Episode #2- Building Muscle? What’s Possible.

Giacomo

Welcome everybody. This is Vegan Proteins Muscles by Brussels Radio. My name’s Giacomo Marchese and I’m Dani and this is our second episode.

Dani

We want to give a huge thank you to Bif Naked for allowing us to use the song. Moment of Weakness for the intro to our podcast. Moment of Weakness is from her 1998 album, I Bics and it’s been one of my favorite albums ever since I was 12 years old, which is, that was a long time ago, but it’s a great song. And Biff is a vegan and an animal rights activist and a humanitarian and she was kind enough to let us use this awesome song.

Giacomo

So if you get a chance to check it out, Ibificus is the name of the album by Bif Naked and it’s on itunes and even though it is 16 years old now, it is still a rad album by an awesome vegan artist who you should totally support. So, thank you, Biff.

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Dani

All right. Well, welcome back, everybody. I hope that everybody in the States had a, a good Thanksgiving. How was your Thanksgiving?

Dani, Giacomo

Jack Ma, my Thanksgiving was all right.

Giacomo

We hosted it this year, which was kind of nice.

Dani

How did counting all your macros through Thanksgiving turn out?

Giacomo

Well, I didn’t actually count them through Thanksgiving. I, I definitely had a plan in mind. it did help that you were cooking. I did, I, I helped chop some vegetables up though.

Dani

That was fun. He did chop some vegetables. That was his contribution to this, to this holiday. my Thanksgiving went pretty well. you know, overindulged a tiny bit, but ultimately stayed on track. We got our workout in that morning. We were at the gym for about 1.5 to 2 hours. That’s always fun when you go to the gym on the holidays and see who else is there. But other than that, it was a really good holiday.

Dani, Giacomo

Everybody really enjoyed the vegan food more than they’ve enjoyed the non vegan food in the past even, which was very cool, you know, II I probably wound up eating a little more than I had planned.

Giacomo

Also. Usually we’re weighing out our food and, and measuring so that we know what we’re taking in and I kind of just eyeballed everything, got an idea of the type of portions that I was consuming by planning ahead only takes about 5 to 10 minutes.

Dani

But lo and behold, neither one of us put on any weight from the holiday because we were mindful all the way through it. So get in touch with us. Let us know how your Thanksgiving went. I’m curious about other people’s methods and how that turned out for you.

Giacomo

We’d love to hear from you in today’s episode, we’re gonna talk about muscle gain. How much muscle can you actually gain in a year, Dani?

Dani

Well, there’s no real one answer to that question and I think that that’s pretty much going to be the

theme of our entire podcast I think is that there is no one answer for everybody pretty much in anything that has to do with, bodybuilding or fitness or really any athletic endeavor. But most people who are compete in bodybuilding or some sort of physique sport, this is typically their off season. I’m saying off season in quotes because anybody who actually doesn’t know is that

it’s really anything but off. But this is the time of year that most people focus on building as much muscle as they can before they have to start prepping for their next show. So, what we’re about to talk about doesn’t just pertain to bodybuilders or physique athletes specifically, but really anybody who’s looking to build muscle on their body.

Dani, Giacomo

So this is what most people call building season or bulking season season and then, you know, just put on as, as much weight as possible and most of that weight gain is going to be muscle, right?

Dani

No. And why you can’t just put on as much weight as possible and think that it’s all going to be muscle. That’s ridiculous. And that’s where a lot of these myths come from.

Giacomo

But there’s so many variables. I mean, you know, everybody is different. Right? I mean, every person has different genetics, different age. I mean, you know, some people are just starting out. I mean, is there any way to quantify, like, on average how much muscle one can expect to gain?

Dani

Well, there’s really no one holy grail of studies on this. But I think you and I both know that we could eat ourselves into the ground and work out really hard every single day and we would not come out looking like Arnold in three months. Is that a challenge? We’d get fat and, you know, it and, you know, partially this has to do with how long we’ve been training, our body types and, but I, I think that goes for most people that you can’t just eat whatever you want and lift heavy and build a

bunch of muscle. But, you know, that said there are some guidelines based on a few different studies which have come to roughly the same conclusions. not exactly the same formulas but roughly the same conclusions. Basically, there are a few different studies. big name people in the industries who have done your own research on how much muscle you can actually gain.

