Don’t Start Any Diet Until You Do These 4 Things

Hey, it's J.J. 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's 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. Hey, JJ here. Can you believe how fast the holidays are knocking at the door this year? One minute it's pumpkin spice season, the next you're getting your guest room ready and wondering where their wrapping paper went. And that's when I turned to Wayfair. From bedding and towels to holiday decor and last minute stocking stuffers, Wayfair has everything you need to get your home and holidays together fast. And for way less. With Wayfair, I know I can refresh my guest room in no time. Maybe I'll add a soft new comforter or a few holiday throw pillows. With Wayfair, it's so easy and everything arrives super fast. Plus, there's free shipping for any order over $35 easy and total peace of mind. So whether you're hosting, gifting, or just adding those final festive touches, Wayfair has your back. 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. 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 the holidays.

Are all about family. But at the Chrysler Wrap up the Year Sales event, 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 Vac 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'm JJ Virgin, Ph.D. 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. 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 virginonarch.com in your browser for half off your first year. That's 50% off your first year@monarch.com with the code Virgin.

Ray Ban Meta glasses come with open ear audio so you can listen to your favorite music without blocking out the world around you.

Hey Meta, play Gorgeous.

Here's Gorgeous by Doja Cat.

You can also ask Meta AI questions.

Hey Meta, when's Doja Cat's next concert? Doja Cat is playing at the Los Angeles theater next Tuesday.

Sweet Ray Ban Meta glasses available at Ray Ban stores and other authorized retailers.

Foreign.

