Friday Q&A: The Best Time to Work Out & How Much Vitamin D You Need

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I think you should actually eat when you're hungry, and that means really hungry. That's not emotional cues. Not because you smelled something cooking, like when you're really hungry. So in the morning, what I've trained myself to do is I get up in the morning, I have black bulletproof coffee.

Here's JJ Virgin triple board certified nutrition and fitness expert and four time York Times best selling author. It's time to reignite wellness.

All right, hey everybody, it's JJ here and it's Sunday and I am launching this cool, fun new thing on my podcast. We're actually redoing the entire podcast right now. We are blowing it up. We're starting season two after a couple years. It was a long season one. Season two is going to do the following. We are going to have one guest per week, one me per week, and then we are going to have Q and A Friday. So I got to record these Q and A Friday. So what we decided to do, what I decided to do is do Q and A Friday, Sunday, and record a bunch of these things today. So I wrote a couple questions that have been coming up a bunch and if you've got some questions, I will take those live as well. And hi, Cynthia, my bestie's on. And so that's what we're gonna do. So cool. I'll tell you some of the ones that I've got here and then if you've got some other ones, you just throw them on out there. All right, that'll be perfect. But I, you'll see me not respond as I'm answering a question because I'm gonna stay go, not add and stay totally focused. That is it. So here we go. Question number one. So here is the question that I'm going to address first. How much vitamin E should I take? So let's back this up a little bit because vitamin D is actually really kind of falsely named. Vitamin D really isn't a vitamin. It's pro hormone. It is so super important because it kind of sits at the top of the whole hormone cascade. Does a Ton of really important things, everything from brain health, gut health, really, really important for your immune system. So this is one that you want to make sure that you are taking and you are optimizing. It is so key, critical. Plus, I was just recently doing a podcast with Dr. Veronique Desalier, Breast cancer conqueror and she was saying that you have an 83% higher risk of breast cancer if you're vitamin D deficient. Oh my gosh. So we want to make sure we get this one right. So what you want to do is you want to get this test. It is a 25 hydroxy vitamin D test. Ask your doctor for this 25 hydroxy vitamin D. You can always also go over to my website, jjvirgin.com and we have testing resources there as well. This is a super critical test for you to get. And then what you want to do is optimize your vitamin D levels to 50 to 80 ngs per ML. 50 to 80 ngs per ML. Now couple things to think about. Always take vitamin D with vitamin K. The only exception would be if you are on some kind of a blood thinner. Then you need to work with your doctor on it. Otherwise you always want to make sure that you take vitamin D And yes, vitamin D3 with vitamin K. The reason being is vitamin D helps you absorb your calcium. Vitamin K make sure it's going to the right place. So these two work together. You want to make sure that you are taking them together. So look for a vitamin D that also contains vitamin K. That way you get those two together and again, it's vitamin D3 that is super important. Here's the next thing to think about. You should be getting ideally 20 minutes of sun exposure without sunscreen every day. Now obviously this is going to vary depending on where you live. So if you're living like right now, I live in Tampa, Florida and so my sun exposure is going to be very different than say someone who lives in Minnesota in the winter. So if you are someone who is in a very seasonal place, or if you're someone who doesn't get out in the sunshine or slathers on sunscreen, then you're going to need to make sure that you are taking more vitamin D during those times. So for a lot of people, they may need less vitamin D supplementally during the summer, more during the winter. So it's important for you not just to test once, test your levels. I find that if someone's low quite often they'll want to take 10,000 IUs of vitamin D again with vitamin K somewhere probably in the 5500 micrograms for the first month or two retest, see where you're at. Oftentimes you can get to about 5000ius is where you need to be, maybe as low as 2000. But during the winter you might need to ramp it up. During the summer you may need to take it down again. So there you go. That's the vitamin D story again. Always take your vitamin D with K. Make sure that you're testing using a 25 hydroxy vitamin D test. Make sure you check that seasonally and adjust as it is. All right, we are going to go on to the next question. And yes, vitamin D3 is going to be the best one. And of course you want to get sunshine, right? But some people genetically just don't make their vitamin D well either. So even with sunshine, they're not doing well. Okay, we are going to do the next one that I get asked a lot. And again, if you've got a question here, just throw it on over here because I'm doing a couple more of these today. And then my girlfriend Brie, the Betty Rockers coming over for dinner. We're gonna have wild salmon and little, those little fun potatoes roasted and some broccoli. So I gotta go make dinner. But tell then we're gonna do these. Okay, next question. When is the best time to exercise? All right, this is kind of a trick question because here it is. The best time to exercise is when you will exercise. So my I'm going to tell you the first thing that's most important is exercise when you know you're going to actually fit exercise in, schedule it in as an appointment. Ideally have a responsibility partner or a coach or someone that's either with you or checking in to make sure that you did it. That's the first part. Now if we're going to get down to when is the best time, there's a lot of reasons why morning is the best time. One of them is just the hormonal reasons. Testosterone is higher, cortisol's higher, you're going to get probably a better workout and quite often you're in more of a fasted state. And if you can exercise fasted, you're better off. If you need to eat a little bit because you don't get as hard of a workout when you're fasted, then do that and then you could eat. But ideally, if you're working out in the morning, you've got better hormone response, you're working out fasted and then you're having