Can’t Lose Weight? Get Healthy First. Heal Your Gut

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Hey this is JJ Virgin. Thanks so much for joining me. This is Ask the Health Expert. In each episode I put the power of health in your hands and share ways to get healthy life, lose weight, heal your gut, detox, and lots more so you can look and feel better fast. If you'd rather watch the video, hey, I did put on my makeup and do my hair, so check it out on my YouTube channel. Hey, it's J.J. here. Now let's be honest. The holidays are basically a financial ambush. Travel, hosting, gifts, surprise holiday, school things. Suddenly you're wondering how December turned into a spending spree. If you want to keep your finances under control this holiday season, you need to be using Monarch. It's rated the Wall Street Journal's best budgeting app of 2025. Monarch is the all in one personal finance tool that brings your entire financial life together in one clean interface on your laptop or your phone. What really grabbed my attention is how fast those little holiday expenses pile up with Monarch. Seeing everything in one place makes it a lot harder to accidentally overspend, and honestly, I appreciate anything that keeps me from starting January with a money hangover. You'll love exploring the holiday spending category. Imagine how good it will feel to actually see what's happening before your credit card statement does that whole dramatic reveal thing. Monarch basically shows you exactly where the money is going in real time, and that level of clarity could change everything, right? Don't let financial opportunity slip through the cracks. Use the code virgin@monarch.com in your browser for half off your first year. That's 50% off your first year@monarch.com with code Virgin.

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If you can't lose weight, no matter what you try or no matter what you eat or don't eat, the problem may not actually be your diet. Now this is the first in a series of videos to take you through some of the things it could be instead. And most importantly, how to Fix them. Number one, your gut. Hey there. I'm JJ Virgin four times New York Times bestseller and Fitness hall of famer and I've been helping thousands of people lose weight and stop the weight regain for over 30 years now. So let's stay connected. I've got lots of great info to share and now all you have to do is hit like on this video and subscribe to this channel. Alright now first, if you're frustrated because you can't lose weight even though you're starving yourself, which is the worst thing you can do by the way, I hear you. So if you can't lose weight no matter what you try or it's like a boomerang that comes right back, your diet might not be the problem. You may have a messed up gut microbiome. A big clue that your gut is the problem is not only are you holding on to weight, but you're also dealing with indigestion, bloating, gas, cramping or other digestive issues. Your gut has a lot more say about your weight than you think. So it's really a great place to start. There are actually genes in your gut, bacteria that impact how well you can digest and absorb nutrients and, and how well your digestion helps you lose weight and keep it off. I mean, it's crazy, right? Your microbiome has a say in it, how you store fat, how much of the hunger hormone ghrelin you produce. And if that gut microbiome is unhealthy, it increases inflammation and you're not only gaining weight, you're setting yourself up for chronic disease. So you may think you're in control, but a lot of times your gut is calling the shots. So what could have happened to wreck your gut? Like what did you do? Well, inflammatory foods, too much sugar, toxins, stress, antibiotics and of course leaky gut, which I did another video on, so check that out too. So here's the good news. You can speed heal your gut. Here's how. Now first you've got to swap out these seven high fi, that's high food intolerance foods for some gut healing foods. What are they? Gluten, dairy, peanuts, eggs, soy, corn and sugar and artificial sweeteners. HIFI, again stands for high food intolerance and that equals high inflammation to your body. Swapping these foods out for just three weeks is a super fast and easy way to detox and let your gut begin to heal. Now I'm not going to go into the swaps too much here, but check out the links below for my Other videos where I did. And also check out the Virgin diet. It's going to give you specific swaps to get those inflammatory foods out of your diet. And it's important because swapping them out will help you figure out if you have any food intolerances. Food intolerances inflame your gut, make it leaky, and are the reason you hold on to weight and gain it back. All right, so then you're going to add more. Number one, fiber. Fiber is so key. First of all, it helps you digest your food better. It helps waste cruise through your digestive draft. It's a prebiotic. That means it feeds the good bacteria in your gut. And one way you can do this is pile on the non starchy veggies. I like you to have 5 to 10 servings of non starchy vegetables a day. Yes.

Really?

