Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 378 - Q + A: TRT, Creatine, BCAA's + MORE!

Episode Date: July 31, 2024

Join my app based training teams, free for 7 days! HERE! Interested in Working With Coach Danny and His One-On-One Coaching Team? Click HERE! Help the show (and enter for a chance to win some swag) by leaving a review on: - APPLE PODCASTS - SPOTIFYOUR PARTNERS:HERELegion Supplements (protein, creatine, + more!), Shop (DANNY) !The best hydration and pre-workout on the planet! Get your  LMNT Electrolytes HERE!   SISU Sauna: The best build it yourself outdoor home sauna on the market. Save hundreds of dollars by clicking HERE! (CODE: DANNYMATRANGA)RESOURCES/COACHING:    Train with Danny on His Training App HEREGrab your FREE GUIDES (8 guides and 4 programs) by clicking the link: https://mailchi.mp/coachdannymatranga.com/free-guide-giveaway----SOCIAL LINKS:Follow Coach Danny on YOUTUBEFollow Coach Danny on INSTAGRAMFollow Coach Danny on TwitterFollow Coach Danny on FacebookGet More In-Depth Articles Written By Yours’ Truly HERE! Sign up for the trainer mentorship HERESupport the Show.

Welcome in everybody to another episode of the dynamic dialogue podcast. As always, I'm your host, Danny Matranga. And in this episode, I am going to be answering user questions from you fielded from over on my Instagram. I actually answered these very same questions over on my YouTube channel. So there's a full video that actually goes with this podcast if you prefer video format. But in today's episode, we're talking about a variety of different things from creatine, specifically creatine's impact on water retention, where it is and how it is that we retain water. I give you the easiest and probably simplest explanation ever as to what a calorie deficit is and how to get into one. We discuss the kind of structure and function of various amino acids in the body, specifically the branched chained amino acids, how they work, why they work, ways in which you can actually go about gaining weight or increasing weight faster, my thoughts on TRT for men, as well as a few other things. Enjoy the episode. This is 378. This episode is brought to you in part thanks

to some of our amazing partners like LMNT. LMNT makes the best electrolyte product on the market. In fact, I've actually started drinking my LMNT each and every morning before I have coffee so as to optimize my circadian biology, make sure that I'm hydrated and make sure that I'm getting ahead on my water intake throughout the day and not reliant on stimulants, but instead being somebody who's reliant on hydration and the proper balance of minerals and electrolytes. If you want to feel your best all day, mentally and physically, it's imperative that you stay hydrated. LMNT provides a balanced ratio of sodium, potassium, and magnesium to support brain and body hydration. This combination of electrolytes

improves health, performance, body and brain performance, mind you, helps to reduce cramps and soreness and get you more hydrated. There's no sugar. LMNT is sweetened with stevia. It's perfect for exercise and perfect for the sauna because the flavors are natural, tasty, delicious, and not overpowering. And if you're like me, you'll use them multiple times a day across your training sessions to get hydrated early to replenish after sauna use. And again, it's not just me. LMNT is the official sports drink of Team USA weightlifting, and it's used by athletes in the NBA, NFL, Major League Baseball, as well as athletes like you and I looking to take your fitness to the next level. My favorite flavors are definitely the raspberry and citrus. When I put a box

together, I try to load up on raspberry and citrus. And when you put your box together, you can get a free sample pack containing all of Elements' amazing flavors like mango chili, citrus, raspberry, orange, and more. To get access to this free gift with purchase, scroll down to the show notes and check out using the special link for dynamic dialogue listeners. Welcome into the studio today, guys. No workout content today. Instead, we're going to be answering your questions. Q&A style should be super fun and enjoyable. We're going to get into fitness, nutrition, lifestyle, all of it. Your questions fielded. I'll throw your username, all of that up there. Let's get into it. Tara Katz here wants to know my thoughts on TRT, bioidentical pellets versus injections.

