Becoming An Urban Monk

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Hey, it's JJ Virgin. And welcome to the JJ Virgin Lifestyle show where I talk nutrition, exercise, mindset and lifestyle with some of the coolest people in the world. And I give you tips that you can put into fast action to uplevel your health so that you can go out there and live the big life you are meant to live. So today I'm talking with a long time friend, Dr. Pedram Shojai, on what it means to be an urban monk. If you haven't heard about this before, stay tuned for this one because it's a really fascinating concept. And now Pedram, he's a busy guy. He's the founder of well.org, the editor of Be More magazine, the author of Rise and Shine, the producer and director of the movies Vitality and Origins. And I was in Vitality. He's the co host and creator of the healthbridge podcast which is commonly up at the top of the charts on itunes. He's starring in two TV shows this year and he's got his next book coming out and that is Urban Monk coming out February 2016, as well as his next movie in pre production which is featuring some of the heavy hitters out there changing the world. Pedram is considered to be one of the most influential people in health and green media. And he's also got a baby, a new baby. He's got one baby and now another one too. So he's not going to be getting a lot of sleep anytime soon. Anyway, I'm going to definitely be digging into that how he's made the shift from single guy in LA to the married guy in the OC with 2 kids while keeping his stress level in check. Well, most of the time. So let's do this. So Dr. Pedram Shojai, what is your background and why did you become a monk?

You know, I was pre med at UCLA and I was of that generation where either you're a doctor, lawyer, engineer, and you know, that's what you do if you want to be successful. And I started cruising around the UCLA hospitals and doing some internships and was just surrounded by a lot of misery and miserable people. The doctors weren't happy. And I'm sitting there scratching my head, saying, I'm looking down the barrel of this life, thinking, I don't know if this is it for me. And then simultaneously, I had found some tai chi class, I thought it was cool and fell into kung fu. And learning about all this just amazing stuff from the east was like, okay, on one end of this seesaw, I have vitality and life and just this abundance of enthusiasm and beauty. And on the other end, it's like bedpans, grumpy doctors. And it just became a clear path. I started studying the stuff that made me feel good.

How did your parents feel about that? I can't help but asking.

Well, no, they're number one ranked kid out of high school, went into UCLA guns blazing, and then decided he was gonna be a hippie witch doctor. I mean, yeah.

Wow, we're so proud.

Yeah.

Oh, they were freaked out. And the best way to silence opposition is to show success. And so I just did everything I did with full intent. And when I got into medicine, I was successful at that. And as a monk, I traveled the Himalayas and walked with the best of the best and came back with a good sparkle in my eyes. And they said, well, at least the kid's onto something.

So you came back to LA with a sparkle in your eye and there you are in la. And what's that like?

It was a difficult re entry because I somehow assumed that it would just rub off and people would just get what I had, had spent years drinking of, not just in my training, but in the Himalayas. And all of. Didn't occur to me that people had lives they couldn't walk away from and they couldn't go do the things that I was. I had the privilege of being able to do and sit with the guys I had the privilege of studying with. And so it took me a couple good years of kind of reconciling my, how should I say, my airy, fairy spiritual new reality with the reality that people lived, which was two and a half hours of traffic in LA and divorces and kids being late from soccer and making you miss yoga and all the crap that we deal with in real life.

So you've got all that. So you've got this higher level of understanding, but also the understanding of meeting your patients where they are now. How are you able to put those together and help your patients?

That was the secret sauce, right? Was having to, you know, get out of the realm of the potential of what we do. Because you Know, the breakdown of how all of these systems came over to the west was that they came from ascetic practices, which is basically, you know, I've given up money, I've given up sex, I've given up the real world. And I'm going to sit on this rock and meditate the rest of my life. And that's great. If that's the choice that you make and you do it, great. But if you've got a job job and you're worried about being late to yoga or you learned how to meditate but you never do it, welcome to reality.

Right.

