Ep 132 – Are Macros Everything?

TRANSCRIPT:

Dani

Hello, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of Vegan Proteins Muscles by Brussels Radio. My name is Dani and I’m Giacomo and this is episode 132. So for those of you watching on YouTube, this is a video podcast. And for those of you listening in, the audio is going to sound a little bit different because I am home, but Giacomo is in Florida and we’re doing this over zoom for the first time ever.

Giacomo

Yes. And this is going to be a really interesting conversation because usually we’re right in front of each other. So I feel like just environment being different in what it is. I’m kind of excited for this episode. Dani.

Dani

Yeah. So how’s. How’s Florida, babe?

Giacomo

It is Florida, but it’s Satellite Beach. It’s Space coast where I’m at. It’s got a vibe, it’s got a military slash surfer vibe to it. Surfers come in and the waves here are incredible at Satellite Beach. And then you also have all the science behind and the military behind sending everything up into space and all those kinds of logistics. So you kind of catch that in the air. It’s just. It’s just the way it is out here. My dad lives out here and his girlfriend and they got some dogs

hanging out. Right? There’s a dog that one of their buddies left with us to hang out overnight. Her name is Effie and she’s just the coolest. And their dog, Cotton, and the two of them are just playing together and they’re. They’re working me. They’re telling me I gotta go to the bathroom or this or that. I’m like, okay, you got me. Like, we’ll go on some walks together.

Dani

Cool. Very cool, son. My mom is at a wedding in Vermont and the kids are being picked up from school today by their mom. So I have the house, like to myself for at least three days. Like, like totally to myself. And I guess I’m pretty excited about it right now. All I want to do is sleep. Like, that’s it. Because I. Like I just said I had the kids by myself yesterday and this morning, and I don’t usually do the morning routine with the kids.

And Desmond wakes up before 5am so I’m tired right now. But that is not going to stop us from having a good episode. They were super well behaved and adorable. It’s just like, nobody’s that cute at

4:45 in the morning. So anyway, so Giacomo has an outline for this particular podcast topic. So why don’t we talk about what we’re talking about?

Giacomo

Oh, gosh you put me on the spot. The outline is in the back of my head because this is a conversation. But I definitely did a little bit of digging and thinking about what to talk about before this episode. And it’s all about macros specifically. Are they everything? Are they the end all, be all to being fit, getting the body you want, et cetera?

Dani

All right, so what do you think?

Giacomo

Well, well, I think the very first thing we need to think about before we actually get into this conversation is defining what macros actually are. And I know that’s kind of silly, but I think it’s important to really start things off and be like, okay, because some people might not even really understand. And obviously we know a lot about each macronutrient, but I think the only way to talk about that is to get started with the basics.

Carbohydrates, which give you energy, the most easily digestible and usable source of energy that you can possibly get in fat, good for your endocrine system, good slows down digestion, can be satiating for some. And in my opinion, you can actually overdo it on fat. Where you should be getting in more carbohydrates.

And then our favorite, Dani, protein, which you are able to use protein day of for your body’s needs to perform and recover for muscle building and muscle repair purposes. And then afterwards it becomes stored energy like anything else you get in for the day.

Dani

Okay, thank you for that. I don’t know. I don’t know if protein is like my favorite. I just think that in our particular community, like in the vegan community, I just feel like it’s often understated the importance of protein because everybody just wants to be like, oh, I don’t even need protein when you know you. Well one, yes, you do. Of course everybody needs protein.

But I get what people are saying. Like, I don’t need to specifically focus on protein and order to get enough protein, which, yeah, true. But for people who want to build muscle or get leaner or lose weight and hang on to the muscle that they have, then protein is very important. But, you know, even protein is not the be all end all of the macros. It’s a pretty cool macro for a lot of reasons, but carbs and fat are pretty awesome too.

And I know you mentioned, like, oh, I think you can overdo it with fat and not get enough carbohydrates. I actually, I feel like I see more the opposite, where people are leaning really heavily on carbs and just not willing to eat fat at all. But regardless they’re all important, I guess, is the point.

Giacomo

Yeah, for sure. I am a little bit bitter over what has happened the past 20 years, or 15, I should say, because I haven’t been at it that long with the protein stuff in the plant based world.

