Aging Backwards with JJ Virgin

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Whoa, whoa, whoa. This show is about you, not about me. I want to help you find practical, real world ways to dial in your health and mindset so you can finally lose that weight and feel strong and energized. Stop settling for less than your personal best. It's time to find out how to look and feel better than ever. And I'll be right here with you the whole way. Hey, it's JJ and welcome to today's show. We are going to be talking today about, I like to call it de aging because to me, anti aging sounds like you just left the planet. So I always think of de aging, reversing aging. Like, how do we turn back the clock, not just stop it, how do we have it so that when people look at you, they go, oh my gosh. Like, how do you just keep looking better? And not just that, how do you keep feeling better? So if you're feeling like your joints are a little achy or you walked into the bedroom, you don't remember why you walked in there, or you're looking in the mirror and you're going, what is going on? This, my friend, this episode is for you. Now, before I dive in, I want to do a shout out. I also want to remind you we always do super cool show notes and today of course, will be no different. So you'll be able to get those@jjvirgin.com d aging d e a g I n g jjvirgin.com de aging and one of the things I always love to do is read out a review. Now, I've been reading out a lot of five star reviews and I was like, team, I know they couldn't all be five stars. So turns out they had hidden a couple from me. I guess they didn't want to hurt my feelings. And here's, here's what I'll tell you about that. Yes, I am sensitive and my feelings do get hurt. But I also recognize that when I can get feedback and we can make this better, the rising tide lifts all boats. So I'm always looking at how do I serve you best? Because, hey, I'm not doing this for me sitting here by myself in a room. I'm doing this so that we can get you the information that can make a difference in your life. And what I like to do is get the latest, innovative, cutting edge, great stuff, but more importantly and then tell you what the heck you can do with it. And I bring in the most awesome guests to do that. Now, today's awesome guest is actually going to be me. And that's really relevant to the to the one from today, which is from Cam Corey. Cam Corey left this review and it must have been when I did with Chalene, which I loved that one. And it says, please more info and less interruptions. 3 stars. There are great guests on the show, but each time I listen, I end up feeling frustrated at how often JJ interrupts and goes off on her own stuff. She's often answering her own questions that she puts to her guests. I just listened to the episode about the 131book. I have no idea what the 13 method is because they never got to that. If that's a ploy to get you to buy the book for real info, it's not working for me. Nope, that wasn't a ploy. If I get a good deal of information on a podcast, I'm way more likely to buy a book. Please let jj. Please, jj, let your guests talk more about what they are offering and their knowledge, less time on the backstory and less interrupting. You're only doing a 30 minute podcast, which in my opinion means you get need to get down to the real stuff pretty quickly. I appreciate what you're doing and the info you're giving us, but I'd love to hear a lot more from your guests. Thanks. I will tell you with Chalene and we'll hook up to that that episode. So Chalene is one of my favorite people and we don't get to spend enough time together. So we might have. You might get a little background of like when two friends haven't talked to each other for a while, what happens? And we got to get her back on. We already talked about that. So we'll be bringing her back on because we have a lot of stuff to talk about and I think that's what you heard on that episode is we kind of going, oh my gosh, after all these years of, like, all the crazy diet stuff out there, what really is real? So to be continued. That one. Now, today, I can't interrupt myself. I mean, maybe I could, but I probably won't be doing that. So. So we're in good shape for today. But I do take that under advisement. So thank you, Kam, Corey, for taking the time and I always appreciate that. Caring enough to write in. I really appreciate that. Now, before we deep dive into de aging, I want to share something else super awesome with you.