And so for me, it was really stepping into the shoes of the thousands of people that were my patients and being like, okay, well how can I help this individual in a real way that's going to be meaningful and not ask them to come over and get a yin yang tattoo or do anything that doesn't apply to their practical everyday life? And that became the basis of my practice and really what I did for a good 20 years before I started writing books and doing what I do now.

Yeah. And one of the things you do now that I've seen you go into this transition is you've become a dad. Yeah. Now you're a family guy. And how's that work with your monk history?

You know, it's nothing like a good pressure test to check your theories in life.

Right.

And you know, I used to always sleep great and always used to.

Used to being the operative past tense.

Right, right. And so it's, you don't know what you got till it's gone. And so having gone through that, you know, it's kind of like big wave surfing. I got another kid on its way and by the time this airs, I'll have two kids. And it's, you know, it's like you do what you can and you practice what you will, but you know, I don't have time to go out in the yard and do Tai chi for two hours now, but I do have time to circulate my energy and my breath while I'm sitting there playing with my kid. And so you learn how to hack into all of these wonderful practices while you're in your day, but not by leaving your day, but by being fully present with your kid. And so it's been wonderful, it's been a wonderful experience bringing these things in and proving that they can work in your day to day life. Because if not, what you're going to do is you're going to end up resenting the kid because he's taken you away from your yoga or your tai chi or your meditation. You resent your wife because she didn't jump in and help when she obviously knew that it was your time to go out and do your thing under the stars. And all the kind of unrealistic expectations that we can have of life when we are stuck between the two worlds. And as a dad, you're a householder. You got bills, you got mortgage, you got tuition, you got milk. And so all of those things are now part of the calculus. And so how does a monk become an urban monk? That became kind of my mission, and it's been a really fun process, bringing these worlds together.

Yeah, it makes you a much better practitioner when you really understand it. Because, you know, now that you're a parent, there's no way you can even begin to realize what life is like when you have kids. Right. I know. I think we're all laughing. We're like, just wait, Pedra.

You know what's funny is. And everyone says that. And on the other side of that experience, you're like, yeah, whatever, I got this. Right? And then you come over and you say, wow, God, I get it. I totally have a lot more compassion for all of humanity now because, you know, this is hard. And so was it as hard for me as, like, you know, some of my other friends? No, because I think I was very well equipped to deal with it. But it kind of. It reconciled my reality with that of all these other people who I could not relate to on the other side.

Yes. And it makes you a better urban monk. So let's talk about you as an urban monk and what that life looks like.

Yeah, well, you know, I run a very large organization called well.org, i mean, we do a lot of film and TV and we do a lot of stuff. So, you know, I'm a busy dude in my real life. You know, we go to a lot of conferences. I see you around every once in a while when I'm lucky, you know, and I'm, you know, I run a big organization that is, you know, kind of dedicated to making the world a better place. And when I leave the office, I know that I'm going to go home and be Sol's dad. And I know I'm going to go home and be Elmira's husband. And so I've. I've really gotten into this compartmentalization so that you don't bring the office home with you. And then we go to the park, and I'm playing with the kid and I'm on the monkey bars doing pull ups and playing with them simultaneously because guess what? Dad didn't have a chance to make it to the gym this morning because he had some meetings and he'll get at the park right now or I'll do lunges while I'm walking him. And so it's learning how to adapt to whatever you've got in front of you in a way that's going to still serve you on a personal, interpersonal, personal, spiritual level, while still being the family guy that you need to be and being the awesome dad that you want to be and that your kid deserves to have.

And I think about so many people who you have this uniqueness in that you started in traditional medicine, you actually had the ability to see, because so many people go through a decade, two decades, three decades, and then they go, oh my gosh, I'm miserable. And it's like you could see the future and never go down that path. So you were to, I mean, and then to have the opportunity to go to the Himalayas and to do all that study and then study all of the Eastern philosophy and then go into medicine. You have like this amazing background that you brought into this. But the person listening who's like going, okay, well I don't have that. What I have right now are a lot of bills, overhead, stress, you know, kids, spouse, and how do I take what you've learned and put it into my life and live like an urban monk? How can we all live like urban monks and use these lessons you have?

