The Bossticks - JJ Virgin On Mindful Eating, Body Composition, & Powerful Aging Strategies That Work

Episode Date: December 23, 2024

#788: Join us as we sit down with JJ Virgin – a triple-board certified nutrition expert & Fitness Hall of Famer. Driven by her passion for the healing power of nutrition, JJ is on a mission to transform the way we view aging & longevity. In this episode, JJ shares foundational health strategies, discusses mindful eating habits, highlights the significance of body fat composition for both men & women, & reveals how you can embrace aging powerfully!   To connect with JJ Virgin click HERE   To connect with Lauryn Bosstick click HERE   To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE   Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE   To Watch the Show click HERE   For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM   To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697)   This episode is brought to you by The Skinny Confidential   Head to the HIM & HER Show ShopMy page HERE to find all of Michael and Lauryn's favorite products mentioned on their latest episodes.   Visit istandwithmypack.org to support I Stand With My Pack's (ISWMP) mission by donating or adopting. Every contribution helps!   This episode is sponsored by TravisMathew   Consider TravisMathew your holiday headquarters, and discover the perfect gift for everyone on your list. Visit travismathew.com and receive 20% off your order with code SKINNY.    This episode is sponsored by AG1   Go to DrinkAG1.com/skinny, you'll save $20 off your subscription OR $49 o when you sign up for a double subscription just like we have! Plus you'll get a free Welcome Kit, bole of D3K2, and 5 free travel packs.   This episode is sponsored by Noom   Start your GLP-1 journey today at Noom.com.   This episode is sponsored by Lightbox   Discover Lightbox Jewelry's lab-grown diamonds for yourself on lightboxjewelry.com. Plus, all new customers will get 10% off their first order on lightboxjewelry.com using the code SKINNY10.   This episode is sponsored by Smartwater   Life's full of choices. Smartwater is a simple one. Visit drinksmartwater.com to learn more.   This episode is sponsored by Stakt   Visit shopstakt.com/tsc and use code SKINNY at checkout for 20% off your purchase.   Produced by Dear Media

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She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you alone for the ride. Get ready for some major realness. Welcome to the skinny confidential, him and her. Since I've worked in weight loss this long and I used to teach this course called

overcoming weight loss resistance. and a decade, actually it was like 20 years ago. And I looked at all the different things would get in the way of people losing weight or cause them to gain weight. And what I would see is people get into a metabolic hole and it is really hard to dig out of. And so this idea that, you know,

you just need to eat less and exercise more when someone's damaged their metabolism, no, they need to improve their insulin sensitivity, they need to get to sleep. There's so many things to get them out of it. And when they're that insulin resistant, they need a little help. Hello everybody. Welcome back to the Skinny Confidential, him and her show. Today we have JJ Virgin on the episode

talking all things, health, wellness, simple nutrition, personal training, step-by-step blueprints on how to improve your health and to get the results that you want in and out of the gym. We also talk all about what actually works and what does not. JJ Virgin is a triple board certified nutrition expert and fitness Hall of Famer. JJ is on a mission to transform the way we view aging and longevity. And in this episode, like I said, we talk all foundational health strategies, discuss mindful eating habits. And we highlight the difference between fat and body composition for both men and women and how you can embrace aging gracefully with that. JJ Virgin, welcome to the skinny confidential, him and her show.

This is the skinny confidential, him and her. I screenshoted your Instagram, JJ. I sent it to the girls that we work with. And I was like, I have to have you on the podcast because I think you're the perfect person to nail this subject through the wall. We have a lot of young women listening to this show. And I guess the first question I would have is, what do women who are just starting out in fitness,

maybe in their 20s, typically say to you? What's the pushback towards your favorite thing to do, which is weightlifting? So the big pushback, of course, when I say you need to lift weights is, I don't want to get big. Right. And in 40 years of helping people

lift weights. The only time I've ever had someone get big is when they don't lift weights and they sit on the couch, right? I mean, you're not going to get big lifting weights. Muscle is like metabolic spanks. It holds everything in tighter and it boosts your metabolism. It makes you more insulin sensitive so you can burn more fat and it gives carbs a way better place to land than in your thighs or your belly, right? Land on your muscle for energy. I noticed when I started, lifting exactly what you just said that this is so weird. I could tell that I had insulin resistance and it went away. How could you tell you at insulin resistance? What were you feeling? I'm so sensitive to my body. I was just feeling different after I gave birth, maybe fatigued, maybe like I couldn't

lose weight no matter what I did. Even if I didn't eat anything, I just couldn't lose weight, which probably made it worse. And then I started lifting and something about it, I swear to God, I, I'm not, I could feel balanced my hormones or something. It's the fastest way to heal your metabolism. When you look at what's going on, we have a metabolic health crisis. What is it now? Like 93% of the populations metabolically unhealthy, which is basically their insulin resistant. The fastest way to fix that is to start lifting weights and get your muscles to start

be feeling that again. So you quickly become insulin sensitive. You give sugar a place to go. I mean, if all we had people do was start doing air squats after every meal and push we could change everything. It would be that easy if you just started doing air squats and push-ups to just start to change. There was a study that looked at, it's called vigorous, intermittent lifestyle physical activity or VELPA, and they looked at people doing four and a half to ten minutes a day in one to two-minute increments versus people who weren't.

And they could be doing other things too, but it was just doing these or not doing these, right? And it would be things like jumping jacks, air squats, push-ups. The people that did one to two minute increments, four and a half to ten minutes total a day, had a 40 to 50, or so in 45 to 55 percent reduction in all cause mortality and risk of cancer and heart disease death compared to those who didn't. It can be that simple. It can be that simple as habit stacking. Every time you eat, I'm going to do some jumping jacks or air squats or something to get breathy. Huh. Think about that.

You used to do that when you were little. I've known him since he was really little. and he used to do push-ups all the time after certain things. Well, I would get in trouble a lot as a kid, and I'd be sent to my room a lot. So I'll just be in there just doing push-ups and sit-ups and pull-ups, everything I could do. But no, my modality of fitness that I fell in love with from an early age, again, like maybe like 10, 11, 12 was weightlifting. Like, it started out as a kid doing push-ups and sit-ups and all this stuff. But that's what I've made.

I've always done, I've always lifted weights my entire life. My friends would always say to me and Lauren would say, like, oh, you're lucky it's genetics. And there is genetics play a part in it. I didn't know. But what I was trying to explain to them, I'm like, no, if you start this early and you keep this habit, keeping weight off, staying metabolically fit, all of these things, keeping muscle mass on. You know, like, I can take a break from the gym for like one or two weeks. I don't like to, but if I do, I can get it right back.

And so I'm, you know, we have kids now. I'm telling them, like, the soonest they can get in, the better. Yes. And that whole myth that kids can't lift weights until they're older, which never made sense to me, because I was always in acrobatics. I'm like, well, what is the difference? I'm doing pull-ups and push-ups, but if I go pick up a dumbbell, there's something magically different. It's bizarre.

So, yes, the sooner, like one of the worst things they ever did was take all of the sports out of school. Like reality is school should be sports and learning how to cook. Not only that, I think one of the worst things they're doing is they're taking competition out of sports with children. Because what you're doing then is you're teaching children that it's, you're basically anyone that's got a competitive drive. You're telling them it's okay to not be competitive, which is, which is, I think for some people going to limit what that person then does later in life. Like, I think it's good to have, I remember as a kid, I would play soccer, and I play hockey, in our box, and I'd do all these things.