Dani

What does that mean?

Giacomo

I just am. Well, let me ask you a question. I mean, this is hypothetical because we only work with plant based dieters or vegans. Do you feel like fitness fanatic people who are into fitness that are not vegan at all, do you feel like they get in enough protein on average when they start to like work out and really get into it? Do you feel like they have the same struggle that vegans do?

Dani

No, I guess not sure where you’re going with this.

Giacomo

Well, that’s, that’s my issue. I, I think when it comes to eating properly, when you’re getting into fitness or when you’re ready into fitness, there’s like excuses that are created when you have, when you consume, when you have a plant based diet or when you’re vegan and you just don’t want to get enough protein and you, you start to make excuses or you start to like reason with yourself like, oh, I want to eat a certain kind of way or protein is not that important or blah, blah, blah.

There’s been so much. First of all, the dietary dogma has been out of control with protein and I don’t think it was anyone’s fault per se, but it’s true. It’s been pervasive for the past 10 to 15 years in the vegan world. And that drives me crazy. And then the other issue is that at this point, regardless of that, we just have our eating preferences or beliefs about health in the vegan sphere.

And I think we’re missing the forest for the trees and we just don’t get the right amount of protein. And at that point, at what point does it just become behavioral, Dani? And it’s no longer a belief and all of a sudden you see people just not getting in enough. So yeah, I’m, I’m pretty, I, you know, for me it’s upsetting that anybody.

Dani

Watching this is about to find out why this is not usually a video podcast. I’m seeing myself like, oh no, people are going to see the faces. I’m making the faces out loud this time. Okay, so I’m going to totally disagree with you, I guess, because I think that when it comes to protein, I’m going to just talk about vegans. I guess in general, I’m not worried about anybody’s health.

I don’t, I mean, I can’t even remember the last time that I met somebody who was eating so little protein that I was worried for their health. Like, you’re gonna be fine, your blood work is gonna be fine. Nothing bad is gonna happen to you. Where I worry, I guess, and maybe worry is even too strong of a term, is when people say I want to build muscle, I want to be leaner, I want to achieve XYZ physique.

I’m not getting stronger in the gym. And then I look and they’re eating 40, 50, 60 grams of protein. And then I’m like, again, nothing bad is going to happen to this person. Right? But they’re not going to achieve their goal that way. It’s highly unlikely that if that is their eating pattern long term that they are going to be able to achieve that goal.

So really it’s like they’re only hurting themselves. I guess they’re not, but you’re not hurting yourself. It’s not like you’re going to end up in the hospital. But you know, if you’re trying to achieve a goal, then yeah, you need, you need, you need to eat more protein. It’s more important than. Does that make sense?

Giacomo

It does. And I feel like I’m on the same page. Dani, what about fat? And I feel like there are outliers that don’t consume enough fat. But I don’t know if I would consider it the rule like people wind up over consuming carbs versus fat. Okay.

Dani

So I don’t know if you recall the 80, 10, 10 craze, craze that swept the vegan community 10 years ago, 12 years ago. I don’t even remember exactly when it was. But I am talking full blown craze where every people really like feeling guilty if they weren’t eating October 10th and what 80, 10, 10 was for those maybe newer to this community. I still hear it like it’s still out there.

People still talk about it. It’s 80% of your calories coming from carbohydrates, 10% of your calories coming from fats, 10% coming from protein. And I even heard this taken as far as like 95, 5, like because every, everybody just has to one up the next person all the time. So obnoxious. And usually, but not always the 80% of the calories coming from carbohydrates was usually from fruit.

Like this was a very fruit based diet most of the time. I have certainly met people who like ate more potatoes or rice or Whatever. But usually it was a fruit based diet with virtually no fat and no protein. And that in my opinion, like, that the fat portion of that has really stuck around where I meet so many women who are eating like under 30 grams of fat and they’re like terrified to add fat to their food. And on the one hand, fats are the densest of all the macronutrients.

They add up the fastest. It is so easy to add 2 or 300 calories of fat to your salad, like without even really thinking about it, with just a little bit of olive oil, for example. So I understand the sort of caution that people have around fat, but there’s like a straight up fear that a lot of people and I work with mostly women, but also it seems like it’s predominantly women who are like terrified of having their fats over a certain amount.

