Healthy Eating Set On Easy Mode

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All right. First one came from Instagram. It's Christine Miller DeVito. And she says, where do I find the precooked grass-fed beef? Buy it sliced cold. I had this in a recipe. That's why she's saying this, that I mentioned for one of my lunch options. You can get that at Sprouts. I will tell you, you know, I'm a road warrior. If you follow me at all, I travel about 70% of the time. I do not travel light. I'm not a carry-on gal because I have so many things I need to bring with me. So I know what's— where Sprouts are all over the country. And it's one of the first things I do is get a fridge in any place I'm staying and I get their sliced turkey and grass-fed beef. So that's one of my little hacks is they've got fresh grass-fed sliced beef. Amazing. Okay. She also says, I found that I can no longer tolerate onions, peppers, radishes, or celery. Do you have any suggestions on substitutions for these vegetables? I guess I would try to find out why you can't tolerate them anymore as my bigger question for you. I'm assuming, I don't know if they're cooked or raw. So a lot of times cooking can fix everything. I don't like any of those things raw except for radishes. So first of all, I would check your gut and see what's going on there. This is where I really love either a Tiny Health Test or a Vibrant Wellness Gut Test. So I would look at a gut test and see what the heck's going on. Then the next question is, is it okay if I substitute goat cheese for feta cheese? When I'm writing recipes, The way I write them is I want you to be the artist. So if I put goat cheese, of course you could do feta or vice versa. It's really for you. Like if I put down that you're supposed to use grass-fed beef and you wanna switch it to chicken, go wild. You know, you can switch things out, move things around however you wanna do it. If you can't do onions, I'm assuming you probably can't do leeks. But you know, I'm trying to eat as many different vegetables as possible. I've been really working on that 30 different plants a week from Tim Spector, the ZOE nutrition study that came out that showed that the best for your gut microbiome in terms of diversity was 30 different plants. Herbs count. And so like play around with some of the other ones that could work for you. Cooking fixes a lot. A lot of times raw vegetables can be a little bit rough, so maybe cooking these things fixes them. Okay, so Jane, James McPhee from Instagram says, JJ, what's in your all-in-one shake? So I have two different types of all-in-one shakes and two different flavors. Vanilla and chocolate. And then I have plant-based and I have bone broth. Now, here's why. I have found that a lot of people seem to respond to dairy. And so I wanted to make some options for my protein shakes for people who couldn't do dairy, who can't do whey. But the challenge is whey is actually the best amino acid profile, like of everything. Whey rocks it. So one night I woke up at 4 in the morning thinking, what would happen if I took the amino acid profile of bone broth protein and of plant-based protein, mine's pea. And the challenge with both of those is they don't have the perfect balance like whey does. I go, but I could make them that way. And so that's what I did. What I did was I took the amino acid profile of whey, and then I took the amino acid profile of bone broth protein, and I looked at what I need to boost in terms of amino acids for bone broth or amino acids for plant to make them resemble whey. And so the big thing that I've done in my All-in-One Shakes is made the amino acid profile boosted so that it's the best amino acid profile. Because you're using this protein powder most of all for the protein and you're eating protein for the amino acids. And so I wanted to make sure I gave you the best profile for you. So that's what I did. So that's the key thing in here is this is what's in your All-in-One Shake. And then we have some other stuff in it. You can see if you just go to reignitewellness.com because by the way, right now, since you're live with me, if you use the code SAVE$10, SAVE$10, so S-A-V-E dollar sign 1-0, one-time use code, you can use it on shakes and you can get your shake for yourself. You can use it on anything you want the store except the granola, and it can't be used with discounts, right? But $10 for you to use, and you'll see in there with Reignite Wellness, you can go and look at all the rest of the things. I call it all-in-one because I've also put in some nutrients in there as well to make it more inclusive. But the real thing that I think is the hero of it is the fact that we've got all of the protein amino acids just dialed. All right, next up from Dana Lewis, and she says, people really underestimate the brain side of creatine. Also interesting on HCL, not talked about enough. What have you seen a difference in women specifically? Okay, so there's a couple really wild things going on. I want to give you some insight into this, pull back the kimono on creatine for women. 