[Beginnings & Breakthroughs] Taking Your Health and Weight Goals to the Next Level with Liz Clark

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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. I am super excited, first of all, excited about this podcast series because it's really all about celebrating you, celebrating your success and then also helping you go to that next level. And boy, today's interview is certainly a success. To celebrate, we are going to be talking with. Well, I'm going to be talking with Liz Clark. And Liz actually met me in the bathroom at an event I was speaking at probably 15 years ago at T Harv Eckers Health event. And way back then, I mean, my book was Six Weeks to Sleeveless and Sexy, which she remembered. And then she did the virgin diet and she did a detox and she's had some amazing success along the way. And I'm really excited to just kind of unpack that with you because there's lots of learning lessons in here that you can apply. And then we're gonna talk about where she can go from here. And I'm not gonna be spoiler alert. There's something very specific for her to do that again, I think, is one that we all need to focus on. I also wanna let you know that if you would love to do this, if you would love to be a Beginnings and Breakthroughs, this could be either we're walking through what you did to be successful with one of my programs, or you're just starting out and you're.

Like, what should I do?

You can go to jjvirgin.com, sign up and apply to be one of my interviewees. And I'd love to get to know you. And so now stay tuned for this amazing success story with Liz Clark.

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Okay, so tell me. Give us a little bit of history about where you know, where you were, what you've done, and then we're going to go. Where are we going to go from here? Which is the most exciting part. We want to. But let's celebrate some success too, right?

Well, when you first came out with your Virgin diet, I did that imperfectly.

What does that mean?

It was a real challenge to drop some of the, you know, when you start reading the labels and gluten was in everything, right? And the corn is in everything. And it. So it was a very different way of eating. And I probably stayed 80, 90% good after the first detox for maybe a month. And every Time I did it, I extended it a little bit longer, and I got to where I could maintain it for about six months.

Well, did you notice? Because here is the whole thing and I am really trying to reframe this whole idea of a diet. There are a couple things that I am going to give you that I think will help make a big difference. And they are much more mindset shifts. I think one of the big challenges we have as a idea of a diet and being on it or off.

It or I'm perfect or I'm not.

Because I don't know about you, but, like, I've done nothing perfect in my life. The only perfect thing I did was, like, give birth to my two baby boys. Then I was like an imperfect mom, right? There's nothing like, no one's perfect at anything. So it's not about being perfect. It's about using that as a tool. And so to me, a diet. And I really wish there were a different name from, like, you know, the diet is the way we eat every day and then there's a diet, and they're totally different things. And the reality is the virgin diet, just like the Sugar impact diet, was set up to take you through a process for a short period of time to help you identify during that time how you feel when you eat certain foods so that you can go, wow, I ate gluten. And I'll just give you personal things. I ate gluten and I'm like, okay, boom. My fingers swell and I'll go up three pounds on the scale overnight. Now, I didn't sit down and eat three pounds, three pounds worth of food. So, you know, I know calories wise, I know that it was inflammation. I eat dairy. I get mucus and break out. So I know my reactions to them because I've gone through, taken them out, given my body a chance to cool off, reset, cleanup, and then I've come back and tried it and it was like, bam, right? So that is really what we're doing. Because then it puts the power in your hands to go, all right, I'm here, and there's this gluten containing thing. And I know I'm going to feel crappy if I eat it, but I'm willing to pay the price. Or you have such an extreme reaction, you go, this is something I should never, ever touch.

Right?

You learn how to work with food and how to have the right relationship with it. So that's what really the point is. And you may find that when you pull out, like, I know for me, gluten, dairy, soy. I just. And corn. I feel better when I don't eat them. Like, they don't do anything good for me. And most of our processed food is gluten, dairy, eggs, corn, soy, peanuts, and sugar. Right. I didn't include sugar there because I just. I'm not a sugar eater. But so that's really. I want you just to kind of get that mindset, because that's what I'm really. My real goal is for you to go, oh, I eat when I eat this. Like, I just had a gal, we're doing the virgin diet in a group that I'm in. And she said, you know, I gained a pound and a half eating corn. One. I mean, she didn't eat, like, you know, 5,000 calories worth of corn. Right. And then she goes, the next day, I gained another pound and a half eating corn. I go, yeah, because your body is inflamed from eating corn. Stop it. So that's the first thing I want you to think about there. So when you did the virgin Diet, what did you discover about how you felt? Did you go through the process where you pull out the foods and then go back and re challenge them?

I learned so much doing that. And I had also tried the. Because I think a podcast you did with Sarah Gottfried. So I pulled out caffeine, which was a trigger soy. I never really liked it that much, but I had a vegetarian boyfriend, so I went through a period, so I didn't miss soy when it went okay. Real sugar addict, though. And I love bread.

Okay.

Yeah.

You know, I don't really know anyone who doesn't love bread.

But I learned that when I would eat gluten, my wrists would hurt. It's interesting. I now know when I eat rice, I will gain a couple of pounds. But the last detox I did was last year, and I think everything just aligned. So I feel like I was reborn on May 17, 2021, the first day of my detox.

So what happened?

I had been working on some mindset training, and Jennifer Jimenez, who does transcend dance.

