Cook To Heal Your Hormones with Dr. Alan Christianson

Hey JJ Here. Every year around this time, I get the urge to make my home feel a little extra special. A space that feels just like the holidays. And Wayfair is my go to for that. Think cozy textures, twinkly decor, warm lighting, and all those little touches that make you want to curl up with a good book and a blanket. You'll usually find my books stacked on a great little end table I got from Wayfair, proof that function and style give can coexist. Now, whether you're adding last minute hosting essentials, picking out gifts for loved ones, or refreshing your decor for the season, Wayfair makes it easy with beautiful finds, great prices and fast delivery. And when the holidays wind down, Wayfair has everything you need to tuck it all neatly away. Smart storage solutions for every room from the kitchen to the closet. Plus, with free shipping for any order over $35, don't that's fast delivery and a total peace of mind. It's the perfect mix of joy and order, bringing the holiday spirit in, then storing it all with ease. If you're ready to make your home feel as good as it looks, get organized, refreshed and ready for the holidays. For way less head to Wayfair.com right now to shop all things home. Wayfair Every style Every home that's W A Y F A I R.com hey, it's JJ here. You know, I've been talking about environmental toxins forever, and laundry detergent is a sneaky one. A lot of them contain harsh chemicals like dyes, preservatives, and even UV brighteners. Those brighteners don't actually clean anything, they just coat fabric so your eyes think things look whiter or brighter. That's more chemicals I don't want on my family sheets or skin. And if you've got sensitive skin or allergies around the house, this can be a big problem. That's what got my attention about Earth Breeze. It looks like a dryer sheet, but it's actually laundry detergent. You toss one in the washer and that's it. No pouring, no mess, and no heavy plastic jug. Their packaging is lightweight cardboard, which helps reduce plastic waste. And if you choose the fragrance free option, it's gentle, hypoallergenic, non irritating and non sensitizing. I really like how simple it is and how fresh and clean everything comes out without those unnecessary chemicals. Right now you can try Earth Breeze for up to 40% off with free gifts@earthbreeze.com virgin that's earthbreeze.com virgin for up to 40% off plus free gifts on.

Your first order this episode is brought to you by Corona. When you're on a beach with an ice cold Corona in hand, how can you not feel centered? But did you know you can get that vibe anywhere? That's because whether after work, at barbecues or at a bar with just a squeeze of lime, Corona brings you La Playa mentality. Because while we all want the beach life, paradise doesn't always have palm trees. Corona La Playa awaits. Get yours@orderchorona.com Relax responsibly. Corona Extra Beer Imported by Crown Import, Chicago, IL.

I'm JJ Virgin, PhD dropout. Sorry mom turned four time New York Times bestselling author. Yes, I'm a Certified Nutrition Specialist Fitness hall of Famer, and I speak at health conferences and trainings around the globe. But I'm driven by my insatiable curiosity and love of science to keep asking questions, digging for answers, and sharing the information I uncover with as many people as I can. And that's why I created the well Beyond 40 podcast to synthesize and simplify the science of health into actionable strategies to help you thrive. In each episode, we'll talk about what's working in the world of wellness, from personalized nutrition and healing your metabolism to healthy aging and prescriptive fitness. Join me on the journey to better health so you can love how you look and feel right now and have the energy to play full out at 100. If you've been struggling with your hormones, what if I told you that you could get rid of your hot flashes? You could have more energy, you could reduce pain and inflammation by simply adding a couple ounces of specific foods into your diet. Would that be a Heck, yeah. I would hope so. And what if I told you that there's actually a quiz you can take to help you identify exactly what you need to do? I know, I know, it sounds too good to be true, but it's not. And my guest today, who has been on the show a number of times because he's so awesome, Dr. Alan Christiansen, has done just this with his Hormone Healing Cookbook. And he also has his Food Hormone Quiz, which I'll tell you how to get for free. Let me tell you a little bit about him first. And then this episode, I gotta tell you, is fire. We talk about these specific types of foods, what you can do, how easy they are to add in some recipes. One I was like, what? You'll know why I questioned it. Anyway, let me tell you About Alan Dr. C is a naturopathic endocrinologist who focuses on thyroid disease. He's a New York Times bestselling author who's written the Metabolism Reset Diet and the Thyroid Reset Diet. And he is the founding president of the Endocrine association of Naturopathic Physicians. He's literally trained thousands of physicians worldwide in natural thyroid care. He has frequently appeared on national TV shows like Dr. Oz, the Doctors, the Today show, and CNN. And then in print like Shape, Women's World, Natural Health. And again, he has put together an amazing cookbook. Turns out he wrote the recipe himself and I can vouch for his cooking skills because I have eaten at his house multiple times and it's always been amazing. So you're going to be able to get information on his cookbook. You'll be able to take this Food Hormone quiz and I'm also going to put all the other things that we've done together because we've had some great episodes and he has great book. So I'll put all of that@jjvirgin.com Foodquiz all right, I will be right back. Dr. C. Stay with me. Hey JJ, virgin here. Okay, real talk. So often the holidays sneak up on me. Travel, gifts, hosting, you know, all the things and suddenly it's like, wait, who spent what and where? And I know I'm not the only one who's looked at a bill in January and thought, wow, that escalated quickly. 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 on your phone. Monarch lets you link everything and gives you real time visibility so you're not shocked later. Right now, I've been checking the holiday spending category so I don't accidentally start the new year with that dreaded debt hangover. And honestly, just seeing everything laid out is already helping me stay more aware. This season, Monarch does the heavy lifting. It links your accounts in minutes, gives you smart categorization and super clear visuals. Yes, that end of year reset could be a real goal. This time, don't let financial opportunities 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 the code Virgin. This episode is brought to you by McAfee.

