Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 135: Does Cardio Make You Fat + Six Eating Habits For Leanness + Q+A

Episode Date: October 28, 2021

Thanks For Listening!---Grab the new Female Physique Advanced HERE!---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 Coach Danny to Fix Your S*** (training, nutrition, lifestyle, etc) fill the form HERE for a chance to have your current approach reviewed live on the show. 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:Sign up for the trainer mentorship HEREFollow Coach Danny on INSTAGRAMFollow Coach Danny on TwitterFollow Coach Danny on FacebookGet More In-Depth Articles Written By Yours’ Truly HERE!Support the Show.

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome, everybody, to another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. As always, I am your host, Danny Matrenga. And in today's episode, we're going to chat a little bit about cardiovascular exercise and its impact on body composition, performance, particularly anaerobic performance as it pertains to hypertrophy, building muscle or strength outcomes, and some of the misconceptions around cardiovascular exercise and things like body fat, body fat gain, body fat reduction, how much cardio to do for fat loss, etc. Then we'll transition into some habits that I think are very prevalent, very mainstream and show up a lot. These are habits that I see with clientele, clients that I work with both in person and online do these things. But this is an opportunity to
Starting point is 00:00:50 examine some of the habits that I think are more aligned long term with body fat gain. So trying to pinpoint some particular nutritional things people do that lead to what I like to call some calorie leak, where a lot of calories come from. So where people go, man, I really feel like I'm eating well, but I just can't seem to lose weight. Well, a lot of times that's because calories leak in. And we will open up with a Q&A. So going from a Q&A to talking a little bit about cardio and then talking a little bit about some fat loss eating behavior, whether your goals are weight loss, body weight management, you work with clients. This will be an interesting and enjoyable conversation, and I can't wait to get going. So let's get started. First question today
Starting point is 00:01:29 comes from Danielle Bichich, and she asks, do you still need to do 10,000 steps daily if you train daily for 45 minutes to an hour? I think this is a really good opportunity to have a dialogue about the 10,000 step benchmark, perhaps why that has stuck with people so much and why they think that's a target. And first things first, we have to acknowledge that doing 10,000 steps a day is arbitrary. It's not some magical number.
Starting point is 00:01:56 9,999 isn't some cutoff and everything just magically falls into place once you cross that number and get 10,000 daily steps. 10,000 daily steps was popularized big time by the step counting movement that was kind of ushered in on the back of the boom in activity trackers that we saw about five to six years ago when companies like Fitbit and Garmin went really mainstream with their activity trackers and 10,000 steps became a really popular guideline. And I regularly get between 15,000 to 25,000 steps a day with having a dog, doing personal training, going on walks with my dog, going on walks with clients, going on walks and taking, you know, phone calls for core coaching method, all the different things
Starting point is 00:02:37 that I'm doing, I find that I get a lot of steps. And I think it's a phenomenal habit. But the way this question is phrased, do I still need to get my 10,000 steps if I train daily for 45 minutes to an hour? These things are not what I would call analogous to one another. A one hour resistance training workout you can't just get 10,000 steps get that vitamin D, you can get that sun exposure that's so valuable for your circadian rhythm. I like to do that. So I would say you do not need to get 10,000 steps a day if you train for 45 minutes to an hour, but I would recommend doing that much movement. We'll talk a little bit about movement targets when we get to the later half of the conversation today with regards to fat loss and what we do over at Core Coaching Method for our clients and what I recommend for cardiovascular exercise. We'll talk a lot about walking, but great opening question. Next one comes from Julia
Starting point is 00:03:55 Goldstock, and she asks, thoughts on zero-calorie sweeteners? These are also called artificial sweeteners or non-nutritive sweeteners. Things like stevia that are technically non-quote-unquote artificial still fall into the zero-calorie sweetener thing. And my opinion is this. I think that artificial sweeteners have been unfairly demonized. I think the research is fairly clear that they're safe in small dosages. You can get problems that seem to occur, particularly in rodents, when you supply them with large amounts of artificial sweetener. And there might be some hormonal fluctuations that occur with, again, very frequent intake of non-nutritive or artificial sweeteners. And there might be some alterations in the gut microbiome as well. But in aggregate, when I look at everything and I go, okay,