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Welcome back. All righty, here we go. We're going to dive into de aging. Here actually is the title of this. I did this as a TV segment and the TV segment was aging backwards. The things that are aging you prematurely and what to do to reverse it fast. 50 is the new 30 if you're doing the right things to keep you looking and feeling young. The good news is that the things that can make the biggest difference are not the expensive lotions and potions or cosmetic surgery. You can de age with some super simple diet and lifestyle strategies. All right, so again, I did this as a fun TV segment. One of the cool things that happened when I moved to Tampa is that there is a national show that literally is five minutes from my house. So I go in there and I do segments every month and record a couple at a time. So this was one of them that I really, really loved. Had a lot of fun with it. So here we go. You ready? Number one, stop that snacking and switch to intermittent fasting. Now we'll tag to. I have one of my podcasts where I talked about eating by the clock. I want to give you a couple things to think about here. When you snack, you know when you're eating breakfast, a snack, lunch, a snack, dinner, and then, oh my gosh, another snack. Couldn't go to bed hungry. When you're doing that, you are keeping your blood sugar sugar up, which is super, super aging. We don't want to do that. What you want to do instead is teach yourself to become what's called metabolically flexible or fat adapted, where you're able to use stored fat for fuel. And the sugar impact diet is, by the way, the way that I help people make that shift from sugar burner to fat burner. How you know you're able to do that is you're able to go 4 to 6 minutes, 4 to 6 minutes, 4 to six hours between meals. Now, here are the crucial things, and this is where I want you to start because we're going to talk about intermittent fasting and alternate day fasting. But where I want you to start first is if you're really focusing on eating from the trifecta, that's healthy fats, fiber and protein that will allow you to have better blood sugar control and be able to go longer between meals. You want to wake up in the morning and eat when you get hungry. That might be an hour after waking up, two hours, three hours. But you eat when you're hungry and then drink a lot of water, maybe some ice, green tea in between meals. Stretch your meals four to six hours and stop eating four to six, three to four hours before bed. So what you might find is you have three meals a day, you might have two meals a day. A lot of times on the Weekends we'll have a late breakfast, like around 10, and we'll have an early dinner. Like literally like we'll have dinner around 5 o'. Clock. And sometimes we don't even eat in between. Or if we do, we just have a little bar or something. So that is it. So don't be fooled by all that, that stuff about all the meals and all the snacks, that's the first thing. Now it turns out, as we know, and I don't have to tell you this, anyone who's ever gone on a diet knows that if you go on a diet long term, it stop working. And when I say that, I mean a calorie restricted diet. You know, the one where you kind of feel like you're going to die. That's why they call it diet. But here's what we know about calorie restriction. It actually slows down your metabolism. Not in the short term, not for a couple days. But if you do it longer than that, your body thinks, huh, we're getting less coming in. So I need to downshift my metabolism to accommodate it. Just like when you over exercise, your body starts to make you hungrier. To accommodate it, we, our body tries to keep homeostasis. Now how can you trick this? Turns out there's two different ways to trick it. One is intermittent fasting and the other is fasting, which I think the easiest way to do that is a 20 or a 24 hour fast. Now that could be every other day or that could be like once a week. And again that's after you become fat. Adapted, right? But a great way to ease into that whole thing is first start to, you know, eat in the morning when you get hungry, stop eating at night. Three to four hours before bed. No, don't go to bed later, get rid of the snacks and start stretching out the time between meals. Have lots of water in between. A lot of times we're not hungry, we're thirsty. You've heard that before. Then start to throw in some intermittent fasting. And the easy way to do intermittent fasting is to just two days a week. Again, I like to do this on the weekend when I sleep in longer. So on the weekend when I'm sleeping in, I will go to bed, I will eat a late breakfast, kind of like a brunch. Think of it at brunch and I'll eat an early dinner. So for me, on those times when I'm either switching a time zone because I do that a lot, or I am, I'm sleeping in. That's when I'll do it. So try to do that two days a week. That's super cool. Then once you've got that dialed, go for the. The fast where maybe you're going to have a. An early dinner one night, and then you don't eat again till the early dinner the next night. All right, that's the first one is stop the snacking and switch to the intermittent fasting. All right, now next up. Oh, and I also wanted to say