Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - BONUS: Public Health Issues POST-COVID-19

Episode Date: June 26, 2020

In this episode, Danny sits down to talk about how the COVID-19 pandemic has and will continue to impact everyday lifestyle. With the pandemic, our potentially disastrous habits have been brought to the forefront. We discuss how these consumption loving habits we’ve fallen further into are going to impact us for years to come. As we begin to shift our attention to a hopeful future, we must also be wary of the side effects our current habits have created.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:Overarching laziness and instant gratification in society! 2:33People’s routines have been completely upended! For the better AND the worse! 5:53A deeper dive into the problem concerning a spike in caloric intake for the now and the future! 9:33The second wave of issues related to the challenges of restarting healthier routines 13:06Gym memberships skyrocketing equals creating healthy habits? Truth or grain of salt? 15:15Transitioning back to normalcy and the almost certain rise of OBESITY! Post-COVID society is very concerning, much like current-COVID! 19:10Support the Show.

Good morning, guys. Welcome in to another episode of the podcast. Today, I want to talk about some stuff that has really come across my mind recently in the wake of what appears to be some type of return to normal post-COVID-19. Now, this does not mean that this pandemic is over. It does not mean that we will not see a second wave, but it appears as though at least the public consensus around the virus has calmed a bit. It seems that there are some areas in this country where the curve has been flattened. Now there's others where it has not. And there's other states. I'm lucky enough to live in California where I feel as though we've done a much better job. There's some states where this is still very much an issue and it's getting worse every day. Now,

I'm not here to talk about that, debate it, debate masks, none of that. I'm actually here to talk about the way COVID has changed our lives and our lifestyles and how I'm a little bit more concerned than I was initially. I'm going to talk about how this is going to impact mental health, physical fitness, and just habits as a society moving forward that I think we were already dangerously flirting with. And now we've embraced full force because if anything, if we know anything about this post COVID landscape, it's that it's likely changed the way we live, if not forever, at least for the very near future. I'm slightly concerned that some of the strategies we've been forced as a society to implement to get ahead of this virus, right? Because it was very contagious. We weren't as

prepared as we could have been as a country. We didn't have the testing that we could have had. All of these things, right? So we had to be very reactionary. We implemented some social distancing measures, increased reliance on delivery, closed a lot of things. And it's really impacted our way of life. And I'm actually concerned with these impacts and how they're going to continue to deteriorate some of these habits we've picked up. I think they're going to continue to break down public health, and they've only expedited what was already a very serious problem. Perhaps the overarching, biggest thing that has changed because of this

is what I would call an overarching laziness has kind of permeated society. We were already a society very reliant on instant gratification. We wanted things within two days delivered to our door. People weren't getting really angry if they weren't getting their Amazon package in two days, which if you really think about things contextually, it wasn't, but maybe 10 years ago that just getting something sent to your house was amazing. Hey, oh, I got that delivered. What? You got that online? Oh my gosh, that's so cool. Yeah, dude, online shopping's the wave. And now here we are 10 years later, we're like, I can't believe my Amazon package isn't here. I shouldn't have to wait this long. They need to get it together.

We've become so conditioned to have things now, now, now, that the continuation and the extension of that has only gotten worse. We've moved even further away from going and buying things at the store. We've had an increased reliance on delivery. We've had an increased reliance on food delivery, which is something that I've become quite concerned with as well. We'll talk more about that later. But just this societal laziness, the societal expectation that I want to have it now, I should get to have it now. And then we have, of course, the issue of many people being told it's not safe to work and that they have to be on unemployment. And anytime you see a large number of people on unemployment, a lot of them

don't want to go back to work. And that's fine. You know, you don't have to work if you don't want to work. But in many cases, working is how people get paid. In most cases, working is how people get paid. And unemployment doesn't last forever. And so what we've got now is we've got a population with unemployment north of 20%. You know, this expectation that this unemployment is going to be really high because it's been, there's this Trump stipend of $600 extra attached. And we're kind of living in this fantasy world where we don't have to work. Many people are getting more money than they were before. I know my friends who are unemployed are making, in some cases, actually more money than they were before. For people like myself who work still, that's not a slight. I'm

