How To Get Amazing Arms And Legs (And Why Exercise May Be Less Important Than You Think)

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Hey, folks. I first met today's podcast guest at a health conference where I was sitting at a table and I looked at the person who was sitting in the chair to my left, I think it was. And then I did a double take because I realized that this, this woman sitting next to me had some of the most impressively toned arms and legs that I've ever seen in my life. And I was even more shocked when I started talking to her and found out how she actually exercises and what she does to keep herself in such good shape. So in today's podcast, she's going to spill the beans on how she gets such amazing arms and legs and also why exercise may be a little less important than you might think. But you may have heard of my guest before because she's pretty well known in health and nutrition and her name is JJ Virgin. She's the author of, among many other books, which I'll link to for you in the show notes over on Amazon, the Virgin Diet, and some other things that she'll be able to tell you about today. But, jj, thanks for coming on the call.

Oh, my pleasure.

So I guess let's just jump right in. Well, first of all, I'll let people know if you want to see a picture of jj. I will put a link over in the show notes. You can go Access him@BenGreenfieldFitness.com But my first question for you, JJ, is have you always been like this fit?

So, you know, I just love you when you ask questions like this. I'm like, I'm gonna be impossible to deal with the rest of the day. So here's the cool answer to this. And I don't know if you know how old I am, and I actually use it as a marketing opportunity because I'm 51.

No way.

Yes. And I actually said that. I was doing a PBS pledge drive and I said that. And the host was like, no way. Yes. But what's interesting is I'm fitter at 50 than I was in my 20s and 30s when I worked out like four times longer and was counting every calorie. And, like, everything was a struggle and hard. And I'M like, what the heck?

So you were into fitness, like, back in the day?

I've been in. I've actually have never had a time in my life when I haven't been into exercise sports forever. I mean, I remember, like, being five in, you know, dance class, but really, I mean, I started teaching calisthenics. This is how I date myself in my teens. And then I. I paid my way through college as a. An aerobics instructor. I became one of the first personal trainers in the country. It was me and Body by Jake.

Was that when you had, like. Like the leotards and the big socks?

I wore those. I will admit to this. I actually wore those horrible leg warmers.

Now I'm gonna have to find another picture.

Yeah, thank God there were no camera phones back then. Literally, that. I do have a couple of them because I. I actually went to Japan and brought. Was one of the people to help bring aerobics to Japan with Sports Connection. And I have the picture of me and my leg warmers and my tights and my leotard. Yikes.

You were into fitness, but you say that you feel like you're more fit now. Why do you say that?

Oh, I know I'm more fit now because I've dialed it all in. I mean, it's not one of the things. You look at this, and exercise can be. It's a drug. Just like I like to say, food is information, so is exercise. And it can be totally therapeutic, amazing, or it can be destructive, and it all depends on the dose. And back then, I was in the more is better phase, you know? Like, I remember I celebrated my 30th birthday. I went and ran the 4th street stairs in Santa Monica. Then I went and played beach volleyball. And then I went and rollerbladed, like, some insane amount, like, 30 miles. And then I went ahead and a bunch of beer and sake and sushi. So undid the whole thing. But, you know, I used to just do so much exercise. And it's interesting because now I do a fraction of it, but I know I'm fitter. I mean, I'm ripped, I'm leaner. It's effortless, which is the coolest thing. The stuff I'm able to do is crazy. I love when someone says, let's go to the gym. I go, you sure you want to do that? Okay.

Yeah. So what do your workouts look like right now? What are you doing that's so much different than what you used to do?

Well, unfortunately, back when I was in graduate and Doctoral school. Everything was about eating a low fat, high carb vegetarian diet and doing loads of cardio. And it was interesting because as I dug into the research, doing my graduate work, I went, well, wait a minute, this doesn't make any sense. If you follow the science, right? That's when I did my big flip over and started doing. I thought it's really all about holding onto and building muscle and doing intense exercise. But none of the teachers were teaching that. Everyone was dialed into this. If you couldn't work out, and I don't know if you have ever heard this, it really was the undoing of all of us. If you couldn't work out for at least 30 minutes, don't bother working out. All because you won't get into fat burning. I'm like, you burn fat when you're sitting on your butt. You shouldn't be burning fat when you're exercising. You should be burning sugar because you're working out so darn hard. Now here's the first thing. I don't want to discourage someone who hasn't done anything from going, oh, my gosh, I'm going to have to kill myself here. Because the cool thing about intensity is the harder you work out, the less you have to do. And it's totally relative to your fitness level. For some people, getting in and out of the chair ten times might be their burst. But the first thing I tell people to do is just to move more. Like, you know, I have this really fabulous little dog who is so smart and pretty and so I take her for walks. So that's my move more. But that is not exercise. This idea that you should be walking for exercise is ridiculous. We're supposed to move. We should be moving an hour a day. And some of that will actually be exercise, but a lot of it won't. So the park farther away. Walk the dog, Take the stairs. Yes. Wear a pedometer of some sort and track this and get in an hour of movement a day.

