Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 63 - The 4 Biggest Nutrition Pitfalls I See

Episode Date: August 21, 2020

In this episode, we talk all about nutrition and how Danny looks at nutrition! We touch base on the biggest mistakes and how to troubleshoot these problems to improve our lifestyle!---Thanks For Listening!---RESOURCES/COACHING:I am all about education and that is not limited to this podcast! Feel free to grab a FREE guide (Nutrition, Training, Macros, Etc!) HERE!Interested in Working With Coach Danny and His One-On-One Coaching Team? Click HERE!Want To Have YOUR Question Answered On an Upcoming Episode of DYNAMIC DIALOGUE? You Can Submit It HERE!Want to Support The Podcast AND Get in Better Shape? Grab a Program HERE!----SOCIAL LINKS:Follow Coach Danny on INSTAGRAMFollow Coach Danny on TwitterFollow Coach Danny on FacebookGet More In-Depth Articles Written By Yours’ Truly HERE!-----TIMESTAMPS:Information about PowerBuild Program 1:41Not Relying Enough on SINGLE Ingredient Foods 5:28Not ACCURATELY Counting Calories 9:48Over Reliance on Supplements 19:40Eating out at restaurants TOO MUCH 25:30Support the Show.

Back in to another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. I am your host, Danny Matrenga, and as always, this is your one-stop shop for quick, informational, educational, evidence-based fitness, nutrition, performance-enhancing tips. Today's episode is going to be all about nutrition. going to be all about nutrition. More specifically, it's going to be about four common nutrition problems I see in my coaching practice. So this isn't going to be an episode where I highlight problems with specific nutritional ideologies like veganism or where I take on a particular macronutrient like protein or carbohydrates. Instead, it's going to be an opportunity for me to share insights directly from my coaching practice. So what that means for you, if you're somebody who's new to all this and just wants to

get in better shape, this is going to be an amazing opportunity for you to learn from the mistakes some of my clients have made and from a lot of what is my job to fix as a coach. I'm also, for those of you who are more hobbyists and enthusiasts, going to share this from a standpoint of, hey, here's how you can troubleshoot this in your own, you know, kind of conventional practice of fitness. And then for you coaches and practitioners, you're going to also kind of get my coaching view and lens with how and kind of you'll see how I deliver this in the podcast today. So there's lots of really cool stuff to talk about today, specifically with nutrition. We'll get to that in a minute. And again, those are four of the most common nutritional problems I see as a coach in my practice. But before we get to that, let me give you a little update on kind of all things where I'm at. So I'm getting closer to launching the Power Build program. I talked about it a little bit on one of my recent podcasts, but we're putting it, the finishing touches on it now. So again, it's a 12-week program, three specific blocks,

one that's more of a linear progression-based maximal strength phase, followed by a block that is conjugate-based, takes inspiration from Louis Simmons, and it's got some elements of speed and power built in. And any of you who've been following me for a while, you'll know I like power, even with Gen Pop clients. I like power work. I think it's fun. I think if performed properly, it has a ton of applications. I think there's a really good way to integrate it into almost anyone's program if you have half of an ounce of creativity as a coach. And it's something that not a lot of people train. So I know that this particular block in PowerBuild is going to be a really, really fun one for those who do it. And then the last block is a hypertrophy block but there's also the

inclusion of specialization days so it's a four day upper lower split across the first eight weeks between the traditional strength phase and that kind of hybrid power phase but the last day is a four day a week hypertrophy program with a specialization day. So at the end of the entire 12 weeks, that 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, those last four weeks, right, or 9, 10, 11, 12, you're going to be able to include a specialization workout to help bring up any lagging body part you want. And they're all baked into the program. And they're all baked in with the kind of understanding that, hey, we need to monitor volume, we want to optimize recovery. So the programming is set up to reflect a higher percentage of volume towards those muscle groups you want to polish up in that last hypertrophy block with a specialization block for glutes and

hamstrings, quads, pecs, lats, arms, and delts. So pretty much what everybody's looking to develop. And I shouldn't say lats, I should say back. And so that's that. If you hear my phone buzzing at all, it's because I'm recording this podcast kind of in the middle of some of these Northern California fires that we've become all too accustomed to. If you're from California, you know what I'm talking about. If you're not, you might have at least seen them on the news. I think on a recent podcast, I brought up the fact that we had crazy lightning, and then we had crazy rain, and then the next day or two, we had crazy wildfires. So California goes pretty hard with the inclement weather, and my phone buzzes quite a bit because they're doing evacuations across

