The Dr. Hyman Show - The Importance of Weight Training, Protein, and Muscle

Episode Date: June 30, 2025

Muscle plays a powerful role in keeping us healthy and living longer, but most people start losing it after age 30—and that loss can drive chronic disease and early aging. The good news is that strength training and eating enough protein can help prevent this decline, improve blood sugar control, and reduce the risk of issues like diabetes, dementia, heart disease, and depression. Muscle isn’t just for movement—it acts like an organ, releasing special compounds called myokines that fight inflammation and support everything from brain function to hormone balance. Resistance training also boosts mood, sharpens memory, strengthens immunity, and supports better sex hormone levels as we age. To get the most out of it, aim for strength training two to four times a week, and make sure you're getting enough high-quality protein—especially at your first and last meals of the day. In this episode, I discuss, along with Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, why strength training, muscle, and protein intake are vital for a healthy metabolism, hormones, longevity, and much more. Dr. Gabrielle Lyon is board certified in family medicine and completed a combined research and clinical fellowship in geriatrics and nutritional sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.  She completed her undergraduate training in nutritional sciences at the University of Illinois. Dr. Lyon is a subject-matter expert and educator in the practical application of protein types and levels for health, performance, aging, and disease prevention. She has continued to receive mentorship from Dr. Donald Layman, Ph.D., over the course of two decades to help bring protein metabolism and nutrition from the bench to the bedside.  This episode is brought to you by BIOptimizers. Head to bioptimizers.com/hyman and use code HYMAN10 to save 10%. Full-length episodes can be found here: Why Weight Training Is Key to Longevity & Fighting Chronic Disease Top Muscle Health Secrets to Boost Longevity and Reverse Aging How To Get More Protein In Your Diet

Coming up on this episode of the Dr. Hyman show. Now after age 30, you lose as much as 5% of your muscle mass per decade. Most men will lose 30% of their muscle mass in their lifetime. But muscle is the organ of longevity. I'm all about food first, but some nutrients like magnesium are nearly impossible to get enough of through diet alone. Our soils are depleted and things like sugar,

caffeine, and stress drain our levels. Magnesium supports over 300 functions in the body. Think metabolism, sleep, energy, pain and more. That's why I recommend magnesium breakthrough by Bioptimizers. It's the only supplement with all seven forms of magnesium for full body support. Get 10% off at Bioptimizers.com slash Hymen

with code HYMAN10. Before we jump into today's episode, I wanna share a few ways you can go deeper on your health journey. While I wish I could work with everyone one-on-one, there just isn't enough time in the day, so I built several tools to help you take control of your health.

If you're looking for guidance, education, and community, check out my private membership, the Hyman Hive, for live Q&As, exclusive content, and direct connection. For real-time lab testing and personalized insights into your biology, visit Function Health. You can also explore my curated, Why is it important to focus on strength training or resistance training or weights or body weights where you have to build muscle? Why is that important? Well, we have a metabolic health crisis. That's why 93% of Americans have a busted metabolism or metabolic dysfunction. Six in ten Americans have one chronic disease and four in ten have

more than one. Even worse, one in ten Americans have type 2 diabetes and probably one in two have pre-diabetes or maybe even more if you're looking at the 93% depending on how you define it. So that's terrifying. 43% of Americans who are adults here have obesity, which is terrible. That's frightening to me. We also have a diet of too much ultra-processed foods, about 60% of our diet. We also have those foods accounting for about 90% of the added sugar in our diet or about 150 pounds per person of sugar per year. That's a lot of sugar. Fewer than 23% of Americans are actually meeting the recommended amount of exercise, which

is defined as 150 minutes of moderate or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise per week. Our diet combined with our sedentary lifestyle is absolutely wreaking havoc on our metabolic health. And metabolic dysfunction is the root cause of obesity, of type two diabetes, of Alzheimer's, other dementias, fatty liver, kidney disease, and early death. So it's just basically the thing that kills

most of us, right? From cancer, heart disease, diabetes, dementia, kidney disease, many many other things. Even high blood pressure is caused by this. Now metabolic dysfunction leads to certain things that go on in your muscle. It becomes filled with fat. It's more like a rib eye than a filet mignon, which you do not want. Maybe to eat it, it tastes good, but not to have it in your body. Now intramuscular fat, which is basically what most of us have, it's called being skinny fat if you're not overweight

or being overweight with marbled fat. It's really associated with this phenomenon of insulin resistance, which is the biggest driver of all age-related disease in aging. It's also associated with lower amounts of strength and loss of muscle. We call it sarcopenia, one of the biggest drivers of all diseases in aging, but almost never gets diagnosed. And we're going to talk about how to diagnose it

and what to do about it. It also drives more inflammation. So the less muscle you have, the more inflammation in your body you have, and the more risk for heart disease and many, many other diseases like dementia, cancer, diabetes, all these are inflammatory diseases. It also makes you more tired because your mitochondria aren't working. When you have this problem of insulin resistance in the skeletal muscle, it can often be there decades before you ever see a rise in your blood sugar or get type 2 diabetes. So what if building up lean muscle mass with resistance training could help us avoid this metabolic health crisis? Well, it can't.

Muscle is more than just about looking good or portraying a fitness aesthetic. It's really a metabolic organ that secretes molecules that promote health or create disease, depending on its health and functionality. There's something called myokines. You probably never heard of, maybe you never heard of them. You've probably heard of cytokines, cytokine storm from COVID.

Well, myokines are molecules that help regulate inflammation and your muscles secrete their own messenger molecules. There's over 600 peptides that have been identified to be secreted by the skeletal muscle. This is huge. These are called myokines. They're messenger molecules that regulate everything in our body. And they're released in response to healthy muscle contraction. And the good news is they exert health promoting and metabolism enhancing effects. And they're also anti-inflammatory. And that's good for us. Myokines talk to our bones.

They talk to our brain. They talk to our fat tissue. They help balance our hormones, our blood sugar. They support our detox system. They help our blood flow and our mental health. Now many of the protective benefits of exercise in short and long term come from the secretion of myokines. Now these myokines are particularly effective in the elderly. It's really important because they go down when you

get older and you want to build up more of them. So let's talk a little bit about muscle and longevity. I wrote about it in my book Young Forever. It's a really important topic. It's something I actually didn't really wanna pay much attention to until I was older, but I bit the bullet and I've done a whole effort for myself on strength training, which is really transform my own agility, strength, stability, capacity to do things.

And it's quite amazing. I wish I'd gotten into it earlier, but better late than never. Now after age 30, you lose as much as 5% of your muscle mass per decade. Most men will lose 30% of their muscle mass in their lifetime, that's a lot. But muscle is the organ of longevity.