Yeah. And I think, like, at that particular conference that I was talking about, I think you were one of the people in the room who, like me, was spending like half the time standing instead of sitting.

Yes. Oh, my gosh. I know. I was like, pacing around because I can't stand sitting. And even when I'm doing a lot of my interviews, I will slap a headset on and pace around because it's just, we sit too much. So the first thing is just to move more. But again, it doesn't count as exercise for me. It's Very easy to decide if something is exercise. You must get hot, you must sweat and it should hurt a bit, not a lot.

So what would like a sample routine look like for you if you were to wander into a gym or your home gym or whatever?

Yeah, so I have a home gym. I travel all the time and I belong to a gym because I like to mix it up. I remember at one point I was belonging to four gyms. I went, this is just insane. Stop it. But I like to have a lot of variety and I like to keep things fun. So like this last week I've been traveling. So I ran the stairs. One of my favorite things to do when I travel if I'm in a hotel that's 20 stories or higher, is I do the stairs.

Right. That's one of my fallbacks too, Except I have a twist. I have to stop at every landing and do some kind of a body weight exercise.

Oh, that's so good. So I mean that kind of thing. If you go to one of those hotels where they say they have a fitness room which translates into we have a broken treadmill, you can now run the stairs and do. Yeah, you can do. I was at one where we were then lunging down the hallways and doing plyometrics and then you can do some push ups and dips and there's all sorts of cool stuff you can do. So you can easily get a workout in when you travel, even if there is no gym. As long as there's some stairs somewhere. You got it made.

I just like for you, like, you're cool with doing 15 minutes of pure basically like sugar burning glycolytic type activity.

Oh, that's what I tell people to do. I don't do endurance training at all. I do not do any endurance training. I'll walk the dog. I mean, to me, if you're going to do the walking, do moderate. It's not for exercise. All your exercise should be short bursts, hard, whether it's weight training or total burst style training. And that's what I do. Like yesterday I did some leg stuff. So I did lunges and squats and plies and step ups and leg presses and then I did bursts on a Stairmaster and an exciser.

Okay, now are you lifting heavy or do you do high rep, low resistance or high resistance, low rep.

I switch it all around. So if I'm starting someone out, I'm going to tell them to work in the 8 to 12 range of hypertrophy. And the first time they do it, do one set, but move quickly into three to four sets of the heaviest weight they can handle in good form. But once you've gotten used to doing this, you got to change this thing around. And so I switch off between three different phases. One is really what I would. You know, you've got a sophisticated audience. So neural adaptation and it's the power phase. So it's three to six reps. When I was doing my graduate work, six, three times six. I was trying to find the best place to really build strength and it was three sets of six. So I do three to six reps. Heaviest, heaviest weight I can handle. Then I will move into my. My default's always three to four sets of eight to 12 reps with a 60 second rest break. And then I also like to move into my longer. I'll do two sets of 15, 20, 25 reps. And I'm always moving it around and changing it up. But truthfully for me, I'm kind of at a point where I do, I do a lot of TV and I sort of have to watch because I could go, I love lifting weight because you can tell exactly what you're doing and what you measure. You can prove and you're like, I got stronger. But I also have to watch how much I am lifting so that I don't get too much tv. But that's the great thing. And especially for women, because I remember way back when, when I first started really personal training women in the gym and I was working them out at Venice Gold's Gym, which. Have you ever been there?

Do you mean the one that's outside?