95% creatinine's in our muscle, 5% in our brain. I have heard, now some of this is just theoretical, is that our muscles, it's like we prioritize it in our muscles. This makes no sense to me. It would seem like you should prioritize your brain, but apparently your muscles, you need to have enough so that you have enough then for your brain. Now we make a gram or two of creatine a day from amino acids, methionine, glycine, arginine. Turns out for your body to make that creatine's very, it is the most expensive process we do in our body. To do this using something called methylation. So it uses your B vitamins, your methyl donors, to do this. It's very expensive. So things like B12 and SAMe, 5-methyltetrahydrofolate, are things that we use to methylate. This is the thing that taxes your methylation system the most. So if you're one of those people who's a poor methylator, has that 5-MTHFR SNP, like the last thing you wanna have to do is have your body have to work harder to make creatine because you're not getting enough supplementally. Okay, so that's the first part. Our body makes a little bit. We should be getting it from food. You have to eat a gram, a pound of raw or rare meat or fish, or 2 pounds of cooked animal protein to get about a gram of creatine. That is a ton. Like, I personally can eat that, but I think we're probably not getting that in, right? Can we agree? So it turns out that if you take in more creatine, your body will, will balance out by slowing down or shutting down its own production of it. Not forever, but just while you have enough on board, which is awesome because then you protect those methylation pathways so they can do other important things like lower homocysteine.

How cool.

So what the studies have shown is that about 750 milligrams of HCL equals about 5 grams of monohydrate. But when they've done the brain research, and I don't know if the form gets into the brain better or what, 750 milligrams of HCL they found helped women have faster processing speed, better cognition, better mood. And this was a menopause study. So these are preliminary research, you know, there's not a gazillion of them, but I mean, that's pretty amazing. I know what it does for me. So, and now you hear on the monohydrate side, people are saying, oh, have 10 grams, 20 grams, but I don't know if you've taken that much monohydrate. You feel like crap. It's, it's distressing to your GI. You bloat. The other thing I want to point out is I took HCL and I combined it with taurine. Why? Like creatine is your performance engine, right? Well, taurine's like a cooling and fluid system. It helps your body with cell hydration. So it's going to help with you not feeling that bloatiness thing going on, right? So we used to always do taurine and B6 to help people not retain water during their periods. So taurine's really good for that. We also brought magnesium in because magnesium is really the activator here. In fact, magnesium— the ATP, which is your energy source in your body, is really magnesium ATP. You need magnesium to make sure your body can actually use the creatine. So they— that's why I put HCL, creatine, and taurine together. There is no other available that has that. I have the exclusive on it. So that is shiitake. It is amazing. If your guys want to use it, just cover the S, it becomes heatine. It's totally fine. But yes, so likely 750 milligrams is going to do you fine. I tend to use more, but I'm also 6 feet tall and I drive myself pretty darn hard. So between hard workouts, hard mental stress, I do tend to do at least 2 servings a day, sometimes more if I'm time zone adjusting. All right. So I've got from Kent, S. Kent S8S, breakfast ideas for someone who can't eat dairy or eggs. Yes, that's why I made the shakes exactly how I made the shakes. Now we have a guide that has 50+ recipes. We'll drop it into all of the different comments, but it's basically jjvirgin.com/smoothieguide spelled I-E, smoothieguide, and 50+ loaded protein smoothies. These are all dairy-free and egg-free. So remember when I wrote the Virgin Diet, it's drop 7 foods, lose 7 pounds, just 7 days. I wrote it to help people uncover their hidden food intolerances. The most common and ones that can be very triggering for people with any kind of autoimmune disease are dairy and eggs, then of course gluten. And so the next question, should I avoid dairy if I have Hashimoto's? I certainly would. Autoimmune disease, I would be very careful. I'd like, I'd basically follow the Virgin Diet and that is pulling out gluten, of course, and then dairy and eggs, corn, soy, peanuts. Okay, so Lupe says— M. Grier says, I love your protein cheat sheet. Do you have one for carbs? So first of all, I'd love to know, do you want a protein cheat sheet or a carbohydrate cheat sheet? And we are creating, by the way, a