Workout Gamer Cast #2: Secret of Mana, Basic Nutrition and Macros

How's it going everyone? Workout gamer here. Welcome back to the Workout gamer cast. What we talk about the nerdy stuff and the fitness stuff. Are you a nerd who likes to lift? Are you a lifter who likes to nerd out? This is the cast for you. Today we're going to talk about Secret of Mana. We're going to do a little review on it. We're going to talk about Basic Nutrition and MacRows. Kind of describe what those are. Kind of give you a basic guideline. We'll see. And then we're going to go into some viewer questions. If you want to submit some viewer questions, find my page on Facebook, the Workout gamer, and go ahead on the most recent episode and put your questions for the next episode. And maybe you might find your question answered on here or it might become a full segment like today's. So let's go ahead and talk about Secret of Mana. There will be some spoilers. So if you haven't played the game, honestly, I'll say this now. There's not a lot of spoilers. I mean, it's kind of a basic game. But anyways, I don't mean that in the bad way. This was made by Square, possibly known as Square Enix today. And, or was it Square Softback then? I don't know. So Square is known for making Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, and a bunch of other games down the line. The premise of this game is the world of mana, this world has sealed off its mana. There was a evil group of people who wanted to use it to control everything, and then the heroes kind of, what's it called? They sealed it off, and they sealed it off with this mana sword. Turns out the boy, aka Randy, yes in the Japanese version, they referred to the character's boy, girl, and pixie. There are known as Randy, Prim, and Pompom in this game. One of those two, anyways. And that's kind of the basics of the game. The boy, Randy, finds the sword, unleashes the world with mana again, and kind of have to rinse, wash, repeat what the previous hero has done. And there, as I said, that's kind of the basis of the story. The first five, ten minutes of the game, explains that to you. It's kind of like a cut scene slash, here's the story you need to now go play the game. That's great in the sense of cool, I don't have to sit through so much, so much, and this was back in the SNES era, so it's like cool, I get to jump in immediately, start to adventure the world. That's all the story, I'm honest with that, other than what happens throughout the game. Some of the stuff in between the game doesn't matter, like, you have the girls, Prim, you have her story, which is she's going to be promised to wed a soldier, or a prince, or something like that. That plot gets talking to her about, but because of how much this game kind of just goes through everything, you kind of forget about it, you kind of forget about all the little middle details, especially with the pixie, themselves, and you just kind of forget a lot of the things, you're like, huh, okay, I'd say the strong point of this game is being able to play it, is being able to, oh cool, I'm going to go through the forest, try to find things, oh, let's try to solve this, let's go and attack this and fight that. That's the strong points. The weak points are, I want to say, the story, I want to say it's bad, it's just more, it's there. The way I like to describe it, it's like an anime where there's an overall arch what they need to do, but they focus on, like, just whatever's going on, day-to-day basis. The gameplay is pretty much, there's kind of like an act of time battle where, if you do an attack, your percentile goes down to zero and it builds back up to 100. So if you attack at full power, you're more likely going to hit the enemy. If you hit anywhere under 100%, you may miss or you might only do like one or two damage. So, you know, like hack and then slashing is not a thing, you got to be more strategic in terms of like, okay, I hit it, this gives us time to like, replace ourselves to go and attack. So I can see where it can be like, okay, you can't just all three corner one person and just have your way with it and go to town on just attacking. It actually gives you some moments of, okay, let's think about how we're going to approach this monster in this attack. The AI, in terms of controls, the game, unless I don't have the instruction manual, I play this on the switch and it's not the HD version, it's from trials, no, it's the collection of mana. Sure, I could have read the instruction manual, gave me, but a lot of the same things you have to kind of figure out for yourself, like there's this, there's this thing where you can set up where if I'm this close, you can be the more defensive or you can attack. I want you to be more offensive and that's if you're playing by yourself. If you're playing with three other friends or two other friends, they can control it and I find it multiplayer is actually a lot more fun than playing a single player. If you had this on the SNES, you'd have to go get the multi tap, the play three characters. That's a, I started my gaming venture with Super Nintendo and Sega, but I don't have too many fun memories. I don't think they had this game, but I did have the PlayStation and the N64 and the PlayStation had a multi tap and that was an odd peripheral itself because there wasn't too many games