Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 325: How Long to Cut? How Long to Bulk?

Episode Date: October 3, 2023

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Welcome, everybody, to another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. As always, I'm your host, Danny Matranga. And in this episode, episode 325, we are going to be discussing how long your diet should be for fat loss and how long your diet should be for slow, sustainable muscle growth. Put another way, how long to cut and how long to bulk. Many of you want to transform your physiques using this kind of foundational component of bodybuilding culture, a slow, deliberate cut or fat loss phase, or a slow, deliberate bulk or muscle growth phase. But how the heck do you do that? And this is stuff that I've done successfully with coaching clients for years in person and online. And I want to share some of the best

tips I have for you as you look to navigate cutting and or bulking to add muscle to your physique or chip away at body fat to improve your health and aesthetics. Should be a fun episode, folks. Hope you enjoy. This podcast has some awesome partners. And one of my favorite, of course, is Legion Athletics. Legion is my go-to supplement manufacturer for what I like to call my big rock supplements. This would be my protein powder, my pre-training formula, my post-training formula and creatine, and my kind of ancillary vitamins and micronutrient protection. So why do I like Legion so much? What sets them apart? It's quite simple. Legion uses all natural ingredients. All the formulas include natural coloring and natural sweeteners. No artificial

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

sure are the new grape and the amazing amazing tropical punch as for my creatine i get that from legion's recharge five grams each and every day i take it on the days i train as well as the days i do not because recharge also contains l-carnine, which can help with promoting muscle recovery and decreasing soreness, as well as some ingredients to help with creatine utilization. And of course, my favorite supplements for my ancillary micronutrient health are Legion's multivitamin and Legion's greens powder. Not only do these two products contain a ton of high quality vitamins and minerals, they also contain unique adaptogens like KSM 66 ashwagandha and reishi mushroom, which I like to take each and every day to promote my health. If you want to cover all your bases with a high quality protein, creatine, post-workout,

or the ancillary micronutrient health stuff like greens, powders, and multivitamin, I encourage you to go over to legionathletics.com and check out using the promo code Danny. That'll save you 20% on your first order and you'll rack up points that you can use the same way as cash every time you use the code and you'll also be supporting the show. Okay, so as we take kind of a long form look at how it is the body loses fat and how it is the body kind of slowly gains muscle. Taking a longer form approach to both of these tends to be best for most people. But let's go ahead and start with fat loss. So this was actually inspired by a listener question. Shout out to, and I hope I get this right, the underscore lilimeme, asking how long is too long to be in a calorie deficit? And I think that's a great question

because I think it gets at the root of like, okay, I know I'd like to lose body fat, but I don't want to overshoot at the cost of my health, which is something that I see a lot, just being in a deficit for far too long. I think the longer you spend in a deficit, the more you're probably going to pay in the sense that your physiology is going to adjust and adapt. And a lot of people are afraid of metabolic adaptation and seeing their metabolism just crash. That doesn't happen as often as I expect, or maybe as often as you would expect. But I'll tell you what does happen a lot is people start to kind of feel like shit, especially when they've been in a deficit for a considerable amount of time. So of course,

it's true that you must be in a calorie deficit to lose body fat, but depending on just how much fat you'd like to lose, assuming it's a fairly large amount, it probably makes sense to break it into small chunks. That way you don't have to be in a deficit for multiple months at a time. Maybe you do four, six, eight weeks in a deficit before you implement a tool like a refeed, before you implement a tool like a diet break, just giving your body and more importantly, your psychology, the opportunity to kind of detach from the rigors of being in a calorie deficit. And there are some physiological things that happen when you're in a calorie deficit that aren't exactly the best. It's not uncommon to feel fatigue, lethargy, loss of pumps

