How To Be WellnStrong

56: Top Weight Loss Do’s and Don’ts, Building Muscle, & Aging Powerfully | JJ Virgin

• Jacqueline Genova • Episode 56

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Join me as I sit down with renowned health and fitness expert, bestselling author, and prominent media personality, JJ Virgin, to discuss her most impactful tips for losing weight, building muscle, and aging powerfully. In this episode, JJ shares the most common mistakes women in their 40s make when looking to lose weight and why they need to start thinking about weight loss differently. JJ delves into the secrets she’s learned in her 20-plus years as a celebrity nutritionist—namely, that nutrition, resistance training, sleep, and managing stress are keys for not only weight loss, but strong strong and healthy aging. With over three decades of experience in the field, JJ has become a trusted authority in nutrition, weight loss, and wellness. She is the author of four New York Times bestsellers: The Virgin Diet, The Virgin Diet Cookbook, JJ Virgin's Sugar Impact Diet, and JJ Virgin's Sugar Impact Diet Cookbook.

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*Unedited Transcript*
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Jacqueline: [00:00:00] JJ, welcome to the show. It's so nice to finally connect with you. I think I first heard you on the genius life podcast and after diving right into your work, I felt that it was my duty to share it with my own followers and

JJ Virgin: Ah,

Jacqueline: So truly thank you for your time today.

I'm, I'm really excited for our conversation.

JJ Virgin: you. Who's, who's your audience? 

Jacqueline: Primarily women, over 95 percent female, between 25 to 35, about 60%, and the other 40 percent are between 35 to 45, with a few stragglers in the, in the over 50. 

JJ Virgin: What do you think is going to best resonate with them? I looked at all the questions,

Jacqueline: There's, so much, quite honestly, I had a hard time dialing down, so we're gonna be jumping around a bit, I hope you don't

mind, but, 

JJ Virgin: jumper. You can just go 

Jacqueline: know you are. Trust me. I have heard you. I know you're a wonderful jumper, but, uh, I think primarily focused just around weight loss, tips for again, those over 40, certainly the importance of muscle, and resistance training and

JJ Virgin: Yeah. Well, the weight loss stuff [00:01:00] will happen. We'll work at any age, you 

know, it's not, it's not 40 plus. There is a weird thing that starts to happen at age 30. 30. So actually, it's

great that 

Jacqueline: interesting.

JJ Virgin: age. Yeah. You know, as I started to dig into this, I'm like, everyone talks about 50 being over the hill. And I'm like, it's 30 is actually when when things start to make this shift.

And it's not like the day you turn 30. There's not some magic thing. But it's like, there's You know, cause everyone's like, why is it the age 30? I go, it's not, there's not a magic 

date. 

Jacqueline: That's so interesting. Well, I just, turned 29 last Wednesday, so I'm very curious to, to hear that.

JJ Virgin: wish I'd known this stuff, man. I, ah, and I was in, I've been in this since I was a teenager. And it's like, I wish I'd had the information that's out now. Darn it.

Jacqueline: What's the one thing you wish you knew when you were a teenager? Out of everything that you've learned over the past few decades, what is the one thing that you wish you knew?[00:02:00] 

JJ Virgin: It would really probably be more mindset related. I was very fortunate. Actually, I was doing. Sprint training and resistance training, weight training when I was a teenager, go figure. Um, but it was really much more the one mindset and I think really the thing that's most damaging and I feel like it's shifting now but it's, it's, it's so damaging for women is this idea that women need to be small, petite, skinny, Thin.

Right. And you know, growing up, and it's still, it's still pervasive. Like you look at book titles and, and for women it's like tiny and full, you know, thinner and guys, it's like bigger, stronger, and. In growing up, I did all the right stuff unknowingly, it was just the sports I was attracted to, but I was always very focused on weight, on being smaller and being a six foot tall girl, I wasn't [00:03:00] ever going to be like a small and back then I wanted to be a model because If anyone who's six feet tall, that's kind of the natural thing.

And they, I remember going into a modeling agency in San Francisco and I probably weighed, I don't know, maybe 140, 145. And they told me I needed to lose 20 pounds. And which I know my weight, like right now I weigh about 142. I that's my average weight and I'm 10 percent body fat. And that is, I mean, normally very lean person.

And so what they told me to do basically would have probably, you know, it was the wrong information. And I remember I lost 10 pounds and my dance teacher was like, what, what is going on? Cause she thought I was anorexic. Um, Because I just took it on as a science experiment and started really cutting calories and eating 500 calories a day.

And so yes, you can get, you can drop weight quickly doing that. God knows what I do with my muscle. Like the only way [00:04:00] I lose weight now and lose weight then is to lose muscle.

Jacqueline: right,

JJ Virgin: So, but it's just a bad commentary really on the messaging to women that's setting us up for such poor health later in life.

Because the reality is if you just focus on losing weight and being, and being tiny, being skinny, being small, a lot of what you're going to lose is muscle. I mean, that's what the research shows that 25 to 40 percent of the weight loss in a, in a weight loss diet done, you know, and this, these are done incorrectly, uh, is, is somewhere between, it's actually 20 to 50 percent 

loss.

Yeah. 

Jacqueline: That's crazy. And I mean, the other thing to JJ and I'm sure you've heard this from many clients and I'm sure on other podcasts as well, but there's this perception from many women that if they start to weight train, They're gonna bulk up right and they have this fear of I don't want to bulk up What would you say to people who are thinking that

JJ Virgin: I actually worked, I've done the weirdest things in my career, [00:05:00] the weirdest things. One of the things that I did was I used to counsel models in South Beach, Miami on, you know, on their nutrition and fitness. And the thing was, they didn't want to do any weights because they didn't want to put on any weight.

They basically were on like the cocaine and lettuce diet. You know, with a little champagne for fruit. I mean, horrific, right? And they were so afraid to lift any weight because it would get them big. Here's the reality of doing this for 40 years. The only people I've seen get bigger are the people that aren't doing that and are not, you know, and aren't eating correctly.

And it's like, they're sedentary, but I have a. A little different philosophy now as I started to unpack this because, you know, I've been defending, hey, lift weights, they're your metabolic spanks, they hold everything in tighter, they're going to support a better metabolism, you'll be more insulin sensitive, you'll be able to burn more fat, you have carbohydrates, have a place to go, they're not going to go turn into fat and be on your belly, and in really working with [00:06:00] so many people over decades, that's what I've always seen is women get it.

Tighter, fitter, but I, I kind of think that we're sending the wrong message because what if we did get a little bigger? What if you got a little bigger, a little stronger, a little more powerful? I think that we have been taught as, you know, a gender to play it down, behave, be, you know, be the good girl. And it's like, forget that, you know, it's so right.

So it's like. What if, you know, I can't tell you how many times I'm at the gym doing something and some dude comes over and like wants to fist bump me and tell me how good I'm doing for either. They either say one of two things. I'm just waiting for him to say it. And they say, Oh, well, you're so strong for a girl.

Or they say, Oh, wow, you're so strong for your age. And the reality is I'm just flipping strong. And I look at them and I go, I am lifting more weight than you.

I'm lifting more weight than you did. So

Jacqueline: I love that.

