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Metabolic Freedom With Ben Azadi

#857 How To Burn Belly Fat & Lose Flabby Skin Extremely Fast! - Do These 5 Things ASAP with JJ Virgin

Today, I am blessed to have JJ Virgin here with me. As a triple-board certified nutrition expert and Fitness Hall of Famer, JJ is a passionate advocate of nutrition’s healing power and is mission-driven to ignite a movement of women choosing to age powerfully. After decades of watching women strive to shrink themselves, JJ is urging women to step into their power—physically and personally. Using her principles of powerful aging, she inspires women to get strong, bold, and get what they want in life.

In this episode, JJ emphasizes that many people focus on minor details, like specific diets or exercises, instead of prioritizing the big rocks—the major actions that make the biggest impact. First and foremost, she advises prioritizing protein at meals, especially eating it first. Protein is metabolically expensive to digest, helps manage hunger, reduces cravings, and is crucial for building muscle.

A comprehensive approach combining resistance training, high-intensity interval training (HIIT), and consistent movement is essential to optimize body fat loss and overall fitness. Full-body workouts outperform split routines for body composition, while HIIT is particularly effective at reducing visceral fat. A foundational practice is tracking daily steps, aiming for at least 8,000 steps, gradually progressing to higher intensity by adding resistance, like a rucking vest.

Resources from this episode:

Website: https://jjvirgin.com/

The Virgin Diet: https://www.amazon.com/The-Virgin-Diet-J-J-Virgin-audiobook/dp/B00ADXRW7I/benazadi-20

JJ Virgin's Sugar Impact Diet: https://www.amazon.com/JJ-Virgins-Sugar-Impact-Diet-audiobook/dp/B00OQQWEZS/benazadi-20

Eat Protein First: https://discover.jjvirgin.com/7-day-protein-challenge-int-1

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jj.virgin/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JJVirginOfficial/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/jjvirginvideos

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/jjvirgin/

JJ’s Podcast: https://jjvirgin.com/main-podcasts/

🔎 Find all of the Metabolic Freedom Sponsorship deals and coupon codes here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MGMtuWpaOnDU_SQbowd29DLBgp76i3GQrvDeEg2Y0co/edit?usp=sharing

/ / E P I S O D E   S P ON S O R S  *BonCharge: Blue light Blocking Glasses, Red Light Therapy, Sauna Blankets & More. Visit https://boncharge.com/pages/ketokamp and use the coupon code KETOKAMP for 15% off your order. *BON CHARGE products are all HSA/FSA eligible, giving you tax free savings of up to 40% Beam Minerals: BEAM Minerals products are the perfect support for the keto/carnivore/fasting way of living as they won’t

break your fast, PLUS they taste just like water and will help you keep carb cravings at bay as you move into a fat-adapted state. Give BEAM Minerals a try today for an enhanced keto experience. Head to http://www.beamminerals.comand use the coupon code AZADI for a sweet discount!  Text me the words "Podcast" +1 (786) 364-5002 to be added to my contacts list.  // F O L L O W ▸ instagram | @thebenazadi | http://bit.ly/2B1NXKW ▸ facebook | /thebenazadi | http://bit.ly/2BVvvW6 ▸ twitter | @thebenazadi http://bit.ly/2USE0so ▸clubhouse | @thebenazadi Disclaimer: This podcast is for information purposes only. Statements and views expressed on this podcast are not medical advice. This podcast including Ben Azadi disclaim responsibility from any possible adverse effects from the use of information contained herein. Opinions of guests are their own, and this podcast does not accept responsibility of statements made by guests. This podcast does not make any representations or warranties about guests qualifications or credibility. Individuals on this podcast may have a direct or non-direct interest in products or services referred to herein. If you think you have a medical problem, consult a licensed physician.

Duration:
1h 41m
Broadcast on:
02 Sep 2024
Audio Format:
mp3

Today, I am blessed to have JJ Virgin here with me. As a triple-board certified nutrition expert and Fitness Hall of Famer, JJ is a passionate advocate of nutrition’s healing power and is mission-driven to ignite a movement of women choosing to age powerfully. After decades of watching women strive to shrink themselves, JJ is urging women to step into their power—physically and personally. Using her principles of powerful aging, she inspires women to get strong, bold, and get what they want in life.


In this episode, JJ emphasizes that many people focus on minor details, like specific diets or exercises, instead of prioritizing the big rocks—the major actions that make the biggest impact. First and foremost, she advises prioritizing protein at meals, especially eating it first. Protein is metabolically expensive to digest, helps manage hunger, reduces cravings, and is crucial for building muscle.


A comprehensive approach combining resistance training, high-intensity interval training (HIIT), and consistent movement is essential to optimize body fat loss and overall fitness. Full-body workouts outperform split routines for body composition, while HIIT is particularly effective at reducing visceral fat. A foundational practice is tracking daily steps, aiming for at least 8,000 steps, gradually progressing to higher intensity by adding resistance, like a rucking vest.


Resources from this episode: 



🔎 Find all of the Metabolic Freedom Sponsorship deals and coupon codes here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MGMtuWpaOnDU_SQbowd29DLBgp76i3GQrvDeEg2Y0co/edit?usp=sharing  


/ / E P I S O D E   S P ON S O R S 

*BonCharge: Blue light Blocking Glasses, Red Light Therapy, Sauna Blankets & More. Visit https://boncharge.com/pages/ketokamp and use the coupon code KETOKAMP for 15% off your order.

*BON CHARGE products are all HSA/FSA eligible, giving you tax free savings of up to 40%

Beam Minerals: BEAM Minerals products are the perfect support for the keto/carnivore/fasting way of living as they won’t


break your fast, PLUS they taste just like water and will help you keep carb cravings at bay as you move into a fat-adapted state. Give BEAM Minerals a try today for an enhanced keto experience. Head to http://www.beamminerals.comand use the coupon code AZADI for a sweet discount! 

Text me the words "Podcast" +1 (786) 364-5002 to be added to my contacts list. 

// F O L L O W

▸ instagram | @thebenazadi | http://bit.ly/2B1NXKW

▸ facebook | /thebenazadi | http://bit.ly/2BVvvW6

▸ twitter | @thebenazadi http://bit.ly/2USE0so

▸clubhouse | @thebenazadi

Disclaimer: This podcast is for information purposes only. Statements and views expressed on this podcast are not medical advice. This podcast including Ben Azadi disclaim responsibility from any possible adverse effects from the use of information contained herein. Opinions of guests are their own, and this podcast does not accept responsibility of statements made by guests. This podcast does not make any representations or warranties about guests qualifications or credibility. Individuals on this podcast may have a direct or non-direct interest in products or services referred to herein. If you think you have a medical problem, consult a licensed physician.