Yeah, it's the question of the hour. And that's what I kind of dedicated my life to, is kicking that down not from theory, but from real life experiences with real patients and encounters that I've had. And a lot of it, I feel, has to do with energy. When someone tells me that they don't have time in life, what they're telling me really is that they don't have energy. And so the question becomes, how can we optimize your lifestyle so that you have more energy and in doing so, you'll be able to do a lot of the more things that you want to do in life. And that doesn't mean drinking a bunch of coffee all the time, but it means optimizing your diet, optimizing your sleep, optimizing your stress levels and really kind of finding the places where you are inefficient and really kind of coming back in under the fold. And if I can unlock a little bit of energy in a couple Things that we're looking at in someone's life, it's like cash in the pocket, man. And it's like, great, now reinvest this in your life and you'll find that you're going to do a lot better. So whether your problem is you're tired all the time and you're sick, that's an energy thing. If you're always broke and you're out of cash, that also is an energy thing because you don't have the clarity to think that through and make the decisions and move things around. When you look at life through the filter of that, all of a sudden it becomes an incredible task because then you can find your way out by liberating more and more energy. And as you do so, it becomes kind of an upward spiral instead of the downward one. And like I say, I've seen thousands and thousands of patients in my days, and as we start to liberate that vitality, all of a sudden you start to see their life change in a very positive way.

Love that you use vitality, because I know that was one of your first movies that you did was the Vitality movie. What I'd love is to hear a story, one of your favorite success stories, of a patient, really, you know, getting rid of the energy drainers and stepping into vitality.

Yeah.

This is one I just wrote about in my book. And it's, I'd say like late 20s female, living in New York, you know, stuck in that kind of big social life. It's like, okay, I'm gonna meet the girls for dinner here, we're gonna go here. And then there's this show and just all this stuff that happens when we're kind of caught up in a social life. And you and I were talking about this a little while ago. It's like I lived in LA for 35 years and every night's someone's birthday. And so she was just caught up in this social life and spending money on these dinners and going to these places and never able to quite catch up, never able to catch up on sleep, and basically just started switching around her lifestyle to get into a yoga class and rock climbing gym and spend some of her time with her girlfriends, walk in the park instead, and really just shifting around. Kind of the calories she took in because she'd always go and try to get a salad, but then they'd get four drinks. Good luck losing the weight, right? And so just kind of taking a look at her social life and enlisting some of her girlfriends to join her in that and just do like a 30 day experiment to say, okay, look, this doesn't have to be the rest of our lives. We could go out and get drinks, we could do whatever the hell we want, but for the next 30 days, let's do this thing together. And in doing so, all of a sudden she started having more energy, she started dropping that weight, she started having less stress and social anxiety and guilt about all these things. And she read a book for the first time in months and all of a sudden all that stuff that sits in the back of our necks, all that kind of anxiety ridden guilt of not getting to the things that we know we need to get to, that we said that we're going to get to all the ought to's in life. When you start kind of ticking off those things off the list, it's not that hard to all of a sudden just start feeling dramatically better because you're like, oh, I don't feel guilty, I don't feel stuck, I don't feel burdened because I'm taking care of the things that I've told myself I want to take care of for my own life, Health, love, whatever. And suddenly her life started to just get propelled into this wonderful place. She did better in her job performance, she ended up getting a raise, then she ended up starting her own kind of side gig on E. You know, all of a sudden it's like all this money's coming in, all this. The time's better spent. It just, it just works out when you start voting for yourself and doing things for yourself on the front line of your life.

Now I love the whole concept of the urban monk and I know you have a book coming out, the Urban Monks coming out with Rodale here in a couple months and depending on when you're listening to it, it might already be out. So I'm going to say whenever you are, you can pre order it or grab it now. But what's the inspiration behind that book and what's the message? You really want to get out to the world?