Sonoma County, which is quite broad. I'm not in the evacuation zone. I'm not going to hype up like I am. I'm in a spot that apparently seems quite safe. The sky is still relatively blue. There was a bunch of ash on my plants this morning, but the wind can bring that in, so I feel pretty safe. But the buzzing is constant because they're evacuating zone by zone, and all the kind of phones in the county get an alert when they evacuate one zone, even if that's not your zone. So to all the first responders and firefighters out there, thank you very much for keeping this thing at bay as best you can. I know it's not fun.

I'm sure it's a hell of a lot harder than what I'm doing right now, recording a podcast. But if you're listening, you are appreciated. So without further ado, now that the housekeeping is done, see, this is why I would have normally put a co-host right here if I had like a co-host. They would be saying some banterous, funny, humorous things. But you, you, my dear listener, are my co-host because this is about me and you right now.

We're going to talk about the four most common nutrition problems I see, and I bet you do them, or you're a coach. I bet your clients do them. Hobbyist, you probably do them from time to time, and you know that you do them, but you don't want to talk about it. But we'll just call it like it is. The number one thing I see far and away, far and away, is not relying heavily enough on single ingredient foods

when it comes to putting your diet together. Relying too much on processed foods, packaged foods, prepackaged foods. We'll talk all about that in a minute but the over reliance on other shit has pulled us away from perhaps the single most fundamental easy to change step with i shouldn't say easy to change bang for your buck thing with nutrition and that is this if you made sure that the bulk of your foods that you consumed were created by you put put together by you, using mostly single ingredient foods, you would do pretty damn amazing. What do I mean by that?

And I'll give you a meta example. That means instead of for dinner, instead of having like a pre-packaged salad with a pre-packaged dressing that contains a myriad of ingredients, a box of pre-packaged pasta paired with a, you know, pre-pulled chicken that's been frozen that you're thawing out. Who knows? Versus saying instead, I'm going to have for dinner, steamed broccoli. That's one ingredient. I'm going to have seared ahi tuna, whatever. It sounds good. That's another single ingredient. And I'm going to have baked sweet potato with grass fed butter. Okay, random as hell. Very bro diet, right? Protein, sweet potato and broccoli. who is perhaps still somewhat focused on calories and macros might go out and have a decently macro-friendly meal, but there's a massive reliance on either processed foods, prepackaged foods, or multi-ingredient foods, which in context might be healthier than how most people eat.

But this movement away from single-ingredient foods can become problematic. Simply being able to prepare foods that are healthful in their natural form where they're fully nutritious, they have all their fiber, they've yet to be processed. You know, there's a lot of nutritional errors that we can kind of manage simply by aiming for more single ingredient foods. Aiming for a greater percentage of single ingredient foods in the diet is going to minimize the consumption of processed foods for obvious reasons. None of those in many cases are single or even double ingredient foods, right? It's going to minimize how often we eat out, which we'll talk a little bit more about later. But aiming to consume more single ingredient foods, I think is a really good idea. And it pulls

people away from the other bullshit, which is only eat clean food. Okay, well, we don't necessarily know what clean is. Clean is contextual. For one person, a kale chip, like which are these little fried strips of kale, might be clean compared to a potato chip. But for another person, they might go, well, it's just kale, but it's fried in highly inflammatory oils. And so then to that person, that is not a healthy option. So we don't need to bring semantics into this. Focusing on single ingredient foods kind of removes our natural tendency to gravitate towards things that have a lot of stuff added to them and might be processed. And overall, if body composition and long-term health is of value to

you, focusing on more single ingredient foods might be a positive outcome driven way that you can improve the quality of your nutrition in the long run. And it's one that I think is very easy to understand contextually, even more so perhaps than something like counting macros or even counting calories. Doing that can be arduous and sometimes off-putting to novices, which we never want. And so telling somebody, hey, I want you to focus on using mostly whole foods and trying to prepare them as is. And see if you can simplify your diet by doing that. You know, you have some lean proteins lying around, some quality carbohydrates that are also nutritious lying around,