very fortunate to have a job, but many people didn't like that job. So they're sitting at home making more. And I think it encourages this societal laziness. The need to have things delivered or dropped off at your car, I think encourages this societal laziness. This is something we already have. And it's just something that I am increasingly concerned with as we move away from this pandemic, even if that's next month or in the next six months, if we have a second wave. This isn't about COVID. This is about some of the habits and some of the things that we've implemented societally that concern me at a more micro level. One of the things that we've implemented societally that concern me at a more micro level. One of the things that I've come across a lot in my coaching practices, and this

is something that I'm also aware that's changed, is people's routine has been completely upended, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse, right? If you were in a routine where perhaps you were working too much, you were going too fast, you weren't taking time to slow down, take care of yourself. COVID for many people actually provided reprieve. It was shelter from the storm. It was a break from the craziness of everyday life. You said goodbye to the commute. You said goodbye to the crazy office. All of the things that were in your routine that might have really been adding stress, many of us were able to step away from for a little while and gain perspective. And for the first couple weeks, I actually thought that it was quite healthy that many of us got the opportunity to step back and examine how it

was we were living our lives, the routines that we had created on a daily basis, important to us as they may be, might be quite hectic and actually detract in some ways. And this examination period is always valuable. That's what vacations allow us to do. However, every part of people's routine, for the most part, was upended. No more working, no more going to the gym, no more going out with friends. You know, there were things that we had scheduled that were a part of our lives that had become habit. And with regards to things that are physical fitness related in particular, and this is something that I saw quite a bit with my clients, particularly those who I worked with online through this, it takes months, if not years, to formally, formally, truly, truly, truly get into a routine of going to the gym four to

five days a week. That's not normal behavior. The average person who goes to the gym goes maybe once or twice. You know, some of them only go once or twice a month. They have a gym membership, but they don't go. It's a rare few who make the sacrifice to go to the gym four to five days a week. And I think that's quite a bit better than going once, maybe even twice a week. I mean, everything in context, but if you can go more, train more, generally work a little bit harder, recover just fine. I think it's better to do more training. I think it helps us deal with the stressors of life. I think it helps us become stronger individuals, healthier individuals. There's no secret what resistance training to do.

But I've noticed without that routine with gyms being closed, many people have slipped to two, three, maybe even one. I know I did that backwards, workout per week. They've really fallen out of their fitness routine. And it does worry me a little bit. Another thing that I think a lot of people have gotten away from that might have been helping them live healthier lives was cooking. I know a lot of people are eating out more and having more food delivered on a daily basis. eating out more and having more food delivered on a daily basis. And when we talk about food delivery services, I think they're quite, they're quite, they're very effective during a pandemic, right? There's a lot less transfer of potential contagions and pathogens when somebody's just dropping

a bag off at your house with gloves and there's an effort and an impact to minimize contact. But what is a little bit worrisome is consider that people are more sedentary than they've ever been given that they're probably not going to work. Many are sitting at home on the couch. Gyms are closed. Many people's neat non-exercise activity thermogenesis has dropped exponentially. And now there's a reliance on people to bring you your food. And the only work you have to do is to get up off the couch, stop watching Tiger King, and go grab it. So the amount of calories expended and calories ingested has been an issue societally for years. And it's been getting worse year after year as our convenience culture increases our lives get easier our caloric expenditure tends to go down and because we have so many high calorie hyper palatable foods available to us our caloric

intake has been scaling up and so with covid societally it became very acceptable and borderline safer for us to just stay inside, which of course minimizes our caloric output. But unless we were cooking and making an effort to really cook mostly healthful foods, a reliance on delivery is kind of an issue. And one of the things that was really popularized and put out there by commonplace media outlets early on during this pandemic was get non-perishable foods, get foods that can last a while, get foods with a lot of calories. There was really this fear that was pumped out. And I'm not here to pick sides. I think in general, the news provides something that's relatively serviceable. And I think that people don't do enough of a good enough of a job

educating themselves about the current political scene. So I'm not trying to scare anybody away from watching the news, but just know that the news cycle thrives when people are angry or when they are scared. 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 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. And early on during COVID, a lot of people watching the news were certainly scared. A

pandemic is a scary thing, but it created this rush on groceries and food supply. And so people were bringing home a lot of really high calorie, non-perishable processed foods that they've been slowly working their way through over the course of the last, what is now over 100 days. And, or at least that's how long that my state here, or my county here in California, I should say, has been under some type of shelter in place ordinance or had some type of COVID-19 restrictions put in place. So we had less movement. We had more of a reliance on high calorie, hyper palatable, you know, delivered food from restaurants. Let's say the average restaurant dish is 12 to 1500 calories, somewhere in that range. And then we had a society that was bringing home large amounts of processed foods, high calorie foods, foods that last a long time that we can just sit down.