No, no, no, the one that's inside. It's four warehouses. It is a trip. I used to take clients on field trips there, but women were always afraid of getting big. And I'm like, women don't. Unless you're going to start eating like a truck driver. When you have muscle, it holds everything in tighter and then it's going to make you more insulin sensitive so you can burn more fat. And then it's going to boost your metabolism so you burn more calories all day long. Plus you're burning up your fat storing enzymes when you exercise. So everything's guiding you to burning more fat and bo. Boosting your metabolism. You will get leaner and fitter and tighter if you work out. So that's the big thing I want to emphasize here is for women, if you're hearing this going, I don't want to lift weights, I don't want to get bigger. It doesn't Happen and you can really control how ripped and lean you want to get. It's like if you say, okay, I'm kind of where I want to be, it's easy enough to maintain it. Right, right.

And do you think that a big part. To me, it seems like a lot of people who tend to bulk up when they are lifting heavy, especially women, like a big, big part of it is basically eating a very, very large number of calories diet.

So, you know, it's actually eating the wrong calories again. Just like exercise is information, food is information. And it is so interesting. Back in the day, I was in doctoral school and exercise physiology and I sat there and I went, you know, you cannot exercise enough to compensate for a poor diet. And when you do diet correctly and put it with ex, the results are crazy, crazy. But there's simple things that you can do when you're working out that can just crash your results. Like let's say that you go to the gym workout and then you go have one of those juice smoothies with all this fructose. Well, you just blocked fat burning, you know, I mean, it's terrible.

Right, right, Exactly. The giant 24 ounce Jamba Juice.

Yeah, I was going to say Jamba Juice and I thought.

I can say it with the extra energy shot thrown in.

Yeah, perfect. But here's the one, Ben, that blew my mind because you know everything. Right now I'm working on my next book coming out, Sugar Impact Diet. So I'm like, my nose is into everything sugar and how we're hiding sugar and how we're really duping people and green machines. It' swhich brand is that anyway, it's called green machine. 56 grams of sugar in that sucker. And you look at the Jamba Juices and the light Jamba juices are like 40 grams of sugar. You know, I mean, you wouldn't go work out and then have a Coke. Right, but that's what you're doing.

Yep, exactly. And the problem is a lot of that is fructose based sugar. And so there's, you know, unless you're running on pure empty, most of that is getting converted into fats.

Yeah, you would really. I mean, there's just not enough room in the liver to store all that fructose. And the more dose you have, the better your body gets at transporting it into fat. So it's, it just gets better and better at making fat. I don't want my body to be really good at making fat. That's like not a skill set. I Want to have.

Yeah, yeah. And I think a lot of people don't realize that. I mean, even post workout fructose doesn't very efficiently get converted into muscle glycogen.

It's the worst time.

I mean, you know, like white rice or sweet potatoes might, but yeah, I mean like green machines and Jamba juices are kind of, kind of bad news bears for post workout.

Kind of the worst. It's the single worst time you could have fructose after, after a workout. The single worst, worst time. So there's really not, I mean, I'm not going to say any time's a time to go hit yourself with a bunch of fructose and even fruit. I think we have to be careful with it. Drives me crazy that we've got this food recommendation by the American Dietetics and Diabetics Association. I'm trying to think of who did this. With the new MyPlate where they say you should have five servings of fruits and vegetables. I'm thinking, well, a banana is not the same as. And broccoli is not the same as a potato. But if you say five servings of fruits and vegetables, the average person's going to go, cool, I'm going to have some apple juice, a banana, some french fries, ketchup. I got this one covered, right?

Yup, exactly. When it comes to fruit, I would say that the two times that you might be able to get away with the fructose based sugars would be you wake up in the morning, your liver glycogen stores are empty and maybe you could put a little bit of banana in your smoothie or something like that. And then the other time that, and I tell this to athletes, is you've got different sugar transporters in your gut. So if you're say like an endurance athlete out doing a really long session, which we just got done talking about, is not a good way to tone your arms and legs, right?

No, it's a great way to slab out your arms.

Yeah, you can use different sugar transporters like fructose and maltodextrin and stuff like that, but that's for the ironman triathletes out there. So, you know, I want to get into some of these other ways that you've found apart from exercise to be able to really tone your arms and legs better. But just really quickly you talked about lifting heavy weights and you know, you mentioned throwing curve balls at your body and kind of shifting between doing high reps and low weight and high weight and low reps. But when you're doing things like three to six reps or six to eight reps, what kind of exercises are you doing?