perimenopause, menopause cheat sheet, or we're thinking about it. So love to know if you would like either of those. But as far as cheat sheets, um, we're going to drop the protein cheat sheet for you on Instagram and Facebook so you can see what she's talking about. Here's the way to think about carbs, and This is the book I wrote called The Sugar Impact Diet. And I wrote this book to help you really uncover carbohydrates, understand them better, because all carbs are not created equal. There is a huge difference between a slightly ripe banana and banana chips, between a cooled and baked potato and French fries. And I know I'm stating the obvious. Between a blueberry and a raisin. I know they're different fruit, but I'm saying it because raisins are super condensed. Grapes are higher sugar, Raisins? Oh my goodness. Between an apple and apple juice, right? What we want to think of with carbs is to get the carbs that have the lowest sugar impact. How do I talk about sugar impact? Sugar impact is looking at your impact on blood sugar, your impact on insulin, how much fructose it has, and how much fiber it has, and how much nutrient density it has. Things with more nutrient density and fiber, better. Things that are more insulin-raising or blood sugar-raising, Worse. And so that's when I went through and I rated all of the foods. So that cheat sheet is actually in the Sugar Impact Diet, and I rated them green, yellow, and red. So something like a blueberry would be a green, and— or a raspberry or a blackberry. A raisin would be red. So it's all in the Sugar Impact Diet, and it really helps you. You go through the process just like in the Virgin Diet, and you figure out where do you need to be on that chart. Do you feel better when you eat low sugar impact foods or low to medium? And it also helps you kind of go, if I'm going to eat a higher sugar impact food, where should that go and what should I do after? I just recorded a little eating routine video, and one of the things I put into the eating routine— because I was like, we all talk morning routines, but we really need to talk about eating routines and what we should be doing. And one of the eating routines is we should be calming our nervous system down before we I just been playing around with this thing called a Pulsetto. I'm kind of obsessed with it. It's a vagal nerve stimulator, but you can use it before you eat just to get your parasympathetic up and be able to digest better. But then after you eat, especially if you're eating higher sugar impact foods, do some air squats, go for a walk, bring your blood sugar back down. Okay. Heather on IG has a chiatine question and it's @hdjewel. Chiatine versus monohydrate, but what about for brain health? Do you take the same amount for just muscle building? So no one knows right now. There have been a couple of preliminary studies on this. The problem is, how do you know if it's in the brain? You can't test it, right? So the only way you test it is by going, how's your mood? How's your focus? How's your processing speed? Those are the ways that we're looking at it versus, you know, looking at your energy or looking at your recovery or looking at your strength gains, etc. So this is one of the challenges right now is we aren't really sure. I find with most people, 1 to 2 scoops They feel great overall. If you do more, your body just doesn't really produce its own, which is actually better. It's not forever. It's just while you're taking it. The minute you stop taking it, it'll start producing again. But it's actually better because you're saving that methylation for more important things. So I think if anything, it's an indication to do more. So I do 2, 2 servings a day of my chiotene. If I'm traveling, time zone adjusting, I generally take it to 3 to 4. Now I'm going to drop my creatine guide into chat. This is at jjvirgin.com/creatineguide. There's some really great information there. I cite the research in there as well. So you'll get to see the difference between monohydrate and HCL. And I show you actually the absorption and bioavailability curves because you're going to hear out there that monohydrate is the only one you can take that is the best studied. It's the cheapest. Well, it might be the cheapest. But when you compare the amount you need to take versus the amount you need to take of HCl, and then you add in magnesium and taurine, it's not. So that's the other part. Beware what you're hearing. If I hear one person say it's the most studied, so I should take it, it's like, should I take things that have been around the longest just because they've been around the longest? I don't have a horse in my backyard. I'm not using a rotary phone. You know, I don't have a fax machine anymore. So, I mean, I don't even understand that. Anyway, being a PhD dropout, I'm sorry, Mom. We're counting them all up. It's like 36 graduate and doctoral level classes. And ongoing conferences and multiple certifications