6 Free Or Low-Cost Biohacks That Boost Metabolism and Longevity

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The biggest myth in wellness is that you need expensive gadgets, high-tech labs, or a billionaire biohacking budget to get healthy or slow aging. Newsflash: you do not. And if you need proof, look at Julie Gibson Clark. This is a single mom with a normal income who outperformed multimillion-dollar biohackers, and she did it with Simple, consistent habits. She majored in the majors. Some of the most powerful tools for your metabolism, your energy, and your longevity are free or cost almost nothing. Seeing sunlight first thing in the morning, waking up, walking after meals, eating protein first, unprocessing your diet, going from a hot bath to a cold shower, even swapping the light bulbs in your bedroom. These can all make a big difference. So today I'm going to walk you through 6 free or low-cost changes that can create real metabolic and longevity benefits and how you can start using them right away. Hey, I'm JJ Virgin, PhD dropout, sorry mom, turned 4-time New York Times bestselling author. As a certified nutrition specialist, Fitness Hall of Famer, and globally recognized leader in health, I'm driven to keep asking the tough questions and use my podcast to simplify the science of health into actionable strategies that help you thrive. Want an ad-free experience? You can now subscribe to my exclusive VIP podcast at subscribetojj.com for just $4.99 a month or $49.99 a year. It's like your daily latte, but better for your health. I'd also love to hear your thoughts on the show. And here's the fun part. When you send me your review, I'll reply to you using my on-demand virtual me. That's right. My team and I created a virtual JJ packed with my books, speeches, and wisdom so I can personally connect with you. Here's how you do it. Subscribe and leave an honest review of the podcast. Take a screenshot of your review, text it to 813-565-2677. 27. That's 813-565-2627. My virtual JJ will reply directly, and trust me, this will make your day. So subscribe now at subscribe2jj.com and text me your review. Let's keep thriving together. So good, so good, so good.

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Let's talk first about the free daily habits that really move the needle. Again, I like to talk about majoring in the majors before you major in the minors. And the first one is moving after your meals. This is one of the fastest ways to regulate your blood sugar. When you move, you take the carbs the carbs floating around your bloodstream and soak them into your muscles. So even a 10-minute walk can reduce glucose spikes. But here's the cool thing: intensity trumps duration. So if you're going, "I don't have time for 10 minutes," 1 minute of high intensity like air squats is worth 4 to 9 minutes of moderate movement. So yes, you can pull this off. Now, my favorite thing to do at night, usually it's with the dog, so it's kind of walk, walk, stop, but is take a walk after dinner. And when I'm traveling, what I always do is choose restaurants that we can walk to, so we have to walk after we The next one up is getting some heat on after your workout. So turns out that a sauna or a hot shower is gonna dilate your blood vessels, help improve recovery. It's an anabolic, means it helps build muscle, and it helps support metabolic flexibility. Then get a little cold on your face and your chest, cuz that little cold burst can activate the mammalian dive reflex, which lowers your stress and shifts your nervous system from sympathetic to parasympathetic. Into calm. Next up, unprocess your diet. Please, pretty please, I want you to swap out those ultra-processed foods for whole foods because those ultra-processed foods are making you hungry. They've got the lowest thermic effect, so it's easier for you to store them rather than burn them. And they got a lot of toxic stuff in them too. They kind of fit in with the obesogenic formula because they're high in carbs and they're high in fat. They're low in fiber and they're low in protein. Easy to store as fat on your body. Of course, we're going to talk about what you should do instead. But just a little hint, hint is just build your meals with protein first. When you eat protein first, you won't want all that stuff. Then add in some non-starchy vegetables. If you get through all of that and you're like, I gotta have this ultra-processed thing, and you won't, by the way, it'll be easy. This just one shift, you're going to get better satiety, better blood sugar, and you're going to crush your cravings. Red light. Okay, I mentioned replacing your light bulbs. This is like the coolest thing ever. There are these red light bulbs. We actually I've got these Philips Hues that you can control with your phone. So in the morning you can mimic sunlight, in the evening you put it into this warm red. So super great, supports melatonin production, calms you down, gets you ready for sleep, and then improves your sleep quality. So again, you know, there's these great red lights, I love them, but you can get these inexpensive red light nightlights that can help make the difference. And the other thing that makes a difference is when you wake