that needed it. Just like in the SNES, there was like maybe a few games that needed the multi tap, so there was a commitment, so getting your allowance together, hey, let's get this so we can play this game together, it's cool because it's like, you know, you get three players instead of just two. That's pretty awesome. And when it comes to the characters, I can see, because of how the characters are set up, you can totally have like a family play this game, you know. You have your child or who doesn't know too much, let them play the fighter, Randy, the boy because he has no magic. He has no magic, he's the one that's going to be up front doing a damage tanking and that's honestly his only purpose because once you unlock magic, he is useless. And I say that not because, oh, cool, I can cast magic, that's way better. Yes, it is better. Some of the magic is extremely powerful and broken. So and the bosses aren't, a lot of them don't have any immunities to magic. So honestly, if you just keep spamming magic until they're dead and it's honestly not too hard of a boss fight. And you know, you start off with very low MP, then when you level up, you get more and more, but against a point where, oh, I unlocked this creature, that lets me steal MP. Well once you find that combination of, okay, steal MP, cast, cast, cast, steal MP, cast, cast, cast, cast, it again, why would I play the fighter? Why would I have him, I would just have him be more defensive or, yeah, you go deal with that while I'm casting and doing whatever I need to do. Especially in boss fights, it's like, yeah, he's not important. We just go and cast magic. And I get it, magic supposed to be some kind of mystifying thing in this world, but it's very powerful. It's like, why would I play anyone else? Especially when he gets to the final battles, like, it's like, okay, attack is useless. I'm supposed to cast magic. For me, that's somewhat of a flaw because it doesn't give, like, there's no special abilities. Like, you unlock these gins from magic powers, but even as a fighter, you don't have any special abilities, you just kind of attack. And yeah, again, that's great if you have someone who, like, a child playing with you, but if you're playing with group of friends, like, man, I don't want to be the fighter, I want to be the spellcaster. But again, that could be, that's all subjective. And one of the big things with this game is its menus, because in order to cast magic, you have to essentially pause the game, look for the character, press it, cast. So it slows the game down quite a bit, especially if you're healing people, because you heal everyone, everyone's going to freeze in place for like a second or two, then the game continues. And it's, the menus are quite overwhelming, and it's very overwhelming, because it's like, oh, I got a posit, got a fine one I'm looking for. Oh, where's my equipment? Oh, I have to go to this menu, to press equip, to bring up a whole other menu. It's very messy. And it takes away from the game a lot. And I do my best not to compare this game to like, other game squares made, like Final Fantasy. I mean, this game alone has a lot of good things, but Final Fantasy, like Final Fantasy 6, AKA Final Fantasy 3 in America, Final Fantasy 6 did it way better. I mean, the music's more memorable, and I'll talk about music in a little bit. The gameplay, the menus, everything, the story's more fleshed out in six. This one, it's like, it's just cool, you did the temple, here's a little text, go to next one, go to next one. Which is fine. It's not meant for you to kind of like, have like a strong, if I move this here or here, you just kind of go through the game. It's a game that kind of just go through, more of a casual RPG versus, I need to set up all these different combos and whatnot. It's very simple, very basic, and going back to music, it's memorable. in the sense of if you put it on like okay I know what that is but it's not going to go into my playlist when I listen to the music from time to time. It's very like okay that was a thing that was like it's I like it but it's not like groundbreaking. Again I hate to compare it to it but look and it's hard to say that it's you can call it limitations because Final Fantasy VI had very memorable music, Dancing Mad, Terrorist theme, The Overworld and also the opera moment. That was a groundbreaking moment which had character development, music and just beautiful scenery and again that game is more advanced. That's more for like you're going to go through this whole journey. Secret of Mana I find it more as a you're going to go through this experience. It's not a bad one it's not it's it's it's it's a good one it's a fun it's enjoyable it's definitely worth your time. There are some moments where you just feel like underwhelmed because magic in this world makes it on the whelming because honestly you can go through a dungeon not spend any MP and then just unleash it all on the boss. There are like maybe a few moments where I had a grind maybe because I was just trying to buy armor or what yeah just trying to buy armor and whatnot or just like okay I need to get a little stronger but very rare moments where I had to do that had to spend time of just like all right I'm trying to level all these guys up it just got to the point where like all right I'm just going to go