Do This Daily to Burn Fat & Build Muscle at the SAME TIME

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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 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. 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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Wouldn't it be great if you could lose fat and build muscle at the same time? Well, guess what?

You can. And you know what?

It's simpler than you think. I'm going to break down the exact routine that can help you achieve this. Even if you're dealing with the hormonal shifts of perimenopause, it's a myth that you can't lose fat and put on muscle at the same time. This is known as recomping. And there are the five things you need to do to make this possible. First, one, protein. Now, you're going to want to eat at the higher end of protein. So my recommendation is 0.7 to 1 gram per pound of target body weight. And I made it simple for you. If you don't love math, you can go to my protein calculator@jjvirgin.com the number seven seven day. When you lose weight, if you are not careful, you can lose anywhere from 20 to 30% of that weight from lean tissue. And of course, a lot of that is muscle. One of the ways to make sure that you don't lose that is by eating enough protein. When you eat protein, your body is going to use the leucine within that protein to trigger muscle protein synthesis so that your body can make more muscle. So I know my minimum now for 40 plus and is 30 grams of animal or 40 grams of plant based to start the day off and to end the day 100 grams or more overall. But again, I do this based on your target body weight. So when I know that you're eating protein first, you're not going to be hungry, which is going to allow you to go into a caloric deficit. You're going to be more satisfied. You're going to have what your body needs in order to hold on to and build muscle. The next one is to lower your sugar impact. You could be eating the same amount of calories, right? You could be in caloric restriction. But if you're eating a lot of sugar, it can make you actually gain more fat around your waistline and lose more muscle. And so your other food should be Lots of non starchy vegetables, a little bit of fruit, some healthy fats like avocados, nuts and seed, wild fish, slow, low carbs. We want to make sure that you're losing fat and holding on to our building muscle. So where those calories come from matter. The next important thing is resistance training. In order for you to be able to build muscle, you've got to stimulate that muscle. And that's all about resistance training. And so it can repair, recover and put on more muscle. In order for you to put on muscle, the best real range for you to do this is to work in about anywhere from six to 30 repetitions of an exercise and then do repeated sets of it, about a two minute rest break in between. When we're doing resistance training, I like to divide the body into three different parts. For this upper body pushing, that's things like push up and overhead presses and dips. Upper body pulling, that's things like bent over rows and upright rows and pull ups and then hip and thigh hinging, that's things like squats and step ups and deadlifts. When you're first starting out, it's actually going to be a lot easier for you to build muscle. The fitter you get, the harder it is for you to continue to push and improve. But you can push and improve by adding in more repetitions, by adding in more set, by increasing the tempo, by increasing the weight. So there are a variety of ways to improve, right? So you can always find a way. So resistance training is critical for building muscle. But again, you have to do more than what your body's used to and continue to progress. So your body will continue to adapt. Beyond that, we want to make sure that you're moving more. When I think about my metabolism and really dropping fat and holding onto or building muscle, one of the key things here is, is energy expenditure. You have your resting metabolic rate, which is about 50 to 60% of your overall calories. You have the thermic effect of food, which is 5 to 10% of your calories. And we know protein is the most thermic of the macronutrients. 20 to 30% of those calories are used in assimilation and digestion. The other piece of your metabolism is activity and that's moving more. And here's the thing that we know is quite often as we start to restrict calories, our body actually starts to conserve and move less. And so what I teach people to do is to make sure that you are tracking your activity. You can do this with an OURA ring, an Apple, watch a Garmin. But check how many steps you're doing a day. Make sure that you're getting minimally 8,000 a day. Ideal goal though is really 12,000 or more and that you are doing this on the regular. So how do you get more movement throughout your day? And of course, what we measure and monitor we can improve. So I really like tracking all of this. Super important is, number one, think of getting a stand up desk because we want to think of standing rather than sitting and moving rather than standing. Then think about getting a walking pad and I'll put the ones that I like in the show notes because now you can do some of your meetings. Either pace around with a headset or get on that walking pad so that you can move more all throughout the day as well. And then track those steps. Then you can increase the intensity of those steps. So think about how you can move more throughout the day, especially if you can move after your meal, especially that evening meal, to lower the blood sugar response of it, improve digestion and help you with sleep. Number one, if you live in a hilly area, that's an easy way to increase the intensity. Get out there and move on the hills. Number two, you can move faster. So that could be a little jog or just take up your speed. Or number three, you can add a rucking vest. You're kind of adding that weight back in and burning more calories. Think of this as what do I need to do? So my body has to adapt to get stronger. Now, in order for you to be able to drop body fat, you have to be in a caloric deficit, but you want to still be able to build muscle. So here's the way that you can do it. That's going to help combat the diet fatigue and may help offset some of that muscle loss and help you actually gain muscle. And it's diet cycling. And this is from the work of Dr. Bill Campbell. You figure out your maintenance calories. First, you figure out your maintenance calories by doing a macro audit using a food tracking app, I like Cronometer, and then see how many calories you need for maintenance. And then what you do for five days of the week is you take a 25% caloric restriction. So if you needed 2000 calories for maintenance, this would be 1500 calories a day for five days, two days a week, you go back to your maintenance calories, 2,000 calories, and then repeat. And you keep going with this until you hit a plateau. And if you hit a plateau where you're not able to drop body fat, then reassess, assess your maintenance calories because they might have downshifted a little bit. Now one of the big reasons we want to make sure that we're really focusing on holding on to, or better yet, putting on muscle as we drop fat is you're going to avoid a lot of that metabolic adaptation, that metabolism downshift. That can happen as we lose weight. You're going to need to track, right? You're going to need to use a food tracking app. And I'm going to really emphasize when you do this food tracking app, you want to weigh your food. It is not enough to just, you know, here's this, nope, actually weigh it with a food scale so you really see exactly what you're taking in. This doesn't need to be forever, but this is a game changer. It's the first thing I do when someone comes to me and goes, I'm stuck. I'm not losing anymore. I go, let's track and let's make sure weighing in. It's non negotiable for me, non negotiable for anyone that I work with.

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@subscribetojay.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 JJ 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 or on the show is solely at your own risk.

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 take all Things Books in 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 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.