Yeah, well, I mean, first and foremost I want to help people, but you know, I've always thought I was doing that through all the stuff that we were doing. But you get to the point where, you know, I've kind of, I'm tired of this hippie, dippy spiritual community and everyone trying to like pretend who they want to be and you know, sneaking cigarettes in the back and you know, it's just there's this inauthenticity that, you know, you Think that if you're going to do yoga, you're going to start dressing in Lululemon. Or you think that if you're going to do Tai Ch, you gotta get a yin Yang tattoo and change your identity and all these kind of weird things that go along with this kind of quote unquote, spiritual communities. And so it keeps normal, regular people who like to get a drink with their friends and got real stress and kids and all this kind of stuff out of those realms because it gets weird and kind of culty and creepy. And really all you need to do is pick up some of these practices and do them in your personal life. And you don't need to drink the Kool Aid. And so my whole deal with Rodale was, look, I'm gonna drop some F bombs, I'm gonna cuss, I'm gonna talk like I normally talk. I'm a regular dude and I'm not a guru and I don't wanna be a guru. And if you see a guru on the street, run away, right? Because it's not about that. It's about finding your own personal power and just being awesome and learning how to live in a life that's busy in coexistence with other people so that we could love and respect each other. But let's not get weird about it. And so it's my. It's a great. It was a really fun book to write because it's a haymaker getting in the face of some of the sacred cows that we hold dear and then just picking apart life in a way where we can look at it with some utility and be able to actually take some practical steps right now to just have more energy, to just have less stress, to just have more fun. And so I really enjoyed writing this book. My first book was very kind of Aryan spiritual and very much tied to the lineage. And I wrote about Taoism and Qigong and all these wonderful things that I've studied. And it doesn't take away from any of that, but it only spoke to a very specific type of person that had already drank that Kool Aid. But I'm not that guy. I'm just, you know, I'm a regular guy. You know, I'd like to get a drink with my friends. And that's fine because I love to enjoy life.

Alrighty, you heard it here. You can be an urban monk and enjoy your life while doing it. In fact, that's what being an urban monk is. So there, right? Dr. Pedram.

Love it.

Love it.

You nailed it.

Alrighty. So grab your copy, go to theurbanmonk.com and Pedram. As always, it's awesome hanging out with you jj.

I love you. Any chance I could get to hang out with you? I'm in.

Pedram. Thank you so much for joining me today. And I want to remind you, listening to check out jjvirgin.com urbanmonk to learn more about how you can become an urban monk. Now come on. It just sounds so cool, doesn't it? Okay, so after the break, I'm going to be answering listeners questions, so be sure to stay with me.

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And be part of a community. Get ready to transform your life one simple shift at a time by visiting www.jjvirgin.com welcome back. Now this is the time where I answer a listener's question. And today's question is awesome because it comes from one of my listeners. And today's question comes from Christy Kaiser.

Hey there. My name is Christy Kaiser. I live in Alabama. If I could sit down and have a quick question with her, I would want it to be about, you know, portion control and getting off sugar and eating clean is not an issue for me. Like, I feel like I eat so well and I exercise, but I feel like when I get off track is when I'm eating a little too much of the almond butter and some of the other good fats like avocado. And I just wanted her to talk a little bit about that. And I love the idea of not counting calories and I don't want to be bound by that. Anyway, I know she talks about trigger foods and how she loves almond butter and doesn't even buy it and keep it in the house. But anyway, I probably just would love to come to some more balance in that area and how she keeps everything in moderation.