It's the currency of longevity. Those with lean muscle tend to live longer. Those with more lean muscle tend to live longer. Having and using muscle is one of the most effective ways to slow the whole aging process. Now what else is exercise good for in strength training? Well, it's good for your brain. Now one of the things we see a lot

in people with Alzheimer's and dementia is sarcopenia and the loss of strength. And that's why in studies resistance exercise has been shown to improve cognitive function and memory in the elderly with cognitive decline. So what's the mechanism here? How does it actually do this? Well, it boosts something called BDNF.

That stands for brain-derived neurotrophic factor. It's like miracle growth for the brain. Now in human studies, resistance exercise for about 12 weeks to about six months has been shown to increase this BDNF, or brain-derived neurotrophic factor. And that promotes neuroplasticity which is the reorganizing rewiring of your brain's neural networks which is good connections

between brain cells. It also helps stimulate neurogenesis which is the formation of new nerve cells. Basically you get new brain cells and you get better connected brain cells that are smarter. One study found much higher levels of BDNF even just after one resistance training session. That's not bad. Now it also reduces the expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines that are bad for your brain. Exercise also enhances the clearance of something called amyloid beta plaques,

which is one of the known pathologies of Alzheimer's. And it doesn't just hold up for older folks, right? We don't just want older folks to exercise. Everybody needs to do it. It also works on young people too. A systematic review and meta-analysis reported a small, but positive effect on the cognitive and academic performance in adolescents

who participated in resistance training and association between muscular fitness and academic achievement. So that's pretty interesting. If you're more muscularly fit, you do better in school. Not bad. Same as with memory hoarding for university students. Resistance training is associated with improved attention,

concentration, memory, with enhanced language, and math skills. Not bad. And the way it works is it's regulated by the production of certain neurotransmitters and neuromodulators, things that affect your brain function that are resulting from exercise, like lactate, BDNF, something called IGF-1, which is a growth hormone regulator, vascular endothelial growth factor or BDGF, which helps

your blood vessels stay healthy, acetylcholine, which is a neurotransmitter, dopamine, epinephrine, serotonin, all these are neurotransmitters. So that's all good. It also increases blood flow in the brain. Now there is something called the healthy user bias. So that may be a factor, but maybe it's the students who do resistance training tend to be more physically active.

Maybe they eat healthier. Maybe that's why they're doing better in school possible. But I guarantee you exercise is having a role. What else is a strength training and exercise good for? Well, your mental health. We know that resistance training has antidepressant effects and research actually tells us that exercise is as or more effective than counseling or medication

for alleviating depression or anxiety. That's pretty damn good. So better than counseling, which makes you cheaper and better than medications, which often have side effects. In fact, one review published in the British Medical Journal included more than a thousand randomized clinical trials. There were about 120,000 people in those trials. It was the most comprehensive study

on mental health and exercise ever done. And what they found was modern intensity and we'll call HIIT training, which is high intensity interval training, offered more mental health improvements than lower intensity exercise. So workouts weren't long, just 30 minutes daily, most days of the week.

And I did one this morning, it was a super high intensity workout with bands and strength training where I also did cardio as part of it because I'm doing it very quickly and you get your heart rate up, like mine was up to 167. All that counts. Now all types of physical activity were helpful, but resistance training offered the biggest benefit for depression. Now studies report greater self-acceptance. They report personal growth, flow state, social affiliations and connections, and autonomy in your life from lifting weights. Not bad. What else is strength

training good for? Well, the list goes on and on. It's good for your heart. The American Heart Association recently released a scientific statement that resistance training can actually reduce all cause and cardiovascular mortality. It means death from any cause and death from heart disease. Now when you combine resistance training with aerobic exercise, you get double the benefits. A 46% reduction in all cause and cardiovascular mortality

versus about a 29% benefit from strength training alone, or 18% from cardiovascular exercise alone. A resistance training also improves other factors that relate to cardiovascular health, like blood pressure. It reduces your diabetes risk. It improves your triglycerides and cholesterol. It helps your mood, your body composition, your blood sugar control, inflammation, sleep,

blood vessel health, the quality of your life, and overall level of fitness. So it's pretty darn good. And what else is strength training good for? Well, sex. It's good for your sex hormones. Aging beyond 30 to 40 years is associated with a 1 to 3 percent decline per year in circulating testosterone concentration in men. So as you get older, your testosterone levels drop if you're a guy. Now this decline really results in a condition known as andropause, which is like menopause, but for men.

And studies show that immediately after resistance exercise training, your testosterone levels can increase significantly depending on the intensity and duration of that strength training. The acute spike is temporary, lasts about 30 to 60 minutes after exercise, but over time, resistance training and doing it regularly

has increased resting baseline testosterone levels in men, especially when they combine with adequate nutrition and recovery. And that does a lot of good things for you. It improves your libido and sex drive, your blood flow, sexual performance. So when resistance training is combined with aerobic exercise in a series of trials,

men experience a 15% improvement in their rectal dysfunction, which is great. You don't need a Viagra. Resistance training helps counteract age-related declines in testosterone because it preserves muscle mass and strength as men age. And maintaining lean muscle mass is really important to maintain and sustain healthy testosterone production

because that's what happens when you exercise your muscle, you make more testosterone. On the other hand, endurance-based exercises like steady state cardio don't really increase testosterone levels as much. In women, same thing. Resistance training stimulates the release of testosterone. It also helps increase estrogen, which is important for maintaining bone health for menopausal women. And it balances the ratio of estrogen to testosterone and improves insulin sensitivity,

which helps a lot of women's health issues like PCOS and irregular menstrual cycles. So in a review on resistance training women with PCOS, which is common and causes infertility, irregular cycles, acne, facial hair, and a lot of things, researchers found that resistance training interventions improved insulin sensitivity in these women, improved their functional strength,

and led to fat loss around the belly, we call it visceral fat, which is really important for managing PCOS, because it's really not an ovarian problem, it's a nutritional problem related to insulin resistance. Exercise and strength training is also good for your immune system. Now resistance training boosts immune function.

It helps the body better fight infections. It reduces inflammation throughout your body, so it's great. And it also has been shown to improve the function of various immune cells, such as your natural killer cells, which are roaming around fighting cancer and infections, and your T cells,

which enhances your body's ability to fight infections and all sorts of diseases. It also boosts your body's ability to fight infections and all sorts of diseases. It also boosts your body's production of antioxidant enzymes, your body's own antioxidant system, like superoxide dismutase or SOD, glutathione peroxides. These are enzymes your body makes, but when you exercise with strength training, it increases their activity.

And by enhancing these antioxidant defenses, resistance training lowers your oxidative stress levels, it protects your cells, it protects your cells, it helps your mitochondria stay protected, and helps them from all the damage that can accelerate aging. Okay, so that's a lot of benefits. Your heart, your brain, your mood, sex, pretty much everything. Weight loss, metabolism, it's just kind of a panacea, right? It's amazing. If there was a drug that did all that, it would be a trillion dollar drug, trust me. And yet, you know what?

