Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 376: too MUCH creatine, PCOS, Emotional Eating + More!

Episode Date: July 17, 2024

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Hey, everybody, welcome in to another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. As always, I'm your host, Danny Matranga. And in this episode, episode 376, we will be discussing creatine supplementation. High dose creatine supplementation. Is there an amount of creatine that is too high? I will share some updates on my 10 gram a day creatine supplementation. Is there an amount of creatine that is too high? I will share some updates on my 10 gram a day creatine experience. I'm going to share my opinion on emotional eating, how you can manage it, my non-informed, non-therapist take, of course. We'll talk quite a bit about PCOS and insulin resistance, how you can lose weight, what one should do when looking to lose

weight while battling either PCOS or type 2 diabetes, my Costco essentials, what I get from America's favorite warehouse store every time I go, as well as some stuff on nutrient timing, imposter syndrome in the world of coaching, fat loss without losing muscle, ozempic, and much, much more. Thanks for tuning in. This is again episode 376. Enjoy. 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. LMNT 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 Element's 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. Okay, folks. So getting into the questions today, as always, these are your listener questions. I've pulled these from listeners who follow me over on Instagram, who ask questions there. Maybe they don't listen to the podcast, but they definitely follow me there. I know a lot of you have

cross-pollinated, but speaking of which, if you want that short form social media content and you want your question answered here, yes, there is Instagram, but I would be remiss if I didn't bring up all the awesome stuff we've been working on over on the YouTube channel. We have tons of fantastic new videos for you on the YouTube channel, longer form stuff. So like if you enjoy what we do here on the podcast, getting into detail in fitness, you'll probably love the stuff we have over on the YouTube channel. We have a step-by-step guide to your first workout, everything you need to know about shoulder training. We have a posterior chain guide, as well as everything you'd need to know about training to develop the have a posterior chain guide as well as everything you'd

need to know about training to develop the glutes, the lats, et cetera. A video exclusively on squat depth, a video breakdown of my favorite pieces of cardio equipment, how I grocery shop, full upper body workouts, warmups, lower body workouts, warmups, tons and tons and tons of stuff all over on the YouTube. So definitely check that out. If you enjoy the podcast, if you like things that are longer form, you will love the YouTube. Okay. First question comes from Amber Armstrong and her question is, is there such a thing as too much creatine? Didn't realize my pre had five grams, she means pre-workout, and was taking it separate as well. Okay. So Amber, great question. Let's assume Amber's taking a five gram serving as well as getting five grams from her pre-workout. That's 10 grams. That is double

the clinically effective dose or the clinical effective dose. That does not mean that it is unhealthy or dangerous. Remember, the dose makes the poison. So what can we say about a 10 gram dose of creatine? Well, we know that three to five grams is ideal for reaching saturation. That's the kind of short-term, day-to-day use of creatine, or I should say the long-term, really, use of creatine. Three to five grams every day maintains saturation in athletes. That's probably all most of us need. Now, is taking 10 grams a day potentially

dangerous? Absolutely not. And we know this because the preliminary research done on creatine, before we knew that you could reach saturation with a three to five gram dose, most people started with what was called a loading phase, where they would take 10, 15, even 20 grams of creatine a day, usually mixed in something sugary like juice. And the thing is, juice is supposed to help shuttle the creatine into the muscle tissue. And, you know, I get it. 20 grams a day sounds like a lot, but that I think speaks to the safety of creatine. You can take five times the maintenance dose, four times, three times the maintenance dose to quote unquote load and read saturation more quickly with few ill effects. I've actually been taking 10 grams of

creatine most days. I'll be honest, I've fallen off. Thankfully, Legion, the supplement company I most prefer, just launched a brand new creatine only product. So this is just creatine monohydrate. They had before this a recharge creatine L-carnitine corsolic acid blend, which is super amazing for recovery and not feeling sore. That's like a premium product that contains creatine. They also just launched a standalone creatine. So now that that's up and running and I've ordered like 10 bottles for myself, I'm back to 10 grams a day. I had been finishing a bottle of thorn creatine that was left at my studio in addition to my daily serving of recharge to get to 10 grams a day. And I ran out about a week before the Legion product dropped. So I've been doing that