- If you are looking at the gym, and I remember this used to drive me crazy 'cause people would go get on a treadmill and then they'd step off and go, "I burned X amount of calories." I go, "No, you did not." Because you did not take into account what you would have burned had you not been on the treadmill. So you really didn't burn what you think you burned. So please don't go eat what I think you're gonna go eat because you think you just burned that. Your body doesn't work that way. (dramatic music) (dramatic music) The Greek definition for metabolism is to transform. Your metabolism is designed to take food and to transform it into energy so you feel good and burn fat. We are determined to deliver the science and art of metabolism to you. We bring on the thought leaders in this space to have life-changing conversations so you could apply it and upgrade your metabolism. The topics covered here include biohacking, ketosis, carnivore, fasting strategies, mindset, and metabolic health. Your body was built to be self-healing. Our goal is to identify the interference and remove it. You are a masterpiece because you are a piece of the master. Welcome to the Metabolic Freedom Podcast. My name is Ben Azadi. I'm the best-selling author of KetoFlex, and I want to thank you for spending part of your day with me. (dramatic music) - Welcome back to the Metabolic Freedom Podcast. I am your host, Ben Azadi. I hope you're having a wonderful day so far. Today we bring on somebody I have not interviewed before. This is the first time, can you believe it, with 800 plus episodes. Her name is JJ Virgin. I've been a huge fan of JJ since, I believe, 2015. And she is a wealth of resource and information on today's episode. We're gonna get into the top five ways to burn stubborn belly fat, how to speed up the process. So you're gonna hear about the concept of eating protein first. How much protein should you have? What about protein supplements like amino acids? What about protein shakes? We'll talk about the value of building lean muscle mass. We'll discuss the value of sleep and recovery as it relates to fat loss. Being active, getting daily steps, we'll dive deep into the signs of creatine and some unique ways to use creatine. We'll discuss heart rate variability as a gauge, different ways to track your heart rate variability. And we'll discuss what happens when you lose the way and have excess skin. How do you prevent that? Or how do you tighten up your skin if you currently have excess skin? This was a phenomenal conversation. It is worth the time to listen to it. You could watch the video version on youtube.com/ketocamp. Check out her website, her books and her programs. We'll drop a link in the notes for all of her information, including the show notes. I am so excited to bring her to you today. Before I do, I want to remind you, I have a masterclass coming up, a keto masterclass to learn how to use keto. This metabolic tool, this amazing process, the right way for men, for women, for all walks of life. I get into the science of keto, the art of keto and how to flex in anaticatosis, this concept of metabolic freedom. If you go to ketosismasterclass.com, you can watch that free training coming up for free. That is ketosismasterclass.com. Without further ado, here's JJ Virgin. JJ Virgin, for people who are struggling to lose stubborn fat, what are the top five things they should do or shouldn't do to speed up the process? So here's the most important thing. I feel like we have gotten really good at majoring in minors. You know, like should I do some apple cider vinegar? Should it be walking rather than hit training? Like all these little things where we got to focus on the big rocks first. So I'm going to go through the big rocks. Then we could go into all the little bitty things, but if you do these big rocks, probably you won't need to worry about the little bitty things. The first one, I love so much because it's going to solve a couple problems because if you're trying to lose fat, at some point you're going to have to go into a caloric deficit and you're going to have to achieve it one way or the other. And if you're hungry and having cravings, that's out the window. So the easiest way to be able to get into that at some point, which we will talk about, but this is the first big rock, is to eat protein first. It's to prioritize protein, but I say eat protein first because I have been at too many dinners and heard too many times from women that they get too full to eat their protein. And I'm like, well, I just sat at dinner with you and I watched you have a salad with cranberries, raspberry vinaigrette, glaze nuts. You literally had a Sunday, then you had some bread, then you had some appetizer like calamari. And then you say that you, and I'm talking fried calamari, so you're mainly getting dough and fried, right? And then finally your meal comes and it's like some kind of starch and veggie and a little protein and you eat the starch, then you finally get over the protein, of course you're full. So the easy way to solve this is to eat protein first. Now, why do I want you to do this? So when you look at our three macronutrients, along with water that we must have to survive, which it's interesting, we do not have to have carbohydrates to survive as you know, protein and fat and water we must have. We can live without carbs, which, and I know this must make you crazy too, Ben, it's like, why did we design an entire diet based on the one thing that we can live without? - It's wild. - And how is it working for us? Not good, you know? So, let's focus on the protein. And the reason I love that is a couple things. Number one, when you're eating Whole Foods proteins, like wild salmon, grass-fed beef, you're gonna get healthy fats too. So you get everything you need and then drink a bunch of water with it. The reason I want people to focus on protein first is protein compared to carbs and fat is so much more metabolically costly to digest and assimilate, where fat really takes nothing to get on your body and be burned as fat or stored as fat. We have a great storage depot, pretty much unlimited for fat. Then carbs, maybe five to 10% is the processing to either get them stored in your muscles as glycogen, which is what we hope we have, like liver and muscle, or turned into fat, which is what we hope we don't do, or just burned. And then we've got protein. 20 to 30% of the energy that we take in, when we take in protein, has to be used in the digestion and assimilation of protein. How cool is that? So 100 calories of protein is only really 70 calories, probably or 75. Contrast that with 100 calories of fat is 100 calories. So that's the first part of it. The second piece of it, and you would think, and this has actually been shown, is that if all you did initially, this would help you initially, it's not gonna be a long-term fix. But initially, if all you did was take some of the calories away from fat and carbs and move them over to protein, you would eat less overall because you wouldn't be as hungry, but you'd take in less calories overall, too. It's not a huge fact, but it does make a difference, and everything counts. But the second reason I love protein is because it's going to make you feel fuller longer. Everyone's talking about GLP1s, and I'm like, all right, well, just eat protein. It's one of the nature's little GLP1 agonist protein. So protein not only helps us with hunger, but it also helps us with cravings, and as you know, those are two very different things. And so now you've got the building blocks, we turn over 300 plus grams of amino acids a day in our bodies, and we need the protein, we need the essential amino acids from the protein to make the other amino acids, and then to make neurotransmitters that will help shut down our cravings. So we're not hungry, we don't have the cravings, we've got a better thermic effect. So that's where I really like people to start, because it just makes the rest of this easy. And it's something you can do whatever diet you're following. So I always do that, like let's like not get into the diet religion and the diet wars. You could do this plant-based, you can do this carnivore, and you can do it whichever way you do it. But start with making protein, 0.7 to one gram per pound of target body weight. You can even push it a little higher if you're working on recomping, and put that as your first thing that you eat before you eat anything else. - So I wasn't asked you how much do you recommend? So 0.7 to one gram per ideal body weight. Can you share how somebody would calculate that based off of somebody who's overweight right now, and they're trying to lose weight? - Yeah, and I mean, here's the thing, and this is what I used to do, but it just got so complicated. In the perfect world, we would go get a DEXA scan and find out our target body weight that we'd really wanna be, but based on more of our skeletal muscle, then we'd dose it for skeletal muscle. All right, you know what? The minute we start to make things hard, then people have a reason why not to. So you know that weight you feel good at, right? Now, I'm gonna say that we always wanna look past weight to what that weight's made up of as the most important thing. However, let's just not get into the weeds of should it be 140 pounds or 160 pounds, pick a weight. And then just look at that weight, and let's say it's 150 pounds. So you're gonna go 0.7 times 150 would be how much is your lowest amount, and then you could go up to 150 grams, and really you can go higher. There's so much research has come out lately about protein intake, 'cause it used to be that don't eat more than, I remember I got a DM, you'll love this, I got a DM, my manicure has told me that I should not eat more than 27 grams of protein at a meal because I'm like, because what, what will happen? Where will it go, you know? Because I'm like, it's gotta go somewhere, it's not going poof, you know? We can take protein and we could use it as fuel, our body doesn't want to. So, you know, it's like it's going to try to use it more and break it into amino acids and use it to rebuild, but if it had to use it, it could turn it into sugar, and you could use it for fuel, or you could turn it then and put it into glycogen muscles, or you could turn it into fat and store it. So you can do any of those things, it's not gonna like turn into some evil rampaging monster in your body, do not worry, you know? - That's well said. - It's like everyone's worried about overeating protein, I'm worried about you overeating sugar, and damaged fats, and ultra-processed food. I don't think we've ever seen anyone, you know, who's in the hospital because they were, you know, they just had a really, really, a pig-out diet on wild salmon, and they just happened. No one ever, I mean, even like, you know, look at carnivore, you're getting people sick because they're eating, grass-fed meat, no, we get sick because we eat ultra-processed foods, you know, that's why we're sick. - Spot on. - So, yeah, but yeah, we get so protein-phobic, and we're still protein-phobic, it's crazy. So, that's the first one, and again, the big way to do this so that you can be effective at it is to use a food tracking app, any food scale. We are really, really bad at identifying how much we eat. So, you gotta use a food scale. In case in point, Ben, yesterday, I was doing a coaching call with someone, and they said they'd won this on Instagram. So, I get on the call with the scowl, and she goes, "Okay, I'm doing everything you said." Don't you love that when people say, I'm doing it, I'm like, "Okay, correct." - I see that, I read that all the time on my social media. - Okay, so let's walk through it. I wanna, let's see how this is working in real life. And so, the first thing I said, all right, walk me through breakfast because when we talk about eating protein first, my, you know, I believe breakfast is such an important meal because this is when we're gonna trigger muscle protein synthesis, stop that catabolic state that we were when we went to bed, and now we were breaking down, now we're gonna get going with muscle protein synthesis. So, she goes, "I had two eggs, my two eggs." All right, so, if you, and her goal weight was 160, and now I didn't even get into this 'cause she was five, six, she said her goal weight was 168, and I thought, "I'm just gonna leave that one alone for now, we won't even, like, we only had so much time." I'm like, "Let's just start the protein." Anyway, so we kind of calculate out her minimum would be 120 grams of protein, which really for a woman, 40 plus, they should be getting in like 40 grams of protein breakfast goal. So, her eggs, her two eggs, which she thought she did great on, was 12 grams of protein. So, then she backpedals, she goes, "That's not a normal breakfast." I go, "Okay, phew, what is?" Oatmeal, peanut butter, and some kind of nut milk. I go, "Well, what do you think?" And she goes, "Oh, and then I have an egg on the side." I'm like, "We're in the same situation here with this." And that's why I say we've gotta use a tracking app. I mean, I used to have people write this down, you know, I've been at this for 40 years, so you used to be, write it down on a piece of paper, then you would have to get like a chart down. It's so easy, just put it in there, use your food scale, and you've got real-time data right there going, "You and 12 grams of protein, "that ain't gonna cut it." - It's so useful, you're right. These apps are incredible, and a lot of them are free. It'll calculate everything for you. So, you just said, aim to get, if you're a woman over 40, especially, aim