and just studying every single day. But more importantly, I learned the most important things not in the research lab. And that's what was so interesting in school was we were being taught stuff in the lab, but I was paying my way through graduate school, so I was not just stuck in the lab. A lot of times, like, people are grad students and they're also getting paid to be in grad school by working in the grad school. Not me. I worked outside, so I was testing everything. And that's where I learned the most. From 40 years of working with with y'all has made a big difference. Okay, more questions. Someone said, I purchased Amino Power powder from your Amazon store last month and just ordered more from your website. Was there a change in the formula and taste? Yes. So totally upgraded the entire thing. Um, we used to have a fruit punch flavor. I'm sorry, I am not 5, so I did not like fruit punch. I've been reformulating every single product. They're now all done, and I've got some new ones coming out I'll tell you out. If you have not tried my chocolate or vanilla protein and fiber granola, oh my gosh, 10 grams of protein, 11 grams of fiber. I'm obsessed, like obsessed with this. But as far as amino acids, so I was looking at this and I went, you know, first of all, I want to make all of my powders feel— taste about the same so you can combine them and it won't be weird. You know how sometimes you combine and you have like orange with raspberry with fruit punch and you're like, this is just gross. So everything is this lemony orange. So my Electro Replenish electrolytes, which I reformulated, and my amino acid power, my essential amino acids, which is called Amino Power Powder, I reformulated. And my chiatine is that orangey lemon. So everything is built to go together because I like to put all three of those in my gym bottle and take with me. So by the way, if you've not tried chiatine, when you go to the store to spend your $10, also grab the stick packs. So we have the stick packs now. You can throw them in your purse, That was quite an endeavor to get stick packs. I can't even begin to tell you, but we have them. Yay. So you can get them. You can even just add on a little trial of them if you want. They are there. So as far as the Amino Power powder, what changed besides the flavor? What I did was I went through and every single product that was in the line when I bought the company back 18— gosh, it's almost coming up on 2 years now. This is quite an endeavor. I looked at every single product and I was keep, kill, or upgrade. For the aminos. I knew I wanted to upgrade them because I'd been listening to a lot of amino acid information, and I really liked the information I heard from Dr. Robert Wolfe and a bunch of the different protein researchers. And what they had in the NIH is the best way for— is the best blend for sarcopenia. So that's what I modeled, made the most sense to me. And then of course, making it taste citrusy lemon. The reality with amino acids is they taste like crap. They're the worst tasting things ever. And so getting them to not taste bad is its own little special feat. Okay, context of the video is about what you put in your smoothies. Oh, okay. I just read Georgi Dinkov say that resistant starch can feed endotoxin-producing gut bacteria, thereby promoting inflammation. To avoid low glycemic starches such as green bananas— there are some people out there. It's funny, I also coach healthcare practitioners and help them build their brands, and one of the things I've warned all of them about, and I think it's the challenge out there, is that the people who get the most attention on the internet make the biggest claims, and they, they go down this rabbit hole of absolutes, and science is never that way. This is a completely overgeneralized claim. It's not a fact. Green bananas contain something called resistant starch. So do cooled potatoes, cooled rice. Now, resistant starch can affect the gut microbiome positively. Potentially there could be a negative, just like fructooligosaccharides can be great for the microbiome but negative. It depends on the situation. In most cases, this is something that you should be doing and can be amazing because they're rich in resistant starch. And resistant starch is this really cool starch that's not digested in the small intestine, and that it goes to the colon where the microbes feed on it. And that's what you want. It's kind of like a prebiotic in that it can increase some bacteria, it decreases others. In most cases, what you see with resistant starch is that it increases the production of these short-chain fatty acids, especially butyrate. And butyrate is amazing. It's one of those things when you do a gut health test like Tiny Health or Vibrant Wellness, it's one of the things you look for. And a lot of times you end up having to supplement. I'm— I've been supplementing. I just did— I went through hellacious rounds of