Starting point is 00:04:41 what are the pros of non-nutritive sweeteners or calorie-free sweeteners? Well, they allow us to enjoy things that are sweet and might, you know, kind of curb those craving things that pop up so much for so many people with very little penalty. They can provide a lot of the mouthfeel and a lot of the same taste that sugar provides. And sugar, we do know, can be problematic in high amounts and it's very prevalent societally. It's probably one of the larger contributors to food hyperpalatability and therefore the obesity problems we face. So I think demonizing low calorie diet, quote unquote, drinks, beverages, foods that are sweetened artificially is a very non-nuance approach to food. And it's not a very effective way at looking at a larger picture here where so
Starting point is 00:05:26 many people struggle with the weight management and calorie management, because these foods will make weight management and calorie management easier for a lot of people. Do I think you should take large amounts of artificial sweeteners every day? No. And that's one of the reasons that I really like Legion's products, is they're mostly sweetened with stevia. So we're talking about a low calorie or no calorie sweetener that doesn't seem to have some of the impacts that other artificial sweeteners have. So I'm regularly one to have a diet soda. I will occasionally have something that's sweetened with something like aspartame or sucralose without it bothering me very much. I think it's all again about scale and doing this in moderation.
Starting point is 00:06:10 If all you're drinking every day is like diet Rockstar, diet Monster, diet Coke, you know, that could be problematic. But I have like maybe one serving of artificial sweeteners a day. It tends to be stevia. I haven't noticed any issues. And so I tend to think it's okay. Next question comes from mdsn.bbla. She asks, what are the benefits of sauna sessions?
Starting point is 00:06:28 So if you want to learn a little bit more about sauna in various forms of temperature exposure, whether that be high temperature exposure like sauna, steam room, infrared sauna, or cold exposure like cold plunge, cold shower, you should go back and listen to the episode I did very recently with Dr. Mike T. Nelson. We talked a lot about this stuff, including some stuff like red light therapy, photobiobondulation,
Starting point is 00:06:47 that I think you guys will find very interesting. So do go check that out. But some of the big benefits for sauna use is reduced all-cause mortality. So we know that semi-regular, three to four times a week sauna utilization, let's say 20 minutes, has been shown to reduce all-cause mortality. And all-cause mortality are, has been shown to reduce all-cause mortality. And all-cause mortality or, you know, reductions in all-cause mortality quite literally means reductions in all of the various causes of death. So if you do sauna fairly regularly, it will reduce the prevalence of the most common causes of death. I believe that for very deconditioned people, probably people who are in very, very
Starting point is 00:07:26 elementary stages of their fitness, maybe they're just getting started, maybe they're not active, I think that sauna exposure can be a cardiovascular training bout because it will elevate your heart rate, particularly if you're deconditioned. And if you are well conditioned and you're very aerobically fit, you're very fit, sauna sessions, I think, can be recuperative because they are, again, allowing for, in almost all instances, increased water intake. You're going to be sweating a ton, but you should be replacing that, hopefully, with even more water. And I would strongly recommend electrolytes while using the sauna. It's a good way to actually get in there, get sweating, elevate your core body temperature, elevate your heart rate, get blood flowing.
Starting point is 00:08:03 All of those things can be beneficial for your recovery. I think that sauna can be very recuperative. It will elicit a lower aerobic effect, but for training, I think it's very recuperative. For mental stuff, I find subjectively that it really helps me with my mood. I usually leave feeling relaxed. I tend to sleep very well. I do sauna in the evening. You might have some transient, you know, kind of flush, if you will, of certain things, whether those are quote-unquote toxins or metals, it's hard to say. Some people say you're not going to see that, but I have seen some data that supports the actual kind of passing through the skin of certain metals at high temperatures with certain rates of perspiration. So things are happening when you're in the sauna, but the big reasons and the big things that I do it for
Starting point is 00:08:47 are I feel that it increases my mental toughness because it's not necessarily easy to sit in there for 20 to 30 minutes. I love that it reduces the risk of all-cause mortality. I love that I get a small bump aerobically. I love that subjectively I feel that I recover better and that I have a better mood when I use the sauna. So those are the benefits that I would point to if somebody said why I should use the sauna. Okay. Next question comes from underscore dot underscore dot hailstorm. And she asks, occlusion bands around girls' butts and thighs. Does this shape the booty or something? Why? So occlusion bands are bands that actually limit the amount of blood flow in and out of an area. They don't completely cut it off.