JJ Virgin: [00:07:00] Right? Maybe I'm, what if I'm so strong for a young guy? Do you ever think of that?

Jacqueline: Yeah. So true No, that's so true. And I mean, even for me too, I think throughout high school and college, I focused mostly on cardio and not that cardio is bad or should be eliminated. And I am curious of your take in terms of how much cardio to incorporate into your workout, but you can't just do cardio because you're also just going to be doing it every single day in order to see any type of results.

And I just remember always being ravenous all the time. And I would just have over like, you know, 3, 000 calories if I were to run six miles and that obviously is not really sustainable in the long run.

JJ Virgin: Well, you didn't burn 3000 calories

running. 

Jacqueline: Not at all. 

JJ Virgin: There was that problem. 

Jacqueline: Right, but what should what should a workout look like ideally?

JJ Virgin: Okay. There's a couple things to unpack there. Number one, I got to dispel this myth because people will go, I went on the Stairmaster and I burned X amount of calories. I go, you really didn't actually burn that because you have your [00:08:00] resting metabolic rate. You have their thermic effect of food. Then you have your.

And so when that you get the estimation on the little machine, it's not accounting for your resting metabolic rate, you would have burned some calories anyway, so it's not the big effect that they think and I think what we have to do is look past exercise for caloric burn. I actually look more at activity, non exercise activity for caloric burn more than I do straight exercise.

I look at exercise much more for the metabolic effect. And. I remember reading a couple studies in grad school way way back before we had any of this information and one of them was showing how women and I'll share that back then I was one of the first personal trainers And everyone was focused on cardio all the research in the lab I was at the school I was at was cardio cardio cardio cardio, not me I did resistance training because I was a working personal trainer and I didn't get paid unless I got [00:09:00] results.

And what I saw with, with the cardio is that the day you stopped the day it stopped, and you could lose that mitochondrial adaptation fairly quickly, but you also learn, lose the calorie burn immediately. And you didn't put any muscle to change your metabolic equation. So you just kind of put yourself into this.

Dependency state. That is not to say not to do cardio. It's just if you're doing it for weight loss, boy, are you putting yourself into a, into a challenging situation? So that's the first part to think about when you look at exercise. I think it's, it's, It's a challenging field because I mean, when you look at it, you've got exercise, you've got cardio exercise, you've got resistance exercise, and you've got things like yoga.

You've got all this stuff and it's all exercise. And then you get these guidelines from the CDC saying you should do 150 minutes of moderate exercise or 75 minutes of intense. I'm like, well, what is that? What? And so and then you have most of the guidelines that are out there and the research is [00:10:00] done on dudes.

And I love Stacy Sims. I had her on my well beyond 40 podcasts and she, her whole statement is women are not small men. I mean, for the most obvious reason we cycle, but we also are different in the way that we are better fat burners by nature, like we're better able to burn, burn fat when we're exercising.

We're actually a better recovery. Um, we have smaller capillaries, so cold plunging can be more problematic for us. So we just have to look at it and go, okay, what are our goals? And if we know that we tend to have less fast twitch muscle fiber and we lose more of it as we age and that's really the muscle fiber where we can build it, have a better metabolic rate, have a place to store more carbohydrates as glycogen, and we already are good at more of the long, slow distance.

What do we really need to do and focus on? I think that before we even talk about exercise, we need to make sure we get in eight to 12, 000 steps a day. And I think 8, 000 is the absolute floor. And [00:11:00] I literally will not go to bed if I have less than 8, 000 steps. And

I was, I know I was like I was at a meeting a couple weeks ago and literally like it's a there's nothing there's nowhere to move so I'm standing in the back like swaying the whole time we get back to the hotel like I'm up and down the stairs every time there's a break I'm like and I get back to the hotel and I only have like I don't know, maybe 6, 6, 500 steps.

I'm like, well, our room was on the 16th floor. So I'm like, perfect. And my husband's like, like, see ya, not doing that. So I go jamming up the stairs thinking that'll cover it. No, it only, it was like 300 steps. I go, how could this be? So then we had to go and bless my husband. I'm like, we have to go out. I know, but we're going out because I have to get my stuff.

So you make that first before you even look at exercise, because we know that, you know, if you're exercising, getting your 150 minutes in a week, but you're, you're sedentary [00:12:00] the rest of the time, it's basically in a race. So you've got to get this going first and make it a habit. So that's always my first place to start with people is let's just dial those steps in.

You know, start to do it. Lift it up. If you're, if you're like the average person who's getting 3 to 4, 000 steps in, it might take you, you know, a couple weeks to get to 8, 000. That's fine. Doesn't matter. Just 

Jacqueline: Yeah, JJ. Here's a quick question for you just for me on a personal note 

Are there, is there such a thing as like too many steps? So, you may think I'm crazy, but I average around like 20 to 25, 000 steps a day. Because being here in Greenville, I'm just always walking

outside. I'll take, I'll take meetings outside.

Please come visit me. I'll take meetings outside. So, is there, is that too much? Should I be dialing it down or back? No? Okay.

JJ Virgin: no, because you're not doing, you're not intense, right?

Right. No, no, no. We're meant to move, man. We are meant to move. And, you know, there's not a total, like, there's not an upper limit on [00:13:00] this. Um, I mean, at some point, if it's disrupting your whole life and you're not doing anything else. Hey, you've got a little walking addiction, but you know, I think the more the merrier and what I love to do.

And there's a great study that showed that they were looking at people doing 12, 000 steps a day and they gave one group the, the, um, the prompt to add intensity in that group, better body composition changes, better waist circumference, better HDL, better blood sugar control. So I also, I have a rucking vest.

So a couple of times a week, uh, Pop out with that, or I'll jump on my walking pad with my rucking vest. So I think that would be a good one to add in there. Because if you can add either some speed, some hills, some, you know, some weight with a rucking vest, go you. So that's the first thing. But then we got to get into the real exercise.

And, you know, I got hate on Instagram because I said walking isn't exercise. I'll stand by that. Walking is exercise if you're [00:14:00] very deconditioned. But if you're not deconditioned, Walking is not exercise. Exercise is something that you do that's more than what you're used to, so your body has to adapt and recover.

So unless you're like a couch potato, that's not walking. So what do you want to do with your exercise to be most efficient? You want to do both high intensity interval training and I do intervals of the intervals between high intensity and sprint interval and then you want to do resistance training and ideally throw in also a type of yoga, Pilates, some balance y flexibility thing, although in your resistance training, ideally you're working through full range of motion where you can't do it on everything and And you're adding in some stability and balance where you can, you're doing more things, free waiter cables rather than machines because in life we're not bolted to the floor.

And then as you really build a foundation with your resistance training, you're adding in more strength and [00:15:00] power into that because, um, typical resistance training is focused on building muscle hypertrophy, which is, you know, six to 30 reps, big range.

Jacqueline: I was just gonna ask you the reps

JJ Virgin: Big range. When I was in grad school, it was like there were these very specific ranges of strength was 1 to 5 reps and then hypertrophy was 8 to 15 reps.