some veggies lying around, some fruits lying around, maybe some herbs lying around. That's what you got at the grocery store. Make something with those things. Tell me how it is. You know, tell me how full you are. Tell me what those calories end up being. Nine times out of ten, it's more nutritious, generally more macro-friendly, and a little bit less stress than a lot of the ways people end up eating. So that's a really easy, quick one that you can implement that I think not enough people do. So number two is for people who are a bit more advanced. And, you know, even if you're advanced,

like in the context I'm about to describe, you could still focus on single ingredient foods. But number two is not accurately accounting for all calories. I'm a big fan of calorie counting i know it doesn't work for everybody i know you could make the argument that for some people it's you know at at the root of it it could cause some disordered eating tendencies that down the road might not be ideal i'm not here to argue that i understand that no nutritional protocol is perfect and i don't think that you can change or modify your behavior in any way without having some type of consequence, sometimes positive, sometimes unintendedly negative,

right? I'm not here to argue that. But what I will say is I have found it to be very effective with my clients. My clients get great results tracking their calories and accounting for the amount of energy they're putting into their body as a means of losing body fat or gaining muscle. It's been very effective for me. Here's where there are shortcomings though, because again, nothing's perfect. People have a tendency to over represent or over report how much they move in a day. And they tend to under report how much they eat in a day. So let's talk about how this could be functionally problematic for people who are looking to lose weight. They want to get leaner and they think they're doing things right with calories, but it's not quite working. So most people will set up their macros

using an online calculator or they'll use an app and these apps and calculators use activity multipliers. So what these activity multipliers do when you calculate your calories, or when you calculate your macros, you need to figure out approximately what your total daily energy expenditure is. And your total daily energy expenditure is a lump of a bunch of different things, your base metabolic rate, your exercise activity thermogenesis, your non exercise activity thermogenesis, your the thermic effect of food you eat, a lot of different stuff. And so when people input data into these calculators, what's my age, what's my height,

what's my activity level, ends up coming up. And there's often options from sedentary to highly active. And in my experience, people tend to, to no fault of their own, or perhaps there's a little bit of humorous baked into this, they select an activity level that they think they have, but it's not one that truly represents their actual activity level. And it can be quite simple. And by quite simple, I mean this. You might see that the activity multiplier button that's labeled active says active describes people who work with their hands or work outside. And you might read that and go, well, you know, I work outside sometimes. When quite in fact, you're not very active, but you end up selecting active

because you see the term you identify as active. Very few people ever select activity multipliers below their actual activity, meaning people who move a lot tend to be spot on, but people who do not move a lot tend to oftentimes select an activity multiplier on one of these online calculators that puts them a little high. And so the problem with this is you might be counting calories, but you might be shooting an arrow at a target that's in the wrong place. So that's the first problem, right? And we end up over-reporting our activity level through error on the front end. Another thing people tend to do that's quite silly is they add back in calories from wearables like Fitbits or Apple Watches. They go, hey, well, my wearable says I burned 300

calories during that workout. By the way, the wearables are incredibly inaccurate too. If you get anything from this second one, it's that people and devices cannot be trusted to be accurate on a whole hell of a lot of occasions. Anyway, the wearable spits out a number that the person burned and they go, oh, I burned 400 calories. Then they go, well, I'm supposed to eat 1600 plus the 400 I burned. That's 2000. Well, the 1600 number you calculated using that activity multiplier that you might have been wrong about originally, now you're adding calories back in on top of that. And so people end up way off. So that's the first issue going into it is people don't do the accounting work properly on the setup.

When it comes to actually tracking the food, let's say hypothetically, you nailed your macros and your calorie intake targets. Everything is perfect. So long as you hit these macros, you hit these calories, you're going to lose weight, get ripped, get shredded. You've perfected it. You did the ultimate accounting on the front end. All you need to do is weigh your food on the food scale, measure it in cups, whatever you typically do to count your calories.