Oh, I know.

I know.

Jennifer. Mary Morrissey's daughter. Right.

Because I'm a life mastery consultant.

Awesome. Yeah. No, you know, Mary's one of my closest friends, so.

So there was something that Jennifer said about. I don't know, it just hit me at a different level about imagining who you are. And I always had this feeling that I was a thin person in a fat body, because I was fat as a kid when everybody around me was a Toothpick. And my dad said, you're not fat. You're pleasingly plump. Okay. So I started dieting in high school and probably screwed up my metabolism from then on because I was a really active kid. I did sports, I did ballet. I was moving all the time, but I was still fat. So started really bad dieting probably in high school, the sneak diet in the back of my mother's Cosmopolitan magazine. But I decided with this mindset, there's a thin person in there, the next opportunity I get, I'm going to take this thing seriously. And the pandemic really helped because when we went into lockdown, I started rebounding every single day. And so I had a habit now of rebounding because in the past when I would do detoxes, sometimes I would especially during that transition when you're letting all the bad stuff off, I wouldn't exercise when I was detoxing. This time I said, no, I'm going to keep doing my rebounding. I just decided to follow it all to the letter. And being that I had no temptation because we were in lockdown and I was already in the habit of cooking for myself. And your recipes are a stretch for me because I'm not used to cooking, but they're delicious. I found a few favorites that I really liked and could carry on after the detox. On May 17th of 2021, I was 135 pounds, but I felt awful. I felt slow and fat and my joints hurt. And now this morning I was 109 pounds and I feel great. And all the My joints don't hurt and I have energy and I've eliminated completely corn and soy. Eggs don't seem to bother me, so I've added those back in. I don't do dairy little butter, but I usually use ghee. And I've just learned so much about ingredients. I wouldn't have tried if it hadn't been for your recipes and your I have the Sugar Impact and the Virgin Diet Cookbook and they are like post it noted and tabbed, and they're out all the time.

Oh, this warms my heart. I'm so thrilled. So, corn, soy, dairy. What about gluten? Do you do gluten? Not to gluten. What's your story with gluten?

Gluten? I have found that if I do it maybe once a week, but I don't even think about it. Unless, for example, I went out to dinner on the weekend and I knew there was farro in this grain bowl that had quinoa And Farro. And I knew I could do that one because it had a lot of really good fresh vegetables in it and olive oil.

Farro is an interesting one. It's this low gluten grain. It's a little different. If someone's gluten intolerant or celiac, I wouldn't touch it. But there's a couple things, like Farro sourdough bread that. That you can tend to handle even if you're, you know, even if you find you feel better without gluten, if you're not gluten intolerant or celiac. All right, so there's that. So. So, I mean, those are some pretty tremendous shifts you've made. Now, question for you. And this is some of the stuff that's going to be my next book, so we're going to give it to you early. So my big thing that I want to get out in the world is that it is kind of like, forget aging gracefully. We need to age powerfully. And my whole life I've been focused on. And even in grad school, when everything was about cardio and doing cardio, it was always, let's get strong. Let's do weight training. And back then it was like, don't let people do weight training and put muscle on until they've lost the weight. And I actually think that that's the exact opposite of what we need to. But I also think now with where you're at, and you had a couple hints early on that made me also go, we need to look at this is. I want you to move from just looking at your weight to what your weight is made up of. It is so mission critical. You know, remember way back when when we used to look at total cholesterol as a marker for health? And then they realized, oh, wait, it's not total cholesterol. We got to look at HDL and ldl. Weight's the same thing. You see, we want to make sure that what you're weighing in right now, that you've got enough muscle for you to age powerfully, to be able to have great bones, great insulin sensitivity, and be able to do all the stuff you want to do every single day. And that's my one big concern because of the history of dieting, which the reason I remember reading something, Liz, where they go, diets don't hurt your metabolism. I'm like, of course they hurt your metabolism if you. If you don't do them correctly. Because diets done incorrectly, where it's not done as a therapeutic tool is really about how much weight can you lose? Well, if you want to lose a lot of weight, you really want to lose muscle because it weighs a lot and fat's fluffy. But the reality is that's so damaging to your metabolism. If you think about how most weight loss programs happen, big calorie restriction, you drop muscle, then you go back to eating the way you were. You put on fat, and over time, you shift your body composition so that you've got higher fat, less muscle. And one of the biggest things that you really want to make sure you have is you want to make sure you have enough lean body mass. That means when you step on a scale, you've got fat and you got everything else, which is called your lean body mass. And the thing we can control in lean body mass is how much muscle we have. And literally, as we age, if we're not using it, we're losing it. And it is what. It's where we first become insulin sensitive and have great glucose tolerance. It's what protects our bones and our organs. So one of the first recommendations to you is, I want to know what that weight's made up of.

Probably the best thing about that detox I did was the Deborah Atkinson bonus at the end.

I love hearing that. I'm going to tell her. She'll be so thrilled.

And I am continuing to work out twice a week with weights.

Excellent.

So last a year ago.

That's Deborah Atkinson for everybody. Flipping 50. She's amazing.

So I started out at 31.4% fat and 28.1% muscle. And I am now 16.8% fat and 33.9% muscle.