And then endurance was 30 plus. And I was always like, well, what happens in between? You know, um, and so remember, these are just ranges. But what's so funny is people don't want to lift heavy weights because they're afraid they're going to get big. But the reality is, if you just focused on doing super heavy, Like the heaviest weight you can handle for one to five reps, and maybe you have one left in reserve.

That is how you get strength in really not that much muscular size. It's actually doing longer reps. Yeah. So these people that are doing like sets of 25 where they, by the time they get to 25, maybe they could do one or two more and they do multiple sets. That's much more hypertrophy focused.

Jacqueline: Hmm,

JJ Virgin: Yep. [00:16:00] So we want to do all of that.

We want to do strength. We want to do things fast. Which involves power, because remember, strength is how heavy can you lift something one time, um, hypertrophy is really much more building that endurance, and then, um, power is how fast can you do it. So you want to engage all of those.

Jacqueline: right so interesting and I heard you also talking about a client You had a while back whose goal was to lose five pounds and you worked with her for a while And at the end of that she essentially weighed the same, but her body fat percentage was like 10 percent less, although she weighed the

JJ Virgin: So Vicky came to me and she wanted to lose 10 pounds. And I think her BMI, I'm trying to remember it was somewhere between 19 and 21. So she was, didn't need to lose 10 pounds. Like she didn't need to lose any weight, right?

Like you wouldn't take someone who's 19 BMI and have them lose weight. And so. [00:17:00] She, um, I did her body fat though. And she was 25 percent now the norms that I was taught in grad school way back when, and the norms now are different. And we, far as I can tell, our physiology hasn't changed. So I call BS on that.

Like what I was taught in school was women have 10 to 15 percent of essential fat, you know, fat that they really need to survive. Men only have three to 5%. So you can already see the disparity there for a woman. Okay. A healthy, um, athletic woman will be somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 to like 22 percent.

The ideal range for a, a normal like, you know, fit, healthy woman, 18 to 22 percent, maybe up to 25 percent. When you start getting to 30 percent and beyond, that's insulin resistance. And of course, you also want to combine that with measurements because what we're really looking for is, you know, how much visceral adipose tissue does someone have?

Because it's not just. What you weigh and what that weight's made up of. It's also where [00:18:00] your body fat is located and we know for women Either when younger women with say PCOS or women as they start to go into perimenopause They literally start to have more visceral adipose tissue and lose more subcutaneous.

So, you know, they'll be thrilled They're like, oh, I'm losing the fat on my thighs. It's like yeah, but it's going to your core It's, it's, my mother called it shifting sands. I'm like, I will have none of that. I am not having that. She's like, yeah, my butt went to my gut. I'm like, Nope, not only that. Nope. Yep.

So, um, what was the, Oh, so Vicky, so Vicky weighs, she has a body composition of 25. Now, Vicky, when she came in, she was, On Jenny Craig, she literally brought in the packages because I was like, I'm sure I can work with this. And I'm reading the ingredients. I'm like, I can't work with

this. Yeah, I can't. I was like, I had no idea because I'd never looked at these things.

I'm like, oh my gosh, like seriously, people buy this. So we dumped [00:19:00] that, put her on the right type of protein first style diet, got her doing resistance training with some HIIT training. And it was like, a miraculous change. Now, it's kind of like watching grass grow when you do this because you can lose maybe 1 percent of your body fat a week, you know, not more than that.

And putting on muscles about one to two pounds a month. So these things take time. And someone's not used to doing it, you get what are called newbie gain. So stuff happens a lot faster to start, but then it's, it's fairly slow. So literally, this was like, A year where and she did lose 10 pounds. She lost 10 pounds of fat.

She put on 10 pounds of muscle. Sure. Her body fat went down to 18%. She dropped down to clothing sizes. She looked like an entirely different woman and yet was still frustrated. Because of the scale, and I'm like, I don't know, I don't know what to do here, like, you know, and so it was really good. I've learned [00:20:00] so much of doing this for 30 years of now.

I ask what when you're what are your goals? Like, is it just you want to weigh a certain thing? What? What would that weight do for you? What are looking to accomplish to achieve? How are you looking to feel? What do you want to look like? Because as Andy Galpin says, you want to look, look, feel and perform better, right?

And you have that tied to some number on the scale, but that's really arbitrary. Right.

Jacqueline: Right. And how do we, how do we go about changing that, that paradigm shift? Cause that's been ingrained in women for, for so, so long.

JJ Virgin: I know.

Jacqueline: It's like, it's like, what do we do? I mean, I'm 29 and again, I've learned so much just by being in the 

space for the past four years. 

I'll, I'll continue, I'll continue your mission, 

JJ Virgin: You carry the torch. You know, you think it's hard in the 29 year old. Try this, the 50 to 70 year old.

Um, 

Jacqueline: And I'm sure that's the, that's the bracket where you need to be doing strength training the most. Right.

JJ Virgin: Yes. And I still, cause I've been, Very, very vocal about [00:21:00] creatine. In fact, I have a huge creatine expert coming over today that I'm taking who I'm going to suck everything out of his brain and take him out to

dinner. But, um, But, every time I mentioned creatine, people are afraid of it. And literally, I'm like, if you do gain anything from it, it's water in your muscles.

You want that. That's a good thing. People would pay for that, you know, but it's, it's just. It's it is so ingrained and it's it really concerns me because if someone's been fighting, you know, it first of all, it's such a mental thing of where you come from such a not a negative place when you focus on getting stronger and you can feel yourself getting stronger and faster like I have a sprint treadmill at the house and I'm working on my pace and I can see myself getting faster.

I can see myself jumping higher. I can feel I can do heavier weights. That like, that's what you want to focus on if you're focusing on those things and you're [00:22:00] putting that together with tracking your protein, you know, eating your protein, fat and fiber trifecta, getting in those veggies, it's it's going to work out, you know, and, you know, once you have all those habits in place, we can always cycle in some caloric restriction if needed, if you were struggling with some body fat loss.

But, you know, the first things are like, if you. build those habits that a healthy, fit, lean person has, then you will become a healthy, fit, lean person.

Jacqueline: Right. I am curious, in the clients you've worked with who have that extra focus on the scale, are they more inclined to have issues like, like eating disorders, for example, or struggle with other mental issues? Issues like OCD. Is it more of a control thing? I don't think so. I mean, I've had very few people with eating disorders, you know, some eating disorders, people, some people with trauma, there is a huge, huge tie in with, people [00:23:00] with their weight and with trauma and they need to go work, do the trauma work because they're doing this to protect themselves.

JJ Virgin: So that's a different one. Um, the eating disorders world, I have not, that's not my world I play in. So I haven't probably attracted very many people because of it. I had a couple clients who had eating disorders. Um, and one who was, Um, so, and it took a while to gain enough trust to be able to help them.

But I don't, I don't think the, I think it's just that we're so ingrained that this is the weight you're supposed to weigh. I think it's just been communicated for so long and it's still like, you know, you go to a typical doctor's office and I just went to the doctor because I had to have prolotherapy.

I had to have PRP on my elbow from a luggage injury.

Jacqueline: Oh no!

JJ Virgin: And so my husband and I are lugging like seven pound luggage, you know, on, on carpet and I messed up my elbow. So I go in there to get PRP and they're putting me on the [00:24:00] scale and I go, I'm curious, like I'm in here for an elbow injury.