Maybe you do serving sizes of some prepackaged foods because you haven't heard the first tip of this episode yet. That's fine. The funny thing is, as long as like people could nail the front end and know all they had to do is track perfectly. And I've set people up pretty damn close and been like, hey, all you got to do is track perfectly and you'll probably get right up to that target we're aiming for. They still can't do it. And that's and it's been shown in the science. This isn't to discourage you. If anything, it should make you maybe go, okay, cool.

I'm not the only person who makes these mistakes. I can strive to get better. Because you can totally get results with not perfect tracking. And that's not what I'm saying. I'm not trying to give you an all or nothing here. But the evidence is clear, and I've seen it quite a bit in my practice. When left to their own devices to track people have a tendency to eyeball things to underweigh things to make small miscalculations that end up well that the

end result would actually be them gaining fat but they end up consuming a little bit more calories than they had originally intended sometimes it's through no fault of their own. Sometimes it's getting a little bit lazy, and instead of weighing the food, they eyeball it, and there might be a conscious decision in there when they look at it and they go, oh, that's a little bit more than a tablespoon. Oh, it's okay, I deserve it.

You know, that stuff happens. Literally everybody does it, myself included. But these are the issues I've seen that hold people back i'm not calling anybody out who does this because i'm not going to stand on my high horse and say that i fucking don't i certainly do shit happens part of the reason i know to look out for this stuff is because i make these mistakes and one of the things that i found out in the industry that's quite common is when you have an issue or a problem and you decide to communicate to somebody about it, whether it's another coach, another trainer, or a client, a lot of times they'll go, oh my gosh, I thought I was the only person who did that.

It's nice to know you do it too. And after enough of those, you realize, oh my gosh, human beings have some relatively consistent behaviors that pop up if you leave them to their own devices. And under-reporting their caloric intake happens to be one of those things. Especially if you have a cognitive bias of like, hey, I'm trying to lose weight and I want to eat this. And if it's a smaller portion, which I could technically eyeball, or when I eyeball them, I usually get more than when I weigh them out. You know, those cognitive biased moments can hold you back. So being aware of them and me communicating to you that they might be problematic is a real deal. And coaches, one of the issues that comes up a lot with this is like, okay, I calculated my client's macros perfectly. I know

exactly how many calories they should eat, right? And I gave them these calories and they tell me they're hitting them and they're not losing weight. They got to be overtracking They've got, they've got to be under reporting. I know they're under reporting. I know they're sneaking out. I, I saw on their fucking Instagram story that they went out and they were drinking. And you know, I, people tell me this stuff. Coaches reach out and tell me this go, Hey, how do I communicate that to my client without sounding like, Hey, I know you're lying to me about what you're eating. I, you know, and one of the ways you can do this is you can say, Hey, could you send me some pictures of everything you eat today that you track i want to get a little bit of a visual representation of

what your plate looks like and then you might hold them accountable to the portion control in that mechanism because they go oh snap i can't you know i can't squeeze this one by coach if i have to send them a picture right so that's thing. Another thing that you can do that I really like is just try and be straightforward. And people go, man, you know, I'm eating the calories, but I'm not losing the weight. You say something, you know, scientific, evidence-based, practical, and optimistic,

which is, hey, one of the things that I run into a lot in my practice and that shows up quite a bit in the literature and that shows up quite a bit just around from people I know is a lot of times we think we're eating the right amount of calories, but we're actually underreporting. And you can attach one of these studies, right? When you share this with your client or, you know, look, they put these people in a metabolic ward and they track their calories and sure as shit, they underreport it consistently.

Most of the people in the group did. And then you go, you know, I've seen it a lot. It's not uncommon. I just want to be sure you're tracking everything. Are you sure you're using your food scale? You're this and you're that perfectly. And nine times out of ten, they're going to say, well, now that you mention it,

there have been a couple times where I didn't break out my food scale, which is just code for, yeah, there was probably a couple times where maybe I ordered a pizza and didn't tell you about it. But that is neither here nor there. The important thing is having that moment with that client where you choose to be honest with each other about at what level they're executing and you give them the opportunity to move forward. So you say, hey, cool, well, let's try that. Or, hey, cool, that's going to be the new expectation, is that you really do weigh things out thoughtfully and thoroughly. That's going to be big. And so, guys, that's number two, just doing the math wrong, straight up.