I got a message that Our flight was canceled, but they can put us on another flight. And we just need to confirm our credit card info.

Wait, I got a security alert from McAfee. It flagged that message as a scam.

McAfee Scam Detector automatically spots and alerts.

You to suspicious texts, emails, and deep fake videos. Learn more@mcafee.com online protection. Okay, we have a crowd pleaser with us today. Back live, Dr. Alan Christensen. I am super excited to be talking to you today. Thank you for joining me.

Always good to be with you, jj. Yeah, this would be a lot of fun.

Well, I hope we're going to jump in first, because I know we're going to talk about hormones and food and how to use food for specific symptoms, which is super cool. And what I hope we can do first is bust a myth, because I know you're quite the myth buster out there. I feel like over the last couple years, people have become afraid of plants. They become a scary thing. And the last thing you want to do is push people away from plants and into ultra processed foods. You know, I mean, it's like I went, wait a minute. If there's something that we should be afraid of, I don't think it's the broccoli. So can we first start and talk about plants? You know, this whole discussion about plants and plant toxins and all the scary things and should you avoid them?

Yeah, boy, we can. Yeah, this would be great to go into.

Yeah, you go ahead, rant away.

I'll rant for a bit. Plants. We've got massive data sets showing that the more plants people eat, the more kinds of plants they eat, the healthier they are. Pretty irrefutable. And yet you can make an argument why almost any plant could be dangerous. How do you manage that tension? How do those things coexist? Well, so plants give us different things. They give us macronutrients, you know, fats, proteins, carbs. They give us micronutrients. They give us vitamins and minerals. Well, they also give us phytonutrients. And here's where it gets weird. So phytonutrients is kind of a generous term for what could be called phytotoxins. So plants make massive amounts of pesticides, of herbicides, of insecticides. There's like a full on arms race going on in the plant kingdom. We've evolved along with these things. They've evolved and adapted to us. We've evolved and adapted to them. I got to pull in a concept called hormesis. So a tiny Bit of something bad can actually be good, like exercise. You know, if you were to put someone at gunpoint, make them march for a couple days, they die. You know, not a good thing. But if you make them walk an hour, probably a really good thing. And so some things that stress the body make the body stronger. And this is called hormesis. And we know that phytotoxins, these toxins that are in plants, they are toxins that in macro amounts, they would be lethal. No debate about it. And all the scary things we hear about, they will tear up your gut. Xyz. Totally true. If you were to take huge amounts of these and take them out of the whole food matrix in which they're found. Totally true. But in the amounts and in the context of the food matrix, these things are good for us.

It does feel like over the last couple years, people are like, should I be eating these things anymore? And then I did a podcast with our buddy Dr. Jeff Bland, and he is very gung ho on Himalayan tartery, buckwheat. And it's got all these amazing properties, but the reason it has the amazing properties is because it is grown in the harshest environment, right? And guess what? It created because of that.

It gets tough. Yeah.

Yeah, it gets tough. So it has all these properties that can help us.