And I would get really bummed when I would lose. Like, I didn't like it. You've got to feel, the biggest thing you learn in sports is how to lose. You know, how to win, but how to lose. You learn way more in life and the things that you lost at. Yeah. And how to show up in that way. Yeah, I mean, like, I'm not going to be pushing my kids super hard,

but what I'm not going to tell them is they lose and they're upset about it, I'm not going to say, hey, it doesn't matter. Like it does matter. Yeah. Right. Everyone shouldn't get a trophy. Sorry. If you had a wand that you could wave right now for all women out there who are listening,

what do you wish they knew? And you can do five things, 10 things, whatever, about all of fitness and health and diet. Okay. First of all, that we get over this whole scale thing. I think that we need to toss the scale that's just looking at total weight. And we need to start to use the scale as a biometric tool. We need to be on it. monitoring as a biometric tool every single day. But we're looking at total, we're looking at body

composition, not weight. How do you do that? So, you know, here I am. I'm, I'm six feet tall. I was 140 pounds at like age, I don't know, 15, right? So I've always been the bigger kid at school and and more strong. And so I was always, when I'd step on the scale, you know, it was like, oh my gosh, you weigh how much? 140, 150. And I remember I went to a modeling agency in my teens, and they told me that I had to lose 20 pounds in order to model because models were 120 to 130.

Now, had I known back then, had I known how to do biomedance, which I'll explain what this is, I would have seen that I was really lean, really low body fat and had a lot of muscle, but we just didn't know those things back then. So the technology has gotten so much better than it used to be. Now you can get a little home unit have a biomepedant scale, they're like, you know, 100 bucks. And what it's going to look at is

your total body water. And what you want to see is that your total body water is either increasing or holding steady, especially if you want to lose weight, because your total body water is a predictor of your overall fat-free mass. And you want to make sure that if you are trying to lose weight, that you're losing fat, not muscle. Your biggest goal in life should be, especially right now, whatever age you are, your biggest goal is to pack on as much muscle as you possibly can. Like what I would tell a 20 to 30 year old woman right now is put as much muscle on your body as you possibly can. And you would be lucky to be able to put on 10 pounds a year. Talk about that for a second because I think this is, I always laugh on this show about this is guys have been trying to put on this kind of muscle day in, day out for a year.

You know, what I was saying on the, it took me like three years to put on 10 pounds of muscle. It's so hard. It's so much work. And yet women are like, I'm going to get big. I'm like, in your wildest dreams, this would happen. First of all, if you put on muscle, likely you're going to get smaller again because muscles metabolic spanks. And as you put on muscle, if your weight's staying the same, you're losing fat. So, but the reality is to build muscles a very slow process. I call it it. It's like watching grass grow. Now, if you go to the gym, and you start working out, you'll start getting strong, but that doesn't correlate with getting bigger. You can get stronger, and your muscle mass doesn't go along with it exponential, like it doesn't go one to one. You'll get stronger first because it's your central nervous system learning how to communicate with your muscles, right? And then you'll start building muscle. But muscle growth is at best, you know, once you're starting to build, maybe a pound a month, it's not that easy to do. And here's the thing with a woman worried about getting big.

You know what you can do if you're lifting weights and you start getting too big? Stop. It. But also, isn't like one of the, for me, my experience is when I was lifting weights at first, I was getting bigger because the fat had not shut off yet. So you almost have to get over the hump to get to the other side. Like I feel like it took six months of lifting weights. I don't think you were getting bigger.

I think you were saying the scale was changing. The scale was changing. But that's why you have to use the scale correctly. Right. Yeah. From a composition standpoint, you were not getting bigger. Yeah. Maybe you feel, I don't know, maybe you feel bloated. Well, women have, women have really bad body dysmorphia anyway. Yeah.

Like, we cannot be trusted. Yeah. You know, we can't. I will tell you a story about a woman. She came in, she wanted to lose 10 pounds. I have a biomepaden scale. So I did the biomepidant scale with her. Looked at her body fat.

It was 25%, which is in the range of normal for women. But she was one of those very lean, like, To me, I looked at I went, I know the body type she should be, and she wasn't quite there. She wanted to, you know, wanted to lose 10 pounds. She, over the course of a year, she lost 10 pounds of fat and put on 10 pounds of muscle. So she dropped the 10 pounds of fat, but she put on 10 pounds of muscle. She went from 25% body fat to 18, and she dropped 2 inches off her waist, and she dropped two clothing sizes. Like she looked like an entirely different person and she was still upset because the

scale didn't say what she wanted it to say, even though if I'd asked her at the time, well, what is it you're looking to achieve? Like, do you want to drop clothing size? Do you want to drop waist size? Because if you're losing weight and not losing your waist, you're making yourself worse, not better, right? And so it was interesting. Back when I was in grad school, they taught us that people should not lift weights till they lose the weight. I completely 180 degrees, disagree with that. First of all, doing resistance training is very metabolically costly anyway. So you're going to burn a lot of calories and burn calories after you work out. If you go for a walk, you're not burning calories after you walk.

You don't have to recover from it. You're going to become more insulin sensitive. You're not going to be as hungry. You do a lot of cardio. You're hungrier. And so I would wonder about how you felt, if that was just more how you felt versus what the reality was. If we could look at inches and we could look at the scale and we could look at, you know, what was going on with your body composition.

If you'd been using a biopenedicale, you could attract your total body water and your weight. And if your weight was staying the same but your body water was going up, then you would have known you were putting on muscle and losing fat. So let's say a woman comes to you who's 35 years old. She has gained 15 pounds over the last 10 years, drinking maybe alcohol, maybe eating too much at night. And she comes to you and she's like, I really want to get back to the weight that I was when I was 20. What are the steps that you're taking and implementing for her? Okay. So the first thing that we do is find out what her weight really is.

Okay. What is it made up of? Oh, okay. So not like how much she was. So what I want to know is, and the best way to do this is to go get a Dexa body scan. Okay. We did that. We did do that.

So good. So you get a Dexa body scan because here's what you want to know, not just how much body fat you have, but where is the body fat? Is that body fat, vatitis, fat, visceral adipose tissue, which is that dangerous. fat likely for you guys that you didn't have that issue that tends to be more when someone's very metabolically unhealthy or a woman when her estrogen drops she actually starts to take more fat and drive it into her visceral out of post tissue so you want to know how much body fat she has where that body fat is and how's her muscle mass looking does she have enough muscle mass like the gal I told you about Vicki who

wanted to lose 10 pounds she had what we would call you know she wasn't you know her body fat wasn't that bad, but sarcopenic obesity. She went down to 18% body fat. That was a good body fat percentage for her, but it wasn't that she needed to lose fat. She really needed to put on muscle. And quite often, that's the most important thing that we can do for someone, yet we're focusing so much on fat loss, right? So it depends. Let's say she came in, she was 30% body fat, maybe 10 pounds overweight. What would I focus on? First thing that I would do is get her tracking her food, and getting optimal protein in and making sure she's eating it at each meal first, so she actually eats what she needs to eat,

because I hear all the time from women that can't eat that much protein, and I watch them sit down and eat the muffin and the latte and the juice and all the garbage. And I'm like, well, of course you didn't eat the protein. Like, you know. You got to start with the protein, right? We have little kids, and if you put pasta and if you put toast, and if you put the fruit and you put the cookies on the plate, they're not going to eat the healthy thing.