All right, number two, healthy fats. Healthy fats are so key because they reduce inflammation and heal your GI tract. In fact, studies show that a diet high in omega 3 fatty acids, that's the fatty acids that are in things like walnuts and cold water fish like salmon and halibut and chia and flax, can lead to more bacterial diversity in the gut, which is a super good thing. So eat a variety of cold water fish high in omega 3s, again, salmon and halibut, and add more healthy fats like coconut milk or flax milk in your loaded virgin smoothies. All right, number three, fermented foods. I know, I don't really like them either, but they're so good for us. Kimchi and pickles and fermented vegetables like sauerkraut. They're packed with beneficial bacteria probiotics that again help stimulate your microbiome's diversity and nourish your gut and cool down that inflammation. Besides that, they also help strengthen your immune system too. So maybe hold your nose and just get some in every day. Deal. And finally, four, bone broth. You've heard a lot about it. It's full of collagen and gelatin, which both help reinforce the integrity of your intestinal lining and also help reduce inflammation. So you can sip it as a meal replacement or I have it as my protein powder every single day in my loaded smoothie. It's a delicious chocolate way to get it. Okay, supplements, number five, These are so key, important. Now, obviously you're going to want to take some probiotics and fish oil, which is great because it makes sure that you get some of that anti inflammatory fat in every day. And the third one that I really Love are digestive enzymes. Now, digestive enzymes are going to help you break down your food. Our body, of course, makes some digestive enzymes. But if your gut is out of balance or you're under any kind of stress or you're 35 or older. Hello. Pretty much just named everybody here. You're probably going to need to supplement. Here's a couple other things that can help. Antimicrobial herbs. These can help because they can treat some of the gut dysbiosis and bacterial overgrowth and things like ibs, irritable bowel syndrome. So those are things like grapefruit seed extract, oregano, oil, garlic or berberine. Now, if your gut is leaky or inflamed, there are some things that can really help, like put that fire out. I've actually put them into one formula. My Reignite Wellness Healthy Gut support. Here are some of the important things in that formula. L Glutamine. This is the number one amino acid for just cooling down the inflammation and protecting and restoring the integrity of the gut and also helping that immune system there, which is super important. And dgl. DGL is a form of licorice that helps support the stress hormones and digestive health. Slippery elm and marshmallow. No, yeah, not that marshmallow. These are the plants that actually start to support that stomach lining. And chamomile, which helps reduce inflammation. And quercetin, which is an antioxidant, helps cool inflammation as well. All right. Another important strategy is intermittent fasting. I talk a lot in my videos about this, but here's a couple important highlights. You want to make sure that you are restricting your eating every single day to at least a 12 hour window. Here, here's how you do it. You stop eating at least three hours before bed. Do not go to bed later. Right. And wait an hour or so before you wake before you eat when you wake up in the morning. But ideally you push that to more like a 14 to 16 hour window because when you do this, you start to shift the balance of your gut bacteria and you also are protected against metabolic syndrome. And metabolic syndrome is a big reason. That's insulin resistance to why you may be hanging on to fat. So try that, that 12 hour window every single day and then taking it down to a 14 to 16 hour fasting window. And then one day a week, go to eating one time a day, which will send your gut healing into overdrive and also help restore that blood sugar balance. All right, couple other important things. Exercise. Cross couldn't get through a video without that Mention, exercise can actually help create more diversity and better health in your gut. Who would have thought Exercise for your gut, right? And eat more polyphenols. You're going to love me for this because these polyphenols help feed healthy bacteria. So what's our polyphenols? A couple of my favorite foods, Red wine, dark chocolate and coffee. Yeah, there's. We're not going to be suffering here, right? The big thing that I want you to promise me is that you will avoid at all costs artificial sweeteners. These are not food, these are toxins and they can lead to dysbiosis and so many other problems. And of course you want to make sure you're reducing stress, which can lead to leaky gut and all sorts of other problems. But it's not like we can eliminate it. So what can you do every day to help manage it? Maybe some yoga, some. Some meditation, some walks, hanging out with your dog. You got to find your jam for lowering your stress hormones. But here's the bottom line. The issues in your gut could be the real reason you're holding onto that extra weight. And when you heal your gut, you heal at your core. And when your body's healthy, it's going to want to drop the fat, it's going to want to lose the weight. Alright, I hope this has been helpful and you're able to get that gut microbiome back in balance and fast. I promise it's going to make a huge difference. Now, if you want more information like this, don't forget to like and subscribe. So you keep getting lifestyle intake tips and tricks. And in the next video, I'm going to cover the next reason other than your diet that's preventing you from losing weight.

For more info on this and other health topics I I cover or to rate and review, find me on Instagram, Facebook and my website, jjvirgin.com and don't forget to subscribe to my show so you won't miss a single episode. Go to subscribetojay.com thanks again for being.

With me this week.

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