It's available to you, anywhere, anytime. All you need is your body weight and you can do it. I mean, you can do other stuff too, but it's easy to get started. So let's talk about how to get started with training. You don't have to lift like a bodybuilder to get the benefits. You don't have to be in the gym all day.

Studies actually show that people can maintain strength You don't have to lift like a bodybuilder to get the benefits. You don't have to be in the gym all day. Studies actually show that people can maintain strength and muscle with as little as 30% of their one rep max, as long as they push themselves to momentary fatigue. So you've got to kind of get your muscles tired. So what is a one rep max? I think of it as a point where you can't do another repetition with good form. You might be able to get the weight up one or two more times by sacrificing technique

and contorting your body, but that's not necessary and it also puts you at risk for injury. So you don't need to worry about the amount of weight you're lifting. That's why bands, light dumbbells, even your body weight can all be effective ways of working out. Now, how much resistance training do you need to do to see results?

Well, in terms of minimum effective dose, it's actually not a lot. If you just want to maintain the strength you have, research shows that just one workout per week, one set per exercise is gonna do the trick. So it's really a minimum viable dose. I don't recommend that low a dose, but that's just to maintain where you are.

Now the caveat here is that the one set needs to be all out. So again, you push your muscles to fatigue, so you can't do another rep. Or if you did it, it would be bad form. Now, if you're a beginner, you can just do a full body workout plan using all the muscle groups in your body,

all the major muscle groups one day a week. And you can do more. And there's just common simple exercises, right? Squats, pushups, we call bent over rows, lunges, planks, push-ups, we call bent over rows, lunges, planks, dumbbell shoulder press, bicep curls, tricep dips, super simple set of things. You might not need to know everything about how to do them.

You can learn on YouTube. We probably want to get someone to show you if you don't know what you're doing, but it's really important. Now what about maintaining your muscle? So if you just want to maintain your muscle, basically one day a week for 20, 35 year olds is fine. But as you age, you're going to need more.

It's just the way it goes. That's the bad news about aging. You can stay fit and healthy and strong, but you need to eat more protein and you need to do more exercise. So not less. 60 to 75 year olds will need two workouts a week with two to three sets per exercise.

And I encourage people to actually do more, probably three to four times a week. One day you can do upper body like bench press, bent over rows, overhead press, bicep curls. One day you can do lower body like squats, deadlifts, lunges, leg press. What about increasing strength and muscle size? If you just want to increase and not just maintain,

for most people lifting weights three to four times a week is going to help you significantly increase muscle and strength and give you lots of the health benefits that we talked about associated with resistance training. It's also a good strategy when you're trying to lose weight. Now some resistance training is better than none. So make sure you set realistic goals that align with your life. Break down big roles into smaller parts. Where are you currently? Where do you want to be? What's the best way to get there? Take baby steps and so forth. I know, I actually never liked resistance training. I never liked the gym.

I thought it was smelly. I was intimidated because I was kind of a skinny guy and I didn't really feel good going to the gym with all the big guys with bald muscles. So I kind of avoided it. But I started doing strength training. I joined a gym. I got a trainer.

I learned the basic mechanics. I worked then with bands, especially during COVID. And I got really strong just doing three to four days a week at home. It took me 30 minutes in and out, really simple. And I didn't have enough to drive to the gym. So I think encourage you to learn how to do this. It's critical.

And there's just so many resources out there. There's just no excuse. So how do you make resistance training work from your schedule? Well, I travel a lot. I bring my bands with me everywhere. They're basically a pound or less, it's this big, and I bunch them up and they fit in my suitcase,

even a day carry on or a light suitcase. You can use body weight workouts, planks, squats, pushups, and also block out the time that works for you. Even if it's only 15 minutes broken up into five minute chunks throughout the day, just do something, right? Maybe you look at your roadblocks, work,

your kids' schedule, events, holidays. You know, I want to start doing pushups and I, you know, I just was busy and I just didn't like exercise. And I'm like, okay, I'm going to take a, every day I take a shower. And I usually take some minutes for the shower to heat up my house. So I have like a couple of minutes while it's warming up.

And in those couple of minutes, I would get on the floor and I would do pushups as many as I could possibly do. And that was great. And it really helped me get into the string training and a very low friction level, where I would do tricep dips just in my bathroom on the bench. So really simple stuff to get started.

So you just make sure you do a commitment to yourself and hold yourself accountable. Do something, right? A fast pace walk around the neighborhood with weights on your body. Just do 15 pushups, 25 air squats, something. Just do something, right? A fast-paced walk around the neighborhood with weights on your body, just do 15 pushups, 25 air squats, something. Just do something, okay? Now, what else do you need to do to build muscle?

Strength training for sure, and 75% of our muscle mass is related to strength training, but the other 25%, and this is a key 25%, comes from our diet. Now, we need to make sure we're eating enough protein to build muscle back up. You need to eat muscle to build muscle. It's just how it goes. It contains all the building blocks to build muscle. You can get plant protein but you have to supplement it with amino acids that you find in animal protein in order to act the right combination to build muscle and turn on the muscle building switch or what we call muscle protein synthesis. And you need about one gram per pound

of ideal body weight if you're trying to build muscle. You can do 0.7 if you're already there and if you don't need as much but basically 0.7 to one gram per pound of ideal body weight is what you want to do. If you don't like working out at the gym which I don't really like, try other things. You can do rucking. It's probably the best exercise most people don't know about that's putting a backpack on with weights. Add loads for your muscles and bones, increases demand on your heart for a brisk walk,

so it's great. And it's been shown to be helpful for back health and it doesn't require a lot of special skills. You just get a weighted vest or something that actually maybe is better. You can throw weights in a backpack. That can be a little hard on your body sometimes. And just go for a hike somewhere

where there's mountains or hills. Yoga also can be helpful. I did a lot of yoga your body sometimes. And just go for a hike somewhere where there's mountains or hills. Yoga also can be helpful. I did a lot of yoga for my life. I didn't find it to build a lot of muscle, but if you're really aggressive with it, I think you can. Now, does all this sound too intimidating? Maybe you don't have time in your schedule. Maybe you can try exercise snacks.

Now, what are exercise snacks? Well, exercise snacks are isolated bouts of vigorous exercising, lasting about less than a minute, and they're performed periodically throughout the day. Just like snacking, right? But this is a good kind of snack. Exercise snacks can help offset the effects

of sitting all day. Now the feasibility and time efficiency of exercise snacks makes them really suitable for incorporating between activities of daily life, right? And it leaves you with the need for planning and adequate all kinds of leisure time for structured exercise. So every hour, maybe you have 10 to 20 air squats, stand at your desk, get your heart rate up

by going for a brisk walk, take the stairs, bring resistance bands to your office, do all those things. It's all possible to incorporate it into your life. When I was just starting my medical journey as an emergency room physician, magnesium was a critical element of our care. We used it to treat all kinds of conditions from arrhythmia to constipation to preeclampsia.