Right. I mean, you know, when my kids were little, I always gave them. what I wanted to make sure they ate first. Like you have them eat it first. So breakfast, they'd have like a hamburger patty or chicken. They didn't even know about cereal until they went to Grandma's house. Grandma's house is a problem. Oh, my gosh.

Hi, Mom. Grandma's house. Uh-huh. Same with Grandpa's house. Don't sleep on Grandpa. Yeah. Grandma and Grandpa's house is dicey. Yeah.

Oh. Yeah, they introduced cereal. They introduced cheese its. They introduced the other days. Zaza said something about McDonald's. I'm like, where, what? Yeah. What are you talking about?

How do you know about this thing? So you would introduce more protein. You would have them get a Dexa scan and then what? So Dexas scan to see where things really are and then come home, have a biomepedant scale and a tape measure at home. There are these cool ones that actually report to your phone, Bluetooth. So if someone gets all triggered by the scale, first of all, I'm like, you don't have to look at it. Get on the scale. It will report to your phone. And once a week you take the average. You never look at the scale every day and make judgment calls. That's ridiculous. You might be retaining water. You might like have not going to. gone to the bathroom for a day. All these things happen, right? So you track it over a week and you take the average of the week for your weight and you're looking at really body fat

and fat-free mass and total body water and then you do a waste intent measure once a week. How long are you seeing people lose weight with this sort of like prescription? So here's the reality. I hate to even call it weight loss, although I know we need to. I really want to think of it as losing fat, holding onto our building muscle. Okay. And yes, you can recomp. you can build muscle, lose fat at the same time. Now, if someone's goal was purely I want to build muscle, I'm not going to focus on fat loss. I'm actually going to give them a little caloric surplus.

But if you want to lose fat, build muscle, you can do it and still be a little bit of caloric deficit. You can do that. But I don't focus on that at first because here's what I know. If all we did to start was increase someone's protein, as we start to fix neat, which I'll talk about in a second, they'll start to lose weight there. I want them losing maybe a percent of,

of their body weight a week, because I know that that would be from fat, and again, while they're holding onto our building muscle. So the first step is they do that dexia, they come home, they get used to using a biomepedin scale. Every day they wake up, go to the bathroom, get on the scale, it goes into their phone. Once a week, they do their waist and hip.

Then we start tracking what they're eating and getting the right amount of protein for them at their meal. So basically do 0.7.1 gram per pound of target body weight. Easy peasy, right? 0.7 is the low end. You could go over one. It wouldn't really matter. Like, there isn't really a protein threshold.

If you're 150 pounds, you want to have like 105 grams of protein roughly. Which is why when I was the weight that I was before I had my first baby, the same genes didn't fit after my weight training. They were way too big, which is weird. I was the same weight, the same exact weight on the scale. But because I was lifting weights in my body composition trunk, they were too. too big. But again, like, I just, I think the, I've been part of these conversations on this show now for a while. And I, a lot of the questions and a lot of the tops are geared towards weight loss. And I agree with you. I think it's more, the whole idea is you're changing the composition

and structure of your body. You're adding more muscle and getting rid of fat so that the muscle can help you with insulin resistance, boost your metabolism and make your body more efficient at burning the fat off so that even when you're sleeping or just walking around, your body's working for you as opposed to storing all of those carbs and fat in bad places, correct? Exactly. But it's like watching grass grow. Body recomping is a slow process. And let's not forget, you know, bone density, which everyone worries about bone density. Well, if you are doing resistance training and fixing your body composition, you don't ever have, it won't be an issue for you. I also, yeah, we talk about like young people that have low back problems and they're like 20s and

30s. I'm like, that's likely an issue with muscle mass and structure and bone structure. Like, you shouldn't have those issues. lifting weights. So we did the, so the diet part, they're now eating protein, they're using a food scale because we underestimate what we eat, right? Even dietitians underestimate what they eat by like 20 to 40 percent. So they're using an actual food scale to weigh their food in for a couple of weeks so they can know what they're really doing. They're tracking on a food app to make sure they're getting that protein in with, again, 0.7 is the low end. It's easier just to go, let's go one gram per pound. If you are more plant-based, you're pushing it up to the higher end for sure, so you get

all those essential amino acids. If all you did was keeping calories the same, shifted some of the calories from carbs and fat over to protein, initially you're going to have some weight loss because of the thermic effect of protein is so much higher than the thermic effect food of carbs or fat. That makes sense. And I think that those are all applicable and digestible on things that people could start right away. What are signs that you see when someone needs to put on muscle? Say you're at the airport. You're looking around. What are the signs where you're like, fuck, that person needs to put some muscle on? Well, an easy way to look at this is if someone's got normal weight, but they've got high body fat. I mean, there's the obvious ones where you see the

really thin people, right? But the ones that you, I think for most people, it's not obvious, where you'll see someone that looks totally normal weight enclosed. but if you put them on a body fat scale, all of a sudden they're 35% body fat, normal weight. That's called sarcopenic obesity. So that's more the issue. And I'll give you another example of one. So a lot of the things, it's not like you're going to look. I mean, the person you would see and go, oh, my gosh, they need to put muscle on.

By the time they get there, it's way, like, it's way far gone, right? It's more the, you're trying to unscrew a lid and you can't do it. these little things you wouldn't like you notice over time, right? So it's small things that maybe just add up. I also notice this is so weird that the skin on my face is tighter from lifting weights. Yes. What is that? I know. Isn't it awesome? So and creatine does that too, by the way, but resistance training improves your skin. I mean, exercise is going to improve your skin with circulation, but resistance training is going to help with collagen and it helps your skin. What do you wish that women understood about creatine because that's another thing that I post that I'm having creatine

and people like lose their minds about it. They don't. Okay, well, let's stop creatine and we have to circle back to neat because I mentioned, we're opening all these loops. There's so many questions. There's so many questions. Because when I look back like what would I tell my younger self? Well, my younger self started lifting weights early on. So that was always good. I was always good there. But, you know, I would have skipped the vegan days that I felt I needed to do. It was very interesting. When I played around with veganism, and I was always an omnivore, and then I went into this vegan downslide, and I was still lifting weights. But the crazy thing is, is I've always been super lean. Like my normal body fat is 10 to 12 percent, which for a woman is ridiculous. But it's just my genetics. I mean, I work my butt off too. But I tend to be really lean. And when I did the whole vegan thing, I was up at like 25 percent body fat. why? No comment.

No. I've already commented before. Is it because you were just eating a bunch of big processes? Because I was getting loads of carbs and fat and not enough protein. And why did you decide to go vegan? I was in L.A. Right. That's all I like to say.

Okay. Next question. I was in the fitness industry in L.A. Yeah. Like enough said. Yeah. Had to try that out. And you know what happened?

