[Beginnings & Breakthroughs] Beat Stress, Fix Food Intolerance & Lose Weight with Deborah Genovesi

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Welcome to Beginnings and Breakthroughs. This is where I celebrate and coach people just like you who are on a mission to heal their metabolisms, feel better fast, and live their best lives. We will be walking through what's worked for them and what they've discovered on their journeys. And then I'll coach them on their next best steps. And if you're interested in being a guest, stay tuned and I'll be sharing how you can join me too. All right. I will be right back with our awesome guest. All right, welcome to Beginnings and Breakthroughs. And I am going to be unpacking Deborah's story today. This is mainly me sharing her story and then walking her through what she is going to do. This is a story of someone who was a type a TV producer. We actually met that way. She was recording me for something. And then she had her own health challenges and decided to become a holistic health coach and an FDN practitioner and has been working in the field for, gosh, now over a decade while unpacking her own health issues and helping others. And we're going to be really focusing on a couple things today. What you really need to do as you age to age your best. She's 56. How to address menopause, the scale and fibromyalgia. What to do if you feel like you're always hurting yourself when you're working out. Yet you know you need to. So all of those things and more are covered in this episode. And I will be right back with Debra.

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Well, I'm, I'm a little, you know, I. It just feels a little funny because here I'm the coach. But even coaches need coaching, you know, it's like an endless journey, really.

I'm glad we captured that for the recording because first of all, coaches need coaches. I have coaches, like, we all need coaches. And I find that the most successful people in life are the people who, who always keep learning and they approach it with a beginner's mind and don't think they know everything. So I think that was a very astute statement. And this is, is Deborah. I met you in 2012. I was trying to figure out, was that before my son Grant got hit or after? It was before. And at the time you were a stressed out TV exec and you made a big change in your life and became a health and life coach and went through and it really worked on your health. I think with the Virgin diet, you dropped 70 pounds. And so you've made a lot of good changes. And probably what you're discovering is, is that you don't ever really actually get done. Have you discovered that? Yeah, you know, I have things I'm working on myself right now, like in my health. There's always, I try. And here's an important lesson I think for everybody is, is don't try to peel the entire onion at once. For sure. Your eyes will like cry too much.

Peel a layer and then walk away.

You know, so we peel the onion little by little. And I find that I have the most success when I focus on one thing at a time. And so we're gonna unpack the stuff you have going on, and then we're gonna focus on like, what's one thing that you can do and then when you're done with that, what's the next thing? But it's a really important lesson. Cause, you know, you look at all of us and we all like think we're gonna do like, you know, we have these huge plans for what we're gonna do in the next week. And the reality is we could totally accomplish those in a year. But the fact we're trying to do them in a week is a joke. And of course we set ourselves up for to fail. And it almost then be becomes a. So I don'. I tried and I failed again, blah, blah. So we're going to stop that talk track. So the issues you have now, we've unpacked this offline. You have had issues with your sleep and you just discovered you have sleep apnea. And now you're on a cpap. And I'd love just to share because I think this is something so important for people. I'm a big proponent of tracking your sleep using an Oura ring or a Fitbit or a Garmin or an Apple watch and really paying attention to sleep. It's one of the most important things that we can do. How did you discover that you had sleep apnea?

Well, it's so funny. I only discovered it. I wasn't snoring, but I just discovered it because I felt really tired. And I had done a bunch of other things, of course, sleep hygiene, all of the things that we do. Being in a dark room, no noise, all of the things. And yet I still was tired. And one of my doctors said, I think that you should check for apnea. And I said, I didn't have apnea when I was 70 pounds overweight. How am I going to have it now? That's just for overweight people. Wrong. That is incredible.

I had a very famous movie star who was like a big superhero who had sleep apnea.

Yeah, it happens. And I will be perfectly transparent. I resisted this idea. I did not want to do the cpap. I had real difficulty with the first machine they had me on. But the good news is they put me on a separate. A different machine. And I took to it like a duck to water. And I definitely feel I don't have that groggy feeling when I wake up now. You know, I. It has definitely moved the needle. Yeah, I have I do have more.

If you are not sleeping well, it's. It impacts everything. How well you're able to lose weight, your control, your appetite, manage stress, build like there's nothing. It doesn't touch. So I'm super glad you did that.