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Just head over to biooptimizers.com slash Hymen with code HYMEN10. That's biooptimizers.com slash hymen with code HYMEN10 at checkout. I have individuals that I see them go to the gym and I watch them train. I know that they're not training in a capacity that they need to be, even though they're doing fun stuff like ropes and battle ropes and they're trying to jump on a bosu ball and all of these fancy field athletic type things. But at the end of the day, they're not able to generate enough power. They're not able to generate enough force.

They're not focused on strength and or hypertrophy. Strength is obvious. Hypertrophy is muscle growth. I would argue that if you focus on muscle growth, you're going to get stronger, you're going to get more force, you're going to get more power, you're going to able to do these things. And he said, Gabrielle, think about high ground activity. I'm like, that, but that is high ground activity.

He said- When you're on a mountain? Exactly. I'm like, is there a Sherpa's here? What are we doing? I don't know what high ground is. And he said, focusing on muscle hypertrophy is the most important thing. If they build and target the growth of healthy skeletal muscle, they will get stronger, they'll

have better metabolic control, they will have a better ability to generate more of a VO2 max. have a better ability to generate more of a VO2 max, they'll be able to do everything better and go back to the basics. And so high ground activity, and people are going to be like, I didn't think we should use machines, are high ground is exactly that, lots of contact. For example, a hack squat. A hack squat is a squat that has a back rest.

Your feet are on something. Your legs are, your arms are touching something. It's a lot of contact and a lot of feedback. So when you are able to engage in that exercise, you are fully focused on the muscle of choice. And by choosing those type of things, and that is what we consider a compound movement, you are putting in effort in the right place, as opposed to going and doing bicep curls, which would be considered a low ground activity.

You are not supported. Maybe you're standing up. Maybe you're swinging your arms. Maybe you're instead of working your arms. It's better to use these big machines, is what you're saying. Yes. Maybe you're instead of working your. It's better to use these big machines, is what you're saying. Yes. And it's called high ground training.

So you need to buy these expensive machines to go to the gym? But think about it. It has to matter enough. Could you do resistance training, body weight, and bands, and all of those things? Absolutely. Do we need to do that?

Totally. But if we are really serious about our health and wellness, we have to put some effort in to do those things. And I get a lot of pushback when people say, well, do I have to go to the gym? No, you don't have to if you're certainly more advanced and you know that you can move and do things in a way that is safe. Because here's the reality. So basically, I should get a trainer to go to the gym is what you're saying? Yes, until you learn. How to do it myself.

And another high ground activity. So people think about lunges or split squats. So that's one leg in front, one leg in back. But another way to do that would be one leg in front, and then have your foot back up against a block. So now you've got to- And why does that work better? Because now you've got your foot fully flat instead of a split squat in the way that you're doing it,

or like an assisted deadlift where a single leg RDL. Basically what I'm saying is- Russian deadlift. I'm saying is, when you increase contact, you are now training the muscle with the intensity. Again, intensity declines as we age. It doesn't have to be heavy. You do have to go to a level of fatigue because you're looking for stimuli. And what about these other kind of tools

for people who have injuries or who, you know, sort of they're hacks to get the intensity without the injury or hurting yourself, like electrical stim, exercising, or a blood flow restriction, or these VASPER cooler kind of things. Wonderful. How effective are those?

Because I'd rather probably like at my age get a bunch of blood flow restriction devices or electrical stims so I don't have to hurt myself, because I have a bad back and I don't want to hurt myself. So is that as effective? I can't say. I haven't seen any data. This is very difficult to do over time.

It's very difficult to follow someone and control for everything. I've worked with a lot of special operations community. They use a ton of blood flow restriction and injury. I know a lot of physical therapists that use it. Individuals use it to help with rehabilitation, slowly loading up tendons. Again, it's not always muscle injury. It can sometimes be tendons.

It can sometimes be ligaments. How do we go in a slow progressive way to eliminate the potential for injuries? Yes. Do I think a stim suit is great? I do. Do I think blood flow restriction is great? Absolutely. Does that allow you to do the intensity without the risk of injury? It does. The stim suit is different. It's different because it's. When you get the muscle hypertrophy and the growth? You will.

I mean, again, I'm saying that as if I know everything about it. I'm assuming, yes. I've seen some data to support yes. I've also seen rhabdo from it. Which means damage to muscles, yeah. From electrical stim, yeah. From electrical stim, yeah. From electrical stim.

But you can also get that from just training. I've seen people with high muscle enzymes after training. Absolutely. Yeah. I think that the real magic is going to be the interface with fitness professionals and medical professionals. The true interface, because we can't do what we do without that component.

And I have- Yeah, so that's why, I don't know if you know this, but Function Health, which I co-founded, to be able to test all your biomarkers, we partnered with Equinox because- I didn't know that. Where's my invitation? How come I get it later?

What is this? It just got announced. I mean, come on. There's a membership and there's a whole thing, but the idea is that you need to look under the hood and deal with the medical aspects, not just the training aspects too. Yes.

I fully agree with that. And then I think that the other thing is that people feel like strength training, resistance training, is interchangeable. That they could go do a class or do something else. And I would say there's nothing more important from my perspective as a geriatrician than strength training to really focus on resistance,

exercise, everything else. I love the idea of having a great VO2 max. Cardio. Which is cardiovascular activity. Here's how I prefer someone do it. Do high intensity interval training to compress the time. Because sometimes people can't manage the length of time it takes and the effect on joints or the interest. You should do things.

How long just practically as we wrap up? Practically how much time a week should people devote to strength training? The more intense an individual works, the less time it takes. So you could do once a week super intense? I wouldn't recommend it. I don't think that's optimal. Twice a week, three times a week? I think if I were to design a new lifter, or even an advanced lifter, I consider myself an advanced lifter, I train three days a week.

And full body? For 20 minutes, 30 minutes an hour? No, 45 minutes. I, shout out to Carlos Mata, my trainer. You should come in and get some pushups with us. But seriously, full body, three days a week, very intense. We do push, pull, hinge, those are all actions, you know, someone could look that up.

We do sled pushes, we do things that are dynamic and hard that continuously challenge me. But for a beginner, they are going to get the biggest bang for their buck. They're going to improve the most. Yeah, yeah. I saw that, it was amazing actually, what happened. Three days a week, two days a week, full body.