So I very rarely do what I call vanity exercises, you know, bicep curls or tricep extensions. And it's so funny because people will go, oh, you must do a lot. First of all, they think you must work out a lot. I'm like, no, actually, no. And then they go, you must do a lot of like arm exercises. And I go, really? No, I do. I have divided the body into four segments because it never made sense to me to see people, you know, doing back and bi's one day and shoulders and tries the next because you already got the shoulders the day before. So what I divided into is upper body pushing. That's things. And here are my big power moves. And you want to do as unstable an environment as possible in anything that you do. So standing rather than sitting, you know, we're not bolted to the floor. Sitting on a ball, lifting the foot up, doing free weights or cables. I rarely use machines. So upper body pushing would be things like push ups with varying angles and alternating arms and, you know, feet on the ball, that kind of thing. And then overhead presses, dips. Those are my favorite. Maybe a chest press off a ball. Those are my favorite types of upper body pushing. So that's using chest, shoulders, triceps, and then upper body pulling are things like pull ups and bent over rows and one arm rows and upright rows and cable rows and then hips and thighs. The only thing that I do, and again, because I had, I tore my ACL when I was on Pointe Ballet at 17, which is so silly because I'm 6ft tall, as you know. So the idea that they put me on point, I wanted to do it because it was such a strength move, but kind of stupid anyway. So I've, I've had a total knee replacement because I was, you know, completely. It was ridiculous. I put it off for so long. But so the only thing I do that's kind of a single lever thing is I do leg curls. You really. I think leg curls are a great thing to do. But for hips and thighs, lunges, squats, step ups, Smith squats, ball wall squats, plies, and then I will do leg curls or I like to do using the ball where you elevate your hips and do ball pull ins. And it's great for hamstrings and glutes.

So you're not using a bodybuilding approach at all of like stacking different forms of bicep. Curls or different forms of tricep extension, stuff like that.

That's silly, honestly. I mean, you know, every once in a while I throw in what I call the vanity trio, which is just some triceps, biceps and a diagonal raise for shoulders. But I really do very, very little of that. I do all big movements. I don't do any of the stacking, like five different exercises for biceps. It's amazing. If even once a month I did a bicep exercise because I'm doing pull ups and I'm doing ben over rows. I'm doing everything that involves that, but it's going to get my metabolism kicked way more. Use my core. The best core exercise, although of course one of my body ones is power core. But let's face it, the best core exercises are squats and bent over rows and pull ups and push ups. Those are core exercises because if you don't engage your core, you're going to fall over.

Yeah, exactly. Interesting. You've got this exercise system set up. But I really suspect from the things that I've seen you write and talking to you and from your book, that exercise is probably not kind of at the top of the totem pole for you when it comes to arms, legs and body in general. So what would you say? I mean, you've talked a little bit about food and moving more, but what other things would you say are kind of neglected when it comes to going after getting amazing arms and legs or.

Toning your body so you know really how your body looks? Your fitness is really just going to be a symptom of how you're taking care of yourself. And the top needle mover for looking and feeling better is really going to be how you eat. And the information out there, the general information to the public is just so twisted and wrong, it makes me insane because it has people snacking all day long and eating this high processed carb diet. So it doesn't make any sense. But one of the most important things that I think we neglect is the whole idea of restoration and recovery. And, you know, central to that is sleep. And if I had to pick like one thing that people walked out with and said, I'm going to do that, that would change everything else. It would be to focus on sleep. Because I find so many people steal from sleep and they say, what's the least I can have? In reality, what you should do is allow yourself for a week to wake up, you know, just to go get yourself to bed at a normal time. Because we need to sleep during the circadian rhythm. So go to bed, power down an hour before sleep, go to bed between 10 and 11, see what time you wake up. Because you should wake up without an alarm, feeling refreshed and you shouldn't be aware of waking up throughout the night. And do that for a week and you'll say, wow, I need X amount of sleep. Like I know I do best, around eight, eight and a half hours of sleep. And when I get less than that, like the average is seven to nine hours. But if I sleep seven, I feeling bad, I can't get away with it. And when you are a short sleeper, when you are not getting what you need, you are more insulin resistant, your cortisol's higher, you've got ghrelin elevated and you've got stress. So with the stress hormones, you're also going to get serotonin and dopamine down. The whole takeaway from all of that is that you're going to end up hungrier, better at storing fat, especially around your waistline under stress, which means you're breaking down muscle, craving more sugar because your serotonin's up higher. And so you could be working out great. But if you cannot access, you know, if your anabolic hormones because you're under stress and you aren't giving your body time to repair and recover because sleep's when you really should be raising your growth hormone, you've got a problem, right? So. And then you're not going to have you work out either.