And unfortunately, I feel like it’s going to burst quite a few people’s bubbles. There’s actually not a lot of information on how much muscle a female can naturally gain. But we have a little bit of a rough idea.

Giacomo

I mean, and there is no standard one size fits all formula and certain people will gain muscle faster, especially those who are just starting out with lifting when you, when you’re training for the very first time. I mean, you could expect your body to adapt to those changes real fast. And I mean, it’s, it’s, it wouldn’t be inconceivable to gain if you are a male, maybe a pound of muscle, a month or a female.

Yeah. de depend, you know, depending on age because, I mean, say you’re a 15 year old, young, healthy person, I mean, your hormones are going to be supporting a lot more muscle gain than someone.

Dani

Yeah, I mean, a 15 year old male is already growing, right. So, even without lifting weights, they’re already growing. Once they start eating properly and lifting weights, they’re gonna start growing a lot more, the numbers of these studies have concluded are basically based on ideal situations.

Dani, Giacomo

What exactly is an ideal situation when you’re training consistently?

Giacomo

And your meal regimen is on point, basically, meaning you’re eating all the right foods, you’re getting an adequate amount of sleep and you’re in the gym several times a week, right?

Dani

So an ideal situation is your diet training and recovery is basically all on point. So, for a beginner, like a brand new lifter who is doing everything properly lifting, heavy eating adequately and getting the proper rest. You can roughly gain anywhere from 1 to 1.5% of your body weight in a month.

Dani, Giacomo

Or that can equate to about two pounds roughly as a male.

Dani

What about as, I mean, I don’t know any, any newbies who are 200 pounds trying to gain muscle. So there’s that, or, you know, roughly 2020 pounds a year, I would say if in your first year of training for a guy who’s between, you know, 18 and 25 years old, you could probably gain 20 pounds. I think that’s

totally doable.

Giacomo

It’s really exciting. However, the, I think the key component here is the fact that these, these gains diminish rapidly over time and they, after I’d say about four years, they kind of max out.

Dani

I wouldn’t say they max out, but the gains are minimal after four years of, and I can’t stress this enough, proper training and dieting. And when I say dieting, I mean, the food you’re eating not being on a diet per se, right?

Giacomo

And I mean, when you say minimal, you know, say you’re gaining, say you’ve gained 20 pounds of muscle in your first year by the fourth year in of training consistently, you could expect to gain maybe 10% of that in that year, 2 to 3 pounds, not like like three pounds or so, you’re not just gonna keep packing on, you’re not gonna be the next 260 pound behemoth on stage.

Dani

Not, not naturally. And that’s what we’re talking about here is we’re talking about how much muscle can you build naturally. Now, when we say naturally, we’re specifically not talking about like anabolic steroids and things.

Dani, Giacomo

We are still including things like creatine which help quite a bit when you’re trying to gain muscle, proper supplementation, other supplements that prevent, you know, muscle tissue breaking down and, and help build muscle faster.

Giacomo

Not no ma I mean, there’s no magic pills. Basically, these, these aren’t going to be the make or break, they’re just going to help, you know, give you that little extra push.

Dani

So that’s what we mean when we say naturally, we basically mean no drugs, no steroids. Now for a

female and I think this is so important because there’s so little data on this. You can basically take those numbers that we just said for men and cut them in half roughly. so a woman who has just started lifting and is eating perfectly and training perfectly and sleeping perfectly can gain 10 pounds, 10 pounds or so in the first year, more or less.

Dani, Giacomo

And you know, by the fourth year, like you should be pleased with yourself if you’re gaining two pounds a year and believe it or not, if you’re doing everything right.

Giacomo

Although the number sounds very small. I mean, the, the changes in your physique can still be. Yeah, I mean, you know, one pound of, of solid muscle on your body, if your body composition is the same for an entire year, you, you will still look very different.

Dani, Giacomo

Plus the muscle maturity, the muscles look different when they’re, when you’ve had them for a while than when they’re brand new, which is why it’s important to build on top of what you’ve already built.

Dani

Absolutely now. So these numbers, they’re really just very, very basic guidelines. There’s always going to be genetic outliers. There’s always going to be those incredibly genetically gifted people who are going to, you know, blow these numbers out of the water and the people that are going to have to fight tooth and nail just to make it here.