Oh, I should also add. I should also add, I would have never known I had this, because every single doctor said, well, you're in your 50s. It's just menopause.

Okay? So we also know that we walk away from those doctors. And because quite often your sleep gets impacted by menopause. No question. However, that's where wearing these different things can be helpful. And also just checking it out and doing a sleep study not gonna hurt anything, because if this is the case, holy smokes. So, you know, there's a whole lot of ways to deal with it. If it is menopause, that won't work. If it's sleep apnea. So that's the other big sign. And you said you were doing things and it wasn't working. So that was clear. Next thing is, you did go through menopause, and you can't be on bioidenticals. You've got a big family history of breast cancer. So I think that's just an important one for people to be aware of their history and to also, in those situations, make sure that you're doing the things that help detoxify those estrogens. And you already mentioned, I was like, yay, A plus students. Sulforaphane and dim. And then the other big one are broccoli sprouts. So I have my son growing them for me now, because I'm just a baby about doing that kind of stuff. So that's another key, critical thing. And we're going to talk now more about that, because the fact that you are in your 50s. And the next thing that we're going to bring up is the one that makes me most concerned, because what we're really looking at now is how do you live like a light bulb for as long as possible. And you're looking at me quizzically going, what on earth is she talking about? And I still remember being in a lecture, a longevity lecture, and they said, you want to go out like a light bulb? And I'm like a light bulb. And I thought, light bulbs don't dim. They just. They just. You know how they go spark and they're out. And, you know, my grandmother went out like that. She was like going, going, going, going, going, like late into her 90s, and then spoop. She was then she was gone. And, like, you want to, like, what is it? Slide into home? Like, that's it really late in life. And so that's what we're going to focus on now is, you know, we can't do the bioidentical. So we've got to make sure that you're really focused on bone density and muscle mass and maintaining those and good cardiovascular health. Because estrogen is really important for bones, for brain and for body. And so we got to make sure that that's happening. Bones, brains, cardiovascular. And you have an issue that could be interrupting that, and that is fibromyalgia. And here's the challenge with fibromyalgia that I see is I always want to go, is it fibromyalgia? And if it is, what could be causing it? And I always want to dig in and look at both a toxic response or something impairing your gut. And so I'm always looking at, is there any toxic type of exposure going on? Is it mold, or do we have glyphosates or any of the things that, if we're human nowadays, we're exposed to. And if we're not a great detoxifier and we aren't doing things like sauna on a regular basis, you know, I do that.

I have one. I just did.

I did, too. I had sauna and cold plunge. I. I become absolutely like. That has been one of mine. I'm going to be good at this. So I've been meditating in my sauna and then going in cold, plunging, which is. I have to talk myself into it every day. You're a better woman than me, let me tell you. It's. But you feel fabulous. So. So for you, one of the things you mentioned was. You mentioned two things that make me want to look deeper into this. First of all, that you have fibromyalgia, but that when you pull out, you did the virgin diet, dropped 70 pounds. Now you've got about 15 that you put on over, and that has been over the course of 10 years. So I call that a massive win, by the way, especially going through menopause. But now we're going to look at this again. But you say when you stay off of gluten, dairy, and sugar, you don't really have much in the way of fibromyalgia symptoms. So then I go, well, is it a food intolerance, or is fibromyalgia. Now, you also talked about having some, what I call sensory integration issues. And. And that would be like bright lights Sounds, et cetera. And so I look at that and I think, do we have anything going on toxicity wise? And then you shared with me that you had some. You're working with a doctor now because I said, okay, might be good to really look at detoxification, not a cleanse. A cleanse is a great way to reset and get yourself back on track. A detox is really where they're going to look at levels of, of things like glyphosate, different chemicals, mercury, and then start to really work with you on potentially chelation. You're doing the sauna stuff to get it out, but you have to work with a functional medicine practitioner to do it because you got to make sure it actually leaves, doesn't just get freed up. Right. And we know that if you have some of these toxins, first of all they can mess with your gut, they can make it more leaky, they can make you more susceptible to food intolerances, and they can mess with your mitochondria. So that can really impact things like fibromyalgia. They can mess with your weight because they lower your body temperature, they can impair your thyroid, they can make you more insulin resistant, they can make you more estrogenic. So all the way around I do have some, you know, this is definitely one that I know you're working on resolving with the functional medicine doctor. So I'm thrilled about that. And one of the best things you can do is doing a sauna. And, and I remember when I first started hearing about saunas, I was like, well, who can afford a sauna? Like a, like. And I don't know why. I had it in, you know, the hotels with the big side and we have a sauna, we got it from Sunlighten and it's absolutely fantastic. You can do all sorts of different programs. Detox and pain relief and weight loss and cardiovascular and anti aging. And it was not expensive. Like you look at what's expensive. Expensive is having to go pay for one, leave your house, go somewhere when you really need to do this, like five times a week. Like that's expensive. That would be like cost prohibitive. But you can basically pay for it in three months in the same way. Like, you know, these saunas, depending on the type you get, can be a couple thousand dollars up to $10,000 and you can finance them. So this is one that I think it's one of the reasons you see in Europe, especially places like Iceland and Germany, where they just spa. It's part of their. I was just in Italy and we went to a spa for the day. Now, I thought we were going to a spa, but we were not going to a spa. We were going to a spa. You're like, what, what are you talking about? A spa in Italy is, are these things that everyone, everyone has time off and a spa allotment. So you go there to do the hot and cold plunges and the saunas and steams and it's just part of life. There's just like it is in Germany, just like in Iceland. And it's because these things really do things, they make a big difference.