I'm curious for you for sleep because you're obviously a successful person from a career standpoint and you're traveling and you've got a lot on your plate. Do you have specific things that you do to help you sleep better, especially when you're stressed out or when you're traveling?

I have a total sleep strategy and no matter where I am, because half the time I'm on the road, I follow the same thing is that I have about an hour before bed. It is power down time which the biggest thing that you, you can do to create problems for yourself is look at email before bed because it never fails. It's like something you can't do anything about that now is going to stress you out.

That one email always shows up that you really weren't planning on.

Exactly. But the other thing is when you're looking at light like that, it also fires up your neurons. So no iPads, no cell phones, none of that technology free bedroom cover. Any lights like your alarm clock, if you have one, should be down low hopefully you don't even use. And then I always, I have a routine that I do and it doesn't matter where I am. I have that routine of powering it down, taking a bath, preparing for my. Do my writing stuff for the next day and my intentioning for the next day.

Do you find that a bath helps quite a bit with sleep? Like when you're traveling?

Usually, yeah. Because when you heat your body up, you know, one of the things that happens as you sleep is you cool down. I bring the temperature down in the room, I take a hot bath and then it helps me cool down, accelerate my cool down. I also take some different. I take some magnesium, I take some gaba and theanine. And so I take a bunch of, what I call. We're actually coming out with something called sleep candy, but a bunch of nutrients that help with sleep. It's perfect for sugar, isn't it? And then I read, and this is one of the big things I read a good but not great book. Because if I get into a great book, I will absolutely stay up all night and read it. But if it's a good book, I read a couple pages and I'm like done. I go to sleep and that's it wherever I am. And I also have been careful about. Because I'm not a good time zone changer. So I don't. If I have to get up somewhere for a conference, if I'm going back east and the conference starts at 9, I generally come in a day early and I start switching my time zones at home. So I'll start getting up a little earlier at home because otherwise I'll just be wrecked.

Yeah, yeah, those are great tips. Okay, cool, so we got sleep. What else?

Well, sleep, I mean, you brought it up when you said sleep, you said stress. And of course it's so clear because one of the biggest keys of stress is having poor sleep is obviously a stressor to the body. But when you're stressed, you also have poor sleep. So It's a catch 22. But you know, I think one of the biggest things that exercise does is a core benefit. And when I say that it's not endurance training because endurance training actually creates more stress on your body. But when you do high intensity interval training, burst training and resistance training, which is just a form of burst training, really, you teach your body how to handle stress better. You know, you're going to stress and recover stress and recover. And really when you look at the most successful people in life, whether that's success of like you know, raising an awesome family or having a huge career, whatever that success is. There are people who have higher stress resilience, higher stress tolerance. Because I've seen people, it's such a mental game. You know, they get so stressed out about something, and I'm like, you know, a year and a half ago, my son was run down by a car and left for dead in the street. And I had to, you know, I'm the sole financial support of my family. And I had a huge book launching from the ICU that I did as a New York Times bestseller. And I'm like going, you know, to me, once you go through that, people talk about something they're stressed about. And I go, that is no big deal. No one's in a coma. No one's dying. It's all fine. You can handle it.

Obviously, that's a pretty big part of your story. And I know it's such an amazing story. Which one of your books would somebody be able to read about that story in?

They actually, it's not in a book. That will be a book at some point. I'm going to write that book with my son. He's been on Sanjay Gupta's show on cnn. Of course, people are like, you shouldn't talk about this. People will think it's some kind of miracle. I'm like, well, it is. You get fish oil in your kid is the takeaway right away. And he's about to be on the Doctor Show. Depending on when this airs, July 17th will be on the Doctors. And Joe Mercola did a thing on him.

But to me, I'll find some resources.

There's a bunch out there. And then we did the GrantVirgin.com because everyone wanted to know. I think the real takeaway for that to take away for all of us is take responsibility for your health, get the knowledge, get the network. And don't accept what someone says to you because, you know, they told me to let my son die. And this, that's an extreme example. But every day we have situations where people say, oh, you know, you'll never be able to do X again. Right. Or you just have to accept you're just getting older, so you're gonna have headaches and gas and bloating and more body fat. It's like bs, don't listen. Right?

Yep, I hear you. I found the CNN story, too. So I'm going to put this in the show. Notes for people. When it comes to stress, you talked about some of the things you do for sleep. Do you have A few little kind of tricks that you use to decrease stress when, you know you're kind of under a lot of it.