So don’t, don’t think that these numbers are set in stone at all. It’s just to give you a rough idea. And the reason that we bring this up, one of the reasons that we bring this up is because especially in the off season, in bulking season, in building season. What sort of stuff do you hear?

Giacomo

Well, I’m, I’m gonna put on about 25 to 30 pounds of solid muscle in this bulking season. I’m just gonna, I’m just gonna make crazy gains.

Dani

Right. I mean, I mean, everybody sets off on their off season looking to build as much muscle as humanly possible. That’s, that’s the point. Right. Right.

Giacomo

But, I mean, in all fairness, how much does one have to gain in order to gain as much muscle as possible?

Dani

Well, that isn’t that the ultimate question there is. How do you bulk? Do you bulk? Do you just eat your face off? Do you track your food in the off season? Do you continue to do cardio off season to try and stay lean while you’re putting on muscle, et cetera, et cetera. There’s so many different ways to go about this and you’ll almost never hear us say that somebody’s right or wrong. but we do have our own thoughts basically on building muscle.

Giacomo

One thing is definitely true. You don’t need to add on tons of weight gain just to gain muscle. Meaning if you’re putting on more fat than muscle and remember the rate at which you can build muscle, then it’s, it’s pretty much unnecessary.

Dani

Well, not only is it unnecessary, it’s going to make dieting so much harder. You know, if you put on a ton of weight, when I say a ton of weight, I mean, like Giacomo said, if you’re putting on more fat than you’re putting on muscle, which honestly, if you’re gaining more than a pound a week from a woman’s standpoint, definitely, if you’re gaining more than a pound a week, you’re putting on more fat than muscle as someone who just started to train, don’t forget that.

Yeah, even as someone who just started to train, you are putting on more fat than muscle. And what that means is when it comes time to die it down. If that’s your ultimate goal, if your goal is to, you know, see these muscles clearly and be relatively lean, eventually you’re going to have to diet off some of the fat if you’ve put on too much fat. And again, the same way when you’re trying to put on muscle, the situation has to be ideal to put on mostly muscle.

The situation also needs to be ideal to burn mostly fat. So the same way you will put on fat while you’re trying to put on muscle, you will burn that same muscle, trying to lose fat. If you put on too much fat, you’re going to end up dieting off some of that muscle that you just worked your ass off to build. So, is it worth it?

Giacomo

Right? Because I mean, remember just how your metabolism adapts to the amount that you’re feeding your body when you’re in a gaining phase and you’re gaining muscle and fat, but more muscle

than fat, right? The same thing is going to happen on the way down when you’re losing fat and you’re going to lose some muscle, no matter how optimal the situation basically.

Dani

Yeah, you will lose some. But that’s a, that’s a different podcast. That’ll happen a different day. We’ll talk about that So, how much weight do you gain?

Giacomo

Well, we’ll put it this way, like you were saying earlier. I, I think it’s really important to pay attention to, to what’s happening to your body on. I would say at least, every other week to check in with yourself. Are you getting stronger? I mean, you should definitely be getting stronger if you’re looking to put on muscle. If you’re not, then, then you’re not eating enough. But when you’re getting stronger, how faster are you gaining weight?

And I think it really goes back to looking at what’s, what’s practical, right? So, say you’re just starting off in the gym and you can gain a half a pound a week, realistically of, of muscle. I’ll, I’ll use a, a guy as an example. If in two weeks you’ve put on three pounds, then you can only gain maybe at the most a pound of muscle. Chances are those other two pounds are probably fat.

Dani

Well, that’s not necessarily true. I mean, not everything that you gain is muscle or fat. There’s other things that you gain like glycogen and water. Typically when you’re aiming to build muscle, you’re going to have to increase your calories. slowly, I emphasize slowly because we’re talking about not putting on too much fat while you’re gaining muscle.

But for every extra gram of glycogen or carbohydrate that you store, you’re going to also store anywhere from 3 to 4 g of water. So don’t totally, totally freak out because not everything that you’re gaining is either muscle or fat. There’s other things happening too.

Giacomo

It also depends. Are you, are you supplementing with something that’s going to make you retain water so you can perform better in the gym? Like, exactly.

