Do These 4 Things to Lose Weight After 50

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I'm JJ Virgin, PhD dropout. Sorry mom turned four time New York Times Best Selling author. 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 most of all by my insatiable curiosity and love of science to keep asking questions, digging for answers and sharing the information that I uncover with as many people as I can. And that's where you come in. 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 powerful 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. Don't miss an episode. Subscribe now@subscribetoj.com to start unlocking unlocking your healthiest, most energetic self. 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 the Subaru Share the.

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You've probably heard the myth that metabolism doesn't really change until you hit 60. Well, whoever said that clearly wasn't talking about us or as one of us. I'm talking about you and me, Peri and postmenopausal women. Now, if you're in this phase, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Things are shifting, and it's not just that number on the scale. Suddenly, muscle's harder to hold onto, but you have no problem holding on to belly fat. In fact, my mom used to call it shifting sands. You know, where your butt becomes your gut. And it's pretty descriptive, but also it sounds pretty bleak. But I have great news. There are four key areas to focus on and simple ways to know if you are on track to shift this so first of all, what is actually happening that is making you gain weight, especially around your belly, and then struggle to lose it? Well, it's no surprise that as we age, of course hormones drop. Usually it's progesterone that goes down first, which then of course drops your sleep too. And then estrogen starts this roller coaster ride and then quite often alongside it, thyroid goes down too, which means we're going to start to struggle with muscle loss. And it becomes harder to build muscle due to something called anabolic resistance. Now that estrogen drop compounds the problem, because you need estrogen really to help you build muscle. And low estrogen can lead to insulin resistance and increased inflammation. And low estrogen also is going to drop your metabolism a little bit. Muscle mass loss will too. And so what does this mean? Your metabolism slightly slowed down and you have a real struggle to start burning fat now. So these hormones are going down, but there are hormones that go up unfairly, because one of the ones that tends to go up is cortisol. Turns out that estrogen and cortisol balance each other. So if estrogen going down, cortisol's coming up, and cortisol makes you store more fat around your waistline. In fact, we know about this visceral adipose tissue that you have more receptors for cortisol there. Now I'm probably not telling you anything that you don't intuitively know and probably have experienced. So here's the question of the day. How do we counteract this? Got to be super strategic. Now the first important thing here is we've got to stop focusing on weight loss per se, because you could lose weight and lose muscle and make yourself worse, not better. So we've got to focus on body composition and holding onto our better yet body building muscle so that you can boost your resting metabolic rate and compensate for that drop that we have there. And then we also of course going to want to drop fat. So what's this all called? This is all called recomping. Holding onto our building muscle as we're dropping fat. We'll come back to muscle in a little bit. But let's talk first about the biggest driver for this. The fastest way that you can start to make a shift is by changing what's at the end of your fork. So step one in these four things is going to be fuel. It's going to be what you eat. And what I want you to do is start to live by this mantra, you ready? Eat protein first. Here's why I say this. Number one, as we age, and especially if you are one of those 80% of the population, we're not getting in the exercise, you really should be getting. Hopefully by the end of this video that's changed. But what starts to happen is you become less sensitive to protein. You start to have something called anabolic resistance. So we actually need more protein, not less, as we age. So not only are you less sensitive to it, you tend to not digest it as well either. Which is why I like to use my protein first. Digestive enzymes to help with digesting protein. The reason this is important is we want to be eating optimal amounts of protein and digesting it well. Because protein of our macronutrients in which we have protein, fat and carbs and of course alcohol, gotta count that too. But protein is the most thermic of the protein, fats and carbs. It burns 20 to 30% of its calories in the digestion and assimilation of it. Contrast that with about zero for fat and maybe 5 to 10% for carbs. So if all we did was take some calories away from carbs and fat and move them over to protein, we would have a metabolic win. We'd also have a metabolic win. Because when you eat protein, it's more satiating it slows down stomach ache. Emptying it helps you feel fuller, longer, and it's also more satisfying. Those essential amino acids help build these brain chemicals that tell your brain, hey, I'm good, I'm full, I don't need anything. So it helps with cravings, it helps with satiety. So it's a super easy thing to do. However, what I've seen is that we are not getting anywhere near what we need to do. Now, first of all, you gotta know that the the recommended daily intake for protein is abysmal. It's ridiculous. It's about half of where we need to be. We should be eating about a gram per pound of target body weight. And I have a protein calculator to help you because there's a range there. So check the show notes for getting the protein calculator. But still, even with this information, most women are getting about half of what they need in a day. So I have a little hack for you. And that is essential amino acids. One of the things that I do every day is I make sure that I get in every morning at breakfast. I also do a big drink of essential amino acids with my chiotine, creatine and my electrolytes, because I'm going to take that with me to the gym. So one thing that you can do is add some essential amino acids. And if you're really struggling to get that protein in, try doing that at breakfast and dinner, or try doing that at one meal and then bringing them with you to the