for the end. Overall if you decide to play this game it's on the switch I think it's on PlayStation and whatnot you can find the collection of mana it's not a bad it's not a bad selection honestly it's it's it wouldn't hurt to play it it's a very basic so if you have little little ones or whatnot I find it more for the family to play together with an RPG versus like Final Fantasy 6 would be more of like an individual journey and adventure and experience and it's cool multiplayer definitely a multiplayer just because it's a lot more fun you play with friends playing with family I'd say give it a shot like for me like don't think of it too much as a serious RPG I find it more as a this is more casual we're gonna play together we're gonna do what we can an adventure out in this world very small world oh gotta say this before I end it the map sucks I don't know what it is about RPGs during this time but maps suck it's cool that you get to fly around on a dragon but loading up the map screen like okay I don't want the spherical one I want the actual map when it loads up it takes like a good five seconds and that's that's a pain in the ass really it's just maps are terrible during this time I don't know why you don't even know where you're going sometimes so it's like oh is this the place I need to go to nope is this the place you go to nope so you can get lost on the world overworld map but that's my take on Seagot Amanda give it a shot you know it doesn't hurt if you have someone who's like casual gamer you want to like have a little fun experience it's it's definitely worth the time uh right so let's go and talk about basic nutrition and macros so some of the things uh this was actually a question let it actually it was more of a one word statement by my friend I asked anyone have any nerdy or fitness questions her response was macros so I asked her what do you mean that could mean a whole plethora of things and uh she's a good sport so essentially she was asking what are like I'm going to explain what they are how do calculate them in the percentiles that you need for your nutrition so macronutrients the full word um macronutrients are like your proteins your carbs and fats um so you know you need your protein not would be very basic very basic and what I talk about today uh protein is for like building muscle and repairing as well there's all of these other functions as well but we're going to kind of we're going to kind of stick to stick to that carbs are going to be your energy source and fats kind of keep you full plus it has some benefits elsewhere as well now you need these things uh I'm also I'm just pulling up my my sheets right now okay I'm just kind of like that doesn't make sense okay so so those you need those things in your diet all the time and we hear things like oh yeah I need a lot of protein well hold on how much do you need uh oh I heard carbs are bad cards are not bad for you um I'm going to avoid just stop there let's let's not talk about like in a sense of what oh I've heard this from Facebook I've heard this from you too uh this Instagram or tilt let's look at the basics of things you need calories calories it's kind of like your inner I'm going to call them energy points proteins carbs fats are what keep your body kind of like running and there's your micronutrients like you know your vitamins and minerals and stuff now that can be for a different day we're going to talk about macros so I have a couple of ways to calculate them so I'm going to there's there's three ways that I know of there's plenty more so the first one I'm just going to get out of the way because it's super complicated uh for the equation so this is for if you are a male 10 times your weight in kilograms plus 6.25 times height and centimeters minus five times your age plus five did you get all that it's different for women 10 times weight kilograms plus 6.25 times height and centimeters five times age minus 161 for that for that purpose we're not going to talk about that one let's just go and move on to another way and I've kind of tested these out and I'm like all right there's somewhat accurate uh they're pretty accurate the next one is hope you got your pencils down because I'm only going to say this uh once okay it decided to shut me out there we go another one is your body weight times about 14 that's what for your calories is for maintenance for what your body needs to sustain itself 14 or 15 depending on a few variables and then the other one is finding a fitness tracker either going on tdcalculator.net or downloading my fitness panel or all those other food trackers what kind of give you like because there's elements of how active you are what's your height what's your weight what's your age a lot of these things have these variables because they can change no one is the same I mean I might be five 10 uh five 10 person who is 236 pounds who lives in Oregon and so on with the same elements in probably let's say Florida they are our needs are very different maybe I'm more active than person B or person B is more active here you're how we calculate is very different uh also there's if you're trying for fat loss weight gain ideally for fat loss you want to minus 500 calories from what you need so for myself maintenance is around 3200 calories fat loss is 2800 calories for me to eat now when I'm saying