I finally, and I was running three aerobic studios in L.A. at the time. And I remember I just was feeling so rotten and one of my clients was a doctor and he went and brought me to his office, drew my blood, and he goes, you can either go to the hospital or go eat a chicken, pick one. I'm like, I'll get the chicken. And when you eat the chicken after you haven't had it in a while, it's like you're probably like stuffing it in your face like the hyena from Lion King. You're so hungry because it's like your body like craves the. It's always so funny when you're in these vegan places and they've got like vegan bacon. I'm just to eat the bacon.

Like, you know, if you have to make all these fake things to taste like the thing that you just want to eat, which would be better than eating the fake things because they got all this garbage in them. But anyway, over to the creatine. Also, has anyone ever looked at our teeth? Like, do you think these are just here for just, you know, just for looks? Like, the reason we have these sharp teeth is to get through food. Well, there were no vegans in the wild. They would have died of nutrient deficiencies. They couldn't have made it. Of course. So there you have it. When you have a diet, and I have a whole rule around diets, because, I mean, there's all sorts of diets out there, and they can be really good for, you know, three weeks to three months to create some change, but that doesn't mean that's the diet you need to be on forever. You know, I think we get confused about these things.

I also think that, you know, I'm a diet book writer. We all write the diet book we needed for ourselves. It doesn't mean everybody else needs that, right? So that's the other piece of it. over to the very first part of this before we go over to creatine, when you said, what would you tell someone who wanted to lose weight? I'd say, first of all, know your body composition, and you want to figure out if you want to lose fat,

you need to put on muscle. Likely, you need to do both. Likely, you need both. You first shift, and I have people shift protein and do e-protein first because that makes the fastest change. And people need wins or they're out. I've been doing weight loss for 40 years. If they don't see a change, they're like, I'm out.

If you're hungry, I'm out. Well, protein's like a GLP1. Razor, right? So another thing to talk about, I know. I said that on TikTok and got eaten alive. I'm like, I asked Paul Saladino, I was like, so meat is like a Zempec. It does the same thing. It's a SACU.

It's fast, it's fast acting, though, where you take, so if you take, it's like semi-glutide, terseptide, they're keeping GLP1 around. What this does is help you raise GLP1. GLP1 comes up and comes down. So protein does. that, fiber does that. So, I mean, this is what your body naturally should do. My take on GLP-1s is that we have a GLP-1 deficiency and resistance going on in this country because of, like, insulin resistance, fatty liver, obesity, create GLP-1 deficiency. So there's that. Anyhow.

So then the deficiency is creating a situation where our bodies are... We're hungry. We're hungry and insulin resistant. And then we're eating hot food. So, yeah, if you look at GL-1s, they help improve insulin sensitivity. Yes, they shut off food noise, but they're doing a whole lot of other stuff. I feel like we're focusing on one aspect that's the smallest part of the, like the big things it does is improves, helps your body secrete insulin when it should, not when it shouldn't, so that when you eat, you secrete it, you bring back down blood sugar. And it helps drop inflammation quickly. So it can be, and it helps, it helps heal your metabolism. So you think, do you think there's a lot of positives of it? I think it's hugely positive.

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The way that I love starting each and every day knowing that I'm getting it off on the right foot is with AG1, long time partner of this show. And that's because it forces me to start each day, like I said earlier, with a head. healthy habit, especially during the holidays. So here's what I do every single day, almost with the last eight years now. I drink AG1 by taking a simple scoop in a heaping glass of water every single morning. Sometimes I add a little lemon, but typically just the powder itself. And after I take it, I feel great. The under eye circles under my eyes have slowly diminished over the years. If you look at early videos of me, I looked a little rough. Now I'm looking fresh and hydrated. Age 1 has made such a big impact on my digestion. Years ago, I did my blood work and everything looked good, but I still

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Disclaimer, not all customers will medically qualify for prescription medicines. Compounded medications are not reviewed by the FDA for safety, efficacy, or quality. A lot of people have said this recently. I've noticed really smart people that I respect. They've said, if you're going to do it, you shouldn't do too much. It's like going to have a drink with your friends and you have 10 beers as opposed to one. It's exactly right. Since I've worked in weight loss this long and I used to teach this course called overcoming weight loss resistance

and a decade, actually it was like 20 years ago. And I looked at all the different things would get in the way of people losing weight or cause them to gain weight. And what I would see is people get into a metabolic hole and it is really hard to dig out of. And so this idea that, you know, you just need to eat less and exercise more

when someone's damaged their metabolism. No, they need to improve their insulin sensitivity. They need to get to sleep. There's so many things to get them out of it. And when they're that insulin resistant, they need a little help. and this is the little help. Don't you think if you take on a modality like weightlifting and you're doing it,

maybe in the beginning you're doing with a friend or with a trainer and you're learning how to properly do it, you're getting in such a different kind of workout that, one, you're kind of exhausting yourself, especially if you're new to it, which is going to enable you to get to be hungrier after and then you can go and eat this protein. And then if you're tired like that, you're also going to go to sleep earlier and sleep better. For me, I don't just weight lift just for the muscle aspect. I do it because it exhausts my body. body and then I can go and rest later and recover. It's like it's not it's not just the one thing.

It enhances the sleep. It changes my hunger hormones. It's like all of these things that then have a compounding effect. It also pumps more blood to the penis. I'm not joking. I'm not joking. I pumps it up. It's different having sex with a guy that doesn't lift weights than with the guy that does. I hate to break it. If the guy's listening, it does. So I had a friend message me a guy he's around my age yesterday. And he said, hey, I'm thinking about peptides. And I also want to get your take on TRT. And I was like, listen, because we're talking about testosterone. Like, dude, lift some weights. As I said, listen, there's a lot of things you can do naturally before you do those things. Like, if you need to do those things after you're doing all the things, that's a different description.

And you should, by the way, you should do, same with, same with GLP1. It's like, okay, let's, let's fix your diet. Let's fix your exercise. Let's fix your sleep. However, what I will tell you, having worked with morbid obese people for years is they can't exercise like that. They're too inflamed. So if you can give them something that can start to calm down the inflammation and get them insulin sensitive, then they can start moving. It's super duper helpful. But I don't think anyone should be on a GLP1 if they're not tracking their food, getting that protein in and doing resistance training. It has to be in there. I think that and that's that that's the problem is that people who get on it but they don't do anything else, I think that's a problem because you're not adding any healthy habits. It's almost like a

lazy way out. Same with testosterone replacement therapy or hormone replacement therapy. Any of these things. It's a tool. They're a tool that you want to get all the other stuff working. Yeah. So, you know, you are eating your protein first. You're the simplest thing, getting your steps in. So one of the people that I've been working with, 385 pounds when we started, low testosterone, no duh, right? And I'm like, you're getting 2,500 steps in a day, you get hypogonatal, if you're, if you're stepping less than 3,500 steps a day, like, could we just get you moving first and get you a little insulin sensitive? So the studies show that 7,500 to 8,000 is sort of the low, like, that's your floor. Okay. That's the, for me, that's the, no matter what I could be at a meeting all day long,

I come home. If we're not there, like I'm going to get my, you know, that's, that's the bare minimum 8,000. Like you could look back at my aura ring and I think I've missed it one day the entire year because it's whatever, you know, but I think we should be hitting, that's the floor. Okay. And so, so it's the, it's the Dexa, eat, and then tracking your body comp, eating protein first, knowing your overall calorie load, because if you do want to get more strategic, you'll want to do some strategic caloric restriction cycling, then getting that neat in. and ideally adding in like a weighted vest on some of it, just doing more walking, more steps with 8,000 as the floor,

then adding in resistance training. So that's how I put the hierarchy. Like I don't want someone doing resistance training twice a week for 30 minutes and sitting on their butt the rest of the time and thinking they're great. So generally I want to get the steps first because one of the things that tends to happen when you do exercise is your body is very, very adaptive, meaning it or very homostatic. It wants to stay where it is. And so if you restrict calories, you will tend to move less.

