[Beginnings & Breakthroughs] Muscle Growth After 40 with Kate Jansen

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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. So when I wrote the Virgin Diet, the biggest question I got asked was, well, what do I do about sugar? Like, I can't give up my sugar or I'm only eating honey. And so after I wrote the Virgin Diet, I decided to take a new look at sugar. Because what I discovered is people seem to either be controlled by it or confused by it or worse yet, both. And that became the Sugar Impact Diet to really help you figure out where sugar is sneaking in and which sugars to choose and which sugars to lose. And, you know, when you write a book, you the most fun part of any of this is hearing people's stories and what happened, you know, what happened as they went on the journey and then helping them take the next step in the journey. And that's what we're going to do today with Kate. She did the Virgin Diet and then she was determined to give up her sugar issues and she did the Sugar Impact diet. Had a crazy huge result, which you'll hear about and has maintained that. And now we're just taking her to the next step of the journey and focusing really on, okay, what do we need to look at in terms of macros, protein, fat and fiber or protein, fat and carbs, and especially her workout for her to build on where she's at. So I am super excited to share Kate's journey with you and her next step when we come back. Stay with me.

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You know, again, it's just that nighttime I just wanted something to snack on at night. In college it was, I wanted something to snack on while I was studying. And then as I Became an adult. It was, well, you know, I'm really good all day long and I work out and the rest of my diet's healthy, so it's fine. I can just have that sweet, you know, something at night and be fine, and I'll work it off, and it's no big deal. And yet, as I still continued, you know, in my adult life, I'm. It was like, I can't give this up. You know, nothing will. I'll try to give it up for Lent because I'm Catholic. I'll give it up for Lent, and then, you know, it'll get out of my system and I'll be fine. And I still wanted it after.

Yeah, it's. When I was in high school, I decided to go work at an ice cream parlor because I thought if I do that, I will never want to eat ice cream again. No, that did not work. It totally doesn't work. So you really have to figure out. And I love. Dr. Mark Hyman's a good friend, and he describes sugar as our number one recreational drug of choice. And I think we have to really realize that's what it is. The problem with a lot of these processed foods is. And you were talking about, I go to the grocery store. Well, processed foods either are loaded with sugar or loaded with carbohydrates that quickly turn to sugar, and they're highly addictive.

So.

And they will, as you're walking through it. I always love that they put all of that right at the end, right where you're checking out. Like, when your resistance is low, the resolve is weakened. So my big goal with Sugar Impact Diet was to show people all the places that's sneaking in. Because I'm betting you weren't going to the store and buying, like, table sugar.

No. And to be honest, as I was reading your book, I was like, well, because I have studied and I love health and fitness and all of that. It's kind of a hobby of mine. And so I knew that really nothing else I was eating had it in it. Like I do Primal Kitchen. For all of my ketchup and everything. It's very. It was just like, I wanted those.

Just that little something.

That little something at the end of the day. And so even for me, it really wasn't even added sugar. When I did, you know, when I went through everything I ate, I was like, well, I'm. You know, maybe my balsamic has a little bit in it. But even then, it wasn't. It wasn't even that much. It was I could. I pinpointed it down because I'm like, I know what it is.

I love that because the first thing I have people do is, like, identify if it is sneaking in. Because I find with most people it's like, oh, I'm not eating any. I'm like, you just had raspberry vinaigrette with craisins on your salad. You just had glazed chicken. Believe me, you're having it, so it's great that you didn't have it. Sneaking in. What you had was a habit.

Yeah. An addiction. And just like, if I needed that, for some people, it's a glass of wine. They need that alcohol or whatever it is. For me, it was. I needed to end my night with that sweet. And if I didn't have it, you know, I'll stop on the grocery store on the way home and get it if I need to. But, yeah, it was, yeah. Embarrassing.

All right, so how did you break that?

I read your book. I mean, I had read the Virgin.

This was not a setup, I promise.

No, no. And I have followed you for years. I had just like you said, I did the elimination with the first book and got rid of everything. And that sugar was the hardest thing. And I think one of the things, I was ready, though. Like, I decided, and it was March 1, because it was like the start of Lent this year. I was like, ok, Last year I gave up Starbucks and haven't had it since. I can do this. I can give up sugar. I know I can do this. I think so. I had to be in the right mindset and really, really wanted it. And I had turned 40 and was now almost turning 41, and I was like, OK. By the time my birthday comes, so from March 1st to May 9th, my birthday, I am going to do this. I am going to give up the sugar. So I got your book and as a teacher, got my highlighter out and took my notes and. And went through it and said, there's no way. Ok, ten pounds in two weeks. And it wasn't even really so much the pounds. That was the added bonus of losing the weight. It was more just get rid of the sugar habit. And so I followed it to a T. And I think one of the biggest things was reading the testimonials inside the book kept me going because every few pages there'd be another one and I'd be like, oh, my gosh, that's me. If she can do it, I can do it. And so I just kept doing it.