to get 40 grams of protein at breakfast, that first meal of the day, what are your thoughts on supplementing with amino acids, maybe protein shakes, any favorites for type of proteins and protein shakes? Is that an okay way to kind of fill the gap sometimes? - Heck yeah, I love them all. I'm a big fan of supplement spin. I've been working in the world of supplements now for 30 years and spent, you know, a good amount of time teaching doctors how to use supplements in their practice and doing seminars and workshops on that. So I'm like big in the supplement world. The first thing is, I think that one of the most underutilized tools, and honestly, I just started messing around with them, and I'm like, where was I? Our essential amino acids. I really feel like, you know, any woman, like we all need to be looking at our body composition, we all need to be tracking skeletal muscle mass, we all need to be looking at how we can pack on as our retirement fund as much muscle as humanly possible, and before a woman goes, "Oh my gosh, I don't want to get big." Good luck, like, good luck. You'd be lucky if over the course of a year, you could put on 20 pounds of muscle, I'd argue probably you'd put on 10 or 12. And, you know, as we talk about how to drop body fat, that's one of the ways that you'll do it because muscles, metabolic spanks, holds everything in tighter, gives you a better metabolic rate. Everyone talks about the slow metabolism. The way you affect your metabolism, your resting metabolism is more muscle. That's it. So, put more muscle on, it's holding everything in tighter, it's going to boost your metabolism all throughout the day, it's going to help you become more insulin sensitive, which if you're insulin high, you're not gonna burn fat, so you gotta be insulin sensitive. So, it is really the key to all of this. And, in order for you to, when you're 40 plus, build muscle is you gotta have protein and you gotta have resistance training. So, one of the things that you can do that, why are we eating protein, we're eating it for the essential amino acids. So, when you really look at it, I do essential aminoes every day. So, when I go to the gym, I take my big thing of green tea and essential aminoes, creatine and electrolytes. That's my little cocktail. It's 64 ounces. - Wow. So, you're drinking that throughout your workout. - Yes. - That's a good stack. Are you doing the green tea for the catechins, the caffeine? What's the, are you just like the taste of green tea? Like, what are your favorite benefits of green tea? - I think green tea, I, you know, I think we should be drinking like 32 ounces or more of green tea every day. It's for the EGCG and the DNA. So, I just interviewed Dr. Casey Means on Good Energy and she was talking about like the three ways to really help your body produce GLP1. And one of them was to reduce the breakdown of GLP1. And one of the ways you do that is through EGCG. And I'm like, oh, I mean, there's so many things it helps with insulin sensitivity. While it has caffeine, it has theanine. So, theanine helps raise GABA. GABA is the calming neurotransmitter. So, it's like this great steady energy that doesn't make you tired, but you're not like that frenetic stuff. I'm a fast caffeine metabolizer. So, which I'm very happy about. - Yeah, you wanna, I'm a slow metabolizer. And I love coffee, so I have to be careful. - I love coffee. I love like coffee is my favorite thing. So, yeah, I'll do green tea and chase it with coffee. But that's why I like to do it. I love to get that green tea in. So, that's how I do it. And then, you know, obviously I want my creatine on board and my electrolytes. I drink a lot of fluids. So, I'm really careful to make sure I'm getting enough electrolytes. Otherwise, I start to get leg cramps. - Yeah, smart move, especially being in Florida where it's very humid. - That's yes. For your creatine, are you doing about five grams a day? What are you doing? - So, I've been in the middle of a creatine research study, which started with me as the guinea pig and then my husband and now I'm expanding it. So, I've been playing around with two different types. And so, there's monohydrate and there's HCl, and then there's a bunch of other ones. But when you really dig into the research, those are kind of the two. And so, the argument with monohydrate is, it's been around for average the most research. That's when we should use. But then you look at that and you go, well, that's kind of a dumb argument, you know? Just 'cause something's been around forever. I mean, does that mean that's the one you should use? 'Cause I'm not using a rotary phone anymore, are you? - Good points. - Right. So, this is how it all happened. I started getting into creatine and to be honest, I don't know how I missed it for so long. I literally went in my early 20s. I was lifting weights down at Gold's Gym in Venice, the mecca bodybuilding and taking clients down there and field trips to show them that you do not get bigger lifting weights unless you take steroids. 'Cause you'd see women at Gold's Gym in Venice. And I remember they were so old, they were in their 60s and 70s. And I was like, I killed a look like this woman. You know, there's one woman or 80s and they're lifting weights and they look fabulous. And all the dudes took creatine. And I'm like, okay, I'm not taking that, right? Then a couple of years ago, I'm digging through this and I go, this is like the supplement that every woman, I mean, forget the bros. Like the women need to be on creatine. Creatine, women have 70 to 80% less tissue stores of creatine, we're not eating the foods that creatine tends to be in, like very rare stakes. And a small percentage of it goes to our brain and the research on menopause and brain health for women with creatine is insane, with mood, with cognitive decline. I mean, incredible, besides fact, it also helps with skin. So I started telling everyone they need to be on creatine. And I went on creatine, I did the old school loading doses where I was doing 20 grams a day, little GI, yeah. I mean, you know, I just kind of, (laughs) I'm one of those types. I am impulsive, dive in the deep end. So I do four times a day, five grams for five days and then I went to state between five and 10 grams a day. So I was like, I'm, you know, 140 pounds. So I'm not the typical, you know, I'm not a little, I'm six foot tall, yeah. So I had some GI issues when I was loading, but then it was fine. So I looked at all the research and, you know, no, it doesn't cause hair loss and it doesn't impact your kidney function. Your creatinine might go up, but nothing else is going up. So it's just a false marker. It's just showing your excreting more creatinine. It doesn't, it's not, it's not a marker of a disease process. So I go through and pack all this and I start telling everyone to take it and I'm starting to get all these DMs from women going, I'm gaining weight. I go, it's in your muscles. Like use your, use your bio-impedance scale. Look at total body water. It's in your muscles. This is awesome. They go, no, it's not. I feel bloated. And I'm like, and I'm getting frustrated because some of these people are my friends who are doctors who need it because they're a little frail and they won't do it. And I'm like, oh, this is crazy. So then I was doing a talk in New York City at a medical conference and this guy pings me and he goes, hey, I am the founder of a creatine company and he started to give me all the research on creatine HCl. And I'm like, look at this going, yeah, but creatine monohydrate is the most researched. Well, anyway, he gave me all the research on it and everything they've dug it into. And I went, I keep hearing from women that their stomach hurts, that they're bloated and he's sharing how the reason that's happening and he's got the research to show it is that 80% of monohydrate is not absorbed. And so it causes a little GI and it causes some bloating. And so does that mean you shouldn't use it? No, I mean, a lot of people do great with it and it's inexpensive. But there's a lot of very sensitive women, especially if they're going through menopause when we tend to have more fluid issues anyway because of all the hormone flux and the last thing you need is more of a fluid issue. So that's where I started to mess around with HCl. So I'm actually going to be offering both here pretty quick because the people who are sensitive, like use HCl. You use a seventh of the dose to get the same result. Wow. Right? So that's what I've been playing around with now is both. So overall, I think creatine should be every woman, every woman like, you know, really not even 40 plus, 30 plus because when you look at what happens somewhere around, it's not 30, it's not some magic number, but somewhere in there is hormones are shifting, all of a sudden we're starting to lose muscle, but we're losing more strength and more power. And where creatine comes in and helps, it's not this magic bullet where you can take creatine, sit on the couch and, you know, you've got muscle. It's going to give you creatine in the fossil creatine system, which is this way that you have high performance so that you can work out harder. And this is important because we need to have more power and more strength at the gym, more speed, right? And it helps you work out harder, which means now you're going to have build more muscle and you're going to put more stress on your bone. So it's good for your muscles and your bones indirectly because of that mechanism. And it's also energizing for the brain. - I'm a big fan of creatine. I love that breakdown. Thank you for that, JJ. - Have you ever felt off during your keto journey or a carnivore journey? Maybe you experienced a headache, some fatigue, pesky cravings. This can happen when your body loses vital minerals, especially when following a keto diet. Here's what happens. 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That is beammineral's.com, B-E-A-M-M-I-N-E-R-A-L-S.com. Coupon code AZADI. We'll put that down below in the podcast notes. All right, let's get back to this interview. Every morning I've been putting something in my coffee, which has enhanced my health and wellness. I've been putting high quality Sheila Jit. Sheila Jit is packed full of micro minerals and micro nutrients. And you have to remember this, the mitochondria, they run off of high quality minerals and amino acids. When you consume Sheila Jit, high quality Sheila Jit, like the one I use from Man of Vitality, it's gonna provide your mitochondria and your cells, minerals in their most bioavailable form, supporting overall health, stronger immunity and improved energy levels. The product I use from Man of Vitality has a combination of Sheila Jit and Ormis. Ormis is a supercharged supplement and their unique formulation contains Ormis elements in the most bioavailable form for optimal absorption. 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So the first tip here is add more protein, hit your protein target. Second tip is build muscle. Are there any specific exercises or movements that you prefer to get the biggest bang for your buck? Building muscle, what I've been really working on is a very specific protocol because it's very different with food versus exercise. With food, yes, you'll have some people who've got like a religious thing where they can't eat something or they've got leaky gut and they can't eat something, but you can give them an overall framework. With exercise, they may have never lifted a weight in their lives, they may have scoliosis, they may have a torn ACL, like there's all these things. So I was like, oh boy, how do we put this together? And then the research, I'll give you the research because there's three different things to look at here too, is there's hypertrophy, there's building muscle, making your muscle bigger and really you're making the muscle fibers bigger that doesn't mean you're getting bigger that's gonna hold everything entire. I just keep wanting to say that 'cause women are so afraid of getting bulky. And in 40 years of doing this, I've never seen it ever, like ever. And again, when you look at how slow building muscles is like watching grass grow. It is so slow, right? It's like, and especially if your estrogen's starting to decline 'cause estrogen's such an anabolic hormone for women, it really is like where testosterone for men helps them build muscle, we need estrogen to do that. So it is really hard to build muscle, but that's the first part of it, but then there's strength. And actually building strength, they go hand in hand but they're actually different training to build muscle versus strength. Strength is what's the heaviest thing you can lift one time. So if you really wanted to build absolute strength, you would do like five to 10 sets of one to five reps with like three to five minutes of resting between, which is like, right? And then there's power. And when you look at, okay, we're losing muscle, we're losing strength. How do you know if you're losing strength? If you can't unscrew the jar lid like you used to be able to, you just lost some strength. What can you do at home to test it? It's really easy. All you need to do is get a hand grip dynamometer from Amazon or 30 bucks. It's a great thing to do every month to see if you're getting stronger 'cause strength is the fastest thing you can increase. Takes longer for you to build muscle. But if you've never lifted weights before and you start lifting weights, your muscles and your nerves start to talk to each other and your strength goes up pretty much every time you exercise, it's awesome. But then there's power. And