Antidiet Dietitian podcast: This or That RAPID Q&A

Astrid Naranjo asked me some great questions in this interview.

Chapters

00:00 Intro

00:33 Gradual Energy Reduction vs. Severe Calorie Deficit

01:21 Partials vs. Full ROM (Range Of Motion)

03:11 When to Introduce New Exercises in Your Mesocycle

05:01 The Role of Wrist Straps: When and Why to Use Them in Your Workout Routine

07:11 Maingaining vs. Energy Surplus for Maximum Muscle Growth

08:16 The Ideal Workout Timing: Morning vs. Evening

10:23 When to Listen to Your Body Signals and When to Make Your Body Listen to You

12:31 Distinguishing Between Emotional/Mental Fatigue and Neuromuscular Fatigue

14:53 Fasted Training vs. Fed Training: Which is Better for You

16:42 Protein and Carbohydrate Ratios Before and After Workouts for Improved Performance and Recovery

20:08 Resistance Training for Children: Overrated or Underrated

20:30 Activity Snacks: What Are They and Are They Overrated or Underrated

24:42 Collagen: Overrated or Underrated

28:22 Protein Water: Overrated or Underrated

28:56 Bodyweight Exercises: Overrated or Underrated

Transcript (auto)

Are you ready for this q&a? Yes, let’s get into it the way we’re going to go about is I have three sections the first section is about choosing uh two options this or that and I’m gonna give you any statement and you sort of will have two options and you will give me what is your gonna be your best and so to that next we have overrated underrated as per usual with some couple of controversial questions your audience and my audience have for you are you ready that’s good awesome so the first part is this or that for fat loss on a cut are Gradual Energy Reduction vs. Severe Calorie Deficit you someone who prefers decreasing energy intake gradually or do you prefer this to cut um right back to a very severe deficit I don’t do it gradually in the sense of you know step wise 50 calories per week or something I go straight to the optimal deficit which is usually not super severe the leaner someone on it the greater the energy or the lower the energy depths has to be so if someone’s overweights they can cut very fast it sounds already very lean they’re in countless prep you need to be very conservative maybe even just a five percent deficit but I go straight there so if they go from say five percent Surplus to ten percent deficit I go straight I make that jump in one go okay

Partials vs. Full ROM (Range Of Motion) if we were to talk about partial or full ROM what would you choose full ROM for now for most exercises length and sparkles are becoming super popular for probably good reason because there are now a few studies that find that they are even Superior to fall out but it’s all in untrained individuals and it’s all on exercises that have a very pronounced sticking point at the top such as calf raises leg extensions so I’m not super convinced that it’s the way to go over full run most studies that look at partial versus full ROM still finds full ROM is better and it seems to be mostly the length and part that’s important but I think if you’re only doing the life report it’s at least not necessary for exercises like measure curls left prayers where you already stimulate the line composition well anyway okay if we were to say for leg training particularly is your preference doing full run or do you prefer partials partials can make some sense for leg extensions for example if your machine is not very good and it doesn’t have great range of motion and a very nice resistance curve most leg extension machines are really only very difficult at the top where you extend the leg and then partials might make sense what I often do now and in clients is I have the last set as partials and before I do full on one big downside I find of only using length and partials is that it becomes very difficult to track your progression because you know what is half half there’s no marker to say whether the wrap was full and it becomes a very slippery slope so it becomes very difficult to monitor your monitor your progression and if you don’t know if you’re progressing then you don’t know if your program is working which is um very bad from our coaching point of view because you can’t optimize you can track absolutely now a follow-up question about mesocycles and when you

