Getting Lean for Life with Dr. Bill Campbell: Part 1

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Every holiday starts at Dick's. 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.

So this is super exciting because this has never been done before and I have the best guest for my first time here. I'm so excited you're here.

I am honored to be here.

All Right, this is Dr. Bill Campbell. He is in the house. Literally he is in my house. What he doesn't know I'm going to lock him in after this and do this to his brain and get everything out of it and transfer it over. He is here with us because I have been stalking him, watching him on social media. What you'll want to do is go to his Instagram and we will link to this in the show notes. Because if you love not just the research but understanding how to pull something from the research and put it into your everyday life, this is your guy. He has an amazing research review that I subscribe to that I just love. I get a couple of these every month but yours is my top one called Body by Science. And then he is also at the school where my son is getting his PhD in math, university of South Florida. He is a professor of exercise physiology and he runs something that is super cool. I don't think there's any of these anywhere else in the country. He runs a physique and performance lab. This physique and performance lab. What's your, like, core theory with this or through line of what you're trying to do with this?

So the research that my lab team does is we try to help people optimize their physiques within a maintainable lifestyle.

See, now, this is the most reasonable thing I've ever heard. Practical, right? It's completely practical. And that's. I love science so much. Like my two favorite things in the world, besides my husband and my doggies and my kids, are exercise and nutrition science and marketing. And what I've always had an issue with a lot of the science out there when I was in school is I was being taught stuff. And I go, yeah, but that doesn't work in the real world. And so the fact that you are taking this and then saying that has to be something that you can do in the real world is everything. It's amazing. I love it so much. And we will also, in the show notes, show you how you can get the research review because again, what this is, is it's taking the latest research and making it super applicable so you know exactly to do. So if you've heard about a diet break or what you need to do to lose fat fast and how quickly you can do it, that's what these studies tell you. Or you even just did one that was fun because you did diet soda. Yes or no? And the answer was yes or no?

It depends on what study you're relying on.

So I thought that was fantastic. So what I'd love to start with is how you got into all of this.

All right, so we're going back into my 20s. So I started off just loving bodybuilding. Love bodybuilding, Lifting weights, taking supplements. And at the time, I was in a marketing job, a merch sales, merchandising job. So I would sell weed killer and bug killer to the Home Depot's, Lowe's, these big home improvement brands. Did I love killing weeds? No. So I would do that in the day. And then I just couldn't wait to get home and work out and read about bodybuilding. So the magazines. And then I remember reading and I. I don't remember where I read it, but I remember reading just one statement. And that one statement you could say changed my professional life. The statement said, if you love what you do, you will never work another day in your life.

And I was like, that's it.

I love, like you, I love exercise and nutrition. Those are what I believe I was created to. To pursue. So that night realized, all right, I gotta get On a different path. And I had no science classes at this point. My degree was in marketing, so I had to start from ground zero in anatomy and physiology, chemistry, organic chemistry, biochemistry. So I started.

Yes, I did the same thing, English, and hadn't had to start back. Yeah, yeah.

So very similar. So that took a few years, and eventually that led to applying to a master's program, which I got rejected from the first one I applied to. And then I got into a master's program, got married about the same time, which was perfect because my wife was able to support me during this transition, this career transition. And then I was at a point where, okay, do I want to work in the private sector, sports nutrition company or maybe academia? And thought a lot about this. And I realized I think I can make the biggest impact in exercise and nutrition from an academic or research perspective. So ultimately, that's what I did. And I just. I love what I do. I love USF University of South Florida. I love my lab team, my students. I love the freedom that I get to research the topics that I want to research. So I'm living a dream life. I'm very blessed.

It's so sweet. So I will tell you, my son, you know, is getting his PhD in math, and he has. Now he gets to teach, and he gets to interact with the students. And he goes, I live my dream life. It's like, wait, I've heard this.

Yes.

And it's just.

It's true.