So yes, I have cousins in Italy and hope to go see them in May. But exactly what you're saying, that's just a routine part of the world.

Yeah, it was. I was like, that's so crazy. And I was like, well, what spa? Like. Cause I thought we were going to, like, I was used to a, you know, spa, like a hotel spa. I'm like, this is not that. What is this? Where am I? You know, it was, but it was super cool. We spent like, we did a, like, we basically did a little mastermind in the hot, you know, silica baths. It was like, this is fabulous. So it's just something to think about. And if you've never really looked at it because you thought this might be expensive, you know, they're not free, they're not inexpensive, but they actually are more affordable than one would really think, especially when you amortize it and you look at how you could get a payment plan on these types of things. So I'm really glad you're doing that. So then we get down to the things that we can really work on, which would be food and exercise. And you said a couple things offline. You said, you know, I get off track, I get inconsistent with my food, and I have emotional eating things that go on. So for emotional eating, I'm gonna, I have so many great experts in my, in my world. And for emotional eating, the person I love the best is Tricia Nelson. I figured you did.

I have done her part.

So Trisha, like, you know, that's why I just say, hey, you know, lean into it. See if you can like work as a coach in it. Because what you, what you work in and do, you'll get better at yourself. Like whenever I remember early on I wanted to be a Broadway tap dancer and so my tap dance teacher made me teach tap dancing to five year olds, you know, but you get really good. Like if you have to teach a beginner something, if you have to support them, your identity is going to shift as well. Right. So that's the first thing I would say is I'd go, tricia, hey, can I, like, work as a coach, mentor, like, you know, volunteer? Because it's going to be better for you as well.

Great idea.

And then the next thing, and it will help hold you accountable and be consistent. Because now you're a role model, you know, and people often ask me, well, how do I make sure that I stick with where I'm at? I said, there's a couple of ways. One, you can find fitter friends. If you hang out with them, they'll tend to lift you up and take you with them. But the other one is to be a teacher and coach and support and focus on those areas. I mean, Trisha Nelson was an emotional eater. And so I guess, is it Trisha Greaves now? I think it's Trisha Greaves. Anyway, whichever one it is, she was an emotional eater. And so like, she went through this to conquer her emotional eating issues. So, like, you know, lean into that. So that's the first part, because you know what to do, you know, when you keep these foods out, you know how they impact you. And I would also say, as we're looking at things that could really cause inflammation, of course we need to look at anything ultra processed. So, you know, when I look at gluten and dairy, and I look at a lot of the reasons that the virgin diet works, I think especially with gluten and corn and soy, it's the glyphosates that we're getting in those as well. And you can't pull it apart. You're like, is it the gluten, is it the glyphosates? Yes, you can't pull any of that apart. So gluten, soy, corn, heavily sprayed crops, even if they're organic, I don't believe that we really can get clean anymore in the United States because of all the seed blowing and water flowing. And dairy, as we know, can be very inflammatory too. And then of course, sugar is just you, you really have to be mindful of sugar. And you know, nowadays, hey, 20 years ago, hard. Now we've got monk fruit, stevia, allulose. So if you really need something, you can use that. But ideally, you're really focusing on eating by the plate. Protein, fat, fiber, trifecta with good blood sugar balance so you're not having the cravings and then finding those replacements for when you have that trigger. First of all, I think anything that's a trigger food, I Don't care how healthy it is. Too much healthy food's unhealthy. Like, even though, you know, calories count, where they come from counts the most. But too many, too many nuts, too many nuts. And it's easy to have too many nuts. Like, I do not have, I don't have macadamia nuts in the house. I would never do that. That would be stupid. I would eat all the macadamia nuts. So know which things you cannot behave yourself with. Don't bring them into the house. Right. Like keep them out.