one more thing on that. Since we're. Since we're on this subject, here's what's super cool about. Here's the other reason why you're doing the intermittent fasting. And fasting is what's interesting. You know, I just talked about how when you cut your calories, you start to slow down your metabolism. Turns out that when you do fasting or intermittent fasting, the opposite starts to happen. Is your body basically kind of ramps up, and it ramps up growth hormone. Here's the other cool thing that happens with intermittent fasting is that. And also with fasting, your body triggers something called autophagy. It's basically like your body taking out the cellular trash. So the old cells, et cetera, your body is getting rid of those. So it's like a cellular detox to be able to do that. Think of your body taking out the trash. All right, next one sugar. You knew I had to bring this up. I mean, you knew there was no way for us to talk about reversing aging without talking about getting the darn sugar out. And this is where the sugar impact diet, of course, comes into play. Because what I found when I was writing that book is that so many people are fooled by these hidden sugars. You know, sneaking in, they're having that. I just had a green drink. I'm like, yeah, but your green drink had apple in there and carrot and beet. And you got hit with a load of sugar. And your body doesn't know the difference when you're sucking it down. So, you know, same with it. You know, having a little honey because it's all natural. Well, guess what? It might be all natural, but it's still sugar. So you think about a lot of the places that sugar sneaking in where you don't think about it because you just had the salad, but it had a raspberry vinaigrette. Or maybe it had the glazed pecans on it, or maybe you had a little bit of the teriyaki sauce at the restaurant, right? Or the orange glaze. All those things are sugar. Sugar. Sugar. And the challenge with sugar is it's super aging because of a process called glycation. And glycation is where protein and fats combine with sugar in the bloodstream. They don't need enzymes to do this, and they cause premature, premature aging. And what I want you to visualize here is crusty old bread. That's what glycation looks like inside. So what you want to do is you want to start to look at where all those sugars are sneaking in, and you want to lower your sugar impact. That is what I have people do on the sugar impact diet is first identify where all the sugar sneaking in, then you start to taper it down. Trade higher sugar impact foods for medium ones, and then we don't go cold turkey. After you've done that for one to two weeks, depending on how you scored on the sugar impact diet quiz, then and only then do you shift to low sugar impact foods. This is super important. Now I have to do one big shout out when we're talking about this, and I gotta shout out fructose, because fructose is the most aging sugar of all. And when I'm talking about this, I'm not talking about eating some blueberries or having, you know, an apple. I'm talking about apple juice. I'm talking about eating excessive fruit. But it really is when we pull out, like, we unwrap the fruit and have the juice when we dry the fruit and have it as candy, when we constantly concentrate the fruit juice and turn it into syrup, this is giving you a big hit of fructose. Or if you're still being fooled by the health food claims of things like agave, which is the highest source of fructose, except for crystalline fructose. And the challenge with fructose is it actually is the most aging sugar. It glycates seven times more than the other sugars do, which is that very aging process. So lower your sugar impact and really caution, caution with fructose. The only place you should be getting the fructose is in one or two pieces of fruit per day. And berries, Berries are best here. We love our berries. Lots of great colors. Why do we love our berries? Because of the antioxidants. So this is the next part is you're going to want to make sure that you crank up the antioxidants. Now, when I did this on tv, I had a couple things, mainly because I know the host well. Whenever I bring in wine and chocolate, I win them over. But one of the reasons that we talk about Red wine. So much is from the resveratrol, which actually the resveratrol in red wine can activate our longevity genes, the Siri1 genes, and that helps keep us younger. So that's one. And then of course, all of the different high quality foods out there that have a lot of great antioxidants that could be things like wild salmon, dark chocolate, all the different colored fruits like blueberries and blackberries and cherries. Right. And avocado. So think about where you can get great antioxidants, but especially focus on making sure that you're getting resveratrol in. And the highest content of resveratrol is pinot. Now I'm going to do, I'll put into the show notes my buddies over at Dry Farm Wine and shout out to Todd and David at Dry Farm Wine, because what you want to make sure, of course, is that you don't make a good thing bad by getting a bunch of added sugars. So that is where Dry Farm Wine comes in because they have got really clean wines without added sugars. Okay, now you might want to have one of those