If you do exercise, you'll tend to move less the rest of the day. So I want that foundational stuff that you're tracking. So when you go do resistance training, you won't move less. What is if you could say in your perfect world, how many steps? Like for someone like me, I'm doing my things that I need to do. I don't really know what the ideal amount of steps is. What do you look at your watch and you're like, I'm so happy with this? I don't think it's really an ideal amount of steps.

I think it's more, make sure you get your 8,000 in. 12,000 would be better. Okay. You know, but here's the thing. If you did 4,000 more steps, but then it blew off your resistance training, no, that wouldn't be a thing. So what I would say is foundationally 8,000. More is better, but the next thing I want to add in is resistance training, minimally two days a week. I think you're better off with three.

It depends on where you're at or four, you know, like two days a week split, two, two, or three full body. or even more than that, and then add in some hit. Okay. But the point is, is like, if you're sitting around and you're looking at your protein intake and you're at 40 grams a day, and you're looking at your walking steps, and you're at 2,000 steps a day, and you're not sleeping till 1130 at night every night. Don't worry about getting in a cold plunge. Yeah.

This is where, yeah, let's major and majors. First, that you've got to, you got to lock down before you even start thinking about all the peptides. And that's, this is my, this is my gripe. It's like, and this literally just happened to me a couple of, couple nights ago. I was in New York and I was getting barred by people going, which peptides should I be on? I go, you're not even lifting weights. Like, you know, you have to earn your peptides. Earn all. Like, you want to do all this stuff. Do the basics first.

Eat protein. Get your non-starchy vegetables in. Sleep. I don't know how to help someone if they don't sleep well. You know, do your resistance training. Get your steps in. Do the foundational stuff. And then you can start frosting the cake. You don't jump into all the other things. That's what I was kind of saying to this guy because I was telling him that maybe not with peptides. If you start going down the TRT path of the hormone replacement, like that's a whole different discussion that needs to take place for a longer period of time. Which by the way, like, you don't want to touch that until you really have exhausted everything else. And there's so much guy, like in generally it'll be later in your late 50s. And there's so much you can do to raise

testosterone outside of TRT. Like that's the last resort when it actually is physiologically dropping. Yeah, I think the bigger discussion there is like, why are, men in their 20s and 30s having issues with a testosterone. Like that is the bigger concern. Honestly, as I've gotten older and now I'm like more of one with the world, I think it's a concern not only for individuals but for the entire population. No kidding. Like it's a it's a problem. It's a huge problem. I think that easy ways to boost your testosterone is to lift weights, eat more protein, change your cleaning supplies to branch basics code skinny. And watch football, watch football, but also we had this guy on yesterday.

that said even the pans that we're cooking on, the Teflon is lowering testosterone. So we're going to the farmer's market, getting organic eggs, cooking them on Teflon, and it's literally causing hormone imbalance. So examining what your environment is. Yeah, the plastic bottles. You had a clip go viral. Plastic bottles for sure. You had a clipgo viral that said that you wanted to be in the best shape of your life at 60 years old. I love that. I'm all about that. I'm all about that. Talk about that. So we want to be in the best shape of our lives at every, every decade. So, well, what had happened was I'd had all these really big goals for 50 and I hit them all and I never did a reset.

And I noticed that I was kind of like not excited about 60 because it sounds old. Like, you know, 50 was like, let's go. All these 60, I was just kind of ignoring, ignoring, ignoring. And all of a sudden now, which is fine until you're like 56. Now you're closer to 60. And about 58, I was trying to unscrew a jar. And I've always been able to, like, I'm strong, right? And I couldn't unscrew it.

And I didn't think anything of it the first time. But the third time, I was like, oh. And I knew the statistics with grip strength. Grip strength, if you were at the low end of grip strength, you have the highest risk of all-cause mortality. Like, grip strength is a proxy for overall strength. It matters. Like, they should not sell. You know, those little plastic grippy things to help people,

unscrew things. No, those should not be allowed. If you have to get a plastic grippy thing, get your butt to the gym. I almost had to buy one. Michael couldn't open jam the other day. When did this happen? This is true. If you go to my office right now, you know what I do when I sit on my computer? By the way, I have grip strength. That's amazing.

That's not the point, though. My grip strength is so good. Hold on. That was a lot. I'm fact checking you on the show. That never happened. I think I ended up opening the jam. No, no. You work on your grip strength, Michael.

I use those when I'm sitting around on calls. That's not the point of the grip strength thing is to use the grippy strength thing. That's not the point. I can open the jar of jam for me. I know, but I'm saying I have good good show. No, why are we having jam is what I want to. I am having jam sometimes once in a while. At what time?

Yeah, I want to know about the jam. At night, at night, she's having jam at night on bread. I'm a sourdough toast in the bed. Oh, my goodness. Wow. I don't know why I can't lose weight. I just had jam with sourdough at night before bed. One piece of toast in the middle of the night.

In the middle of the night. The plot thickens. It gets worse. This is fully backfired on there. You're just crumbs all over the bed. It's grass-fed butter. It's raw. Oh, that makes it totally fine then.

You can totally eat in the middle of the night in bed. I'm a bed eater. It's not great. Well, if you say that, you are. Okay. You're right. That's so Louise Hay of you. Wow.

I'm going to try to not be a bed eater. No, what do you mean try? I'm going to not be a bed eater. No, that's wrong. You're a great eater. You're an excellent eater because you want to be an amazing role model for your kids. And your kids will do what you do. I know they're eating toast in the bed.

Probably don't want your kids getting up in the middle of night, raiding the refrigerator with grass-fed butter and eating it in bed and jam. They can't open the jam, though. Don't worry. Michael can't open it either. I can open the jam. We won't eat jam anymore. He can't open it.

The thing is, though, like, if you got rid of every jam jar in the house, it wouldn't affect my life in one way. I don't, why do we even have the jam? A little jam on toast is pretty good. Do you know what you're doing there? What? You're just spreading sugar on toast. And spiking my insulin.

So while you're raising your blood, sugar, but that's, I mean, it's not bad. It's like, what's, what's the value of that? Why not just eat some fresh fruit? Why would you eat this condensed sugar bomb? You know what I can do? J.J., because of you, I can take some raspberries and mash it on toast. How's that? So, why? Why don't, why are we eating toast? I'm a, I, I, I count like, my macros. Squirming a little bit here. I'm not skimming. I count my macros. And one of the non-negotiables for me while I was losing weight was I could have a piece of sourdough. So I'm doing all my things and my sort of reward is my piece of sourdough.