You know, it's the biggest thing I tell him. Cause he's like, oh, I just don't know about this. I go, you do what you love, honey. You figure it out. So you came to usf. How did it come to be that you have this physique and performance lab? Did you dream that up and create it? Like, where did that come from?

So everything I was told was, you have to pursue funding. And that usually means studying diseases. Because the government, the federal government doesn't care about how big one's biceps are or if your glutes are a little bigger. All the things that we care about as bodybuilders. I didn't care about that. I'm like, there are enough people studying sarcopenia, cancer. And those are, in my opinion, very important topics. But I was not passionate about it. So I said, okay, I can always find another job. I will either make it or fail researching what I want to research, which is exercise and nutrition. And essentially, it's a. Another way that I describe it. If somebody's fit, their bodies might be good. And I'm looking. How do we go from good to great? And the way that I went about this was I study bodybuilders. Bodybuilders are the experts with fat loss. But bodybuilders, they're a little too extreme. Most people can't implement what bodybuilders do just to step on stage. So I just dial it back a few notches. What are the essential components to improve one's physique? And those are the things that I research.

And that's where I'd love to dig in, because there are great lessons there. I mean, I spent years training clients at Gold's Gym in Venice. And what was so interesting at the time, it was when I was at Cal State Northridge and then when I was at usc. And what we were being taught in school was about 180 degrees different from what I was seeing people do at Gold's Gym. And I was like going, all right, my professors at Cal State Northridge and USC don't look that healthy to me. The people at Gold's Gym, like, there were 70 year old women I would have killed to look like. I was like, look at you. And I go, how come there's this divide? This doesn't make sense to me. Why on one hand am I being told at school that you need to lose weight before you lift weights and that you have to do cardio for at least 30 minutes or don't bother, and that you can get all the nutrition. I was literally told this. You can get all the nutrition you need from a potato versus I go down to goldstream Venice, you know, and they've got one little area with four bikes that you never see anyone on until, like, competition week. No one uses them. They do everything in the weight room. They're living on chicken, broccoli and brown rice. They go. It's a completely diametrically opposed situation. So you've had this opportunity to both look at what they were doing, look at the extremes and dial it back. What are like the big lessons learn there? Because that's how you designed your studies, right? Based on what you were seeing.

Yeah. Well, it's funny. I think you'll like this. I basically designed my studies for me and my wife. So we want to look.

Let's love this.

I think she does now. She didn't always love. When I was getting my. My doctorate and master's, she was my lab rat. Like, I would bring her into the lab and do all these tests on her because I was learning how to do the test that got a little wo.

Oh, God. Did you have to do muscle biopsies on her?

I did muscle biopsies, but that's the one. I didn't even ask. I did not ask that.

I don't think there's like, how do I know how much fast twitch and slow twitch? I'm like, well, I don't think you really want to do that, honey.

No. So I didn't even put her in that situation. But every other skill that I learned, I took blood on her when I was learning how to take blood. So everything but muscle biopsies. So that's essentially yes. I don't want to step on stage as a bodybuilder, but I would like to look close to that and be fit and be functional and have mobility. So the things that are interesting to me, and my wife has the same mindset. I'm like, all right, let's study this in the lab. And of course. Well, now, my students, I have such an amazing research team. They're designing our research studies this year.

Oh, that's so cool. Well, let's talk fat loss. I know we're going to dig into muscle a lot, and to fat loss and to protein. All my favorite things. Selfishly, just like you talk about, you design your studies based on you. Like, my podcast is like, what is J.J. most interested in? And everything now is geared around what does it mean to age powerfully? And the reason I put that together was I was looking at the statistics, you know, and everyone's talking about muscle loss as we age. But I go, well, yeah, you lose muscle, but all of a sudden, you can't unscrew the lid off the jar, and then you can't run anywhere. So it's really muscle, but strength more and power the most. So that's where I've been really focusing, and that's why I'm looking at powerful aging. But I know with most people, when you hear this, they go, they want to lose weight. What they really mean is they want to lose fat.

Yes.