gym. So that's protein. Now, the big thing we have to look at too, is if you want to lose weight, we're going to also start to focus on, hopefully just by adding the protein in, you'll start to eat less. But if that's not enough, then we want to create some caloric restriction. And I like to do it in a very specific way so that we create the deficit. So your body has to go into its own fat stores to fuel itself. And I love the strategy that I learned from Dr. Bill Campbell will link to the podcast we did about this where you cycle caloric restriction so that your body doesn't have a tendency to metabolically adapt and you don't have a tendency to go, this is awful, and I hate it, and I'm not doing it anymore. So you do it five days a week of cycling caloric restriction, and two days a week, you stop. So how do you do this? First of all, you gotta track what you're eating. So I love the Cronometer app. We'll link to it in the show notes. And you gotta use a food scale with it so that you actually know exactly how much you're eating. What I want you to do is just start with tracking your food and optimizing that protein and see how many calories you eat in a week on average. Then if your body is not, if you're not releasing fat, like you want to start the caloric restriction and eat 25% less calories than what you need for maintenance five days a week and go back to normal for the other two days. What you want to make sure during this time is that you're cutting calories from either carbs or fat. But don't take it away from protein. Keep that protein up and also don't take it away from fiber. So high fiber foods, especially non starchy vegetables, a little bit of berries, maybe some things like legumes, keep those things in cut back, especially any ultra processed foods because those just trash your metabolism and make you crave more, as we know, or some fat. So cut from there. All right, so that is cycling caloric restriction. So beyond fuel, the next thing is moving. And let's talk about, of course first, resistance training. Because when you look at your metabolism, you have your resting metabolic rate. And the only real way to impact your resting metabolic rate is by how much muscle mass you have on your body. I'm assuming that your thyroid's working well, estrogen's going great. The big thing that we can do to change your resting metabolic rate, how many calories you would burn at rest, is to have more muscle on your body. That's why I like to call muscle your metabolic Spanx. Now the other cool thing about muscle is that it's the fastest way to improve something called insulin sensitivity. When you're more insulin sensitive, it's easier to use fat for fuel and it will directly impact that visceral adipose tissue because that is very insulin resistant. So this helps restore that insulin sensitivity. Now one other cool thing about muscle is that it acts like a sugar sponge. So when you're eating carbs, they can go into your muscles where they're stored as glycogen, they're stored as energy for your next exercise session. So that's fantastic too. So metabolic Spanx and a sugar sponge. And so that's the first thing is it's going to help you not only with your overall metabolism, but also can help target that visceral adipose tissue. So resistance training for the win. And what's important, you've probably heard the statistics that as we age we lose anywhere. We can lose up to 1% of our muscle muscle mass a year. The average range is 3 to 8% a decade, with it starting to double after the age of 60. But even more, you kind of lose double the amount of strength and three times the amount of power. It's really use it or lose it. So you've got to do resistance training as you age to offset this. And you don't have to, by the way. You can get stronger as you age. You can build muscles, you age. They just did a study where they looked at 65 year olds and 85 year olds and they found both could equally build muscle. So this is hugely important for your metabolism and it's really important for your metabolic health. Now, resistance training is one piece of this puzzle. The other piece of this puzzle is high intensity interval training. And the reason I love high intensity interval training is it really targets visceral adipose tissue. We say you can't spot reduce, but we know that high intensity interval training is one of those things that goes after visceral adipose tissue, probably because it's so important for restoring insulin sensitivity. There's another reason I love HIIT training and that is because it can work, work very well as something called an exercise snack. So a recent study just came out that looked at exercise snacks. These are 1 to 2 minute high intensity little bursts. Could be air squats, could be jumping jacks, could be running up the stairs. Note those are all things that don't require equipment and can be done like in your street clothes, right? One to two minutes of hard stuff. And what they found is that people that did 10 minutes a day in one to two minute increments of these hard things had 40 to 50% reduction in all cause mortality and mortality due to cancer and cardiovascular disease as compared to people who didn't. So here's my recommendation, because this will especially help with blood sugar control as well, is habit stack this. So do this either when you are, say, brushing your teeth after eating, do this after each meal. But ideally, let's say you get up in the morning after breakfast, do one to two minutes of jumping jacks after lunch, maybe do 60 seconds of air squats after dinner, maybe go up and down the stairs. It's that easy. All right, so we've got resistance training, building your metabolic Spanx, we've got HIIT especially done as like these exercise snacks targeting visceral adipose tissue. And then I just want you to move more and I want you to think of this like as if you were flossing. So if you use a little tracker, could be an oura ring, could be an apple watch. Track how many steps you do a day. Your goal is that 8,000 steps a day is your floor. And so let's say that you track right now and you're like the average person getting in 3,500 steps a day. Goal. First let's get it up, you know, to 5,000. Then let's get up to 6,000 with your goal in like a month, have it up to 8,000 and then go from there. But this turns out this is part of non exercise activity thermogenesis and for metabolism, this is probably the biggest modifiable thing you can do. It can be responsible for burning hundreds of extra calories a day. And the reason I emphasize it