Yeah, but Lauren, this, okay, now you're in a little therapy session. Excuse the show for a moment. Lauren has this thing, which I will say I do not have. I'm just going to put a blanket statement. Michael has no attachment to food. No, no, no, not the fat. But you have a thing where you need to negotiate everything. So, for example, if somebody gives you a plan and tells you this is the,

exact way to get something done. Lauren doesn't like the person delivering the message, even though she knows it's correct. So she has to, hold on, no. So she throws in a negotiation, like, well, I will do all these things, but then I will have my toast because I need it. It's like a control thing for her, right? I mean, don't you think I can have a piece of toast a couple times a week?

Sure. Depends what else you have going on in your life. Protein, weightlifting, walking, Pilates. Wait, hold on, hold on. No, no, in terms of your overall, like looking at your diet, absolutely, you don't, first of all, a piece of toast and it just depends if you're gluten sensitive or not even though sourdough is lower. So as long as you don't have issues with gluten, although I believe everybody has issues with gluten.

And our wheat sucks here because it's going to have glyphosate. So I'm never a fan, but, you know, maybe you're sitting in sauna and one or two days a week. It's not an issue. So I'm not, I don't think that's, I don't, I think we're majoring in a minor. Okay. If once or twice a week you're eating sourdough, if you're eating sourdough in the middle of the night in bed, that habit's the scary habit. It's anything.

It's like I'm getting up in the middle of the night. Maybe at 6.30. I was going to give you a way worse example about infidelity, but then I had a better one to not get myself in trouble. It'd be like this. It'd be like if I hire a business coach and they say, okay, Michael, you got to do this and your business will just crank and crush it and get everything right.

And I said, okay, I can do all that. But I just have to embezzle a little money like once a month. Like once a month, I just need to embezzle just a little bit. And that's like the same thing I think about these diets. It's important to create some wiggle room in life. Sure. Because in life, if it's absolutes, then you're either completely on it or you're failing. So there are the black and white people out there that do great with that.

But most people have to have a little gray in there too. I have to have a piece of sour notes a couple times a week. You say you have to have certain things. It's not like, oh, once in a while. You would love to. And part of life is what would you love? And if it's not like you're saying, you know, I have to have a heroin a couple times a week. What do you think about alcohol?

I had dry farm wines. Oh, so you will have a drink. I grew up outside of the wine country in Northern California. So you like your wine? Yes. Okay, I like dry farm wines too. I did a little co-brand with them. I like my wine.

I love Todd. Yeah, we've been, we've been buddies since forever. We actually did a test with him to see how much we could all drink without getting a hangover. And what is it? That's a fun test. How many glasses? We unnecessarily did that. We were in Palm Springs during the pandemic all together, and we were like literally went

through bottles and bottles of red wine and he had his dog with him, Pino, who drinks red wine. And all I know the next day I wake up, I had been wearing white, a white t-shirt, white shorts, and it's just battered because I was feeding Pino wine all night long. I'm like, oh my gosh. Sounds like a fun time. It was a fun time was had for all. Yeah, he sponsors. He sponsored our wedding. He needs to do a bread line and do, and do no glyphos. Like, well, how do you say? Well, you have to go to Europe to do. Because don't you notice when you're in Europe, you feel fine, we do. We do. We do. And you come here and it's just a. That's a whole nother chance.

So you wanted to be in the best shape of your life, you decided at 60. Oh, yeah. So the whole thing was happening with the, you know, screwing the container. I'm like, oh my gosh. So first thing I did was go get a Dexa. And I'll share the story of my husband too because it's wild. He actually had the wilder experience than me. So I go get a Dex at 59 and I trained for it.

I actually increased my calories, trained for it, pushed myself, and went in and did a Dexa and I was, 154 pounds and 13.9% body fat, same weight, same body fat as I was at 39, which is crazy. My husband, who's always been athletic, 6-2, he was 25% body fat. And I'm like, but it's not me saying anything now. It's the dexex. I was like, whoa, you know? And you wouldn't have known it.

That's what, like, he didn't look ripped and lean, but he didn't look, he just, he didn't look fat. He just looked a little soft. To pause for one second for men and women, what is a range? Just because I think people are like, what percentage should we be? So here's the reality. And the percentages are crazy. What I learned in grad school 25 years ago and what the norms are now are different. I'm like, but we haven't changed. So I'm going to give you where the essential fat is and what I think they are, but the numbers are all over the place. So women have 10 to 13% essential fat. That's like the fat we need to have in our body to survive. contrast that with men, three to five percent.

Okay. So men have much less fat to begin with, right? So men, what I learned in school was that athletic males would be like five to 12 percent, healthy males will be somewhere in the, you know, 10 to 18 percent. And they could go up to say 22 percent. But really, I always looked when I was training guys, 10 to 18 percent was where I was trying to get them. And for women, it was athletic women would be like 15 to 22 percent.

And then you'll see the physique model girl. So when they really rip down, they'll get into 8 to 10%. And the men will get down to like 3%. They'll get as low as close to physiological as they can. And then healthy women, somewhere in the 18 to 25% range. So for him to be 25% was unbelievable. Now, fortunately, if he hadn't quite been doing all the things that had asked him to do, well, this kicked his butt into high gear.

So a couple things happened though, and one of them is the big differentiator that I wish we'd done differently because it's impossible to parse it out. He went on testosterone. So that made a big difference. And how old is he? He was 57. Okay, but that's an appropriate. Yeah. And he needed it. He was down at 300, brought him up to 900. So he went on testosterone, doubled up. We both take Midapure timelines when you take Midapure. No, what's that? You don't? What's that? Midepure is uralithin A that triggers mitophagy that helps you get stronger. Oh my gosh. Okay, I'll hook you up. So we both went on mitochondria, but he started really tracking his protein too. Now, I had pushed myself and now I wanted to get lean.

So I went in and started doing cycling caloric restriction where you figure out how much you really eat, which you do over a course of a week or two. so you can get your average calories, and then five days a week, and I learned this from Dr. Bill Campbell. If you had him on, amazing guy. He's doing menopause physique research right now. Cool. Anyway, 25% caloric restriction five days a week, normal, two days a week. And so I did that. Tim just started tracking what he was eating and massively upped his protein. If this isn't a good discovery, I don't know what is. Lightbox. Lab grown diamonds. They're priced starting at $500 per carat.

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We use chronometer. Chronometer. You're the second person that said that that's good on this show. That's a great one. So I actually pushed my protein up to more like 1.5 grams per pound of target body weight. He pushed his up to a gram per pound of target body weight. In eight months, he went from 25% body fat down to 10. Wow. Wow. I know, I was a little irritated with him. He dropped 27 pounds of fat. It's so annoying. It's so annoying. It's like I just, I think I want to change. It's so annoying. I can't even go on and on. I know. Anyway, 27 pounds of fat loss, 24 pounds of muscle put on. Now, it did testosterone treatment? Sure. Probably, you know, that's why I look at and go, well, testosterone treatment. But still. I love blaming genetics and testosterone. It's like, ah, just because you have testosterone and genetics. No, but I think it's relevant for you to share that story.

because I think for men of that age, that's drastic change and important. And it's like, you know, obviously a combination of things. What happened to you? I went down to 10% body fat, which is my, like, I, that was what I would sit at. And what are you right now? Because I think you look amazing. Somewhere in the 10 to 12% I'm about to go do another Dexza. So you're, this is the thing that I find so interesting about people that.

