10 Hidden Reasons Your Body Holds Onto Fat

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You're doing everything right. You're eating clean, you're hitting your macros, you're doing your workouts, you're watching your calories. And nothing is working. The reality? You're not crazy. It's not about willpower, it's about biology. And today I'm going to walk you through 10 hidden reasons your body could be holding on to fat and more importantly, how you can overcome them. So here's how this all started. I've been in this world for 40+ years now, and in my early 20s, I was personal training my way through graduate and doctoral school. And I had a group of clients and one of them had a ranch in Santa Barbara. And she said, "Hey, let's have a girls' trip to Santa Barbara." So I took them all there. I controlled their calories. I controlled their exercise. I had everything dialed in. Prior to this, I admit it, when people weren't getting the results, I thought it was because they were cheating, that they weren't being honest to me. And what I discovered during this time in Santa Barbara was that despite having everything controlled, some people did lose some weight during that time, but some people didn't, and some people even gained weight. Ah, what the heck is going on? And then I validated this again because I was working at The Palms in Palm Springs, which was a spa where people came and stayed and again controlled their food. We knew their exercise, everything else, and exact same thing happened. What is going on. And so that's when I realized that in order for you to lose weight, and when I say weight, I am talking in order for you to lose body fat and hold on to or build muscle, and I take a muscle-first approach, by the way, you need to be healthy. You don't lose weight to get healthy. You actually have to get metabolically healthy in order to make those body composition shifts. And there's just a lot of crazy misinformation and myths out there that you may have fallen prey to. So before we get into these 10 reasons and what you can do about them, with the last couple being a doozy, and I've got even a bonus one that'll kind of blow your mind, I am first going to bust a couple myths. So bear with me first because these have to get out there so that we just release them. And the first one is, it's just my age, I'm getting older. Now, I am going to be the first to say, I hear out there, "Oh, menopause does nothing to your metabolism," and I call big BS on that. However, the biggest thing that's going to make the biggest difference are your habits. And guess what? We can change those. Next one, "I just need to do more cardio." Reality is, no, you need to add more muscle. So you might need to be shifting some of that cardio, you cardio bunny, and moving them over to resistance training. Third, it's my hormones. They are out of control. Well, I'm gonna tell you, and one of the things we're gonna talk about is hormonal imbalances and what they can do. And yes, they can absolutely have an impact. However, there's so much you can do in lifestyle that can help get them better. May not take it all the way. Some of these things, if your hormones are down, you might need to replace them, but there's a lot you can do with lifestyle. And what I want you to really understand is that this is not about restriction. What we're going to be talking about is restoration, rejuvenation. You are not broken. You've just been taught the wrong set of rules and they may have damaged your metabolism over time. All right, so let's get into it. Let's talk about those 10 hidden barriers and what you can do about them. Chronic caloric restriction. Now, we've all heard about this. What happens when you cut your calories too low and for too long? Your body tries to save you from yourself. There's something called adaptive thermogenesis, which after After caloric restriction, this especially happens if you start to lose muscle mass, can make long-term weight loss even harder. It is what happened to The Biggest Loser candidates after they got done with that extreme weight loss. Their daily resting metabolic rate was about 500 calories lower than it should have been. So imagine having to starve yourself even more. So you really wanna watch chronic caloric restriction. What I like to do, and you'll hear about in a little bit, is do some cycling caloric restrictions. So 5 days on, 2 days off. Learned this from my buddy, Dr. Bill Campbell, and then make sure that you're leading with protein first and focusing on putting on muscle mass. Really, one of the things that happens, um, with the GLP-1s, it's not that you lose muscle because the GLP-1s, it's that you lose muscle because you've lost your appetite. You're not prioritizing protein and resistance training. So when you fix that, you can offset a lot of this issue that happens from chronic low calories. And we really don't want to be doing chronic low calories anyway. Yes, you need to be in a little bit of a deficit to lose body fat. However, I like to cycle this and I also like to do a lot of this in terms of push and then, and then give yourself time to just recover. Like, so push for 5 days or do a program for a month and then stabilize and go from there. Okay, next one, inflammation. Inflammation is an interesting one. And I remember looking at a chart years ago and they were showing how obesity drove inflammation and inflammation drove obesity and round and round and round we went— go. And it was kind of like we were all looking at this chart going, well, which came first, chicken or the egg? Like, did you get inflamed and it created obesity or did you get obese and it created inflammation? And we also know that inflammation can drive insulin resistance as well. So now you get impaired, not just