Starting point is 00:09:31 Usually they block what's called venous return. So you end up with a lot of metabolites building up and accumulating in certain areas. Occlusion training is often referred to as blood flow restriction training or BFR. There are different types of BFR from Katsu training to traditional BFR metabolite training that have been around for quite some time and have been tossed around as potentially being anabolic. And there's a lot of really fascinating literature on well-executed blood flow restriction training as it pertains to injury recovery, the proximity to failure that you can get to with next to no loads or very low loads, the metabolic effect. And I do think that doing some form of
Starting point is 00:10:12 blood flow restriction training could be beneficial for a variety of outcomes. I've used it successfully for hypertrophy. Well, not independently. I've used it to supplement additional training, of course. I think it can be valuable for injury recovery, tissue repair, particularly things like soft tissue repair, allowing you to train and rehabilitate well. So I definitely think that there is a, let's call it therapeutic application here for BFR. As for whether it has the ability to shape muscles, that I don't think is possible. I do think it's reasonable to say that wearing them under your butt kind of gives your butt a little bit of a lift while you have them on. And that might be popular, aesthetically speaking, in the same way that
Starting point is 00:10:55 maybe a waist trainer might make your waist appear slimmer or doing curls on a preacher bench might make your arms look bigger, rolling out your calves, make your calves look huge. Like I think that might be happening here, but as far as their ability to actually shape the glutes, not super, super inclined to say that's possible. In fact, I'd say it's probably impossible. It's probably not happening. Could it help with potentially lining you up long-term for some hypertrophy? Sure. Let's say, yeah, but, but no more than it would for probably any other muscle group. And I would put it way, way down the ladder below a lot of the main things that you're focusing on. Okay. So check it out. This next question, I really like this. This one comes from Lupe underscore
Starting point is 00:11:35 lift. She says, do you personally like to intake protein through food or protein shakes is one better. So I actually look at protein shakes as food. Uh, I thought a lot of people go. What do you mean you look at it as food? I look at it as like dehydrated milk like protein shakes go in with like yogurt Cheese, etc and with my quick protein snacks. I like to look at my protein shakes as quick protein snacks They are in no way shape or form a replacement for something like animal protein meat, where you get all of these different vitamins and nutrients, but they are pretty damn cool in that they supply a high amount of protein and not a ton of additional calories. And so what we know is happening when we take in protein shakes is we're probably going to be a lot less likely to miss our protein totals.