glasses of wine in the evening to help you de stress. When I look at this, one of the most important things that you can do to help with de aging is to figure out how to manage stress better. And it's different for everybody, right? I always talk about how much I want to do yoga, but yoga just for some reason stresses me out. I get in a yoga class and all I think about is everything I need to do and I want to make lists and I mean, it's ridiculous. So think about what are the things for you that really help you de stress? We'll talk about a couple in a minute, but here's why. So stress shortens your telomeres. We actually have tests now to look at this. And the telomeres are the protective end caps around your DNA that keep your your cells healthy. Now, the other thing that can happen is when you're under stress, the stress, of course, raises, besides shortening those telomeres, it also raises cortisol. When you raise cortisol, a couple things all not good happen. Number one, you break down muscle. You don't want to do that because if you're not building muscle, you're losing it. And as we age, we tend to lose muscle. By the way, you don't have to, let's keep you working out and lifting weights. But stress raises cortisol, which can break down muscle. It also makes your gut more permeable. So you're more likely to have food intolerances. It also lowers serotonin, which can impact your sleep, which is a big deal because sleep is so critical for de aging because this is when you get the big boost of growth hormone and this is when you're repairing and rebuilding. Right? So sleep is super duper high critical factor here. And then of course, low serotonin can make you crave sugar. So it can get you into all the wrong places right now. What can you do? So you gotta find those things that really work for you to de stress. And again, it might be yoga for you. Maybe it's meditation. We'll put a link to my girlfriend Emily Fletcher's Ziva meditation and also my buddy Nick Ortner's tapping from the tapping solution. These again, finding the thing that works best for you. I know when my son was in the hospital, I had tapping as kind of in my hip pocket. And I think the important thing is to have some solutions that work for you when you start to feel that stress or anxiety coming up, that you have a solution for it. I got to tell you, one of my favorite things to do is get in a hot Epsom salts bath. Love it. With a little lavender essential oil and a really, a really like, you know, mindless Chiclet novel. Like, love those. I admit it, you heard it. Guilty pleasure. But it allows me to turn my brain off, right? Stop thinking about whatever it was to think about. Next one that I love is my dog love. Like nothing can get rid of stress like a little dog who, when you walk in the door, thinks that the greatest thing on earth has happened because you've walked in and just wants to get petted. So, you know, a dog, an animal that is. There's a reason they've got all these emotional support dogs. I know they had emotional support. Peacock. I really don't see it. But animals are definitely a great one for lowering stress and of course, laughing and you know, go see my buddy JP Sears on YouTube. In fact, let's see if we can find. He did a spoof on the virgin diet. Off to see if we can find it. Throw it in here too. But see what you can find of JP Sears. Shout out to him. Such a nice guy. All right, finally, this might come as a little bit of a surprise. Although if you've been around the community, it won't really blow your mind completely. But the next one is to trash your treadmill and instead of doing long distance running. Now, one thing I shared earlier is not only, you know, when you do low calorie dieting. Over time, your body downshifts your metabolism to compensate for it. The other side of that is you go, well, I'm going to lose weight by just exercising more. Well, what happens if you start to really exercise a lot is you get hungrier because your body goes, oh, I've got to keep homeostasis, so we need to eat more. So what you want to do is just like I say, your body's not a bank account, it's a chemistry lab. In terms of food. It's actually the same with exercise too. And exercise can be like, amazing. It's amazing for keeping your brain function up. It's been something I've been on my son rant about. It's like, honey, you must exercise because it raises BDNF alpha. It is the thing that's gonna keep your brain, help you rebuild your brain and keep your brain young. Super important. But I want you to think of using exercise correctly to help with raising growth hormone, raising testosterone, lowering cortisol, and helping your body handle stress longer. And when you're doing all of that, like distance endurance type of training, it has the opposite effect to that. It lowers your immune system. It creates a lot of oxidative stress, which is super aging. Super aging, right, can raise stress, hormones can break down muscle. So instead of that, because who has time? Anyway, what I want you to think of doing is high intensity interval training. I call it burst to blast fat. We'll put a link in the show notes to my favorite, favorite, favorite burst training machine, the exciser. And again, the show notes are going to be@jjvirgin.com d