insulin signaling, but leptin signaling, which means you're going to feel hungrier and better at storing fat. A very bad combo, right? So what do you do about this? Well, one of the things that I look at, because actually there was a study in Nature 2006 showing that chronic inflammation is key driver in metabolic dysfunction. But one of the places I start with this is diet. And when I wrote The Virgin Diet years ago, I didn't really realize what I'd stumbled upon at the time. I'd taken a simple food elimination diet, is what I was seeing when I was looking at food sensitivity testing is what we were doing in the elimination diet world was way more complicated than what I was seeing people reacting to. And what I saw there was that gluten was really the driver to making your gut more permeable. And then the top things that seemed to trigger that low-grade immune response that created the inflammation were dairy and eggs, and then corn, soy, and peanuts. And of course, sugar also is disrupting the gut microbiome. So gluten and sugar, and especially fructose, were creating a lot of the problems. And then those other foods creating an inflammatory response. So one of the things I always like to do is, hey, let's start there. Let's see how your gut integrity is. Is this an issue for you? You can either do an IgG for food sensitivity test, or you can just jump into the Virgin Diet, because by the time you would have gotten the test results back, you would have figured this out already. So that's one thing you can do. And then another thing that can help you here with inflammation is, first of all, every time your muscles contract, you know what they do? They help reduce inflammation. The other thing is fish oil and making an oil change and making sure that you're getting the omega-3s that you need, that you've got a good balance between your 6s and 3s in your diet, that you're not too heavy on the 6 side, which if you're eating a lot of the ultra-processed foods would put you into a more of an inflammatory state. And then taking fish oil, which I kind of think of as nature's Advil. Next up. Oh, and one other thing that was interesting. I remember reading about this, um, cuz one of the ways you can test chronic and systemic inflammation in the body is through something called HS-CRP, highly sensitive C-reactive protein. And it turns out antioxidants, which you get from eating that beautiful bright array colors of the fruits and vegetables, can help lower that as well. So polyphenols from plants. Okay, the next one, I have to cover this, of course, hormonal balances absolutely will cause some issues here. And let's just talk about what it is, because I can't tell you how much it irritates me when they go, oh no, menopause doesn't cause any kind of weight issues. I'm like, okay, wait till you go through it and you tell me that. Maybe you'll be one of the unicorns that it doesn't. But I still remember my mom calling, telling me that she called it shifting sands because basically she lost her butt. It seemed to all end up in her gut. And this is what happens. Estrogen's going down. Estrogen is anabolic for women. It helps us build muscle. Cortisol is going up. So is insulin. Cortisol is more of a breakdown hormone, can start to break down muscle. That combo's not bueno. Then of course, cortisol and insulin together can lay down more fat about around your abdominal area in that visceral adipose tissue that we talk about. So what starts to happen? We start to lose muscle and gain fat. So even if your weight's not changing, what your weight is made up of is. And for a lot of women, they also start to have their thyroid decrease. And of course, thyroid's really your metabolic switch. Study in 2008 showed perimenopausal women showed increased central fat, and increased insulin resistance. So what do we want to be doing here? Well, make sure you're looking at a fasting insulin when you're getting your labs done. Super important. Track your body composition changes at DEXA and InBody, and work with a great menopause practitioner. Turns out that just being an OB-GYN does not make you an expert in menopause, as odd as that is. That you really want to find one who's now been certified, a practitioner who's been certified in menopause and is very hormone literate. This is another very interesting one, and I'll tell you what came— how this came up. So the NHANES data, which looked at diabesity, you know, and there was always this idea that people got diabetes because they were obese, but what they discovered in the NHANES research is that wasn't the case. What was actually happening is people got diabetes because of the toxins that were stored in the fat cells. So environmental toxins, plastics, pesticides, mold can be known as obesogens and And what they do is they actually disrupt your hormones, quite often will make you more insulin resistant, lower thyroid function, but also they will lower your metabolism. I still remember the research I was looking at by Tremblay, where he showed that our metabolic rate lowered slightly so that our body could hold on to the fat so it could hold on to the toxins. There was a study in 2017 in Nature Reviews Endocrinology that shows that— showed that toxins play a role in obesity by altering metabolic set points. Okay, so what the heck do we do here? Because that 10-day juice fast, that, that is not it. These toxins are wedged into our body, and it is one of the reasons when you start to think about losing fat that you have to make sure that you are eating a nutrient-dense diet, because detoxification is a nutrient-dense activity. You need the polyphenols, you need those antioxidants, and then you also need the amino acids. And this is where I get crazy about the juice cleanses that can free up the toxins