Starting point is 00:12:21 We're probably going to get our macronutrient intake up in the protein department, which is so important for body composition. It's so important for feeling full. It's important for performance. And we're not going to incur a lot of the additional calories, usually from fat, usually from carbohydrate and certain sources. But there are additional calories. But when we're talking animal protein, we're talking usually fat. And so the big pros are, yeah, we get a lot of extra protein. But some of the cons are we don't usually get. And so the big pros are, yeah, we get a lot of extra protein, but some of the cons are we don't usually get a lot of the associative micronutrient densities. For example, we get a lot of calcium, vitamin D from dairy proteins. Those things don't tend
Starting point is 00:12:53 to show up as much in whey protein, even though it's dairy, because it is quite processed. We get a lot of vitamins. We get a lot of polyphenols from both plant-based proteins. We get our polyphenols from those sometimes, oftentimes fiber if you use nuts and seeds. And then with meat or animal proteins, we can get a lot of beneficial fatty acids as well as micronutrients. And those things, again, they just don't show up as much in protein powders. So you'll get the macronutrient bump you're looking for, but you might miss out on some of the micros. So I recommend, just like I would if somebody said, should I only eat chicken? No. Should I only eat red meat? No. Should I only eat eggs? No. Should I only eat fish? No. Eat a variety of
Starting point is 00:13:34 protein sources because they all yield a different spectrum of amino acids. It's so funny. I went to the dog store yesterday right by my house. I like this. It's like a little local shop. And yesterday, right by my house. I like this. It's like a little local shop. And I tend to find that the dog food is fairly priced and when possible, I like to shop local. And I said, hey, you know, Cooper is officially over a year old now. Cooper is my little dog, my little miniature schnauzer, my partner in crime, the love of my life, my man. I love Coop. And so I said about a year ago when I walked in, I want you to help me pick a good dog food. And we settled on a chicken and rice formula. And after about a year of Cooper eating almost exclusively this kibble with some snacks, I said, hey, I need to change him to the
Starting point is 00:14:16 adult food. I think he's about a year old. We'll get him off puppy food. He said, oh, cool. That manufacturer makes a variety of different adult products. And I said, okay, well, he was on chicken and rice. Does it make the most sense to change him over to an adult formula of chicken and rice to minimize the digestive distress? Because all my dog owners are probably aware, and we see this in humans too, but whenever you adjust a dog's primary food source, particularly its kibble, or you change it, it can lead to some pretty big digestive distress a lot of diarrhea a lot of in the house poops just because their digestive system has been eating almost only one thing so i said hey let's keep it as similar as possible and he said well i would do that but maybe get some small bags of the salmon formula and the turkey formula so that you can expose him
Starting point is 00:15:00 to the different amino acids that are prevalent or present in each protein. And I was like, oh my God, I recommend that for people. And I just, it had slipped my mind for many years. It's old bodybuilding conventional wisdom, but you get a plethora of different amino acids when you eat multiple protein sources. And, you know, we know that leucine is important, particularly for muscle growth. And you will find that in spades in most animal and plant proteins, but definitely big time in the dairy protein, egg protein. And usually you have to get some of the plant proteins in a blend to get your leucine, but you can get it through your plants. It's hard, but you know, leucine is the one we talk a lot about, but there's 20 amino acids.
Starting point is 00:15:38 And again, not all of them are essential. We do synthesize some, but diversifying your protein intake is really important. So in answering the question, do I personally like to intake protein through shakes or food better? I would say food, but I don't dislike a shake. And I do quite a bit of protein shakes personally. I find it makes a really big difference in helping me hit my total macro intake. And it really helps my clients too. For clients who want to lose fat and aren't interested in tracking macros,
Starting point is 00:16:05 they're just getting started, one of the simplest things I'll have them do is say, hey, eat the way you've been eating, try to prioritize a little more protein, a little more vegetables, and then take one meal and completely replace it with a full serving of fruit and a protein shake. And oftentimes that massively reduces caloric intake
Starting point is 00:16:21 without having a huge impact on satiety because people end up feeling fuller longer by virtue of having really satiating protein paired with a fibrous fruit. So I think that a protein shake can be a highly versatile form of dietary protein that can really help you out, particularly if you're new to this whole dieting thing. Hey guys, just wanted to take a quick second to say thanks so much for listening to the podcast. And if you're finding value, it would mean the world to me if you would share it on your social media. Simply screenshot whatever platform you're listening to and share the episode to your