It's not about the time, because you could go there and you could be on your phone. It's about the intensity. It is about the overall volume, the overall amount of work that you're doing. So you could do lighter weights, more reps. Exactly. So that can be considered intensity?

It could be, as long as you're going close to failure. And I never believed that until I started seeing the stuff out of McMaster University. I was like, no, you've got to lift heavy. But you don't. Two days a week, full body. Ideally, that's enough to maintain if you're going to, you know, five to, I don't know, pick a number, 25 reps.

Again, there's so many different ways to do it right, which is amazing. The only one way to do it wrong is to not do it. Yeah, that's a good line. The only way to do it wrong is to not do it. You should hear that out there, because I was a late starter, and I regret not doing this when I was younger. I really regret it.

I tried. I tried to out. I know, I was bad. I mean, at least 10 years ago, I was like, Mark, you cannot be doing all this yoga. Yoga is wonderful, but come on. Yeah, yeah. I know. But, and by the way, it is wonderful.

So let's talk about the, now that we've talked about the need for training and the amount and all the different varieties of kinds of things we can do in this. By the way, all of this is in your book, Forever Strong. So people can check that out and check out your website, which is drgabriellion.com. My YouTube, I have training programs. Training programs, check out her YouTube. Definitely follow this lady, she's amazing.

And she's going places. It's like that doctor. It's like that doctor's fist's like that doctor she spoke, oh, the places you'll go, that's her. I'm going to the gym after that. I'm going to the gym, okay. Well, I'm going to a concert. Are you really?

Yeah, so. Grateful dead? There you go. And the next piece I wanna talk about, and we talked about this when you were on last time quite a bit about protein and about diet and about diet and muscle. And I think your perspective has changed over time. We're learning things over time. a bit about protein and about diet and about diet and muscle.

And I think your perspective has changed over time. We're learning things over time. And I think the question is really, when, what, and how should you be eating to optimize your muscle health? Great question. Probably my favorite topic. Although I think that I might eventually, I don't know, talk about underwater basket weaving. God, I killed that joke.

But in the meantime, protein is the most controversial macronutrient. It just is that way. And I think that it is, and it will continue to be that way. But what is the reality of why we need dietary protein? We need dietary protein because we need these amino acids. We often only hear people talk about protein as the building blocks.

I would say let's scrap that and let's talk about dietary protein when it comes to each of these essential individual amino acids do different metabolic things in the body. They are not interchangeable. I'll just give you a few examples. Threonine is an essential amino acid for mucin production in your gut. I remember some of the first patients I saw with you,

they all had, quote, leaky gut. Threonine for mucin production. Arginine for nitric oxide production, which is a way. To dilate your blood vessels and inflammation, right? Exactly. Tryptophan for serotonin production for your brain. Leucine for skeletal muscle stimulation. As you can see, they all do different things. They're not interchangeable.

So then the next question is, well, that's confusing. How do I eat for that? I would say, you're right. That does sound super confusing. And... Thank God nature took care of it for us. They did. First most important thing that someone understands is how much protein that they are getting. And that trumps everything. If I were to say, what is the protein hierarchy? That would be 1.6 grams per kg, which is 0.7 grams per pound ideal body weight. Which is double what the RDA is, which is the minimum amount you need not to get a deficiency

disease. Correct. And that's 0.37 grams per pound. Or 0.8 grams per kilo. Exactly, which is also based on only high quality proteins. So that's not based on plant proteins. Not based on plant, and you're saying plant proteins are not high quality proteins. Based on the definition from digestibility and amino acid profiles. It's just, you know, people get very offended by that.

It is purely biological numbers. It's not, this is better, this is worse. This is purely based on the spectrum of amino acids. So the first most important thing is getting enough protein. And people will say, well, we get a ton of protein. Well, we get a ton of protein for what? Do we get a ton of protein to overcome the minimum deficiency?

Yes. But do we have enough protein with an appropriate amount of calories to maintain healthy aging and metabolic correction? And I would say we have some work to do. The average individual, the average male, gets about maybe 90 to 100 grams of protein. Average female is probably around 70 grams of protein. And we know that in order to protect skeletal muscle that we're really looking at closer

to 1.6 grams per kg, so 0.7 grams per pound, or closer to 1 gram per pound, ideal body weight. So if I'm 180 pounds, you're talking about like 150 grams of protein a day. That's reasonable. Now, that's the first most important aspect. Whether it's coming from plants or animals, if you choose to, and this is just protein, this is not talking about where you're getting your iron, or creatine, or B12. We're purely talking about protein, not the other micronutrients that are diminishing.

And we have deficiencies of none of that. And that are different in animal versus plant protein. Plant protein has a lot of fiber, and phytonutrients, and lower protein quality. If someone wants to get their protein from plants, they are likely going to need a certain percentage more, depending on the source. Maybe it's 30% more.

Overall, calorie consumption is going to go up. But you can get enough of these amino acids necessary for muscle health. However, you have to be careful if you are older and you are not highly active, then if your idea is to eat whole foods and eat whole foods from plant-based proteins, then you have to watch total calories and carbohydrate. Yeah, I mean, because if you want to get four ounces of chicken is a few hundred calories,

and the equivalent of that in quinoa is like six cups, which has got like 1,000 calories. Correct. So how do you manage that? And the way in which you manage it is you choose things like tofu or rice pea blend, protein powder. So you have to eat processed proteins in order to actually maintain the level of protein you need as you get older? Is that what you're saying? I would say that unless someone is very active.

So unless someone was very active, then I would be concerned about the ability to dispose of the carbohydrates and overall calories. I would have certainly concerns about that, just from a metabolic point of view. So basically, if you run five miles a day and you do all this stuff and then you eat more calories, it's fine. But if you're just an average person who's not doing that and you're trying to build muscle, the amount of protein you need is an average person who's not doing that and you're trying to build muscle, the amount of protein you need is

going to put you over the calorie limit and end up causing metabolic issues. I mean, it definitely depends. There's many ways to do it well. But what I would say is that understanding that the total protein intake is most important, understanding that that first meal of the day is critical because you're coming out of an overnight fast. There's only two ways to simulate skeletal muscle.

And you have to protect it. And that is through resistance training and dietary protein. We know that when you are in an overnight fast, you are catabolic. The body is using liver glycogen and potentially pulling from amino acids from skeletal muscle because these processes, protein turnover throughout the whole body has to be going on.

Yeah, you can't like, your body doesn't stop like repairing tissues and making new cells and proteins all night long. It still has to do that. And you do that in a state by using kind of recycling protein. That's called autophagy. It's a good thing. You recycle proteins, you recycle an enormous amount of proteins. You oxidize.

You replace. It is a very dynamic process. Understanding that that first meal of the day is most important. I don't care when you have it, but coming out of an overnight fast. So we should be having, like, what, French toast, a muffin. You want to completely destroy your metabolism.