this if you're tracking your food right now and you're only eating 1500 and the calorie says you're supposed to be eating 2800 I'm not saying eat those additional 1300 calories because you will gain weight I'd say definitely work on tracking your food eating what you need to eat to start working up your metabolism which will start you know your naturally going to start want to eat more and then you can start adding a little bit food but little by little it's so your calories are correct because your system can mess up whether you're overeating or under eating and before I move on if you get something like a fitness tracker or go to a TD calculator it will give you the macros that you need so you don't have to do all the equations but if you're a math person going to the second equation I gave you so let's say you take your base you take your weight times 14 you take that number minus 500 from that number and that's the calories with a deficit in order to get your protein take that take your weight times 1.0 and that's usually what you get so if you're 150 pounds you need 150 grams of protein again this is all subjective and then if you got then take 150 times 0.3 or 0.4 for your fat intake and then this is where you got to do more math take your base take your calorie deficit minus the protein minus your grams of protein you need times 4 and then times the minus your grams of fat plus 9 Then you get this number you see it goes on and on and then you would take whatever number you got from that whole equation and divided by four that's how many carbohydrates you need That equation that's a lot of work go download a fitness app go download a My fitness pal is one of the easy go-to ones. It's the most well-known one You don't have to use it. That's all up to all up to you It's just one of the ones. It's easier well-known. Most people have it. It's kind of the go-to And I like it. I am not sponsored by the way by my fitness pal, but if they're listening, hey, what up? I'll watch a boy. I could use a I could use some some stuff So let me pull up my my food diet real quick nutrition so macros So in this one. It tells me you know 50% of my food should come fifth percent of my calories should come from carbs 30 comes from fat and 20 comes from protein and Honestly, I feel if you track your food This is not as hard as you think so go get a fit a fitness tracker Go put in your stats and whatnot and it'll do all the work for you the other work that you would need to do is Putting in the food that you eat This is super important because you know if you want to get results if you want to start eating better Understand what's going into your body first because I've I've had a lot of consults where I've met people were the like Oh, yeah, I decided to do keto or I'm starting to do this in a very fast thing. I'm starting to paleo I'm starting to going vegan vegetarian But when I asked them the the big question, do you track your food? No? If the answer is no, why are you going from zero to a hundred and? You know a little bit about my background. I'm I'm a nutrition coach. I can't tell you what to eat Exactly, but I can kind of look at your eating patterns explain the basics of why this is What you're doing is either beneficial or bad if you want to go to someone who like is going to tell you exactly what to eat a Nutritionists, they have to go through school. They're licensed. So here's a little tidbit be careful who you have I'm a nutrition coach. I understand my my realm of what I can say and what I can do There's nutrition licensed nutritionist that couldn't have to do a lot more and go through school and whatnot So if you come across someone that says oh, I'm going to make you eat this this and this are your licensed nutritionist No, be careful Be careful, but if they're looking at what you're eating is like hey This has a lot of sugar in it and has a lot of added sugar too is there way you can change that to something better I noticed that you're you're having too much sodium. This is what's causing that is a way we can change that You know we can kind of dig in deep and kind of look at as a nutrition coach A certified nutrition coach we can kind of look in like oh, I noticed this pattern when you eat every Thursday You just you it's like a big day. What's going on? Oh, you have like a dinner. You guys have like family outing. Okay, that makes sense. Okay, so It's adjusting understanding you're eating patterns and calories because if there's nothing bad about keto paleo Being the vegan vegetarian and so on and so forth. It's just if you're not understanding what your body needs or On the basis level of tracking your protein carbs fats and your calories There's no way you can succeed in all that stuff. Don't jump in the deep and immediately. Let's start off small Okay, this fitness tracker tells me I have to eat this much Okay, let me start tracking my food daily to kind of see if I'm even hitting that number Awesome Now let's see if I'm getting enough protein carbs and fats Oh cool. I'm getting I'm super close on protein. I'm I hate carbs easily Fats sometimes I might go over. Okay. Cool. Then you can start looking at the other things like oh I'm eating a lot of sugar. What's that coming from? Let's start eliminating some things we're placing what better things and that's what we start getting the cycle