Starting point is 00:16:55 Instagram story or share it to Facebook. But be sure to tag me so I can say thanks and we can chat it up about what you liked and how I can continue to improve. Thanks so much for supporting the podcast and enjoy the rest of the episode. This question comes from Rolly Mark 15. When it comes to correctives and strengthening, how do you come up with different variations? So correctives refers to corrective exercise, strengthening, I'm guessing just refers to conventional resistance training. But I do think it's important to acknowledge that variety isn't as important as progressive overload and actually making progress. So variations, while nice, they're not as important as many people think, particularly when it comes to corrective exercises. Like, I don't want to have somebody do any more corrective exercises than
Starting point is 00:17:40 they have to. In fact, I think a lot of trainers who sell people on doing massive amounts of corrective exercise are bullshitters. They're kind of reinforcing to people that they're broken and they need to do lots of correctives. And if you're constantly needing to do correctives, do more correctives, and then find variations of those correctives, they're not very corrective, are they? They're not working that well. That's my two cents on it. So if I work with a client and I see weak lower traps or I see weak posterior chain musculature, I know what I'm going to attack that with. I don't need 10, 20 different exercises, right? And with regards to strength training, you can do a variety of different things. You can look at the plane in which you're training, right? We do so much work in the sagittal plane, but maybe you want to incorporate some transverse or frontal plane training with regards to injecting some variation. You might want to try some stuff with stance. Maybe you do single leg work. Maybe you do ipsilateral work. Maybe you do dual leg work, but you do it in the kneeling position. There's so many ways to incorporate variety. Maybe you
Starting point is 00:18:42 usually do free weight pressing and you want to switch to machines, or maybe you usually do barbell and you want to make a shift to dumbbell. I think with our strength work, I'm more inclined to used variety. And I like to look at things through a progressive continuum. So maybe I would go from stable to semi-stable to unstable, or from strength to power to explosive, from hypertrophy rep ranges that are, you know, three reps from failure to two reps from failure to complete failure. There's so many ways to do it, but I do think variety in general needs to be progressive to be what I would describe as productive. Okay, so moving on to the main questions of the day, talking a little bit about cardio as it pertains to body composition. And it came across my desk the other day that many people in the fitness space are continuing to sell cardio as something that makes you fat. And I don't think that cardio can make you fat, but here's where that notion came from. came from. It came from the very real fact that too much cardio is probably counterproductive for long-term fat loss due to what we call the interference effect. Doing a lot of cardio,
Starting point is 00:19:52 tons and tons and tons and tons of cardio, and being in a calorie deficit will lead to the interference effect kicking in and your body having a hard time preserving muscle while in a deficit. Too much anaerobic work probably tells your body a very simple way, uh, hey, having all this muscle isn't super economical for me right now because you're kind of starving me, so I'm going to lose some of this too in conjunction with my body fat. And that's not ideal because that can lead to some long-term metabolic down regulation that makes dieting harder and can lead to fat loss stalling. And I think there are a lot of people who have attempted to lose fat by crash dieting and doing
Starting point is 00:20:30 massive amounts of cardio, seeing a ton of benefit up front, but losing a lot of muscle and ending up stalling out pretty quickly due to some severe metabolic adaptations. And I don't think that means cardio makes you fat. I think that what happens is that those people find out that a slower cut paired with more resistance training than cardio allows them to achieve new levels of body composition and new heights with their body composition that they hadn't before. And they go, wow, I'm doing less cardio and looking better. So that must mean cardio keeps you fat, makes you fat, isn't good for fat loss. And none of these things are true. I think cardio is phenomenal for fat loss and actually has the ability to truly enhance fat loss. But it's not an all or nothing thing. Do I do cardio or do I do weights? Which one should I do more of? Should I do one or the other? I
Starting point is 00:21:15 think you want to find the split that works for you. But in truth, and what we do with our clients over at Core Coaching Method, even if the goal is fat loss, we're going to recommend much more resistance training because preserving the muscle is so important. Preserving the metabolic integrity, if you will, is so important. We don't want to just pound you with a deficit so large and so much cardio that you lose a lot of weight up front and then bottom out. I would rather have a client lose no weight for three months, but lay the foundation with building muscle, actually getting the habits and routines in place, taking good care of their nutrition, being nourished and building a platform, then
Starting point is 00:21:49 take 20 pounds off them in month one and then leave them completely fucked because we just tanked them with massive amounts of cardio and hardcore deficits. I just think it's really prevalent in our space and it's kind of led to cardio getting a bad name. As for whether or not cardio can actually make you fat or make you gain weight, I don't think there's any truth to that notion at all. Even extreme amounts of cardio done on no sleep with cortisol through the roof is whatever. All these nightmare scenarios that you see these gurus throwing out, I still don't think that cardio is going to ever lead to fat gain. It might downregulate things from a metabolic standpoint through, again, just pure muscle loss over time and through malnourishment.