for about three months with maybe 10 days off. I've been back on the 10 grams. Here's what I'll tell you. I haven't noticed much in terms of change of strength, in terms of change of cognition, in terms of change of muscularity from switching from five to 10 grams. I will say, I guess I'm a little bit disappointed. I was hoping I might find a little bit more on the other end of it, but I am committed to trying to do this for a full six months. I'm definitely holding on to some strength and muscularity and still building size. I have been training really hard though, so it's hard to kind of discern what's what. But one thing

is for sure, I didn't have any negative issues from supplementing with that amount of creatine. I didn't have any hair loss. I didn't have any problems with skin. I didn't have any problems with digestion. I didn't have any of the problems people typically associate with creatine. And so while I think that creatine at 5, 10, 15, 20 grams a day is safe, that creatine at 5, 10, 15, 20 grams a day is safe. I just haven't had much luck getting more out of 10 grams than I did five. So I think I'm going to keep going for three more months and follow up with you guys on this. But if you are listening and you're curious, I would just use this to inform that, hey, creatine is probably super safe, especially if I stick to the three to five gram a day dose.

That's where most people are going to be successful. I will say the smaller you are, the closer you can probably be to three grams. And the bigger you are, the closer you could be to five. And if you're somebody who's using like performance enhancing drugs or you're huge or super jacked, hey, who's to say you can't get away with 10? I'm doing 10 just fine on my frame and I'm like 5'9", 190. Okay. Next question comes from Spinning Vinyl Gold. And the question is, how do you stop emotional eating? And so I'll speak to this from a trainer standpoint, because I'm not a therapist and I can't really help you manage your emotions, right? This isn't psychological advice. This is just advice advice. This is

just advice from somebody who is coaching and has coached for a very long time. People whose emotions often dictate their food decisions, which is to say pretty much everybody. One thing I've learned in the many years I've been coaching is that food is a very available tool for coping with a variety of uncomfortable feelings, whether that's boredom, anxiety, stress. We often turn to food to break that up. And some of the most common foods that we turn to in these moments are ultra-processed, hyper-palatable foods that contain many different oils and sugars and additives that confer tremendous caloric weight and flavor to the product. So they're very, very rewarding to the brain.

And this can create a feedback loop of when I seek to escape boredom or anxiety, stress or depression, sadness, you name it, I can turn to food. And to me, this qualifies as emotional eating. I am eating to assuage an uncomfortable feeling or emotion. And one thing that I think is really important to do to succeed in these moments, again, this isn't advice as a psychologist, this is advice as a trainer, is identify the pattern. Be honest that it's happening. You're asking this question, so it's a great start, but it's good to have a dialogue. Hey, I'm rummaging through the pantry. Why? Oh, because I'm bored. Oh, maybe I'm a little anxious. Having a dialogue is a great first step. When you catch yourself in your home or at work or wherever you have a tendency to eat things you

probably ought not to, and you catch yourself, ask the question, what am I doing this for? What am I hoping to get out of this? What am I feeling internally? And is it hunger? If it's not hunger, and in many people's case, the goal that they want to have, or the reason their emotional eating is a problem, is because they want to lose weight, right? So you might ask a question like this or begin to initiate a dialogue like this. I see myself going to grab food. Is this emotional? Yes. Okay. Would I be more likely to have this uncomfortable emotion if I were fitter or if I keep doing things and engaging in behaviors that will keep

me from reaching my fitness goals. Oh, okay. The food I'm grabbing is not only going to, you know, keep, take me further away from my goals, but it's only a temporary fix for this emotion. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to make a better choice, which brings me to like the second thing you should do here, which is, you know, give yourself alternatives or design your environment entirely to better manage these emotions. If you're stressed and you grab an apple, that's a very different thing from being stressed and opening up a sleeve of Oreos, right? One of them can do a lot more damage. So I think having a good dialogue and designing your environment appropriately are things you can do to manage the emotional pull we have to eat. However, I do think it's important that you address the underlying thing, which is the emotion, which is why I often recommend

counseling, meditating, some people call counseling therapy, whatever you want to call it, meditating, getting outdoors, getting outside yourself, being in nature, meditating, some people call counseling therapy, whatever you want to call it, meditating, getting outdoors, getting outside yourself, being in nature, volunteering, finding hobbies, do things that bring happiness, joy, connection, fulfillment, openness, self-awareness into your life. Many of us live life pretty blind and pretty unaware to how our emotions and our feelings and our egos dictate our decision-making. And most of us, myself included, are not fully equipped to explore all of the elements of our psychology, of our psyche, of our ego alone. And we can better connect with these things in nature, with a therapist, through meaningful