So classic examples. So buckwheat products, they're rich in various types of bioflavonoids. You know, rutin is a classic example of that. And bioflavonoids, well, they're insecticides. They kill small insects. But in our bodies, they encourage the growth of connective tissues. Almost like, think about, like, how sand irritates an oyster and it grows a pearl. So things that are found in plants are tiny micro irritants, and they make our bodies respond in ways that are useful. It's not like they supercharge us. It's that we expect them. It's like our bodies are waiting for them, and we don't really work at our normal capacity in their absence.

Well, that's a big statement. So you've written this new book. Do you write a cookbook or do you, like, create a cookbook? I think it's more of a creation. And I'm betting Kiran might have had a hand in it, too. Your wife. But in doing this, the premise is that food can help your hormones. Yeah, let's kind of dig into that one. And also, do plants have hormones? Like, let's unpack that.

This is crazy stuff. So hormones, I think most people have a sense that they're important that they do a lot.

I hope so.

And that good hormone levels are the difference between feeling great and not functioning very well. So there's having the basic amounts of hormones, but then there's countless ways that our body regulates how they convert, how they circulate, how they absorb across the cells, how they're eliminated. And plants help all of this stuff. One example could be, like, broccoli. We know that there's glucosinolates in broccoli. Well, that's a. That's an herbicide. That's something that in high amounts, kills certain types of invasive plants. But in tiny amounts, it's something that our liver registers, and our liver then works harder in ways that makes it better at regulating hormones. So, yeah, we ingest plants. Plants actually do have hormones, like you said, and that's. That's part of it. So we simply consume hormones, which changes our total circulating load. But there's also a lot of ways in which their phytonutrients make us better able to do our own managing and juggling and getting things right.

Along those lines, then if plants have hormones, and I think I would think of some of the classic things like yams for progesterone and soy for estrogens. If that's the case, can that be a bad thing?

Yeah, that's a super logical question. Let's talk about soy. There's a little more depth in that story. So soy has phytoestrogens. A lot of foods have them, actually. You know, we see that in spinach. We see that in kale. Lots of plants have phytoestrogens. Flax has a fair amount. This is pretty wild. But there's. There's so much wisdom in nature, and there's so much ways in which these things help us with homeostasis. So our body has receptors for estrogen. Back up a step. So think about a hormone as a key. And your body has, you know, locks that fit certain keys. And as a generalization, there's sometimes that we want the keys to be used, and sometimes we don't want them to be used. So with estrogen, for example, with aging, there can be a loss of skin elasticity, a loss of collagen growth, a loss of healthy bone density, a loss of repair of brain cells. These are all things that estrogen can help with. But there can also be then problems of proliferation of abnormal breast cells that could lead to cancer or buildup of the endometrial lining. Well, these are actually a different type of estrogen receptor there's an alpha and a beta receptor. You could think about that as good or bad. Super simple, but not too far from the truth. Soy as a phytoestrogen, it actually plugs up that bad receptor. Imagine that. That's a lock that you don't want a key to get into. Well, soy is like wax that goes in there. The wax doesn't open the lock, but it makes the keys not fit. It makes the body numb to even other kinds of bad estrogens if there's too much estrogen from the body itself, or if there's synthetic estrogens from contraceptives or from plastic compounds. So the phytoestrogens in soy block those things and prevent them from doing anything. Now over on the good side, the collagen, the skin, the bones, the brains. So soy helps keep that one more open. So to say it's an estrogen kind of sort of. It's an. We call it a selective estrogen response modifier. So it helps it in the ways you would want and it blocks it in the ways that you don't. So, yeah, it's pretty amazing.

Talk about nature being smart. Let's list out a couple more of them because I know, you know, flax happens to be my favorite chickpeas too, right?

Those are great. You know, figs are ones that I use a lot. In the book they've got this compound called 7 methoxy coumarin. And this is a estrogen response modulator as well. It's one that we don't hear about as much. Lots of big data sets have shown that in a matter of a week, just a few figs a day in addition, added to the diet can just plummet. Pretty much all the major hot flash symptoms.

Holy smokes. But we're not talking fig Newtons.

Not talking fig Newtons. Well, and this is the thing, you know what foods do in the context of a healthy diet, Whole foods is totally different than what those food extracts might be doing in ultra processed foods. So yeah, the context makes such a big difference.

Wow. So give me an example. Since it's not the fig Newton. I'm not a fig lover, but maybe I just have not had a fig in the right recipe. So what are you doing with figs?

Well, here's one that I like that I'll mention, I'll come back to that. But here's one that you would like. Savory steel cut pilaf. Steel cut oat pilaf. There's a savory version of that that I've got in the book, and it's got some diced figs in there. It's not sweet. The figs make a more complex, rich flavor.