Dani

So there are other factors but these are just guidelines and I think ultimately, you have to look at, look at yourself in the mirror, take pictures, see how you’re looking and be honest with yourself. We all want to look at ourselves in the mirror and be like, hell, yeah, I just put on 15 pounds of muscle, but

like, did you really did? You probably probably know.

And we’ve all been there, we’ve all been in a situation where we’re like, yeah, I’m just going to eat as much as I’m just going to eat whatever I want because I’m bulking, right. I’m bulking bro as a way to eat as a way to justify eating whatever you want with reckless abandon. And how did that work out for you? Giacomo?

Giacomo

Never, never really worked out for me actually.

Dani

And, and why?

Giacomo

Well, the, I think a giant part of the equation is the, the mental toll that it takes on you basically to put in all that work and that time, that effort in the gym and then realize, well, the end result will eventually be what I want. But this is what I, you know, I need to sacrifice myself to get there.

You know, my comfort level, you know, I, I have to be ok with putting on 2030 40 pounds within a year if I want to have more muscle. And what happened when you cut pretty much looked exactly the same as if I weren’t going to put on those, the, the 40 pounds.

Dani

So overall, I don’t think it’s really worth it for you. or other people, I would say Jacque Mo and I are both with mesomorphs. I think we both are, we gain fat and muscle relatively evenly. It’s not like either one of us just gains a lot of fat or gains muscle really easily. he has a little bit of an easier time getting lean than I do, but that could also be because he’s a guy and I’m not.

but there are situations where I feel like people can get away with eating a lot more than they think they can. And those are ectomorph. These are ty typically guys I feel like, but I, I have met quite a few women who are like this as well, but I feel like there are more ectomorph men than women. Ectomorph men are generally thin guys who want to get bigger, want to build muscle and just, they feel like they can’t no matter what they do. And most of the time, the problem is that they are not

eating enough. And a lot of these guys have metabolisms like a furnace. they can eat, no, they can maintain on 5 to 6000 calories a day. and basically they need to eat more and it’s going to be uncomfortable and that’s why a lot of people have a hard time with it. So, in situations like that, I have had a few clients where it’s basically just like, eat, just eat, hit, hit this protein number and then eat as much as you can after that. But beyond that, I don’t care what you eat, just eat a lot.

Giacomo

I think something else that, that we should mention is until do you actually know how much you’re eating? You shouldn’t make assumptions, you know, am I eating too much? Am I not eating enough? Because the reality is, you know, these individuals who are ectomorph that feel like they can never possibly eat enough, they, they probably

aren’t, but they don’t even realize it. And then, you know, other individuals like ourselves who are mesomorphs or on the opposite ends of the spectrum endomorph, right?

Dani, Giacomo

They probably always feel like they’re never eating enough, but that’s just because this is their natural metabolism as opposed to just eating your face off and gaining as much weight as you possibly can and praying to the muscle gods that it’s all muscle, it really comes down to making that situation ideal, making sure that your training, your diet and your recovery are all as on point as possible.

Dani

And that means eating in a caloric surplus, you’re going to have to eat in a caloric surplus in order to build muscle unless you are a complete noob to the gym.

Dani, Giacomo

In which case people can gain muscle on their maintenance calories or even sometimes in a deficit because you’re young and you’re, you know, have a major growth spur or something like that. In that case, that’s the magic of being a newbie.

Dani

Enjoy that while it was. but for, for the rest of us, you’re gonna have to eat a caloric surplus in order to build muscle. Now, the size of that surplus is dependent upon many factors. experimenting a little bit with yourself is key here. But increasing your calories slowly, I mean, like 50 to 75 ish calories a week for a guy and maybe about 50 calories a week for a girl, depending on what your

weight’s doing. If it’s jumping up like crazy, don’t increase your calories. If it’s jumping up at the appropriate amount or even a little slow, then you increase your calories.

Giacomo

And just to put that into perspective of apple is about 100 and 50 calories. So we’re talking about very,

I mean, half an apple would be how much you’d add to your meal plan. Roughly.

Dani

And again, this is completely dependent on the person. But the point is to make very small increases to your meal plan in order to be gaining as close to that ideal amount of muscle as possible. So, for a woman who’s been training for two years, about a half a pound a month, that’s about how much muscle you can gain. A woman who’s been training consistently and well, for two years, a half a pound a month, if you’re gaining four pounds a month, slow your roll.

a guy one pound a month, two years. Just, just to give you some ideas, we’ll try to post these numbers where you can see them because I know that it’s hard to envision them without them right in front of you. So basically you want to be gaining weight slowly to ensure that as much of it is possible is muscle so that you don’t have to die at your face off in order to reveal that muscle until later on.