hard work, through exercise. There's so many ways to cultivate connection to the self and self-awareness. But if your day looks mostly like rushing, stressing, bouncing from task to task to task, and you're constantly feeling things like the pull of technology, stress, anxiety, maybe sadness or boredom when you aren't able to stimulate your brain with these high frequency activities. In the food environment we live in, food is almost always going to be your best coping tool. And so learning to regulate those emotions is critical. Okay, question from Anna Victoria. A friend asked me if she should take creatine,

but she doesn't train or eat properly. She's very inconsistent. I think she thinks creatine will be a magic pill. Should she take it? I would say yes, she should take creatine, but it's not a magic pill. Anybody can benefit from taking creatine if they're active. Anybody can benefit from taking creatine if they're active. In fact, most aging adults, even if they are inactive, probably would benefit from taking creatine purely for the short-term memory and cognition benefits associated with creatine. Now, the more active you are and the more you engage in anaerobic exercise, which is of course exercise like lifting weights, sprinting, the more creatine seems to help. Creatine powers like the first 10 to 12 seconds of explosive activity. It lowers

blood sugar. It helps bring other fuel into tissue. It helps hydrate muscles. It can raise DHT without affecting things like skin and hair. And it has an insanely mild safety profile, one of the safest supplements you can take. So even an inconsistent resistance trainee, like your friend, will still benefit from it. But if she's inconsistent with her training and inconsistent with her creatine, then she won't benefit much at all. inconsistent with her creatine, then she won't benefit much at all. Just like we need to train consistently and eat consistently to get the benefit out of training and nutrition, we also need to supplement consistently. And one thing that's true of creatine is taking it for like one week and then stopping for a week and then 10 days and stopping for a month and forgetting to

take it, like many people forget to take vitamins, that will render creatine substantially less effective and it won't be able to help you as much in reaching your fitness goals. So your friend's bigger problem is inconsistency. The creatine might help, but I just wouldn't expect all that much considering all the things you just outlined. Okay. Another question from a Victoria. This is from Victoria12272017. Question is how to lose weight with PCOS and insulin resistance. So let's break this out into two categories. First, for anyone listening who has PCOS, who has clients with PCOS, loved ones with PCOS, wants to learn about PCOS. I strongly recommend going back into the podcast library here and diving into the

episodes I've done interviewing Lyle McDonald. Lyle is an OG kind of underground badass in the fitness space, a super genius when it comes to all things female physiology. He definitely understands the menstrual cycle, female anatomy, female physiology, and the interplay between nutrition, training, and those things better than just about anybody. He and I slam for three hours between a couple different podcasts on the nuances of PCOS. I think you'll find that super duper helpful if you want to learn more. But just to kind of short dive, not deep dive into PCOS today, there's a few things you need to remember. The first is that it's diagnosed via the Rotterdam criteria, which only assumes a patient has two of three conditions. They do not need to have all three, but they need to have

at least two of the following. Cysts on the ovaries, elevated testosterone, or let's say dysregulated androgens, and elevated blood sugar, or let's say insulin resistance. If a woman has two of those three, she qualifies to be labeled PCOS, which is why oftentimes women with PCOS are treated with metformin. It's a drug that helps with insulin sensitivity. It's hard to treat cysts on ovaries. It's hard to regulate elevated androgens, but it's pretty easy to regulate blood sugar. 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. 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. When it comes to weight loss or insulin, well, let's take the second part of

the question. When it comes to insulin resistance, that is just one component of PCOS, but it's probably the component that plays the biggest role in the challenge so many PCOS women have with losing weight. Being insulin resistant can make appetite regulation very difficult. It can make it hard to manage blood sugar, and that alone can make weight loss very challenging. Having stable blood sugar is very helpful for having a regular appetite and satiety signals that are working as they should. PCOS women are often benefited, in my opinion, by the elevated androgen levels if they do present as having that kind of phenotype or genotype in this case. Are they symptomatic in that they have a gently elevated testosterone level? If so, they'll respond really well to weightlifting.