Yeah, I just, you know, I don't like sweet things.

Most people. Here's one that most people besides JJ would like. So carob fig balls. These are super easy to make. Toasted. Toasted carob and figs in a food processor. And some walnuts. Really easy to throw together. And they're a great snack and portable. Good shelf life. Really healthy, slowly absorbed. Yeah. Lots of good ways to use them.

Figs. Who knew? I'd love to dig into some more specifics on this, but kind of a bigger question before we dig into some of these specifics in using these plants now to help with hormones, because I've always thought of things like broccoli to help with estrogen metabolism, but this is like a whole step. This is way deeper than that. How quickly would you notice as you start to use these things, like, let's say you're starting to use some of these phytoestrogens like figs and flax. How quickly would you start to notice a difference?

How quickly things change. The body can have symptoms that are based upon how it's functioning and then how it's built. So, like, functional and structural symptoms. A functional symptom could be, like, mental alertness or energy, and a structural symptom could be, like, how healthy your hair is or your skin is. Now, the functional symptoms. There's actually papers on this in the case of rosemary. You know, I've got a chapter about talking about helping brain function, you know, reversing brain fog. And there's data showing that Rosemary's effects are pretty much instantaneous. It's not even ingesting it, just tasting it and inhaling it. You can have measurable effects pretty much at the point of usage for mental function, really.

So you just have to snort some rosemary. I love rosemary. So it is my favorite of all herbs. And we always seem to run out. I don't know what happened. Tim's like, we have one entire spice drawer that is just rosemary. It's like, you know, you need to calm down. But I just. Oh, I think it's fabulous. So now you just gave me a reason to use more of it.

You know, a cool trick is whenever you get the fresh stuff, just throw whatever you're not using in the freezer, and you can pull that out and use that whenever.

Now. Okay, so that. That's another question, because, you know, I'm a lazy chef. And so we have all dried. It's organic, but all dried rosemary. Is that okay, or is the fresh that much better, or does it not matter?

As far as the health effects, there's no clear difference whatsoever.

Yay. To be clear, I didn't pay him to say that. Okay.

No, no differences. You use different quantities based upon recipes, and some real intense gourmands may suggest there's little taste differences, but, yeah, the dried stuff works just fine.

Okay, that's very exciting. We talked some phytoestrogens. Let's dig into some other ones. Make me happy. Do some more things like rosemary.

Yeah. So a cool thing, you know, energy levels. A lot of folks get too tired for various reasons, and one of my favorites here are beets. Beets are a really cool food. They're related to nitric oxide metabolism. And this is how our body uses energy. You know, you push exercise so much too. And a lot of things that help athletes can actually help anyone make more energy, even if they're not, you know, trying to run, just functioning, getting through life. We do that better if we can have more energy. So, yeah. Beets have been shown to raise our aerobic capacity almost by 30%. What? Within a week.

Wow. How much beat is required to get that effect? And do we have to have, like, a daily beat? Like, what's the story?

Yeah, so it's about. About a beat a day. Is what. What it takes for that. In endurance sports, they make these concentrated beat shots. People do them, like, before events. There's. There's clear evidence for it. They're. They're not illegal, but they're pretty much blood doping for endurance athletes.

Wow. That I'm so telling. Tim's son is the, like, was the number one volleyball recruit in the country. I don't think you've seen him, have you? Did you see him? He's six, nine.

Wow. Yeah.

I was like, where'd this come from? Anyway, I'm gonna, like, dope him with some beets.

Well, if you want to get a little bit specific and kind of weird is that you've gotta. You've gotta taste them. Believe it or not, they make some powders, and they also make some capsules that probably wouldn't work that seems to mix with the saliva for this nitric oxide metabolism.

So a beet gummy.

I'm kidding.

Totally, totally kidding. So, but literally, for that kind of thing, one beet serving a day, which beets are pretty big, aren't they?

You know, you'll see different sizes the average ones are about 2, 2, 3 ounces.

That's a doable thing. When I. When I was doing the what to eat, when to eat, and why summit, Tom o' Brien was like, every day we need to get in a root vegetable. I was like, okay, I can. I can get the beet in. I can put the beet in salad. I just need to figure out someone who's going to come make my golden beets for me, because those are the ones I like. Okay. Do you eat a beet every day?

Pretty much not. I don't make every single day, but if it's close to an event, I will. I'll be more consistent about that. Beet juice is an easy way to do it. Regularly as well.