in the gym, loss of strength in the gym. Of course, you have less fuel to work with. So some of this should be expected, but it's probably in your best interest, if you'd like to lose fat in the long term, to spend considerable chunks in a deficit and take a diet break every four, six, eight weeks, depending on your level of discipline and compliance. Now, what we need to first discuss before we dive into anything else is, you know, exactly how a calorie deficit works is pretty simple. You know, you need to create it through restricting energy in the form of food, and you can increase the deficit by increasing output in the form of exertion. That can be movement. That can be cognitive exertion. You burn calories doing a lot of different things, the primary of which, though, is movement. Now, what happens when you reduce calories, which are the unit of energy that we use, right? So in the US economy, you use dollars and cents to pay for goods and services. I want this service that's going to cost this amount of

currency. In the human body, the same thing is true with calories. Calories are your currency. I'd like to go to the gym. Okay. Well, that is going to cost 200 calories burned. All right. Well, on the flip side, I'd like to have a piece of chocolate cake. Well, that's going to mean you're incurring the debt, metaphorically speaking, of 800 calories. And you might only have a daily budget of, let's say, for the average adult, a woman, 1,800 and a man, 2,500. Do you want to spend or allocate that total amount of your currency to chocolate cake? Well, not if you want to lose fat. You want to give as few currency or as little currency away for non-satiating, non-nutrient-dense foods because it's very hard to adhere to a deficit when you're blowing 800 of your 25 or 1800 calories a

day on a huge piece of chocolate cake, that's probably going to do nothing more than just leave you hungry. So what you have to remember is this is kind of like a money game. It's kind of like a currency game. And the more lower calorie, higher volume foods you eat, proteins, greens, fibers, lean vegetables, et cetera, these are lean proteins. These are things that keep you in a deficit because they don't keep you. You have to still ensure you're in a deficit. They tend not to have as much currency cost, right? There's not as much calories coming with them and they discourage eating more because they actually keep you full.

And when your body is not getting enough calories, which is to say, think about it like a hypothetical. It costs 24. I mean, like, let me just make fat loss as simple as I possibly can. It takes 2,500 calories a day in this hypothetical situation for Bob to get through the day. If Bob eats 3000 calories, he has 500 more calories than he needs. And he has to store that somewhere. The human body has evolved for 200,000 years to use body fat and the adipocyte, the body fat cell as the primary place to store excess calories. So you have a few extra calories at the end of the day. Most of that is probably going to be stored as body fat. However, if you're in a calorie deficit, Bob needs 2,500 a day, but he only eats 2,000. The body needs to mobilize 500 calories worth of energy from somewhere.

Where do you think it likes to get that energy from? Well, the place it loves to store it in the first place, body fat. from? Well, the place it loves to store it in the first place, body fat. Body fat tends to be mobilized to make up the gap between how much you're needing and how much you're eating. And if you're eating less than you're needing and you're metabolically healthy, you're training, that gap should be filled by the slow metabolism of your very own body fat. That's how a deficit works. You can't fake it. Hormones don't really change that process. They might speed it up or slow it down, but typically they indirectly affect things like appetite, satiety, food drive, motivation to train. And those are the things, hormonally speaking, that you want to pay attention to if you're

looking to optimize your health, hormones, and fat loss. It's not to say that you can't lose fat if you're in menopause. It's not to say that you can't lose fat if you have low testosterone. It is just to say that the central tenants required for fat loss, appetite regulation, adherence, movement, are made more difficult when these changes happen in the body. So we've pretty much established how fat loss works. So let's talk about like the short term, you know, what's going to happen in the short term. If you're in an energy deficit, we'll use that 500 calorie example. We can see initial weight loss in the form of fat loss, water loss, sometimes stored carbohydrate glycogen loss. Typically the initial phases

of getting into an energy deficit are where we see the most rapid fat loss occurring. This is highly motivating for individuals. This is why most people can stick with a diet for one, two, even three weeks because a lot of the results are front-loaded. But this is in many parts driven by the fact that people give more of a shit at the beginning of their diet. And the longer they've been in a deficit, the less cognitive energy they have to allocate to adhering to the diet. Oh, I've been in a deficit for eight weeks. I'm not as excited about it. I'm starting to feel fatigue and lethargy. We'll talk about how this happens