I love it. Well, that's why we're doing these sessions too. First of all, you have the same birthday as my, as my son Bryce. So clearly awesome. Humans are born on May 9, apparently. Apparently. And yeah, that's the whole point of these success stories. And I literally took 900 people through this who were like sugar addicts. And one of the things is, you know, couple big things to celebrate is first you've done the virgin diet. Like, my perfect thing is do the virgin diet, then the sugar impact diet. Make sure you know where it's sneaking in. You were super clear where it was. You're eating by the plate of protein, fat and fiber for good blood sugar balance. You just had a habit. And one of the interesting things when you look at, you were saying a couple things that, you know, you could get away with this for a while. Like I used to always say, hey, you can't out exercise a bad diet. Well, you know what, in your 20s and 30s, you actually can probably out exercise a bad diet. And if you really look at this data, statistics, you know, these extreme athletes can get away with a lot, but it's probably not what you were. And I wasn't either. But even so, if you're working out, you can sneak things in. But over time, and especially when it's an evening habit, which is probably the worst time, like if you're going to eat sugar, the worst time you eat sugar is right before bed. Like, that's the single worst. Like, don't do that, you know, right? You're going to do it. Do it. Like when you're going to go do a hard workout and suck the sugar in and use it for fuel. But don't do it right before bed. Like that's, that's when you especially don't want to do it. And I love that statement that habits dictate hormones. Like if you do something like this and it becomes so habitual, it will start to wreak havoc. It'll start to change your blood sugar. You know, it'll impact your insulin. Like it just starts to mess with stuff. So it's great that you caught the habit and fix this. So how did you go about knocking out this evening? Sweet. Like, did you just cut it and you just said that's it? Did you replace it with something else? What did you do?

Well, I didn't. I guess I kind of did just cut it. But I did the phases of the book too though, so. However, going through the first phases, okay, I was already eating all the other low sugar stuff like berries.

That's easy. Yeah.

I kind of started easy with it, but I had an easier starting point, I think, because I didn't have to cut it anywhere else. I think I started with, like, maybe herbal tea or something. But again, I was in the right mindset that I really wanted it. And that's key, I think for a lot of people, they're like, yeah, I'll do it. The other thing is, you know, I'm a high school business teacher, and in my business classes, I'm always telling my students, like, you have to have a smart goal. You can't just say, I'm going to do this. It's like, how are you going to do it? And so I wrote everything down that I wanted to to do so I could see it every single day. And one of the other things that I had never done is use my scale, use the bathroom scale. I always just went by how, because I've always worked out and, you know, was fine with how. With kind of where I was and was always like, oh, ditch the scale. I don't need it. I'll just go buy my clothes. But this time, as I saw, you know, every few days that number go down, it was like, oh, my God, this is actually working. I don't want. I didn't want it. I didn't want that sweet at night anymore because I'm like, this is. The book is saying what's going to happen, and it's literally happening in front of me.

Well, and what's wild is you're already exercising, you're already eating healthy. This was just one thing. So shifting this, taking that one thing out. What changed in terms of your weight? Because that bold promise, like, that was people coming in who were eating sugar and not necessarily doing anything. Or what happened with you over the course of two weeks?

Well, the biggest thing, I would say the weight was great. I mean, I started at 139. I definitely reached, like, I was definitely 10 pounds down by my birthday. And now I'm even, I think, maybe 13 down. But the biggest thing, more than anything was I could see the definition, my muscle definition. And having worked out my entire life. And no, I was never, like, a college athlete or anything like that. I just, in high school, discovered working out, loved it, and kept up with it. And I was like, oh, my God, I have muscles hopping that I hadn't seen before. And I didn't change my workouts. Like, I continued to do, you know, stream the workouts. I mean, I always change, like, the program that I'm doing, but I didn't do anything that I would have done differently with that. So, so I would say like, just like seeing the muscle definition, I was like, this is amazing.

This is great.

Finally I could have looked like this all along.