breakfast after that. That's like the best of the best. Especially if you can follow with one of my paleo inspired shots, shakes and get that branched chain amino acids that we've added and the bone broth protein and the collagen. It's like a bam. It's awesome. So that'd be my top choice is to be able to do it that way. But again, one of the reasons I like people to work out in the morning, besides the fact that they've got better hormone response, is that they're less likely to blow it off. The big challenge with working out later in the day is if things come up, guess what gets booted? Your exercise gets booted. So that's why we want to make sure that you've got the schedule at a time where it's not going to get blown off. I know for me, if I have to work out later in the day, it like, you know, my, my enthusiasm for that workout goes down as the day goes on. And I always make sure that if I do have to work out later in the day, I'm doing it with my husband because one of us is going to force the other one to go do it. But it's never as good of a workout as the one workout when I can do it early in their day. So find your best time to work out. Schedule it in like an appointment. If you're one of those people feels like you might flake on it, put some money on the line, like get a trainer who's going to charge you double if you cancel. Get a responsibility partner, do a bet, whatever it takes to do it. Because exercise is that important. Hugely important of course for your brain. You know, we think of exercise for losing weight. I actually don't use it for losing weight at all. It's important for having a great metabolism, for adding more muscle on, which boosts your metabolism, helps you be more insulin sensitive. But it's really critical for health and critical for you avoiding being tofy, thin outside, fat inside. So again, schedule workouts in like a non negotiable appointment and if you can do that in the morning, that's the best. Okay, let's see what else is going on here. I've got one more that I'm going to jump in and. Hey Sandy, good to see you again. All right, so let's do, Let's move into what's the right. We're talking a lot of exercise today and I see that question about HMB to help Keto. I really. I must tell you, I don't really know about taking that or taking exogenous ketos at this point, so not really keen on that. Robin, hey. Good to see you there. Lisa's been doing if for two and a half years. Love seeing that. Hi, Kathy. I was just doing a de aging podcast because again, we're redoing the whole podcast. And part of what I was talking about was how critical it was to add intermittent fasting to really watch your meal timing. So I think with that one, I'll answer the do I need breakfast? Question. How about that? I'll do the do I need breakfast? Question. Here we go. So, jj, do I need breakfast? And I gotta tell you, when I very first started this, I was like, the breakfast. Like, I was so insistent on breakfast. You must eat within an hour of waking up. And if you look at the research there, it's all over the place. There is a lot of research showing that people who skip breakfast have a higher risk of heart attacks, women of higher blood pressure, a higher risk of obesity. But let's really kind of back it up, because you can get research to prove anything one way or the other. I always want to look at what's really going on with the hormones and how are you feeling? And I'm waiting until we get a little bit more tuned into genetics and really starting to understand early birds versus night owls and who really is on in the morning and fired up. Because I find that people who tend to have more of a morning brain are more fired up. They tend to be the ones that are hungrier in the morning, and the ones that are the opposite tend to be hungrier in the evening. I think there's a couple important things to think about here. I think you should actually eat when you're hungry, and that means really hungry. That not emotional cues. Not because you smelled something cooking, like, when you're really hungry. So in the morning, what I've trained myself to do is I get up in the morning, I have black bulletproof coffee. Unless I've got brother Dave with me, in which case he makes me bulletproof the exact way I like it. Otherwise, I have black bulletproof coffee, and then I just kind of wait until I get hungry. And depending, I switch time zones a lot. So depending on where I'm at, that's usually anywhere from, you know, two to three hours after waking up. I find for me, it's usually about two hours after waking up. So that's the first thing that I do, is I eat when I'm hungry after waking up. And then the next thing that I do is make sure, and this is a hard and fast rule, is stop eating at least three hours before before bed. And longer is better. Four or five hours is even better. And that means that you need to eat a good meal of fat, protein and fiber so that you're not that you're able to sleep. Because if you're real hungry when you're going to bed, that can make it problematic. Adrenaline comes up and you can't sleep well. But that's what I tend to do first, is really work with eating breakfast a little later, eating dinner a little earlier, and then seeing if I need something in the middle or not. And it may just be a bar if I need something between breakfast, between those two meals, or if, depending on what the space is, I might need an extra and a real meal. So I used to be never ever skip breakfast. Although now what I find is that some people do fine skipping breakfast and some people like me do not do fine skipping breakfast. And some people can skip dinner. I can do that. Some people are horrible at skipping dinner. So I think you really, really have to just see what works for you. And I think what we're going to find that this has a lot to do with your cortisol rhythm and your genetic sleep patterns. So those are the big, the big ones for that. So again, wake up in the morning, eat when you get hungry, don't graze, don't snack, eat two to three meals, stop eating three to four hours before bed or more. Try to get in like goal is at least a 12 hour overnight fast and ideally a couple days a week. You're getting into intermittent fasting, if not consistently, at least a couple days a week where you're getting that 16 hour between meal fast and then throwing in as you get more metabolically adapted, a 24 hour fast between meals. Having, you know, early dinner one night and then not eating again till the early dinner the next. All right, there's the breakfast answer.

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