Yeah. When sometimes you feel like you want to crawl out of your body.

Exactly.

I know. We all get those. Oh, my gosh, it's brutal. There's a couple that work really well for me. Music works really well for me as just a mood shift immediately. So music is one that I use a lot. If I am home, I use my dog. What can I say? My dog. You know, it is impossible to be stressed when some little dog runs up to you with their tail wagging like, you are the greatest thing on the planet. Right. You know, that's for dogs versus cats, because my cat will look at me and just blow me off. But the dog is like, you're home. Oh, my gosh, you're so great. Right. So the dog absolutely helps. Watching something that is just hilarious. YouTube is another biggie. So if you have a favorite comedian, that's great. And then hugs are always. You know, it sounds so corny, but, like, I, you know, I go and grab one of my teenage boys. You have to do a sneak attack on teenage boys.

Yeah, no, it makes perfect sense. You get that. You get that oxytocin related.

Exactly, exactly. So all those things really are oxytocin releases. You get them when you pet your dog. You get it when you laugh. You get it when you hug. And music for me, is such a good way to just break out of that, like, silly stuff. But, you know, I mean, the other thing is we just had a really stressful business event happen, and I'm looking at them going, worse things have happened than this. You know, I mean, it's like, I look at it go, and especially with what's happened with Grant, I'm like, no one's in a coma. No one's dying. I can handle this. I've handled bigger than this. This is all fine. And, you know, the other piece really is to have a strong network of friends, even if it's just one or two that are like your lifeline. I think nowadays we feel so disconnected and, you know, everyone's tending to text or email. It's like, pick up the phone and download it to a pal. Helps a ton.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Interesting. Okay. So, you know, I think that just a quick reality check for people. You know, we just talked about music, pets, friends, relationships, snuggling. But we're talking about how to get amazing arms and legs. So these are the things that fly under the radar that I Think a lot of people don't think about versus doing another set of bicep curls or tricep extensions. And, you know, these are the things that fly under the radar, that make a big difference.

Oh, well, think about it. If you're stressed out, you are not going to have a great body. Because when you're stressed out, you are going to raise stress hormones that's going to impact your thyroid. If your thyroid's not working well, all your anabolic hormones are not going to work well. You cannot build muscle if your thyroid's not working well. Now, you're going to lower your testosterone. So. And you're also not going to have the energy you need to go into the gym. Your blood sugar is going to rise higher, you're going to have higher fasting insulin plus, you're not going to have the energy you should. And you're going to interrupt your sleep, which means you're not going to have elevated growth hormone. So, I mean, if you just run down the, run down these cycles and go, wow, if I dial in, if I work on. It's not about reducing your stress, because in most situations, we probably can't reduce our stress. We can reduce. We can change the way we handle it and change our perception of it. Because I believe stress is a mental event that's becoming, that we are bringing into our body. So it's becoming physiological. It is your perception of it that creates the stress. So you deal with the stress, you deal with the sleep, you dial in your diet and you work out to the level that you need to, to create the impact. But it's a lot less than what most people are doing. What I see, Ben, is that most people are either exercising too much or not exercising at all. I rarely see people doing, you know, going in there, hitting it hard, giving your body the recovery it needs. I mean, if you train really hard, you shouldn't be able to go back. And you might have to take three days in between that body part, you know, but it's the dose and the restoration and recovery is more important. Yeah.

Are there any other tips that you'd give to people that you think kind of tend to fly under the radar?

Let's see. Tips. Yeah, there's. I think we underestimate the importance of hydration because if you are even mildly hydrated, dehydrated, I'm talking 1 or 2% dehydrated, your stress hormones go up. So that's a big one. I also look at just overall nutrients and you cannot get what you need from your food alone. And so it does become very critical to take just basic. The first thing that we tend to do, we all want to take, take a great protein supplement or something to help our body burn fat. But in reality, your body should be good at all that stuff if you're doing things correctly. So diet comes in key then making sure if you're 30 or older or under stress, that you're taking some good digestive enzymes. Most people need help with breaking down fat and protein, but they don't need help with breaking down carbs faster. So I use a digestive enzyme that breaks down fat and protein but slows carbohydrate absorption, which makes.

Take that right before you eat your. Do you use that before every. Every meal. Use it every meal.