So I'm going to do a little math here. That is. You dropped almost half. Like, it's so close. Half your body fat. This is like amazing. Like, this is gold star. Go to the top of the class, you win all the awards. I mean, this is unheard of. So just so for perspective for people to understand. And it's funny, I go back when I was in doctoral school, we had spent a whole semester doing body composition testing. It was like that's what we did. And the norms that we used back in the 80s are completely different than what we have now. And I think it's just like blood values where all of a sudden our lab normal ranges are not where they used to be. And I don't want you to be normal if you're listening. I want you to be ideal. And so I'm going to give you what the ranges should be. And don't listen to the stuff you're hearing out there because the whole thing we're doing here is so that we can live longer, younger and live younger longer. Right. And when we finally do go out, we go out like a light bulb. So we feel great, we can do all the things we want to do. And muscle is key for that. So you got to have a good body composition. So there's actually two sides to this. One side of this is how much body fat do you have? And for what we want to have is ideal ranges for women is 18 to 22%. Now we would let them go up to 25%, but when they got up higher than that and especially like 30, 32%, that was metabolic syndrome. And 25% to me is kind of like the highest I'm going to go because I think after that you start getting into all sorts of metabolic syndrome types of things. Athletic women are in the 15 to 20% range. Right. So you're now in athlete range. Super cool. And you're actually going to get yourself even better. Because my sense is. Because you're five. Five, right. How tall are you?

Yes.

Five. Five. Five. And you weigh how much? 109.

You said yes this morning.

So yeah, you're a real lightweight. A featherweight we'd call you. Right.

I have small feet, I have small wrists.

Okay, so you're a small boned person. But I do want to do this one thing, so bear with me. And it requires math, so everyone's going to have to wait a moment while I get the math. So. So right now that means that you have 90 pounds of lean body mass. A little bit more than that, but around that. Right. Let me just check my math just to make sure. I didn't totally boo boo this thing. Yeah. And what I would look at with you is your waist measurement went down to amazing 32, down to 24.5. Amazing shifts in everything. You've got a great waist to hip ratio where Your waist is 24.5, your hips are 35, you've got a great body fat percentage. But I'm just going to just for the give you something to just think about here. I would really focus on seeing if you could add in another day of some resistance training and start to focus. And we're going to look at your diet next and go, could we add a little muscle? And that is why we have got to really look at weight differently because we all tend to go, we don't lose weight actually at this point, your weight, you know, your weight if you're small boned, and I want to let everybody know that because they're going, oh my God, she's 109 pounds. But if you're small boned. Right. However, you could probably add a pound or two of muscle on and it would be even better for you.

Yeah, I wondered about that because it seems to be hovering just about there and I don't know if I need to eat more protein, but my visceral fat.

Let's talk about that. Yeah, your visceral fat.

Yes. Well, I have one of those smart scale things and I started out at six, but I'm down to two and that's so good.

So visceral fat, for everybody listening, this has been. This is so. And this is why I love the type of scale you have where you can look at your body fat, you can look at your lean body mass, and you can also look at visceral fat. Because the reality is if you're losing weight, but you're not losing your waist, then you're in trouble. Now, you know, for you, you went from a 32 inch waist to it. Is this right? A 32 inch waist to a 20, 24 and a half inch waist?

Yeah. I think I was pretty inflamed when I started the detox.

Holy. I mean, that's fall off my chair level here. That is really amazing. And to drop that much visceral fat, because visceral fat's the scary stuff. That's the stuff that can really start to cause bigger health problems. The things that you've shifted here are just. I can't celebrate you enough here. It's really quite incredible. We can look at a couple things now to help with saying, adding muscle. Have you had a recent, like all your labs, done everything checking out there? Do you know how you're doing with all that?

I haven't recently.

Okay. There's a couple things that you just want to make sure of that we always want to look at. Obviously you want to look at the bigger markers and this is where I love to do. I'll do things at home, but I'm going to give you a couple of things to track and then I'm going to have a couple things to look at. Of course, when you go get your labs done, you're going to want to look at hemoglobin A1C, your fasting glucose, your fasting insulin. I'm guessing from what's going on with you that they are beautiful, but we always want to know. Same with a whole cholesterol panel, but also within that, looking at something called lp. It's a very atherogenic type of, of cholesterol particle. And then LP PLA2 to see if you're plaquing those two. Because the one thing that I do like, the things that I would look at with you that I go, okay, these are what we need to check is anything cardiovascular? Because women, we get so concerned about breast cancer, but our biggest death rate is from heart disease. We want to make sure that you're good there. The other thing is to do. Have you done a bone density scan?

No, I have not.

Okay. We must do that because for most people the first sign of osteoporosis is a broken bone. So we do not want that. So those are the things that I really want to make sure because they're hidden.

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Now, in terms of like, you know where you are now and where you'd love to be from here, what are some of your goals? Because you feel great, you look great, but where, where would you like to go from here?

I compete in dog agility.

I know I was going to show you my. Well, I was going to get my new little puppy up and I've got my 15 year old down here. So you were going to get a dog show? Because I saw that.

So I want to stay competitive. I want to be able to run with my dog.