Yeah, that's. That's true.

So, you know, and again, just remember that too much healthy food's unhealthy, but along that too, we gotta watch oils because for inflammation, like, we have to be so careful. And this is why it's just so much easier not to eat processed food. Because when you really start to look and you can go to the health food stores and go, all right, I'm at the health food store. And everything should be healthy at the health food store, shouldn't it? It's the health food store. And yet, you know, I think of two of the worst things you should never touch that are at the health food store, and they are seed oils like canola oil, corn oil, safflower oil, soybean oil, and then high fructose types of things like agave, apple juice concentrate and crystalline fructose. And yet those things, you see so many things there with canola oil. And then the only way to make it worse is put the canola with the agave, like, double hit it. So I want you to be a stealth about that, because the higher fructose foods are gonna make your gut more permeable, and those oils are going to drive inflammation, and that is just a bad situation. And for you, detoxifying, you gotta have good gut integrity.

Yes.

So that's the big picture there. But the biggest picture, I think, is really now looking at your body composition. Now, I don't remember.

I don't want to.

I know I was like a heavy sigh, a pause. That, that frightened. That frightened me, you know, that. You know that thing, and it's on the Lululemon bag, so I'm sure you've seen it says, do one thing a day that scares you. Wasn't that an Eleanor Roosevelt quote? Yes. So here's the thing. And I think I was going, I was reading through yours going, were you the one that says, I don't get on scales? I, I, blah, blah, blah, blah. If not you, it's every Woman says this, and here's what we need to look at. We need to think of using a scale in a different way. And for you, it is mission critical because we have to make sure, especially with fibromyalgia and how much you've not been doing any kind of resistance training. You've got a window right now where we have to put muscle mass on and we have to manage that muscle mass. And the only way to do that is with a bioimpedance body composition scale. It can't be guessed. There's no way to do it that way. And so what you have to realize is that a scale is not a mean friend. It's not there to shame you. It's only there to say, all right, let's look at how much of your body is fat free mass versus fat mass. And you would never in a million years if you were wearing a blood sugar monitor, go, you know, okay, I'm not going to wear that because I'm ashamed because my blood sugar went up when I ate that. Whatever. No, that's information. And the scale is the same. Whether it's information like a blood pressure cuff, like a continuous glucose monitor, like an oura ring, it's information. And I don't know how to fix it without that information. Like you have to be monitoring this. What you monitor and measure, you can improve. So you gotta, you gotta check it out and you're gonna manage that little voice that goes, oh my gosh. And I'll give you a case in point. I have been messing around. I'm working on my next book. And so how I work on books is I start, I do loads of research, which is what I've been doing for the last year. Accumulating research, testing. I test with me, then I start testing with the beta group. And so right now I'm doing some stuff and I get to test on me first. And, and so I've been testing, you know, a shift of resistance training because once you get to a certain point, you can't really build muscle without gaining weight. And then, so you build muscle, then you lose fat, then you build muscle, then you lose fat. If someone's not, not conditioned, they haven't been doing weight training, they can actually put on some muscle. It's called recomping, where they put on muscle, loose fat at the same time. But generally once you're past a certain point, you'll do one, then the other one, then the other. So I've been working on building muscle and of course my weight went up Five pounds. And I'm watching this and I, and I. What I really watched was this voice going, oh my gosh. And then I went, this was what was supposed, like, holy smokes. You just did exactly what you were supposed to do. Stop voice, Stop voice. You know, and now I'm in the next phase. So I'm just watching it. But it's interesting. And men don't do that, by the way. Like, you know, I've got one living here with me. We get on the scale every day today because. Every day. Because that's one of the things. It is very clear from the research, people who maintain their weight weigh in daily. And what I'm really trying to get people to understand is you're not trying to maintain your weight. You're trying to maintain or build muscle mass. And for most of us, we need to build that muscle mass. It is the key to everything. This episode is brought to you by McAfee.