Giacomo

I won’t disagree with you there. When you frame it like that, it makes a lot of sense. I was thinking more logistically in terms of how much fat people are getting in, in terms of their fear of fat and the way that it makes them feel, then yes, I absolutely agree with that point. is definitely a thing. But you have the other side of things where vegans aren’t afraid to eat their carbs, which is kind of cool in my opinion, because carbohydrates are where it’s at.

Because think about it, you’re constantly teaching your glycogen stores that they can be refueled real easily and where they can’t be accessed, your body can access food right away. And if, in my opinion, that is where the magic happens, because that’s what acids really need, they need to make sure that they don’t.

They get in their carbs. And I think we as a community have an advantage in that regard. Plus, arguably, you’re going to get your most bang for your buck nutritionally out of carbohydrates. So I think that’s actually a net positive of being vegan, as long as you can balance it out.

Dani

Yeah, no, I agree. I think that in general, vegans are less likely to be afraid to eat carbohydrates. But, you know, there’s a lot of carb fear too. A lot of people DM me and just say, like, I don’t know how to get my carbs low as a vegan, because a lot of people think like the baseline to reach their goals is that you have to eat low carb, you know, and you can overdo and underdo that.

Underdo isn’t even A word. But you can overdo and underdo any of the three macros. You can eat too many carbs for your goal and also not enough. You can eat too much fat for your goals and also not enough. You can eat too much protein, which is a whole last conversation. Yes, you can eat too much protein for your goals and you can also eat not enough.

So I understand that like people, human beings in general really love a very straightforward solution like black and white answer like this good, this bad, and it’s just not that way. And even on a podcast I couldn’t be like, well, everybody should eat this much of this and this much of this, because it’s not everybody. There’s variations from person to person to person, but in general, most people should be eating a pretty good balance of all three of the macronutrients.

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Giacomo

Yeah, totally. And I think for the most part now, the straightaway simple solution on paper, what is the baseline on what you should be doing to balance out carbs, fats and protein? I don’t think there’s any true mystery around that anymore, everyone. It’s generally accepted the science at Least that you try to get in the 0.8 to 1.2 grams of protein per pound of lean body mass. Am I saying that right, Dani?

Dani

0.8 to 1.2. Yeah, correct.

Giacomo

And then fat, you really, if you really want, I mean male or female, you want to get in bare to bones, minimum of 30 and probably upwards of 40. Especially if you’re like going into pre menopause or postmenopausal in age. Age in general, it comes that much more important to just get.

You keep your fat a little bit higher, your body’s going to be less responsive biologically to what you do to stress out your endocrine system when you’re dieting down especially. And then carbohydrates, that’s where you get the rest in there. Are outliers always.

Dani

Sorry to interrupt you. It’s very hard to not interrupt with zoom because there’s like this lag. But I just want to add on. I don’t like to see women’s fats below 40. I’ll do it. I’ll do it occasionally if I’m getting somebody ready for a bodybuilding competition. But it’s temporary. I don’t like to see it sub 40 on, on almost anybody.

You know, occasionally I’ll work with somebody who’s four foot eleven and a hundred pounds and maybe, maybe we’re having a different conversation then, but most people are not four foot eleven, a hundred pounds. So, uh, yeah, anyway, continue.

Giacomo

Sorry, no, all there with you. And that’s. Those are more of the outliers where the gen. Like the baseline where you always want to gravitate, gravitate back toward if you’re not dieting. Obviously I should have put that in. So thank you for that, Dani. That’s where the baseline is. But there are all kinds of reasons why you can experiment with these numbers.

Although I do still believe that the protein is the one thing where you should keep that tried and true right there all day, every day. Maybe if anything, have it just a touch a smidgen higher for insurance’s sake if you’re going to be dieting down.

Dani

Yeah. And I mean, I think you can, I think you can have a range. You know, I know for myself I’m happy if I get anywhere in between like 110 grams of protein and like 160 grams of protein, which is a pretty big window for me. 160 is probably overkill for me, honestly.

But if I fall somewhere in that range, I’m pretty happy if I start. First of all, I Won’t go above that by accident. That’s not going to happen. But I could drop below it by accident. And then I make a conscious effort to kind of keep it there.