Giacomo

And also, so that these changes can last over time. Because remember if you’re constantly taking off the muscle that you’re putting on because you’ve gained too much weight in the process, well, then you’re never gonna really progress. You’re just gonna constantly look the same year after year.

Dani

Exactly. And you see that a lot, you see that a lot people who come back every year and they, you know, mo mostly look the same and that also comes from competing too often. Again, another topic we’re not going to get into right this minute.

Giacomo

I mean, that’s, that’s not really motivating or encouraging for anyone. I mean, imagine looking the same after working hard at something for three years. I mean, chances are you’re probably not gonna want to keep doing that.

Dani

And I hope that helps you guys out to understand, you know, roughly what your body can actually do naturally when you’re looking to build muscle. And this is the same for a vegan or non vegan diet. I guess we didn’t actually talk about veganism at all in this segment. But that’s, that’s really the fact of the matter is that it’s the same.

Giacomo

Yeah. And I, I think, question if I was listening to this, I would think to myself. Well, still, but how do I know exactly how much to eat and what’s a good starting point? Well, the starting point is a little easier than you might think. Just take a look at what you’re eating, log it. So, in some sort of food tracker or food journal or anything like that and use that as a starting point and then slowly add to it.

Dani

Really, people are so surprised that it can be that simple. You know, everybody goes to a calculator online and those can be helpful sometimes. But more than anything figuring out where to start is what have you actually been doing? Write it down?

Dani, Giacomo

Put it in a Myfitnesspal, put it in some sort of a tracker, even if it’s with a pen and a paper and figure out what you’ve actually been eating and there’s starting point because there’s no, absolutely no calculator that can, that can figure out what’s going on in your body only you can.

Giacomo

And that’s by finding out what, where you’re at and what you’ve been doing.

Dani

Absolutely. So, hopefully this gives you folks a good idea of where to start and what you can do. And of course, if you have any questions about this, you can hit us up on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. We’re at vegan proteins on any one of those things.

Giacomo

All right. And the next thing we want to talk about is our favorite gym, gadget of the week. And today we’d like to talk about knee sleeves, specifically sbd knee sleeves. What do you think about them, Dani?

Dani

I actually really thought that they were gonna be stupid and Giacomo got them for us anyway and they came in and he was all amped about leg day and I was like, who gets amped about leg day? Not me? And we got them. And basically they look like leg warmers kind. They look like leg warmers made out of foam, but they’re not foam. They’re made out of some magical material that is almost impossible to move. It took me like 10 minutes to get these things on my knees.

It was embarrassing. I hid in the corner of the gym. I was fighting with them just trying to pull them up my legs, like the angriest pair of panties in the entire world. but once I got them on, they were awesome. It was leg day we started with squats. I increased my Mac squat by 20% of my first time ever wearing them. Which is pretty impressive. I think. I couldn’t believe that one piece of equipment could make that big of a difference for me.

Giacomo

Oh, you were thrilled. I mean, you didn’t want to stop doing squats even though. So, technically it was time to move on to the next exercise.

Dani

But then I started thinking like, well, if this one little piece of fabric wrapped around my knees really increased my smack squat by 20%. Maybe, maybe I’m cheating. Maybe that’s like, like a cheating way to get the weight up.

Giacomo

We have to ask yourself why it’s increasing the amount of weight that you can lift and is it? Yes. Is it, in fact an aid in the sense where it’s taking your, your knees and your joints completely out of exercise and making them weaker or is it the fact that it’s actually supporting your knee and preventing injury? And it’s definitely doing the latter. It’s supporting your knee joint and preventing injury?

Dani

Yeah, that’s exactly what it did. I mean, don’t get me wrong. It has some spring to it, but not enough spring to fight my body weight plus the 200 pounds on my back. I can’t imagine that it actually added any weight to my squat in that respect, but it stabilized my knee joints so much that it, it stopped me from internally rotating my knees at all, which is a problem that a lot of people have when they’re squatting.