All right, and when he says an event, he's not talking going to a party. He's talking about an athletic event. Okay, just to be clear. All right, so beyond the beets, what else?

Well, another fun thing, you know, walnuts. We've got walnut oligopeptides along the lines of energy. Believe it or not, physiologists don't totally know why we get tired. You'd think that would be an easy question, but we don't totally have the answers. But we know that part of it relates to the buildup of these various metabolic wastes. You know, we've got lactic acid, lactate dehydrogenase, blood urea nitrogen, these sorts of things. Walnut oligopeptide helps us clear pretty much all of those much, much faster. So we get rid of the wastes much more quickly, and they also improve the other end of that, which is the Krebs cycle of energy formation. So, yeah, we make energy better within our mitochondria. We clear the wastes more quickly from them.

So how many walnuts does this require? And how quickly would you start to notice a shift in your energy? And is this again, another daily thing or is it something that, because it's a fatty thing, it's stored or what?

Yeah, yeah. All great questions. So the oligopeptides, they are stored. They're metabolized more slowly. If you're averaging about an ounce per day, you can see substantial benefits. And in terms of time of onset. You know, one paper that I saw, it was pretty cool thing. They. They had cyclists, and they gave one group this cookie with purified oils or whatnot. You know, oils and protein and carbohydrate. And the other group got an actual cookie made of mostly walnuts, but it was the same calorie Load, the same macro load, but these were ingested right before a time trial event. So immediately with like an hour before and there was an observable difference of like 13% better endurance in a time trial.

Wow. And was this blinded?

It was, yeah.

Those poor people. How unfair. For the people who got the process.

Cookie thing, you know, and I've mentioned a couple things about athletes, but I really want to have the listeners connect that that's fine for those who are, but even if you're not, again, you want more energy. And so the ways in which we make energy in just day to day life, it's the same way that we make energy at the extremes in athletic events. So if we can do it better there, we can do it better anywhere.

The holidays are all about family, but at the Chrysler Wrap of the Year sales, it's all about you. Enjoy every mile in the most awarded minivan in America, the Chrysler Pacifica. With the most standard safety features in its class, Available Stow n Go seating and the available Stow n back built in vacuum. Make the most of the holidays with a great deal at the Chrysler Pacifica Wrap up the year sales event based on Ward's small van segment. Based upon the latest available competitor information, Chrysler is a registered trademark of FCA US llc.

I love that statement. And you know, when you think about it like what are the big things people complain about? Energy is a huge one and then pain and inflammation, you know, a big one there.

And this is a cool thing too in terms of back to like regular real world audiences. One of the studies that I cite in the book was on those with severe fibromyalgia. So pretty much debilitating for some people. I remember one, one of my first few patients back in the 90s, she was dropping out of college and she couldn't function. She was pretty much bedridden. And the best diagnosis she had was fibromyalgia. The study that I'm going to refer to, they used beta glucan from whole oats and the intake was like 2 ounces of oats per day, which is not very much. And they saw, and this is actually a blinded study as well, and they saw over a 50% improvement of quality of life symptoms over the course of two months. So, so yeah, we can see big, big differences in inflammation and pain from whole foods.

You know, you just pointed this out but didn't really point it out. So I'm going to bring this to light because you've talked about, oh, it's just an ounce of this it's just 2 ounces of that. And what I'm really hearing here is how important diversity is.

Yep.

I did a call, I did one with Deanna Minick and one with Sarah Ballantine, and both of them are. Their whole thing is food diversity and what happens. And. And I think it that when you look at the average diet, I don't know what the stats are, but I'm guessing people are in a food rut and pretty much eating the same stuff every single day. You know what I'd love to look at is diversity. If you can talk a bit about diversity. And then also after that, what are some of the foods? Now, I know you're talking about in the cookbook, things for specific hormones, and we've got a quiz about that, but I'd love to know just overall, some of those foods that you would just make sure that you put into your diet on a regular basis. Like when you say that about beets, it's like, okay, let's definitely get the beets in. Like, what are some of those foods that are just so good and do so many things that it's important to have, especially with everybody kind of suffering from energy issues. Right. And stress issues.

Yeah. So in terms of the expanding on the point about diversity. Yeah. Couldn't agree more. We think a lot of this comes down to the phytonutrients that we kind of opened the discussion with. But also fibers. So not fiber, but fibers. You know, there's. There's at least 16 common kinds of fibers that can be had in the diet. And the tough thing is that if you're. If you're on a carnivore diet, that 16 goes to zero, sadly, which is.