They're not going to go bad. We can snack on them in March, April, May and June. You know what I mean? Like crackers, chips, packaged foods. Those don't go bad. And while in context, those aren't inherently bad foods, those aren't foods that you can really get away with eating when you're not moving much. That's when you start to pay for it. That's when you really start to see weight gain. And so one of the things that I'm really nervous about, and of course, yes, it falls into this umbrella of the systemic post-COVID laziness that I've seen. And I hate to use the term

post-COVID because we're still fighting this fight, but I think it fits contextually, is underneath that umbrella of getting more lazy. We've lost a lot of our movement routines and we've picked up some really, really poor consumption routines around having things delivered to us or buying stuff from the store that isn't exactly aligned with this reduced caloric intake. So I am worried that in an effort to curtail this virus, get ahead of it, do what we needed to do societally. We're going to run into a second wave of issues here in 2021 and 2022 related to our expectation around food, our lack of desire to cook our own food, the routines that were shattered, to cook our own food, the routines that were shattered, no longer going to the gym in a reasonable amount of time, or a reasonable number of times, I should say, throughout

the week. You know, those routines are no longer in place. So we're going to have to build them back. Many people are going to have to build them back. This idea that the minute gyms opened, everybody was going to rush back. That was just the fanatics. Think about the people who were just getting into a routine. Their habits were finally starting to come together. You know, that takes a lot of what I call activation energy. It takes a lot of practice. It takes a lot of building things up. And that becomes really, really hard to recreate after 100 days

of perhaps not having a job, having everything delivered and getting paid to stay at home. You know, humans default mode might be to be a little bit lazy and let life come to them. And so I'm just concerned, you know, and I think this is something that we're not talking about. And I want to put it out there into the health space to the practitioners who listen to the hobbyists and enthusiasts who listen to the podcast on a regular basis. And that's that, you know, you all probably rushed back. Most of your peers are probably really, really focused on their fitness. They're probably healthy. Maybe you have some family members

and a few coworkers who aren't, but probably most of the people you spend your time with, they appreciate their health and fitness. They like to go to the gym. That's all normal behavior. But for many people, that has been completely crumpled up and thrown in the trash.

And a lot of people will be starting from scratch. I've heard from a few friends in the corporate gym space that gym memberships are skyrocketing at locations that are open. However, I take that with a grain of salt for a few reasons. Here's why. Number one, gym memberships were being canceled left, right, and center going into COVID because a lot of people realized, hey, I'm not getting paid and I don't want to pay a membership. So a lot of people who canceled are probably just re-enrolling. Secondly, I worked in a corporate gym for over five years when I was younger. And I, every January would sign five or six people up every single year, the same five or six people. They would come from January. They'd come a couple of times,

they'd come a couple of times in February, cancel in March. And then the next year in January, they'd sign back up. And so my point with that is signing up for the gym doesn't mean you're going to go. It doesn't mean you're going to get into a routine. And let's not even talk about what those routines are going to be like, like the over how much you're going to have to overcome to make that a routine. Now, given that the gym is an exponentially less social place, it's less inviting with masks and social distancing, right? Like there's so much that's changed at the level of actually going to the gym that I'm concerned. And I think that we need to be aware that societally we're going to have increased laziness more than we already had. We're going to see an increased difficulty or an increased requirement of energy to form routines

and habits because we have, for many of us, not needed them for months, right? We're going to see that continued increase in food delivery. Had I known how impactful this was going to be societally, I probably would have bought something like a Grubhub or an Uber Eats. Those are stocks I would have bought because there's certain things, habits are hard to break. And COVID really forcefully broke a lot of people's habits but in in ingrained some new ones that i don't think are ideal uh one of which being getting food delivered i think that probably we're gonna see even when people are allowed to go back to restaurants a permanent bump in how many of us are getting food delivered from apps like grubhub