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Now what would you say? That brings up a question. What would you say? Because I've been seeing a lot of this trend and it sets my teeth on edge. Just eat intuitively and you don't have to weigh yourself.

So right now we have, I don't agree with that. We have 5%. That's a hot button for sure. And I definitely have an opinion about it. And for a while I was scared to voice the opinion. I went, hold on. Like there's we now. Before the pandemic, 12% of the population was metabolically healthy. Now it's 5%. We have a massive crisis. Here's the issue. If you were looking to maintain your weight and you're in your 20s and 30s, we have a pretty good way of calibrating. And if the only food you had access to was clean protein, grass fed and finished, pastured wild, you know, as close to nature, slow, low carbs, legumes, wild rice, quinoa, nuts and seeds, lots and lots of non starchy vegetables, little bit of fruit, and that was all you had to choose from, I'm not worried. But if you are saying you can intuitively eat using processed foods, you are kidding yourself. Because the processed Foods are created for you to no longer be able to have that satiety signal going. See, when you eat the other way, you've got protein, fat, fiber, trifecta that's increasing satiety. But when you eat processed foods, they have been created, manufactured to make you hungry. They've got obesogens in them to make you more insulin resistant. They will never allow you to intuitively eat. They will make you intuitively overeat. That's how they've been designed. And so it's a big fat lie, and it's damaging people because, yes, we intuitively should be able to do that, but not with the foods that we're reaching for. So you have to do a total detox of that stuff, Reset your body so you can hear correctly. And then if you're looking at maintaining weight, which is different than trying to build muscle or lose weight, yes, your body, you can do that if you haven't gotten yourself all off kilter by doing artificial sweeteners or things that impact your body's ability to correlate. But that's not anybody I know, unfortunately. And if you're not under stress, if you're metabolically healthy. So you'd have to be totally not under stress, only eating whole foods, metabolically healthy, and not looking to change your body composition. So if you are in your 20s and 30s, well, that's not me, pretty much not anybody, you know. So then there's us. And so what do we need to do? We need to look at, number one, someone's muscle mass. So how do you figure out where you should be? And this is one I've been trying to mess with. How do I create a chart? Boy, is this complicated. Because what I want is for you to be able to go, okay, this is my height, this is my weight range. And you can look at the height and weight table. So you can do a height and weight table.

And.

And you can do a weight range and kind of know, okay, with my height and weight, I should be somewhere between like 110, 120, and basically someone who's. Who's got smaller bone frame, which is very few people. Like, if you test most people's bone frames, they're medium, but if it's small, they go on the lower end, and if it's large, they go on the higher end. If someone tends to be, you know. Yeah, so that's where you can figure it. Low to high on the range, then you pick. Okay, let's say that my ideal weight is 120, as a woman. Now, I will tell you, back in the days when I was going to grad school and doctoral school, I did this project in doctoral school for body composition. And the norms they told us for body fat percentage then are not the same as now. They've gone up. That is bs. It's not all of a sudden healthier to have higher body fat. So I'm going to give you where I think we should be. And it's probably not correlating with what they're saying, but I think they're trying to make higher body fat okay. And it's not okay. It's not healthy. Too much body fat, we know it's not inert, right? And especially visceral fat.

Well, we've seen that. We've seen that trend also with cholesterol.

And with thyroid, which is a whole other thing.

You know, thyroid, blood sugar.

Yeah, everything.

My parents, my parents, doctors are constantly telling them they're fine. They're not fine.