power is how fast you can do something. And that is the biggest thing that we lose. You can test that at home by just standing by the wall, reaching up really high with the pencil, marking the wall and then jumping as high as you can and marking the wall and seeing the difference. There's norms online for that. That's the big thing we lose. And when you really look at what happens because by the time someone's lost bone, to me bone densities like blood sugar, why are we not testing fasting insulin? Why are we waiting till blood sugar is messed up when we would have seen it in fasting insulin years earlier? Same with bone. By the time we've lost bone, like if we had just been monitoring our skeletal muscle, the quality of it, how strong is it, how powerful is it, we would not have bone mineral densities if we were taking care of our muscle. But at this point, a lot of us, it's, we've got a lot of women who listen to the women's health initiative, who aren't doing hormones, we've got women who are afraid of getting bulky. When I was in grad school, we were taught that no one should lift weights till they lose weight. - Really? - Oh boy, yes, yes. I was the black sheep in grad school because we were funded by pre-core. Everything we were doing was on aerobic exercise. By the way, the other thing Ben, we were taught back then that if you couldn't work out for at least 30 minutes, don't bother because you had to get into your zone. You had to be in your fat burning zone. And if there's a silly myth out there, it's this idea of burning fat while you exercise as if this is gonna make the difference. Because if you burn fat during exercise, that doesn't necessarily mean that you lost fat that day, right? You still need to be in a deficit somehow. If you burn fat during exercise and then ate a bunch of carbs afterwards and couldn't store them all as glycogen and store them as fat, you're right back to square one. Anyway, yeah, we were taught just silly stuff, but I decided that I was working with clients and I could see it wasn't working during all this cardio. So I started doing resistance training 'cause I thought, gosh, we could change their whole metabolic rate by doing resistance training. Why wouldn't we do that? So that's what I did. And I did my research project on that and I had to find the one person that would actually sign off on it 'cause no one wanted to do with it. It's like, okay, 30 years later, see, but muscle. So when I start with someone, the first thing that I want you to do is to start building muscle, 'cause I know you'll build strength and to do it in compound movements. And what I like to say is you don't train to get better at training. You're training to get better at life. And what we're really trying to do is make it so that you're built to last so that you can do the things you want to do in your 70s, 80s, 90s so that you don't step off a curb or move out of the way quickly and break your hip because you fall, which you know, the stats on breaking your hip. It's hideous, like, you know, that 50% of the people who break their hip will never come back to normal function. 20 to 30% will die within the year. It's a huge problem. So, and it doesn't have to be a problem and that's the big bummer with it. So resistance training, I think we should be doing things that are very functional, like a squat. And quite often I'll hear, 'cause 40 years of this, I can't do that 'cause I have a bad knee. And I go actually, or I have a bad back and I go, actually, you need to do this because you have a bad knee. You need to do this 'cause you have a bad back. I blew out my knee tore my ACL when I was 17 and I had five knee surgeries, but I was able to put off a total knee that they told me I needed in my early 20s. I put it off 'til 52. - Wow. - Because of all the ways that I kept my, I just was like, okay, I'm gonna do all these things, squats and step ups and all the things so that it is so strong that it doesn't have to rely on the joints as much and I will just get, and my ligaments as much and I'll get all my muscle strong. So that's what I did. So I believe that we do these things 'cause in life you have to squat. So if you have a bad back and you have to get out of a car off a toilet, what are you gonna do? You have to do it. You know, in life you have to put something in the overhead compartment on the plane. You have to pick stuff up off the floor. You have to carry things in out of the car. So people are worried about getting injured at the gym. I'm worried about getting injured in the wild. If you do these things correct, right? You're not going to get injured. You do them in a controlled environment. You do that squat. You do that bent over row. You do the push up. You do the overhead press. You wanna really help your bone mineral density. Do an overhead press, do a squat. So that's the first place I start is doing hypertrophy range, muscle building range exercises. So somewhere when we were in school, it was a tight range. It was like eight to 15 reps. Now it's six to 30 reps. I was like, all right, so, you know, but I find I'll tell people they can do more reps if they're afraid of doing heavier weight. But the reality is we're better off working in like eight to 12 to 15 reps in multiple sets. 'Cause otherwise it's like, it's just boring and long and awful. (laughs) So, and things I love people doing, again, like upper body pulling, something like a pull up or a pull down. And then something like a row or a bent over row. I love those. So a vertical and horizontal plane. And then for upper body pushing an overhead press, 'cause we wanna load that spine and get used to throwing things in the overhead and a pushup type of thing. 'Cause you can do those anywhere. In my perfect world, you would go to the doctor, they would have you do pushups. They'd give you a little norm on that, right? And then a squat and a deadlift. - I love those. - Of course. Right, squat and a step up. But things too that, you know, that's the foundational that you build off of. Then you start to build off of, okay, what do we need to do rotationally? 'Cause we've gotta be able to move in different ways. How do we add in some power? Like I think we should be doing squat jumps that really helps your bones. And then throwing in some strengths, you know, like when I first started pull ups, I could only do a couple. So that was a strength move for me. Now I'm getting into endurance 'cause I can do more. But for a lot of people, you know, a pushup might be something where you can do one to five. So it would be a strength move for a while. Doing something really heavy. But that's the basic foundation for resistance training. And again, it's going to increase your muscle mass, which then it's going to give carbs a place to land in your muscles, it's a sugar sponge. It's gonna make you more insulin sensitive. It's the fastest way to help improve insulin sensitivity, that in sleep. And it's gonna pump up your basal metabolic rate, how much how many calories you burn at rest. But it's also very energetically costly after the exercise. You've got a lot of recovery to do. So it's got a lot of benefits all along the way. I love that tip. And the great thing about tip number one, with the protein, it'll help you perform better when you go and work out. Creatine could also help. You mentioned the amino acids, the electrolytes, the green tea, all that could also help. Is there a certain amount of times in terms of workouts that you recommend in general? Three times a week, four times a week. What's a good amount in terms of frequency that you would suggest for people? - Well, it's interesting for body fat loss. Like when I put together an exercise program and I've got a whole algorithm for how I do it, which kind of leads into the next piece, they just did a study where they looked at split routines, like one day upper push-pull, one day lower, versus full body. And the full body actually beat this split on body composition, body fat loss. So I kind of looked at this and went, what I'm trying to do is look realistically too at how people would design their life. And so if you could go to the gym every other day focused and do a real resistance training routine, or you could do it at home, because all the stuff you could do at home too. Then you could do high intensity interval training two of the other days and then maybe throw in a yoga class has flexibility, balance stability stuff super important. Now I find for most women, they've been doing yoga or Pilates and walking and doing cardio forever, but they haven't been doing cardio as high intensity interval training, which when we look at body fat, specifically visceral adipose tissue, that bad fat around your organs that's so inflammatory, high intensity interval training is really good for helping you get rid of visceral adipose tissue, that and getting rid of the fructose. So I really like making sure that we get in the resistance training and the HIIT training, but I'd also say like I look at someone and go, what's our priority with you? And designing it. But ideally, once someone's gotten past the new begins, they need about 30 sets per area to really start to keep that hypertrophy going. And so, if you did three days a week, 10 sets for each area, so you could do five pushups, five sets of pushups, five overhead presses, is 10 there. Do it, actually you don't even do that. It would be, cause that would be, yeah, 10, three days a week. Right, my math is correct. So you can be that simple, right? So that's how I like to do it. But 30 sets of each area a week, it's been what they've been found is best for hypertrophy. And again, for me, the most important thing with any of this stuff is the consistency. I love the new research on all of the exercise snacks that's coming out. You know, when I look at an exercise routine, one of the other things in terms of losing fat and where I start, I don't actually start people with resistance training. I start people with just tracking how much they actually move. Because I find that like, you know, I don't know if you've seen the research on this, but the average person moves three to 4,000 steps. - Yeah, it's terrible. - It's crazy. And actually, I just wonder how much of the pandemic waking issue was just people not doing any of their activities or their day of living, not going out and having to walk anywhere. And so we've become really like, first thing I started to do myself, I'm always my first guinea pig is to really pay attention how many steps I get in a day with 8,000 being the bare minimum. And really, like I really try to not have it be 8,000. My goal really is to get 12,000 and up. And when we travel, we'll get like 20,000, 25,000 because we will only take stairs. You know, like we won't use hotel elevators. We walk everywhere instead of taking oovers. But that's where I like to start is let's take you first and get you 8,000, your bare minimum. More is better per day. And that might take a month. Like who cares? It doesn't matter 'cause this is a long game thing, but we gotta get each of these things in as a habit, just like eating protein versus a habit and getting the optimal amount. Now we're gonna make sure that we're getting your steps in. Once we know that you're getting your steps in, what I like to do next is add a rucking best a couple days a week. Add some results. So it's just adding extra resistance to your walk. - Right. So there was a cool study that looked at people who were told to get their steps in. And you know, one group was the control did nothing, but they had their, you know, the step group and then the group that added intensity. Now, same number of steps. Nothing changed and really same amount of time. If anything, the time was less on the intense group 'cause they moved faster, but they got better results. They lost more body fat, they had better cardiovascular results. So it's like, all right, once you've got the steps going, how do we continue to progress you? And since I live in Florida and there are no hills, the obvious progression for me was like get a rucking best, but then you start to look at the rucking best benefits. And you know, it's for a bone density, it's amazing. And it's so easy. So, 'cause when you think about it, this is something we've been doing since we were little kids. When we had to put all our books in our backpack and go to school, we've been rucking. So we're just returning to our rucking roots. So that's the next thing. And then after that, I add in the resistance training, get that really going, continue to, I mean, once you've got your resistance training going, that's something you progress and do for a lifetime. And that's where we can start to throw in power training, like the jump training, things with speed and the strength training, doing maybe once a month, I'll do really heavy, heavy, heavy and short, short sets. So you can play around with that once you're in it. But to begin with, you just focus on hypertrophy. And then you add in that high intensity interval training. The other benefit of that is it really pushes your VO2 max, which we know VO2 max and strength are huge predictors of longevity and health span. And then add in a little yoga so that you get the balance and flexibility and stability that you need. - Rock solid, rock solid routine. You know, on the topic of steps, I recently interviewed a neuroscientist, Dr. Shane Omara from the UK. And he was sharing with me that the study that showed just getting five to 7,000 steps per day will reduce all cause mortality by over 50%. And that's not even a lot of steps, right? Five to 7,000 if you compare that to