I think it’s just your body’s natural inclination. When you have a weakness in your, in your medial glutes or your piriformis or anything like that, your knees rotate inward and you can hurt yourself that way. And this, I I didn’t have that problem at all even increasing the weight by a lot.

Giacomo

And it’s not only about the support that it provides by increasing blood flow in that area and keeping everything stable. It’s also about the fact that since everything is so tight over there that you can actually feel those joints. So proprioception, right?

Dani, Giacomo

You’re you’re actually aware of where your knees throughout the exercise and that’s going to prevent them from buckling in that in and of itself, you know, you’re, yeah, there was more of an awareness towards that knee joint that’s kind of big in general.

Dani

But also like you mentioned before, we weren’t talking about this. It allows you to whether or not you want to call it cheating or not cheating. It is allowed in raw powerlifting meat. So that’s something that made me realize. Well, I guess, I guess most people don’t consider it cheating at all, but it allows you to lift more weight for more reps, thus increasing your volume. And in order to stimulate muscle growth, you need to be increasing, overload, overloading your muscles

over time and preferably by increasing your training volume, whether that’s with reps, weight, et cetera. And that’s what it allowed me to do. So whether or not you are looking to power lift or you’re just looking to build muscle, you know, squats are important. Squats are like, you know, probably the king of all exercise is maybe tied with the deadlift and they’re huge muscle builder in the legs if you do them properly. So I am thrilled with this product. They’re not cheap.

Giacomo

They’re, they’re about $90 for a pair of them. We got ours from Anderson powerlifting dot com dot com.

Dani, Giacomo

Anyhow, they not cheap.

Dani

But if you’re serious about squatting, II, I would highly recommend them. In fact, I did recommend them to a couple my powerlifting clients after using them for one day. So that speaks volumes.

Giacomo

And the other thing is when, when exactly do you start incorporating knee sleeves into, is it necessary for someone who just signs up for gym and just start squatting for the first time to pick up a pair of these to protect themselves?

Dani

No, no, not at all. I mean, most people who just start squatting. I’m speaking from a woman’s perspective. A lot of women start squatting with their body weight or like with a dumbbell under their chin or maybe just the bar that they should, at that point, you should really be focusing on learning, learning the form, learning your body that, that in and of itself is gonna fix a lot of imbalances that are in your body.

Giacomo

But, and once you’re starting to get to that point where the weight is starting to feel heavy, that’s, that’s kind of a signal that you should consider maybe protecting your knees.

Dani, Giacomo

So you’re able to use them for or your other joints to, you know, your knees, your, your core, your wrists.

Dani

I mean, all of these people really gear up for maximal lifts like this. So highly recommend them. I don’t think they’re necessary for everybody.

Dani, Giacomo

But like I said, if you’re serious about squatting a lot of weight, they can be very, very helpful and as cool as they look, don’t, don’t go around wearing them all day long.

Giacomo

I mean, just use them for squats because yes, they mean, they are taking that area, you know, they can, could you wear them all day?

Dani

Like, I feel like they cut off the blood flow to your foot or something and you’d have to lose it entirely.

Giacomo

Yeah, you probably don’t want to do that.

Dani

Just, I would just recommend them wearing them for really heavy leg exercises like a, you know, a five or under rep set of squats or super heavy leg press things like that. Exactly. And moving on, we have some questions this week from some of our online followers. Ok. We have a question from Josh Verde on Facebook. Actually, we have a few from him today. Thanks, Josh. Getting adequate protein without soy or gluten. How do you do that? Giacomo?

Giacomo

I guess part of that question could be answered by knowing how much somebody’s eating. If, if somebody is at a caloric surplus. Well, chances are, it’s, it’s not as hard as you might think. I’m also assuming we’re, we’re talking about a vegan vegan diet.

Dani

Yes, we’re talking about a vegan diet.

Giacomo

Well, there’s protein in pretty much everything, even in the, the plant-based world, however, certain foods do contain higher amounts of protein than others. Beans would be one of them seeds, even grains like quinoa can have anywhere from what, about 10 to 15% protein in most grains. So, I guess the important thing to do is to look at what you’re eating and find out just how much protein you’re taking in from whole foods.

And then just start to consider changing things up a little bit. Obviously, we’re not, you know, without soy or gluten. It does make things a little trickier. And, and if you really want, you can add a protein shake in also here or there. That, that can definitely help.