and why you need to be mindful of it. That is why so many people fall off. They're just bored of the diet. They're feeling that desire for hedonic deviation, meaning like they want to deviate. They want to enjoy that food that they had more willpower to say no to at the initial phases of the diet. And what's going to typically happen, and I have this discussion a lot, you're going to feel potential fatigue, irritability. You're going to see loss of quality sleep. Sometimes you're going to see increased kind of flatness. You're going to maybe be more apathetic. Training can oftentimes take a hit. When I'm training clients who like swear they're in a calorie deficit, they're not losing weight and they're just always hitting the same numbers in the gym. It leads me to ask, okay, is there a miss, uh, you know, are you misattributing

calories? Are you calculating incorrectly? Are you counting incorrectly? Because typically after like three to four weeks in a deficit, most people are going to start to lose some performance. Now you might not see this if you're enhanced or if you're doing steroids or something to that effect, right? But you do need to understand that for the most part, after a while on a deficit, you're going to start to see changes in energy, changes in mood, changes in vitality, because you're probably going to do your best somewhere right around maintenance. And a lot of these things are driven from macronutrient deficiencies, not getting enough carbohydrate, not getting enough essential fats. Sometimes it can be

driven by micronutrient deficiencies, which is why it's so important to eat a balanced diet while you're in a deficit and still lean into those high volume foods like fruits, vegetables, and whole grains that will help you do that. But it's very hard for the average person to create energy restriction and still get everything they need from a macro and micronutrient basis. It's pretty much impossible, which leads me to the central question here from at the lily may may, how long is too long to be in a deficit? So you ask the question, how long is too long to be in a deficit? And I'd say, you know, if you're competing in a bodybuilding show, you've already made it clear. My goals are more

important than my health. So, you know, be in the deficit as long as you need to, to succeed in your given competition. But if you're not competing a good indicator that it's time for a diet break, a refeed, or just to back off the intensity of the deficit is increased irritability, poor sleep, feeling cold, losing hair, seeing huge decreases in training, intensity output, KPI metrics like that, and getting sick more often. You see this a lot, especially with women who tend to, in my opinion, be a little less resistant or a little more less resilient, I should say, to calorie deficits than men. If you are noticing your health and vitality metrics take a big drop, maybe it's like four, five, six weeks into the diet, not a bad time for a week at maintenance. We would call that a diet

break or two to three days where you increase carbohydrate. We would call that a refeed. And then you get right back to it. Keep yourself sane, keep yourself healthy, keep yourself sticking to it. How long or how far out that's going to be is highly individualized. If your stress is already very high, if you have a ton of quote unquote extracurricular, let's call them responsibilities, you're probably going to hit the wall sooner than somebody who doesn't. And, you know, we talked a lot about nutrient availability and the lack thereof being a huge reason that people see problems. But the longer you are in a deficit, let's say you're just an insane, militant, crazy, diligent person. You might see some metabolic adaptation occur. This is the

downregulation of metabolic output, usually through NEAT, non-exercise activity thermogenesis. That's what typically changes the most by far when people are dieting for a long time. You're NEAT. What's going on, guys? Coach Danny here, taking a break from the episode to tell you about my core coaching method, and more specifically, our one-on-one fully tailored online coaching program. My online coaching program has kind of been the flagship for Core Coaching Method for a while. Of course, we do have PDF programming and we have app-based programming. But if you want a truly tailored one-on-one experience with a coach like myself or a member of my coaching team, someone who is certified, somebody who has multiple years of

experience working with clients in person online, somebody who is licensed to provide a macro nutrition plan, somebody who is actually good at communicating with clients because they've done it for years, whether that be via phone call, email, text, right? This one-on-one coaching program is really designed to give you all the support you need. With custom training designed for you, whether you're training from home, the gym, around your limitations and your goals, nothing cookie cutter here, as well as easy to follow macronutrition programs that are non-restrictive, you'll get customized support directly from your coach's email, or they'll text you, or they'll WhatsApp you. We'll find the communication medium that best supports your goals, as well as provides you with accountability in the expertise you need to