They're not fine at all. My mom's doctor told her she was better off being 10 to 20 pounds overweight. Well, here's the thing. I think she was saying that for frailty, but it's like if it's 20 pounds of fat, that's very different than 20 pounds of muscle. And so you don't want to be frail, but you can't combat frailty with body fat. You have to combat it with muscle mass. And so that's such a good point. Right. And so I was looking at that going, how could she be saying that? Because the caloric restriction models and longevity models say the opposite. The single most important muscle for longevity is going to be muscle. And if you are not actively measuring and building it, you are losing it. Right. And if you are not feeding it with protein, and basically our protein requirements are way low, so you have to figure out what's my ideal body weight. And then I need to be getting at least 3/4 of a gram to a gram per pound of that ideal body weight in order to support me building, putting on muscle. Because I've got to have enough amino acids in excess of what my body needs for everything else to be able to put them in there for muscle protein synthesis and turnover, which is really costly. And so if I don't have enough, my body's then going to go, you know what? I think I'm not going to make bones today. I'll just go build some biceps. No, it'll say sorry on the biceps. Sorry. So, you know, we got to make sure and as we age, we get what's called anabolically resistant. We aren't as able to do that muscle protein synthesis, plus our, our betaine, our hydrochloric acid is low. So we need to be taking things like betaine, you know, protein enzymes to help us digest that well, because we aren't doing it well. So that's another big one. So as we age, what you want to look at is you figure out your ideal weight. And so let's just pick someone who's 120. Now I think that the highest body fat a woman should have is 25% and that, that would be someone who's just curvier, naturally, just a curvier woman, and they might go as low as 15%. I will tell you, I'm a 15% body fat person, have been forever. I'm a very athletic person. But most women, if we were somewhere in the 18 to 22%, so I'm going to say 20%, if that's what we're striving for, then, you know, that would be amazing. Here's the thing that may take. Gosh, you know, like, let's say someone's at 120 pounds of body fat and I'm trying to do math quickly in my, in my head, I love math, but not, not necessarily live online. And let's say that person right now is 30% body fat or 35. If you're 30% body fat, you've just massively increased your risk of metabolic syndrome. If you don't have it already. You know, it should really be. One of the biggest markers that we have for metabolic health is your body composition. Like that's what we should be really looking at. That means at 30% you only have 84 pounds of muscle there. The rest is body fat. Right? I mean, that's a lot of body fat. Now if you wanted to have, let's see, 20% body fat, you would need to have 96 pounds of muscle. So that is 12 pounds of muscle. And that, by the way, is a lot of muscle that may take a woman. You know, I mean, it's going to take at least a year probably to put on, right? And so this is, and I've, I've worked with enough people where. It's funny, I've, I've had so many. I had the 120 pound woman come in and I remember her well. This was years ago because I always did body composition on everyone and I had a $5,000 body composition scale that I would look at everything Visceral fat. I mean, everything. And people thought I was crazy because this was literally like 15, 20 years ago.

Oh, that's way.

And you know, and I remember this woman came in and she wanted to lose weight. She was 120, she was 5 4, maybe she was 5 5. And I go, you don't need to lose any weight. But she was a fluff ball. She was like, like 30% body fat. So she really, I go, you really actually don't need to lose any fat. All you've got to put on some muscle. And this completely freaked her out, right? And I said, well, what do you want? Do you want, why do you want to lose weight? She goes, well, I want to fit into these clothes. I so, so if we could maintain or build or increase your weight and you could fit into those clothes and look better naked, would that be it? Or do you want to look, do you want to be thinner? Do you want to be lighter on the scale? But what if you didn't change at all in your clothing size and you looked worse naked? Which do you pick now?

Right?

It's an easy one, logically. But I got to tell you, emotionally it's still a challenge on the scale. Bottom line was we had her put on muscle, lose fat. She went down two clothing sizes, she ended up a little, a few pounds heavier. It took like 6 months. Total different body. Total different body. But here's what's also important. If you want to just lose weight, you know what you should do? You should sit on the couch, you should fast as much as possible, don't move much, so you lose as much muscle as possible because that's heavy. And the minute you lose weight, let's say you lose 10 pounds that way because you'll lose mainly muscle. You just massively lowered your metabolic rate. Trying to maintain that weight is going to be eating really low calorie. It can't be done. And that's why you see all this stuff fail, right?

I've done it that way, which is.