Dani

Yeah, there are a lot of soy and gluten free protein shakes out there. Now, most of them are actually. Yeah. Well, a lot of them are. but, you know, high protein, non soya gluten foods, beans obviously are really high lentils being the highest out of all of them. There is actually a pasta out called by the company is Explore Asian and they make bean pastas. We have the black bean spaghetti and the only ingredients are black beans and water and they have, it has 25 g of protein per

serving and 17 g of carbs, 11 of which are fiber, like, I don’t know how they do it. It’s a magic food or something. Yeah. I mean, it’s no, you know, home cooked Italian pasta or anything like that. But it is, it is really good. And I do recommend it to a lot of my clients that are soy free and gluten free, which I should point out that Giacomo and I are not even remotely soy free or gluten free. Give us all the soy and gluten.

Giacomo

I, I also wouldn’t rule out vegetables. You’d be surprised just how fast the, the protein can rack up in mushrooms have a lot of broccoli. Any dark leafy green is gonna contain a fair amount of protein. Actually, it would surprise you. The problem is that you can only eat so much of this stuff because it’s so fibrous. You get full really fast.

Dani

Yeah. And you know, too much fiber can wreak havoc on your digestive tract just as much as not enough.

Giacomo

Exactly. And, and to the point where you’re not even absorbing your nutrients or your food properly.

Dani

But ultimately, if you’re looking to build and you’re eating at a caloric surplus, getting enough protein from food that is not soy or gluten is a lot easier than trying to, cut fat and maintain muscle without soy or gluten. That’s a little bit harder. and that’s where you’re gonna end up incorporating a little bit more pro protein powders of, of some kind.

When you’re not in a Yeah, when, when, once you move into a deficit and you’re trying to hit the same amount of protein, which you roughly should be, that’s a little bit more challenging, but it can still totally be done. It just is probably gonna get a bit monotonous. Next question. Why carb load more carbs on leg days, less food, on rest days.

Giacomo

Carbohydrates are definitely your friend when you’re training hard and you should definitely consume your carbohydrates closer to when you’re going to use them and when your body is going to, to be asking for them. So before a training session and after a training session, specifically, you want energy for your workout and then after your workout, your muscles are in recovery and repair mode.

Dani, Giacomo

And then so obviously, you definitely wanna focus on eating more of your carbohydrates around your training sessions and and also on your, on your training date, not all of your carbohydrates around your training sessions.

Dani

If you’re looking to build muscle.

Giacomo

Yeah, because also want your carbohydrates to be working for you all day long.

Dani

It’s not really a hard and fast rule or anything like that. But a lot of people do, do more food on leg days, less food on rest days. It really depends on the person if it’s an endomorph, somebody who gains fat easily. I would probably do that. It’s like a gentle form of carb cycling to have, you know, slightly higher carbs on heavy lifting days and a little bit less food on rest days or non lifting days.

But for an ectomorph who’s like a hard gainer, I would just feed them, may maybe feed them more on heavy training days, but not necessarily feed them less on rest days because they can eat more than most of us can. And again, that really depends on your goal. If it’s for muscle building, I don’t think it’s quite as important as if you’re on a cutting program where you’re trying to, you know, cut as much fat as possible.

Then I think carb cycling will be much more beneficial more for strength and hormone purposes to keep your hormones functioning properly, to keep fat loss going and stop anything weird from happening.

Giacomo

Right. We’re talking about when we were at a caloric deficit.

Dani

When you’re at a deficit, your hormones, respond to a caloric deficit pretty rapidly. And carb cycling can help keep that to a minimum and also getting the higher carbs on heavy training days, like a leg day will help you keep your strength and intensity up in the gym, which is also gonna help you maintain the muscle while you’re burning fat. So that’s pretty important too.

Giacomo

Speaking of hormones, men and women, their hormone levels are obviously drastically different. So it, it can, I mean, well, maybe you can give us a little more insight.

Dani

Does it matter how often you should carb cycle or men typically tend to do a little bit better with one big refeed, which is like a high carb, low fat day, typically once a week, once every 7 to 10 days or whereas women tend to do better with a slightly smaller refeed, maybe twice a week, twice every 7 to 10 days or so.

But again, that’s not a hard and fast rule. A lot of this is just generalizations, but everybody is different. These are just good, starting off points because they seem to be the average.