And fat loss is, like, you know, reign supreme. So I'd like to start with the whole fat loss thing. But where I'd love to start is when I was in school, I was taught that men have 3 to 5% essential fat, fat they have to have to survive. Women have 10 to 12% body fat. For a healthy male, they'd be somewhere in the 10 to 18% range. An athletic male, say, 5 to 12%, and that a man, like, 22% higher than that was metabolically unhealthy. And that for women, that women was 18 to 22%, maybe up to 25%, but when they started to get to 29%, metabolically unhealthy and athletic women would be somewhere in the 15 to 22% range. Now I'm looking at the body fat ranges and they're all a lot higher. But I know that our physiology didn't change. So I don't know if we've just gotten better at understanding body fat and its risks, or maybe we're separating body fat and looking at visceral adipose tissue. But I'd love to know, like, are there norms now for body fat and where we should be and what are they?

Now I can speak to textbook norms and I can speak to what I see. So here's where I always just ground my own, my own mind around this. Your average young female who doesn't lift, but who's not obese. Her average body fat is 27%. That's your average. Just think of a young 30 year old female walking around, not fit, but not obese. So 27%, the average male, young male, again, not fit is 15%. We would look at them and say, oh, they are relatively fit, but they're again, these aren't people that are lifting weights or out running. So there's average. And in the textbooks they refer to this as reference man and reference woman. And I'm aware of that back back to the 1980s is when I first came upon that literature. So that one thing that tells us is people that are overweight, they're above those numbers of body fat to be optimal fit, prevention of chronic diseases, having more mobility, more energy, we're going to be lower than these averages. So for a female that may be around 20% body fat, for a male that might be around 12 to 13%. And you're right, it is important to at least conceptualize this essential body fat because when you start getting too lean, that's when you, for a female, you would start harming reproductive functions. When you see females like bodybuilders on stage, they're likely in that range, but they're not living their lives at these very lean physiques that you see when they're competing for most of them. So again, if a female gets below 10%, male gets beneath 5%, they are having some hormonal abnormalities that are not healthy in the short term. But we've learned that they recover after their competitions, usually within a few weeks to a few months. So just to answer all of this, the typical, most healthy ranges are gonna be lower than these averages because the average person, especially as society gets more and more sedentary, more and more reliant on ultra processed foods, these things promote excess body fat. So we want to kind of set the thermometer back to what's best for a number. In my experience, in my opinion, for males, that's around 12% body fat. For females, it would be around 20% body fat.

So it was interesting, Tim, and I went, I was telling you, I decided to get in my best shape for 60. So I did Adexa when I was 39 and I was 13.9% body fat. Now I'd been as low as 10.

And real quick, Dexs will always be higher than what you think. So if you're 13% on a DEXA, that would probably be 10, nine on many other devices. But let's let me hear this.

So 13.9. But what was interesting, that was when I was 39, at 59, I went in same weight and 13.9 again. And I was like, chicken dinner, right? I was like, winner, winner.

Yeah, you're winning.

But Tim, he didn't look like you just met him, but you would, you would look, oh, he looks great. He looks healthy, he looks fit. He was working out and eating healthy 25%. And I went, now I have a Tanita professional grade Tanita downstairs. And that had him at 18%. And I was like, but the Tanita downstairs reads me high and the Dexa read me lower. So I was like, that's interesting. Yeah, isn't that weird? So I went, although just recently it read me low. So I was like, okay. Huh. We went through and shifted everything for him, Made sure he was taking creatine, upped his protein, like, just shifted everything. Now he's down to 12 on the.

Tanita or on the Dexa. Dexa.

He dropped from 25 to 14. He put on. He dropped 20 pounds of fat and put on 19 pounds of muscle in six months. Now he also started testosterone. So I was like, if he hadn't started testosterone, he probably would have gotten half that result.

Yes.

You know, but still. But it just shows you how critical it is to test these things. Cause you wouldn't know just by looking, Nick. I never would have suspected this. And the other piece of it that I'm just hoping at some point we'll be able to start to look at is, you know, obviously your total body fat is very different than if you had higher visceral adipose tissue versus not right yes.

