29 Foods I Eat EVERY WEEK As a Nutrition Expert

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I'm a certified nutrition specialist, Fitness hall of famer, and I speak at health conferences and trainings around the globe. But I'm driven most of all by my insatiable curiosity and love of science to keep asking questions, digging for answers, and sharing the information that I uncover with as many people as I can. And that's where you come in. That's why I created the well Beyond 40 podcasts to synthesize and simplify the science of health into actionable strategies to help you thrive. In each episode, we'll talk about what's working in the world of wellness, from personalized nutrition and healing your metabolism to powerful aging and prescriptive fitness. Join me on the journey to better health so you can love how you look and feel right now and have the energy to play football full out at 100. Don't miss an episode. Subscribe now@subscribetojay.com to start unlocking your healthiest, most energetic self. Hey, JJ Virgin here. Okay, real talk. 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Doja Cat is playing at the Los Angeles Theater next Tuesday. Sweet Ray Ban Meta Glasses available at Ray Ban stores and other authorized retailers. The number one question I get asked is what do you eat? So I'm going to open up my fridge and pantry and show you the foods I make a point to eat every week so I can stay strong, stay, stay lean and more importantly, have great steady sustained energy. And I'm going to show you what a typical day's menu looks like too. I'll share my little treats and I'll also share where I wish I could do better. Now the reality is I'm a pretty simple eater. I don't spend a lot of time in the kitchen. So that means it comes down to having the fridge, the freezer and the pantry stocked well and planning ahead. So let's start with what I do when over the course of the week. And then I'm gonna break it down so you can see what a typical day looks like. First, of course, let's start with protein. Since that's always what I eat first in the morning, it's pretty easy. I either am doing a protein shake, I'm doing Greek style yogurt. As far as yogurt goes, this is if I'm eating dairy or not. Sometimes I'll do coconut yogurt and the goal is to get in some fermented food a few times a week. Now I wish I was a fan of fermented veggies. I even went to Korea, tried it there. I just, I don't like it. So unless dry farm wine counts, the way I'm getting my fermented food is dark chocolate and yogurt. So the other protein in the morning that I'll tend to do are eggs and egg whites with a little sheep's milk feta. Rest of the day it's grass fed beef Grounder, New York strip grass fed lamb, wild fish. I kind of stick with salmon or Chilean sea bass and then occasionally some scallops or some shellfish. I love Shel, but sadly my husband doesn't. So it's one of the things I get when I go out and pastured chicken, especially pastured chicken thighs in the air fryer. I love that Antibirico pork chops. In a week I find that I rotate in like at least nine different protein sources. So that's where I start. The next thing that I do are non starchy vegetables. One of the things that is a staple for me is cauliflower rice because I can keep it in the freezer and I can do all sorts of things with it. I make a lot of pilafs in it with it where I shove in a lot of leftover vegetables so whatever's left over or I have other frozen veggies. I'll use all of that. Like last night I made a cauliflower rice pilaf with a bunch of mushrooms in it and then I added in some lentils cause we were having Greek food. Other thing that I love, I try to eat a lot of mushrooms. So I try to eat mushrooms at least three times a week. Amazing for our immune system. And what we love to do is take mushrooms and onions, saute them in a little extra virgin olive oil and then put them on our grass fed grass finished steak. Now onions are amazing because they are a great source of prebiotics. And if you're doing the red onions, you're getting some quercetin in there too. Plus I love having that leftover, that's an easy thing again to add into the cauliflower to make that pilaf. Brussels. Okay, I know they're polarizing. You either love them or you hate them. What I like to do with brussels sprouts is I steam them lightly and then I coat them with some olive oil and a little bit of balsamic and I roast them in the oven till they get a little crunchy and I love them. The other thing I love when we do a couple days a week is broccoli cause it's so easy and we just put a little bit of grass fed ghee with it. Other than that, green beans with mushrooms is another staple. I'll saute up some mushrooms, steam some green beans, put em together. Asparagus. I have a recipe in my virgin diet cookbook for asparagus with a little lemon rind on top. Love asparagus because of the prebiotic Fiber in it. One of the things I keep in the freezer is a frozen pepper blend. So I keep frozen mushrooms, I keep frozen pepper blend. Peppers are fantastic to just throw again into the pilaf. Or if I'm doing like a Mexican food night, I'll use them there. So that's one I keep in. Now spinach for me is not one that I love. But what we every once in a while we'll do is spinach with some mushrooms. So we'll saute that and then put our Chilean sea bass on top of that. The one I do love is spaghetti squash. So we do spaghetti squash and I'll just make a bunch of it. Cause it's such a great one to have around for leftovers. And you can do some pesto on top or some marinara sauce. The other thing I love to use for pasta is hearts of palm pasta. So spaghetti squash is one. Hearts of palm pasta, I found it at Trader Joe's is another. And hearts of palm are just a fun thing to throw in your salad. Speaking of salads, I pretty much stick with arugula. And if I'm really getting fired up, I will actually add in some cucumbers and radishes. I tend to be pretty lazy about my cooking, but if I get fired up, I'll make enough cucumber and radishes. So I have it for a couple days in a row. And