up in the morning, see the sun. This can boost your cortisol by as much as 50% really helps you anchor in your circadian rhythm, get your metabolism humming. So you wanna do this within 30 minutes of waking. So if you get up and meditate, then right after that, go out. Now, if you are living somewhere where it's not light when you wake up in the morning yet, then you can get yourself these 10,000 lux lights and they're pretty inexpensive. So that would be the way that you could do this. If you want to really dial in your day-to-day routine, start with dialing in your morning. Routine. And I have a video, How I Finally Built the Perfect Morning Routine for Women Over 40, that walks you through exactly what I do each morning. But remember, your morning routine is only one part of the equation. What you do in the hours after that routine can make or break your metabolism, your cravings, your energy, and even how well you age. Which brings me to someone who's a bit of a shero of mine, Julie Gibson Clark. Because she's totally figured this one out. So here's what Julie Gibson Clark proves about longevity. She is one of the best real-world examples that longevity is built on consistent habits, not on hardware. I find it really kind of fun and fascinating. She's a single mom in Phoenix. She's got a normal income, and yet Julie Gibson Clark is ranked number 2 on the Global Longevity Leaderboard. This is called the Rejuvenation Olympics. Yes, there really is such a thing where they track your biological your chronological aging, and she is aging 34% slower than she should be. And here's the cool thing. She spends about $108 a month on doing this. So here's what she actually does. You can steal this. Now, I'm not going to steal all of this because some of this I'm like, I'll have no part of that. She wakes up around 4:45, 5:00 AM every day. Hopefully she is going to bed early. Hopefully, Julie, I bet you are. She starts her day with green tea and some quiet time, prayer or meditation. And again, I'm hoping she goes to bed at 8:30, but you know, there's no way you win the longevity Olympics, the rejuvenation Olympics without good sleep. So I'm sure she is. Then for exercise and her recovery, she does strength training, she does cardiovascular training, and she does some metabolic conditioning. Then after her workouts, she's doing a sauna. And remember I talked about how heat can be really anabolic, help reduce inflammation. And then apparently she does a cold shower afterwards. Now, one thing I'd heavily emphasize is getting into too much cold after a workout can block muscle protein synthesis. But doing this nice contrast onto your face and chest can actually get you into a parasympathetic state. So that's the best way to do that hot and cold therapy if you're doing it right after a workout. For her daily eating, she actually does intermittent fasting of about 16 hours. What I like is, which is this early intermittent fasting where she eats in the late morning. She eats apparently about 16 ounces of non-starchy vegetables per day. Not supplements, not a green drink, actually really eats them, which I figured out was about 6 to 8 cups. I don't know if this is cooked or not, but that is a lot of servings. That could be anywhere from 8 to 16 servings. So that's fantastic. She basically focuses her diet on lean protein and whole foods, and she does supplement, but not a whole lot, pretty minimal. And then for stress and for mindset, again, she does some prayer or some meditation daily, and she's really careful with her scheduling so she doesn't overschedule. This is a really important one, and she focuses on being consistent but not being perfect. So what's the key takeaway from all of this? What her results really show, that the core principle of aging powerfully is not the budget you throw at it. It's your consistency. That is the single biggest thing that impacts all of this, is being consistent. No one goes to the gym one time and changes their life, right? Or takes a supplement one time or changes their life or gets one good night of sleep. All right, now let's talk about how you can apply this to your life, 'cause that's what really matters, right? So first thing is I want you to focus on light and movement and that morning sunlight being super duper important. And again, if you can't get the sunlight, maybe you're living in Iceland, then get yourself that 10,000 lux light. And then think about how you can move throughout the day and especially after meals. I am a huge fan of exercise snacks. I have my 10 Minutes to Win It Challenge of doing small movements all throughout the day. We know it's way better for you to take whatever you would do for exercise and do it throughout the day rather than doing it all at once. So if you can habit stack eating, maybe walking after your evening meal, that's what I like to do with my hubs every night. And then maybe after breakfast you do some air squats, after lunch you do some lunges, just habit stack movement all throughout the day and check yourself. This is where it's great to track with some kind of tracking device, which by the way, if you want to go totally on the cheap, could be a pedometer. I mean, we can go totally old school here, but you wanna, or just set a little timer so that every hour or so you move, it's just in a minute or two. And that's my 10 Minutes to Win It Challenge. We literally are going off the information that shows that a minute of intense exercise is worth about 4 to 9 minutes metabolically of moderate exercise. And how do we move more all throughout the day? And then how do we throw those walks in too? So you get that 8,000 or more steps per day. And then let's talk about your meals. 