Now you've just this. Scale. And by the way, they had a scale that literally you could have probably had a six or 700 pound person on. So this huge scale on the scale. And I'm like, just like, what does this got to do with my, with my elbow injury? Like nothing, right? Nothing. Moreover, what are you going to do with this information?

So you just put me on here and you know, my weight, you don't know anything else. You don't know what that weight's made up of. You don't know how strong them. You just know that. What are you doing with that? Nothing whatsoever, so it's still such a big part of a doctor's office where in the perfect work, you would go to the doctor's office and anyone in your, a girl in her teens would go get a bone mineral density test and a full DEXA scan to look at skeletal muscle, fat mass, visceral adipose tissue, because that should be almost zero, and muscle bone mineral density, they do [00:25:00] it in their teens, because Your teens and early 20s are when you can really be laying down bone.

You want to know what's going on then when you can really affect change. And then you'd maybe do a DEXA every year or two. Um, but it would be part of your physical and you would starting at age 30, make sure you're doing it every year because that's when this weird magic shift happens because we stopped building muscle through hormones and we start building muscles through, um, dietary triggers plus resistance training.

Jacqueline: So 

that's the shift. I was going to ask you shift. It's the big shift. And, you know, the more I dig into these things starting around age 30 in the every decade, we lose 5 to 15 percent of our VO2 max. When we look at what women should be training for, they should be training to improve that. That's high intensity interval training.

JJ Virgin: Not just slow, steady state walk around. I mean, we need to be doing what you're doing and that's activity. [00:26:00] And then our workout should be resistance training and high intensity interval training.

Jacqueline: So then, what are the major key differences between someone working out in their 20s versus their 30s and 40s?

JJ Virgin: In their twenties, they can build muscle. Like they can go eat a vegan diet, not worry about. Protein and have a lot easier, uh, easier time building muscle in thirties and forties, fifties, sixties. It's when anabolic resistance starts where we start having difficulty going into muscle protein synthesis with the stimulus of protein and resistance training.

So we actually need more protein, not less. And we have to be very, very, uh, aware of how much protein we are getting. And the reality is, if women focused on eating one gram of protein per pound of target body weight, and they tracked it to really know how much that was, and weighed it, because we underestimate what we eat in general by 20 [00:27:00] to 40 percent, but I believe we don't.

We overestimate our protein. Um, so if they tracked, so they could really see what they needed. So it just became a habit. First of all, when someone eats protein first, which is how I have people do it so that they don't get too full. Um, it's a fabulous thing because protein triggers GLP 1. Like everyone's talking about GLP 1s.

Protein is a natural GLP 1. Drug, right? It's the food drug of the GLP. Um, and what happens when you eat protein first is you're not hungry you're more satisfied you make better food choices and Protein has a bigger thermic effect. And remember I talked about how food has a metabolic effect It's one of the three categories then carbs or fat do so, you know research is pretty clear that that if you eat protein first It's way easier for you to lose weight and maintain weight than if you try to do it You know, sitting down to that basket and, and the salad that most [00:28:00] of us turn into a sundae with our salad dressing And 

Jacqueline: And all the olive oil. Olive oil. Haha.

JJ Virgin: And now it's like going, well, I did, but we went to Italy two summers ago to go see Andrea Bocelli in his private theater. It

Jacqueline: Oh my goodness, J. J. I saw him for his Valentine's Day tour here back in February. My sister got me a, um, uh, it was a Christmas present, and he was incredible, but that sounds

JJ Virgin: was like one of those. Life one, you know, lifetime thing. And so but we're off to Italy. I love, love, love Italy. And right before I went off to Italy, I had this interview with Stephen Gundry where he was like, olive oil, olive oil, olive oil, olive oil. And so I'm like in Italy, jumping it on. Thank God we were walking like 30, 40, 000 steps a day because I was like, it was ridiculous.

And that's where tracking food can be great because extra virgin olive oil. Like there's such clear benefits to it, but too much healthy foods, unhealthy. It is very easy. Like we are women. We [00:29:00] can't eat 5, 000 calories a day, you know? So it's really easy to overload on fat if you're not watching it.

Jacqueline: 100%. That's so funny. I am curious too though, is there a particular time of the day where we should be loading up on protein? So for example, should our breakfast typically be more protein heavy than dinner?

JJ Virgin: I personally, now there's the research out right now. Is they did one base, they did one study where they looked at breakfast versus dinner, then they did a study evenly divided through the day. I would love to see this study because the study I think would probably make the most sense is breakfast and dinner just because of some of these things, how long protein can take to digest.

Now it also depends on the type of protein because whey protein is fast digesting. You know, if you eat a big steak, that's going to take longer. And it also depends on the type of protein. Like let's say you're doing just breakfast. essential amino acids, right? [00:30:00] Because we're eating protein to get the essential amino acids.

There's nine essential amino acids. There's two conditional, and then there's nine others that we make. And so you're eating protein to get the amino acids, depending on the type of protein and what else you're eating will make the difference of how much, how many of those essential amino acids you back basically can extract and utilize.

You don't, it's not a hundred percent. If you do essential amino acids as a. supplement, you get all of it. And I've gotten to the point now where any 150 plus, I'm like, you have to be on them. You take five grams or more at breakfast and dinner. That's it. Non negotiable because there's so much information coming out about sarcopenia and support, and there's no downside to it, except that they, amino acids do not taste delicious.

So most of them are like fruit punch, like gag. But, um, You know, I think the perfect thing would be to make sure you're getting the amount overall and really make sure in the morning time [00:31:00] you are getting it because you've been fasting for at least 12 hours, you know, somewhere in the 12 to 15 hour range likely.

And you're eating about two hours after you wake up, you gave your body time to wake up, you went and saw the sun, you got your circadian rhythm on, right? And so you're eating and you want to make sure that you have, you know, enough leucine in the protein to trigger muscle protein synthesis and depending on the studies that you read, it's somewhere between 2.

5 and 4, I think, play it safe and say 3 to 4 grams. And so that really comes down to how much protein do you need to get to that. It's basically, 30 grams animal usually 40 grams plant unless you're eating like a, you know, an isolated plant protein powder like maybe a pea or a soy if you don't have thyroid issues. So Yeah, that's, I mean, my favorite way is to have people figure out how much they need for the day and then generally it's easier if you just kind of divide it throughout the day, but really prioritizing [00:32:00] breakfast and dinner.

Jacqueline: Yeah, that makes sense and going back to fasting So I'd love if you could share with listeners your thoughts on fasted workouts because I will be the first to admit I did this for quite a while thinking that when I worked out in a fasted state i'd be burning more fat But that's actually not the case The truth.

Right.

JJ Virgin: Well, so here's what's interesting. Like, let's, let's go back. I always want to find out why are we doing this? And when you look at exercise, your goal with an exercise session is not how much fat you burn during the exercise session. And in fact, if you are working hard, your goal should be, how many carbs can you burn during the exercise session?

When you're doing hard resistance training, a Hard high intensity interval training. And it's never all one or all the other, right? Your body's like a hybrid car. We're shifting back and forth depending on what's the most efficient or what is the priority requirement. But in that fast [00:33:00] movement, it's glycogen, it's glucose.