From a health standpoint. Yep.

Yeah. Is there any way that you guys are looking at that or evaluating that right now?

My lab does not. We have a device that will estimate visceral body fat, but all of my research subjects, they're generally young and healthy. Now we're about to having a little bit of a shift where we're going to start looking at some middle aged, maybe just females over the next year, so.

Nice.

Yeah.

Well, what are you going to. I guess you can't really tell me yet.

Well, I don't. Why don't have the details. So one of the projects, and I'm working on this with one of my grad students, Kendra Jarrett, we're going to look at females around the menopause age. So what are the best habits going into menopause so that you are as solid as you can be to prepare for this? Then during the menopause transition, what are the best practices that you can adhere to so that you're beating the odds? Because this is so good.

No one is addressing that market because it's so challenging to do it.

Yes. And it's funny, I, I thought the same thing. It's almost like the fitness profession ignores.

It's not almost like it, but I.

Don'T understand that because it's half the population and everybody ages now to slap me on the wrist. My level of caring wasn't as high until my wife went through this recently. So that was like, whoa, I have a lot to learn. So I'm in the process of learning.

A lot about it. It's a very interesting time because estrogen is going to drop now. You are going to have trouble building muscle and burning fat. Right. And you're going to want to crawl out of your body and leave and come back later. Testosterone's dropping.

If you had the energy to do that.

Yeah. Gonna go lie down and have some cookies and cry. You know, it's a very interesting time. The best way I described it is that margin of error you had before is gone. Like, it's gone. You can't do those things anymore. So now it's like, all right, you better be doing stuff to manage your stress. Cortisol is a bigger issue. If you look at the things that, that tend to fluctuate. Like a lot of things are going down at that time, but cortisol can be the thing coming up that's not gonna help you put on muscle.

And I wanna reflect on something you said a few minutes ago, which was a brilliant response that you, you had. You Said that you're focusing on strength and power. And this was women as they age. So one example that I always tell my students, if you look at, just picture an older person, just somebody that's aging, 60s, 70s, 80s, or think of somebody, unfortunately, that's in a hospital, if you just kind of zone out and focus on what do you notice about their movement? And there's one characteristic, and it is that it's everything is slow, slow movement, an effort to do things. And what we learned as muscle biologists is you lose mostly something called type 2 muscle fibers, which those are our most powerful muscle fibers. So if you don't train for power as we get older, that is the definition of aging from a kinetic standpoint. It's being slow and not powerful. So I like what you said. Training for strength and power becomes considerably more important the older we get, and it's different.

And that's what I've been really looking at here, is if you're going to train for power, you've got to add in some things that we typically tell people to stop doing.

Yeah, it's the opposite of what you.

Gotta jump, you gotta throw, you've gotta.

Like, think explosive movements. Yes. Now, that doesn't mean we don't warm up. That doesn't mean that we're. That we don't get into this wisely, but it's exactly right. And nobody's doing this. The only way to maintain these type 2 muscle fibers is to stimulate them. And strength and power training are the only ways to keep them stimulated.

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I am so beyond excited about this because literally I'm looking at this going, you know, what we've been doing is as we age, we go, oh, you know, you should just walk, just do walking, maybe do an elliptical. But all things that are much more long, slow distance and maybe you're going to do some Pilates or easier things. But if you look at, then if you are now prioritizing slow twitch fibers and you're losing fast twitch, but you're doing more exercise towards slow twitch, you actually will make it worse.

Yeah, there's a fiber type transition that happens in, in the body. So yes, that's.