'Cause of course, one of the fastest ways to fix your health is to change what's at the end of your fork. So build your plate, eating protein first, then adding in your non-starchy vegetables and then getting in a little bit of healthy fat. Likely you'll get that from your protein. Get a clean source or what you use on your vegetables. Use some extra virgin olive oil and then make sure you're getting in at least 10 grams of fiber at each meal as well. Little more is better. Bring it up strategically. Don't hammer yourself out of the blue, out of the gate. And then of course, using that heat and that cold. And I really love heat after a workout. Such a good thing. And then doing that cold burst. And that cold burst, I actually learned that from my buddy Dave Asprey, that you could dunk your face into ice water or you could stand in the shower and let the cold hit your chest. And again, it's, it's going to trigger your parasympathetic nervous system, which seems so weird. It seems like it'd be the opposite. Let's go back to diet because one thing that I want you to really think about is do kind of an assessment, an audit of your intake, your food intake. And this is where using a free food app can make a big difference. I do like a food scale, but they are like $10, so we can spring for that too. But really looking at how much of your diet is processed foods. Foods. And when I think of that, I'm talking ultra-processed foods. The average American now eats 60 to 70% of their diet of ultra-processed foods. So my kind of rule is, could we get that down to maybe 10%? Like, let's— and I don't think of things like wild rice or legumes— just because it's in a package doesn't mean it's ultra-processed. Ultra-processed is really, have they taken the fiber out? Are they using damaged oils? Like, let's really try to get that stuff gone. And I believe we can eliminate it altogether. But if you're eating half your diet in ultra-processed foods, let's just work it over time. It doesn't have to happen overnight, but it does need to happen over time. So just make good steady steps towards it. And this is where I like to do really healthy food swaps. Swap in whole foods. When you pull out those ultra-processed foods, you're gonna have better blood sugar control, you're gonna have better metabolism because you've got low thermic effect from the ultra-processed foods. You won't be as hungry, you won't have cravings, you'll reduce inflammation. It's just a win-win-win. And then let's look at fixing your nighttime environment. Switch those lights, switch them over to red. This might be one of the biggest things that you spend your money on is, is getting some red light bulbs and just like at night we literally start to turn down everything and it just, it signals to my body now, it's like we're winding down, but it signals to your nervous system too. Remember if you have bright lights jamming, your melatonin's not coming up, right? So you gotta have the shift there. Now I just threw a lot at you. You don't need to do all this at once. Let's pick one thing first. What's the one thing of all those things you went, oh, I need to do that. Do that one first. Do the one that's going to make the biggest difference. Okay. Once you've got that one dialed and I don't care if it takes you a week or a month, just focus on the thing, get it consistent, and then we're going to add another one. I mean, it took me a year to really nail meditation. So like, let's just pick one thing, get the thing in your life, and then we add the next thing. If you live like a healthy, lean, fit person, guess what you become? One. All right. Here are the takeaways. You don't need a small fortune to change your metabolism or age powerfully. Sunlight, moving after your meals, eating protein first, doing hot and cold therapy, eating a— moving into a whole foods diet. By the way, you'll save money there too. There's some of the highest impact tools you have. This is how you major in the majors. A lot of those other things are minors. Julie proved that consistency beats complexity every time. So start with one habit, stack it, stack the next one on it, and watch what happens over the next 30, 60, 90 days. And if this helped, be sure to subscribe, share it with someone who needs simple and doable tools too, and tell me which habit you're starting with today. Your biology is not expensive to support. It just needs consistency. Be sure to join me next time for more tools, 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 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 JJ. It's my on-demand virtual self 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 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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