So your, your body is using circulating glucose or freeing up glycogen and Using, pulling it from the specific muscles you're using. And so when you really look at it, like I was wearing a CGM to the gym, I got it to 200 and I was thrilled because I was trying to see how hard could I go? How much sugar could I burn?

If you are burning fat, you're in a lower level aerobic thing. And you don't need to be fasted to do that. It's the type of exercise. So I think the reason people do fasted workouts is they think that it's going to help them burn more fat and lose weight. But that's really much more what's in your bank account.

Like I used to always say, your body's not a bank account, it's a chemistry lab. What I say now is your body's a bank account, it's a chemistry lab, and it's a history book. And when you look at this, the most important thing you can do with a workout is be able to work out as hard as possible. Now, for some people.

They do better [00:34:00] fasted for some people, they do better fed. It's really what works best for you. I find for most women, they do better fed, not fed right before. That's the only have so much blood. You don't want it going to, to digestion. You want to have it go to your muscles. But, you know, how can you work out as hard, like I can't, I work out way better when I've had a meal about an hour or two before, that's my sweet spot, but if you, if you don't have a choice, like sometimes when I'm traveling, I've got to get up in the morning, go work out, or I'm going to miss my workout, and I crank in some creatine, some collagen, and some essential amino acids, and some electrolytes, throw it into a beer, Big 64 ounce jug and go and so and that works for me too, but, um, remember if you're doing this to burn body fats, it's, it's the other thing you think about like when you look at keto diets and people go, you're trying to get your body to burn fat.

Well, do you want your body to burn dietary fat or body fat? Because [00:35:00] they don't specify that you can gain weight on a keto diet. And I see a lot of women on a keto diet that are over fat because it's super easy to overload your calories. So if you want to lose weight, you've got to make at the end of the day, your body has to have a deficit.

So it has to go into your fat stores. And use that.

Jacqueline: Yeah. What are your thoughts on carb cycling? That's, that's apparently like all the rage now too. 

JJ Virgin: So the research doesn't really back it up, but I think it makes sense. Um, you know, I think I, I don't like the term intuitive eating because I think ultra processed foods have completely disrupted our, um, Are the way we can perceive food. So unless you are completely clean and cleared out and everything else, and you've been tracking, I don't know how that works, but I do think intuitively, like I know when I've done a big, hard workout, I [00:36:00] feel like afterwards I always want something like some berries, some, something that's carby, I feel like I'm just kind of refueling my muscles and that's actually a great time to do it.

Um, so I tend to eat a little bit. I work out every day. So it's like. I wouldn't need to carb cycle because every day is a workout. Um, but if I wasn't, let's say I'm going on a plane and I'm not going to work out much except for just walking, I probably wouldn't do much. So I think it makes sense to do. Um, I also think what's really important is for someone to really dial in because diets are tools, right?

We've got vegan, we've got paleo, we've got carnivore, we've got, uh, elimination diets. We've got time restricted feeding and intermittent fasting. So we've got all these choices. And really you've got to look at this and go, what am I trying to accomplish? What are my goals? What is my current health history and what's my lifestyle like, and what's going to work?

Because if it's [00:37:00] not going to work with your lifestyle, it doesn't really matter anyway. And then you've got to go like, will this. Is this something that I can do? And maybe it's something that you do short term. Like, I think there's totally an application for something like a carnivore diet short term as an elimination diet for gut healing.

Like it makes a ton of sense. I don't know that I would have someone do that forever, but I think, you know, I actually have someone I'm working on right now who is insulin resistant and I'm like, let's do this for, you know, let's test it out for a week or two and see if we can get some stuff to budge. So I think these things can be used as tools , 

Jacqueline: I couldn't agree more. I'm going back to fasting again, another tool that many use but what are your thoughts when it comes to intermittent fasting? Um, for women and again, for a cycling woman, we know that there are certain parts of your cycle where you should refrain from longer fasts.

JJ Virgin: I've kind of looked at this now and I heard Dr. Peter Attia say it and I went, Oh, 

I'm going to adopt that. 

Jacqueline: I was just going to bring that up.[00:38:00] 

JJ Virgin: I'm going to adopt that time restricted feeding is anywhere from you is eating within a window each day and intermittent fasting would be okay.

24 hours or more of not eating. So again, It goes back to what are you doing this for, right? If I was wanting to get pregnant, I would not be touching intermittent fasting. That's for sure. Because of this cispeptin, our women have more, um, are more sensitive to the neuropeptide cispeptin that regulates, that's a nutrient sensor but also regulates reproductive organs and it dials things down when nutrients aren't available.

And so low carb can dial it down, fasting can dial it down. So if someone's working on fertility, I don't think this is the place for them. Now, I think intermittent fasting, we've got to really distinguish between that and time restricted feeding. And [00:39:00] I think about when I was growing up, we all time restricted fed.

Because that's normal eating. Normal eating is eating your breakfast an hour or two after waking up, stopping eating dinner, you know, two to four hours before bed, not really snacking. That's, that's what I was raised with, like that's what everyone did. Now all of a sudden, you know, and I remember when it happened, um, where fat was made to be the villain, all the fat got pulled out of foods.

I was actually working at a place called Pritikin in LA at the time, and it was like, The leader in this, everyone was eating 10 percent calories from fat. They got fish twice a week as a big treat. And we were starving all the time and everyone and loads of cardio. So a lot of very angry people. Um, and then everything got into snacking because.

Your blood sugar was so ridiculous. You were, had trained your body to be a sugar burner where you were fueling everything on sugar. I remember I was hypoglycemic at the time. Like if I didn't eat every couple hours, I got [00:40:00] hypoglycemic. It was the first time I tend to be super lean and I was basically vegetarian that went into being a vegan.

My body fat was up at 25 percent where it's normally at 10, uh, and hypoglycemic. Like, I was like, wow, I was like, I wish we'd had cameras back then. I could have been like, you know, I could have been a great reality show, um, doing this stuff. So I, that's when all of that snacking started because it was, if you're eating fat free.

Carbs you were starving like you were starving all the time So I think what we need to get back to is eating in a way that really balances blood sugar improves satiety I call it the protein fat and fiber trifecta eat protein first It'll have some fat in it eat a lot of non starchy vegetables a little bit of fruit Other slow, low carbs, if needed, get your fats from whole food sources first and then do things like extra virgin olive oil.

But that blend is going to be [00:41:00] satisfying. And then you should be able to go five to six hours before you need to eat again or longer. You shouldn't be starving. If you're starving, there's something wrong. You've either got insulin resistance going on some cortisol and juice, right? So. Um, so if you look at it and go, okay, I'm going to eat an hour or two after waking up, I really think two, maybe even three, and I'll stop two to four hours before bed, ideally three to four.

So let's say you wake up at six and you ate breakfast at nine and then you stopped eating it. You had dinner at six. So you were done by seven. There's a 10 hour easy eating window right there,

Jacqueline: Right.

JJ Virgin: right? So not 

Jacqueline: Yeah. I have a feeling I'm going to know your answer to this, but we hear this, this group of researchers, right? They call themselves like the longevity, um, researchers. 