So you got it. Like, that's why I've been looking at going, if I was going to design. And I have been agonizing over this now for months. I'm working on this program I'm calling Built to Last and it is for that, you know, 40 plus, 50 plus person. And I've got them into different types, you know, the sedentary, the couch potato, the walker. And based on that, where they start and how they do this, because I've got to be able to progress someone without getting them injured. But my whole premise is you train safely in a gym, not to get better at training at the gym, but to get better at life. And if you can't jump and move to the side and do those things in the gym, you're going to get hurt in real life. So you've got to put these things into the gym and the primary focus is going to be on fast twitch. When I look at cardio and everyone's talking zone 2 and VO2 max, well, you can improve VO2 max with HIIT training. I just tested my VO2 max yesterday because I was like, I want to see where it is and then I'm going to really push it. But I thought, I want to focus, start, have them do some sprint interval training and we'll do it controlled. But I heard on some podcasts, I'm trying to remember, who's that? You know, after the age of 30, it was like 95% of the population never sprints again.

Oh, that wouldn't shock me, right?

I hadn't sprinted for a while and then I Went to a Camp Tampa class and went on a sprint treadmill, which is why we got one. It was like, oh, I need to do this, you know? But that is. My focus is like. It's putting in power in the warmup. Like simple power moves. Now, this is after you've done some foundational training, but then some hypertrophies, then an immediate strength push, and then some hypertrophy so that I can get all of it in and in the order so that it makes sense. And that's where I was playing around, too. And then in the cardio, doing some sit, hit into some zone 2 if they want to. But again, what are the priorities? And then alongside that, some yoga in there, because they still have to balance.

Yes.

Get up off the floor.

Yeah. That's huge.

Right? I mean, think about if you were going to test someone's fitness level of 60 plus. I was like, what would the test be? Well, it would be jump. It would be get off the floor.

Right.

Cause getting off the floor involves balance, too. And then it would be a grip strength. Yeah. Pretty simple stuff. And then like a 11 mile walk for a VO2 max. Anyway, I digress. Let's go back over to fat loss.

All right. Which is my cup of tea, but.

I have so many things to talk about here.

I could not congratulate you on the mindset of training for power.

Well, and here's. Okay, one more thing there, and then we'll go over to fat loss. It's a bigger thing, too. Now you get this because you are married and you seem like a very evolved male. Plus, you do a lot of research on women. Women are an interesting bunch. And I've been talking a lot about creatine lately, and I get DMED every single day. Women going, I don't want to do this and get bulky. Women, our whole lives have tried to make ourselves smaller. And in fact, being 6ft tall, you know, my whole life, they're like, you're so big. I'm like, I'm tall. It was never like, I don't wanna be big, I wanna be tall. We've always tried to make ourselves smaller. And what I also see here at this point in life is you look at the blue zones, and I think one of the big reasons people live longer in the blue zones is because they matter as they age.

Yeah.

We have a totally different thing here in, you know, like an ageism thing here. And so I think part of this whole thing is stepping into your power. So now let's dig into fat Loss. All right, your area of expertise here you hear all the time like, and I remember this back in grad school, do long slow distance cause you'll burn more fat. And I went, I don't think it's about how much fat you burn during exercise. I think it's how much fat you burn all day long. So what are some of the myths out there with fat loss?

First, the one thing that I get a lot of is just being extreme in fat loss approaches. So let's have a, an assumption here. Somebody wants to lose body fat, so they desire to lose body fat. What should they focus on? The answer to that is calories. Some people will tell you. And all over TikTok, YouTube, cut carbs, dietary fats, horrible. Don't do a detox regimen. None of that matters. What matters is that you consume fewer calories than what you're burning. And I know that's not sexy. I know that's not exciting. My life is dedicated to fat loss. That is what I do. I get up in the morning and I read fat loss research and I go to bed at night thinking about that. And I've never read a study, and I've read thousands of studies where the researchers put their subjects in a caloric deficit and they did not lose fat. Now there are some things that we can incorporate into our lives which are more powerful that it can be, if you want to use the word hacks to help with fat loss. And the most low hanging fruit is protein intake. And my lab has done several studies on protein intake and most of this is in females. But it's amazing, like protein is unique in its ability to induce fat loss. In fact, I've been saying recently, protein is a fat loss supplement.