succeed, as well as biofeedback monitoring, baked-in accountability support, and all of the stuff that you need from your coach when you check in. We keep our rosters relatively small so that we can make sure you get the best support possible. But you can apply today by going over to corecoachingmethod.com, selecting the online coaching option. And if we have spots available, we'll definitely reach out to you to see if you're a good candidate. And if we don't, we'll put you on a waiting list, but we'll be sure to give you the best shot at the best coaching in the industry. So head over to corecoachingmethod.com and apply for one-on-one coaching with me and my team today. You typically will see poor posture, less mobility. We see a constrain or a constriction of output at a lot of different levels of the system

to try to adapt. So if you're a foot fidgeter, if you're a tapper, if you're a, you know, you're constantly moving. And I oftentimes do that while I record this podcast. It's not uncommon, uh, for you probably to hear the chair hit the desk like you just did, or to hear the squeaking of the wheels underneath me, because I have a pretty high need. Well, if I was in a deficit for four weeks, it would go down. If I was in a deficit for eight weeks, it'd go down a lot. And if I was in a deficit for 12, you wouldn't see hardly any fidgeting because of those metabolic adaptations to my need. Another thing that happens at the, like, you know, this would be after the point most likely at which

you've gone a little too far, um, is hormonal disruption, particularly to the thyroid and sex hormones. So for women, it can affect libido and thyroid health. For men, it can affect libido and thyroid health. So I think what you want to pay attention to is, you know, how's my immune system going? How's my energy? How's my movement? Am I just totally slouching, totally exhausted, totally tired, totally wiped out 24 seven. If you are, you've probably been in too steep of a deficit for too long. And especially if there's some associated weight loss, a way to look at this that I think is fair is to take it in five, 10 and 15 pound chunks. So like every five pounds of weight loss might be a good idea to incorporate

a refeed. Every 10 pounds of weight loss, it might be a good idea to incorporate a refeed. Every 10 pounds of weight loss, it might be a good idea to incorporate like a one week diet break. And every 15 pounds of weight loss, it might not be a bad idea to take a, you know, let's say two week diet break just to make sure that you don't go so far, so consistently without allowing a break for your psychology and your physiology that you do any of this disruptive, damaging, or potentially incur some negative health effects. That's what we really want to avoid. Now, specifically, specifically for women, I think this is super important. If you are in a calorie deficit or you are restricting energy

for so long that you've lost your menstrual cycle or you've initiated or begun what we would call hypothalamic amenorrhea, essentially your body does not have enough energy to run its reproductive system. That is another really good cue. Again, that's of course female specific. Again, another great one is immune system suppression. So you're just getting sick a lot more than normal. Always a good thing to pay attention to. So I like a more balanced and sustainable approach to fat loss, avoiding extremely long-term deficits and gauging every 5, 10, and 15 pounds, when to refeed, when to diet break, when to chill. Okay. So this question is from Kirk off Matt, and it's the opposite question. Essentially, it's how long is a typical bulking phase,

realistic muscle amount per month, which is to say, how much can I reasonably gain in training? So this is insane. This is one of my favorite, craziest, like statistical things about fitness. And that is the rate at which muscle growth occurs in natural lifters. If you've never lifted before as a dude, you can gain 20 to 25 pounds of muscle in one year. For a chick, you can cut that pretty much in half, but in year two, you're probably only going to gain 10 to 12 pounds. And guess what? As a chick cut that in half as a dude in year three, five to six pounds as a chick cut it in half. And after you've been training consistently for four, five, six years, you'll be lucky to gain two to four pounds of muscle a year. That's not a ton, but it means

that in four years of fairly consistent training, a man could put on between 35 to 50 pounds of muscle and a woman could put on between 20 to 25. And if you just committed to training hard enough, close to failure for four to five years, and then just maintained across the lifespan, the likelihood of developing things like diabetes, dysregulated blood sugar, bone density issues, metabolic issues, sex hormone reductions that occur with age and menopause, et cetera. All that stuff is mitigated by just having muscle. So one thing I recommend to people while you are young, train your ass off, get in the routine, train four to five days a week, three to four to five days a week, build some tissue over a five to 10 year window, build that muscle. and you will literally have that for life.