Well, the big promise of that, you know, when you really look at like, what are the big game changers for the diet? I always say it's like, figure out the high five foods, which foods work for you and which foods don't. Cause otherwise you've got that inflammation, you feel crappy. Figure out where sugar's sneaking in or. Cause I found people either were confused it was sneaking in or they just were controlled by it. Like you were on the controlled side and you know, like, look and see what you need to do. And that program set up to taper someone, not just go stop, you know, because that tends to send you screaming back over for something. And so it teaches you to taper, trade transition. And what I found during that time was, yeah, the average person was losing 10 pounds and 2 inches off their waist. I was like, holy smokes. Like, that's crazy. But shout. What it does for you is nothing good. Like, the impact on your health is insane. Between your bones, your brain health, your gut health, your weight, I mean, it's just. There's just nothing good about it. And then of course, bad seed oils is the final frontier of like, what things we need to cut out. Fortunately, when you cut out a lot of the, you know, gluten and soy and corn and all the processed foods, you cut out the bad seed oils too. So you're in good shape. So you're not ending up with like canola and soybean and all these pro inflammatory fats and stuff. And now when you were putting yourself on the scale, did you have a scale that gave you body composition or was it purely looking at weight?

It gave me body comp. And actually, even before I started this back in November, I had done it at my gym. I just go to like an Orange Theory Fitness just on Saturdays. The rest of the days of the week I work out in my basement. But just for a good challenge, I do that on Saturday. So I had gotten like a listing back in November of like what my body fat percentage was and all of that. And it was, you know, I think body fat was like 19.4, something like that. Well, I did it again at the end of May or right around, you know that, that same time in May and it was like 15%.

Nice.

I mean, yeah, so that'll again, that's.

Yeah.

The number on the scale is nice, but it's the other stuff too that's even nicer. I mean, because the scale still, you know, continues to change here and there a little bit. And for women, obviously, depending on where we are in our cycle, all of that. But so, I mean, yeah, looking at, you know, body fat percentage and just like muscle definition on my body, that's better than any number of them.

Yeah, well, that's what we really. Ultimately, if I had it my way, you would not be able to do weight without knowing muscle mass and fat mass. Because that's what you're really looking at. If someone's losing weight and they're losing muscle mass, they're making themselves worse, not better. It's the worst thing you can do for yourself as a woman. You know, we have to hold on to and build muscle. It is key, critical, and in fact, the focus shouldn't be on losing weight, it should be on holding on and building muscle. Because if you do that, you'll lose fat and everything changes.

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The next goal is even more definition. It's like, well, if I can look like this at 41, well, what's the next year hold? What can I look like at points? You know what I'm saying? So I feel like you constantly have to have that next goal because I don't want to just be stuck again. I'm not looking to run marathons or anything crazy, but it's like, oh, I kind of have like 2 pack abs. Could I get this pack abs? It's like, why not go even further? So, yeah, so, and you know, like I mentioned, I'd like to learn more about like keeping track of macros. And you know how you know that is eating by the plate, obviously. But like, for me personally, it's like, I know it's a little bit different for everybody depending on what your goals are and things so.

Well, with your goals being muscle mass. Here's what I would tell you. So you're now, your weight is now what, about 125 and you are 15% body fat.

Yeah.