It's a great statement. Why do you think women are so afraid about eating protein? My whole mantra now is eat protein first. And I'd love to dig into like the protein leverage hypothesis all around this because I still see women not getting enough protein and they're like, I don't know how to get that much. I go, just eat it first, just eat it first. If you eat it first, then you know you got it in. Then eat the rest of that other stuff. You probably won't want to. So why is this propaganda still around?

Do you think that's that? I don't know. Now you offer protein supplements in your supplement line?

Yeah, I have a, I've been using protein shakes. Well, what happened was when I wrote the Virgin Diet, part of it was I wanted them to start the Day with a smoothie. The reason being is in the virgin diet. It's a, an elimination diet where I pull out gluten, dairy, eggs, corn, soy, peanut, sugar, artificial sweeteners. Because in food sensitivity testing, these are the most common offenders when you do that. What do most people eat for breakfast?

Protein or they.

No, they eat gluten.

Oh, you're saying in general.

Before.

Before.

So I, So you know, most people are eating a bagel with cream cheese, a muffin and a latte. So what I did was I made a smoothie and I actually had to make it because what I wanted didn't exist. Everything was either way. And I, I think whey is one of the most amazing things, but not if you're intolerant to it and you get low grade inflammation. And when I was doing food sensitivity testing, I used to teach for a lab company, Metametrics, and 70 to 80% of the people I saw, and I saw lots of food sensitivity testing were reacting to eggs and dairy. And I was like, well, shoot, you know, you looked at the protein powders and they were either soy, which I was not going to put someone on, chronic soy consumption, or they were dairy or eggs. So I made my own. And so that's when I started with all of this.

A lot of people, when they debate and argue and there's a lot of fighting in the fitness and nutrition space.

So much, yes.

And what they argue about is what's causing all this obesity. And one of the things that's most typically argued is it's carbs. And some people say, no, it's fat. And what's been ignored is the role of protein in the obesity pandemic. And it is a pandemic. It is worldwide now. So there has been a theory, and this theory's been around for decades, it just gets no attention. And essentially the protein leverage hypothesis says that until you get a given amount of protein in your diet or consumed in your body per day, you're gonna have an elevated hunger drive. If you don't eat much protein, you're pretty much gonna have a high hunger drive all day. When you do surpass this protein threshold now, you're not as hungry. And is there truth to this? Well, there's been multiple studies and this was originally found in insects. They were like, they the studies real quickly, which was really powerful. They had humans, these were males and females, and they had them eat a 10% protein diet, which was very low, a 15% and a 25% protein diet. And they did this for four days and they did a great job of disguising the meals so all of the calories were the same. So all the subjects were eating the same amount of calories. The only difference was some of them was low protein, some of them were higher protein diets. And again they disguised it so they couldn't taste the differences. And at the end of the four days, when they compared the 10, 15 and 25%, the group that was eating the lowest protein consumed significantly more calories. They were craving more foods. And this also supports a lot of the ultra processed food research. They were craving foods and they aren't, they weren't necessarily the healthiest foods. So they were choosing a lot of processed carbs and fats to make up these calories. So now we have this protein leverage theory which says more protein's gonna make us less hungry. And if you're less hungry, you're gonna eat less calories. Then we had this really well designed study which supported this. And that's just one of the studies, there are many. So eat protein first, those are things that you're putting yourself off to a great start to your day. And again, this is one of the slowest hanging fruit. Focus on protein, get protein first in the day. And this really helps people like me, cause I am a hungry guy. So I have to do things that help control my hunger. And this is one of the easy things we can all do. Just prioritize proteins.