Why I yo, yo'd a lot, right? So we don't do that anymore because we're focused on feeding our muscles and we're focused on watching a scale, getting a scale, you know, Now Tanita has a bioimpedance scale that's like 99 bucks. And it can tell you visceral fat, perfect visceral fat, body fat, fat free mass. And now your job is, I need to make sure I'm getting the protein in to feed my fat free mass. And. And then because you're working through fibromyalgia. I would like to see, like, you need to work with someone who understands this, because here's the challenge. And you told me this offline, that because you have fibromyalgia, the minute you try to do anything at all, you pull something. And I remember early on I was doing all my grad work in biomechanics and spinal lifting. Biomechanics, because I thought marketing. My parents were golfers. Golfers have bad backs. This is a good business. Like, I'll never run out of people with sore backs. And the. The school of thought back then was, if you have anything going on with your back, avoid your back and just do abs. And I go, but their back was weak and tight in the first place, and their legs were weak in the first place. What if I strengthen their glutes, strengthen their quads, strengthen their back and work their core. But I'm not avoiding the area. I'm going to actually work the area. And that's what I would tell you. The worst thing you can do is not. Is do less because. Because you. Then everything you do, that's when you blow out your back getting the groceries out of the car. So I listen to you, and I think I'd love to have you working with a trainer who understands this more like a physical therapist type and maybe a doctor, a da, Anyone that understands this type of exercise that can come in and start to really help you work through it. Because, you know, some Pilates movements incorporated with some like trx, you know, we got to get you moving through motion again and doing activities of daily living. Because in life, we have to get out of the chair, go down the stairs, and, you know, if you look at people 65 plus the leading. There's a constant throughout life of how much people die from accidents. What changes is that when they get to. I think it's 70 actually, plus the accidents. What the accidents are changes dramatically. And 70 plus is it falls and they die. And this is just a tragedy, right? So you look at it and go, all right, what am I going to need to do? I need to do things that require balance. I need to do things that require core. So that's where I love things where the TRX is involved. Because you can do a TRX assisted squat, a TRX assisted pull up a cr. You know, so all this stuff that you're like, oh, there's no way I can do this. You can do it with a trx. And so that's where I look at pilates machine trx. Working with someone who understands this stuff and knows how much to push you and then also understanding that you will be a little sore.

Yeah. My thing is, because I'm not good at this, I oftentimes don't know the difference between good hurt and bad hurt.

And that's absolutely. So bad hurt is hurt at a joint site or hurt for, you know, like, you know, if you're a little sore the next day, like, I just massively upped all my weights like I talked about, and I was like, oh, man, I haven't been sore like this in a while and it was gone in a day. That's normal hurt at a joint site. Hurt to touch, you know, hurt that lasts three days, that's too much. And what I like to do is go slow because I can always. The first time I, when I was a personal trainer, the first time I took someone to the gym, I took them to the gym for two and a half hours and I took them through everything I knew and they went to bed for a week like their back was out there. I was like, oh, my gosh. Yeah, you know what? Better to start easy and build.

Right.

Because we can always back off. You're not going to break anything likely. Right. So just work with someone who knows, understands the body and. And continue to build on. If you get a little too sore, back off, but try to build rather than back off. Right, okay, cool. And then the other thing, I'm assuming that you're on Coq 10. Okay, good. And just a shout out for anyone going, what's Coq 10? Coq 10. When I look at supplements, that would be really important for you. Number one, I would also recommend, along with your tanita, to correlate your tanita with going to get a DEXA body set scan. Because we need to see what your bone mineral density is now. And that will really tell you your body composition. That's like the gold standard for it. It's like 100 bucks. Your doc should write you a script, but if not, it's like 100 bucks to get a DEXA body scan. We want to make sure. Check on your bone mineral density again, because if you're not, if you're, you know, now you've gone through menopause, no estrogen. I would be using flax seeds, though, in my smoothies for some of the phytoestrogen. Right. But you know, the things I look at are bone health, heart health, brain health, and so supplements that I really love here. And I will do a Shameless plug because we just made a packet of these because I was like, okay, what would be my ultimate menopause pack? What am I doing? And annatto e gg are it's amazing because it helps with hot flashes and bone mineral density and brain health and breast cancer risk reduction. And then CoQ10 of course for cardiovascular health and for mitochondrial health. And then dim to detoxify bad estrogens. Now one other shout out. I just did a podcast with Dr. Richard Johnson, who I'm obsessed with. I studied him when I wrote sugar impact diet and he told me how fructose basically kills mitochondria, I was like, there is another reason. So like the worst thing, and I'm not saying don't have one or two pieces of fruit, I'm saying don't do fruit juice, don't do crystalline fructose, don't do agave, don't do apple juice concentrate, all that stuff that's high fructose. Everyone worries about high fructose corn syrup. And yes, that's bad. But you know, apple juice has more fructose than a coke. So watch all that. Cause that can damage that mitochondria too.