So let's just talk about TRT, testosterone replacement therapy. This is a woman, so I'm guessing what she might mean is HRT, hormone replacement therapy. But we'll talk specifically about TRT for men, whether I prefer the injectables or the pellets, then we'll talk about HRT. So I don't think anybody should get on hormone replacement therapy, testosterone replacement therapy without first talking to their doctor or physician. I think a lot of guys want to just get on steroids so they can build muscle and get fucking bigger. I don't think there's anything wrong with their testosterone. In fact, I think a lot of guys desperately want to have low lab values so they can just start cruising on high

levels of test and look better. And then they say that they needed medical TRT, but the thing is they fucking just wanted to take low dose anabolic steroids and look bigger, which is your prerogative. You can do whatever the hell you want with your body. Whether or not you should get on hormone replacement therapy is very different from the question of, do I want to take advantage of the medical fast tracking that's happened in the last few years to take performance enhancing drugs? And if you want to do that, that's on you. But if you want to manage your hormones using hormone replacement therapy, that's between you and a physician. And I do generally think that adding hormone replacement for both men and women instead of being hypogonadal and having no like sex hormones present

is going to be a lot better than just trying to raw dog life with no hormones. However, don't get it twisted. A lot of the people who are saying they're doing medically indicated TRT are just dudes taking steroids who want an excuse for it. If you are not looking to have the anabolic effect, the performance effect from HRT or TRT, you need to be more considerate about why you're doing it and what you're doing it for. Almost anybody can get TRT now to get better results and better gains, but TRT for sport versus hormone replacement therapy for longevity are two totally different things. So just be sure to check with your physician. This question is from Nayful12, and the the question is weight gain tips for those who struggle to gain weight,

fast metabolism. So I like to kind of flip this on its head. Typically the habits and behaviors I would want to not engage with if I wanted to lose weight are some of the best habits and behaviors to engage with if I want to gain weight. So of the best habits and behaviors to engage with if I want to gain weight. So for a client who's cutting, I would recommend avoiding liquid calories, eating higher satiety foods that are lower in fat, lower in added sugars. If a client wanted to gain weight, I would recommend more liquid calories and more foods that have added fats and sugar. You need increased energy density if you have a high total daily energy expenditure. Take myself for example. I'm shorter

than the average guy at 5'8", but I move way more than the average guy. So my total daily energy expenditure is pretty high. So to maintain my weight, I need to eat quite a bit of calories. And if I try to do that only from clean foods or whole foods or single ingredient foods, I'm going to come up short. But if I include things like smoothies, which are blended up and easier to drink, or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, which are hyper palatable and very energy dense, I have a shot. So to gain weight, if you have a hard time eating enough calories,

you need to make sure to take advantage of energy dense foods that tend to be higher in fat and higher in calories and liquid calories can actually be your friend. Miss Madison Scott asks difference between BCAAs and regular amino acids. So this is a good question. amino acids. So this is a good question. There's 20 amino acids that we will find in nature. The BCAAs are the branch-chained amino acids, meaning there's three of them. And the reason they're called branch-chained is actually super simple. It's because of their shape. They simply have a branch on them. The way they're shaped, there's like a genuine discrepancy. Leucine, isoleucine, and valine, the BCAAs, are shaped gently different from the other 17 amino acids. It's also the case that those amino acids are essential, meaning we have to get them from

food. Many amino acids are non-essential. We make enough of them in our own body that we don't need to worry about getting them from food. But the BCAAs specifically must be gotten from food, and they tend to be found in foods that are high in protein. Leucine, the chief BCAA responsible for muscle growth, we find this in red meat and dairy. But a big reason why I don't recommend supplementing with additional BCAAs if you already have a high protein diet is because many of the best sources of dietary protein, whether it's chicken, fish, eggs, dairy, even plant proteins, they often contribute quite a bit of BCAAs in the protein. Like this protein powder, I have a scoop,

boom, there's 20 grams of protein. Well, it turns out that of that 20 grams, five of the gram weight is coming just from three amino acids, leucine, isoleucine, and valine, which is awesome. If you eat a high protein diet, particularly high in meat and dairy protein, I wouldn't recommend supplementing with additional BCAAs, even though they are unique and pretty important. Okay, this one comes from Fitness by Anna B. And the question is, I usually do three leg days a week for booty gains. Will switching to two days a week make me lose progress? So this is a good question. I think the answer of course is