It's, you look at eating protein first and prioritizing protein and the two big things. Cuz if you're hungry, all bets are off. I'd been in the trenches working on weight loss for now like almost 40 years. So if someone's hungry, I'm, we're done. Like, you know, I, it's not gonna work. So but when you eat protein you have both satiety and satisfaction. And it was interesting. I created this little thing, my seven day eat protein first challenge. And all it is, all I want you to do is figure out the optimal amount of protein, which I want to talk about what you think that is. And then we had making sure your bumper meals of breakfast and dinner, you really hit at least 30 grams more is better. I generally eat three meals a day, but you could do it in two, you could do it in three, you could do it in four, depends on how much. And the biggest thing that we got from that was, and I expected people to go, oh, I, you know, I'm not hungry. But the other thing it goes, I don't have any cravings. And I went, holy smokes. That's a huge one. You know that sniff it around afterwards. And the thing I always talk about is you could be sitting at a restaurant, you just ate a big piece of steak, and then they come by with salmon and they go, oh, we've got an extra salmon for you. Do you? And no one's gonna go, sure. You know, wow, it's your birthday salmon versus if they come. Come by with your birthday cake, you're like, huh, you know, yeah, but, yeah.

Nobody'S craving the fruit.

Yes. Yeah. I did this reality show for a year called Freaky Eaters. It was kind of like My Strange Addiction meets Hoarders, right? And it's like, what. What is that food? And literally, people would be like, mono eating. They'd only eat french fries or they only eat cornstarch or maple. Weird stuff. But never once did we have someone who was like, only eating salmon, you know, chicken breasts. It never, ever happened, ever. So then in looking at protein as this tool, as this fat loss tool, which I think if you frame it that way for people, they're gonna be like, holy smokes. Protein's a fat loss supplement. And. And I think it's important. You look at all the diet books and it's always manipulating carbs and fat.

Yep. That's where the argument is.

They never talk about protein. I'm like, if you just focused on protein, you wouldn't have to worry about the other stuff are just energy.

Yep.

You know, that's all it is. So where do you think the optimal amount ranges should be? Since there are so many different opinions on this stuff? What do you think and what research is it based on?

So a lot of research. And again, I've. I've done multiple studies on protein intakes. Many of these studies have been in females only.

I know. I love. You do so much research on women. Yeah, you're the outlier.

It's funny, I get asked and I. I always just say, well, one, I love women. I've married one, I've got two daughters, and I've got. I've got a girl Pat as well.

We're having a dog situation over here. My dog is. Is in love with.

And I like, I love it. I don't have a dog right now, so I love it.

All right, Keith. Doc.

So this optimal amount of protein is. I like to base it on. Well, let me just talk. What the research would indicate. The research would suggest the most important thing is your total daily protein intake. So when you get up in the Morning till you go to bed at night. How much protein did you have in the day? That's the most important thing. And I would suggest my research, my analysis of the research would say that if you multiply your body weight by about 0.75, that's the amount of protein where you get the most benefit from a high protein diet. And again, that can mean fat loss, maintaining muscle, even building muscle for resistance training. And if we have Europeans listening In, that's about 1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight, but about 0,75 grams. So take your body weight, multiply it by 0,75. That's how many grams of protein you should get above. That is not harmful. It's just that the benefits become less and less. But I, I will eat more than that. My wife will eat more than that.

I eat more than that.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah. I'm a very happy protein eater. So there's no harm to going above it.

No, and there's actually, I would suggest there's benefits. It's just that the 90% of the benefits are met at that 0,75 times your body weight level. Above that, benefits get less and less.

So you talk about that for the day. But what I'd love to do is also break that into meals.

Yes. And, well, that's the second most important.

Thing because I, so I get this DM and said, honestly, it was like either my hair stylist or my manicurist was one of those two. And I'm like going, I'm not sure why this would be a question says that you can only assimilate 22 grams of protein at a time. Something like that. And I'm like, what?

I've heard that my whole career would.

Vary based on your age, sex, activity level, size, muscle mass, number one. Number two is, is it 23 grams or is it 24? Like, I just kind of went, oh my gosh, come on. But you know, you've heard that your whole life of how much protein can you really use? And, and it's not like the protein that maybe can't be assimilated and brought into your muscles or wherever it's going to go. The rest of it doesn't just magically poof, go into air. Let's break into that. I would love to talk about that one. Like, what's an optimal amount per meal.