Giacomo

So you nail this formula, you have the skill of tracking. You could arguably live your life like that because you’re a machine and bottom line, results driven. Obviously, I’m setting us up here for a clear recipe for disaster, meaning that even if you could be that person, why would you be that person? And this is, in my opinion, the perfect segue here to move the conversation over to, like, are macros in fact everything?

Just because they can get you results and just because you’re, you’re not feeling. You’re feeling differently about hitting them and tracking them and this and that. This is where the conversation gets interesting, in my opinion.

Dani

So I guess I. I don’t know. No, of course. I mean, I guess it’s a hard question to answer because, like, are macros everything? That’s like saying, is food everything? You know, is your diet that important when you’re trying to reach a particular goal? Yeah, yeah, it is. Are macros everything? Like, when we say our macros everything, do we mean, like, following a specific set of macros to a T? Is that what we mean?

Giacomo

You tell me. I think it’s open to interpretation because, yes, you have to track in some sort of way to achieve your goals. And yes, you can also not track in some sort of way and just know what you need to do. But those tools and those skills exist for a reason, right? This is when you’re trying to change your body. But what about when you’re not trying to change your body in any sort of aggressive way, where you’re not trying to take your body out of a state of balance to either bulk or to

lean out? What do you do then? And I think that’s where people can get a little fed up or a little hooked on macroing, and it’s potentially not the answer. Right? But then they go in the opposite direction. And we’ve talked about this ad nauseam, but we’re going to talk about at least one more time that listening to your body is not always the solution because you might feel like you’re doing what you’re doing, and sometimes you, sometimes you realize you’re lying to yourself, and

sometimes you don’t realize you’re lying to yourself about, like, how your eating habits are and what balance of food you’re getting in. And this is where I feel like macroing can definitely help, but it is not the solution. It is a tool, it is a skill. It’s just. It’s not the end all, be all, and it is not everything.

Dani

Yeah, it is a tool, and I think it’s a really, really, really valuable tool. Look, I wrote a book about it, and I still stand by this book. I think this book is super, super helpful, and it teaches people how to do exactly that. But I originally wrote that book in 2014. I’ve updated it a few times since then. But now I do recognize that one, there are people who.

That is just not the best avenue for. There’s a million ways to achieve a bodybuilding goal. And when I say bodybuilding, I don’t mean competitive, step on stage, win a trophy, bodybuilding. I mean anybody who has a pursuit of building muscle or getting leaner and is, like, passionate about strength training. Like, you’re a bodybuilder.

And a lot of people say, oh, I’m not a bodybuilder. I don’t want to be a bodybuilder. I just want to build my glutes and my shoulders and get a tighter waist like, honey, you’re a bodybuilder. That’s what bodybuilders do. Anybody who has a goal like that could get a lot of value from figuring out exactly how much they need to eat and then eating that amount.

However, for some people, this is triggering to them for, like, disordered eating behavior. It’s just like, more numbers to focus on, which, you know, we never want to push somebody in that kind of a direction. For other people, they are just, like, flat out not going to do it. They’re not going to do it. So we need to find a different way. There is no way that is quite as precise. Flat out. There’s no way short of following a meal plan, which I find to be significantly more problematic

in the long run. There is nothing as precise as learning how to sort of track your food and eat the right amount. But there are lots of other ways to do things, and I think we have a podcast we’re recording going into depth about exactly that. What all the different ways are their pros and cons. So we’ll save diving into every single one of those for that episode. But, yeah, there are definitely other ways. And for some people, there is a better way than just sticking to your macros.

Giacomo

What is the better way, Dani? Well, how. What is the happy place in between eating healthfully, cracking things numerically, being firmly aware of what you want to do when you’re a creature of habit, and, like, sticking to your gun. So, like, you’re kind of in a meal plan, like in the back of your mind, but not actually writing it out and then just

having fun and knowing, like, when to let loose a little bit within reason. Like, what, what is your. I realize I’m asking an impossible question, so I apologize in advance.