like you said, the average person is getting about 3000, that's nothing. And you're right about what happened with COVID and us being kind of at home, not going out and about. I think that's one of another benefit to having a dog, right? I have my dog, I walk him twice a day, like you're kind of forced, not forced, but you know, you got to go and walk your dog. So you get those steps. I was speaking at a conference a couple of weeks ago in Orlando, the Keto Orlando Summit. And I flew out my videographer to record content. And I was recording a piece on this about the steps. And I, there was an escalator at the Hilton Resort. And then there were stairs right next to it. And I wasn't gonna make the case that most people are going to stand on the escalator and just wait until it goes to the top versus taking the stairs or walking the escalator. So he started recording me. And I started to get into this study that I just shared with you about the steps. And this gentleman was walking. So I stopped recording. I'm like, oh, no worries. Go ahead and walk, you could pass. And he immediately goes on the escalator and stands there. I'm like, oh, this is perfect. Hit record. So I recorded the video. And I said, perfect example right behind me. Like most people are going to just go on the escalator or elevate or just stand there. But if you took the stairs, you could reduce your risk of all cause mortality by over 50%. So I love the tip there, JJ. - And think about, so we call it luggage crossfit. So this summer we traveled all over the place and we do not travel late. We travel with like our coffee maker, our supplements. And especially when we're going to Europe, I always take all my supplements. I ran out of essential amino acids and it was a nightmare. I can possible to find them. So, or they have suculose in them. So I'm like, we have all our stuff. We literally have our suitcases. We have four suitcases at 70. And we have our, we have our carry-ons and persons, why persons, he has background. And literally, like we'll be wheeling these things through carrying them up places. And I just said, we just need to start taking videos with this cause it literally is luggage crossfit. You know, pushing 70 pound suitcases on the carpet. To, you know, two at a time. It's a lot of work. - That's good. - You know, the steps thing, I have a client I'm helping who basically started at 385 pounds. And his doctor wanted to put him on testosterone. And I'm like, whoa, we got high insulin. You know, and you're walking 2,500 steps a day. Like the research shows that if you're walking 2,500 steps a day, you'll probably have hypoconatalism, gonadism. Right? So, you know, it was like, why don't we fix the insulin and steps first and see if we can just turn this around the other way. You know, instead of just treating the symptoms. - So true. - Yeah, steps are a crazy one. And there's so many options that you can just, now that you know it and you can start to track it on your watch or your ring, if you're listening, like just start to track every day. It's crazy. You know, and like my big rule, we were out at an event where literally we were in a room sitting for eight hours. So I'm standing in the back and moving around, but still I get home and I've got 6,500 steps under my belt for the day. And I looked at my husband, I go, I am not. And we were down at the elevator waiting to take the elevator up to our 17th floor. And I go, I'm gonna take the stairs. 'Cause I got 1,500 more at least to go and I've made this commitment. Well, I get to the top and I like, I don't know what it is with stairs. I got like 500 steps counted. And I was like, that's a rip off. So then I looked in my go, I have to go back out and walk. And you know, it's nine o'clock at night. He is not gonna let me go walk out by myself in Arizona, in Tempe, Arizona, in a college town. And he's like, I'm coming with you. (laughs) But it's, it took us like 15 minutes. It was fine. But that's the important thing. Like think about this. And also if you can throw that in, especially after dinner, bonus points. So good, we'll help you with digestion. We'll help you with sleep. We'll lower your blood sugar response to the meal. It's like bonus points. - Yeah, bonus points. So many things you can do while you walk as well. You could be with your dog. You could listen to a podcast. You could be on a, on a call. You'd listen to an audio book. Or I, I personally just, I'm just out in nature when I walk my dog. I don't listen to anything. I'm out on the phone. My phone's not even on. It's on an airplane mode. And I'm just like walking, meditating, doing affirmations. I'm present with my dog. So for me, that's like my reset. And that works for me. - And what kind of doggy do you have? - He's sleeping right here. He's scared 'cause it's dumb during. He's a German Shepherd lab. He's about to turn 11 in a few days. And he's 80 pounds, beautiful dog named Ziggy Stardust. - Ah, Ziggy. So this is why you can walk with your dog. I have a two, six and a half pound, one's a chihuahua, one's a chihuahua, a rat chihuahua, a rat terrier chihuahua. And then we just have a puppy downstairs who's four pounds. And she's a palm chi, a pomeranian chihuahua. Try to take those out and get any steps. (laughing) - Yeah, I guess it depends on which dogs you have. (laughing) - That's cute, you got a puppy. I love dogs so much. - I know. - So, okay, so we covered protein, exercise, which includes movement and strain training. What is the next one, JJ? - So, one of the important things that you need to do if you wanna build muscle is recover well. And I think this is one of the hardest things, especially for people who've been working out for a while because they're just like more. More is not better, recovery is critical. And the place that when we're really helping, recovering the best is when we sleep. And so I kind of mentioned it already that we need good sleep for insulin resistance to, like when I get someone who's insulin resistant, like the person I was telling you about is insulin was 40. I'm like, uh-oh, that's not good. You wanted me two to five. And if insulin's high, you basically think of your fat cell doors being locked. And so, one of the fastest ways to improve insulin sensitivity, of course, is resistance training. And the other one is sleep. And we've got to prioritize sleep. I find for a lot of people, either they're doing crappy things with sleep, like eating right before bed, or, you know, they're just not making it a priority. And so, sleep's the other one. I do not know how to help someone improve their body composition if they're not sleeping well. - Same. Is there a specific amount of the different stages of sleep that you're aiming to get, the deep, the REM, the total? Is there a certain amount we should hit? - You know, here's the thing. I don't, how do we know that any of these trackers are actually really, you know, and how do we know what really is right? And so, you look at all this like genetically, I am not a good deep sleeper. So, and it's funny, my son will come out of his and he's like amazing deep sleeper. I'm like, what is going on here? So, for me, the real test is, are you following, and these are important things, going to bed at the same time each night, although I'm gonna give you a hack because, you know, again, this summer, we were like, you know, London, then Boston, then Spain, then Lisbon, then Florida, then British Columbia. I go, this was bad time zone, you know, change it. But I found sleep deprivation. Creatine actually can help you time zone adjust and can help your brain function better under sleep deprivation. Doesn't mean this is not a, don't have to sleep much, use creatine. That's not what that was. That is, if you do have a night where you like, that was crappy sleep, this is the way to solve it. But ideally, you're falling asleep at this around the same time each night, you're waking up around the same time every morning, and you really feel out what's my good amount of sleep. And, you know, I know for me, it's right around eight to eight and a half hours, that's where I feel best. And I normally, like, I've always been some new, like, I don't like staying up late at night, even when I was a little kid, I was always like the early morning riser. And I know genetically there's night owls and early birds. And here's what's funny. I used to have a lot of clients, when I lived in LA, I had a lot of entertainment industry clients. And I think that that creative brain tends to be the night owl. And that's where they get their creative juices. My creative juices are in the morning. They always have been like, I'm completely useless in the evening. And they would be like writing songs that two in the morning, what are you gonna say? Like, that's their money-braying, you know? So, you know, I think we have to find our natural rhythm, make sure we're not forcing something, but find our natural rhythm and really prioritize it. And as far as the sleep trackers go, I interviewed, have you interviewed Dr. Andy Galpin yet? - No, I have not. - He's so good. And, you know, he was talking about these sleep trackers. And I found that too, like, I'll get a rating. I kind of check into how do I feel that day before I look at anything? - Yeah, smart. - You know, right? 'Cause you'll look at it and go, "I had a terrible night's sleep." And I go, "But I feel great, I feel great." So, you know? - So, will you be talking about like the aura ring or just- - Yeah, it was kind of like going, you know, do not go get yourself all whacked out over these sleep devices 'cause a lot of times, you know, how do we know how accurate they are? I think the aura ring of all of them seems to be the best. - Yeah. - But again, you know, I'm really careful about not letting it dictate my, how I feel. - That's smart, no, you're right. I mean, 'cause it's valuable data, but if you feel good, even though you have a crappy score, you don't wanna ring to determine how you're gonna feel the rest of the day, so. - I don't feel good 'cause my deep sleep was terrible. - Right. - You know? But I tell you where I do use it. So, I've gotten to be a master of time zone adjusting and it used to be like, I was so, I'd so struggled whenever I had to switch time zones. Even, you know, I was spending a lot of time going back and forth between California and New York, California, Florida, and I just would throw me for a loop. And then I thought, you know what? I'm not gonna do this anymore. I think some of it was I got so up in my head that I struggled with it, that I struggled with it. And now I just don't struggle with anymore. I just stopped. I stopped doing that. And I also use creatine, but what I've realized is the minute I get on a plane, I put my clock, my watch to whatever times that I'm going to and I live as if I'm there. And what I found is I'll track my sleep there. And when I find this, I'll get my deep sleep and I'll be fine. As long as I get that in, 'cause, you know, you get that in first, I'm cool. And I don't feel crappy. - That's great. - And then I do a big hits of creatine. I like basically double up. - You love that creatine. I love creatine too. I'm with you on that. But that's interesting about the sleep deprivation and also helping with time changes, time zone changes. Well, what about HRV? 'Cause on this topic of sleep and recovery for this tip, I know you're a big on heart rate variability. You spoke about it at Hacker Health. We were just at Hacker Health, you were talking about it. So if you could share a little bit about your thoughts of HRV, why you track it or you believe in it? - I was always that person who would burn out my adrenals and then, you know, then I'd have to go repair them. Then I'd go do it again, right? And I'd take those adrenal salivary tests and I was fine. Like maybe I should just stop doing that. And, you know, it used to be that the only way you could really tell how you were covering and how much stress you were under was to do an adrenal salivary index, which happened, you're not gonna do that every day, right? Or watch your resting heart rate and see if that's higher than it, you know, 10 beats higher, like, okay, I'm over training or I'm over doing it. So there really wasn't a great way to monitor these things. And that's why I really think HRV is so cool. 