All right, there you go.

But what's the first thing that you're gonna focus on? Cause again, I don't wanna make you nutso because I just downloaded a bun with the biggest emphasis I think really is body composition for you, right?

Yes. And the absolute first thing that I have to do is stop being afraid of the scale. Because whenever I don't weigh is when, by the time I do weigh, it blips up. So daily weigh ins, same time every day, we're just doing it on the tanita and I'm going to focus on muscle and think about muscle.

You're watching for trends too. Because if I see my weight jump up a bunch for no reason, I'm going to look back and go, did gluten sneak in? Did dairy sneak in like I just had? If I train really hard, my weight will jump up temporarily, right? So you know, just, you just go, okay, what's going on? Because there's always something you can tie. But you're really looking for the trend line and that's why you do it every day. And then you look for the trend of the week, right? You know, people go, I dropped three pounds. I go, you probably dehydrated yourself.

You know, so yeah, speaking of that, I noticed when I last did whey that my water, because it measures water too, was way low. And it's Because I haven't been as careful.

Water, the biggest. The biggest marker for total body water is your muscle. And your muscle. Yeah. Because your muscle requires is about 70% water. And glycogen carbohydrates bind with water and are stored in your muscle. So if your water's down, it's how we figure out. That's how we extrapolate muscle mass. Because how much water you have is a direct correlation of how much muscle you have. Yeah.

Good to know.

So watch that. You'll see it improve as you. As you build muscle, and then you just give yourself grace, because muscle builds over time, right?

Yeah. So that's my first thing is weighing. And then my other thing is I just absolutely have to find somebody who I can train with who knows what they're doing isn't going to hurt me. And no more of this excuse of, well, it hurts, so I'm just not going to do it.

It'll just become. Everything will start to. You think it's hurting now, right? Yeah. Yeah.

And I have had the experience, like you said, of just doing the odd little thing, like trying to lift some groceries, and it's like, oh, no, I just pulled something. I don't want that experience as I get older.

This is now the time when you really need to do it. You know, you don't want to try it. 70, go.

Now.

I need to build muscle because it just gets more challenging as you age. And shout out to this if you're 70. Listening. That doesn't get you off the hook. Right? I'm just saying, if you're 30 or 40, really, like, whenever you can start, start. It's never too late. But the earlier you start, the better.

I'm skeptical that I can never get my body fat to the levels that you're saying, only because even when I've been, you know, at my best weight, the. The best I've ever done has been about 29%. I am a curvy girl, so pro.

Probably 25% is going to be the one you aim for. And the reason I know that you can do this is you've never actually focused on that before where it was the right side of it, which is building the muscle. So if you're just focusing on losing the weight and you're losing muscle and fat together, then you lower your metabolic rate. It's impossible to maintain. So this is different. You will be able to do this.

Thank you.

All right.

So much, jj, as always, your. Your brilliance is this.

This was my fun. You're my favorite type to work with and it's great being reconnected.

Wonderful.

All right, let me know how it goes. Okay? Okay, I will. See ya.

Thanks so much.

All right, if you would love me to unpack your stuff story, that's what I'll call it and give you some advice. One of the things we're moving to now is getting all of your information and then I will share the highlights reel and then give you the suggestions through Beginnings and breakthroughs so you don't even have to be here because I know that was a big thing for people. They were shy. But if you have some things you would love addressed, remember, I'm not a doctor and I don't play one on podcasts, but I can give you nutrition and lifestyle advice and ideas to help you become more metabolically healthy. All right, if you want to do that, just go to jjvirgin.com signup and one other thing to do is to be sure to subscribe to JJ.com if you haven't yet so you don't miss one juicy episode. See you next time.

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 take 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 whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com to find out more.