All right, so portion control. What's the deal? Well, here it is. Well, calories count. Where they come from counts. So much for, I mean, obviously too much healthy food is too much and it's unhealthy. But you've really got to get it down to looking at protein, fats and carbohydrates because the right combination of of those can help give you steady, sustained energy, burn fat for fuel, and crush your cravings. But if you get this out of balance, especially on the carbohydrate side, you can end up cranking up your insulin and telling your body to store fat, not burn it. But the other side of this, and the way I'm seeing a lot of people go now is they're going way too low carb too. And when you do that, you can put your testosterone into the dumpster and raise your blood sugar and end up in trouble too. So it's going to be about the balance. And you know what's cool about the balance? When you balance your calories correctly between those macronutrients of clean lean protein, healthy fats and high fiber, slow, low carbs, you won't be hungry. So you won't be thinking about eating every two to three hours. So again, it's going to be all about the balance. And again, when you're getting the balance right, the calories take care of themselves. So let's talk about each of these things. Things on average, I'm going to say I'm going to do this for say a woman who's 140 pounds, because that's really kind of the average female out there. And so if you're a guy or you're a smaller or bigger woman, you know, up or down this, okay, you want to make sure that each time you eat, you're eating from the plate. Whether it's the virgin diet plate, sugar impact diet plate, they're both really the same. And that means you're getting optimal amounts of protein, healthy fats and fiber. And when I'm talking fiber, I'm really talking about carbohydrates. But what I'm focusing on there are low sugar impact carbs, high fiber carbs. Because a low sugar impact carb is going to be by nature a high fiber carb that means something that's loaded with fiber to slow down the blood sugar release. Right. Keep blood sugar stable, get a nice day supply of energy to the brain so you're happy and not crabby. All right, so let's go through each of these. So pretty protein. Examples of protein are cold water fish, which should be wild grass fed beef, pastured pork and chicken eggs. If you're not intolerant to them, you should have gone through the virgin diet and checked that. Don't just assume you're not. You don't know till you check. Okay. And if you're a vegan, plant based proteins, but not soy. Okay. I look at things like use pea protein in my shakes. If I'm doing that now, you want to have some protein at each meal because you can only absorb so much at any one time. So you can't big protein overload, your body won't be able to handle all of it. But also because protein is very satiating and when it's combined with fiber, it actually slows down stomach emptying, which means you are fuller, longer and it's thermic, which means it boosts your metabolism. That's fantastic. But how much protein? So here's the thing. If you're eating just straight protein, there's no fat in it or it's very lean, you're going to have less. If you're eating fat and protein together like grass fed beef, like a great grass fed ribeye or wild fish, then you're going to have a bigger serving because it's not just straight protein. Basically what you want to look at is about half of your body weight in protein grams, up to 3,4 of your body weight in protein grams. That really depends on if you're working out hard, if you are recovering from surgery, if you're under stress, you need more. You've got to go on the higher side of things, right? But again, if you're eating very lean, you're going to need a little less. So for an average woman, that's like 4 to 6 ounces per meal as a serving, 25 grams of shake mix, protein grams in a shake mix. Okay, 20, 25 grams. But again, if it's fattier, if you eat more, if it's leaner, you can eat less. Now if you've got more muscle on your body and again, or if you're recovering from surgery or accident or healing, you're going to kick this up to the higher end of the scale. And the other part of this is now, so we've got the protein under. Now let's talk about fat. Because the deal is, and this is why I love fat so much, is the single biggest thing you can do. Because a lot of people look at a diet and go, I'm going to pull the carbohydrates out and then they don't put anything in. Well, you can't, you can't have a low fat, low carb, low protein diet, right? So you protein, you're going to be able to handle only so much. You can't just eat protein, all protein, all the time. Where you're going to really make up the difference is in healthy fat fats. And you're going to want to look at having somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 to 400 calories of healthy fats or 2 to 4 servings at each meal. So what does that look like? That looks like 10 nuts if they're small nuts, 5 nuts if they're big nuts. Tablespoon of nut butter. Tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil or macadamia nut oil, which by the way is absolutely awesome. Four to six ounces of grass fed beef or wild fish. Tablespoon of grass fed butter or ghee. A