So that's when you're doing some hiit training, right? You do perfect. Okay.

And I'm, my agility instructor tells me it's kind of like the same muscles you'd use playing soccer. The fast, slow turns, you know, that's so great.

So for everybody listening, if you don't know what high intensity interval training is, it's a fantastic way to do cardiovascular training because it's much more real world where you burst and then recover and burst and recover. And if you look at all the major sports like soccer, basketball, that's what they do. Burst and recover, burst and recover. So dog agility Training is hiit training. So that's fantastic. Okay. What else?

So it helps me concentrate on balance because I know as I get older, falling is an issue.

Well, that's why we're going to check your bones, too.

So, you know, my goals are just to maintain energy, maintain my strength. I know the weight training made a huge difference. I can easily get on and off the floor from playing with my dog now.

Nice.

I don't have to be helped up. I don't have to use furniture to get me up. All of those things. And I want to maintain that.

Yes. No, you don't want to maintain it. You're going to get even better.

I want to get better. I really want to increase my. One day, I was doing something on the computer and I put my hand over on my arm and I was just freaked out because I felt a muscle and I kind of want to. I can feel it. I want more definition.

Okay, cool. Awesome.

It's just an ego thing.

No, that's not neat. Well, actually, it's an ego thing, maybe, but you know what's awesome is it's also really important for health. So we're writing down. You're going to go get a DEXA scan. You'll get new lab work just to make sure everything's cool there. Because. Are you on bioidentical hormones or not?

No.

Okay.

Because one of the things that happens as you go through and you don't have the estrogen levels that can reflect back to cardiovascular, brain and bones. That's why we always want to do things to protect them and make some supplement recommendations that can help there, too. Getting some flax. I put some flax meal, couple tablespoons every day into my smoothie. That can help, too. It's a great phytoestrogen. Do you take supplements?

I do.

What do you take?

I take the new multivitamin that you have. Zinc. 5,000 units of D3.

Good. Have you had a D3 test done?

Yes.

Where were you at?

I don't remember the number, but the recommendation was that because I live in Oregon, we don't have sunshine here.

That's why I asked, because 5,000 may not be enough. Remember, when you're taking D3, you're always taking it with K1 and 2 because you got to make sure that it's going in the right places when you're getting the calcium absorbed. When you say the multivitamin, you're doing the packet or the bottle?

The bottle.

Okay. And then what else?

And then I have a couple of Other supplements that I take from another company. One is called Youth. It's a farm enough product. It is comprised of nine foods from the blue zone regions around the world.

Okay, cool.

So it has omegas in it and then depending on how I'm feeling because sometimes there's too many pills to take. I also have extra vitamin B that I take. I have some particularly for hair, nails and skin.

When you do get your labs checked, make sure you check your thyroid too. A TSH Free T3 and T4.

Yes, I've had thyroid issues in the past because of a medication that got put on once that knocked out my thyroid. But it's been much better since then.

Cool. Well, I'll tell you what I love for hair, skin and nails, so we'll go to that next. But any other supplement stuff.

Just thinking down through all the list other than protein powders and green powder and flax and chia.

Okay. And how do you sleep and do you take any extra magnesium?

I don't. I've tried it and I haven't found, I guess the right time of day to take it.

I take mine at night, so I actually take three before bed. We call it body calm for a reason. You probably only need one or two. You're a little bitty thing. I'm not six footer, so. But it, it is one of those. When I look at deficiencies, you know, we do a good multi pack so you get the majority of it. But the reality is it's not going to have enough magnesium. It's not going to have probably vitamin D really is dosed per labs and then extra fish oil. Depends. So it sounds like you're taking some fish oil, so that's good. Then what are you. Walk me through your typical week of exercise, what your schedule is.

I rebound six days a week for anywhere between five and 10 minutes. And it's a. I use an app on my phone that actually does the interval training so that.

Oh cool.

I just follow that then. I have a dog, so we walk once to twice a day. Generally at least one of those walks is a mile, mile and a half. Once a week I walk five miles with a girlfriend. Dog agility. That's one lesson a week and then a couple practices probably 10 minutes on my own, which I don't call those workouts for me because they're drill type exercises for my dog. The class is the only thing where I'm sprinting and running and doing crazy stuff. I'm experimenting with hoop dancing.

Hoop dancing?

Hoop dancing.

What is hoop Dancing?

Well, it's a weighted hula hoop.

Oh, wow.

And I've learned to keep it up on my waist and my hips, and now I'm learning to move it up and down and do some other things with it.

Very impressive.

But it's totally out of my comfort zone.

I totally want a video of that. That's really great. Okay. And then when. When do you do the weight training?

I do it every 72 hours.

Okay.

So it kind of moves, because sometimes, depending on whether I've done a harder workout, I just know, oh, I did one this day.

Okay.

Four days later, I'm doing this one.