'Cause it's like, okay, now I can actually monitor how I'm doing. However, I'm saying or monitoring my HRV and it's like low, it's in the teens. I'm going, wait a minute. I'm hearing, you know, well, first I heard Peter at TSA as long as it's not below 13, you're fine. I'm like, okay. But then I'm going, but why am I so low when I keep hearing about people in their 50s and 60s and I'm down here at like 18. And I talked to Dr. Molly Maloofs, she goes, 'cause you need to wear a chest strap. It's too far away from your heart. I'm like, oh, so, you know, I did that first and to me, it's like looking at a DEXA body scan versus a home biome pins unit. You do the DEXA to get the real data, even though it's still predictive, it's way higher, you know, gold standard predictability than a home biome pins unit. But then you use the biome pins unit at home to track your trends. And you get on it every day so they'll go onto your iPhone. So you can see is my total body water, you know, getting better because you know, throughout the day, like your weight, if you get on scale every day, your weight's gonna go up and down, that's normal. And it doesn't seem to correlate with what you ate, 'cause the day you're like, I ate perfectly, it's like my weight's up three pounds. It's like, it makes no sense. But if you watch the trends, it does. And I think the same is with HRV, like I'm watching now to go, all right, you know, how's it doing throughout the day? Like I'll look at, look at the trend of it to see if I'm improving, if I'm working on something. But I, if you're getting crazy about the absolute number, I don't look at the absolute number because unless you're using a heart strap, the chest strap, which I think is, you know, is good to do so you can calm down, I'm looking at where am I now? And, you know, when we were traveling a lot this summer, I was like, oh gosh, I just dropped down significantly for days, I gotta do something, I've gotta like prioritize some sleep. And we were in Spain literally going out to dinners with friends at 10 at night. - Wow, that'll drop the HRV. - And finally we found the hack for it, 'cause we met another friend there, and they're like, what we do is we just go to lunch, 'cause they'll go to lunch there between three and five PM. So we met up with some friends we'd met at Health Optimization Summit in London, they go, what we do is we just go to lunch with everybody. That way, and I went, oh, that's the perfect solution, 'cause I cannot, one night we went to dinner with people and they go, listen, we're going to dinner at 10.30. I'm like, I don't even understand, hey, what, like, walk me through your lifestyle, you know? But that's where I really saw the HRV tank, but that's where I think, I think we can use HRV where it's really helpful is to see, hey, you know, how's your meditation practice working? When I go to Dr. Joe to spend the first week, my HRV is amazing, but that's not real life, right? My real life is not meditating all day, every day, you know? So that's not gonna happen. But at least I can see when I'm very consistent with meditation, my HRV is better. When we're home and I've got, you know, the same bedtime every night, HRV is better. And it can also indicate for you if you need to, like, back it down on your workout program, right? You know, if you're working out too hard or you're not giving yourself enough recovery, then, you know, take a walk that day, do some restorative yoga, do something like that instead. - I think it's a fantastic measurement, along with the resting heart rate, like you mentioned, for me, those are the two main things I look at. Of course, how I feel is important. We talked about that, but I'm looking at my resting heart rate. For me, if it's between 42 and 46, I'm feeling great, for my resting heart rate, I recovered great. For my HRV, I'm also getting my baseline and working on the trends versus just one rating. So for me, my baseline is around 62 with the aura and not the strap. And if I'm around 60 or higher, I'm feeling good, I'm recovering well. But if I dip 55, 44, that's more of a day for me to kind of just do more. Less biohacking, less stressors, less formesis and more parasympathetic activities. - Yeah, it's so crazy. Like I'll get high on my chest strap, but my aura ring is always, I'm looking at it. It's always like, you know, might get up to 30, but it's always on the low end. It is just, but I know it now where I should be on that one. I'm like, all right. - You know the trends on the aura ring now, you're saying? - Yeah. - Okay, got it. - But I think the other interesting thing, and I'm trying to remember where I even heard this, like where I might tend to be someone who drives it too much, a little bit, you know, I know me, like, you know, there are the people too who are too Zen. - Yeah, yeah. - So heart rate variability is heart rate variability. You actually want to be driving and Zen. You don't want to be just one or the other. - Right. - So I know for me, I need to always incorporate more Zen into my life. And someone who's a Zen person might need to incorporate more, you know, driving things into their life. - More stress, good stress. - Yeah. - Yeah. Stress, recover, stress, recovery. That's why I love high-intensity interval training, because what you're really, and resistance training is the same. You put your body under stress as to recover. - Yeah. It's, that's, that's really it. It's staying in that hermetic ceiling, that hermetic zone. Some people do too much and they drop out of that zone. Some people do do little and they never read into that zone. So you want to find a good sweet spot. You know, for me, JJ, I was just telling my fiance this yesterday because I'm turning 40 next week. And I was telling her, I feel the healthiest that I've ever felt in my entire life going into the age 40 next week. And I'm looking at my recovery from workouts and I'm doing cold plunge and sauna, fasted workout, strain training, basketball. And I'm recovering at a level I've never seen before. Like my resting heart rate is still low. My HRV is still high. I'm feeling great. And I feel like personally, I found that sweet spot that Goldilocks zone of Formesis. And I'm there right now. And I think that's the goal for people to find that sweet spot for them. For me, this works for me, right? But somebody, a 55 year old woman who does all these bio-acts that I'm doing, probably not going to work for her, right? So it's a matter of finding that sweet spot. I'm happy that I found mine right now. - And I'm glad you just said it twice. You said right now. Because the thing we have to always think about, whether it's a diet intervention or an exercise or anything, it's like we change. And especially with women, as you go through paring menopause and menopause man, it's like off the cliff. So we're shifting. The our environment's shifting. We might be under more stress or less stress. So you have to adapt as those things do. So you might be on the perfect program right now. And then you have good stress or bad stress or bad stress, your body's still interpreted as stress. You look at like Honsellier's general adaption syndrome where it's like everything just reports as stress. So maybe getting married, or let's say you were remodeling a house, getting married and getting a new puppy. Even though they're all like amazing, it'd be like boof, you know? (laughs) So this is where these tools are so great because they allow you to look at this and go, huh, what's going on? And it's where I love to have things like the daily bio-impedance scale, watching your ordering because I'll give you an example. When we went to Spain, I had switched my thyroid medication because the stuff that I used to use, we couldn't get anymore. So I didn't even think about it. I head off to Spain with a different thyroid medication and about four days in, I'm like, and I travel with the scale and I weigh myself every day just to make sure everything's cool. And, you know, my weight jumps up four pounds. I'm like, my weight doesn't go up four pounds. It goes, I have a little range I go in about two pounds up, down, up, down, and I'm very stable. I'm like, that's weird. And then I went up another pound. I'm like, uh-oh. And I was like, what the heck is going on? I'm walking. I'm not like, you know, you're, I don't know about you on vacation, but usually, especially if I go to Europe, I'm like, it's hard to keep weight on. And all of a sudden I realized I'd switched my thyroid medication. And, you know, a similar thing happened during the pandemic where I think the stress of the pandemic activated autoimmune gastritis, which I have as like a thing. And, and so, and I was like, my weight went up a pound a day for a week. And I'm like, what the heck, you know? This is why we have these things, whether it's monitoring HRB, it's monitoring your sleep. So because sometimes it can be these external things that you wouldn't think about or a shift in a medication, right? Or you got hit with the toxin, this happened to my son and things go sideways. And if you're not monitoring it, you wouldn't know. And if you are monitoring it, you can catch it right away and fix it before it gets to be a thing. - Well said, yeah, that's why we're blessed to have these devices to monitor. What is the HRV chest strap that you use? What's the company? - Polar. - Oh, it's a polar, okay, got it. Those are three, we got two more JJ. What's the next one here? - We did protein, we did muscle, we did sleep, we did steps, because here's the thing. So when we talk about metabolism, we have resting metabolic rate, then we have thermic effect of food. Then we have activity. I think most people, when they think of activity, they think of the workout at the gym. But when you really look at activity, the workout at the gym is actually the smallest part of activity. And in fact, if you are looking at the gym, and I remember this used to drive me crazy 'cause people would go get on a treadmill and then they'd step off and go, I burn X amount of calories. I go, no, you did not. Because you did not take into account what you would have burned had you not been on the treadmill. So you really didn't burn what you think you burned. So please don't go eat what I think you're gonna go eat because you think you just burned that. Your body doesn't work that way. So when you look at the activity part of it, where you can make the biggest shift, obviously build the muscle to change the resting metabolic rate and to create a bigger metabolic after effect from the exercise. And the hit does that too, creates that oxygen depth. But it's actually the activity that makes the biggest difference. I mean, and this could be another 1000 calories a day. And we just don't even think about it. It's everything from standing rather than sitting, fidgeting, you know, I think you probably saw the research on the heel lifts, the calf lifts under the desk. - I didn't see that, no, what is this? Share that? - They had a study where they had people just lifting, doing calf raises for hours and lowered the blood sugar response to the meal. - That's cool. - The calf raise is sitting, sitting on a down, little serious raises. - That's pretty cool. - But the more you can move, the better your metabolism is gonna be. And the more calories you're gonna burn and that ultimately really matters, you know? And so it's again, like have a meeting on the phone, take the phone for a walk with you, you know, go up and down the stairs. The way I set my office up when we moved to Tampa, I looked at this and I have this studio upstairs and I thought in downstairs is the master bedroom and the kitchen and our bio-hacking lab upstairs is the gym and our offices. And I thought, God, I should pull my espresso maker up here and I'll have a fridge up here and like all my stuff up here, right? And then I thought, no, I will not have this up here. Like I will have it all downstairs. So I'm up and down, up and down, up and down because otherwise I'm just gonna be up here and I'll never leave here. Right? So, you know, if you think about how to design the perfect house 'cause they talk about aging a house and that, you know, what we should do is we get older is get live in a single-story house. I'm like, no, my mom passed away last year at 93 and she went out like a light bulb. She lived in a two-story house. She did all her own grocery shopping like errands. We got a huge fight over the COVID because I was like, you are not going to the grocery store and she's like, yes, I am. I'm like, oh, no, you're not. But, you know, she'd walk around. We lived in a hill. She'd walk around the circle of this hill every day. But, you know, if you had a house where the bathroom was on the bottom floor, you know, the sleeping rooms in the second floor, kitchen on the top floor, it'd be perfect. You'd have to go up and down, up and down, up and down. Like you look at the blue zones and everyone looks at the blue zones and talks about food. And I think the only thing you can really say about the food is it wasn't ultra-processed. But I think what really changed in the blue zones is people move, they have relationships and they move, right? So, don't think you can go to the gym for 30 minutes, three times a week and call it a day. You need to get your moving in all day, every day. And the more you can do it, you know, again, this is the all the exercise snacks data. It's like, rather than trying to get your 8,000 steps in one time, it's way better to spread this out throughout the day. It's going to be much better for blood sugar regulation, you know, and metabolism. So, get in your workouts, but also get in your activity. Both said. Let me know if you could relate to this health insurance. Oh, my gosh. What a pain in the butt it is to deal with health insurance. It is a broken system that is penalizing people who are truly trying to get healthier, like you listening to this podcast. These healthcare costs are rising dramatically due to a broken insurance system that incentivizes higher costs and interventions instead of prevention. So, what's the solution? I'm a big fan of crowd health. It's a better alternative to health insurance. It's not a health share. It's a decentralized community supporting each other directly for large health expenses. Crowd health is a revolutionary healthcare platform that empowers consumers by offering an alternative to traditional health insurance. It operates on a subscription model. 