Starting point is 00:22:34 It might downregulate things or help in downregulating things that the same amount of calories that you used to maintain your body weight out is now making you gain fat. But I don't think doing cardio is making anyone fat. And so I think it's important to acknowledge that your cardio respiratory fitness is important. The right amount of cardio will enhance your strength gains. It will enhance your recovery. It will enhance your aerobic fitness, your mitochondrial density. There's so many wonderful things that happen from doing cardio, which is why for the core coaching method clients, we're operating
Starting point is 00:23:05 with a blanket recommendation of 90 minutes of walking or low intensity cardio a week. And usually that's all discussed like, hey, make sure you're getting walks in, make sure you're doing a 15 to 20 minute warmup on the treadmill before a resistance training. That's a great way to sneak it in. Like if you would like to, you know, do 90 minutes of cardio a week without feeling like you're doing 90 minutes of cardio a week, do a 10 to 15 minute walk before all of your workouts and then go on one 30 minute walk a week. Like that's a great way to do it because it's going to enhance your resistance training performance, but not sap all of your, uh, energy for your session.
Starting point is 00:23:40 As far as habits that I have seen with clients that I think do have a tendency to lead to weight gain, doing a lot of cardio not being one of those, of course, I was able to narrow it down to six things that I find to be tendencies, very common, very frequently occurring tendencies amongst clients, potential clients, friends, family, myself, over the years that I've noticed that are aligned with body fat gain. And the first is a bias towards snacking. People who tend to like to snack or who enjoy snacking, I tend to find that that can be a challenging thing to balance while trying to lose weight. Snacking is a hedonistic eating behavior that many of us have and we all have a different inclination for. Some people love to snack and hate having big meals. Some people love having big meals and hate snacking.
Starting point is 00:24:30 But I find that most people enjoy big meals and enjoy snacking. And so having high calorie, hyper palatable snacking foods around is a habit and a food behavior that can lead to some calorie leaks, some extra calories coming in that can be quite problematic. Another one is grazing, which is very similar to snacking. I find it's more passive and less deliberate in that you will graze and grab things that are out and about. Snacking might be going to the pantry and grabbing these snacks, but grazing might be every time you walk by the secretary's desk, you grab a handful of almonds. So grazing and snacking are tendencies that I see a lot when I'm challenging clients as to, hmm, okay, well, these are the calories we're looking to stick with. You're doing
Starting point is 00:25:10 the exercise, but our weight loss is stalling, or maybe we're actually gaining weight. Are we experiencing some caloric leak here? No, no, no, I don't think so. Well, what about your tracking? Do you think your tracking is perfect? I promise I track everything I eat. Okay. Well, are there snacks where for maybe like one to two minutes, you're just shoveling tortilla chips into your mouth or you're not tracking the small little trips by the almonds in the, Oh, well, you know, actually, and all of a sudden these things start to pop up in dialogue when you get introspective and try to figure out why fat loss isn't happening. Cause it is tricky. There's so many different things you have to look at. That's why most people quit. They're not willing to do the examination. And if you pay close attention to your behaviors, you'll usually find like,
Starting point is 00:25:53 oh, you know, maybe I did eat a little more than I thought because I snacked or I grazed. Those are really common. Now, I think this next one is extremely common too, but it might be more common for me because of where I live. I live in Northern California's wine country, Sonoma County, and wine consumption and just alcohol consumption in general is quite high here. But alcohol ingestion is very, very prevalent. I find high amounts of alcohol ingestion are highly correlated with stagnating fat loss or weight gain. That's something that I have seen. I'm sure there's a scientific paper out there that would support that, and I wouldn't even bother fucking looking for it because it would be the most duh in your face thing ever. It'd be like, increased amounts of caloric intake through liquid lead to fat gain. New study finds. It's like, no fucking shit. Who paid for that? I