Every meal. But shakes. I do shakes every single morning for breakfast. I'm currently using a really cool defatted beef protein shake that is amazing because I don't use whey at all because whey makes you fat.

Is the beef one? Is that the Designs for Health?

Yeah, Designs for Health has it and I've actually worked with them to formulate my own one with other stuff in it, but they have a. I think it's called pure.

It's a beef protein shake.

It's defatted beef protein.

Now that doesn't make your smoothie taste like hamburger, does it?

Well, yeah, it's kind of like putting a steak in a burger. No, it's not. Sounds lovely. So you know what, when I first started it, I went, I've got to figure out a way to talk about this where people won't freak out and stop listening. But it actually tastes like whey protein. It tastes like a milkshake, but it doesn't have all the issues with whey. You know, whey raises insulin as much as a couple pieces of white bread. Actually more. And so many people react to whey because food intolerance is really my major, you know, specialty and umbrella. So I don't, I don't recommend whey or egg white protein. Egg white protein, horrible. And soy protein of course, lowers testosterone, so that makes no sense. And thyroid function. So this is a great way for people who don't want to go the plant based route that really want to have a better amino acid profile because it's got like the amino acid profile of egg whites. It's an incredible thing. And it does not taste like. Doesn't taste like you just threw a steak into your blender. It's not like a rocky moot.

I'm sure. Some, some people think of that when they hear beef protein powder.

I know I was trying to hide. I'm like, how do we, what do we call this? So that we're not saying, hey, have my meat shake, you know, clean, lean, animal protein. So that's what it is. But yeah, grass fed, doing a shake is a great thing. And then all the other meals, I make sure to take enzymes. And then another big one, of course, obviously good essential fatty acids. I take a lot of Omega 3s. It's the reason my son's alive is he had them in before he hit his head. Because it protects your brain if you do hit your head. And you never know when hit your head. And antioxidants are huge because whenever you exercise, obviously endurance training is really bad there because it creates a lot of oxidative stress. Because you're breathing heavier for a long period of time, you are going to create some oxidative stress and you are raising stress hormones some. And antioxidants can help keep that under control, especially vitamin C there for cortisol.

Now, one thing you said about hydration made me think about the importance of hydration for the skin quality. And I'm curious if you use specific skin topicals. There are all sorts of things out there like collagen reducers and skin tighteners and toners and stuff like that. Do you use any of those type of things as far as, like topical beauty treatments?

Are you kidding? I'm 51.

If you do, like, what are your favorites?

It's so funny, Dave Asprey threw that one at me too. I'm like, you really just asked this, go, baby. Well, I'll tell you what, for skin, obviously the single most important thing you can do to have great skin is get the sugar and the sugar impact. Because it's not just the sugar, it's really the impact of, of carbohydrates. Because all carbohydrates except for fiber turn to sugar in your body. So it's really reducing those with fructose being the worst, and artificial sweeteners because both of those are very aging substances. And having a good gut, things like fermented foods, probiotics, so you can't ignore diet. When you think of having great skin, it's obviously you've got to be doing loads of the rainbow of non starchy vegetables, good cultured foods, a lot of good healthy essential fatty acids. You want to have good moist skin, digest your fats well. And if you want to have great collagen, digest your protein well, so you've got to start there because you could put all the topical crap on in the world and then you're eating all this sugar and you're not digesting your protein or fat and forget it, you'll have rotten skin. That's the bottom line. Because your skin really is going to show how well you take care of yourself along with of course, stress and getting good night's sleep. Having said that, I'm like the skincare junkie of all time. Really? Oh yeah. So I used to this collagen mask that comes from Korea that my girlfriend, Dr. Suzanne Bennett imports in called Purigenics.

She wrote the allergy makeover book.

She wrote this. Yeah. The seven day allergy makeover. I will hook you up with Suzanne. You should definitely know about this. It is the most amazing stuff and I use it.

And what'd you say it's called?

It's called Purigenics. P U R I G E N D IX Okay. I use that and I use, actually use a couple different MLM company stuff. I use nerium and I use Agelock. And I use this crazy spray from this crazy anti aging scientist that I really have no idea what's in it. But it works really well. We're all hooked on it.

And I'm like, I'm opening up this Purigenics and it's automatically playing. Okay, I'm gonna bookmark this one for folks who are listening in. Purigenics. Okay, cool. Now you said the other one was Ageloc.

