatever, and just sneak some greens in there. That way you can get two

or three servings of greens and save quite a bit of money. Actually give a little fiber. I'm a pretty big fan of that. Okay. So gen fit 50, last question, what is the maximum calorie deficit you would put someone on? So this is a really good question, and it depends a lot on the feedback that we are getting and the goals of the client. So you can always tell that a deficit is too intense when somebody gets super cold all the time, when they start losing hair, when their training goes to shit, when they can't sleep, when they're feeling irritable. Youficits are pretty clear and obvious. No, not to get legal about it. They're pretty clear and obvious when somebody is in one. It's

one of the most obvious and in-your-face kind of things. You can just almost feel it. And when they get really intense, they really start to wear you down. And I think that's a great indicator when your biofeedback is trashed, not sleeping good, not feeling good, training's really dipping, super irritable, super hungry, super cold, hair falling out, you've gone too far. Now, for most people, specifically women who tend to be smaller, you'll have to restrict calories lower. For men who are bigger and super active, you'll have to restrict calories lower. For men who are bigger and super active, you might have to restrict a lot, but from a higher total. And one thing that's really challenging is at extreme levels of restriction, I think, especially for females,

I see this with my clients a lot, because they have a smaller body mass and we have to generally start from fewer calories, the restriction can really start to rob them of important nutrients. So for women especially, you want to be aware if to be in a deficit because of my height and maybe my activity level and my starting weight, you know, I'm already at 1500 calories maybe. That doesn't give me a ton of opportunity and nutrient diversity to get a bunch of nutrition. So you want to make sure that you prioritize nutrient density, maybe take vitamins to supplement appropriately. Because even for women who are in an appropriate deficit for their size, the requisite caloric intake makes it hard to get

the right nutrition. So we want to avoid malnutrition. It's a long way of saying that. So make sure that the deficit that you're in isn't so extreme that you're malnourished. And if you're smaller and need a pretty small calorie total to actually be in a deficit, definitely make sure that you have nutrient-dense foods in your diet and maybe supplement. Now, for most people, 500 calories below their total daily energy expenditure represents a pretty good deficit. It's going to be just low enough that they start to lose weight, but not so low that they go crazy. Things like 200 calories below I think are so low it makes things happen slowly,

and then that really ends up discouraging people and makes adherence more of an issue than you want it to be. So I think 500 is great. Now, sometimes 1,000 can work depending on the individual, especially if they're like a bigger dude and maybe they maintain on like 3,500 and you bring them to 2,500, they'll lose weight really fast. But you tend to experience more of those symptoms of fatigue, lethargy. However, at 2,500 calories, you're much less likely to be deficient, even just by virtue of surely lucking into some micronutrients. That being said, I think the sweet spot is kind of personal. Many people have the grit and the mental toughness to push as high as 1,000 calories below maintenance. But I would say I think the

sweet spot for many people is going to be between 350 and 750 below their total daily energy expenditure. All right, folks, I hope you enjoyed that episode. If you did, be sure to subscribe to the podcast. Leave me a five star rating on Spotify or Apple podcasts wherever you listen. And be sure to share this to your Instagram story and tag me so I can say, thanks. I'll catch you on the next one.