Which is just spectacular. And that's kind of, by the way, the range that I look at for women and I base this on back when I was in doctoral school a gazillion years ago, because the norms have gone up and I don't buy that it is not metabolically healthy to have excess body fat. It's not just carrying around a fat backpack. It's inflammatory and it does bad things. So, you know, we really have to focus on holding onto and building muscle and then losing body fat. And for a lot of us, if someone's not trained at all, then you can actually do what's called body recomping, where you can build muscle and lose fat at the same time. But once someone's at the level you're at, where they're well trained, it generally is you pick one or the other. And for you, your focus really isn't losing body fat. It's not an issue. So, you know, it's really putting on muscle, which probably means your weight's going to go up a little bit. So just so you understand that, like right now I'm in a muscle building phase and my weight went up. And you know, for, for most women, they'd be like, oh my God. And I'm like, this is what I've been working on. It's like putting on more muscle, you know, and here's the thing, we are in our muscle building years until you get to be about. And I'm never going to say there's not a muscle building years, but it's much easier in your 30s and 40s, 50s, than it is your 60s, 70s, 80s. That's just reality. So you really want to lay down as much muscle, which also helps with bone density now because it's going to serve you well later. It's your, I call it metabolic Spanx. It holds in everything tighter, protects your bones and it helps with blood sugar and insulin sensitivity and it helps you, it makes it easy to maintain your weight. As you see, like if you try to maintain with just cardio, you always, it's like you're always trying to, you're spending every paycheck you get. Muscle mass is like having a really good investment. Right. You know, so that's why we want to focus on that. So in order for you to build muscle at this point, since you're, you know, you've been training for a long time, it's going to require you doing more and looking at your macros. The biggest macro probably is going to be protein. We're going to go through that. But in order for muscles to grow, they have to be overloaded. And part of the whole thing with exercise, my first company was actually called Progressive Exercise. It was all about like, hey, in order to get stronger, we have to overload and adapt. Right. When you really look at exercise and fitness, it's just the ability to do more. And so if you've gotten to a point where you're comfortable in what you're doing, you'll stay the same. And so, like, I thought, okay, I'm going to put more muscle on. I just went to the gym and I changed my eating. Instead of going and doing fasted workouts, I decided to go in and eat an hour before I worked out and go in there. And I lifted everything by about 30%, mainly because I'd been doing fasted workouts. And I went, oh, wow. Like, you know, and so I'm cycling that. And so that's a little different for someone who's just starting to work out. When you're at this level now, it may be, okay, what do we need to do to be able to increase the load on your muscles? And so I don't know if with Beachbody, you're doing resistance training with free weights, but it's going to be getting some heavier weights. It might be getting. I love the trx. I don't know if you've played around with a trx.

I haven't. Yeah.

I'm like, kind of obsessed with the trx. Where was that during the pandemic for everybody? That solved a lot of problems. I travel with that. But, you know, using a trx, getting heavier weights and really looking at, like, how am I going to increase. Because it's either increasing the amount of weight, increasing the amount of sets. What are you going to do to increase the actual volume of what you do and making sure that you have the protein that you need. Now, one of the things I love that I would say to throw in the shake is collagen.

I do. Yeah, I use collagen. Yeah.

Okay, so you are. So right now, are you eating two meals a day?

Yes.

Okay. And tell me about. So Is your shake, what kind of shake powder is it? Is it the paleo?

It's yours.

Paleo or plant?

It's a paleo.

Okay, cool. So you're doing the paleo and the collagen.

Oh, you know what? Actually no, it is the plant. It is the plant one.

So I would switch unless you're a vegan or vegetarian. Are you?

No.

So I'd switch to the paleo. It's going to be better for muscle building.

Okay.

So if someone's a vegan or vegetarian, plant based. Otherwise I do paleo or at least a scoop of paleo and a scoop of plant that kind of makes a great texture and then a scoop of collagen.

Okay.

Okay. Now with building you might find and putting on more muscle, you might find that you have to cycle in a couple of days where you're doing three meals in order to get enough protein. Because for you, in order for you to get to where you want to be, you're going to be needing to eat more in the range of 100 to 125 grams of protein a day.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Yeah, yeah.

And that's hard to do in two meals.

Yeah, yeah.

So like I will tend to cycle in between when I'm doing like a leaning type of week. I'll do fasted workouts. Two meals. Building weeks, I'm doing three meals. When I was training I used to work with a lot of athletes in the old days. I don't even know how that happened. Like heavyweight boxing champs and stuff. And I would have them do four meals because I had to do that in order to get their protein in throughout the day. But with you, you know, that could be. What time do you normally have your, your loaded smoothie?

11. So my, my, my window is 11 to 7. But I'm usually, I usually don't even eat dinner. It's really 11 to 6 because I'm done with dinner by 6.

And what time do you do your workout?

About 4 o' clock in the morning.

Oh my goodness. What time do you go to bed?

7:30.

Okay. Okay, hold on. Hold, hold please. So what time do you get up?

About 3:45.

Okay. And then what time do you go to school?

I leave my house at 7.

Okay, and then what time do you get back?

Around 4:45.

Okay, and then you go to bed at 7:30. Do you have kids?

Yes, two.

Okay. Holy, holy smokes. Everyone go to bed early.

The 12 year old. I go to bed before the 12 year old. But the 4 year old gets put to bed and I follow him to bed.

Yeah. Okay, so really we need to eat dinner. More like 5:30. My rule is eat two to three hours or stop eating three to four hours before bed.

Right. But I can't, it's hard for me. So 5:30 is about when I'm, when we eat. I know that's so that's really hard. That's probably the hardest one of your rule. That's like one of the rules I can't follow because I just have time in my day.