Matcha frappalata, moocaccino. Yes, exactly. But the evidence is very interesting from a satiety standpoint. So there's a skeletal muscle standpoint. You want to hit between 30 and 50 grams. In the morning, when you wake up. And that's also the same amount.

So it's kind of the opposite of what we do in America, is we don't eat protein for breakfast. We eat sugar for breakfast. Right. I worked on some of these early studies. And it was two groups. And one of the groups, they filed the Food Guide pyramid, which was 55% carbohydrates, the RDA of protein, and 30% fat.

And they were both isocaloric. And then the other group was roughly 40 grams of protein at breakfast. It was a 40-30- 30 split, like his own diet. So 40, yeah, well, anyway, it was a 40, 30, 30 split. And what we saw was that those that were isocaloric, but just adjusted. The macronutrients.

The macronutrients actually lost body fat, maintained lean tissue, and with exercise, there was this fantastic synergistic effect that the majority of weight that they lost was fat. So basically eating protein in the morning, reducing starches and carbs, combined with exercise got the most benefit. Even eating the same exact amount of calories. Yes. Right. That's amazing.

So you switch from the standard American eating trajectory to a more balanced distribution. And this is kind of where we don't have time to talk about this one. But this is kind of where that whole 30 grams of protein three times a day came in. There's actually no evidence to support that middle meal. So does it matter like you get, you're saying,

like I need 150 grams of protein, could I have like a 900 gram ribeye steak and that like and that gets me going for the whole day if I. You'll probably do 70, I mean I wouldn't suggest that because then you're stimulating tissue once a day and we've seen that so there was some. Did you want it more evenly spread out or did you like, did you have to do it before exercise, does this matter? It matters? After exercise, how long after exercise.

Great questions. So yeah, just people need to know the practicalities of how do you apply this to get the most benefit. There's a lot of science behind this. There is. If you are young and healthy, it really doesn't matter. As long as you're hitting your total protein target, it doesn't matter. I don't care when you get your protein. I don't really care what kind you get your protein.

So you're going to have cereal for breakfast when you're a kid and be fine? I mean, I don't know. I don't care when you get your protein. I don't really care what kind you get your protein Yes, you're overbex when your kid and be fine. I mean My kids don't but it doesn't really matter. Yeah, as long as you're getting your total protein intake in I don't care if you have it around exercise. I don't frankly. I don't care That's because there's a lot of hormonal activity and you're younger that drives growth your tissue is highly anabolic Yeah, if you are more, if you have weight to lose, if you have underlying inflammation, then understanding first the total amount of protein is critical, recognizing that that first meal of the day,

which is where all the data has been, all the data is, to my knowledge, is on that first meal of the day. Again, I worked on some of these early studies. And what we saw was changes in body composition with carbohydrates managed. That first meal of the day is critical. The second meal of the day, I don't really care about. It's just to get in that protein.

And there should be some kind of a one-to-one ratio of carbohydrates to protein. You don't want to overshoot your carbohydrates for no reason. And then arguably, one could consider that last minute of the day being very important, because now you're going into an overnight fast. So what would that be? Same thing, between 30 and 55 grams.

But here's the thing. If you are. Protein also makes you feel full, and it also takes more energy to burn protein in the grams. But here's the thing. If you are. Protein also makes you feel full, and it also takes more energy to burn protein in the body. Well, it stimulates muscle protein synthesis, which is a, this is where the thermic effect of food comes in, thermic effect of feeding. So fats, maybe 3% of the calories from fats

are utilized for the utilization of fatty acids. Carbohydrates might be, I don't know. It takes energy to metabolize your food. 5% to 10%. Protein can be 20%. So you eat 100 calories of protein, 25% of those calories, or 20, goes into actually processing and metabolizing and breaking down and burning those calories.

I actually believe. So the net net calories are less. Yes. And I believe that it's actually from the stimulation of muscle tissue and not the disposal of urea or nitrogen, which are the byproducts of protein. It is from the leucine stimulation of muscle. But let me close out with some very practical things.

If you are young, I don't care what you're doing. You can have five grams of protein in the morning and the afternoon, doesn't matter, as long as you're getting your total protein in. If you are older, and let's define older, inactive, have weight to lose, or under-protein, you are protein deficient or you're eating a sub-amount, then understanding that total amount of protein

matters first, let's just shoot a high, one gram per pound ideal body weight. But the evidence is perfectly fine with 1.6 grams per kg, or 0.7 grams per pound body weight. You're going to ask me, what is your ideal body weight? Pick the last time you felt great. This is human science, which is not a perfect science. Then the first meal of the day should be between 30 grams,

could be higher. If you wanted to eat twice a day, let's say you needed 75 grams at that first meal. I don't care. Go right ahead. I just want to make sure that you're really hitting between 30 and 50. Now, does it matter that it's a round exercise, not

for that first meal? That's what I do. I notice when I do my morning goat whey protein shake, which is my healthy aging shake that I wrote about in my book, Young Forever, and I'm working out at home, and I have my routine, it's amazing to see the gains I have in muscle very quickly. Let's talk about why that is. This is one of the nuances that if you look at the International Society for Sports Nutrition, they will say it doesn't matter when you eat protein.

And I would say I appreciate that, especially if someone is young and healthy. When you are more mature, Mark, you're more mature. Thank you. We have to overcome anabolic resistance. How do we make your skeletal muscle respond like younger skeletal muscle? You do that by resistance training

and the synergistic influence of also the amino acids. The protein with the strength training. The protein and the strength training, if you look at the data, it looks like this is, you've seen this in Bob Wolf's lab, you've seen this in Katsano's lab. Your muscle responds exactly like youthful muscle. So you wouldn't be able to tell the difference

from a metabolic perspective. If someone is listening and they're like, well, should I train faster? Go right ahead. But now after you've done, you're done training and you wanna take advantage of blood flow, give yourself 30 minutes. And within that 30 minutes to an hour,

because now your muscle is primed to receive nutrients, have your protein. Can't be right after? Sure, of course. You don't have to wait 30 minutes? No. But you shouldn't wait three hours. If you are young and healthy, I don't care.

I'm not going to about me. I don't care about all those young people. For you. I'm just kidding. No, but for you, if we wanted to object. My joke is everybody's favorite radio station is WIFM. What's in it for me? Asking for a friend. Asking for a friend.

Then for you, I would say that that would be a benefit. If someone wants to lose weight, if they have low grade chronic inflammation, this is a great way to help get nutrients to the muscle. That second meal, I don't care so much about. Could it be 30 to 50 grams of protein? Sure. Does it have to be an even distribution? No. Could it be 20 grams of protein?

Easily. That last meal of the day, I like making sure that there's two meals that are robust in protein, because now you're stimulating that tissue going into an overnight fast. Is there evidence to support that that meal is the key to metabolism? No.