gonna be it depends. However, let's say across these three leg days you do 10 sets each. 10 sets Monday, 10 sets Wednesday, 10 sets Friday. I would argue that you'd be better off doing 15 sets on Monday and like 15 sets on Thursday and just training legs twice than training three sessions. The reason for this is because leg training tends to be really challenging and hard. And if you want to know about how important hard training is, check out some of the videos on the channel, specifically the one about newbie mistakes, because a lot of novice lifters, many of whom are chasing booty gains, are doing too much volume too frequently without enough intensity. And I would say that two workouts a week is plenty to build your glutes, and three could be better, but only if all three sessions

are meaningfully challenging and all the work that you're doing is difficult. I used to train legs three times a week, but what I found was I'm better off training legs twice and doing a little more volume. Another approach that might work is doing two hard complete leg days that train the quadriceps, hamstrings, and glutes. And then having a third session available to you where you do some lower intensity kind of penalty free glute work. This could be things like abductions, band work, or lower intensity work. I do this a lot in our online female bodybuilding

program Elite Physique. There's three leg days but only two of them are really hard. And the third leg day is really just a total body day with some legs. Three full leg days might be a lot and I'd probably actually recommend going to two for better gains. All right this one's from Matt underscore or Matt C underscore 215. Matt wants to know the best way to keep off stomach fat in a bulking phase. So the best thing to do is to go back in time and pick parents, both of whom have genetics for very low body fat accumulation in the midsection. Fortunately, I have parents like that. Neither one of my parents has had a ton of visceral fat accumulation in their life. And many of us don't choose the geography of where our body fat gets packed away.

And unfortunately, let's say you're a woman and all of your body fat accumulates in your center abdomen instead of like the typical areas like hips, breasts, thighs. That'd be kind of a bummer. But for a man, and that's a male asking the question, you should expect a decent amount of additional body fat to accumulate in the midsection. It's pretty common for most men. I'm a genetic anomaly in that for some reason, a lot of my surplus body fat gets stored

in my triceps and my glutes, but even at higher body fat levels, I have abs because I don't store a ton of body fat in my midsection. But most of you will, especially if you're guys. So you have to just be okay with it. What's going on, guys? Coach Danny here, taking a break from the episode to tell you about my coaching company, 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 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 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. The second tip I have is to don't bulk like an idiot. If you bulk in a surplus of 100 to like 300 calories, it might be really slow progress, but you'll have a lot less body fat gain than

somebody who bulks at like a thousand surplus calories a day. And I think you could make the argument that if you already know you store a lot of belly fat, it's better to only have a surplus of two to three hundred instead of a thousand, because where do you think the surplus calories are going to be, you know, essentially stored? They're probably going to be stored in the adipocytes or fat cells in your midsection. So those are the two main things you can do, you know, address the realistic potential you have with your genetics and try not to overeat. Another thing you can do is try to limit stress and alcohol consumption. Those two things do seem to increase the amount of body fat we store in the kind of visceral

kind of in between the organs, the abdomen area. But the best thing you have access to is a surplus that is not excessive. So I'm gonna say a 100 to 300 calorie surplus, get some sleep, minimize stress, do not drink alcohol, and that'll give you the best chance. But there's still no guarantee you won't have some body fat on your midsection

because that's just how this works. D Gomez underscore wants me to please explain deficit. So this is actually a really good opportunity. What the fuck is a calorie deficit? A calorie deficit is what happens when you eat less than the amount of calories required to maintain your body weight. So let's use a bank account as an example. Let's say I have a bank account and in that bank account I always keep $1,000. $1,000 is my bank account baseline. One day I spend $800 of my $1,000 leaving me with just $200 in my bank account. Okay. That would be an 800 calorie decrease. Sorry. We got to redo this whole thing. I said,