antifungals, antimicrobials, antibacterial antibiotics after my Amazon trip. I'm restoring my gut now. Did Tiny Health test. Now I'm on a couple different things— the Pendulum Polyphenol Booster. I'm on BodyBio's, um, Tudka and their butyrate But like, that's one of the big things that showed up was a problem with butyrate. And butyrate helps with your leaky gut, with gut barrier function. So if you feel worse doing some of these things, this is what you need to check. Because here it's kind of a, it's its own little like lab test. If you take resistant starch and you feel bad, I wanna know why. Do you have SIBO, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth? Here's the reality. If you are on a GLP-1, it slows down gastric emptying. This can actually potentially lead to some small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. Growth. If you have low stomach acid, which— this is why I always tell people you should be taking protein digestive enzymes. That's something that we've been doing for years, especially if you're increasing your protein. But these— we're actually— our protein enzymes now are moving to a comprehensive formula to help you. They've always been a comprehensive, not just protein but fat and carbs too, but it's really focused on helping restore the gut and gut enzymes. But if you have any kind of SIBO right, or a FODMAP sensitivity, which will tend to be— it depends on how ripe the banana is— you might feel worse. If you do, the real question is why? Because these things should be really, really helpful to you. The idea that resistant starch feeds endotoxin-producing bacteria is kind of outrageous to say. So the reality is these bacteria, they're called LPS, they come primarily from gram-negative bacterial cell walls. Whether food increases, it really has to do with what's going on with your gut. Is your gut messed up? Are you inflamed? Do you have poor metabolic health? This comment of just avoid that is— I completely disagree. And I would also say that if you're struggling with any of these things, because what we know is resistant starch— it's why our extra fiber is a focused resistant starch product, because resistant starches help with insulin sensitivity, butyrate production, fat burning, satiety, bowel regularity, post-meal glucose response, right? Super important. So So in conclusion, this idea that everybody should avoid this and they're inherently inflammatory is wrong. But when you say these inflammatory things online, you get a lot of attention. And that person in particular is known for doing that. Okay, from Instagram, do you use any kind of oil in your diet? Yes, I do. Now here's how I build my plate. This is my overall thought process on fats and oils and all of that, because I know I got a question on that. The first thing I do is, you know, I eat protein first. So I always always start with animal protein, clean, because we store toxins in our fat. This is why you want clean animal protein. You are what you eat. 8. Then I use fats in cooking. Now, what fats do I use in cooking? I use extra virgin olive oil or avocado oil or ghee. Every once in a while sesame oil, every once in a while coconut oil, but those tend to be the ones I use the most. If I'm using other fats or getting other fats in my diet, it tends to be avocado, nuts and seeds, I mainly get nuts and seeds in my super amazing granola I was talking about. I don't just have nuts and seeds around because I tend to be a piggy with them and too much healthy food's unhealthy. I'm really careful with the amount of oil I use either for cooking or for anything because it is very easy to go overboard. I remember a couple years ago we were going to Italy and I'd just done an interview with Dr. Gundry, who is like an extra virgin olive oil fanatic, and he'd just given me all the research. And there I am in Italy like, basically dumping the olive oil bottle on the salad, like just being a piggy with all this stuff. And it adds up, man. You can get a half cup of olive oil on your salad if you're not careful. It's like you had 5 calories of arugula and you had about like 400 calories of olive oil, maybe more. So it's great. Be careful with it. Use it wisely and make sure you're getting it in smaller bottles, high quality. I only use Fresh Pressed Olive Oil Club. I've been a member of that for years and years and years because they actually source it and it's real olive oil. I'm sure you've heard the olive oil crisis or situation in the stores where a lot of the olive oil is, is cut with other stuff. Okay, what is sarcopenia? So sarcopenia is low muscle mass. There's also dyneopenia, which is poor muscle quality. So what I'm really working on now, and I'm doing this with the Lindora Clinics where I'm Chief Metabolic Health Officer, where you can go in and get a metabolic assessment assessment where you look at your body composition. When you're looking at your body composition, you're looking at fat mass and fat-free