Well, you shouldn't eat late, that's for sure. Well, it'll affect your sleep, it'll cause you to gain weight. Now I'm gonna leave you with one more thing. Because I think this is really important. Okay. And that is, if you fail to do the practical, the practical becomes impossible.

You know, what does protein do? Well, why do we need so much of it? Well, it's an essential nutrient because it's the stuff we're made of, right? We make proteins. That's all your DNA does. The DNA is very simple. It basically transcribes the sequence of amino acids

that are needed to build a particular protein. That's all your DNA does. So it assembles amino acids to proteins. Proteins are the structural material for your body, muscle, bone, you know, pretty much everything. Your immune system is made from protein, for example, the antibodies, your peptides are made which are these thousands of cellular communication molecules. It's critical that we eat adequate amounts of protein.

It's also the most essential thing we need to build and maintain muscle and prevent muscle loss. And as you know, I've been very focused on longevity. Of course, I'm gonna be 64 this year, so I get more and more interested in it as time goes by. And you need adequate types of the right protein to make sure you don't get what we call sarcopenia which is muscle loss and that is one of the biggest drivers of age-related disease and we're going to talk more about that. So you need

to optimize your nutrition, you need to make sure you're eating the right amount for you and you need to make sure that we understand protein and get out of the weeds of the ideological view and talk about the science. Today we're gonna talk about the science, we're gonna talk about how to up your protein intake, we're gonna talk about why the guidelines for protein intake are wrong and confusing for people, and even give you a delicious smoothie,

protein-rich smoothie that you can use, that I often use to start my day. All right, so we've known for years and decades that protein is a critical part of our diet because they're basically the building blocks for our body. It makes everything from muscles, organs, our skin, neurotransmitters, cytokines, peptides, all the things that our body is doing to actually run everything. It's really one of the most essential things because we can't get all the amino acids from

eating other foods. We have to eat the protein in the right amounts and we have to have the right amount of amino acids. Our body doesn't make them. Some are derivatives, so there's some core essential amino acids and we have to make sure we get them from our diet in the right amounts and the right time. And when we look at the research on longevity, there's a lot of controversy.

Some people say, oh, don't eat protein because it's going to actually activate mTOR, or what is known as one of the key regulators of longevity. If you activate mTOR, it increases protein synthesis, it increases muscle mass, it can actually accelerate immune cancer growth. So it's not good in certain ways. But if you inhibit mTOR, you actually cause autophagy and self-cleaning and the longevity process. So what should you do?

Well, I wrote a lot about this in my book. It's like anything else. You want periods of fasting and not eating, like overnight at least 12, 14, 16 hours. And then you wanna make sure you have enough protein during the day so you actually can do the functions of protein in your body, for example, muscle building and so forth.

So, you know, it's not like it's all bad or all good, it's really about how and when and what. So we're gonna get into the how and when and what. And if you look at the biggest risk factor for age-related decline, it's the loss of muscle. Because when you lose muscle, you increase inflammation, you increase insulin resistance, your sex hormones go down, your cortisol goes down, your growth hormone goes down,

means cortisol goes up. So you basically end up in this hormonal chaos of levels of inflammation, pre-diabetes. It's really bad. Now let's talk about how it affects our appetite, our metabolism and so forth and why it's important. So we're going to talk a little bit more about why protein matters. But in terms of hunger, when you eat protein, it actually inhibits ghrelin and increases the production of a hormone

called peptide YY or PYY, which is a gut hormone or peptide that makes you feel full and satisfied, right? So higher amounts of protein can decrease the ghrelin, which is the hunger hormone. It also increases your metabolic rate. There's something called the thermogenic effect of protein. You basically take more energy to break down protein. So you burn more calories metabolizing protein.

So in a way, even though you eat, let's say, 100 calories of sugar, maybe it takes like three calories to actually metabolize it. Whereas protein, it might take three calories to actually metabolize it. Whereas protein, it might take 20 calories to metabolize. So your net calories is lower when you're having protein. So it's been linked to weight loss also.

Having protein in each meal provides a way to regulate your appetite, helps with weight management, helps with maintaining muscle mass. Because often people lose both muscle and fat when they lose weight, and then you end up having a slower metabolism, which people say, oh geez, I don't know why I lost weight, and I have to eat less, because if I eat a little more, I gain weight, or people who are overweight say,

I don't really eat that much. And sometimes that's true, because they lost so much muscle, their metabolism is so slow that they can't burn the calories. So the protein is critical and your muscle burns a lot of calories. It actually burns about seven times as much calories as fat. So the more muscle you have, the more calories you burn, the easier it is to maintain your weight. I've had an analysis, for example, in 2020 found that a high protein diet can increase

weight loss and help the weight stay off and prevent obesity and various related diseases. So, that's really important. Also, you know, the requirements that the government has, the recommended dietary allowance or RDAI or RDI, reference dietary intakes, they change the terminology all the time, but essentially we're told that we need about 0.8 grams per kilo of protein. Now, how do they come up with that number? Well, that number is based on how much protein do you need to not get a deficiency disease. In other words, how much protein do you need

to not get quashioracor or marasmus, which are these protein deficiency diseases. And that's not that much, right? So it's not the amount we need for optimal health. or myrasmus, which are these protein deficiency diseases. That's not that much, right? So it's not the amount we need for optimal health. And people go, oh, I don't eat more than 0.8 grams per kilo. Well, no, that's the floor for most people. So what do we actually need? It depends on your activity level,

how much strength training you do, your life goals, and your age. But as we age, we don't actually build muscle as easily. We have something called anabolic resistance. So we actually need more protein as we get older. I tell a story in my book about Emma Moran on my book, Young Forever. She was 117 years old when she died.

When she was in her 90s, she was starting to get frail and her doctor told her to eat, I think 150 grams of meat a day, which sounds like a lot, but it actually, it's not as much as you think. And she was fine and she got strong again and she ended up living to 117 years old. So I think we have to kind of look at that and go, wait, maybe they're on onto something. So the amount we need is probably more like up to a gram per pound or 1.6 or even up to two grams per kilo in a day.

And that may seem like a lot, but there's a way to do it. And it's not as much as we think. For example, a small chicken breast, like four ounces, which is not that much. It's probably like half of what people normally eat is actually 40 grams of protein, almost 40 grams of protein. So that's important to understand.

You don't have to have huge amounts of steaks or meat or anything like that. It's really these relatively small amounts that gives you a big bang for your buck. Now here's another really important point. Quality matters. Not all protein is the same. Just as not all fat is the same or carbs are the same.