But I'm abnormally, like I need to couch that because this is not normal for a woman. Okay. Like that, like a woman, if she got to say 18% would be amazing and fantastic. You just, you just like to push it is what you're saying? I just, this is your life. This is where I've been for, I mean, I started lifting weights when I was a teen and I've always been really naturally lean. I met my birth mom. I'm adopted.

I met my birth mom in my 20s. Same type of body. So you're just naturally lean. Well, no, if I, I mean, if I didn't lift weights and didn't exercise and ate all to process foods, I would look like, you know, I'd be 30 pounds heavier and probably 30% body fat. But I think what's so interesting about high performers is it never stops. You're constantly checking yourself. Like, you're constantly going to the dex. It's not like it's just like one day you get to this like top of the mountain and like you're done. You're constantly. Well, but we don't stay still.

We're like if you are not consistently pushing it. And you hear like Dr. Peter Atia talks about the centenary in decathlon and what do you want to be able to do in your, 90s and 100 and the fact that we're on this downhill slide. You look at the statistics that starting around age 30, we're losing up to 1% of our muscle mass a year. It's like 3 to 8% a decade and starts to double after the age of 60. And it's twice as much strength than three times the power. And I'm like, I'm not going to let that happen. And that was my big takeaway as I started to go into my 60. I go, what if I could be in the best shape of my life at 60? What if I started to do things that I haven't done for years.

Like I went and got a sprint treadmill and started sprinting. And I went, all right. And I've had, I blew my knee out at 17. I put off my total knee replacement until I was 52. They kept telling me you gotta have it. I kept putting it off. But you did one?

I did a total knee and I had to do a total hip because of it. Oh, that's a brutal. And I have to do another one because of that whole stupid point ballet injury because six feet tall girls should not do point ballet. Like it's a dumb, it's a dumb sport for us, like gymnastics.

Bad sports for us, right? I did not know that about ballet. Well, I was doing a period. Yeah, bad. I mean, six feet, who, if you're six feet tall on point, who are you dancing with? No one. You know, LeBron's not doing ballet. No, LeBron is not doing ballet.

Our producer does ballet, and it's not a Carson, our other producer. What do you eat in a day, walk us through it? Everyone loves this shit, walk us through. Isn't it so funny? People love it. They love it. We did a show with a bunch of. of us one time with Sarah Gottfried and Dave Asprey and everyone's like, what do you eat?

Everyone wants to know. How do you cheat? I'm like, you're going to be really disappointed. It's not that exciting. I'm sure it's routine, but like we also want to know like, are you waking up and having coffee or is it water? Is it water with lemon? Do you have electrolytes? We want the whole day. So tell us the day. So I'll tell you what I do and what you should do. When you're at home. Well, but I do. So I travel 50 to 70% of the time. So my routine stays the same. The only thing that's different when I travel is I can't go do my little hot sauna I have two types of sauna at home.

Okay. And I think that, you know, you got to major in the majors first, but then. You get to get the tools up. I think sanas are amazing. We have a cold plunge too, but I get up. I know you're supposed to wait 90 minutes to have coffee. If I had to wait 90 minutes, someone's getting their stabbed. I waited four hours this morning.

I can wait. Oh, I can't wait. You can't wait. I, no, I don't. Well, here's the thing. I'm sure I could wait because I've waited for fasting blood test, but I don't want to. What if I stop doing sourdough every night in the bed and you stop, you don't do sourdough every night in a bed? Not anymore. I don't. What if you're a non-issue? What about nothing? Well, look at her negotiating with me. I told you. I told you. I told you. I'm not stopping coffee. I love it. It's one of my most favorite food groups. Coffee's good for coffee. I think coffee is a great health food. Like if you look at it, it helps with muscle protein synthesis, helps you burn fat. It's good for focus. It's got all those polyphenols. I love coffee. We actually travel all over the world. We have.

The European plugs, we have the U.S. plugs, we travel with coffee makers, wherever we go. What's the best coffee? So we alternate around, like, you know, sometimes we'll do Dave's danger, sometimes we do purity. We've been playing around with my buddy, Vincent Pedre, just came out with this happy-get coffee. So we got a bunch of different ones that people get that. Okay, so you wake up, you have your coffee. Wake up, my husband gets, I wake up, go to the bathroom, get on the scale, take my thyroid medication. My husband pushes, my husband either takes the dogs out to pee or pushes the coffee maker and the espresso maker.

Sometimes we're meditating, sometimes we're not. We used to meditate every single morning. We got a new palm chip puppy. She is not on the meditation train yet, so it's hit or miss. So that's about 50% of the time is meditation. Then this is my money time for my brain. So I get my writing stuff done. And usually I wake up and something has to come out.

So program or whatever I'm doing. If I'm at home, we do the hot sauna, cold plunge. If I'm here, I don't or wherever I am. Then I eat breakfast. I try to eat breakfast about an hour or two after waking up. What are you eating? If I'm traveling, it just depends. Like, I finally can eat dairy again, which is so great because Greek-style yogurt is the easiest thing.

And if I'm traveling, I'll do Greek-style yogurt and I'll either stir in my paleo-protein or stirring my collagen into it. Oh, that's a good idea. You take the Greek yogurt and you put the protein in. Yeah, to kick it up. Mine. I have my own. Yeah, I have my own stuff. I basically make the stuff I use, except for timelines might appear because it's patented. So I use theirs and Qualia. I take their synolytic and their NAD plus. And then if I have to focus, I take their mind. So I do either Greek-style yogurt with collagen or paleo, my paleo-shake, and this is what I love. And this is my little ultra-process food thing. But see, I think we need to distinguish between, like, heinous ultra-processed food, process food, and whole food. food. I love cereal so much. Like cereal is my favorite food on the planet next to when I was growing up I was called nickname Poppy because I ate so many pop tarts, but I ate pop tarts or Captain Crunch. So Catalina Crunch makes a Captain Crunch knockoff that's high protein and fiber. If you can have your Captain Crunch, can I have my sourdell? But I don't eat Captain Crunch. I eat Catalina Crunch. Okay. And it's basically 11 grams of protein and a bunch of fiber. So I throw it on top of my Greek style yogurt. So I get about 50 grams of. protein in there. That sounds good. It's amazing. I either do that or I make a smoothie with my

protein powder and then I'll throw it on top of that because I make my smoothies really thick and I eat them with a spoon. Yeah. If I'm traveling, I have access to none of that, then I do an egg. Like this morning at the hotel, I did an egg white omelet with two eggs. Okay. Because I want the eggs, but I can't get enough protein from just eggs without overloading everything. So you do an egg And then you add the egg white. Well, so this one, they had an egg white. They were completely confused. I'm like, just add two eggs to the egg white omelet.

This was going over their head. So I'm like, all right, just give me two hard eggs. Two eggs on the side. And an egg white omelet with some feta cheese and spinach and mushrooms. Okay. So that's my other thing I'll do. Lunch today, I went to the well. Okay.

Oh, that's great. I was like, oh, we're right by the well. So I had bone broth and some salmon and beets and arugula. But very typical lunch for me, We make double our, we make a ton of protein every night. Whenever we're making protein, we make extra for lunch the next day. And then I'll either do leftover vegetables or put it on a salad. And then I have a bunch of blueberries.