Number three, an over-reliance on supplementation. And I'm going to be very specific about what supplements and why I think an over-reliance on them is bad. Now, before I get into this, let me say this first. I take all of these supplements. So I know what I'm talking about from a mechanistic standpoint. These are mistakes that I've made. These are supplements that I recommend to my clients. But here's why I'm talking about the over-reliance on them and not the supplements themselves. So I have greens powder, but I don't take it every day. I have fish oil, but I don't take it every day. I have whey protein, and I don't drink it every day. But here's where we're going. When you rely so heavily on a supplement like a multivitamin, a greens powder, that you don't eat real greens, that's a problem. When you rely so heavily on fish oil to get omega-3 that you don't eat omega-3 rich foods eat an adequate amount of protein, that could become a problem.

And the reason I say problem is this. When I take a greens powder, I'm getting a lot of nutrition and I'm getting a lot of really good things into my body in a convenient way. Pause. But hear me out. You're missing out on some stuff, right? You're going to miss out on the fiber. You miss out on some of the phytonutrients. You miss out on the ability to incorporate more high volume foods into your diet. High volume foods like green vegetables, cruciferous vegetables, all of that stuff has the ability to add a lot of water, a lot of fiber,

and not a lot of calories. And so if you're somebody who's in a deficit, like, sure, go ahead, take a greens powder, by all means. But why? Why would you? You know, you could just as easily eat those greens and be way more full, get all that fiber, have more food on your plate. That's a plus. But this reliance on supplements, not only do we miss out on the fiber and some of those phytos, but it also mechanistically makes us worse for fat loss. Like if the only green vegetables you're getting in your diet when you're on a deficit are from a greens powder, you're making it harder than it has to be. Period. Straight up. When in doubt, if you're hungry, eat some greens. That stuff fills you up. Okay, another one with the fish oils. Yes, fish oils, very healthful omega-3 fats are good. I'm not saying don't supplement with them. However, you can get a lot of really good nutrition from an egg, from a piece of flax something, muffin, whatever. I don't

eat a lot of flax. It's not that good. I'm not even going to lie. But if you like it, it's very nutritious. From salmon, loaded with protein, loaded with magnesium, all kinds of good stuff. And if you choose to say, yeah, I supplement with omega-3 like two to three times a week and I eat these foods two to three times a week. These foods, of course, being omega-3 rich foods, you're going to pick up some of the other stuff, the folate from the egg, the protein from the egg, the protein from the salmon, the magnesium from the salmon, the B vitamins from the flax bread, the fiber from the flax bread, all kinds of good stuff. And then you can spread your supplements out, make them last a little bit longer. Full disclosure, I work with a supplement company, Legion Athletics. Love you guys. But I don't take a full dosage of their multivitamin every day because I get a very nutritious diet. I take a half dosage. I think a full dosage is incredible.

Sometimes I do, especially when I'm traveling or I'm stressed. But I take a half dosage on other days because I know I'm getting a lot of those from whole foods. And that to me is really, really important. And then I'm sure you're getting the drift, but with protein specifically, whey protein is a byproduct of the milk production industry. So let's just paint a very, very, very simplified picture of it when you're making cheese you separate curds from whey and when you have that leftover whey a lot of times that gets packaged and sold as whey protein whey protein isolate whey protein concentrate whey protein hydrolysis different ways of different purity levels that contain more or less the same amount

of protein, but not a ton of additional nutrition. And I'm not saying that all protein is nutritious because like ground turkey and ground chicken, there's not a lot to work with there. But you know, when we talk about things like fish and shellfish and red meat and organ meat and even some of the plant-based sources of protein are quite nutritious. There's a lot of things we get from consuming animal protein, and I'm not saying we have to consume a ton. I'm not saying we have to be unethical. But if all of the protein or the bulk of the protein we eat in one day comes from whey, right, which whey doesn't even have the same benefits as other dairy proteins like yogurt. There's a lot of good things in yogurt,

but it has to do with the process by which it's gone. It goes through to make it the way it is. We're missing out on stuff. So, you know, I really caution people against the over-reliance on these things because I think it pulls you away from nutritional and dietary strategies that make it a little bit easier to live a leaner lifestyle, to eat a lot of the right foods, to have variety. I don't love vegetables, but having vegetables in my diet can make my diet more enjoyable. I'm not going to sit down and eat a plate of just vegetables, but adding the right vegetables to the right protein can be a really great combination. You limit yourself from that if you just straight up don't eat vegetables and only