and from apps like ubereats and DoorDash, all of these different ones, right? I don't think that's going down. And so that's going to kind of work against public health in a unique way because most of the options on food delivery websites are high calorie, hyper palatable foods that are easy to over consume. Again, paired with not going to the gym as much, having a broken routine. I don't love it. And I worry about, hey, you know, we've spent so much time focusing on this pandemic. It's a very serious issue. I don't think it's a hoax. I'm not trying to minimize it. I'm just trying to look a little bit ahead and say, hey, let's pump the brakes here. We were already living in an obesity crisis. We were already living in an obesity crisis we were already living in an existential crisis of

people not knowing what they wanted to do with their lives feeling lost i don't have a routine i hate my job blah blah blah and so now here we are you've been getting paid to stay at home let's say this lifts let's say january 1st 2021 it lifts You've been sitting at home for 10 months, eight months, you know, eight months and not working. You've been getting unemployment. You haven't been going to the gym. And then all of a sudden it's going to be like, okay, we've got 350 million people. Some of them have been living normal lives. Some of them haven't, but it's your job now to get back to work, start going to the gym again, Stop getting food delivered. Start cooking. Start eating healthy.

The amount of changes people are going to have to make all at once scares me. Because even when people had a routine going, it's still really hard to commit to eating healthier. Or to commit to going to the gym a few times a week. Or to commit for going for a few walks. That's not an easy task. Now people are going to have to make that commitment in conjunction with going back to working and going back to having more stress. And I worry that we might see another bump, which almost seemed unimaginable in obesity in this country. I think we're going to see what we've got right now. The metrics are about 70% of the country is overweight and 50, 40% is obese. I wouldn't

be surprised if at the end of the next CDC evaluation for weight in this country, we saw 75 and 45 or even 80 and 50, right? And that's a public health crisis in its own right that will kill way more people than COVID-19. And so I'm not saying not to take COVID-19 seriously. I think a lot of people in the fitness space have tried to do that. Like, oh, don't worry about COVID-19. Everybody's fat. Oh, how could we possibly be talking about this? Everybody's left, right, and center. People are dying of COVID-19. Oh, how many people are dying of obesity and diabetes? But, you know, we would be foolish not to go, hey, let's be sure that after this COVID-19 thing is done, we try as a society to be a little bit healthier. Because one of the things we did see is that there

is a link between comorbidities like diabetes and obesity and prevalence of COVID-19. So all this to say, guys, I'm as concerned about post-COVID as I am the current COVID climate. As we finish fighting this pandemic, perhaps we get a vaccine. Maybe we flatten the curve. Maybe we, who knows, maybe we move away from it by some miracle. But, you know, we're not immune to pandemics. They will come and go. Bacterial infections are contagious and viruses

are even more contagious and they spread even faster. And so, you know, with the use of antibiotics in society, we're on the cusp of some crazy super bacterial infections and probably some super viruses. And we'll have practices in place, right? Because COVID-19 taught us a lot. But if we don't change our habits, if we don't shift away from this ingrained laziness, if we don't get healthier, we're going to continue to be sitting ducks for this stuff, right? Because we know comorbidities do in some way, shape or form impacts susceptibility. And we're going to be sitting ducks for things like hypertension, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, as we continue to become

less and less or more and more detached from a healthy lifestyle. And I don't think that the way we had to react to COVID-19 did much to help us live healthier lifestyles. It gave us a little bit of a boost in our sanitation practices, which is important. We were disgusting. If you ask most health professionals with how we were touching everything and how little we sanitized and cleaned, but you know, I do worry that after this is all said and done, you know, and we're moving forward, we'll be in a landscape that was forever changed and our behaviors will have been forever changed. I think some of those changes might actually impact our health for the worst. And that's unfortunate because we were already in a little bit of a pickle societally. So guys, that's really

it. Just a quick rant. Some of the things I'm a little bit concerned about post COVID. I know that there's no timetable for this stuff, and I want you guys to continue to take it seriously. You know, I want to get through this as fast as anybody. So don't go, oh my gosh, this guy said COVID's not an issue. It's totally an issue, and I think we need to get to the bottom of it. But I want everybody to be aware and be a resource for the people around them who maybe are struggling with a routine to say, hey, do something, go for a walk, maybe go back to the gym at a low traffic hour, get some home equipment or hey, stop eating out so much, stop getting food delivered, start eating healthier. Because we I think we're going to face a whole

nother set of issues moving forward here in the next couple months. So that's it, guys. Hope you enjoyed the episode. Just a quick blurb. See you guys again soon and have a good one