of start eating better Start cooking from home start doing this start noticing. Wow. It's a loud motorcycle Start noticing everything that you're doing Because the way you get success from stuff like keto, paleo all intermittent fasting all the stuff is because They still follow macros you got like with keto you can only have so many carbs in your day and if you're If you're messing up with how much too much sugar too much this then you kind of beat the purpose of why you're doing it intermittent fasting just because you're fasting for so long You know a lot of people like oh, I'm gonna eat whatever I want now that my fasting is over. Well, no You can still gain weight because you're eating too much too many calories than what your body's burning you can still gain weight that way And with vegan vegetarianism A lot of the time is in order to get the protein you eat you do have to eat more. I'll stop hitting the The table you do have to eat it would be conscious of how much proteins actually coming in And how much calories you're actually getting so You know you got to look at at a bigger perspective nail down understanding food tracking Food tracking is what you absolutely should start off with Because if you're always second-guessing or like having bad habits you need to look at that and realize oh man I'm constantly doing this no wonder I'm not losing weight or building muscle or Whatever the case may be Food tracking food tracking food tracking find a food tracker or a TD calculator Understand what your body needs and then start working on your food and You know once you get successful if you do want to go down the route of All the other stuff do your do your studies first understand what it consists of and how you need to adjust your Macros and calories in order to get successful in this new eating style. So Out of the day just yeah start tracking your food It's gonna be very beneficial because you're gonna start seeing how you're eating what you're eating and How we can change things? I mean don't go zero to a hundred work your way. So it's realistic Work your way. So it's something that's doable and you know you don't have to go to like fanciest man See fanciest Like food markets and just because it says stuff like oh this these cookies are organic so they must be good No, they're still cookies. It's still junk food eat more whole foods more foods that you know Veggies, fruits, you know some good non-process meat do what you can and boom You got the recipe of six six success right there And of course talk to a nutrition coach or licensed nutritionist to kind of give you some tips on what not and That's kind of how macros and basic nutrition is without me going to scientific Enough for you know, everyone's kind of understand like okay. This is what I need to do Once you start tracking your food, you kind of see little pitfalls like oh, you know what? I know I have a soda every day. How about I try to get that down to four times a week than three times a week and Do what you can start seeing what you're doing look at your fridge And there's a lot of resources out there like I think it's My plate.gov. It's something like that It kind of shows you like what you should be eating and whatnot There's a lot of resources out there and make sure they're good quality resources I mean there's so many things out there where it's like oh this Facebook article tells me about this or This YouTuber says this is the best way to eat and it Honestly, let's go back down to basics. I have textbooks on nutrition. I have there's many books out there But make sure the nutrition that you find is very non-biased You know, let it be a scientific study that you find scientific material that you read and start the basics Basics basics and honestly, that's what I can say everything you do starts with the basics Get a control of your your calories. What you're eating how you're eating your methods of eating and everything and then that leads to where you need to be all right, so Let's go into some viewer questions before we end the podcast today all right, so One of the questions is what is the best way to get back into exercising if you've been inactive for a while Good question. You know, I really good question So this is one of the this can relate to a lot of us especially with quarantine and whatnot haven't to close everything down Just like with nutrition Don't jump into deep end. Don't go from zero to 100 Start by doing little things go for a walk in the morning kind of get things going like you know what I had my coffee Let's go for 15 the 30-minute walk just around the neighborhood do what you can and then start adding things that you like to do Oh, I like to go hiking cool start going hiking Um do manageable hikes don't go any don't go crazy. You're like okay, we're gonna do a First one to be like a few maybe three mile hike and then when you get better for five start adding on adding on and then Just trying to find what's gonna keep you essentially motivated and what's enough for you know you get a good you don't have to build up a sweat just because you're sweating That's doesn't mean you're burning a lot of calories. You could just be a heavy sweater and If you're not sweating make sure you don't overheat but Yeah, one of the big things is just try to find things you like doing too Do you like riding your