Dani

Not only are you asking an impossible question, but I literally just said, we’ll talk about that in that episode, not this one. But it is an impossible question because, you know, there is not like, oh, what is the way? What is the better way? Because if you had asked me 10 years ago what is the best way, I would say flexible dieting and nothing else. Like everything else is inferior to flexible dieting. And if everybody was just a robot, I would still stand by that statement. But we

are not robots. We have histories and thoughts and behaviors and patterns. And that all need to be considered when choosing the best possible dietary approach for somebody. So there is no one answer, because it’s going to be different for everybody, which is pretty much always my answer to everything is like, it’s going to depend on the person that the situation. And that is still true. But we’ll, we’ll talk about these specific different ways in that episode in a few weeks.

Giacomo

Right, for sure. So. But there are other things outside of macros to consider. And I hate to use the word lifestyle because I don’t want us to come across as, oh, just be happy. Just have a nice, healthy, balanced lifestyle. Like, we’re all about aggressive goals and we’re all about hard lines and putting your head down, doing the work, doing what you need to do.

But there’s something to be said about setting up your lifestyle in a way where you have, like, where quality of life is taken into account, not just what you do in the gym and not just what you do in the kitchen and what you go grocery shopping for. And I think you can go too far in the opposite direction where it’s like, well, I just want to live a happy life and have good quality of life.

But then you turn around and you’re absolutely miserable because you’re not taking care of yourself. But it’s that in between place again, where it’s, it makes a difference. It really does make a difference. Where you can’t, you can’t have one without the other.

Dani

Yeah, I mean that to me, that brings up like this thought of intuitive eating, which is a big movement and rightfully so. I have a lot of respect for intuitive eating, like, as a movement that is helping people learn to Trust themselves. But much like I don’t think flexible dieting is, like, the answer for 100% of people, I also don’t think intuitive eating is the answer for 100% of people.

The sort of concept behind intuitive eating, I mean, there’s a lot to it. Like, there is a lot to it. And I am super oversimplifying, and I might be missing bits and pieces here and there. I haven’t read the book in a long, long time. But the gist is, if you listen to your body and give your body what it wants, especially in the beginning, in the learning phases, eventually your body is going to start craving and wanting things that are good for it.

If you’re really listening to your body, if you get really good at that connection, you’ll know exactly what your body physically needs. You’ll know what, like, your heart needs. You’ll know what your energy needs are. You’ll know when you’re full enough to, like, stop eating. What a beautiful, wonderful concept, right? And for people that it works for to be happy, healthy, have a good relationship with food and their body, I have nothing but good things to say.

That said, I have also seen a lot of people who have worked really hard towards that goal and not gotten there. And I’m not even just talking about, like, getting in shape, because you’ll hear a lot of people say, like, oh, I, you know, I really, really want to do intuitive eating, and I also have £20 to lose, which. Those are opposing goals, right?

Like, if you are intuitive eating truly, then you are not thinking about the scale. There are some people who will do intuitive eating and will lose weight as a byproduct of getting good at listening to their body. There are some people who will do it and will gain weight as a byproduct of listening to their body. So the scale has scale in your physique has nothing to do with intuitive eating.

And it feels almost impossible, based on the definitions of these things, to have both of those goals at the same time. I still see people try to do it all the time, but there are a lot of principles about intuitive eating that I like. I like them a lot. There’s lots of things in there. We talk about listening to your hunger cues and your fullness cues frequently on this podcast.

We talk about working in foods that kind of, like, feed your soul and building around it. I like that. There’s a lot of stuff I like about it. Can you still do some of those practices and also work towards physique goals? I think you can yeah, but it takes work. Oh, yeah. Well, all of this takes work. Again, I go back to, like, humans just want easy answers.

Black or white, do this and don’t do that. But none of it is like that. Like every single. Listen to your body. Well, that sounds easy enough, doesn’t it? Right? It’s not. That’s really, really hard to do for a lot of people. So, you know, it’s just all of this is going to take work. If it didn’t. I found myself saying this a lot this week to a lot of people. If it was easy, everybody would be doing it.

If achieving the things that we talked about on this podcast were easy, everyone would be there. But the fact is, most people are not there. The vast majority of people have not achieved what they believe is like their ultimate fitness or physique goal. They’re not there because it’s not easy, because it’s really a lot of work.