The problem with that carnivore diet.

There's pretty clear consensus that our gut flora does stuff that's useful. You know, that's all it lives on. You know, it's a garden. And these fibers, that's the water and the sunlight, you know, that's all they have to go off of is these insoluble, indigestible fractions from plants. They can't function on anything else. And it's not a matter of chugging 60 grams of Metamucil per day.

Yeah. Not diversity of fiber there either. You know, when I was on Freaky Eaters, we had a guy come on the show who only he lived on raw meat.

Wow.

And he was the first carnivore, Paul Saladino. There was already someone else. We ran labs. His labs looked great. And I'm like, I gotta convince this guy that this is no bueno. Right. So what I did was I did a stool test.

Oh, wow.

And it showed everything. You know, besides the fact he had some really bad, creepy crawly things in there. I was like, oh. But complete out of balance gut microbiome from that type of a diet, which, you know, I think everyone's focusing on. Oh, you lost weight. I'm like, but at what expense? Hello.

Right.

You know, and what's going to happen long term?

Well, just one more point on that. So a low, an extreme low fiber diet, total fiber, fiber diversity. It's just like taking the antibiotics every day. It's no different at all.

Holy smokes. What?

Yeah.

Wow.

You're starving your flora, you're killing off all of your good organisms. And we've learned a lot about the bacteria relevance of that. But now we know there's good fungi, there's actually good viruses as well. But you're just, you're just taking broad spectrum antibiotics every single day. When you're on an extreme low fiber diet, or even like a diet that's restricted, radically restricted in food categories, it's the same problem.

That is the bold statement. I'm so pulling that out like that. That has like, you know, you can't ignore that. And we all know about the issue with antibiotics in the gut. So the diversity for the different types of fiber, the diversity for the different phytonutrients. Let's walk through some of your most favorite plants and why.

Well, you know, up there on the list I mentioned oats already is one of them. But I would put onions way up there too. You know, they're pretty humble, pretty common things, but if we add to our regular intake of things from that family, it's powerful. There's actually a double blind placebo controlled study, believe it or not, done in Japan. They took some onion extracts and powdered them and had some people take the extract, some take a placebo. And they showed that if you're averaging, really, it was only. I'm trying to get the exact numbers. Yeah, it was actually 2 grams of an onion extract, which is the equivalency of about like 20 grams of onion, which is not hard to do. They saw marked reductions in visceral fat and related measurable inflammation.

Wow, that's huge.

Yeah.

If you're listening and you would like to lower your visceral adipose tissue, that bad stuff hanging out around your organs, which is buy a cold plunge every day, maybe I can just toss the cold plunge and start the onions.

Onion pudding. That's one of my favorite recipes.

Onion pudding.

Onion pudding. It's a savory pudding. If you like French onion soup.

I love French onion soup. I just get it without all the garbage. They like French onion soup without. They're always like, you want that without the cheese and bread? I'm like, yes, I just want the onions. I love, love, love French onion. Okay, tell me what's in savory onion pudding.

It's. It's onions. So French onion soup. They're. They're sauteed down quite a bit. That's how it starts out. You saute a whole bunch of onions and you narrow. You compress them down, you reduce them down by about a quarter. Small amount of a neutral cooking oil. I usually use some kind of an unsweetened milk, like flax milk. There's a small amount of that, and then really some garlic, some salt and pepper, and then the cooking time. And you can then reduce that down and bake that. You can make it as a dessert if you want to, like, make it sweeter, or you can do it as is. And it's a phenomenal side dish.

Ew. That. Like, ew. You would serve onion pudding as a.

Dessert with some more sweetener in there, for sure.

Like, what would you like a sweet onion pudding. I like the savory idea. We'll leave it over there.

I think it's.

You kind of lost me on sweet onion pudding. Okay, Onions. Love that. What else?

Cayenne is a great one. You know, so much good data about that. Basal metabolic rate also diminishing the brain satiety response, you know, helping change appetite levels. And then also substance P, so changing pain response throughout the entire body. You know, pain and inflammation. Funny thing, but we have taste receptors, right? So we can taste salty, sour, sweet, savory umami, but we can also taste spicy. But that's not really tasting because there's no taste receptor for that. There's this thing called substance P, and that's our pain receptor. So spicy things, even in small amounts, they diminish the amount of bioavailable. Substance B. Things don't hurt as much.

Wow. Yes. And I also just saw some research on umami. Like, if you eat first eat something with an umami flavor, it blows your appetite.