Broccoli is a carb but so is Coca-Cola, right? Trans fat or Crisco is fat and so is omega-3 fats. But they have profoundly, or olive oil, they have profoundly different effects on the body. Same thing with protein. Not all protein is equal. fats, but they have profoundly, or olive oil, they have profoundly different effects on the body. Same thing with protein. Not all protein is equal. Now part of the problem is right now I think people think that eating meat is bad for your

health and bad for the planet. I've written a lot about this. I've talked a lot about it. I think it's a complicated subject, but from a health perspective, the data just isn't there to show that meat is bad for your health. It really is not. When you look at these population studies, they're confounded. But from a health perspective, the data just isn't there to show that meat is bad for your health. It really is not. When you look at these population studies, they're confounded.

There's problems with them. And there's been a lot of reviews of this. I go into it in depth in a number of my books, including Food What the Heck Should I Eat, and The Peking Diet. If you want to read more about it, we'll link to those. But I think it's a whole other podcast to get into that conversation. But the reality is that when you, for example, look at meat eaters and vegetarians

who shop in health food stores, and they did a study of 11,000 people, they found that their risk for death was reduced in half for both groups. It's not the meat, it's what you're eating it with. If you're having hamburger, fries, and a Coke, it's different than having a grass-fed piece of meat with tons of veggies. For example, when I have a grass-fed steak or a regenerative steak, I'll have like three or four different vegetable dishes. So I have a lot

of phytochemicals. I don't need a ton of sugar and starch with it. And it's a very different kind of approach. Now, industrial meat is not good. So we should not be eating feedlot meat, we should not be eating industrial agricultural products. And you know, when you have industrial meat, it's got hormones, antibiotics, they feed it, you know, grain and so on and so forth, they're not used to their diet and they get different types of fats and more inflammatory process. But grass-fed meat is far superior and so is regenerative meat. Regenerative is way better. There's a company called Force of Nature, which you can go on forceofnature.com.

I don't have any financial ties to them, but they're a great resource for finding regeneratively raised meat from around the world that actually is delicious. It's venison, bison, beef, and it's amazing because they're raised in their natural environments. They have higher levels of omega-3 fats. They have higher levels of minerals, higher levels of antioxidants, and it's amazing because they're raised in their natural environments. They have higher levels of omega-3 fats. They have higher levels of minerals, higher levels of antioxidants, and it's powerful. So also, if you're eating fish and you want to eat fish, wild-caught fish can be great, but there's also regenerative fish that can be regeneratively farmed, which again is unusual, but fish is delicious.

Another company called Cetopia.fish, we'll put that in the show notes. Again, no relationship to them, but I called Cetopia.Fish. We'll put that in the show notes. Again, no relationship to them, but I just love their products. And here's the other part about protein. If you're a vegan, it's problematic because not all protein has the same types of amino acids. And one of the things in building protein in your body that's so important in activating muscle synthesis and protein synthesis for muscle is an amino acid called leucine.

And leucine is very low in plant proteins. Now you can get enough, but you have to eat a lot. In other words, to get enough of the same you would get, for example, in four ounces of chicken, you'd need like two cups of beans or six cups of rice or four cups of quinoa, it's a lot. So you can't really eat that much. It's very tough to get the right amounts of leucine

unless you supplement. Now if you wanna be a vegan and you're committed to that, you have to optimize your health by adding certain amino acids. And you can do that. You can make smoothies. You can put in branched-chain amino acids. You can make sure you have the leucine you need.

It's doable, but it's a lot harder. And you see often as people stay on a vegan diet, they tend to have muscle loss. And that's a big concern, particularly as we age. So make sure you're getting plenty of the right kinds of protein, you're supplementing with amino acids, and consider maybe even becoming a vegetarian and having grass-fed goat whey, for example, which is a really great source of protein, which I use. So let's talk about how we can get more protein in diet.

What are a few ways to get more protein? Well, it's not hard if you actually know what you're doing and you plan, you think about it. First is, and this is a really important thing, you wanna get at least 30 to 40 grams of protein per meal. And usually, you can think about for your size, the palm size of a piece of protein is probably what you need.

So I'm 6'3", 180 pounds. It's different than if I'm 5'2", 110 pounds, right? So we need different amounts depending on our size, but basically whatever your size of your pump is really a good amount. And you can focus on things like four ounce of chicken, four ounce of meat, probably more like six ounce of fish because the lower, and you can use whey protein.

I like goat whey really is a powerful whey protein that doesn't have as much allogenic properties where you can get legitimately raised grass-fed goat whey, A2 cows, a little harder to find. So basically you want to make sure you get adequate protein. Now it can be any of those things I just mentioned. For example, for lunch I grab some a can or two of sardines. It's really easy. It doesn't have to be that hard.

The other thing is when you eat what? For example, if you eat sugar and starch at the beginning of your meal, for example, you go to a restaurant, they give you bread, basket, and wine. Worst thing you could possibly do. You want to eat protein and fat before you eat starch and any carbohydrates because it blunts the effect of the absorption and insulin secretion, which leads to sort of less weight gain and more feeling full and so forth. So you wanna make sure you start with protein in your meal.

And then the last thing is, we have the worst breakfast in America and the most important time to eat protein is on a fasted state. So it's not just the fasting that works to help your body. When you have this overnight fast of 12, 14, 16 hours, you activate something called autophagy, which is a process of self-cleaning and repair.

But what matters also is what you eat after, right? If you have the typical American breakfast, which is basically sugar for breakfast, cereal, muffins, bagels, pancakes, and then I could go on and on, you know, Pop Tarts even I used to eat Pop Tarts for breakfast. It's amazing I'm still as healthy as I am. You want to not eat sugar for breakfast, you want to have protein for breakfast. And you want a good load of protein. And when you refeed is when you activate muscle synthesis, activate stem cell production, produce all sorts of important benefits that are downstream for meeting protein in the

morning. So make sure you have at least 30, 40, even 50 grams depending on your size of protein in the morning. If you love this podcast, please share it with someone. Don't forget there's a way to listen completely ad free. With Hymen Plus on Apple Podcasts, you can enjoy every episode without any breaks. Just open Apple Podcasts and tap Try Free to start your seven-day free trial. What else you think would also enjoy it? Don't forget, there's a way to listen completely ad free. With Hymen Plus on Apple podcasts,

you can enjoy every episode without any breaks. Just open Apple podcasts and tap try free to start your seven day free trial. You can find me on all social media channels at Dr. Mark Hyman. Please reach out, I'd love to hear your comments and questions. Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to the Dr. Hyman Show wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget

to check out my YouTube channel at Dr. Mark Hyman for video versions of this podcast and more. Thank you so much again for tuning in. We'll see you next time on The Dr. Hyman Show. This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness Center, my work at Cleveland Clinic, and Function Health where I am Chief Medical Officer. This podcast represents my opinions and my guests opinions. Neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided with the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, please seek out a qualified medical

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