sometimes I'll add in some multi colored baby carrots. Now one thing that I love, and I try to do this when I'm out at restaurants, I literally bought this for home and kind of went, I don't know what to do with this is I love rainbow chard, I love artichokes, I hate dealing with them at home. And I especially love sunchokes, which are a great source of prebiotic fibers and glutathione. So. And by the way, like, restaurants when you think about it, are a great time to go in and get the things you would normally do at home. But I'm gonna give you a little warning there. Brussels sprouts in restaurants are kind of like dessert, let's be honest. Like usually they're deep fried, they're usually got sugar on em, they're amazing. But don't kid yourself into thinking it's some kind of a healthy choice. It's probably not. Now what I find in a week is my goal is to get at least 5 servings of non starchy vegetables at each day. But I usually get about 10. Half a cup cooked or a cup raw as a serving. And my goal is to get at least eight different types of non starchy vegetables a week. And I find that I have to focus on that because I get in a rut. Like I would be doing broccoli, cauliflower and brussels sprouts every day if I didn't watch out for it. Now as far as starchy vegetables go, I was not that big of a fan. But my husband needs to get them in. And so where we tend to do this is more at lunch. You know you're most insulin sensitive in the morning. So when you think about it, where are you going to be best? I find that if I eat too much starchy carbs in the morning, my blood sugar doesn't feel good. But I like them more around lunch. But that's when I tend to do more of my fruit. And Tim tends to do more of his starchy carbs. So what he likes to do are root vegetables, roast potatoes, smashed potatoes, wild or brown rice, that's an easy one. And we buy those wild or brown rices that are already cooked that you can just steam. We do not put them in the microwave. We steam them in a little pot on the stove. Lentils are one that I love. He'll do hummus a lot. And I'll tell you what, squashes. I lived in Japan for a while and I'm absolutely, absolutely hooked on Japanese pumpkin. It's called kabocha squash. Super bright orange. You can actually eat the rind. It's amazing with a little bit of ghee. So I find maybe in a week I get like 2 servings in. Here's what I would do if I was in my perfect world. I eat more beets. It's one of the things I try to get whenever I'm out. I just don't really have too much of it at home. Cause I find I buy em and they just seem to sit there. But I love a great beet salad, especially a golden beet salad. When I'm out, what I do eat and when I think of my plate, I think of eating protein first, then non starchy vegetables, some healthy fats. Quite often you're getting that, remember from your protein and then from the preparation of your non starchy vegetables. And then I put together starchy carbs with fruit because it basically acts the same way. So this is where I'm going more than just the straight starchy carbs. And I love berries. So I try to eat 2 cups of berries a day. And I say that because if left to my own devices, I'd eat a lot more than that. So I'm really careful about it so I don't go crazy with it. Blueberries and blackberries are my favorite. I do raspberries too, but they can get really funky if they're like, you know, one day at the house and all of a sudden you've got like fuzzballs. The other one that I love are cherries, but I could eat a pound of cherries easy. So during cherry season, fortunately for me, they're always really expensive and cherry season's really short. But I buy small supplies of them and make sure my son's around because he's also obsessed with them. So again, blackberries, blueberries are my favorites. The other things that I'll eat occasionally are papayas, pink grapefruits, Tuscan melon. Now, I wish that I loved apples. I did a great podcast with Dr. Tom O' Brien where he was extolling the virtues of root vegetables and eating half an apple every day. And I'm like, I just never been a big apple fan. Makes they have always made me feel hungrier. I don't know if it's because they're higher in fructose than other fruits, but they're so good for you. Because of the pectin fiber and the quercetin, they're a great prebiotic. So if you love them, rotate them in too, because they can be amazing. Now, I mentioned this already. My primary fat is extra virgin olive oil. Now I do measure it. I found that when I started tracking my food that I was like a complete olive oil piggy, like I was doing way overboard. So that's one where I measure. Same with ghee. And I love some of these high quality grass fed ghees. They're incredible. They're bright yellow. That's the one you want to look for. And then for seasoning, I keep it really simple. There's two things I use. I use real sea salt. And wherever I travel to, I find amazing mineral rich sea salts. Like when we were in Peru and went to the salt beds, I bought that. The other thing that I use, and I love this, cause it's a great way to incorporate in organ meat without eating organ meat. Shout out to Chef James Berry. Pluck if you haven't heard of this, this is organ meats made into a seasoning. I know it sounds gross. It's actually amazing. My husband puts it on chicken thighs in the air fryer. Like, incredible. So I sprinkle that on whenever we're Doing the mushrooms and onions wherever I can use it. I do because I want to get the organ meats in and I don't want to eat organ meats. So that's how you hack it. All right. The other thing that I make sure I get in every day, I know this is gonna be like, I have to do that dark chocolate. Okay, here's what's cool about dark chocolate. It's fermented and it's prebiotic fiber. So generally what I do in the morning is I will sprinkle in some dark chocolate chips onto the top of my smoothie or on my yogurt. And if not, the other thing I do is there's a product called Living Ratio Cacao Calm. That's dark chocolate with mushrooms. And I'll put that into my coffee, my