When to Introduce New Exercises in Your Mesocycle want to introduce a new exercise for example to your program when is the best time to introduce this new exercise like let’s say you have been sticking to a program with specific exercises for the muscles you’re trying to Target but for some reason you want to add a new exercise when you want to add this new exercise to your program when do you think is the best time to include it at the end of your mesocycle when you are kind of like in a deload phase where you’re not necessarily adding or trying to see what the best RM is where would you put that exercise to kind of start getting familiar with it practicing technique then sort of like actually going right into it in your new program I think you can often just go right into it when you introduce want to introduce new exercise and then I’m assuming you have the volume for it because of course if you introduce a new exercise you have to know that either you’re going to add volume or you’re going to replace something else otherwise your but your volume might become excessive but other than that you can just put it whenever you want most research on these things find that if you’re introducing it gradually for muscle soreness and these kind of things it doesn’t work any better it does reduce the soreness but it doesn’t improve gains compared to going straight into it and it does cost more time just as with the energy deficits introducing exercise more gradually it might be mentally easier for some people but it does cost time and research find that it doesn’t improve the result so it you know if somebody’s very um someone wants to do it gradually that can be perfectly viable but if someone doesn’t have that desire then you can just go straight in and use your time optimally as possible okay so now recess traps for improving the obviously the the capacity for lifting more weight or Trying to minimize the like the limiting factor of your forearms when you’re lifting something are you Pro or against these lifting straps in order to make sure you can give your best to perhaps like luck cool Downs or rows or that lifts I do you like using straps like the eight figure eight or Versa grapes those kind of things yeah I’m a big proponent of straps especially for women but they should not be necessary for most people for most exercises in general I would say deadlifts very likely you only them unless you have great genetics for powerlifting most people find that yeah you will your body will outspace the growth of your grip and most people are stronger with grips there’s also some research on that and shrugs also similar scenario and especially for women where they typically have a more developed lower body compared to the upper body

and it becomes very unrealistic to expect them to do Romanian deadlifts without straps for example some exercises for women sometimes even calf raises if you need to hold like a 40 kilo dumbbell in your hands that can be very difficult for a man and hip extensions as well like if you you are going up to 40 kilos so you have to hold it back right into your chest uh that can also be difficult to worry about straps sometimes men typically shouldn’t eat it pull Downs maybe for High Reps but usually I find that when people need it for pull Downs unless sometimes when you’re on gear actually you can get extreme ratios in some individuals but for most natural Chinese if you need straps for pull Downs usually I would say that’s the sign your grip is very weak and you probably will benefit from grip training I think it’s good to use the straps in the meantime to make sure that your pull Downs actually train your back instead of your forearms but you should probably develop some more forearm um size and strength to make sure you don’t need them anymore because at some point you’ll you’ll start needing them for everything all right now between these two options what is

Maingaining vs. Energy Surplus for Maximum Muscle Growth your preferred option main gaining or actually being the face building faces with large surpluses I’m definitely in favor of bulking I favor go for a lean bulking so very small energy Surplus but main gaining although the research is quite favorable and it’s a recent study found actually that it was almost as effective as an energy Surplus my experience is that it’s absolutely not yeah I think it will work to a certain point for beginners but an advanced individual I don’t know a single super Advanced trainee who still grows muscle in at maintenance like for most people just nothing happens I’ve tried it many times in clients that really want to make sure I don’t want to get any fat I don’t think it will work but we can try it and they’re like no no let’s just do complete maintenance no energy Surplus and then after a couple months like well you know you gain some strength but really haven’t gained any size which means that you have a gay muscle and I’ve also tried it myself and it doesn’t work anymore as advanced trainings need to be an energy Surplus okay now time of the day for training are you proponent of training better in the morning midday evening what is best or is more reactive based on your energy levels I mean more business of course when people have the time to train but if someone has the luxury of choosing a training time the most important thing for one is being consistent with that time because your biorhythm adapts and if you’re training sometimes in the morning sometimes in the evening sometimes at two sometimes at eight then your bio rhythm cannot adapt and optimize your performance at that time and there is now quite compelling research that performance will be lower and also strength gains and some sometimes even I’m also a perfectly can be lower if you have luxury of choosing a consistent time whenever you want then I would favor the afternoon to early evenings for most people that’s when performance is the highest because core body temperature is highest if you were always train in the mornings and especially if you also use caffeine the difference is very marginal but there is at least one study by kusma at all from the from Scandinavia that’s found greater muscle growth when measured out over a period of six months in the group training in the afternoons versus the group training in the mornings so it probably doesn’t make a big difference especially with caffeine in the mornings regular training but there is some research pointing that afterwards early evenings are probably the the most optimal assistance training for hypertrophy strength training for gaining strength or cardio endurance training when it comes to picking the time or is it’s not it’s exactly the same for any type of training I’m not sure I’m not an expert on Honduras training I think there is some research at the optimal time differs per training type the general Trends is that afternoon to evenings are better is similar I think the the ideal time is a bit different for swimming and running for example um but it’s not it’s not a huge difference all right