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One of the best ways to know if you are in a fat burning state or a fed state, which is a fat storage state, is to track post-prandial glucose, post-prandial meaning after eating. The higher your blood sugar rises after eating and the longer it stays elevated, the more insulin needs to be cranked out. An insulin is an energy-sensing hormone and it tells your body to store fat. Therefore, the higher your blood sugar levels after eating, the faster you store fat, and the longer it takes to going back to burning fat, hands down my favorite way to track post-prandial glucose and blood sugar levels in general is with a continuous glucose monitor. I've been using NutriSense and their amazing program for so many years and I've been able to pinpoint specific foods that raise my blood sugar levels after eating. I've also been able to pinpoint what quality sleep and lack of quality sleep does to raise my blood sugar levels, what exercise does. It is such an incredible way to customize your approach no matter what diet you are following. And one of the cool things about NutriSense, they give you a professional in their app to monitor your progress. And the human expertise also gives nutrition advice as well. These are eye-opening insights from CGM data to help you make actionable steps. Head over to nutriSense.io/freedom and use the coupon code freedom to get $50 off your first month. That is nutriSense.io/freedom. Coupon code is freedom. So for people who follow these tips, obviously they're going to lose belly fat, stubborn weight, they're going to get stronger. One of the things that occurs when we lose weight, I saw this personally, I lost 80 pounds in 2008. I had a lot of excess skin. Now, when I did it, I did a lot of cardio. I did some strength training, but I wasn't really building muscle. And I think that's why part of the reason why I had excess skin. So would you say, is one of the best ways to prevent flabby skin? Or if you currently have flabby skin, would you say that one of the best ways is to build muscle mass to fix some of those issues with loose flabby skin? Now, some of it's going to depend. So like little known fact, I worked on Dr. Phil for two years on his weight loss challenges. And so we had people in there who literally lost, you know, 200 pounds, 100 pounds. And they had like literally Sharpay skin. Wow. And if it's that level of skin, it's really rough. Like that's where you do. And the challenge is if you do the traditional plastic surgery for it, because a couple of them did it as part of their gift from the show, you have these zipper scars. So I'm like going, I don't know which was worse here, right? But they had so much excess skin, they had to do it. So I'm assuming it's not that level of excess skin, where we're in that type of situation. However, I will tell you now, because my buddy Dave Asprey had that too. And he went to our friend, Dr. Rob Whitfield, and did something called Nokut, where they take out they micro-core your skin, and it makes your skin shrink. So if you're in that realm, 'cause he was 300 pounds, you know, if you're in the 100 pounds plus with a lot of loose skin, that's where you gotta go. Like I don't know that what we're gonna talk about here is gonna help. However, for most of us, it's more like 30 to 50 pounds, and there is a lot you can do. First of all, for women going through menopause, one of the key things for keeping your skin tight and avoiding wrinkles is estrogen. And you can also use it topically. So I'm gonna give estrogen a shout out, and you can do estradiol cream. The second thing is creatine, of course. And then the third thing is resistance training. And by the way, it's not just when you build muscle, it's also great for your skin. And I would also say in there, one of my other favorite supplements, I love protein shakes, love, love, love. I've been using them for, gosh, 30 years, and about 15 years ago, I started making my own, mainly 'cause when I launched the virgin diet, I couldn't find things that fit my parameters. So I'm a huge fan of protein shakes. I think especially if someone's plant-based, like this is a non-negotiable, that an essential amino's, like you're not gonna get it. You can't, it's not possible. I don't care what anybody says. You're not gonna be able to get enough protein without overloading carbs and fat. If you can show me how to do it, show me, 'cause I've never seen it done. Anyway, protein powder is gonna be great, but collagen is the other thing that I would say here, is build muscle, use creatine, use, you know, get your protein in, likely protein powder, add collagen, probably 15 to 30 grams of collagen peptide today would be super duper helpful there too. Because besides building muscle, which is gonna help it look better, it also, resistance training helps your skin. So you got the second benefit there too. - That's really good, okay. So I love how you broke it down into different tiers, right? If you've lost over 100 pounds and you have a lot of excess skin, this might not work for you, although it could be helpful to do this either way, but if you're around 50 to 70 pounds, this will be very useful. - And here's the thing, like either way you're gonna wanna do this, whether you're like, if you have that excess skin, first thing you'd wanna do is go, all right, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna get myself in the best physical shape possible. I'm gonna really improve my body composition. And I will do the things that help improve my body composition that assist the resistance training, like protein, creatine, collagen, collagen really for the connective tissue and the skin. Creatine, both to help you work out harder and for skin. And then, if it's not where I want it to be, then I can go look. And again, estradiol cream. But like, you wouldn't wanna do that anyway until you saw how far you could get yourself. And you may find your, you're like, you're good. Because again, well, the new note cut stuff is like a miracle 'cause you don't have the old zipper scars. - That's cool. That's a cool option. Are you, is it possible to burn fat and build muscle at the same time or should we focus on one over the other? - So it was so funny, you know, like all the crazy mess of being in this industry forever, just like being taught that you don't have someone lift weights till they lose the weight. And that if you wanna put on muscle, you can't put on muscle and lose fat at the same time. And thankfully, like I just, some of these things, I didn't listen to people when they were telling us this. And I remember I had a client who came in who had a 19 BMI. So that is on the lower end of BMI, healthy like 18 to 22 is healthy BMI, I think it's kind of stupid anyway. But she was thinner, right? And she wanted to lose 10 pounds. I'm like looking at her going, well, there's not gonna be anything left of you if you lose 10 pounds. And she was a skinny fat. She was 25% body fat. And which would be like to me, that's on the higher end. What's interesting, Ben, is what we were trained in grad, actually this was in doctoral school on body fat norms. It's totally different now. - What was it before versus now? - So what I was taught way back when is that for a normal woman, a physically active, you know, 18 to 22% is ideal up to 25%. That when they got to 29% or higher, they were really metabolically unhealthy, probably insulin resistant. Men and that athletic women would be somewhere in the 15 to 22% range. And that women had 10 to 15% essential fat, right? Fat they had to have on their body to survive. For men, three to 5% essential fat, athletic males would be like 5 to 12% fat. Healthy range for men was like, was it 10 to 15%? And then up to 18% just like women up to 25%. And then when you've got over that, like 20% or higher metabolically and healthy, you look at the norms now and I'm like, I'm not using those. They're ridiculous. - What are they now? I don't even know what they are now. - Oh my God, I think for women, it's like up to 35%. - Wow, it's increased that much. - And men, it's like up to like 22%, 25%. I'm like, what are you talking about? You know, no way. So Vicky's 25% body fat. And so we start working. And I remember she walked in, she brought her Jenny Craig diet food. And she's like, so I'm using this Jenny Craig diet food, can we work with this? 'Cause I had a wellness center in gym and I'm like looking at this stuff and I've never seen it before. And I'm thinking, oh sure, I'm sure we can work with this. And I'm looking at going, we can't work with this. Like there's nothing I can do with this. Like I wouldn't give this to someone I didn't like, you know? So we work together and really focused on resistance, training did a little hit, you know, after protein. It was a year, a year. She lost 10 pounds of fat. She put on 10 pounds of muscle. She dropped two clothing sizes. She went to 18% body fat. She looked amazing and she was upset. She didn't lose 10 pounds. This is why I really, I tell the story as a cautionary tale that we have got to use bioimpedant scales and DEXA scans. We've got to know what that weight is made up of. Got to know this, especially as you're going to recomp because without that information, you will have no clue what's going on. And you've got to look at the trends over time because, you know, you can get on the scale and case in point, we did a big competition on Dr. Phil and the people, I brought in a $5,000 segmental tenita bioimpedant scale and I would use that to measure everybody. And so I could tell what was going on, right? But the show only wanted to use weight. And so what happened was we did a one group versus the other and whoever lost the most amount of weight got to go to Canyon Ranch. And so the night before the big weigh-in, one group, that day they didn't need anything. They didn't drink anything. They did all they did all day was cardio. Cardio, cardio, cardio, then they locked themselves in their bathrooms. They put towels under the door and they turned on hot showers and steamed themselves. And the next day, that group lost. Overall, they were a half pound lighter, but their body composition was destroyed. Like all they've done is dehydrated themselves, right? It was pretty funny. So, you know, you've got to look at the trends on this and your goal here is for body recomp, what you want to do is I like to push protein even more. Like I'll push protein to more like even 1.5 grams per pound of target body weight and almost do more like a protein sparing modified fat. So I will go into a little bit of caloric restriction here if needed. We'll see. But you might not even need to. You might be able to do it enough with protein. If you really want to lose body fat, though, sometimes what we'll have to do is do caloric restriction cycling. And I learned this trick from Dr. Bill Campbell who's got the only physique lab in the country and he's now doing menopause women studies. He's awesome. - Cool. - He's amazing. He's like a neighbor, so it's really cool. Anyway, I'll do a push protein higher, do resistance training, monitor body composition to ensure that we are like not losing muscle as we're doing this, right? So I'm looking at the trend every week and seeing if we need to do a little caloric restriction or not, if I do, I cycle it. So I'll do 25%. We figure out maintenance calories and others, a couple ways to figure out maintenance calories. The best way is to really monitor what you eat accurately for two weeks, that means you're weighing everything. The other way to do it is to, and then take the average, the other way is to go get a breath test and times it by your activity level, 'cause I find the breath test is more accurate than the DEXA is, but the DEXA can do it too. But generally what I'll even do is just hit maintenance calories, pump the protein up to 1.5 and then watch to see if we're losing fat and putting on muscle. Muscle you'd probably put on one or two pounds a month, if you're new to it, might be a little bit higher after we get past the first four to six weeks, which is really more neurological adaptation than it is, you're not gonna hypertrophy. But then I just play around with it to see if we have to do any kind of shifts in body fat. Now, I will tell you that it is possible to put on muscle and drop fat and drop weight overall if needed too. So you can do all of it, it's just watching your calories, watching your body composition and pushing protein as needed and really looking at resistance training. When I decided I was gonna get the best shape of my life at 60, my husband always comes along for the ride on everything. So we go in and get a DEXA and this was like a year before. And I actually trained for the DEXA up to my calories 'cause I wanted to put on a little bit more muscle first. And I went in and my DEXA was exactly the same as it was when I was 39. So I was 13.9% body fat, 154 pounds. Now, I'm a ridiculously naturally lean, very muscular person, I always have been. And it's funny, when I met my birth mom at 25, she's the same thing. So like in my 20s, I was always 10 to 12% body fat, usually more like 10. And so I had a target which sounds crazy at 60 to go for it. And that's what I wanted to do. Tim was 25% body fat. Tim has always been athletic. 