but not get them the heck out. When you look at the process of detoxification, freeing them up, very antioxidant, polyphenol-rich, conjugating them, amino acid-rich, escorting them out of the body, pooping, peeing, sweating. It takes more things. And it might be something where you wanna do something like have a Vibrant Wellness Total Tox screen and then work with a good functional medicine provider. I will tell you that one of the things that I focus on here is when I'm home, I am in my sauna every single day. Thank you, sunlight and sauna. And I And I also take binders to help bind up those toxins. So at the very least, that's one of the things you can do is go in the sauna, take binders when you're in the sauna to help you get rid of these things. So, but test, don't guess if at all possible. And I really love the Vibrant Wellness Total Tox Test. Next up, sleep. Boy, just one poor night of sleep. And you know this, we've all felt this one poor night of sleep and you are hungrier and it's not for salmon, right? You know, you tend to have elevated cortisol, elevated ghrelin, and so you now are hungrier. You are better at storing fat. You're more insulin resistant. One poor night's sleep, you're more insulin resistant. And one poor night's sleep, you have trouble pushing muscle protein synthesis. So you're also not going to have the energy to work out, and you're not going to get the results that you would from working out. Just a cocktail of doom here. So I say this not to go to scare you, but maybe to scare you a little bit into prioritizing sleep. 'Cause I find for so many people, it's not that you're, you know, you're stealing from sleep. Let's call it what it is. Let's get that sorted. If you're perimenopausal, and I remember well what happens here, definitely work with someone because things like a little progesterone can change your game there. I also, of course, love my Sleep Candy and magnesium. I do them every single night, travel everywhere with them. And then think about things like, A hot bath, a hot sauna can be super helpful for helping you go to sleep. Same with red light and just making sure that you've got a good dark bedroom or an eye mask, no sound, or use the Oslo sleep buds. Those are my current fascination. And really take that hour for a ritual before bed where you're just powering it down. I learned that from my buddy, Dr. Michael Bruce. Kind of hand in hand with sleep is chronic stress. I'm not talking acute, 'cause you know the acute stress, you don't eat, you don't, ah, you know, but chronic stress is a whole different ballgame. And most of us are not running away from a tiger. We are on a constant running away from the tiger, right? And that ongoing stress is going to elevate your cortisol. At one point, it just can't anymore. And so first you're tired and wired, and then you just get flat out tired. And when you do that, guess what? Those cortisol receptors around your midsection, yep, you're storing that visceral adipose tissue again. Study out of, 2000 from Psychosomatic Medicine found that chronic stress is linked with abdominal fat accumulation because of that cortisol. So what do we do? Hey, shout out to my buddy, Dr. Joe Dispenza, for meditation. I like, that's my drug of choice here. I love Emily Fletcher's Ziva meditation too. So find your bliss. Tapping, my buddy Nick Ortner, The Tapping Solution, which has been found to lower cortisol by 27%. Maybe some box breathing. Very simple. That's one of the ones I use as an interrupt if I find myself getting into a loop, as I have been known to do. Maybe some gratitude. There is a 15-minute gratitude meditation that I use from Dr. Joe that I just love, love, love. And I gotta tell you, I do a big shout out for doggies, pets, kitty cats, but dogs especially. Like, you know, there's nothing like a wagging tail to lower your stress hormones. So find your bliss, find what works. Daily walks, doggies, a funny YouTube video. And then maybe it's some adaptogens like rhodiola ashwagandha that could be helpful there too. And again, find the thing that works for you, cuz that's the most important. Now maybe you've heard me talking about this online about starting at around the age 30, we can lose up to 1% of our muscle mass every year. It's really like 3 to 8% a decade until you get to your 60s. Then it can be even double. Why is this so important? Oh, a whole lot of reasons. I love what Dr. Gabrielle Lyon says about, you know, muscle is the organ of longevity, but it's also— muscle is like your metabolic Spanx, holds everything in tighter, boosts your metabolism, improves insulin sensitivity. It's a sugar sponge, gives sugar a place to land. And it's, you know, multitasking messenger saying, hey, reduce inflammation, improve insulin sensitivity, make new muscle. And so this is key for you having a great metabolism as you age. So you got to prioritize resistance training. And then get a little help from your friends. Who are they? That is shiitine. That is my product I made for women. It is a specific type of creatine, a better creatine that is 7 times more bioavailable than creatine monohydrate. So you use a skosh compared to what you would have to use with monohydrate. You know, they say we need about a gram of creatine from our diet a day, which means you'd have to eat a pound of fairly rare or 2 pounds of cooked meat. But yet we need to take 5 grams of creatine monohydrate or more. So ask yourself why that math doesn't math. It's because it doesn't all get absorbed. So I use a better form called Creatine HCL that I put together with taurine and magnesium because it's an exponential effect on how well your body is going to be able to produce and regenerate ATP when you put those 3 things together. One of the biggest issues that we've had as