aging, d e A G I N G. But what I really like here is I like doing high intensity interval training. I do it a couple times a week. If I'm traveling, I'll do it in the stairwells. I'll run up the stairs for 30 to 60 seconds or take stairs two at a time or walk the stairs if I'm in altitude because that's enough on itself. And then I'll come back down for twice as long, do it again. Up, down, up, down, up, down. So that's one way to do it. You could sprint for 30 to 60 seconds, recover twice as long. Sprint, recover, sprint, recover. I'll do it on the StairMaster. I'll use the exciser. So whatever floats your boat. And the more you can change that up, the better. Just like with diet, the more you can change up your food and eat seasonally, locally, eat organic and Then rotate both your calories, your overall calorie count, what you're eating. Same with exercise. Your body adapts so you want to shift things up. So don't do the same type of high intensity interval training all the time. Shift it up. And if you've got my fast fitness program, I also have in there some 12 minute fast blats that incorporate resistance training in as well. I like doing this type of stuff. High intensity interval training trains your body how to handle stress better and recover from it. Because it's a little hit and then recover. Hit than recover, right? Resistance training. And it also helps raise growth hormone and it does it with the least amount of oxidative stress. Super duper important. And then of course, resistance training is going to help with keeping that muscle as we age and you really do, if you use, you use it or you lose it. And we do not want to lose it. That is one of the simplest ways to keep your metabolism up, is to keep your muscle up. Alrighty, let's recap, shall we? Now, I always like to make sure that not only do you get great information that you also do something with it. So here's the thing. You heard me talk about five different things you can do today to help you slow down or put the brakes on or actually reverse the aging process. Now, these don't work unless you work them. So here's the deal. I'm betting that I said five of these, but I'm betting you're kind of hitting it out of the park with at least one or two of them. And probably as we were going through this, there was one where you went, oh, yeah, I gotta really work on that. So I love Gary Keller's book, the One thing. And honestly, when you really look at it, we all want to, you know, do better, right? And so a lot of times when we're looking at like where we want to be in life, we make all these lofty goals and then we want to do them all at once. My joke always is, okay, someone says, okay, I want to get healthier. So I'm going to, I'm going to do my stress management and sleep and I'll start exercising. I'm going to meditate and I'm going to eat better and I'm going to start intermittent fasting. I'll start taking hot baths, I'm going to detox, I'll do a sauna. And it's like, stop, stop, stop. Pick one, pick one, nail it. Once that has become part of your daily routine, then add the Next one. And rather than glomping on like five things right now and looking back five days later and going, okay, I did nothing, let's pick one thing, nail it, and then if there's another one, you know, you really should do, we'll add that next. So the first thing we're gonna do is win at one. Deal. So let's review, and this is my challenge to you is pick one and get started with it. And I would love to hear from you. I'd love to hear from you either on Instagram @jj virgin or Facebook JJ virgin official. And you say JJ, I listen to your podcast. This is the one that I did. I would love, love, love that so much. And also, so if you've not yet subscribed to the show, oh my gosh, you do not want to miss any of the goodness. And also, of course, you know, I love getting reviews and I love getting reviews where you're telling me, here's what I'd love to hear more of. Here's what, here's what's working. And if something's not working, tell me that too, so we know what to fix. All right, here we go. So here's the five. Ready? Number one was stop the snacking and add in some intermittent fasting and potentially the 24 hour fasting. Number two is don't be fooled by the sneaky sugars. This is where you would do the sugar impact diet. Figure out where sugars are sneaking in and lower your sugar impact. Number three, this will probably be the one most people pick is add in some resveratrol. I talked about red wine Pinot noir from dry farm wine. Now, of course, if you're someone who doesn't handle alcohol well, this is not telling you to start that. Have to say that little disclaimer number four, De stress. Find something that works really well for you to de stress and add that into your life. And number five is to add in some high intensity interval training. Again, pick the one. Pick the one that you're going to nail and then I want to hear from you that you absolutely nailed it. Alrighty. I will see you next time. Bye.

That's all for this episode of the JJ Virgin Lifestyle show, which marks another step towards a healthier body and mind. Don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to the show and we'll talk to you next week.

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