Here's what's interesting. First off, I would love to see you add in a yoga class. Now, the type of yoga I'm talking about is not like restorative, easy yoga. I'm talking hard yoga. I think Deborah's got some yoga classes in there. But what I'd love to see is you actually shorten that time. And I'm going to give you some things that are going to help you recover faster. Obviously, one of the big important things with weight training is the rule of thumb is 48 hours. And if it was really hard, 72 hours, or if you're sore, like sore to touch, sore to joint site, that's your body saying, hey, too hard. But what we really. I'd love to see you do is get your weight training in, and it may even be that you flip it so that you do say upper body one day, lower body the next, and just start flipping it, because you'll be able to work out harder in a shorter amount of time. Right. And get more in. And it really depends on your schedule, but I'd love to see you doing that. And then once a week, adding in a yoga class. There's so many different ones. We had just started doing yoga when the pandemic hit, and so we went online and did it at home, and then we went back out. And it was funny because we convinced ourselves that we were really great yogis. Me and my husband were like, oh, we're so good. And then we go out and we go, we're staying in San Diego for the summer. And I didn't pay any attention. I just saw a class that was, like, at the right time, near the Airbnb we were at. So we go in there and it's like this advanced taught yoga class. I was like, holy smokes, we need to run out of here. And my husband was like, we're staying. But I will tell you, it was really Hard, super challenging was especially hard because we didn't bring towels or water that time, but it really changed everything. I would love to see you challenge yourself with getting into a yoga class and I'd like to see you doing something resistance training every other day. That could be weights one day, two days later is yoga, two days later is weights again. But just starting to really kick that up some. Then we are going to do some stuff that is going to help you hold on to or build muscle supplement wise.

And.

Because you got to go hand in hand, you got to do the resistance training, which yoga done correctly is definitely resistance training. And again, I'm not talking the restorative stuff. I'm talking the vinyasa flow type of stuff. The reason I like it is it puts you into all positions you would never be put into for what you're doing with agility. And as we age, I kick myself every time we did yoga this morning and I was like, why did I ever stop doing this type of stuff? Because you just, you got to do it so it helps you hold positions on one leg, you know, and again, it's stuff. You're not going to do this yourself. You got to have like a class and you can do it online. But it's not like I doubt. I know I wouldn't do it myself. So that's what I'm going to highly recommend. Now, diet wise. And one other thing before we go to diet. How is your sleep?

My sleep is okay. I'm. I've never been able to get it past seven hours.

Well, you might not need to get.

Past seven hours, but I'm pretty consistent at seven hours.

You might be one of those lucky people. That feels great at seven and I'm jealous because I'm not. Have you tracked your sleep to see what kind of quality you're getting?

Yes.

And how's the quality of it?

I'm generally in somewhere in the 80s. It gives a sleep score on fitness.

Yeah. I don't know. Is that 80 out of 100?

I think so. I've gotten into the 90s a couple times and the little thing says excellent.

All right. And what did you do differently when you got into the 90s?

I went to bed earlier.

What time do we go to bed?

Well, if I go to bed earlier, it's 10. If I don't go to bed earlier, it's 11 or 11:30.

You tend to wake up at the same time every morning?

Yeah.

What time is that? Is that six?

It is.

If you go to bed at 10 you still wake up at six. I would just look at, what I would do is this. I really watch and look at your HRV and your deep sleep and REM sleep and start to watch what happens. Like it was very interesting a couple months ago. I ended up eating late and my aura ring basically next morning said, looks like you ate late last night. I'm like, oh my God, what are you, Are you in my house with me? What are you doing? But you'll start to, it's really cool to start to go. What are the things that impact my sleep now? It might be that you only need from 11 to 6. However, the sleep score that you're getting isn't like we want the excellent sleep score, especially if we're going to kick your exercise up. We need the recovery. It really comes down to what's the sleep quality, how's your deep sleep, how's your REM sleep which is part of what they're giving you in that score. It's not just time because time with crappy deep and REM is not going to give you a good score. Look at that. What time do you finish dinner?

Try to finish dinner by 7, but sometimes it's not till 7:30 or 8.

Yeah. So that's part of it. It's really getting, drawing a hard line now and going, I'm going to be done with dinner by seven because you really need that time between dinner and bed. It's super duper important. You want to make sure when you're sleeping you're healing, not digesting. The next thing is what time do you eat when you get in the morning? When do you, when do you break your fast? What time?

Usually by 8am okay.

And are you hungry by 8am Usually.

But I find that I am hungry now and I'm not craving now.

And walk me through a typical, like give me what your typical eating day is like.

When I do break, the first thing I do when I get up is I usually have some lemon water or some water with some amino acids in it.

Okay.

Then when I do have breakfast it's generally a smoothie in the summer. In the winter it's usually the same ingredients like with oatmeal, protein powder and all the other stuff. Lunch is generally salad or some kind of protein and maybe I found these wonderful almond flour tortillas and I'll make street tacos out of them with veggies and some meat.

Cool. And how much protein are you getting in at lunch?

It's probably only three or four ounces.

Okay. And for breakfast, tell me what goes in your smoothie at least.

Depends on generally 22 to 30 grams of protein in a protein powder and collagen powder. Then oatmeal, flax, chia seed, walnuts and berries. Sometimes an apple.

Okay.

One or the other. I don't do two kinds of fruit.

Okay.

And if I'm making the smoothie, it's kind of the same ingredients without the oatmeal, but almond milk, When I do the oatmeal, I don't put almond milk or anything on it.