25% body fat for an athletic male is ridiculous, like shouldn't be. And so we worked on this and he went from 25% body fat to 10% body fat. He dropped 27 pounds of fat. He put on 24 pounds of muscle. - Wow. - Yeah. - How long? - Eight months. - Eight months, that's pretty damn good. That's great. - Here's the thing now, here's the kicker 'cause it wasn't just that like, what did we do? We did all the stuff I was talking about. He'd been kind of phoning it in at the gym. So he kicked up his gym significantly, doing a lot heavier loads. He was really consistent with creatine. He started finally tracking his food 'cause he wouldn't do it. And he massily upped his protein, like doubled it 'cause he was not getting enough protein. So he did those things. And then also timeline, my diffurobe, which I think is a huge help here. But the other thing he did was he also went on testosterone. His testosterone had been down at 300 and went up to 900. So he probably got a third of that muscle mass increased because of getting his testosterone back to where it needed to be. - But it wasn't all that, you know, part of it. - It's impressive. - Isn't that cool? - I mean, that's cool. - That shows you. And here's the thing. And this is why you gotta check body composition 'cause he lost three pounds. - Out of that whole nine month, eight months, he only lost three pounds, but his complete, his physical appearance completely changed obviously. - Oh my God, it's ridiculous. People are like, holy smokes, what happened here? Like it's, and this is what's cool. So he's turning 60 here in a couple of weeks and he doesn't never look like this in his life. This is a guy who's always been an athlete. He was a soccer player, a beach volleyball player. He's always been athletic. He's never looked like this. - That's awesome. - And he was turning 60. So I say that because I hear so often Ben, oh, it's too late for me, like, unless you're taking a dirt nap, it's not too late for you. When, you know, when I was, and my doctoral program was at USC and they were doing, they had master's athletes and they were working with people 80 and 90 years old and I was like, it's amazing, like amazing. You hear about that woman who's 99 who started swimming, I think in her 60s or 70s, like, you know, it's incredible. - So do you think, let me ask you this with your husband, Tim, do you think if he did not go on testosterone, do you think it would have taken longer for him to achieve those results? Would you have explored like as many natural routes as possible for the testosterone? Like, what if somebody's listening and they don't want to go on testosterone, should they think they can't get those results or would it just take a little bit longer? - So I don't know that he ever would have gotten these results. I think he would have gotten probably to 15% body fat, like he would have gotten substantial, but not to hear. I have a very, as far as hormone replacement therapy goes, like for me, I'm a big fan of hormone replacement therapy. Now you've got to talk to your doctor, do your genetic test, make sure it's the right move for you, but gosh, when you look at what happens with people as we age, a lot of it's the hormonal decline, right? You look at women and what happens when we go into ovarian failure, menopause, our bone density and muscle mass fall off a cliff. But forget what the percentage is of how much muscle or how much bone we lose once estrogen goes down. Our cognition goes down like we can't think, we can't remember things, our bone density goes down, our heart, I remember I used to work in a plastic surgery office and the doctors would have me see all their people. And I could tell if a woman was on hormones or not before I ever talked to her, I could see her age, I could see her labs, and if she wasn't on hormones, she'd be insulin resistant, she'd be inflamed, her highly sensitive C-reactive protein was up, her LDL would go up. So you'd see LP, little A, LDL, we didn't do APOB back then, but I'm sure it would have been the same, right? You saw all the cardiovascular risk factors went sideways, she didn't feel good, she was tired, she couldn't work out like she used to. And you look at and go, like I had a gal come to me, she was, I did a talk on how to age powerful, and she goes, okay, I'm doing the protein, I'm doing the resistance training, I'm doing the HIIT training, I'm getting my steps in, I'm getting my sleep and I'm doing my recovery, you know, and I cannot lose this last X amount of weight. And she goes, 'cause I wanna do it naturally and I don't wanna take hormones, they go, "Hormones are natural, they're natural." So, I don't know, like I look at all the things that happen when your hormones go low and I go, "Why would you wanna be frail "and insulin resistant, not thanks for it, "if you don't have to?" We're not talking about giving you, you know, like weirdly elevated levels of hormones, we're taking you back to the optimal level when you were like at your best, at your peak. - Absolutely, yeah, I know you're replacing what's lost. I just interviewed the authors of a new book that's coming out in a couple of weeks called "The Great Men and Pause Myth" and even though I'm a guy, I have women in my life, obviously, so I wanna learn about their hormones. So, I read the book and I interviewed them, Kristen and Maria Claps and yeah, they talk all about that and they share the different ways to test, to take hormones and the value of it. Everything you just said is just a whole book that's very valuable, so I'm with you on that. So, I'm writing a new book with "Hey House", it's coming out next year in June 2025, it's called "Metabolic Freedom". The principle behind the name "Metabolic Freedom" is that we are designed to have metabolic flexibility, metabolic freedom to use whatever substrate is available, whether it's the protein, the carbs, the fat or your body fat or even just sunshine for energy and fat loss. So, 93% of Americans are unfortunately metabolically handcuffed, inflexible. So, what would be your top three favorite methods to achieve metabolic freedom? And it's probably something you already shared today, but what are the top three methods that you would choose for this metabolic freedom? - I had this great mentor and nutrition early on and he always said, "Add before you take away." Because obviously, when you look at, you're like, "Why are we so messed up?" Right, "Why are we so messed up?" And you think, "You know, we're messed up because we don't sleep well, we have all these devices and things that are just messing with our sleep." So, that's one of them. We're eating all this ultra-processed food. So, that's obviously another one. We're not moving, right? So, you look at all these things. It's like, we're going, and here's the thing. We got all these gyms and things, but we're not moving enough. So, I always love the ad before you take away because obviously, we've got to get the ultra-processed food garbage out. Like, when I was over in Spain, we were kind of marveling. And this happened last summer when we were in Korea, you walk around, you go, "No one's walking around eating. No one is walking around holding, like with a frappuccino or a jamba juice or, you know, whatever." And everyone's normal weight. Like, right? They're normal weight. You're like, "What, you know?" And people are, what I loved in Spain is people were walking with canes. They were walking. There was no like, "Oh, you see people in the US, like any reason to not have to walk. They're not walking." So, the Spain is 70, it's about 20 to 25% of their food is ultra-processed, versus 70% plus in the United States. So, the obvious is like, we got to get this garbage out of our food supply, and I like to always think of, well, what if we just first focused on eating protein first, then making sure we're getting in a lot of non-sarchy vegetables? And if we did that, we probably would crowd that out, like, you'd be full. So, you know, you got some healthy fats when you prepared the vegetables, and so there's that. So, I mean, obviously, it's get rid of ultra-processed foods, but eat protein first to shove it out. With the insulin resistance, that is what this is. Obviously, resistance training is gonna be key, but I think one of the biggest challenges we have is you just don't move enough. Like, just move more, make it such an effort to move anytime you possibly can, and that's gonna help. And then the third thing is that, you know, again, when you look at insulin sensitivity, you cannot be insulin sensitive if you're not sleeping well. Not possible. Like, it's like the one poor night of sleep and you're more insulin resistant, you're hungrier, right? You know? And so you're hungry, or I always say you're hungry, it's not for salmon, or energy's tanking, so you've got to prioritize it. And what's interesting is, those are also my three big tenants for what we need to do to age powerfully. So, like, I always love these things, Ben, 'cause when you look at, no, what do we need to do to have good cardiovascular health? What do we need to do to have great brain health? What do we need to do to have good metabolic health? What do we need to do to, like, have lower body, fat, and better muscle? It's all the same stuff, right? - They're kind of, yeah, right. It's kind of like law, universal laws, but they works all across the board. Fantastic answer. That's a good one, two, three list right there. Could you share with my audience where they could connect with you on your website or social media, and a little bit about your books and where they could get your books as well? - No, I'm working on a book, too. I actually just post, it was supposed to come out this year, and I decided to wait because I'm taking a bunch of people through the program, and I'm also building a coaching team. So, I'm gonna start certifying coaching in certifying coaches. So, I'm excited about that. Everything is at jjvirgin.com. The places I spend the most time are on YouTube and Instagram. That's where I like to do stuff. And then, of course, I have my podcast, "Well Beyond 40." And then we put together, we have one challenge. We have another one coming that I'm excited about that's gonna launch with our new creatine for women product that we're coming out with. But we have our eat protein first challenge. I like to focus on one thing at a time and getting that thing nailed, and then moving on to the next thing. And I know that the fastest way to change your health is to change what's the end of your fork. And the easiest thing to do is to add before you take away. And so, that's where I like like just eat protein first. So, I did a seven day challenge for that, which is jjvirgin.com/proteinfirst. That makes it easy to do it. - That's awesome. I love that. What's the new book about JJ? That'll be out next year. - The new book is all around the powerful aging method, which is what the program is and the coaches are. And it really is, what do you need to do to be built to last? Like, I was listening to Peter at Tia's podcast where he's talking about the centenarian decathlon and I go, that just so resonates. And I thought back to a client I had in Palm Springs when I was asking her goals. And she said, you know, I just want to be able to dance in my stilettos. And she was in her like late 70s. And I go, that's fabulous. It's the stuff you don't think about in your 30s and 40s, really maybe not even in your early 50s. But then all of a sudden you go, hey, I want to be able to do all of these things. Like metabolic freedom should actually give you like life freedom to be able to participate in all the things that you spent all this time working for, right? - So true. Oh, that's so beautifully said. Last final question here is on a supplement that I call vitamin G. Call it vitamin G, it's because it's anti-inflammatory, helps with sleep, helps with producing oxytocin and GABA puts you in a feel good mood automatically. I call it vitamin G because it's vitamin gratitude and the practice and feeling of gratitude. My shirt even says it here. It has a nice vitamin G supplement box. So JJ, what do you have vitamin G gratitude for today? - Well, we have a new puppy in the house. - That's awesome. - Oh my gosh. That looks like, you know, it's like, I feel like we should rename her Fuzzy Bear. She looks like she's a little Pomeranian Chihuahua blend. She looks like a little bear and it is so fun. I can't even stand it. Like, it's so cute. I'm surprised I'm even up here doing this. I'm like, you know, every time we like. - Yeah. - You'll go be with your puppy soon enough. Get all that oxytocin. Well, I gotta say, JJ, thank you for your time today. I've been a huge admirer and a fan of your work for many years. I love what you're doing. Grateful to Cynthia Thurlow for connecting us. And I just enjoyed our conversation. So much, keep shining bright. Thank you so much for teaching us all wonderful health tips today. - Thank you. - I hope you love that conversation. I learned so much. I'm going to now upgrade my creatine game personally. Excited to continue with my strength training program. Hopefully you're inspired to strength train, to recover, to get those steps. If you want to learn more about JJ, our website is jjvirgin.com. We'll put our social, her podcast, her YouTube down below. Go check out her books, which are wonderful. If you want to watch the video version and see how incredibly ripped she looks and healthy. She looks at the age of 60. Go to youtube.com/ketocamp. Leave the show a rating and review. Share it with a friend. And go get signed up for my upcoming ketosis masterclass over at ketosismasterclass.com. Love and appreciate you. I have vitamin G for you. I'll see you in the next episode. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - This podcast is for information purposes only. Statements and views expressed on this podcast are not medical advice. This podcast, including Benazotti, Disclaim Responsibility from any possible adverse effects from the use of information contained herein. Opinions of guests are their own. And this podcast does not accept responsibility of statements made by guests. This podcast does not make any representation to warranties about guests qualifications or credibility. Individuals on this podcast may have a direct or non-direct interest in products or services referred to herein. If you think you have a medical problem, consult a licensed physician. [BLANK_AUDIO]