They'll respond really well to exercise, both of which help tremendously with increasing insulin sensitivity. We talked in episode 375 about glucose disposal agents and GDAs that are often used by individuals who want to better regulate insulin, not just the prescription type or pharmaceutical type metformin, but things like berberine and products like glucovantage. And I'm not recommending any of those, but you'll often see women who have PCOS, they receive advertisement for hormone balancing supplements that promote, hey, it'll regulate blood sugar and androgens. And usually they contain things like ashwagandha and inositol. I would say the best thing you can probably do as a PCOS woman with insulin resistance

is find a doctor who can help you manage each of those individual criterion for which you're positive. Maybe it's all three, maybe it's just two, whatever. Find a physician who will help you and work with you on managing the symptoms of PCOS. Because while weight loss tends to be more difficult for people with type 2 diabetes, it's totally possible. And it does, again, come down to very reasonable and very consistent exercise and dietary practices. All right. Brooklyn Gonzalez asks, your Costco essentials, food and drink. So for those of you who maybe are not from America or don't have a Costco near you, Costco is a warehouse store in the United States where you pay an annual

membership around a hundred dollars, uh, depending on the tier of membership you have, I guess it could be more or less, but the goal of, or the benefit of the membership is to get access to the warehouse store where you get tremendous value on bulk products. Costco sells you items at pretty steep discounts because you're buying them in bulk, usually because the manufacturer has a great contract with Costco to get product to them at a pretty badass rate that they pass on to you. They make a lot of their money on the membership. So check it out. Here's what I get from Costco and you can get many of these products other places. We'll start with the beverages.

I almost always buy these four beverages, especially now that they have them all at Costco. The two that I like the most are Spindrift, which are a sparkling water that contains zero artificial sweeteners, zero stevia, zero really intense carbonation. I'm not so worried about the artificial sweeteners or the stevia. I know some of you are concerned about the health benefits or the taste of either. I am not so much concerned about those, but things like LaCroix or products like LaCroix tend to be so carbonated, they mess up my stomach. So, Spindrifts, I found, are fantastic because they have a lower carbonation. And additionally, they do use real fruit to flavor the product, which I love. Not because, again, I'm terrified of these artificial sweeteners, but more just that LaCroix tastes like fucking nothing.

And Spindrifts tend to taste quite good and have between like three to 10 calories a can. artificial sweeteners, but more just that LaCroix tastes like fucking nothing. And spin drifts tend to taste quite good and have between like three to 10 calories a can. Costco has them in four flavors, pink lemonade, lemon, lime, and grapefruit. They're all really good. The other thing I almost always get is Chobani Complete. Chobani Complete's like a 20 gram protein shake with probiotics, comes in a couple berry flavors. There's only 170 calories per shake with 20 grams of protein, meaning 80 calories comes from protein. That's 45% of the total calories in the product coming from protein. So I can have in my lunch two Spindrift and one Chobani Complete to really flavor up my fluid intake,

and it's less than 200 calories. Another two of my favorites that I've been getting recently, especially because it's summer, is just the kombucha and the coconut water. I really love the taste of coconut water. I think it's super tasty. The electrolytes are cool. They're a nice benefit, but I do tend to supplement with LMNT. I literally just like sipping on iced coconut water. And I really like the kombucha trios that they have there from either brand, whether it's Brew Doctor or Health Aid, I find both of the kombuchas that Costco has right now are pretty high quality. Now, for the non-beverage stuff, I always load a ton up on fruits and vegetables. So we always get big bags of spinach. This time we also got some frozen mixed vegetables.

These are carrots, rice, and corn and green beans that we often mix into rice. We got the frozen organic berry blend of blackberries, blueberries, and raspberries. I buy that two bags at a time because I go through about 10 pounds a month on that. I guess it's eight pounds a month. Each bag is four pounds. I go through two huge bags of apples. This is my wife and I, we got a huge watermelon, bananas, oranges, tomatoes, and avocados. That's kind of our main produce. Those things are staples all year, especially the frozen fruit. As for the protein, the absolute staples are Greek yogurt. We get the 0% fat, low fat cottage cheese, hemp hearts, chia seeds, the pasture raised eggs. We almost always get the frozen wild caught salmon, frozen chicken