When to Listen to Your Body Signals and When to Make Your Body Listen to You when where is a sleep deprived should you listen to your body or make your body listen to you I know you made a post about this so I’m interested to hear your thoughts about that yeah I’m a big proponent of making your body listen to you I think a lot of people take the it sounds I mean there’s there’s not really any research or anything to support it it just sounds good to say listen to your body and of course in terms for some things that makes a lot of sense like pain signals there’s a lot of research verifying that listening to pain signals is a very brilliant way to go about Rehabilitation however for other things it doesn’t make any sense for example with dieting most people listen to their body all the time and that’s why they get overweight they eat when they’re hungry and they eat what they want to eat this is what their body is like oh this this seems good and you eat that so for a lot of things especially when it comes to nutrition and sleep as well your body’s telling you at night no I’m not tired I still want to do something but the reason is telling you that is because we have artificial light exposure we are still exposed to more noise higher stress levels all these things than in our ancestral times so our body’s natural way of functioning doesn’t function optimally in our current circumstances so when it comes to sleep penetration often it is better to not completely ignore your body leasing goals but to optimize your environments to make sure that your bodily singles become signals that actually make sense so in that sense often with Street deprivation uh it is good to to to optimize for sleep even if you don’t want to go to bed you don’t feel tires regular sleep cycle High Sleep Quality and then when you are tired the next days you can go to the gym and your performance is slightly a lot better than you think because the Mental effects of sleep deprivation are much worse than the physical effects the physical effects are more long-term more cumulative effects but the Mental effects are already really bad sometimes after a single day and then you might not want to go to the gym you might not be feeling motivated workouts but when you do go and you push yourself you’ll find that your strength is mostly still there the same question goes to General