bike? Do you like going for walks? Yoga, you know, there's many YouTube yoga out there where you're like, okay, maybe finds something you like doing There's a lot of people are When they think of okay, I need to get back to exercising. They immediately run over to a gym Not a bad idea but at the same time a gym may not be for everyone Yes, I'm gonna harp. I'm gonna be very harsh and say everyone needs to be doing some kind of muscle building like if you're walking in treadmill and not challenging yourself for like 20 minutes Then it'd be snow poised to be being at the gym. You could be out and about in nature and make that walk a little bit more challenging It's just finding baby steps to kind of Walk your way into things and then finding little things like you know what that sounds interesting I want to try that. Let's try this. Let's try that. Try things. Do things. You'll either love it or you hate it So you'll know like you know it. I got a good workout from that I felt I felt really good afterwards. Let's try to do this more often and that's kind of how You start from starting from being inactive start a small go-for-walks right a bike Go-for-hikes You know walk around the park do what you can and that's one of the best ways to To start really Many times I've seen people like you know what? Because the weather's nice. I'm gonna start moving more. I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna do that and You know have some backups from when the weather starts to get bad again Just be so it's like you know you don't have to stop immediately Maybe you get to a gym maybe take a yoga class or find some yoga videos or at-home workouts that aren't Extremely killer because as much as I love stuff like P90X and insanity Those are insane The average if you're if you've been inactive for a long time. I wouldn't jump into that That stuff like okay, um, this is that home yoga. You can try this or Pilates or something you can do where you just need maybe just a screen and some space. That's all you got to do That's Very simple. You know for that too demanding that to where you're gonna be sore for the next few days But enough to start getting your body moving. You know as you might start building some lean muscle Start burning some extra calories and you might find something that you didn't know you really loved To give that a shot Next question. This one's a fun one. I actually did homework on this one How many burpees does it take to get strong enough to cook a bug bear by slapping it? So I looked into this So I honestly feel burpees is more of an endurance type of exercise not necessarily when I feel strained for So we're gonna use a dex modifier I'll make one for the strength modifier and this is real life. I'm using kind of D&D rules So this one of two ways you could do this one. I want to say if you're being more dexterous I Want to I have these cards these milit these are your daily military workout cards and whatnot and The greatest thing is like when she gets to the end. It's like you do a thousand burpees in a day not all at once but in a day So I want to say that if you can do a thousand of burpees in a day While learning how to punch now you're gonna have to dip into Levels of being a monk or martial artist or a boxer because doing slapping someone with In the D&D world without having it trained is one damage and that's not gonna be enough The bug bear has 27 health if you go into monk and you're at least 17th level or you get a d10 you you understand how to move and throw a punch though it hit Max out your speed and land a crit boom at 17th level you can drop a bug bear with Just one hit now if you take some of the elements if you understand how you know you could get some help by You know the elements of having your fire because your fist become on fire you might cook its face The whole body bunkers are their medium-sized creatures, I think but There are no way no way unless you can break those The laws of speed and whatnot to knock him out be fashion this speeding the speed of light Yeah, you're not cooking him, but you can definitely either knock him out or Or kill him essentially with in D&D world the other way is Getting stronger working on strength versus with some speed so barbarian if you're gonna work on the the strength modifier If you go to level 9 You know also if you're gonna be having brawler, maybe it's not the prettiest punch, but you're using brute force and you know You might get a little scruffy here and there Brutal critical you had additional die to your damage, so if you land a crit you hit that sweet spot where they're gonna drop you just gotta You just got a roll of perfect Perfect die boom you'll knock him out at level 9 of brute force and strength not the prettiest looking punch or slap But it it'll actually it can probably work and Those are my two questions, so thanks for the questions today everyone That the last one was definitely a brain teaser so Yeah, that's today's episode Tune in next week. I got much more to talk about much more to That I want to share again leave comments in my Leave comments so I can get some fewer questions from all of you possibly the next topic and Show your support. Please follow. Please subscribe. Please watch it share with your friends and I'll come back for you with more great material y'all take care have a good one