And are you doing a plant based protein powder or are you doing bone broth type protein powder?

Plant based. Whatever reason, the animal ones don't agree with me.

Rats. Okay. But you're also doing collagen.

Yes. I love your collagen.

Okay, I'm glad you're doing that. Perfect. And all right, so good. We're getting 30 grams there. So then lunch is a salad with three to four or street tacos. Three to four ounces. What are you doing for healthy fats at lunch?

Avocado.

Okay. And what time is lunch?

Lunch is generally between 12 and 1.

Okay, and dinner then? What's a typical dinner?

Dinner is usually some kind of meat protein. Chicken, turkey.

How much fish?

I try to do more like maybe 50% more than I do at lunch, so probably 4 to 6 ounces.

Okay.

More veggies than I thought I would ever eat. Broccoli, zucchini, Brussels sprouts, those kinds of things. Spinach. And then I have discovered chickpea and lentil pasta. And I love to make some of that on the side and toss it in with probably a little avocado or olive oil.

Okay.

All right.

So the only thing I would pick apart because big things I teach people is I first focus with protein. So the first thing I look at is. All right, where are we in terms of your protein intake? With your floor, the least amount of protein you should have is a gram per pound of ideal lean body mass. Now right now your ideal lean body mass, your lean body mass is 90. But I'd say it's probably your ideal is going to be more like 95. So that would be the floor. 95 grams of protein a day. Then the like more of like, you know, the midpoint is going to be a gram per pound of protein. Your ideal weight, you're at 109. You put on a couple pounds of muscle, you might end up at 115. And by the way, you're not going to be bigger. You're Going to be tighter. So it was very interesting. Years ago, this researcher, Marianne Nestle over at Tufts found that women lifted weights and got smaller. And I would get so frustrated, like, I don't want to get big. I'm like, you're not going to get big. You know, it's like, you're not going to get big. You don't have testosterone at the level that you need to do that. So, you know, I would really look at kind of 115 as, you know, kind of your goal. I'd raise it up to that. But here's the thing for you really to be, to add on muscle requires more, right? Because we're going to be pushing it. And so I look at it and go, I would probably have you even push it a little past that. So I'd have more like 120 grams of protein a day. So what does that look like when you started in the morning? If you're having two scoops of protein powder and a scoop of Collagen, you're getting 30 grams right there. Then I've been sneaking in some. I've been using the flax milk with pea protein in it. It's called good karma. So you can, you can do it. By that, you're also using flax, you're using chia, you're using walnut. So you're getting in a little bit there too. So you're probably getting in just with what you're doing, somewhere around 35 grams of protein. So you're starting out great. And then you look at it and go, okay, I'm going to need at least 40 grams, maybe 45 at each meal. So the 3 to 4 ounce wimpy thing you're doing at lunch is not going to work out. We need to push it to six.

All right?