I use Nu Skin's Agelock Believe. I mean these are MLMs. I'm not kind of an MLM fan but there's two companies stuff Nerium, this Nerium skincare stuff. And then Ageloc by Nu Skin. Amazing. And then I still use. I use Retin A. I mean Retin A works incredible. And then I use this, this great soap from Thorn. This clay soap from Thorn. That's great. I'm trying to think what I literally.

I'm such a. I didn't know made a soap.

They do. They make these. They bought this skincare line but it kind of flies under the rain. Bar the radar. It's Thorn Organics and it's this brown clay. And then I use a Clarisonic for, for cleaning and I use. I know I do some other stuff in there, but those are the, those are the biggies that I do.

Okay, sweet. I just took a bunch of notes for.

You know what else I use that I love is I use. Do you know Kevin and Ann Marie Gianni.

Yeah.

Okay. So Ann Marie Gianni has got the killer sunscreen because I'm really phobic of most sunscreens and I think we should get sun, but I use it on my chest. So I use her sunscreen and then I use.

What's that one called?

It's her Annemarie Skincare. Maybe it's either Anne Marie Gianni skincare or Ann Marie Skincare. So she's got, I use her, some of her cleansers and toners, and then I use some of her scrubs. I have all of her stuff that I throw in my travel bag. And then I use her toner, her cleanser, and she's got a coconut oil moisturizer that kicks it. That's just incredible. So her line's kind of my foundation line. I knew I was like, I'm forgetting something. And that's what I was forgetting.

Okay, cool, cool. I just took a flurry of notes for people. All right, so if you're listening in, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com JJ and I'll try and collect this all and get it for you over there. Cool. Well, this is super helpful. And. And again, like everything from lifting heavy and doing multi joint exercises versus isolating the arms and legs to de stressing and sleeping more, to having a little dog that you can walk around or.

You can have a big dog or a big dog.

Yeah, we have a big dog.

Big poop. And little dogs are little poops.

Exactly.

I like to take a little bag with me, not a big one, to.

Taking care of your skin. All sorts of stuff that you can do here to get amazing arms and legs. And I'm glad that we were able to kind of tap into JJ's mind to learn this stuff because I've been wanting to ask for this for you guys for a long time now. You have books and I know one of your big ones is the Virgin Diet. Jj, but what would you like for people who are listening in, who really want to get dialed into some of the stuff that we've talked about that maybe you've mentioned, books, et cetera, what would be the best book of yours that you would recommend people read?

Read. So I have three books right now, and of course I have Sugar Impact Diet coming out in November that I'm so fired up about. But I actually have a book on arms that talks about stress, sleep, diet, skin, because, you know, no point having great arms and then you have like funky skin and the exercises and that's Six weeks to sleeveless and sexy. A little sleeper book, the first one I did. But what I would say is, is really to follow the diet. It's kind of this. It's sort of. It should have come after the virgin diet because you should be following the virgin diet first. Put this in second. It will give you what to do exercise wise. It really goes into birth style training, which we didn't talk about, and then resistance training and which specific exercises to do, complete with the photos. So there's that. And then I also have these four by four workouts that I created for people because I got so sick, honestly, Ben, of people telling me they didn't have time to work out. I'm like, like, seriously make time 15 minutes. And so I created these 15 minute exercise videos. And what they are is it puts in upper body pushing, upper body pulling hips and thigh and power core. And I use the hips and thighs as bursts and then I put in some flexibility at the end. So you just circuit train it and get it all done in 15 minutes. And those are at JJ's Fit Club. I think it's still the link we're using so you can get those. So that will make it easy because that is one of my pet peeves. When people tell me they don't have time to work out, it makes me crazy.

Exactly. That's why I have a pull up bar installed in the door of my office.

Yeah, get an exciser. I mean, I have an exciser and if I'm driving somewhere, I throw it in the car.

Exactly. Cool. All right, well, I will take all that down and put it over in the show notes. So head over to BenGreenvilleFitness.com JJ to check all this out. And JJ, thanks so much for coming on the call today and sharing this with us.

Thank you. My pleasure. You threw me the skin curve ball. That was fun.

Yeah, that was awesome though. I think that that was the largest amount of skin tips that we've squeezed into two minutes ever on this podcast. So that was perfect. All right, well, cool. Thanks for listening in, folks. And until next time, this is Ben Greenfield and JJ Virgin signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

Visit BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness, nutrition and performance advice.

That.