Totally.

So that's super cool. I've been doing, you know, every day, I do one of these suja lemon loves, which is lemon juice with cayenne. I don't like hot stuff, but it's just I can do it. It's like just enough all see? And you know what I love about this is this is also easy to pull into the diet. Super duper easy.

You gotta eat anyway. You might as well use things that make it count.

Well, you gotta eat. But, you know, I see one of the challenges out there is like, for most people, they're not looking to spend more time in the kitchen. So, you know, it's always like, how do you accomplish these things and make it simple and delicious? Right. Walk me through a typical day of your eating and like, what you and Kiran would eat in a day. I know now we've cured Kiran of her hopefully sweet tooth. And for those of you listen, Kieran is his wife. And early on she came to me because she had a sugar addition. And I basically told her everything that Dr. C had told her.

And you told her more effectively.

Yeah, Well, I was like, she, you know, there's no profit in your hometown. Right? And she was like, oh, wow. We laughed about it. I was like, yeah, just.

And then JJ told me this. I'm like, huh, who would have thought of that?

Wow, how smart you gotta do that. Okay, so what's. Like, what's. What are some of the big, you know, your typical day and things you make sure that you eat?

Yeah. Hers is all. Start with hers. It's a little simpler. She's pretty consistent about starting with a shake, you know, protein shake for breakfast. And then she'll do a fair amount of unlimited snacks. She's prepping for a pageant later on, later on this summer. So she's like in pageant prep mode. The most of her snacks are we call the unlimited foods. And that's all kinds of veggies. We make like a vegetable soup. We'll have often some of that pre made or we'll make a ratatouille, you know, tomatoes and eggplant and bell peppers pre cooked up and ready to go. Or carrot fries. We made carrot fries a couple of days ago. Those are some of our most favorite mid morning, mid afternoon, afternoon snacks.

Now, are you making carrot fries or in an air fryer?

I just use the oven on roast mode and convection mode, which is kind of the same thing as an air fryer, but it's got more room. You can do more stuff it wants.

I know that air fryer is so small.

They're awesome. But we go through food too fast for. So those are typical breakfast and snacks. Lunch, you know, today we had some. Some chicken soup. I made that over the weekend. And that was Leeks you know, leeks, plus onions, you know, carrots, celery, rosemary, some spinach.

What's the benefit of leeks?

Leeks, you know, more benefit like onion, you know, good sources of quercetin, chalcone, bioavailable, lots of polysaccharides and just, you know, just a classic necessary flavor for chicken soup. That was some lunch with some leftovers. Tonight we're going to be driving a little ways, going to visit my parents. And I made some meatballs up in advance, so we'll have those just before we head out. And those were lean turkey, a fair amount of ginger. Also, we'll serve that with some rice and a side of some cabbage.

What about what you wouldn't ever do? Like, what are your. Some of your, you know, because people always say, oh, everything in moderation. I'm not a subscriber to everything in moderation. I think there are some things that should never be eaten. Maybe you don't feel that way, but are there any things that you think should either never be eaten or very, very rarely?

Well, I guess if it's life or death, you know, if it's like survival.

Yeah. I mean, I'm not talking life or death. You're out in the tundra, you know, I mean, maybe that could happen with you in Minnesota, but, you know, I'm with you.

And. And as I mentioned that I'll. Even the mindset, I think, changes to where over time you really pair what you eat with how you're going to feel and how it's going to affect you. And you get to where it's not a reward to do things, you know, aren't going to make you feel good. That's not a treat.

You know, I would hope that you've gotten to that point in life where you go, oh, if I do this, I feel like crap. It's going to take days to get over.

Maybe not, you know, you know, I'd probably put fries on the top, somewhere on the top of that, you know, fried, fried food, French fries especially. That's. I don't know. I guess I worked in a restaurant, too, during high school, and just being around areas where there's the fryer going off, the smell, the oil in the air, that just grosses me out. All those oxidized hydrogenated oils. Yeah, that's nasty stuff.

Okay, no fries, but all you have to do is put it in your convection oven.

Oh, totally. Yeah. Those are great. I love making baked, baked fries at home. I have those a lot.

Yeah. So we're not saying no fries. We're saying no damaged oil, nasty fries.

Well, and that's. And that's just. It is that there's just a world of difference between whole foods and processed foods and just how they affect you. Even, like, for example, the word sugar can be radioactive. I talked about figs a few days ago about a couple figs and hot flashes. And some people said, well, wait, but don't they have sugar in them?