Giacomo

Right. And I think the work is a little more tangible when it comes to tracking because you’re like, okay, I can weigh, I can measure, I can put this number on a piece of paper. I can move said numbers and it’s comforting. Whereas the other work, you can’t really see what’s happening. But if you take a look

back a year later when you try to take off the training wheels and you realize the kind of work that you’ve done to just not be a straight numbers person when it comes to your eating

habits counting person, when you take a look back at the work that has happened that you can’t actually journal, you can’t quantify. Sometimes you can surprise yourself about the kind of things that you’ve learned, and then you can learn to trust yourself some more. Like, wait a minute, I know I should be eating vegetables twice a day. Wait a minute, I know I should be eating whole foods more often than not.

Wait a minute. Like, I know I can vary up my protein sources and I know that I can go out and I’m not going to fly off the handle because that’s just not what I want to do all the time. And if I do it once in a while, and you know when you’re betraying yourself and when you’re not doing it, and that can feel empowering and scary to get there. And sometimes you gotta go back to tracking.

But I think that’s like the kind of knowledge and experience you can only gain by taking it there. And there’s no shame in having to check yourself and having to check yourself with an accountability. Butter. Butter. An Accountability buddy, or a coach, for example. Like that’s to me, that helps you get outside of your head and make sure that you’re still staying true to yourself and your goals as opposed to just being like, well, what’s the point here?

I’m not doing anything, I’m not doing the work. And also still realizing that you can in fact not have to feel like the thing is the fix, it is the macros. Those are everything. I always got to get back to that. Or else it is learning about your body, learning about your habits, learning about your behavior and making it work for you as opposed to having to have something on a piece of paper or to have to resort to counting as the solution or the end all, be all.

Dani

And I mean, you always have to consider the goal as well. If your goal is to get as shredded as you possibly can. I know it’s a hard pill to swallow, but you’re gonna have to track your macros. You are going to have to track your macros at some point or you’re gonna have to eat the exact same thing every day. Those are your two options. I know which one I would pick.

It’s gonna be the macros all day. But you know, if your goal is like, I just want to get in better shape, I want to have enough energy to go to the gym, you might not need to track your macros. You might be able to just focus on healthy habits, you know, and that might be enough to move the needle forward. Now the closer you get to an extreme goal, the more precise you need to be.

And when you need precision. Macro tracking is so valuable. And even if you don’t need precision, if you’re like brand new to these kinds of goals, I still think there’s value in learning your macros, learning what foods are high in which macro, there’s a huge amount of value. A lot of people don’t even know what a proper plate looks like. You know, when you start to learn, what does that look like?

What does a balanced meal actually look like? What does it look like for me to have 25 grams of plant based protein on a meal and then do that multiple times a day? People don’t know. So even if bodybuilding or getting super shredded isn’t your goal, there’s still a lot of value in learning how to track your macros, how much food you generally need.

But once you know that, you know it like, like it’s like riding a bike. You don’t just forget what 25 grams of proteins worth of tofu Looks like now you know that it’s not like two little squares, you know, it’s like a decent amount. So then you don’t have to track so closely forever. Unless your goal does get quite extreme.

Giacomo

Exactly. And again, I can’t stress this enough. There’s no shame in using it as a tool for as long as you need to. And at some point you’ll see that you’re in the flow and you got your rhythm and you know how you’re eating. As long as, like said, you’re not going after some sort of extreme goal.

So it’s tough because we have these kinds of conversations and we put this information out there and you never know how someone’s going to take it and run with it. So it’s like we want to touch on all the points here for all the scenarios. It’s important. It really is.

Dani

And sometimes, you know, I feel like Giacomo and I, like, we’re so cautious about trying really hard to not say something that could potentially push somebody over the edge. Like, we don’t want to harm anybody ever. And when you’re making a podcast and speaking to a broad audience of people with different goals and different histories, like, you do kind of have to tiptoe around certain things that you say.

So just always, I guess, I guess kind of always keep that in mind when you’re listening to us. Like there might be. We certainly have more, much more specific answers for you if we knew anything about you so specifically. But to a broad audience, we always want to be very careful to not say things like, well, you figure out your macros and you nail them to a T, my friend, because somebody is going to hear that and obsess over it and turn like macro counting into their new identity, where

any day that they don’t hit it, they feel like a failure and then that starts to take over their life. Now that sounds very extreme. That stuff happens all the time. All the time. So I don’t know where, why I went off on that little side tangent, but I think, I think it’s important. I don’t know, maybe it’s not important.