It's not what you weigh, it's what your weight is made up of. And here's the key thing. Weight loss is not synonymous with fat loss. If you lose a higher percentage of your skeletal muscle relative to your body fat, you can make yourself worse, not better. Now here are four things that should be non negotiable before starting a weight loss plan. Number one, you gotta know your numbers, you gotta know your starting point. And then you've got to track daily to ensure that you are improving your body composition. So what is body composition? So your body is made up of two things, fat mass and fat free mass. But then we're going to unpack this more. In your fat mass, you've got two types of fat. You got the fat you can pinch. And that actually, though you might not like it, is not the problem fat. The other fat is the fat that you can't pinch. That's called visceral adipose tissue. That's the fat around the organs. And Nisha's the fat you really have to monitor because this is the fat that is problematic. You can see this by doing a biopene scale. Specifically a DEXA scan is the best thing we're going to do for this. But also you can track it by using a simple tape measure and doing a waist to hip and a waist to height to be able to monitor this and make sure you get into the ideal range. Now that's fat mass. Fat free mass is everything else. And within that, you have skeletal muscle, you have organs, you have bones, you have veins, you have arteries. And 3% of that fat free mass actually supports your fat mass. And what you really can change in that fat free mass, obviously is, is skeletal muscle. And that ultimately is what you want to know. You want to know what your weight is made up of your body composition. And the single best way to do this is to get something called a DEXA scan. In my perfect world, we would get rid of all of the scales at the doctor's offices and we would have a DEXA scan or at least an in body or to need a bioimpedance scale. But the DEXA is the best one to start. It's really the gold standard and the DEXA is going to give you that visceral adipose tissue. And your norms for the visceral adipose tissue is as low as possible. Right. But you definitely want at least 10% of of your overall body fat. Remember, more body fat, you'll have more visceral or adipose tissue. That's not a good thing. Then at DEXA you'll also be able to unpack from that fat free mass and find your skeletal muscle mass. For that there's something called an appendicular lean muscle index or appendicular skeletal muscle index. You want to be in the upper 25% for your age. More importantly, you want to know that number because as you're losing weight, you want to make sure you're holding onto or building muscle while you're burning fat. Now a little caveat here. If you've got a lot of weight to lose, likely you're going to lose some muscle. But as you get closer where you want to be, your body tends to lose more muscle. But that's when you really need to hold onto it. So this is why we really want to monitor it. Obviously you're not going into a DEXA every week. That wouldn't make sense. So here's what you do. You go to a dexa, you come home and you get a bioimpedance scale and you compare it. Now my bioimpedance scale tells me that my body fat is twice as much as my DEXA scan does. But I use it to compare and just to make sure where my total body water is, where everything is. I do the bioimpedance scale at home every single day. There's all these scales now that have Bluetooth on your phone so it will track it for you. And then I take the weekly average because your weight's gonna go up and down. No, if your weight goes up a lot or goes down a lot in a day, something's up. Either you're dehydrated, either you had a food reaction create a lot of inflammation. That's why we toss out numbers and take the average and we're really looking for trends over time. With bioimpedance, one of the cool things you'll see is total body water. And you really want to make sure that your keeping your muscles well hydrated and again, I talked about at home, not only doing bioimpedance, but using a simple tape measure to know your waist and have a waist to hip and waist to height. So that's the first thing is we've got to not only know our starting numbers, but continue to monitor throughout and approach this as a detective. The scale is not a mean friend. This scale is a biometric tool to help you course correct as you go. And because the next thing we're going to do, if you're not doing this correctly, you may not know that you're improving because we are going to start resistance training. Now, if you're putting on muscle, you may see your weight go up a little bit, but your body composition has improved. That's why we have to monitor our body composition. So next thing you're going to do is start resistance training. I already talked about that. When you start to diet, cut calories, you can lose skeletal muscle. If you lose skeletal muscle, if you lose weight at all, of course you're going to have a lowered metabolism, but it will be even more so if you lose skeletal muscle. But really, of course, what do we know with skeletal muscle? This is mission critical as we age, right? Muscle, of course, is more metabolic, expensive and just a little bit more than everything else. So part of it's going to help our metabolism. Muscle's where we can start to improve insulin sensitivity quickly. But muscle is everything for having powerful aging. Starting at around the age of 30, we're going to start losing up to 1% of our muscle a year. Bigger than that, we lose our strengths and our power even more so. And this starts to double at age 60. And the deal is use it or lose it. So you certainly want to make sure that as you are losing weight, that weight is mainly fat mass and you are not dropping a bunch of skeletal muscle mass because low muscle mass is correlated with higher all cause mortality risks. Now, the deal is if you're morbidly obese, if you have a lot to lose, you're going to lose some skeletal muscle. But as we get closer to goal weight, you really want to be carefully monitoring this and making sure that you're holding onto it. And again, you'll ultimately know this by doing the DEXA and making sure that you're staying in the upper 25th percentile for your sex and age for that Almi that I talked about. So to minimize your muscle loss, you're gonna be doing resistance training. I really love to have you do three days a week of big compound movements, things like Squats and chest presses and pull ups. Right. That really take a lot of energy and work a lot of muscles. And doing multiple sets of these, like three to four sets of six to 30 reps with a short rest break. Obviously I could do a whole video on this and I have. So I've got a link below for my video on how to start a resistance training program. Makes it super simple. I'll walk you straight through it. So after resistance training, the next one is I want to make sure that you are eating protein first and you're optimizing your protein intake because it's going to do two critical things for you as you go on this program. Number one, it's going to help you hold on to and build muscle. Can't build muscle as we get older without having the building blocks, those essential amino acids. Number two, and this is so key important is it's gonna help with satiety when you eat protein first. And that's why I want you to eat it first because then I know you got it in. But it also is going to help you be more satiated. I always think about, I've done a couple cross country drives and there's a Texas steakhouse that's like, you know, if you eat, I don't know, whatever it was some insane amount of steak, like dinner is free. And I was like, well yeah. Cause no one could eat that amount. Now they might be able to eat 10 boxes of cereal that were the same calories. But we get too full with protein. So how much protein do you want? Protein is going to be 0.7 to 1 gram per pound of target body weight. And this is really an important fact. We don't need less as we age, we actually need more as we age. Because as we age something happens. A phenomenon called anabolic resistance where we have trouble taking those amino acids and using them for muscle protein synthesis. Now make sure when you break your fast and at your last meal of the day, your bumper meals, you're getting at least 30 grams of protein. More is probably better. And if it's plant based, you're definitely going to need to get more so that you have enough leucine. And this is something I learned from Dr. Donald Layman to trigger muscle protein synthesis and then make sure you get enough overall throughout the day. So I did a simple protein calculator and also a seven day meal plan to ensure you get the protein you can grab@jjvirgin.com 7day the number and I will put that in the show notes to make sure that you're covered. So we know our numbers and we're monitoring them throughout. We are doing resistance training to maintain and build that skeletal muscle mass. We're getting the protein for satiety and to make sure that we have the essential amino acids we need to build the muscle mass. This last one is one you probably haven't thought about. And this is super duper critical. So toxins are all around us. They're in the air we breathe, the things we drink, what we're touching. Even if you are trying to be as clean as possible, you can't avoid them. And the deal is our body stores toxins in fat. Now, obviously, we want to be getting this stuff out on a regular basis. We want to avoid our exposure and get things out on a regular basis. But we all have toxins stored in us. There's been enough research to show this. When you lose fat, you free up toxins. So what you don't want to have is all these toxins running wild, going rogue in your body. So you've got to make sure that you can get them out. How do we get them out? We sweat them out, we pee them out, we poop them out, and we breathe them out. The important thing is this pathway to get them out is dependent on amino acids that we get from protein. We. Which is why you're eating protein first. Super important. But some other things that can help. Here is getting the deep green leafies and rainbows of plants, because those phytonutrients help with the first phase of detoxification, freeing them up, getting fiber that can help absorb them and get them out. Remember, pooping is one of the ways we can get the toxins out. Sweating, of course. So how do you do that? Infrared saunas are amazing. Exercise is amazing. So that resistance training and Epsom salt baths, which also, of course, can help with sleep. So double win there. Now, that's just a little bit of tip of the iceberg on detoxification. So I'm going to send you next to one that I did to really go deep into this. And this is how to do a healthy detox. No juice cleansing. Hint, hint. My top tips. Grab that one.

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 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@subscribetoj.com 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 take 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.