take greens or don't cook proteins and only drink whey protein. That's where you run into a problem. Okay, last issue that I just see straight up way too often. Eating out at restaurants too much. Look, if your goal is fat loss, right? And for anybody listening, that's kind of the audience I'm going for with this podcast. If your goal is fat loss, eating out at restaurants is one of the worst things you can do consistently. I think it's great from time to time, and I think it's awesome to be able to be flexible. But 9 out of 10 times when you sit down at a restaurant, you are getting a very large portion, much larger than you would probably make at your own home, with a very hefty

portion of oftentimes hyperpalatable high calorie sides. You're getting food that was cooked in all kinds of different oils in an effort to make it as flavorful as possible. You're getting oftentimes the fattiest cuts of meat in an effort to, again, make things as flavorful as possible. Before this food even gets to your table, you're oftentimes snacking on something first, like appetizers, bread, or chips. This can be problematic. If controlling your calorie intake is something that matters to you, you have very little wiggle room when you end up eating out at restaurants a lot

because those dishes are so high calorie. In fact, the average restaurant dish, if I remember correctly, has north of about a thousand calories, which is quite a bit. When you think about how many calories are in the foods you typically create at home, I don't think the answer is going to be about a thousand calories. And that's just for your typical restaurant entree, right? And it's those things I mentioned with regards to the way the food is sourced, types of foods they bring in, the way it's cooked, and the portions that really kind of make it problematic.

You can go to a restaurant, see something on the menu like Applebee's, for example. I always pick on Applebee's. But you see Chinese chicken salad, and somebody sees that, and they go, well, hey, Chinese chicken salad, that's probably kind of healthy. It's a salad and has chicken on it. Well, they use fried chicken, which has a lot of extra calories from added fats. And I'm not demonizing fried chicken. I love fried chicken. And they use like these fried chicken nugget balls that are more bread than meat. So they have a lot more added fat and carbohydrate and they're quite dense

and they use a ton of them on top of a salad that's mostly like just crap lettuce loaded with peanuts like a peanut dressing and a bunch of additional added calories and so this salad ends up coming out to about 1100 calories and I've never in my life seen someone at their home build an 1,100-calorie salad. Like, we don't put food together that way. It's hard. The way that a lot of these dining places put food together is with the goal of it being as tasty and enjoyable as possible. And I think that's great.

But if your goal is fat loss, hyper palatable, high calorie foods aren't something you should build into your diet all the time. And going out and eating those types of things at restaurants oftentimes creates like the worst kind of case scenario where you end up with a really, really high calorie food. you end up eating the entire portion, which is oftentimes oversized to begin with, and then you're setting yourself back. So those are the four things, guys, that I see the most. And just to reiterate and circle the wagons, not eating enough single ingredient foods, focusing too much on stuff out of packages and out of bags, okay? Over relying on supplements instead of focusing on trying to get

and receive nutrition from the foods you select primarily and aiming for foods that are generally nutritious in place of just relying on supplements. Number two is improper math. Here, just straight. Not doing the right math. Either being too lazy to do it right on the front end or too lazy to carry it out on the back end. And then the fourth and final one, and it's probably

the most obvious, is eating out too much. Look, if you're somebody who wants to get leaner, you can eat out, but you can't eat out all the time and get results as quickly as you could if you got more comfortable cooking from home, using more single ingredient foods, tracking your calories, yada, yada, yada. It all ties together. Hey, everybody, thank you so much for listening. I really do appreciate it. These quick nutritional blurbs are fun. I try to keep them light and off the cuff.

I don't love overly produced podcasts. I think that the authenticity piece often gets lost in the, you know, search for showmanship and oftentimes forced banter. But I would eventually love to get back into a place where I was bringing guests on for you. So stay tuned for that. I am working towards that as we speak. But in the meantime, go back and peruse the awesome library of episodes we have. And check out the program page as I get closer and closer to the launch of Power Build. Female Physique is still on the website as is Foundations and

my home program. Thank you guys so much for listening. I appreciate you. Have an awesome day.