Giacomo

Anything else you want to touch upon as far as macros not being everything and lifestyle or just different people’s needs?

Dani

Well, I mean, I think we kind of touched. I can’t remember if we talked about this in a podcast recently. I know I talked about it in a YouTube video recently, that if all you focus on is macros, then you are leaving a lot of important things about good, well rounded nutrition on the Table you’re leaving, you

know, you’re not. Not considering fiber or the colors of the fruits and vegetables that you’re getting in, and therefore the micronutrients you’re getting in.

Quality of your food, like meal timing, even, like, you’re not considering any of those things if you’re just hitting your macros by the end of the day. So there’s more to. Even though I think macros are super, super precise, there’s actually more to it than just, hey, hit these numbers by the end of the day. So anyway, that’s. That’s all I got. Got anything else?

Giacomo

Well, if I were to open up that door, I feel like we get into a whole conversation about it. There’s more detail there than I can possibly put out there inside of another minute or two.

Dani

So, yeah, normally if we were sitting across from each other and it was just the microphone, I’d go. And that’s how we know the discussion is over. But now you have to hear us decide if the discussion is over.

Giacomo

I think so. I think that’s pretty much all that’s worth talking about with this episode for now. But I’m super curious to hear your thoughts and what you got out of this episode. And who knows, Dani, what we talked about today, we can wind up potentially having some new episodes with different topics to talk about. So, yeah, no, this was a really interesting one. I’m glad that. I’m glad that we had this conversation.

Dani

And when he says you, he doesn’t mean me. He means you. Guys listening?

Giacomo

Correct.

Dani

Just clarifying. All right, moving on to our question and answer segment. Here we go. Giacomo, when losing weight, how does your body know to use the stored fat and not muscle? I work out regularly to build muscle, but I also want to shed the stored fat.

Giacomo

Your body doesn’t know the difference. And your body will catabolize your muscle. That’s the bottom line. Unless you get the right amount of protein in, that’s straight away, simple, straightforward answer. If you do not, bodies don’t care where they pull it from. You could think about the fact that you’re not supposed to hold on to muscle. It serves no biological purpose whatsoever to.

Dani

Have a lot, to have a lot of.

Giacomo

Correct. Correct. It’s actually metabolically taxing on your system to have muscle. You have to burn calories just to have muscle.

Dani

To have a lot of muscle, everybody should have muscle. It’s very good for you. He’s talking about, like, bodybuilder levels of muscle. Yeah, yeah.

Giacomo

But even in general, from a Biological based standpoint, if you’re dieting down, if you want to get leaner and not smaller, your body doesn’t know the difference of what your personal wants are, it’s going to get rid of what it has to get rid of because it’s, you’re not giving your body nourishment. So it’ll, it’ll shave off muscle right away. Whether you have a lot or a little. Dani, it’s, it’s going to take from wherever it could take from.

Dani

But keeping your protein high will absolutely help you hang on to it as much as possible. And also not eating in too big of a deficit, because if you’re not, if you’re eating in too big of a deficit, there’s no amount of protein you’re going to be able to eat that is going to stop all muscle wasting.

But if you’re in a moderate deficit with enough protein and strength training, that is key. Also, you can’t just eat protein and not strength train. You have to do all of these things in order for the weight that you lose to not be muscle and be much higher percentage of body fat strength.

Giacomo

Train just as hard, focus on your recovery, manage your stress. Because when you diet down, you become even more fatigued and it becomes even harder to put out the same level of energy. When your body’s in energy conservation mode and you’re getting in less food, you have to train even harder. So that creates stress in your system. And now you have to focus on recovery even more than you normally would. Because if you don’t and that fatigue and that stress catches up with you, guess

what happens? You have a harder time training hard, you have a harder time holding on to that muscle and that’s, you know, and even if you were able to hold on to the, to the muscle like your finished look wouldn’t be the same because you weren’t able to train as well or recover as well. I got a question for you, Dani. Or do I? Is it? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, I got it. Okay. All right. Okay, Dani, thoughts on waist trainers when losing weight, how does your body know?

Dani

That is the question I just asked you. Just the first one. Those are the two questions.