And here's the thing. If you're eating something leaner, like you're eating a super lean filet, or you're eating lean chicken or lean turkey breast, then you can get away with 6 ounces. If you're eating something fatty, like you're eating a fatty piece of salmon, well, then that 8 ounces isn't just protein, it's also fat. So you're going to want to get a little bit more right, and count it into your fat grams. Because the way I teach people to build the plate is go protein first. And by the way, at each meal, lead with protein, Start with protein. There's really cool research now showing that if you start eating your protein and vegetables first before, what else you're going to eat. If you just started focusing first on eating protein and fat, you have better blood sugar control from the meal. You don't have as high of a blood sugar rise from the meal, which is super cool, as we know. Why do I love protein so much? Because you need it to build muscle. I love the collagen you're doing because it's great for hair, skin and nails. And it's also the most satisfying satiating. And it's also more thermic than fat or carbs are. It's like takes 20 to 30% of the protein you eat to be assimilated on your body. Now, that doesn't mean go crazy, right? Because if you overeat on proteins, you can't use it all. But with what we're talking about here, you're going to be great. That's the first thing I want you to just think of as protein first and then you're doing everything else. Great. You're doing a lot of non starchy vegetables. Because I like people to have at least five servings a day and my kind of goalpost is 10. And you've got that because you're doing like a serving size. Is a cup raw or a half cup cooked? And then I kind of look at what I've eaten and then go, do I need any more fat than that? Like, you look at your smoothie and go, all right, I did chia, I did flax, I did walnuts. I've got, you know, at least two servings of fat. There may be three lunch. If you do a salad and let's say that you did some salmon on there, you're getting a fat serving there. If you added any olive oil vinaigrette, you got another fat serving there. So you're probably good. So you just look at each one and count. Because I have people do somewhere between, for you, two to three servings of fat and then loads of non starchy vegetables and then little bits of slow, low carbs. And that's what we can really can kind of mess with, depending on where we are with our weight and going, okay, is this where I want to be? Is we mess with fat and carbs? We might say, hey, I do better at 2 fat servings, or I do better at lower carb servings. And for me, slow, low carbs are fruit. So we got, you know, and I look at 1 to 2, 0 to 2 per serving. So in the morning, if you're doing oatmeal, depending on the serving size, you may not Want to add any fruit to that. You may just want to do nuts and protein powder and all of that. And then depending on lunch, like I tend to do a little bit of a, like a little bit of a green banana and a smoothie at breakfast. Most of it's. And then I do pretty much vegetables and protein at lunch. And then dinner I might have a little bit of a carb because it helps me sleep. So play around with it to see what works best for you. It's important. Like when you're working out hard, your muscles store carbohydrates energy in them and you'll deplete it right as you're fasting and, and then you work out, you can go and put back, put it back in again afterwards. But you're going to need that protein. And ideally I love to do a workout. Now my very, my very favorite thing to do is get at least a 12 hour overnight fast, which you're doing, you're doing about 13, but I'd love to see if we can even push it to 14 and then maybe two days a week push it to 16. And here's the reason. It's a very anti aging thing for us to do. When you do what's called intermittent fasting, where you shorten your feeding window down to eight hours, six to eight hours, you trigger a couple really cool processes in your body. One of them you're doing anyway, which is called your migrating motor complex. When you don't eat for a while, that comes out and cleans out your small intestine, gets rid of the bacteria and the gunk and wicks it off to the colon so you can get rid of it. Other thing that happens is you lower mtor and you want MTOR to kind of move up and down. This is this thing that people think is bad, but it helps us build. And then it's important to have it down as well. So when you're fasting it decreases and then when you eat, it increases. So it's a great thing to do a fasted workout and then eat because it activates this and helps you build muscle. And then the other thing is this process called autophagy. And when you do a longer fast, 12 to 14 hours and especially into 16, your body starts to do something called autophagy, which is taking out the cellular trash. It's a real deep detox. So that's one if we can work it in. It tends to be like for you with the big goal of building muscle. It's not something I'd have you do all the time because it's not going to be good for that. But if you could do it one day a week, if you got yourself to at least you always have a 12 hour overnight fast. If we can push it so it's 12 to 14 hours and then maybe one day a week or two days a week, you did a eight hour, it would be a very cool thing to do. And what I do on the weekend is I'll go, okay, I'm going to eat a little later, like around 11 and a little earlier and then I'm done. You could eat at 11 and finish eating by 7 and you'd be in your eight hours and you would work out before. If you can do this now I remember when I first started doing this, I'm like, I'm not going to be able to do this now. I can't. If you can work out and then eat, it's fantastic. Since you're working at home and you're doing smaller bursts, you can start to try and test it, See if you can do some fasted workouts. The fasted workouts really deplete your glycogen stores, your energy stores and your muscles so that now they're wide open to put anything you are eating, like oatmeal, fruit goes more into your muscles and it pushes you to use more fat for fuel. So it's a great thing to do. If you can do it now you just have to see if I'm going to do a really heavy hard weight workout, it's not going to be fasted. I can't do it. But if I'm doing more of my moderate workouts, then I can pull it off. It just depends what level I'm pushing. Sunday we do a really hard 75 minute yoga class. I do not do it fasted. Today we did a 60 minute one and it's 45 minutes. That's really moving. And the rest is the namaste stuff. So I was fine. It's earlier too, so that works. Okay, so there's that. So the big things are increasing your protein, focusing on protein first and building around that. You're doing awesome on your veggies. I thought you said you had a sweet tooth, but I didn't hear any sugar in there.

That's because I've eliminated it.

Oh.

And I did that because I found this great recipe in one of your. I think it was one of the electronic. It's the pumpkin and the cacao and almond butter. Those brownies are so amazing.

You like those? That's so funny. I told them. I'm like, I don't think these are good. Okay. Like, maybe I stand correct. They're like, I don't know about these. I don't know about these.

You want to use the virgin sprinkles in them. And it's taken a while to figure out that. I think it's just under a half tea or between a half teaspoon and a teaspoon of the virgin sprinkles. But since I've eliminated sugar, it's like I don't have a sweet tooth anymore and I don't crave the cake or the cookies. I still allow myself an ounce of 85 or 90% dark chocolate.

So you say allow, and I would say I prescribe it to you. Like, I think that we need to have 1 to 2 ounces of dark chocolate every day. I mean, if you look at the research behind dark chocolate and what it does, it's amazing. So I'm very glad you're doing that. So. So here are the big changes. You're going to get a Dexa. You're going to look at your labs again, but I want to get a dexa. I want you to make sure you know what's going on with your bones. Super important. You're going to look at now monitoring your scale to start to put on muscle. You're going to increase your protein. And then the other thing I want you to look at is. And we don't have them yet, by the time this airs, we probably will. But we did a trial. Were you part of the trial we did with these packets we call our menopause packs? Because there's a couple things in there that are going to be really important for you. And there's one thing specifically that I really want you to take. So this. This one you can probably just even do separately. In that packet is CoQ10, which is so great for cardiovascular, and dim, which is great for detoxifying estrogens. May not be an issue for you, but there's another thing in there, and it's called annatto egg. And both of these nutrients, annatto E is a type of vitamin E called a tocotrienol. And it's two different fractions, delta and gamma. And then GG is on the pathway to make CoQ10. And what's interesting about both of these things is GG can help you make your other hormones, so it can help with you now increasing testosterone, which can be really important. And it also helps you make coq 10. But both of these things have been shown to help with bone density and big cardiovascular and brain effects from annatto, et cetera. So annatto egg comes in 150 milligrams, and you'd want to take two of those a day. So that. That would be one thing I'd recommend the company that does just that single. We're going to do it at some point here, but before we do, you can get it from Designs for Health. So that would be the one I'd want to see you add in there. And then, I mean, other than that, you're going to start to pay attention to your sleep, to see what you're doing, to make sure that you're doing the right things for it and get that score. You're excelling in everything else. So we want to make sure, as we push you on your. One of the most important things that you do when you work out hard is you got to recover hard. And the way you recover hard is what you eat and how you sleep. Then also look at potentially doing magnesium, because again, if we're going to be working out like this, too, magnesium becomes very important.