In my interpretation of the research is that's the second most important variable. So how much do you get in the entire day then? The second thing is breaking that up into approximately three to four, maybe even five. But typically three to four approximately equal distributions of that amount. So let's just say that I'm getting that I need 150 grams of protein per day. If I get 50 for breakfast, 50 for lunch and 50 for dinner, then I'm approximately, or in that case exactly equally distributing that protein throughout the day. And again, you can do that in four meals. I always like to tell people have a protein feeding either before or after your workouts. I think that makes sense. And then let's talk about the 22 grams that your body can't use. Where that comes from is an overemphasis on muscle protein synthesis. So it is true that your body can only take in so much protein and direct it towards muscle protein synthesis. That is true. So when people are saying you can only use 20 grams or 25, what they mean is they don't know they mean this. They mean I can't spike muscle protein synthesis with 50, 70, 80 or a hundred grams. There is a limit. So it goes up and then it levels off. Where this is somewhat not true or where this statement is lacking is we also have something known as muscle protein breakdown. So protein also suppresses the rate at which our muscles are being broken down. Nobody ever considers that. And you can build muscle by increasing muscle protein synthesis or by lowering muscle protein breakdown. We also have something called the thermic effect of protein. So the more protein we have in a meal, the more that will increase our metabolic rate. Cause it takes a lot of energy for the body to digest, absorb, break down. So let me just say this. If you took in a thousand grams of protein, your body will deal with it. There is no limit. Like you said, that it doesn't just disappear. A given amount will be limited on muscle protein synthesis, but there are other benefits that the body receives for more than 22 grams per meal. So on a per meal basis, figure out how much you need per day. And again, we get that by just multiply your body weight by 0.75 and that's how many grams you should get a day. And then divide that into three or four, maybe five protein feedings per day across the day. That's what we know will help maximize muscle mass.

Now, I've been focusing on at least 30 grams of animal, 40 grams of plant morning and evening as a recommendation to make sure that they're getting that two and a half to three grams of leucine. Yes, critical.

Now you're getting into the science wheeze.

What I'm trying to do is make this as easy as possible for someone to follow, but also make sure that we're covering our bases because again, I think, you know, 40 plus, but especially when we start to get 60 plus and you look at all those rates that you hear of muscle loss, strength and power doubling, I'm like, we need to make sure we're deploying everything. And so a couple things that I've been looking at and maybe just overkill, especially when I hear women going, I can't get that much protein. I was like, or they, they just are insisting on staying plant based. I'm like, just have some essential amino acids with your breakfast and your dinner and make sure you get it in. I also do that when someone's going through surgery. But I've been just toying with the idea and maybe this is won't make a difference. Cause I don't know how long after your meal, if you stop eating, at least two hours before bed, maybe three or four. How long are you in muscle protein synthesis? Because you're going to go through a whole cycle of breakdown buildup and you want to. Right.

There's a whole line of research called muscle full muscle full effect is how we often describe it. But when you eat protein, your amino acids in the blood go up and so does muscle protein synthesis. And what has to happen is some people think, well, let me just keep eating protein every 30 minutes so that my amino acids stay high and muscle protein synthesis stays high. But what happens is even if you were to infuse amino acids, because researchers have done this, amino acids go high in the blood, muscle protein synthesis will still go down even if amino acids are high. So what we've learned is you need to eat protein, increase amino acids, then it need to go back down and it needs to reset so you eat again in a few hours and then muscle protein synthesis follows.

This conversation was filled with so much incredible information and I want to be sure you get to hear all of it. So I'm breaking it into two parts and I'm going to continue it. Next week we're going to be Talking about what Dr. Bill Campbell has learned in his lab about losing fat and building muscle, the number one thing that makes diets more successful and the experiment he ran on himself that opened his eyes to the relationship between body fat and hormones. Make sure you tune in next week to catch the second half of my conversation with Dr. Bill Campbell. Now in the meantime, be sure to check out the show notes@jjvirgin.com forward/body by science and get Dr. Bill Campbell's free download the Best Body by Science.

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