Giacomo

Wait, what? I’m confused. You didn’t ask me about.

Dani

Question for me is what are my thoughts on waist trainers? Yeah, I hate them.

Giacomo

Oh, sorry.

Dani

I don’t like waist trainers at all. I think they are absolutely silly, honestly, 100%. I thought we kind of like squashed this idea in 2015, but boy, are they making a comeback right now, waist trainers everywhere. So waist trainers are basically like corsets for the gym. They’re usually made out of some kind of, like, rubber, or sometimes they have like a.

Like a nylon or spandexy vibe to them. Lots and lots of hooks, like iron hook, hook closures, all the way down, sometimes like 30 hooks. And they are very, very tight. And the idea is you wear this waist trainer and you do all of your workouts in it, and over time, your waist will get smaller. Now, your waist will appear smaller when you take this off, usually for a few reasons.

One, you just squished the crap out of it for sometimes days. Like, people wear these for 12 or 16 hours a day. They don’t just work out in them, they wear them all the time. You just squished the heck

out of it. So of course it’s going to look like that. Like, you ever sleep on your pillowcase and wake up with lines everywhere? It’s the same thing, but it’s your whole waist.

But the other reason is because they’re made out of rubber, you sweat a lot when you wear them. And the sweat is coming from your midsection, which, first of all, ew. Can you think wearing a rubber suit and sweating your ass off? I can’t think of anything less pleasant than that. But the water is coming from your waist, so when you take it off, you’ve lost water in your waist, so it looks smaller.

Cool, right? Well, no, because you’re going to go drink a glass of water, it’s just going to replenish itself. Because we regulate our water minute to minute. Now, over the long term of. That’s just like, you know, a day, right? Over the long term of wearing this, they’re so tight that they can actually stop your core from properly activating.

So it kind of forces you into good posture, basically from your hip all the way up to, like, basically the bottom of your breasts. Like, it’s. They’re tall. It’s not like a little belt or anything. And you can’t correctly contract your core with a waist trainer on. Over time, those muscles are going to get weaker, which, yes, means they will get smaller.

But is that really the way you want your waist to get smaller, by losing muscle in your midsection? Think about it. If I had a cast on my arm for six or eight weeks, when we took that cast off, my arm would be smaller because the muscle in there would have atrophied. What do you think happens when you put this waist trainer on your midsection? Now, I’m a big Fan of not over training your core.

You guys have heard me say that if you want a small waist, don’t train your core to death. But we do need some core strength. We need some core muscle. And if you’ve ever looked at like, there’s still a pretty large corset community today, if you look at some people in the corset community, you know, some of them have little 10 inch waists. 10 inch, 10 inch waists. My arm is bigger than 10 inches. There’s no muscle in that particular spot.

How could there be? But then when you see it, and if that’s somebody’s aesthetic and that’s what they want to work towards, no shade, like, do what you want. It’s your body, I don’t care. But that doesn’t look particularly safe to me. That doesn’t look like you’re going to have a particularly stable spine in and out of the gym in general. So that was long, but that’s my answer. Also, dudes are wearing them too.

Giacomo

Yeah, I’m not interested. I’m intrigued. I’m curious. But it doesn’t seem like there’s any real value to it whatsoever. And the risks are all over the place. It just seems like just a mistake.

Dani

Just the risk of getting a rash. Sounds terrible. And I should add, I think I mentioned this on the last podcast, I actually own one because when I had my skin removal surgery on my lower abdominal, I had to wear one as like a compression garment after my surgery for a couple of weeks because you

are so one, you are so swollen. So again, it pushes the fluid out of that area, the water we just talked about.

But also for people who have had surgery in their muscles in their abdominals, which I didn’t, it helps hold the muscle tissue. If you had an umbilical hernia and had to have surgery on it, you would wear something like a waist trainer afterwards to hold the tissue together so it could heal together properly. So I have experience wearing them and it’s awful. That’s all.

Giacomo

Everybody. Thanks so much for tuning in to another episode of Vegan Proteins Muscles by Brussels Radio. Stay in touch with us on socials at veganproteins and at Muscles by Brussels. Hit the contact button on veganproteins.com you’ll always get a video response from one of the coaches here. Once again, my name is Jacques Ball and I’m Dani. We’ll talk to you soon.