Yeah, I have some magnesium. I'll start taking it before bed.

So, like, I would start, you know, 300 to 500 milligrams before bed, see how you feel. I need 1,000. But again, I'm, you know, I'm one and a half times the size of.

You.

So see how you do with that. That would be around it. And then again, you know, have another vitamin D test to make sure you're between 50 and 80 ngs per milliliter because of where you live. It's so key, critical for bone health. Like, that is super duper important. Okay, cool. And then report back and let me know how it's all going. The bigger success story. Like, you've already been the big success story then the bigger, bigger. So it's amazing.

I've weighed myself every day since May 17th and it's just like, no, I'm on this plan. This is.

You know, it's so funny. I've gotten so much flack about. About that. And I'm glad you brought that up because I. We just need to look at. At scales. Like, there's so much stuff that swirls around a scale. And I go, a scale is not like a mean friend. Like, we got to remove the shame. No one would look at their sleep score and have all this shame. And yet we get on a scale and I'm like, this scale, like we should never just look at weight. We've got to look at everything and then go, what? You know, what are we looking at? For most of us, if you didn't focus on weight loss, if you focused on muscle mass, everything will take care. If you focus on having, you know, holding onto and building muscle, getting great sleep and good blood sugar balance, everything else takes care of itself.

So I did learn something that feeling fat and what the scale says have no relation to each other. And so now when I get on the scale and I can say, oh, you know, maybe I ate a lot and I feel fat, but I'll notice that, oh, but I've got more muscle and my fat has gone down. So it's, it's definitely mindset training. And I never really understood that until now.

There's so much stuff around scales. I've been really vocal about how we need to use scales. They need to be a tool. I know there's been cards going out to doctor's offices so people could hand to the doctor saying, don't weigh me. First of all, I think all doctors offices should have body composition scales, because why are we looking at this archaic number? Why aren't we looking at the health metrics? Just like we do with blood pressure, right? Like this is health metrics, and this just then teaches you what you can be looking at. And it's a very big, very different shift when you go, okay, how do I. What am I going to do for my muscle? It's a different thing than going, oh, my God, I got to lose weight, right? And you know, during the pandemic, I was working out like a crazy person because I was like, I had this great gym at home, so I was like, I'm going to work out really hard. And I remember I went and I wasn't testing my body comp, and I have a really great scale here, but I'd just been getting on the regular scale because I knew where I always was. And this is why you need to monitor your body comp at least once a week. Because I went out to another place in San Diego and I dropped like 2% body fat just with all the, like, you know. So it is really important to monitor this stuff because you'll. Your, your mind has been conditioned to tell you otherwise. Like, and especially if you were raised, you know, as you were growing up, you were told you were pleasingly plump and chubby. You know, that's your identity, which I'm sure we've totally unzipped and shedded, right? And. But Every once in a while, they'll try to pop back in, right? And they'll go low. Look, there's. There's you pleasingly pump, and it's like, you know, and just notice, as Mary Morrissey says, notice what you're noticing. All right, so keep in touch. Let me know how this all is going. I'd love to have you back and hear about this and hear all the great stuff. And I'm also super excited that for everybody listening, Liz is part of this really cool program that one of my closest friends, Mary Morrissey, created called Dream Builder, and her daughter Jennifer does the whole health part of it. So it is really the mindset behind what you need to get healthy. I should have her on the podcast. And Deborah Atkinson of Flipping50, who I push out a lot of her information on fitness because she has got great workouts. So that is another one. Another great tool for you. Yay. And look at that. Look at that muscle over there. Next time, I want to see you sleeveless. All right, cool. Well, thank you. I appreciate you.

Thank you. This has been such an honor and a privilege.

Aw, thanks.

Love your programs.

Thank you. Thank you. All right. Can't wait to hear the results.

Bye.

Bye. All right. Isn't that amazing? I am so super proud of Liz, and I'm also super excited about where she's going to go from here now that she's really focusing on muscle and adding in that more protein and really getting that good quality sleep. I'm also curious to see what happens with the DEXA and reminder for everybody that is something that we need to do because again, for so many people, the first sign they have any kind of bone issue osteoporosis is when they break something. We don't want that to happen, so we got to make sure we're watching it and do and taking care of it now. And if you would love to be one of my interviewees, I'd love to get to know you. And you can do that by signing up@jjvirgin.com signup. Alrighty, I'll 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 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.