women is this focus on losing weight instead of focusing on improving what our weight is made up of, improving our body composition. When you focus solely on the scale and losing weight, you don't know if you're losing muscle or fat or both. And in most weight loss situations, it's 25 to 40% muscle, which is devastating to your metabolism. And so when you think of if you've been doing this chronic dieting, which is suppressing thyroid function, and then you are also doing this, you know, gain it back, you lose weight, you lose 25% muscle, 75% fat, then you gain it back. Guess what you gain? Lot of fat, not much muscle. And this goes on and on and on until you really start to damage your metabolism, slow down your resting metabolic rate. And you know what they found in Obesity Reviews 2016 showed how metabolic adaptation will continue even after the weight is lost. It's so— it makes it really hard to maintain the weight. And there's been some hypothesis that this is really happening because your body is trying to get back the muscle that it lost. So that's why it's making you hungrier, making it harder. So what do you need to do? Focus on muscle first. Just like I say, eat protein first. In what you're doing in shifting your body composition, rather than focusing on losing weight, let's focus on building muscle and that will help you burn fat. Focus on building muscle. So we've got to make sure that you're doing what you need to do for muscle mass. And we've got to make sure that you're using a body composition assessment rather than just weight, because you then will have no clue what's really going on there, right? When you do that, and you start to really focus on tracking your macros, maybe getting into a little bit of reverse dieting where you're bringing up your calories a little bit, it will basically heal your metabolism, which is what we're looking to do. All right, gotta talk about the gut because that's where honestly it all started for me. I was teaching for a lab company and one of the things I was doing was using a food sensitivity test and a gut microbiome cut test, but early, early on before we really had all this info on gut microbiome. A couple things came to mind. Number one, I saw that when we did a food sensitivity test and we pulled out the foods people were reacting to, it was a miracle because they dropped the inflammation, they dropped the cravings, and weight loss became automatic. Then there was another interesting thing that happened. I got a client referred to me who was Suzanne Somers' stepdaughter. They told me, oh, she needs a cheerleader. And I'm like, I think, well, wrong person. However, what she had was chronic bloating. And so every doctor kept giving her probiotics, which was making it worse, obviously, because she had a gut microbiome issue with the small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. I just didn't know what that was at the time. I just thought— this was 20 years ago. I was like, well, it doesn't really make sense to give you more probiotics if they're making you worse. Let's focus on maybe restoring your gut integrity. One, get rid of the foods that are causing inflammation. Two, rebalancing your microbiome. And so what did we do? We did the Virgin Diet. We got her on enzymes. We started making sure that her fiber, we brought the fiber up and turned everything around. She dropped 40 pounds and never, like, just her new normal. Like, how cool. So gut microbiome and food sensitivity, major issue. I already talked about the food sensitivity earlier on inflammation, but gut microbiome. And again, I'm gonna shout out the Gut Zoomer with over at Vibrant Labs as a way to look at this. And also there's a great company, Tiny Health, that you can get a great gut microbiome test. So there's really good options out there for being able to look at these things and know exactly what you need to do to impact them. And finally, erratic eating. Meaning like, you know, you're eating late at night, you're snacking all day long. Now, I used to be an absolute crazy person about stop snacking and, you know, eat 3 meals and make sure you— like, now I'm, I've really kind of looked at this differently because the research didn't bear it out. But here's some of the things that seem to be helpful. Number 1, to stop eating 3 hours before bed and give your body that time. First of all, as you're preparing for sleep, your pancreas is kind of preparing for sleep too. We don't want to have to be pushing on your pancreas for insulin at night. When you do that, you'll tend to wake up with higher fasting blood sugar. So, um, stop eating. We want to give your body time to digest, restore, rejuvenate during sleep, get your growth hormone up, which it will not be able to do as well if you are digesting. I think the best time to eat is about an hour or two after you wake up in the morning. But again, we have to figure out what works best with your schedule, working out, et cetera. But really getting on a consistent schedule that goes, that will work with your circadian clock, eating more during the times when you're moving more, when there's daylight, eating less in the evening. So I generally will wake up around 6:30. I eat breakfast around 8, 8:30. Head to the gym around 9:00, 9:30, work out, come back, then I'll have lunch usually around noon, and I try to have dinner by 6:00. So see what works with your schedule. Sometimes I throw in an afternoon snack. I used to be like the crazy person, no snacking. I still think we're better having breakfast, lunch, dinner, or if you are one of those people who likes to push your window a little bit, maybe you're trying to restore insulin sensitivity and blood sugar, Balance better. You can shut it, shut a little bit lower than that, but I like an earlier