breast or chicken thighs. And then I get at least one to two nights a week's worth of red meat from the deli counter. We usually go to Costco once a month to load up on the essentials. And then once every 10 days or so to load up on things that we might need in the more short term. Oftentimes, that could be beef, but we're not like strangers to getting the beef from the butcher. But for the most part, that's what we like. Okay. Achilles.self wants to know, what's the word on eating before bed? Timing, studies. Okay. So in terms of fat loss, eating before bed, and it really doesn't make a big difference directly, right? There's nothing wrong with calories at night or carbohydrate at night. The problem tends to be insulin spikes too close to bed. Calories are what makes you gain fat,

not spiking insulin. What challenges a lot of people is late night eating, spiking insulin, and that making deep sleep harder to come by, and it disrupting natural circadian biology. The thought is that humans used to eat mostly during daylight hours and not late into the evening. And eating late into the evening might signal to the body that, hey, this food is to be turned into fuel. We need to use this. And a lot of sleep scientists and sleep experts will recommend pushing your sleep or your final meal off, you know, keeping it within at least, you know, two hours of your desired bedtime because of its ability to influence your circadian biology. So I would just try to avoid big feedings to, you know, one to two hours before bed. For some of you guys, I understand that's totally not practical,

but I just want to make sure that you guys, you know, have the information you need. It might not be ideal to eat that close to bed. It might be a situation where in which, you know, I, you don't have a choice. It's either miss the macros or have the meal. I don't know how much it's going to affect your sleep, probably just a little bit. So I wouldn't freak out about eating too close to bed, but the science says when it comes to optimal sleep, try not to eat like immediately before bed. But when it comes to optimal sleep, try not to eat like immediately before bed. But when it comes to fat loss, all that really matters is calories across the whole day. Okay. Next question comes from coach Lou Jan strength. His question is how to navigate imposter syndrome in the world of

coaching. Um, so easy question here. Do you feel that imposter syndrome is bad or do you feel that imposter syndrome is maybe indicating that you have room to grow? I think a lot of people misrepresent this feeling of being like subpar or inadequate or not good enough as being their natural barometer for, you know, wanting to be better. Do you have imposter syndrome? Maybe. Or do you have a room to improve? Absolutely. So who's to say you can't be humble and successful? You know, I know a lot of coaches who allow the room to improve or the fact that they're not truly yet an expert and haven't had enough reps, stop them from trying. That's really dumb. You're never

going to be good enough to get started. You know, like a lot of people will use it. We have to be an expert to get started. Then you'll never get started because you can't be an expert without, you know, eating shit and trying it. And so the best way to manage imposter syndrome is just acknowledge, okay, I have room to grow. This feeling inside me of not being good enough is because I'm aware of the deficits in my own knowledge. That's fine. But I still need to get reps. I need to go out and do it. It's like every golfer who starts sucks, but you got to play to get better. And I think you got to just admit that it's okay to be aware of your deficits. Maybe it'll be so hard on yourself, but get out there and do the thing. Okay. Vero Perrin wants to know how to lose fat without

losing muscle. This is a really common question, especially with like Ozempic being really big and people talking a lot about lean mass loss or muscle loss with Ozempic. And I do think the solution here is pretty easy and it creates a little bit of a positive feedback loop. The first thing you should definitely do is consume more protein. Consuming more protein is huge for increasing dietary adherence. It keeps you full and it helps you hold on to muscle. So the protein thing is amazing. It's going to help keep you full and in a deficit, but it's also going to trigger muscle protein synthesis, whole body protein synthesis. You got to lift weights. If you want to hold on to muscle, you need to lift weights or at least do some type of body weight training. The more

frequently you do it, the better. You probably don't want to do it daily, but for most people, you want to do it like three to five times a week. We talked a little bit about the supplement creatine on the podcast today. That is always a fantastic option for people who are wanting to enhance muscularity or recovery from muscle, you know, centric training sleep again, another topic huge for muscle growth and recovery. There's really no reason to freak out about muscle loss during a weight loss phase. If you get adequate protein intake, focus on sleep and train your body, of course, we'll lose some muscle, but that is oftentimes the price to pay. All right, guys, I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did do me a favor, hit subscribe,

follow me on Apple podcasts or Spotify, follow me on YouTube, Instagram X, all those platforms, and be sure to share this to your story and tag me so I can say thanks. I'll catch you on the next one.