mass. Basically, fat mass is fat, fat-free mass is everything else. From that fat-free mass, they're going to make a prediction equation of how much of it is skeletal muscle. It's a prediction. However, what we know is how much, you know, it's going to be the thing that will shift probably as you're, as you start to shift, unless you're morbidly obese and you'll be losing the connective the, the stuff that supports the fat, some of that's fat-free mass. So what we need to do is combine fat-free mass information with, with muscle quality information. So in diagnosing sarcopenia, the things you would look at are really more muscle quality. So some of the things that you can look at to see if someone's got sarcopenia is you do this test where you're sitting, standing over a traditional height chair, you put your hands across your your chest and you count how many times you can squat and stand back up. You have to tap the chair so you make sure you got there in 30 seconds. Look for the norms on that online. That will tell you if you're where you need to be. Another great predictor is your grip strength. Those are very inexpensive to buy on Amazon. Like a hand grip dynamometer is $20, $30. Another great one is, is walking speed. And there is a simple walking speed, walking test. It's like like 150 feet or 180 feet, like how fast you can do that. And those are some of the most common tests to look at sarcopenia and dynapenia. I believe that if we were actually looking for this, we would have a crisis on our hands, but we aren't looking. Shannon says, is there a healthy nighttime snack? I'm eating organic oatmeal, blueberry, and raw almond butter. The goal is to stabilize blood sugar but need to reduce belly fat. What is a better time to eat that snack? Oh, I'm glad you asked this. So here's the reality. Why are you eating this snack? Why are we snacking? So what you really want to do is you want to eat 3 meals, maybe 1 snack during the day, and you want to eat during a smaller window. So you should eat about an hour or 2 after waking up in the morning. You need like an hour at least, but 90 minutes or so for your pancreas to come online. You get up in the morning, go out, see the sun, bring your cortisol up, get your melatonin down, get your organs firing, get your insulin going so that when you eat, your body's ready. And then you're going to eat every 3 to 5 hours. No. And so think about if you had breakfast around 8, maybe you have lunch around 12 or 1, dinner around 6. You want to stop eating 2 to 4 hours before bed. 2 hours is the minimum. You know, longer is better. So the last thing you want to do is eat right before bed. That's the worst possible thing you can do. When you're sleeping, you should be sleeping, not digesting. If your stomach's full, it's hard to— you cannot raise growth hormone. So you don't want to do that. So you want to stop eating 2 to 4 hours before bed. You shouldn't be hungry if you're eating correctly, which means eating protein first, optimizing protein to 0.7 to 1 gram per pound of target body weight, at least 30 grams of animal protein, 40 grams of plant at a meal. You're getting in that 10 grams or more of fiber at that meal. You're getting in a lot of fluid before or after. If you're eating that way, you shouldn't be hungry. So maybe you've trained yourself to have that snack. I know that, that it used to be that people were like, you have to get up, eat breakfast, have a snack, eat lunch, have a snack, have a, have dinner, have a snack. Oh my gosh, this is ridiculous. So stop eating a couple hours before bed. And if I'm going to eat a snack, I'd rather see a little protein hit snack. So I don't love the oatmeal, blueberry, and raw almond butter because that's basically fat and carbs. You don't, don't kid yourself that almond butter is high protein. It's high fat. You can't be high and high. So you can either have high protein or high fat, but you can't have high protein, high fat. So almond butter is basically 90% fat and oatmeal and blueberries are carbs. So this is a protein-fat slam. So if you want to stabilize blood sugar, you actually don't need to eat to do that. Eat protein with fiber and you'll have good blood sugar control for a long period of time, right? Last thing you want to do is eat before you go to bed when your melatonin's up, your cortisol's down, your insulin production's down, because you'll wake up with higher fasting blood sugar and mess that whole thing up. Okay, let's see. So a better time to eat that snack would be never. And the next better time would be between, you know, breakfast and lunch or lunch and dinner, depending on what your timing is. So, you know, and for some people they need to eat 4, 4 smaller meals a day. Sometimes it's 3 meals, sometimes it's 2 meals. See what works the best for you. What are my tips for choosing meals out as a vegetarian? So I have a reel they're going to post on my tips for dining out. I always like to