Distinguishing Between Emotional/Mental Fatigue and Neuromuscular Fatigue Central and emotional fatigue we know that fatigue can be very taxing when it comes to obviously challenge yourself and think about resistance training and giving your best at the gym and giving your best performance when you feel like there is a lot of fatigue it could be emotional fatigue it could be actual mental fatigue or physical fatigue how much should you listen to that fatigue in order to Auto regulate or make sure you are not putting at risk of doing something that is going to be mediocre and then injure yourself or actually being able to get past this fatigue if it’s not like hugely elevated and you’re able to get a really good training session you should try to push through it and yeah I should only say it’s very important to distinguish between different types of fatigue so if it’s actual neuromuscular fatigue then you will witness in your performance that it’s not there your strength is markedly lower and if that’s the case probably you should do a reactive deloads or not train at all because you haven’t recovered yet but if you’re just feeling emotionally drained or exhausted that is a mental thing and it often has nothing to do with your muscular state of Readiness there have been multiple studies that looked at subjective measures or Readiness to perform of perceived recovery status and even in well-trained individuals that presumably know how to listen to their bodies there is no relationship between these things where they are extremely weak relationships between these types of subjective reports and actual performance and interestingly but I’ve also found myself very strongly a research finds that their relationship is completely different before and after the warm-up so sometimes you may feel terrible but then when you go into the gym you do your warm-up and then you find that all that mental fatigue is is pretty much gone and you’re now no you’re not stressed anymore because you’re thinking about something else or whatever was fatiguing you it’s not there anymore maybe you’re just doing something else just any variation often is really good for leading yourself mental fatigue and after tomorrow if you’re you realize that you’re ready to go and you can just do a workout as normal yeah I agree with that now thinking fasted or fit training which one is best I would always answer great fat training we have actually a study on this uh coming up soon can’t share details yet but there was a recent study on Ramadan fasting which of course also has water fasting in it or fasting without water uh in I always get confused when people say water fasting and it means that you are drinking water it’s like doesn’t that mean that you shouldn’t drink water anyway the um research on faster training is is generally negative finding possibly reduced effects on performance reduce the effects on anabolic signaling and thereby long-term muscle growth even protein is likely most important to have because then it already starts the anabolic signaling and your body mtor for example can already see that hey we have amino acids there is hyper Amino acidemia therefore if we combine that with the signal of the strength training which is mechanical tension in the muscle fibers then the body has an optimal signal and the means to produce muscle growth so that’s what you want if you want to have that already as soon as you are working out or right after the workouts there’s even one study which found that just carbohydrates compared to nothing no not even protein improved muscle growth compared to training uh fasted and they were only fasted for a couple hours in that study so generally I would recommend that you sand switch your workouts between a five hour intermeal window so if you think of this as five hours and workout should be in between and you can move them around you can eat right before the workouts and then five hours later where you can eat a few hours before the workout and right afterwards that’s all fine you can move around then window but you should eat you know within a few hours before and after the workout okay do you recommend a specific ratio