is quite often people will start to exercise, they'll start doing their resistance training, they'll do some hiit and then they'll do less neat to compensate. Our bodies are smart. So that's why I want you to make sure that you're doing, doing this so that one thing compounds the other. And we have this exponential, amazing impact from all of it. All right, step three. We're not building muscle in the gym, we're building muscle in recovery. And recovery is super important, not only for building muscle and raising growth hormone, but also because one poor night of sleep, and you know this, you've been through this one poor night of sleep. You're hungry, right? And you're not hungry for salmon. I always say I'm hungry and I'm searching out the carbs. And that's a double whammy because not only are you hungrier when you don't sleep well, but you're also more insulin resistant. So now you're hungry. Worse at burning off fat, better at storing it. So we gotta make sure that we're really prioritizing sleep, but we're also doing things to help our body recover better. So one of the things that I love is a sauna. If you can get one of these, whether it's the quick heat saunas that are the small one person saunas or the bigger, nice infrared saunas like sunlight and has. Oh my gosh. I think this is one of the most important investments for your health. I work in my sauna. My, I do my quick heat sauna in the morning. A lot of times I'll work on my sauna later in the day because it can be anabolic and help you with muscle building. So Saunas are huge. They're great for detoxification, anti aging, cardiovascular, immune system, all sorts of stuff. So shout out on the sauna. If you can't do a sauna, guess what? You can do it in a hot bath too. So you can accomplish it in a hot bath and just throw some Epsom salts in there too for the win. Now, other things you can do that are gonna help with recovery besides sleep. Another big one is meditating. When I think of what you need to do to help your body handle stress better, because likely we can't get rid of the stress, but we can change the way that we interpret it and handle it. And that's what meditation can help you do. It's one of the most impactful things that you can do for your mental health. So get that into your routine. I'm a big fan of Dr. Joe Dispenza, so that's one that I do. I even have my dogs meditating with me so that one's possible too. I even have a puppy meditating with me who's a crazy puppy. So the fact I could get a puppy to do it, anyone can do this. So that's the other one. Because elevated cortisol makes it very hard, especially to burn off belly fat. But elevated cortisol, we have cortisol receptors in our belly fat, it's just going to compound the problem so little think of meditation and sleep for weight loss. I know that seems crazy, but it works. And then the final step, and the reason I put this here, step four is because you gotta have good lifestyle, good diet, good exercise, recovery before you try to balance hormones. If you are stressed beyond belief, you're not sleeping well, you're sitting on your butt, you're eating a bunch of ultra processed food, drinking a bunch of wine. Don't think you can do some hormones and solve the challenge, solve the problems, right? So let's get all of those things in place. Then find yourself a good menopause specialist who's going to check your thyroid because you got to have good thyroid function to be able to balance hormones. They're going to check your thyroid and then talk to you through about doing bioidentical hormone replacement therapy. Because again, remember, if your estrogen is low, it's going to take your lower your metabolism a little bit, it's going to create insulin resistance, going to cause a rise in cortisol, it's cause you to be inflamed and you'll be tired and you won't be able to work out well, of course, progesterone can impact your sleep as well. So this is a biggie. And I didn't even mention testosterone. When I think of putting on muscle for a woman, estrogen is really a bigger driver. But testosterone of course matters too. Okay, so let's review what you need to do to lose that weight after 50. Number one, eat protein first. Add in a little cycling caloric restriction move, get that resistance training going to build your metabolic Spanx. Create that sugar sponge. Do the high intensity interval training to target that that fat and do that neat so that you really help with your metabolic, you know, getting that metabolic rate and burning more calories all day long. And make sure you're building in that recovery. And when I think of recovery, it's not just high quality sleep, it's also getting those tools in place for stress. And then consider bioidentical hormone replacement therapy. And all along the way, make sure that you're monitoring because what you measure, monitor, you can improve. Make sure you're tracking, tracking with a food scale and a food tracking device like cronometer tracking with bioimpedance. Right. Gotta make sure that you're actually making the right progress and you do one thing at a time. I gave you all of that. Start with one thing and habit stack them. Be sure to join me next time for more tools, tips and techniques you can incorporate into everyday life to ensure you look and feel great and are built to last. Check me out on Instagram, Facebook and my website, jjvirgin.com and make sure to follow my podcast@subscribetoj.com so you don't miss a single episode. And hey, if you're loving what you hear, don't forget to leave a review. Your reviews make a big difference in helping me reach more incredible women just like you to spread the word about aging powerfully after 40. Thanks for tuning in and I'll catch you on the next episode. Hey, Jeja, here. And just a reminder that The Well Beyond 40 podcast offers health, wellness, fitness and nutritional information that's designed for educational and entertainment purposes only. You should not rely on this information as a substitute for, nor does it replace professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. If you have any concerns or questions about your health, you should always consult with a physician or other healthcare professional. Make sure that you do not disregard, avoid or delay obtaining medical or health related advice from your healthcare professional because of something you may have heard on the show or read in our show notes. The use of any information provided on the show is solely at your own risk.

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