Giacomo

Our next question is from Sara Lee on Facebook. I’ve always been fascinated by the fine art of the weigh in. Be it for voluntary athletic event or military law enforcement. Personal training tests. There are so many factors at play.

Dani

So the weigh in, I’m assuming she means like trying to make a weight class, right?

Giacomo

Like for powerlifting or a weightlifting.

Dani

Yeah, or anything like that or I’m, I’m guessing they categorize you by weight in the military or law enforcement tests. I’m not 100% sure, but I’m gonna assume that that’s, that’s what that means. So, for the weigh in, usually people are trying to make it into a lower weight class because trying to make it into a higher weight class would be pretty easy just so I could eat a bunch or drink a gallon of water before you weigh yourself.

But you can manipulate your body to make a weight class if you have a few pounds to lose, to make it. But really the question is how much time is there between your weigh in and your event? And is it worth it to put your body through that? I’ll use a powerlifting event as an example if you have to lose seven pounds to get into your weight class and your weigh in is that night and your powerlifting event is the next morning, you could probably do it.

You could probably drop seven pounds overnight. If you had to, at what expense your strength would suffer so much the next day, it wouldn’t even be worth it. So, before you even try to manipulate your weight for a weigh and consider what you’re going to have to do to do it? And is it worth it? I mean, how much are you putting your health at risk to do this?

Giacomo

Yeah. And I mean, well, then I guess the question is what, what do you do? To be a stronger athlete at your, at the time of the weigh in because obviously you’re meeting these numbers because you’re competing against others within a certain weight class. And I think the answer is basically to train at a slightly heavier weight than your weight class for a good greater portion of the year.

So you can make more strength gains. And then when you get to your weight class, I mean, maybe get there a little faster but not within 24 hours. I mean, take a month or so to get there.

Dani

I would say, you know, your weight class, know what you’re trying to do weeks before you get to the way in so that you can be as close as you possibly can without making drastic changes. But I’m sure that what she’s getting at here is cutting water. things like that. which are, you know, I don’t recommend for people’s health in general, but of course it happens, people do it. You know, most people do it one way or the other ways you can do it are by loading water in advance drinking a ton of

water days before and then slowly or quickly decreasing your water intake for that. Weigh in diuretic foods like asparagus, dandelion root, you know, laxative things like a smooth move tea or senna. Again, I’m not saying these things are good things to do at all.

Dani, Giacomo

I’m saying that that this is what people do for away and sitting in the sauna, cut your sodium down to next thing or nothing and then risk your electrolytes getting out of balance and cramping up.

Dani

And that’s what all of these things risk is throwing your electrolytes out of balance, dehydration. I mean, none of them are good. Nothing here is good and honestly, it doesn’t make you look better. So if anybody thinks they’re going to use these tricks to try and look better for an event like a wedding or something like that. No, you don’t look better at all.

You look stringy and flat and unhealthy. But if your, if your weigh in is several days before your event, sometimes that happens, you know, a weigh in is on Thursday, the meet is on Sunday or something like that, then you have some time to dehydrate yourself down a little bit and then rehydrate and still be strong again. But I would never ever, ever recommend that somebody do this to drop more than a few pounds.

And by a few, I mean, like three, like I feel like if I wanted to, I could pretty safely lose three pounds by tomorrow without worrying about any health implications. But you know, much more than that. And it’s really, it’s just, it’s just not worth it in general.

Giacomo

And I mean, the theory is there that you can remove water from certain parts of your body outside of your muscles. But the truth of the matter is that your body is a very smart machine and it’s constantly regulating your water.

Dani

You’re never going to outsmart your body. You know, if people are trying to use these as actual weight loss tactics, it’s not going to happen, you can manipulate it for that particular way. And, but, you know, I’ve worked with people who have done this, I’m friends with a lot of people who have done this in the past. It’s miserable. It’s miserable to even watch. So I don’t recommend it as a, as a long term as a long term solution to making weight.

All right. Well, thanks for tuning in to our second episode of vegan proteins, Muscles by Brussels Radio. Be sure to check us out on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and let us know any questions that you would like to hear answered on the show and any topics you’d like to hear us cover and let us know what you think of the episode.

Giacomo

Thanks for tuning in. See you in two weeks.