I said bank account, but I kept calling the money calories. Okay. D Gomez underscore asks, explain deficit. So what I'm going to do right now is as simply as possible, try to explain what a calorie deficit is without overdoing it. So a calorie deficit is simply this. I'll use myself as an example. To maintain my body weight, let's say I need to eat 2,500 calories. If I eat 2,600, that's 100 calories more than I need. If I eat 2,400, that's 100 calories less than I need. If I ran a marathon out of nowhere, obviously my baseline would increase probably from 2,500 to like 5,000. But for most of you, you have a pretty similar day-to-day activity level. And the most important thing you can do to establish your deficit is to determine something called your TDEE, total daily energy

expenditure. That is the number I just told you for me is about 2,500. That's my baseline. That's my total calorie intake required to maintain my weight. If I go 200 calories below 2,500 below my baseline, 2,300 versus 2,500 is a difference of minus 200, right? If I go 200 calories above my baseline, the difference is plus 200, right? If I go from 25 to 27, a calorie deficit is any number beneath your TDEE. If you consume 2,000 calories on a budget, shall we say, of 2,500, that's a 500 calorie deficit. If you consume 1,000 calories on a 2,500 calorie budget, that's a 1,000 or 1,500, I should say, calorie deficit.

Many people make this super simple mistake, though. On Monday, they're should say, calorie deficit. Many people make this super simple mistake, though. On Monday, they're in a 500 calorie deficit. On Tuesday, they're in a 500 calorie deficit. On Wednesday, they're in a 500 calorie deficit. And on Thursday, they're in a 500 calorie deficit. That would be four days of eating and a 500 calorie deficit. That's two thousand calories less than that person needs through four days. That's going to lead to weight loss. However, what a lot of people do is they overeat by 750 calories Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, which comes out to almost 2,300 calories, and they completely erase the deficit for the week. So one really important thing you need to remember about how a calorie deficit

drives weight loss, as it drives that weight loss over time, you need to create a daily deficit that adds up to a weekly deficit that adds up to a monthly deficit, not just being a deficit for a week and then offset it with being in a surplus for a week. If you're consistently eating less calories than you need to maintain your weight, body fat will come off. I hope that makes sense. So this question comes from Kayla underscore Cochran. And the question is,

is water retention in subcutaneous tissues common with creatine use? So this is a good question. Subcutaneous is a very fancy way of saying under your skin. Okay. So a lot of you guys have probably had like high sodium, high fat meals, and maybe like gotten on an airplane and had elevation. You'll notice you retain water in between your skin and kind of that space. That more classic high sodium water retention,

maybe medication related water retention, a lot of that is subcutaneous. But with creatine, the water retention we experience is water being retained in our muscles. And that's a really big relief for a lot of people who are concerned about creatine supplementation and how it might affect their body weight. Many people, when they're on a weight loss journey or a fitness journey in general, they're conscious of how much they weigh. And hearing that creatine causes water weight retention is scary, especially when you think, okay, not only is the scale going to go up, but I'm going to start holding onto water in like my gut and my face. Fuck that, right? start holding onto water in like my gut and my face. Fuck that, right? That's not how creatine works. I'll give you a very, very crude example using the equipment I have at my disposal here.

Let's say that this is muscle. And this is water outside your muscle. When you start taking creatine, okay, this is the muscle. Maybe you don't have a lot of opportunity to hold water inside that tissue. It's only so much. Creatine comes around and creatine actually helps you hold more water in that muscle than normal over time. Over time. That muscle will be able to better control movement, better contract, better perform because of the creatine and the water in it. There is none of the water or none of that water is going outside of the muscle. Creat the water in it. There is none of the water or none of that water

is going outside of the muscle. Creatine is pulling it into the muscle, not intentionally because it's a molecule. It doesn't have intention, but it does that mechanistically. Creatine wouldn't work if it was pulling water into the interstitial fluid or into your subcutaneous space. It works specifically because it takes water from outside of the muscle and pulls it into the muscle. So try not to sweat that subcutaneous water retention. A lot of that is driven by other things, creatine not being one of them. Thanks for stopping by folks for a little Q&A. We'll do more of these in the future. Just be sure to subscribe to

the YouTube channel, leave comments, ask your questions here. This would actually be an amazing place to field unique questions. Me and my videographer were laughing a little bit about some of the questions that we fielded for this video because frankly, not all of them were great, but I'd love to answer your questions subscriber questions from right here on the channel so leave them in the comment section below thumbs up the video hit the notification bell and I'll see you on the next one