tablespoon of chia, a freshly ground flaxseed meal. A tablespoon of coconut oil, which is an amazing fat because it actually helps you burn fat. It burns very cleanly. It's like a very great easy fuel for your body to use. And why is fat so important? First of all, it's going to give you a great mood. Great hair, skin and nails. And the mood is because we're over 60% fat in our brain and that's specifically omega 3s. So you want to look at, of course, fish oil and eating clean lean fish. But also, not only does it do those nice benefits, but it is going to trigger the release of some chemicals in your small intestine that tell your brain that you have eaten. And that is so critical. And it's also neutral to ghrelin, leptin and insulin. So it's not gonna trigger an insulin effect. So it's not triggering insulin. And it is telling your brain that you've eaten. So combined with protein cause protein and fiber work together to slow down stomach emptying. And then you've got a different effect from the healthy fats telling your brain that you've eaten. So all of that together says satiation, which is what you want. You don't want to feel hungry every two to three hours. If you're eating every two to three hours, you're burning sugar, not fat. You don't want to do that. And what I tell people is it's like as you lower the carbohydrates up the fat and you will not be hungry when you do that. So now let's talk about carbs, because I just said, okay, you're upping the fat, so you're probably lowering the carbohydrates because you've got an optimal amount of protein each meal. So that's you eat that, you don't take that up or down. And then you're going to lower the carbohydrates to one to two servings per meal. I don't count in non starchy vegetables. Go crazy there. Go crazy with the broccoli, the brussels Sprouts, the peppers, cauliflower, all of that stuff. All right? But the slow, low carbs like pumpkin and sweet potatoes and legumes, if you are not pure paleo or quinoa, all of those ones, berries, those you need to really look at. And that's. You want to keep that to 25 or 50 grams per meal. And honestly, I keep it down low. I keep it to about 25 grams per meal at breakfast and lunch. And I might go up to, say, 50 grams at dinner, but I keep it low. I do more of them in the evening than the morning because that's going to help with sleep and that's going to help with hormone production. If you go too low on your carbs, you're going to be lower in your testosterone. You'll raise your stress hormones, too. I actually see people start to have higher fasting blood sugars when they go too low in carbs. And so you want to make sure you're protecting your adrenals there, too. So a serving of carbohydrate. And again, I want people to eat 5 to 10 servings of non starchy veggies a day with a cup of raw or half a cup of cooked. Counting as a serving, and depending on what you're eating, you're getting, you know, 10 grams of carbohydrates there. So you're not going to get really crazy overloaded with that. Right. What you want to focus on is eating a small amount of slow, low carbs, bit at breakfast, a little bit at lunch, a little more at dinner. But again, you're still keeping it down to about a half a cup serving of these things. So tomatoes, berries, squashes, squashes you can have more of because they're less starchy than say, a sweet potato is. But you're going to want to do these, and you're really focusing on doing these, doing the ones that are high fiber, because the whole point of this is to get a trifecta of protein, fat and fiber that will. Will help keep you satiated so that you won't get into this whole, what am I gonna eat next? And how many calories? How many calories can I eat? Right, because that's where we get in trouble. All right, so what does this all look like? Let's look at what you can have. So I always like to start with breakfast, because breakfast is where I see most people blow it. They have that muffin and a latte, which is a cupcake and a milkshake. Let's not ever do that again. Deal. So breakfast could be two scoops of my protein powder and then some coconut or almond milk for the healthy powder fat. So you've got protein from the protein powder. You've got fat from the coconut milk or almond milk or cashew milk. And then I'll also put in half of a small avocado. So I've got two fat servings right there. And then I use a little bit of my extra fiber, which has got a little bit of carbs and a lot of fiber in it. And, you know, sometimes I'll throw in some berries. But I've kind of gotten to the point where I really don't. I like throwing in some raw cacao nibs, which throw in a lot more fiber, too. And between my extra fiber, my shake mix, my avocado, my raw cacao nibs, I'm getting like 30 grams of fiber in there. You can also throw in some raw spinach or raw kale and any other. I mean, I was watching one of my buddies throw in, like, his whole leftover salad from the night before. You actually don't taste that. And it's a great way to just get some extra greens in. All right, now, so you see how I just got in protein, fat and fiber pretty easily there. Now let's go to lunch. So let's say for lunch you're gonna have a salad. And what you wanna do is you wanna get in your salad greens and tight them, right? So