midday coff coffee. Because that's the other thing that I do is coffee every day. I love coffee. And fortunately I'm a fast caffeine metabolizer so I can have it till about two in the afternoon and not get trashed. But I try to do the majority of it in the morning. The other thing that I do is green tea. So my gym creation every day is a big thing of green tea. It's literally a. It's either a 34 or 64 ounce big jug that I put my green tea in. Then I add my chiatin powder and then I add my essential oil amino acids, my amino power powder and my electro replenish. That's my little gym creation that I take with me every single day. So let me walk you through what a typical day for me is. I wake up, I have coffee, no joke. My husband brings me coffee in bed every day. I know. Then breakfast. And generally I'll eat about an hour or two after waking up. I prefer it to be about two hours after waking up. It just depends what the morning looks like and how quickly we're going off to the gym. But that's my preference. In a perfect world, I'd wake up like 6, 6:30. I'd have breakfast around 8 and then I'd go to the gym around 9. Sometimes it works like that. Breakfast for me is either a smoothie and generally I'll make that smoothie with a little bit of coconut or flax milk. I will throw in some chia or flax or maybe a little avocado, sometimes a half of a frozen banana. So that's the smoothie. Or I'll do Greek style yogurt. And I like to use either my, my paleo Shake powder or collagen powder? My collagen powder. So I get that collagen in there. And here's what I like to do. I'll put a little bit of dark chocolate chips and a little bit of something called Catalina Crunch on top. Catalina Crunch is like my guilty pleasure. That's a high fiber, high protein cereal. I, growing up was nicknamed Poppy for all the Pop Tarts I ate. But right next to the Pop Tarts was the Captain Crunch. So Catalina Crunch is like my adult version of Captain Crunch without all the garbage in it. It's literally like a lot of fiber and protein. Check it out. But you can literally make a really thick shake and throw a little bit on top of some dark chocolate chips or do that, do the Greek style yogurt. And again, for me, it depends on what's going on with my dairy. Now, when I'm traveling, I will often buy things from Instacart and keep them in the fridge. However, if I'm not doing that, and I'll bring my protein powders with me and my aminos and all that. But if I'm not able to do that, what I do is an egg and egg white omelette. So I'll do two eggs, four or more egg whites, and then I'll add in some spinach, mushrooms and feta. So that's my travel plan or sometimes my Sunday brunch little meal. All right, then I told you about what I take to the gym. My gym concoction again, green tea with my electroreplenish, my chiatine powder. That's creatine HCl, only creatine made in the United States and with some taurine and magnesium and then my amino acid, my amino power powder, my essential aminos. So I take that to the gym with me. Then after the gym, I'm super lazy about this. Full disclosure, it is whatever is left over. So I think this is a really important thing. Make extra when you're making dinner so you can have it for lunch. So like today for lunch we had Greek food. Last night I had leftover chicken kebabs. So that made it super easy. And I'd made a cauliflower pilaf with lentils, so I had that. I also had a little salad leftover, so I had some of that. So I had salad cauliflower pilaf with chicken kebabs, and I had blackberries. And that is pretty much my lunch every day is some kind of protein, some berries, and then whatever is left over of the protein and vegetables. Then If I didn't do my little concoction in the morning with dark chocolate, I'll do a little coffee, I'll throw in some of the Living Ratio, some collagen, and I'll get it that way, which is a really yummy. It's like. It's like a power mocha. Think of it like that. Now, for dinner, my husband's in charge of the protein. I'm in charge of the vegetables. So typical. We'll do about 6 to 8 ounces of protein, usually 6. But sometimes I'm a little bit more of a piggy. I go eight. If we're out, I'll go even 10. And again, it rotates between all these different things. Last night, I literally ordered in all these different things from a Greek restaurant. Steak and chicken kebabs and that ground beef stuff. So I had that leftover. But a very typical thing would be like a New York steak, mushrooms and onions, and some broccoli with ghee. That is very, very typical. Sometimes I'll have some more berries at night and throw some dark chocolate chips in. Depends what I've done throughout the day. Sometimes we'll do some dry farm wine. Thank you, Todd White. So that's very typical for me. And then a lot of sparkling waters and zeb throughout the day. That is another one that I love is Zevia. Full disclosure. So there you have it. And that's my shopping list. And seriously, what helps me the most is I have frozen fish and meat that I get from Vital Choice in Butcherbox, so my freezer's well stocked. It's also stocked with cauliflower, rice, and a bunch of different vegetables. I've got the pantry well stocked with, like, my protein powders and collagen and amino acids and creatine and electrolytes. And then I've got the fridge, so I get all my fresh veggies and fresh fruit. That's. It's so simple that you can literally do this in 10 minutes. Be sure to join me next time for more tools, tips, and techniques you can incorporate into everyday life to ensure you look and feel great and are built to last. Check. Check me out on Instagram, Facebook, and my website, jjvirgin.com and make sure to follow my podcast@subscribetoj.com so you don't miss a single episode. And hey, if you're loving what you hear, don't forget to leave a review. Your reviews make a big difference in helping me reach more incredible women just like you to spread the word about aging powerfully. After 40. Thanks for tuning in 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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