Scientists, and they tout, right, that the key to longevity is a low protein diet, and I know one of them came out with this five day protocol fast called, um, [00:42:00] ProLon.

Yep. So what, what are your thoughts, JJ, on that?

JJ Virgin: So the whole thing is so that you don't raise mTOR. Um, the challenge is like when you really look at the key to longevity. And I think, you know, shout out to Gabrielle Lyon's book, Forever Strong, that just really details how muscle is the organ of longevity. You know, mTOR is in, is not just in, you know, cancer tissues.

I think that's why they really want to look at it. It's in a lot of tissues, especially muscle tissue. When you look at how you raise mTOR, exercise raises mTOR. So if they're wanting to avoid raising mTOR, which is why they're doing this low protein, well, the challenge is then you shouldn't exercise. But if you look at people who exercise regularly, their risk of cancer is so close to zero.

Compared to people who don't, so it doesn't, that's where I keep having, I don't get your reasoning for this, [00:43:00] because if you look at the research of sarcopenia, hip fractures, and you look at every single thing that having more muscle mass does, better cognitive function, better bone density, better immune function, better insulin sensitivity, but you can't build muscle without protein, anabolically resistant as you age, how do you, how do you, Combine those two one is having you become frail and sarcopenic and one is become having you become powerful and strong and be built to last

I don't get it 

Jacqueline: Yeah. No, I hear you. And then the people who do complete those fasts, I mean, they say that you don't technically lose any muscle while you're doing it, at least in the trials that they've, that they've Published, but can, can that really be sustainable?

JJ Virgin: Well, remember that's they're they're recommending with that to do that five days. It's a five day fast It's a fasting mimicking diet. So what you do is it's very low [00:44:00] protein. It's Carbs and a little bit of fat. It's basically like these crackers these flax crackers all in You These, yeah, so, and it, it goes down in calories.

I think it starts at 800, goes down to five. Um, and it's supposed to mimic fasting, lower mTOR, create a lot of autophagy. Now remember one of the, I think the most predictable way to create autophagy is through exercise. And the best way to get rid of zombie cells is shout out to qualia that you take twice a month that.

Get rid of zombie cells. So, um, so I'm looking at how do I do this without having to do that, right? But you could hold on to your muscle during that time if you were doing resistance training. So if you're doing resistance training during that, you should be fine. But if you're not, you Then you're probably not going to be, you're not going to be fine, you might lose a little bit.

The outright fasts are even [00:45:00] scarier, and that's where I'd say at least do essential amino acids and some resistance training. You know, there's people doing this for different health reasons.

That's why I say diets are tools. So what is it you are trying to accomplish and then dig into the research and go, does this do what it purports to do? Is this the right thing for me? If someone's needed to quickly restore insulin sensitivity, you know, doing this, type of fasting thing can be a real powerful tool if they're obese, morbidly obese, right?

You gave them some essential amino acids.

Jacqueline: Yeah. Sadly, again, that's a problem I've seen a lot in the wellness spaces. It's one size fits all, and that's really not the case at all. 

JJ Virgin: I have 

a theory on it.

Jacqueline: Let's hear the theory.

JJ Virgin: You know, because all my friends are diet book writers, right? Like we're all so the theory is that people write the book for themselves. So they write that book and then everyone should do the book. And it's like, well, not really, you know, it's like, unless it's more of a, you know, will these eat to beat [00:46:00] disease or eat to beat your diet, where it's much more of a manual of all these options out there.

But for a lot of people, it's really this work for me. you should do it too.

Jacqueline: Yeah. No, that makes sense. Going back to creatine. So, for listeners out there who have never heard of creatine before, can you just give a breakdown of what it is and why it is so important?

JJ Virgin: creatine is interesting because women. have 70 to 80 percent less tissue stores of it than men. It's something that we get from our diet, but not in big amounts, mainly from meat and some from fish, but, but cooking can degrade it. And, um, it's, It's also we make about maybe a gram of it. It is Really just as i'm unpacking it.

It is like the super It's the super supplement for women in fact Like one of my regrets is I didn't get on this way earlier I just never really looked at it or considered it because in my mind I used to [00:47:00] train people down at gold's gym in Venice and it was a bro a bro supplement. So, um, and I think I tried it once way, way, way back when and gained weight and freaked out.

So I was like, 

you know, it's pretty, you know, Oh my gosh. And now like, it is the thing I've, I have multiple supplements that I will not go anywhere without. Like we travel literally. It's why I had the elbow thing. Cause we travel with so much stuff. Um, and we go out for weeks at a time, but so creatine.

Does a lot of different things. The thing that's known for first is you have different energy systems in your body that you use when you're working out. And the one that's like the quick 10 second one is this creatine phosphate system. And so that's what creatine lends into so that you can do this explosive explosive.

Workout. So one of the things we know with creatine is that it's going to help you work out harder, which in turn is going to help you have better muscular development, better strength, right? If you can train harder, then you're going to get bigger, better results. So that's one of the things that creatine does.[00:48:00] 

Um, but what the new research is showing is that it helps with skin wrinkles, helps with cognition. They did a study on postmenopausal

women and yeah, 10 grams, but still, um, I mean, crazy. So, you know, Neuro, my son had a traumatic brain injury. He's on creatine. Um, I just think this is one that makes so much sense for people to be on and I, what I'm doing now is just having them titrate up the dose so they don't do the freak out and I'm looking at other forms to see if there's going to be one that might make a little bit more sense, but the big thing is, if you're tracking your body composition using a bioimpedance machine at home, you're seeing total body water.

So when you have more total body water, you're seeing more body water. Your body stores carbohydrates in your muscles as glycogen, one gram of glycogen, three grams of water. So the more muscle, the more total body water. And so you want more water in your muscles. So that's what you'd see if you take creatine, is you'll see that increase and then [00:49:00] you can calm down because your body composition is going to improve.

Jacqueline: Everyone breathe.

JJ Virgin: Breathe, you know, and it's like, I would say, would you love to be a size six? And do you really care if you were like, you'd actually rather be a size six looking amazing at 150 pounds than a size six at 130 pounds, because as size six at 150 pounds, with maybe, you know, one of them's 20 percent body fat versus 30%, one of them, you're going to be able to eat a lot more.

Jacqueline: Yep.

JJ Virgin: You'll have better metabolic rate because part of your metabolic rate is tied to your weight.

Jacqueline: I started supplementing with creatine, I want to say six or so months ago. 

JJ Virgin: What did you feel? felt my workouts were much more powerful and intense. Um, I definitely noticed a difference there. Again, once I got over the initial fear of that, that weight gain that I saw, I was like, Oh, now I understand it's just water.

Jacqueline: [00:50:00] Um, you get over the mental block and you realize how incredible it is when it comes to boosting your performance in the gym. So I'm, I'm definitely a big fan of it. Is there a benefit to the powdered form versus supplement or does it not really matter?

JJ Virgin: doesn't matter. There's, um, different forms of it. I'm doing a deep dive into that right now, but it does not matter. It's the same thing. It's like the thing that matters is how you'll take it.

Jacqueline: it doesn't necessarily matter either what time of day we take it, right?