One of the best investments you can ever make. Just like Warren Buffett would say, it's not about timing the market, it's about time in the market. And I would say it's not so much about building muscle. It's about building as much as you can as early as you can so you can reap the benefits and the dividends quite literally for the entire lifespan. Now, a typical bulk phase, we can break this down. If you're gaining three pounds a year, four pounds a year, because you've been training for five, six years, well, a bulk phase might just be permanent or indefinite where you're like, hey, I give myself an extra 200 or 300 calories a day. And if I can gain a quarter of a pound to a half a pound a month on average, I know

that some of that's muscle, some of that's fat. But like if you're a brand new novice and you can gain like two pounds a month, or if you're a woman, you can gain one pound a month. a month, or if you're a woman, you can gain one pound a month. You know, your bulk phase might be six months and you aim to gain 15 pounds as a man. And you aim to gain eight to 10 pounds as a woman. And you know that about half of that'll be muscle and half of that'll be fat. Um, but how long it is that you bulk really has a lot to do with something that not enough people talk about, which is, I think probably the biggest mistake people make when it comes to building muscle. And that is just plain fat out, like

eating too many damn calories. Like only you're going to only build so much muscle. So if you eat a thousand extra calories a day, but you can only attribute like 200 of those thousand towards building muscle, that additional 800 calories a day, yeah, that's going to your body fat. And you might build a lot of muscle, but then to see it, you've got to chip away at like proportionately more body fat and spend more time dieting to even see it, which drives a lot of people completely insane, which is a lot of people completely insane, which is why for most people, I really wouldn't recommend a dirty bulk or a sloppy bulk. I'd say, hey, add 250 to 350 calories a day, mostly from carbs and protein. Keep your fat standard,

train pretty hard with a progressive approach and allow weight gain to happen more slowly so that you can ensure that more of that is lean tissue. And I know that that is not definitive, but I would recommend a 200 to 300 calorie surplus run indefinitely while you monitor your weight to make sure that you're not overshooting. And then if you have a reason that you'd like to get lean and maybe spend six to eight weeks in a deficit, that might be your break, so to speak. But there's nothing wrong as an active adult looking to build muscle. And I know Matt, who asked this question, is a dude. Same thing's true for chicks. With having a few hundred extra calories each day, just make sure that you monitor your weight and your body composition. A bulk phase can be as long as you want.

A lot of people ask, when should I stop bulking? And I, I, it's like one of the, probably the funniest question that I get asked is when should I stop bulking? And I have like a really trite borderline douchey answer. And it's when you're fatter than you'd like to be. Like if you have been bulking or adding calories and training to gain muscle for six months and like months one through four, you're chilling and months like five and six, you're like, oh, I'm kind of fat now. Guess what?

You overshot and it's time to stop bulking, which is to say like you're probably over consuming calories and the rate at which you're going to continue to build muscle isn't going to get proportionately greater or proportionately larger. Uh, and, and you're probably consuming more calories than you can turn into muscle. So it's better to dial it back. That's how, you know, you've overdone it. You just got fatter than you'd like to get. Well, I hope you guys enjoyed that episode. I hope it gave you some tips so that you don't overdo it when you look to build muscle or chip away at fat. I just want to remind all of you when it comes to your body, when it comes to your physique, don't try to look like anyone else. Don't try to diet like anyone else.

Don't try to take anybody else's advice that isn't a quality health and fitness professional. If you need help, guidance, and quite frankly, accountability with this, that's what most people need. You should hire a coach. It's a very helpful tool. If you're going to the gym for hours a week, you want to make sure you're doing it right. And having somebody on board can really help, but it's best not to compare yourself to other people.

It's best to find what works for you. And it's best to take dieting for fat loss and muscle growth slower while being sure to monitor your health. I want to thank you all so much for listening and remind you, screenshot this, tag me, share it to your Instagram story, and leave me a five-star rating and review on Apple and Spotify so that more people can find the show and we can help more people get in shape. Thanks so much for tuning in to the episode and I will catch you on the next one.