Starting point is 00:26:37 could have told you that. First off, many alcoholic beverages are calorie dense, particularly the dark beers and the wines that are so popular where I live. And I have heard the phrase or utterance, I just can't drink and lose weight. It can't happen. I have to give up alcohol from so many people. Why that is, I think has to do with the fact that when people start drinking a lot, they generally have worse food behaviors as well. So, you know, maybe one glass of wine into the evening, you're pretty good with your food inhibitions, but two glasses, you start to make some snacking related mistakes as well as in taking the additional caloric impact from the alcohol. And from an indirect standpoint, alcohol can really impact your performance in the
Starting point is 00:27:19 gym and it can really, really have a big impact on your sleep quality, which is too bad because both of those things are important for fat loss. So that's one of the big ones. Another one is over-reliance on that high calorie morning coffee. So a lot of people start their day with coffee. I think coffee is fine generally. I think tea is fine generally, but some people like to start with sugar-laden energy drinks or high calorie coffees that tend to be high in fats and sugars. And while caffeine isn't bad for fat loss, in fact, it's probably quite helpful, using these high-calorie vehicles by means of getting caffeine into your system can be a problem. And so I like to often ask people, okay, what about coffee? You
Starting point is 00:28:01 know, oh, we're struggling with the weight loss. What about the coffee? Oh, you know, I just have my coffee every morning. Well, what do you have with it? Well, I'm, you know, creamer. Well, how many tablespoons? Four or five. Well, what if it was 70 calories a tablespoon? That's a 350 calorie coffee. Multiply that out over a week. That's 23, 2400 calories or so if you have that every morning. And for a lot of people, that's a huge difference maker. If switching to black coffee, you know, decrease your caloric intake by 2,400 calories a week, that's phenomenal. And so calories coming from coffee and energy drinks are something I like to pay very close attention to if somebody's struggling with weight loss or they think their fat loss has stalled. Condiments is the next one. Condiments and sauces tend to be a big source of caloric leak. I love hot sauces and seasonings for this reason. They impart a ton of flavor, a ton of different flavor profiles, not just spicy, but earthy. You can get so many things from sauces, from salsas and seasonings, hot sauces, herbs, that you don't need to use a ton of condiments because oftentimes those condiments are very high in calories because they tend to be oil-based and there's nothing wrong with oil and fat, but oil and fat tend to
Starting point is 00:29:09 be higher in those calories. So over-reliance on condiments or just condimenting the shit out of your food can lead to a lot of additional caloric intake. And then the last one that I find is eating out a lot. Eating out is tricky because food tends to be served and plated in a way that is designed to make you want to eat more of it. You get large portions to keep you happy. Restaurants don't get people coming back very often if they're not happy with their portion size or the way the food tastes. So typically you get large portions and food prepared in a way that's very flavorful. So oftentimes cooked in large amounts of dietary fat like butter and oils that impart wonderful tendencies around food that might be contributing to fat gain are excessive snacking, excessive grazing, excessive alcohol consumption, unknown caloric
Starting point is 00:30:12 intake, particularly high caloric intakes around the morning period with regards to coffee or energy drinks that we use to get our day going. So just keeping an eye out for those high calorie morning beverages, overuse of high calorie condiments, and, you know, a high frequency of restaurant meals, which while they can completely be healthy, they tend to be much higher in calories than things we cook ourselves that are similar. So keep that in mind, guys. Those are some habits and tendencies that I find to be pretty consistent for folks who are struggling or having a hard time maybe identifying where those calories are coming in or where their fat loss has struggled. Just things to check out. I want to thank every single one of you guys for listening. You are all such an important part of my growth and my message and getting out into the world. But I want to get
Starting point is 00:30:57 out into the world. And every single one of you who shares my podcast on Instagram and tags me makes my day. Please continue doing that. It makes a huge difference. It helps more people find out about the podcast. And another thing you can do to help is just leaving a five-star rating and review on iTunes. If you have time,

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.