morning intermittent fast, like 10 to 6, rather than doing like noon to 8, depending on your clock. I do think we're better off not grazing throughout the day because you want your body to have time to digest and let something called your migrating motor unit come in and clean out your gut. So can't do that when you're eating. So basically eat, digest, have some fluids, maybe some green tea, then have lunch, do it again. So that's what I like to do. I think that's the best thing. And when you're eating that protein, fiber, and fat trifecta, it's great for satiety. Now, the other thing that I just got to mention here is I really think that we should be doing a macro audit, and then doing a macro audit every once in a while if you start to see your weight creep, because quite often it's a caloric creep. Believe it or not, most of us gain weight. You know how we gain a little bit of weight each year, but really if we were doing a body composition, we'd see what's happening is we're putting on fat, losing muscle, so it's even more devastating. So our metabolism's going to be slowing down a bit because one of the ways we dictate our resting metabolic rate is with muscle. But also there's this caloric creep, is what I'm calling it, where we start to eat a little bit more than we used to. So we're moving less, we're doing less activity, so maybe we're moving a couple hundred calories less a day. We're eating a little bit more each day, and it's, it's actually that swing of just a couple hundred calories that causes that slow, low-grade fat gain that you wanna avoid. I'm gonna throw one more out there. I told you I had one that would blow your mind 'cause you would never think of this. The other one that can do this is that you are just too comfy. You're sitting around too much in the AC. So here's what's wild. Like when you think about how our lives are now, I don't know about you, but like going to the grocery store now is like a field trip. It's a treat. I never go. I do Instacart. So there's all the steps and all the carrying of groceries and everything else that I just don't do, where you would have to get all the stuff, carry it, carry it up to your, wherever you are. And we have our house set up like 72 degrees right now. Think about before AC. When I, where I grew up in Northern California, we had a heater that we barely ever used and we did not have AC. So I, my body, had to regulate its temperature, not the outside. So air conditioning actually makes your body not have to work as much. Instacart makes your body not have to work as much. Elevators make your body not have to work as much. Same with moving sidewalks. Like when I go to the airport, I never take the moving sidewalks. I take the actual regular walkway. And if I don't have a carry-on, then I the stairs. Like, look at all the different places where there's opportunities for you to move more, for you to have to adjust to the heat. So one of the things— reasons contrast therapy of like doing heat and cold can be so great— of where you can carry things. That's why we like what's called the farmer's carry, where you carry dumbbells around the gym. Like, how do you just make yourself work harder instead of making it easier, right? One of my lines, my early business mentor said, don't wish it was easier, make your— make yourself stronger. This is what we need to do. We need to make things a little harder on ourselves. Now I've just given you a load of stuff. What I'd love you to do is go, okay, what's like the big, what's the one thing I could start with? Because if you look at all this stuff and go, I'm gonna do all this stuff, and then you're gonna do none of this stuff, let's be honest. But of all of these things, which one did you think, oh, should do that? Pick that one. Or what's the one that's like the big struggle? Let's focus on that one. Like what one we really move the needle on? I always like to major on the majors before I major in the minors. And I'd love to hear in the comments, like, what's the one? What's the one thing? And by the way, if you have not yet subscribed, make sure that you subscribe and, and share the show. Be sure to join me next time for more tools, tips, and techniques you can use to look and feel your best and be built to last. Would you prefer an ad-free experience? Join my VIP podcast at subscribe2jj.com for just $4.99 a month or $49.99 a year to unlock uninterrupted ad-free access to all the episodes and insights you love. Also, I'd love to connect with you and hear your thoughts on the podcast. Here's how. First, Subscribe to the podcast and leave an honest review. Second, take a screenshot of your review. And third, text it to 813-565-2627. That's 813-565-2627. When you do, I'll reply using my brand new Virtual JJ. It's my on-demand virtual built from my books, talks, and years of experience so I can interact with you directly. You'll make my day, and I can't wait to hear from you. Thanks for tuning in, and I'll catch you on the next episode. Hey, JJ here, and just a reminder that the Well Beyond 40 podcast offers health, wellness, fitness, and nutritional information that's designed for educational and entertainment purposes only. You should not rely on this information as a substitute for, nor does it replace professional medical advice. Diagnosis, or treatment. If you have any concerns or questions about your health, you should always consult with a physician or other healthcare professional. Make sure that you do not disregard, avoid, or delay obtaining medical or health-related advice from your healthcare professional because of something you may have heard on the show or read in our show notes. The use of any information provided on the show is solely at your own risk.

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