JJ Virgin: So here's the thing with it, what you're really doing and, and you know, the old way that everyone did creatine was with loading dose because you're really trying to saturate your tissues. Now, I don't know any way to know if you've saturated your tissues, which would be the best thing to know. And obviously if someone's got.

You know, more muscle in is bigger. They need more than someone who's smaller with less. Um, so I think for most women, it's going to be three to five grams, but we used to have you do that, that amount four times a day for a [00:51:00] week to tissue saturate for five to seven days. And that would give people gastric distress and bloating and they'd get freak out.

So I just say, it's probably going to take you a month to get to where you need to be. And while you're doing that before your tissue saturated, I would do it before I was going to the gym. But once you've got your tissues saturated, it's around, I'm not as concerned because it shouldn't really matter. I mean, there might be an advantage to having it, you know, before you go to the gym, but I haven't seen anything to really prove that.

Oh

Jacqueline: All right I'm curious to see what a further research unveils, but I'll I'll be following you for that And I am curious to what are some of those other supplements that you travel with that you cannot live

JJ Virgin: my gosh. You know, I, I think I've said, uh, I'm not, the supplements I took at 30 are not what I'm taking at 60, but I, and then someone said, well, what would be different? I go, you know, reality is. It's really the supplements I was taking in my 20s. Like again, I think 30 is when we start to think of some things.

I'll tell you like [00:52:00] the stack though, like the big foundational that I think everybody should be on at any age, got to have the vitamin D3 with K2 and you really want to do that with testing. And so why this isn't standard yet in the medical field, I just don't get it. It should be, it's crazy, but we need to do a vitamin D3 test.

It's a hydroxy vitamin d3 test and you want to be 50 to 80 NGs per ml. So that's the first thing Magnesium, magnesium you need to make ATP. I mean, there's a ton of different things magnesium does in the body But for energies and workouts, you've got to have it to make ATP So I generally take magnesium every night before bed and The best way if you really want to know how much magnesium do you am I getting what I need you would do a red blood cell Magnesium level when you went to the doctor the other thing you can just do is go am I getting loose stools back off You know [00:53:00] and then the other one or fish is fish oil and I think there, if you do an omega quant test, this is an inexpensive little finger stick test you can do at home.

It costs somewhere between 60 to 100 depending on what you want to see from the test, but you're really just looking to see what's your omega 3 index and your ratio of omega 6 to omega 3, because You actually need a mega six. They're essential. I know there's like all this stuff going on about, um, seed oils right now.

We don't want to get these industrial rancid seed oils, but we do, we do need about four to one omega six to make a three. Generally, we'll get that dietarily. We don't need to add it by pouring on some crappy salad dressing with canola rancid canola oil and some sugar in it. I don't do that, uh, do not spend your money there, but those, those with a good multivitamin mineral antioxidant, like good basic multi are my foundational.[00:54:00] 

And then the things, so creatine, collagen, and, um, essential amino acids, huge. And some electrolytes. So those are my powders and then, um, I'm obsessed with, uh, this Korean ginseng that I got when I went to, to South Korea that you can only get in South Korea. It's a special thing. They don't export it. I'm like, I guess we'll be going back.

We bought like 4, 000 worth of ginseng. We are like the, you know, people who like to sell or like to buy too. So I'm like a big. Mark up my forehead like I'm going to buy anything. Um, but what I found was that it allowed me to actually use less of my hormones because it helped my hormones, uh, receptors become more sensitive.

And that's actually documented in the literature. I didn't know at the time I just went in for a lab test. They're like, drop all your stuff, all your hormones. I'm like, wow. Um, and then I do timelines might appear, which [00:55:00] I'm obsessed with. Cause you can feel it. It's like.

Jacqueline: you really can

JJ Virgin: Oh, my gosh. It's like I said to Ian, I go, this is exercise in a bottle.

This 

is 

like, I don't want to tell anybody that because then they'll

Jacqueline: I know. I'm telling you, creatine and Timeline's, um, nutrition supplement, like, I, those are two things that I really do feel the difference. It's

JJ Virgin: Yeah, do 

not go to the gym without them, 

Jacqueline: it. Right, exactly.

JJ Virgin: Oh, and I mean, the research that's coming out that they're showing, because what this does is it, it, Works in your mitochondria, just like we think, talk about autophagy and taking out the cellular waste. This is working in the mitochondria, which as we age, we just are breaking down more than we're building up.

So stuff's, it's like, it's like you've got a closet full of clothes that don't fit and you got to prune some of those and some of those you could have take to the tailor and make over. So some of the mitochondria can be reformulated and et cetera, and some just need to go. So that's what my, um, might appear does.

I use the, do you use the skincare too?

Jacqueline: No, I haven't tried that yet. [00:56:00] I just use the little powdered ones. I put it with my yogurt before I work out, 

JJ Virgin: Yeah. I'm excited.

Well, yes, you need that too. And then, um, I've also been using qualia. I've been using qualia senolytic for years, for like, since it came out. So I think almost two years and this is, you take it twice a month. It's a nine different senolytic compounds, like bison, and quercetin, and luteolin. And they all work in different areas to get rid of the gunked up old hanging out.

And it turns out these gunked up old synalytic cells aren't just hanging out, you know, taking up space. They're also in there trying to convert good ones to bad.

Jacqueline: I was just gonna say, I'm sure that has really interesting cancer applications. I haven't heard of that brand, so I'll have to check them out.

JJ Virgin: Neurohacker. So it started out as Neurohacker and they're, they're doing an identity change to Qualia, but they have that, they have an NAD plus product that I've now been playing around with for two months. And I'm like, where is this bend? That is three different forms. It's, it's, uh, Niogen, niacinamide, [00:57:00] niacin, and it raises your, your ATP levels by like, I think they documented one guy at 78%, but 50 percent or more.

And what happens is you age, like by age 50 percent of the NAD levels that you had before, which is going to make it hard to make ATP and ATP is our energy currency. So that's the other one that I'm, I'm like obsessed with that I

Jacqueline: Do you have

JJ Virgin: out. 

Jacqueline: I love this. I'm, I'm taking notes. Do you have any faith in, in like those people who say, oh, like what's your real biological age? I mean, I haven't really done a deep dive into the methods that they use to actually assess that, but do you think there's any truth to that?

JJ Virgin: From everything I've looked at and this is where I, I am, you know, at first, when I started hearing about Brian Johnson, I'm like, What a weirdo. But I listened to his interviews. I'm like, Oh, my God, I love this guy. And here he is doing all this stuff. And for those of you don't know, it's the guy. He looks He looks like a weird vampire because he doesn't do much sun.

He only goes out first thing in the morning, [00:58:00] but he is the guy who sold, I forget which company, made millions and now he's just biohacking himself. And, but he says he's biohacking himself, but the reality is, so they're going through and they look at every single thing out there and how relevant it is.

And so I'm really following his stuff and everything I've seen on bio age, it's like, you know, I don't know how, how real any of that stuff is. I mean, how, you know, um, I think that if we are going to look at how to monitor our biological age, what we would look at is I want my skeletal muscle mass to be in the highest percentile for someone, you know, someone in their thirties.