Yeah. So. So you get home at 4:45. Wow. And you're making your smoothie at school?

I make it in the morning and then take it to school. It sits in the refrigerator obviously. But yeah, so that I make everything in the morning.

Okay. Yeah, it's a rough one because obviously you want family dinner and all that. And what I'm looking at is maybe making a double smoothie. See in order for you to do this and of course obviously on the weekend we can get a harder workout in, but we're going to have to raise your weights and we're going to have to raise your protein and your pro. Like the last thing you want to do is eat a big heavy dinner and go to bed, right? Yeah, that's not going to work. And so really the option we have is to, is to like double up your protein shake and then divide it so that you get to school and I'd actually drink some of it on the way to school and then the rest of the next set of it at 11 and then have dinner at 5:30 because that way we could get in like if you got more like 35 grams of protein in your protein shake and then you did your dinner was like, you know, 30 to 40 grams. We'd at least get right around 100 and that's what I would shoot for hitting. Okay. And that way it'll, that'll way it'll work a little easier. And then I'd also play around on the weekend and I would check this just as a, as a test because I'm assuming. Do you get to work out both days on the weekend?

Yeah, Sunday's usually like my Wednesday and Sunday are like my rest days so it's more just like walking days. But Saturday is where I actually like go to an Orange Theory fitness class and it's like a hard workout.

So what I'd love to see. What time do you go to Orangetheory?

It's at 7.

Okay. What I'm trying to See is what would happen if you. And it has to be somewhat before because if you go and eat and do a really hard workout, it's like bleh. Because you only have so much blood, you don't want to do digestion. But really interesting is if you, you could eat it, you know, two hours before a workout and see if it, if it changed your ability to work out. So I don't know if you're willing, if you're able to push that class just as a test once or twice to see what happens. And then if we could, you know, for your light movements on Wednesdays and Saturdays where you're doing just a walk, if we can do a walk in any kind of restorative yoga, just making sure we're really getting good core flexibility stuff in there as well. Because as you lift heavier, you want to make sure you're really emphasizing good core too. That. So that's what I would test out because that's, that's where like where I look in terms of macros is I build it all around protein. Protein first. Because, you know, we can live without carbs. Not well, but we can, we can't live without protein, fat and water. So, you know, got to be having lots of water. That's obvious. But if you start with protein and go, all right, so if I, if I really think now 100 grams is my floor and I'd really rather get to like 120, which means that I've got to get like 30 to 40 at each meal, right. So my smoothies now fortunately, with the protein powder and the collagen and I kind of heap them up a little bit. And then I also use this flax milk called. What the heck is this name? It's flax milk. I can see the container. Anyway, it's a flax milk that's got protein in it. And so I can kick my shakes up to like 40 grams of protein with flax milk that I can't see the name of. It's like in a, in unsweetened, I get an unsweetened vanilla protein flax milk. And I use that collagen and the paleo inspired and I get myself to 40 grams. So if we did that, then it's very easy to eat that 40 grams. You know, that's a six ounce chicken breast or seven ounce salmon filet to get it at dinner too. And you're golden. And then we just make sure that you have some healthy fats and you know, lots of non starchy vegetables, little Slow, low carbs. So that's it. Simple. Okay, cool. All right, so you're tracking, so, so you're tracking your body composition. You're going to track your, your protein test out, like see if you can do a test on a weekend and see what happens if you do a non fasted workout and if it improves anything. I'm just be very curious. I've been playing around with that and it's like, I was like, wow. It can make a difference and allow you to get some gains in strength that then you can carry forward. Right. So you could use that to push. So try that. Okay. All right. Oh my gosh. You are so fun. Such a great success story. Thank you so much.

No, thank you, thank you.

Made my day. Made my day. So my big ask for you is that you will check back in and tell me how you're doing.

Yes, absolutely.

Okay, cool. All right, awesome.

Thank you.

Thanks so much. Thanks for meeting you.

See you.

Take care.

Bye.

Bye.

All right, if you would love to ask a question, I am doing a couple different things. I'm beginning some breakthroughs, a lot of answering questions now. If you've got something going on, just shoot it on over to us. If you want to share your story and I can coach it that too. Just go to jjvirgin.com signup and one other thing, if you've not yet subscribed, subscribed, go to subscribetojay.com and you will make sure that you never miss any of the goodness. I'll see you next time. Bye.

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, whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com to find out more.