Protein and Carbohydrate Ratios Before and After Workouts for Improved Performance and Recovery carbohydrate protein before and after or is that does it matter as much or much matters the total amount of protein you consume at the end of the day and same for carbohydrates like do you want to prioritize some carbohydrate prior and after for recovery and for performance or are you thinking that there is a specific ratio that is best to think about the daily totals are definitely most important but the amounts pre and post workouts are also relevant and for carbohydrate intake interestingly we conducted the first systematic review on this quite recently and we found that just 15 grams pre-workouts is in the vast majority of context enough to maximize performance like it does seem proven to have some carbs as opposed to nothing but even 15 gram carbs seems enough and are even ketogenic conditions to make sure that workout performance is pretty much optimal and or protein I recommend at least 0.4 gram per kilogram usually good 20 gram high quality protein something like that and that’s enough to maximize in in effect in a fasted State at least it’s enough to maximize multiple protein synthesis and then after workout you probably want more you probably want 0.6 gram per kilogram or more because the in the anabolic window which is basically the whole period of muscle growth after workouts not just right afterwards in that anabolic window the there’s a delay in muscle fullness which means that you can use more protein to build muscle it’s basically the body’s way of uh allowing you to build more muscle but it’s not you’re not going to get that most growth unless you have the protein so basically you want more protein in the periods after the workouts them before to maximize most protein symptoms do you think carbohydrate post-workout makes any benefit to not just some recovery per se of the muscle glycogen but also in terms of like somehow supporting hypertrophy in a way or not not necessarily probably very very little a few Studies have looked at this and they find that protein makes carbs pretty much redundant because carbs only matter for endurance training it does matter because then the glycogen depletion muscle damage actually seems to be associated with the um the adaptation of building Greater endurance for strength training it doesn’t matter it’s just substrate depletion and that’s not part of the actual stimulus of muscle growth because it’s muscle growth is not about um being able to produce more energy like endurance training is so research finds that for strength standing it doesn’t matter if you apply to depleted after the workouts for endurance training it does and the reason that carbs in isolation do have an effect on muscle growth is because of insulin which is anti-catabolic and it reduces muscle protein but insulin is also stimulated by protein so protein is not just anabolic but also anticabolic and therefore if you have protein that is by Staples and Copeland found that protein basically makes the carbs unnecessary you only get maximum decrease in protein breakdown and maximum increase in muscle protein synthesis adding carbs to that doesn’t do anything further let’s move to over and underrated and the first question I’ve got for you is it’s a strength training in children or just children in general overrated or underrated definitely underrated there are a lot of concerns about it stunting growth and um just that it’s harmful somehow and that’s not true at all strike training is very healthy in fact per minute of exercise there are a few studies including a new one that find that it can be healthier than endurance training and for our children as well I think it’s super good to only get them exposed to not just endurance type training but also through strength training pretty much as soon as they are interested in it just emphasize good technique above all else because you know children of course can be a bit more wild and if you train an adult but other than that it’s perfectly fine and even virtually they can already build some muscle and lose some fat which is generally good for their health and plus all the other Associated health benefits of exercise of course is there any particular age that you would say don’t lift or do any weight before this age or it doesn’t really matter I don’t think so no I think you can basically start lifting as soon as the child then in terms of motor skills do it and they’re interested in it then it’s fine to do it okay now activity snacks overrated or underrated and what they are I guess underrated because they’re still very unknown but the idea is I don’t think they’re that effective in most practical settings but there is a recent study that’s found that they can actually stimulate um muscle protein synthesis because most people most of us are even when we go to the gym are quite sedentary most of our time and that means that possibility Services levels are also quite low and this recent study found that if you do activity snacks which is basically just being active for a couple minutes some body weight squats or um some very light activity that’s enough to actually stimulate a bit of muscle protein synthesis and it’s also good to stimulate blood flow tissue turnover there’s other research that can promote active recovery so maybe it has a little bit of use I think if you’re allowed to completely sedentary like bed rest level then is it going to be a small effect I think most of the effect just if you do especially if you do at least some type of exercise every day and you’re not Ultra sanitary I think it will be a very very small effect but it is interesting and I’m curious to see more research to see if that type of active recovery cannot just improve recovery but also muscle growth directly okay when we think about these activity snacks uh are we specifically referring to a specific amount of time um a specific in type of intensity a specific type of exercise what I’ve heard is that it could be very very short time even like three five minutes but you try to go as intense as you can just to increase that energy output and that breathing capacity but I am not sure so much about how is the what’s the benefit of this at the level of someone that probably doesn’t have the capacity to move that athletically to get to that level of intensity but what are your what is your stance on this particularly and when we think about length intensity what would you think about or prescribe for this exercise snack I think it can be very low intensity and pretty short as well it’s mostly about stimulating blood flow and just making the tissues active it’s not so much about actually stimulating muscle growth because you’re using your workouts for that and also in practical purposes if you’re sweating multiple times a day that’s you know very inconvenient the study that we have looked at bodyweight squats and I’m not sure what the other thing was I think it was just maybe General activity uh brisk