two cups of salad greens, that's two servings of veggies. So really pack it down. But again, remember, don't count these as, like, slow, low carbs, because there's hardly any calories in there. But add some tomatoes in, that's a great source of slow, low carbs. And then throw in some pastured chicken. Throw in maybe some nuts and some olive oil. So if you throw in some nuts and olive oil, that's getting two to three fat servings right there. You got the protein from the chicken. Chicken. And you got some slow, low carbs from the tomatoes. And then you got the salad greens. See, I mean, this is easy, easy, easy. Okay, let's go to dinner. Dinner, let's say you're going to have some lentils or wild rice. So you could do a lentil wild rice combo. You could do a cup. That's two servings of slow, low carbs, or maybe a half a cup of lentils and a cup of squash. That's two servings of slow, low carbs. Then a great piece of salmon, let's say 8 ounces of salmon, you got two fat servings there and you've got a little bit, of course you get your protein in there. And if you put a little grass fed ghee or butter on your veggies, there's another serving of fat. So you see how easy this is. You just do the wild rice with the squash with, maybe add some broccoli in there with some ghee, add in your wild salmon and you've got your slow, low carbs, you've got your veggies, you've got your protein and your healthy fats. And I mean, how hard was that? That was a simple, easy, fast thing to cook. And another thing I'm going to tell you is when you do that, make extra for the next day. All right, now this is how you eat by the sugar impact diet or a virgin diet plate. And if you're trying to lose weight, go to the lower end of the ranges, especially on the carb ranges, go to the lower end. Believe me, and I know that people are still fat phobic out there, but you need to eat fat to get lean. Eat fat to get lean. Okay, okay. And you know, if you're maintaining your weight, you can go up a little bit. But really what I want you to do is check in with yourself, see how you feel. You should be able to go four to six hours before you need to eat again. So if you're hungry sooner, look back and this is why food journaling is so important, look back and go, did I eat enough? At that last meal, where was I deficient? Maybe you didn't get enough fat. Maybe your protein was too low, maybe your fiber was too low. I can now tell when I go out, especially if I'm out to eat, because at home I got this down. But sometimes when you're out to eat, they give you a wimpy serving of protein or they, you know, give you one of those like salads. You're like, where's, where is the salad? You know, they don't, just don't give you enough. And if they do that, I'll order like a side of broccoli with it, a side of sliced tomatoes. So I now know what all I need in order to feel level throughout the day. So this is the range I use in both the virgin diet and sugar impact diet. Diet again, protein, fat and fiber. Lighter in the carbs in the morning, heavier in the evening. But all that range of optimal protein, 4 to 6 ounces at each meal for a woman that's like, you know, 25 grams at each meal. Two to four servings of healthy fats smaller woman be more like two servings one serving of slow low carbs breakfast and lunch, two at dinner. Someone you know a little smaller might go to a half a serving breakfast and lunch and one serving at dinner and then loads of non starchy vegetables. Remember, you know if you're bigger or bigger activity level you can go up but it's like that's the basic ratio. Now if you'd like to submit a question all you have to do is go to jjvirgin.com ask and you can leave a voicemail for me. And I love hearing from you. Now one more way I'd love to hear from you. I would say so appreciate it if you could jump on Stitcher or itunes and leave a review for me. It helps a bunch. And be sure to subscribe while you're there and share the show with your friends. This is JJ Virgin signing off and reminding you that you are worthy Dare to live a life that matters.

Foreign. Hello listeners, this is Anne Bogle, author, blogger and creator of the podcast what Should I Read next? Since 2016, I've been helping readers bring more joy and delight into their reading lives. Every week I tag all things books and reading with a guest and guide them in discovering their next read. They share three books they love, one book they don't, and what they've been reading lately, and I recommend three titles they may enjoy reading next. Guests have said our conversations are like therapy, troubleshooting issues that have plagued their reading lives for years, and possibly the rest of their lives as well. And of course, recommending books that meet the moment. Whether they are looking for deep introspection to spur or encourage a life change, or a frothy page turner to help them escape the stresses of work, school, everything, you'll learn something about yourself as a reader and you'll definitely walk away confident to choose your next read, with a whole list of new books and authors to try. So join us each Tuesday for what Should I Read Next? Subscribe now wherever you're listening to this podcast and visit our website what Should I read next podcast.com to find out more.