I usually eat like a cup or two of blueberries, blackberries every day. Then dinner at home, my husband makes the protein. And we have like a freezers full of all the butcher box meats. And then we also get the Piedmontees, these amazing grass-fayed sirloin tips. and these huge bronco, like these big, they're like big beef ribs. Yum. Oh, they're so amazing. Yeah.

The reason we have them is we went to a barbecue place in Austin and got one, and I've been obsessed with them ever since. Oh, my God, you've got to send me the link to that. They're incredible. So we always make, you know, protein for dinner or wild fish from Vital Choice, or he does these air-friar chicken thighs that are amazing. And then I make vegetables. And my favorite thing to make is cauliflower rice pilaf.

Yum. Love this. Have you posted this on your Instagram? I don't know if I've done that one. I'm working on my next book, so I'm working on all the recipes right now. But the other thing, we do a lot of mushrooms. We do a lot of mushrooms. I'm kind of obsessed with mushrooms. Good for you, huh? They're amazing. If you're doing dessert, are you doing wine? Are you doing a dessert? I don't really do. He eats dark chocolate. Sometimes I might eat some blueberries. I'd rather have a glass of wine personally. I'm not a big dessert. Like, if you said to me, would you rather have a ribi or a piece of cake? It's the ribi with salt all day long. Yeah, for sure. Like, that's just just always been my perfect. What is your actual at this point? Because right when I walked in, I noticed you have beautiful arms. Everyone's trying to get these arms right now. They're like ballerina arms. Ballerina arms. What is your workout schedule?

How much do you personally lift to look the way you look? Yeah, this is funny because I have so many women come up and they go, I want to get your arms, but I don't want to get big. And I'm like, okay, so I'm not going to lift heavy. I'm like what you're, I just want to be toned. I go, what is toned? What is toned? Toned means you're lean and you've got good muscle mass.

Yeah. So you just have to make sure that as you're building muscle, you're also losing fat. So, you know, if you're really, if your whole goal was to get bigger and stronger, you'd have to up your calories and you'd just get bigger. But the reality is like when I used to train women one-on-one, I would cut their calories, get their protein up, and they would put on muscle and lose fat. They get tighter and smaller, right? So the biggest things that I do, I don't do any independent little single lever moves. I do all really core functional moves. Like I think that if you want to get better at life, do it in the gym.

Like, I'm not training at the gym to get better at training at the gym, right? I'm training at the gym to get better at life. And at life, I travel really heavy. Like, generally we'll have two or three 70-pound suitcases each. Wow. Like, we travel all the time. What are you bringing in there? My TRX or coffee maker or supplements.

Like we bring a lot of stuff. Oh my God. You and Michael would be misbatched. A lot of stuff. No, no. I like to have a separate, I guess you're doing. You're bringing in a separate suitcase with all the stuff and then one for the clothes, right? Yeah.

Yeah. And then I have like, you know, camera, well, camera setups with the lights and mics and stuff. I have a lot of stuff with me. Okay. All the time. So I have to be able to throw things in the overhead. I have to be able to pick stuff, right? You have to be able to do stuff, squat and deadlift, et cetera.

So for me, a tip. A typical upper body workout is I'm really working on getting and being able to do five sets of 10 pull-ups. Right now I'm at four sets of eight. It's still good. It's not bad for a girl. Right? But I do it this way. I don't do it this way. So I do assisted pull-ups or pull-downs at the gym. And then I do close grip pull-ups. I do bent over rows and upright rows. I'm doing a lot of the stuff she's doing. How many days a week are you lifting? So I hit each body part at least twice a sometimes three days a week. So I'll either split and do upper body pushing and pulling one day, hip and thigh hinging the next, or I will do all of it once. If I do it all together one day,

I'll do two exercises for each area. I'll walk you through exactly what I do. If I do, if I split it, I'll do three exercises for each area. So example, if I'm going to do an upper body pushing and pulling day, and a lot of times I will super set, do push, pull, push, pull, I'll show you, I'll explain how. So I can get it done in less time. So let's say I'm at home doing this. I would do push-ups to failure and then I would do pull-ups, push-ups to failure, pull-ups, right? Then I would do a bent-over row and a dip, and a bent-over row and a dip, and then I'd do an upright row and an overhead press. So I'd alternate, but back and forth between them. And I'm doing the heaviest way I can handle. I'm working in, you know, you can do anywhere from six.

to 30 reps for hypertrophy range. But I generally work in like a six to 10 rep range, about two-minute break. And if I'm super setting, then I use the break to do the other exercise. So it sounds like you're very disciplined with your schedule and with the way you eat. So here's how I get myself to be disciplined with my exercise. I write out my little plan and I like to check things off. Oh, I like that. Right. So I just like to check things off. If someone's listening and they want to work with you. What does that look like? Where can they find you? Tell us your Instagram if someone wants to work directly with you. So I very rarely take on one-on-one clients. I have a couple at a time. Okay. However, they can DM me on Instagram at JJ. Virgin on that. I do have a program that I take

people through as a group called my Powerful Aging Method program because it's the lineup for my book coming out in 2026. And what I'm also lining up is when I was in my 20s, I coached a lot of women in their 50s. And I feel like I need to write an apology, a public apology from my 25-year-old self and booty shorts to those 50-year-old menopausal women. I was like, no, the hormones aren't doing that. It's like, I'm sorry. So I'm actually creating a certification program for health coaches and trainers who work with people, who want to work with people 40 plus who are also 40 plus. because it's just like, you know, when I was a trainer, I worked, I did a lot of prenatal training. And once I was pregnant, I was like, oh, I mean, you can know it theoretically, but it's very different when you know it intimately.

You also forget, right? You get pregnant and you're like, oh, that was easy. And then you get pregnant again and you're like, whoa, I forgot. Where can everyone shop your supplements, find you? I know we never even talked creatine. Oh, my goodness. A creatine. Well, you got to come back on when you're like to.

your book launches. My husband name that product shiatine because it's the one that doesn't blow women. Sheatine. Sheatine. If you're scared of creatine, go check out shia teen. Go get chieotine. It has creatine, taurine. So it has creatine, tarring and magnesium because they have a exponential effect. Magnesium and creatine together, you get better results than one or the other below. Nothing magical is going to happen from swalling a creatine pill. You know that. I know that. But I can take, I mean, I take creatine every day. You can take it. Yeah. Right? Take three of them.

Okay. Torine helps creatine be absorbed better and uptake in the muscles better. And magnesium actually helps creatine kinase, make the enzyme creatine kinase, which you need to make fossil creatine, which is why you're taking creatine. So creatine's great for women because it helps not just in your body, but also in your brain. And really important for mood, for cognition, for bones, slows down bone loss. helps with more muscle strength and also that timeline I have to get you guys on that too

but it helps you lift harder so you're going to get better results from your exercise and better muscle and better bone but also gives you more energy helps you create energy we're both big creatine fans I love that yours doesn't make you bloat at jj.j.orgian

on Instagram everyone you guys I found her on Instagram I love your page I think what you're doing for women is absolutely amazing I can't wait to see your next book come out you have to come back on the show love to thank you for coming on i'll keep you updated on the sourdough stuff yes yes