walking or something but there’s in terms of active recovery there is also some research that bench pressing with for example 30 of 1rm or even 16 percent and then just doing a few repetitions you can already get the effect so I think it can be quite light uh maybe it’s better to do bodyweight squats than just walking but I think even walking is already providing quite some of the effects okay now thinking about collagen and the supplementation when we’re trying to prevent injuries is it for you is these overrated or underrated I think Super operators I’m extremely skeptical of the use of collagen in settings where people already consume enough protein and vitamin C because the body can make its own collagen and the whole Narrative of collagen being effective to support our joints bulletproof your knees all that stuff it doesn’t make any sense it’s not like you consume collagen and it just goes from your mouth through your body into the joints it gets broken down it’s essentially just protein it’s gelatin is broken down in just like other protein sources and then there is an argument to be made that it’s higher in certain amino acids uh like praline that are rate limiting for collagen synthesis but I think if you have a sufficient total daily protein intake it’s going to be you’re only covering that and some of these amino acids aren’t even essential to begin with so um yeah I’m super skeptical of that research like the mechanism doesn’t make a lot of sense there’s uh direct research showing that there’s no increase in collagen synthesis in bone in total body uh in muscle connectors tissue after consuming collagen like even even that finding is mixed right even just the whether there is actually not even equating for protein intake vitamin C intake just the fact when you consume collagen is there actually increasing collagen symptoms in the body that’s already being debated and then when we got to the point of long-term findings pretty much all the positive findings in collagen are are sponsored by the supplement industry you can almost always Trace them back even to one specific company from Germany which is called chilita and they found like all the research surprisingly that finds positive effects and basically all the independent research finds at best super mixed inconsistent weak effects if you were to think about what’s the harm of consuming it in case that we see people still supplementing those who are have an injury or recovering from an injury or going through a rehab process is there harm to supplement would you recommend it or would you say like look just focus on your the quality of your diet focus on eating adequate amount of protein maybe a little bit more than what you normally would do and make sure you have plenty of vitamin C would you supplement with vitamin C instead and good amount of protein or what would be your your best recommendation when it comes to this I think just overall healthy diet Omega-3s do show some promise sufficient protein intake so at least 1.8 grams per kilogram is what I recommend for strength trainees and enough vitamin C that should not be an issue at all if your diet’s goods has veggies and fruits you don’t need to supplement in fact most contains so much that it can interfere with muscle growth because it’s excessively anti-inflammatory that occurs usually only when you take a gram or more which is almost 10 times the RDA for her for untrained individuals so for trained individuals still over five times that um so yeah I wouldn’t I wouldn’t go that route and collagen I think it will do anything um if you consume some gelatin for example at least that’s cheap and it’s filling and it’s it it’s food so I wouldn’t be opposed to that but spending money on expensive collagen supplements I think is not going to be worth it for most individuals or anyone what do you think about the protein water like this collagen Waters and that flavor things that just contain more protein uh is that beneficial for any particular population has that any benefit apart from just adding some more expensive water but what did you think of this yeah I don’t see much use compared to say way shakes or collagen protein like gelatin specifically I think it’s it’s mostly marketing to settle another new product great exercise for muscle growth overrated or underrated underrated but it is true that bodyweight exercise is sometimes difficult to do intensely enough as we all experience during the kovitz restrictions but there are a lot of ways that you can be much more creative than most people are for push-ups for example most people are like oh when I can do a certain amount of push-ups even 20 they think I can’t use it anymore but research finds that you can safely go up to 30 reps as long as you go to failure and still maximum of growth on top of that you can elevate your feeds you can use the deficit you can perform on your knuckles you can use a diamond grip you can even do them on one arm you can do suspended push-ups and you can combine all these things you can also put weight on your back you can use bands you can use chains tons of things you can do to make more difficult same with what chin ups are hard enough for most people already but the same is true for chinabs many other exercises um I recently did a video on the YouTube on hamstrings exercises that people don’t know there are a lot of body weights type macros for example they’re actually very useful especially when you don’t have a lycro machine so I think they’re super underrated and research generally also finds that there are at least as effective even at relatively low intensities there are studies two or three studies at least two on push-ups versus bench press showing that they are equal for pack size growth and there are studies on um like single leg squats being equally good as back spots for example so many people have these ideas of the barbell lift being Superior and necessary but that’s not true at all as long as you can stimulate enough tension in the Target musculature then any type of exercise in principle can do job and body weight is is super useful would the technique itself and the tempo of execution of those exercise would make a difference in terms of the effectiveness of this body weight exercises for example if you’re doing a pull-up and you’re focusing on The Eccentric really slowing down and focusing on that eccentric and this that last stretch would that make a difference if you’re just doing pull-ups for as much as fast as possible or just for the sake of getting more reps I think pull-ups won’t be inherently different than Bulldogs but um you can definitely use Tempo and my muscle connection even to make body weight exercises harder if you don’t have weights for example if you do chin ups but you don’t have the dip belt and you don’t want to put a dumbbell in between your eyes or ankles then you can you can use Tempo to make it more difficult and make sure that it’s still heavy enough for you so that’s certainly a good application