I want my VO two max. Like, how could you determine your best? Biological age from your, from your muscle mass, your strength, your muscle mass, your strength, your power, your VO2 max, right? And your bone mineral density [00:59:00] and your balance,

Jacqueline: Yeah.

JJ Virgin: you know, and then do some quick cognition tests, right? Wouldn't that be the best way to do it because it really only matters like someone's what if someone says my bio age is And I've had bio ages done by the way, and some say I'm 20 years younger ones that I was six years older I threw that one out And I thought you know what what really matters is am I going to be able to look feel perform think?

better. And that's what I'm focused on. And if some random test says I'm older, but I can, you know, arm wrestle someone who's 20 years younger than me. 

And then, you know, right, then play like poker and blow them out. And like all these, all the tasks and, and, you know, the other side of that is, is just continuing to learn new stuff all the time.

Right. And challenge yourself, challenge yourself physically, challenge yourself mentally.

Jacqueline: No, I love that. I couldn't agree more. And I think too, in the [01:00:00] age of all these wearables and technology devices, like, We, and I mean, I say this collectively because I think it's true, but at least my generation is we, we focus so myopically on these numbers that we actually forget to take into account how we're feeling.

Right. So to the point about the scale, like if the scale says something, but we literally feel horrible and have no energy, we quote unquote. Achieved our goal in the number, but we feel horrible, right? So I think there's a time and place. I just got an aura ring I think it's been really insightful But again the first few months I started using a JJ I found myself being like, oh no It says my sleep score is not good today.

And then

JJ Virgin: I better do nothing! yeah, exactly, it'd be a self fulfilling thing, we're like, oh, gotta cancel all my interviews, my sleep score is not good, so, you know, information within the hands of someone, you have to know how to use it, right? But, um, I think sometimes it can be a bit too much.

Yeah, I got myself all worked up about my HRV and then [01:01:00] I interviewed Molly Malouf and she's like, Oh yeah, it's not accurate on your, on your finger. You need to do a chest drop. And I'm like, Oh,

Jacqueline: there you go.

JJ Virgin: and then I did mine. I'm like, Oh, all right. Now I know that my HRV is fine, but I can use the relative change on my aura.

It's just like a bio impedance machine at home. You go get a Dexa. You're going to find out, I mean, that is the closest thing you can get to an MRI or, you know, an autopsy,

Jacqueline: Yeah.

JJ Virgin: but when you do it at home, you correlate it, but you're looking for the trends, you know, you're looking for relative changes. And it's, it's similar to a lot of these different things.

You're looking for trends on these things. You're not, you don't get on the scale one day and makes a judgment call because you could have done everything perfectly that day. And the next day you're the scale jumps up a couple of pounds. You're like, what? And that's just normal. Scale your weight fluctuates day to day.

You take the trend over a week.

Jacqueline: right. No, that makes perfect sense. Um, I did want to ask you one other thing on the topic of supplements. Oh, [01:02:00] protein powders. Again, such a saturated space. In a minute or less, how do we choose the best protein powder?

JJ Virgin: I know when I first started making my, my first protein powder 12 years ago, it was because no one had what I wanted.

Jacqueline: I need, I need to try yours. I was on your site earlier and I was like, this is one I really want to try.

JJ Virgin: So I have two, I'm actually going through every single thing that I have right now. And over the course of the next six months, I am going to go through and, you know, it's like kill it, upgrade it, or keep it the same. So, um, I've been making, I started with a plant based protein powder years ago, a pea based plant protein powder, because I couldn't find one that I wanted.

And I don't, I always like to look at proteins that you could use all the time and not create a. an intolerance to, so I have a pea based, I have a bone broth based And then I will be coming out with a whey based, but I'm doing something [01:03:00] special with that whey protein powder.

Jacqueline: Interesting.

JJ Virgin: You'll, you'll find out when

it's very, but I had to make like a lot of people that I've worked with over the years are dairy intolerant.

Now they may not be forever, but when you have leaky gut, it's one of the dairy and eggs are like the. Biggest culprits. And then it's soy, corn, peanuts, gluten. So I had to, well, gluten causes the problem, but soy, corn, peanuts, like gluten and sugar cause a lot of it. So I focused on those ones first. Um, when you're looking for a protein powder, what you want to make sure of is that like, for me, I don't like ones that have a bunch of added carbs in because I'm going to Put those, like put those in myself with some fruit.

If I'm doing that, sometimes I'm doing basically protein with a little fat and then I add in some fiber, but I basically look for one that's clean. Um, you don't actually need to worry about grass fed. And this is a big, one of the things I'm going to start talking about more because it's such a [01:04:00] marketing thing.

And the thing is, when you look at grass fed, grass finished cattle, The, where the shift really starts to happen and it depends on when they're eating because all cows are fed grass and then it's whether they're grass finished or they're, they're finished with corn and soy and all that, which you really want to make sure is they're not in close captivity being, you know, shot up with hormones and, uh, antibiotics and stuff, but it changes their fatty acid profile.

And so when you look at it and go, okay, I'm doing grass fed way, it's no different. The profile is no different than regular way. But it's great marketing. That's what everybody knows look for. It's one thing I think when you're eating steak, um, and if you're not eating grass fed, get the leanest cuts you can.

If you're going to eat a fattier steak, I'd make sure it was grass fed because it's the fat that's what you're really concerned about. And grass fed will be leaner anyway, the grass finished. Um, but that's the one thing with whey. I do a whey protein isolate, not [01:05:00] a concentrate. So you don't get the casein

because that tends to be for a lot of people.

They don't do well with dairy, but it's really the casing that's the trigger, not the way.

Jacqueline: Yeah.

JJ Virgin: So that's what I would do there.

Jacqueline: Awesome. Well, I'm really excited to try yours, so you gotta keep me pissed when it comes out. But, um, I do want to be conscious of your time, JJ. I could talk to you for hours. This has been so much fun. I will have to have you back on at some point. But where can listeners find you?

JJ Virgin: So I have created a protein, eat protein first challenge to make it easy for people to just dive in. I like to focus on one thing at a time where that'll give you a big win. So that is that jjvirgin. com forward slash protein first, and then that will get you into the whole game. ecosystem.

Jacqueline: Love it. I will be signing up for that. And my last question for you, JJ, is what does being well and strong mean to you?

JJ Virgin: Well, I flip it right into it means you're really setting yourself up for aging powerfully. Like I look at what do you need [01:06:00] to do now? And, and, you know, if you're here listening, and you're in that 25 to 45 age range, you are so fortunate, because the things you do now are going to set you up. So and it's, I know, it's hard to think about, like, I never thought about my 2535.

It's like not thinking about what am I going to do when I'm 80? You know, all of a sudden, you get to six, you're like, what am I going to do when I'm 80? And so the things you can do now in terms of improving your VO2 max and building muscle and making sure you have good bone mineral density will make all the difference in your 50s, 60s, 70s.

You will not need to be one of those crazy crappy statistics you hear about muscle and power and strength loss if you do it now and build that foundation.

Jacqueline: I love that. We'll see. I'm already starting to think about that, but thank you for the incredible work that you do. And yeah, I'm looking forward to staying in touch.

JJ Virgin: Yes, me too.


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Jacqueline Genova

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