I'm like, well, there's a difference.

Yeah, there's sugar to a nutritionist, sugar to a biochemist. Sugar to a biochemist is pretty much everything. I mean, meat has sugar in that sense. You can't escape it. But sugar and processed foods, that context is completely different from the matrix of sugar in a whole food. So, yeah, those things are different.

There's a huge difference between eating an apple and having apple juice.

Yep.

You know, one of the other things I've been really looking at in terms of processed food, because, you know, one of the other challenges is like, unless you're Allen living in Minnesota on a lake, if you're eating wild salmon or whatever it is, something happened for it to get to you. You know, oatmeal. Something happened to those oats for them to get to you. So, you know, we're not saying processed food is bad. We're saying the ultra processed food is bad. And one of the ways I can tell, I think that's a great distinguisher, is if you eat it and you want more, you're full. Right.

And you're like, bet you can't eat just one.

Yeah, right. If you bet you can't eat just one, don't eat it. That's a sure sign. That's a processed food that has been created to bring out your evil twin. Stay away.

A long time ago, we did a live and talked about the whole dry carb thing as being a big factor for that.

Oh, yes. I loved your wet carb. Dry carb thing. Tell everybody about that. I forgot all about that.

You know, it's not a perfect formula for the things you can't eat just one, but it's pretty close. So, yeah, so like oatmeal, you got this. No, you don't. You don't wake up in the middle of the night and go make an extra bowl of oatmeal. You just. You just don't do it. Yeah. So carbohydrate. When they have a fair amount of naturally occurring water, fiber, protein, they take time to absorb. There's not this blood sugar spike. There's no brain reward center activation that goes on, but the things that are dry and crunchy are different. They are much more quickly absorbed. So pretty much all the things that are ultra processed snack foods, they're dry and crunchy and that's part of it.

Yeah. They're dry, crunchy, salty. I would never lose it over a piece of cake, but you throw me a bucket of popcorn and I'm down there licking the bottom of it. So know your things. Right now you created a quiz, your food horm symptom quiz. Like what does someone find out when they take the quiz?

You know, so I made the cookbook to where you can just grab recipe and have fun or you can have a specific goal in mind so you can see which hormone symptoms are most relevant for you at a given point in time. And the quiz will direct you to that. Once you know that, you can then be guided through a couple weeks of a meal plan. Here's the recipes to really focus on those particular hormones. And the thing is you don't have to like get deep into the hormones and the blood levels and this, that or the other. You know, how you feel. And that's. That's valid. And that's enough of a starting point.

Well, don't you think for. Yeah, most people that's probably a better indicator anyway since your hormones are going to change an hour after you took your hormones.

There's so many ins and outs about. Yeah. Hormone tests, hormone levels. You're better off just knowing. Here's the key symptoms, here's some safe things you can do in your kitchen to help them in like 30 minutes or less.

Yay. Yeah. No one's going to say I got toxic eating in the kitchen there, you know, eating whole foods. That is awesome. And I'm really excited about this cookbook. I am going to put the quiz@jjvirgin.com Foodquiz Very obvious. So you can go take that. There also put information about your book, the Healing Hormone Cookbook. Now I want to know, so did you write the recipes? Did Kiran write? Who wrote the recipes and created all this stuff?

You know, that was me.

That's really.

Yeah. Wow. I got an apron and everything. I've spent a lot of time in the kitchen last week.

Really?

Wow.

Well, that's what happens when you move out to Minnesota, away from all of us. I guess that was your pandemic hobby.

We did a lot of cooking with the pandemic as well. The pandas kept on going with it for sure.

Wow. That is very, very Impressive. I hope you have a picture of you with your apron on.

I'll produce one for you in short order.

Okay, good. I want that. And then with it I'm going to put that A low fiber diet is like taking antibiotics every that's like crazy. All right, this has been fantastic. Again, I'm going to put everything@jjvirgin.com Foodquiz+ I'll put all your books, all of our past episodes because we've got some really good stuff that everyone can dig into. Fun, fun. And thank you for all of this and hopefully I'll get to see you soon.

I would love that.

Yeah, somewhere not there because it's still cold there. I don't do cold.

It's going to be beautiful very soon though.

Be sure to join me next time for more tools, tips and techni you can incorporate into everyday life to ensure you look and feel great and more importantly, that you're built to last. And check me out on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and my website, jjvirgin.com and make sure to follow my podcast so you don't miss a single episode@subscribetojay.com See you next time.

Foreigners. 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 check 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.