know why you're a vegetarian because the biggest issue with vegetarianism that I want you to check is to make sure that you have not developed a food sensitivity to dairy, eggs, or soy since you're gonna be so reliant on them for protein. So I am not a big fan of that unless there's some reason because I see so many food intolerances happening because of it. So that would be my first question as to why are you doing that? If you are doing it, well, an egg and egg white omelet with some feta or goat cheese is my kind of go-to breakfast if I'm out somewhere. And that's an easy one. Or getting some— I mean, that would be breakfast or lunch. And then I don't really eat soy, so I cannot speak to all of that. And I don't, you know, and I pretty much stick with Greek-style yogurt, and I don't do those parfaits because they're covered with sugar. That is why I would look at and go, is there a way that we could look at maybe adding in something? Little fish, little grass-fed beef, a little something-something in there to make it healthier. If it's religious, I get see if you can do— if they do anything like a salad that's got, you know, nuts and eggs on it, and then maybe you could have a lentil soup with it. Of all of the legumes, I like the lentils the best because they have the highest protein count. Maybe you can have some feta or goat sprinkled on top of that. So just look at how you can add in your, your nuts and seeds, your cheese, your legumes, and your eggs to make this all work. The biggest challenge you're going to have here is it's really easy to go overloading on fat fat or overloading on carbs. And if there's something that you can get like an organic miso soup or something like that, great.

Okay.

Revan Scanto on IG says, "I'm 45 and I'm not having any perimenopause symptoms. I feel great. Do lifestyle factors like diet affect how women experience this transition?" There are so many things that experience how you have this transition. So first off, genetics are huge. Probably the hugest. Now, I was adopted, so I had no clue. I had no information. So genetics are a big one. Lifestyle obviously is another huge one. Stress is a huge one. Like, if I could go back and tell my younger self anything, it would be like, incorporate great stress techniques way sooner. Like, I would always focus on my sleep, but I trashed myself with stress. And going into perimenopause, your most important thing is to have a handle on that. Body fat's another one. And what's interesting is exercise can be enormously helpful here, of course, diet enormously helpful. But if you're a little higher in body fat, you may have it a little easier because you're going to start producing hormones through your body fat and your adrenals. And so it's— people who are really lean sometimes struggle worse, which sounds a little crazy, but it is what it is. Okay, next one. Patricia Mora just wants to know, does it matter if you use frozen fruits or vegetables? Actually, the reality is frozen fruits and vegetables can be amazing because they picked at the peak of season. So they're picked at the peak and then frozen. So in, in a way, like, I don't know if you struggle with this at all, but I sure do. Like, you buy something from the store and then all of a sudden you've got— it's like your berries especially, you're like, there they are, they're nasty again. So what's great about frozen is you don't have that issue. Like, you get it frozen and then they're perfect. So they're totally fine. One thing too to think about if you're putting greens in your smoothie is you may be better off— and you're just going to have think, you know, what you're going to have to really check into how you feel. But for, for some people, especially if you've got histamine issues, taking things like— or oxalate issues or lectin issues— sometimes, especially for oxalates, doing some of the greens and cooking them first and then refrigerating them and putting them in your smoothie can be way better. By the way, if you want access to any of my challenges or giveaways or free resources, my promotions, newest information I'm sharing— of course you do, right? Then go to my free Facebook lifestyle community because I post everything there first. And then the conversations we're having here, which we're doing on YouTube Live, we do over in the Facebook community. So I've got a question from my Facebook lifestyle community that says, what do you suggest for plant-based diet for protein? Have you published information on healthy plant-based diet lifestyle? I, full disclosure, and I think you know this, I'm not a big fan. Like, if you are doing a plant-based lifestyle for your spiritual, religious reasons, then we're going to work on what we need to do to make that the best, healthiest version of it. But if not, I think you are way better off eating, incorporating in some animal protein. Now, having said that, in all of my cookbooks, Virgin Diet Cookbook, Sugar Impact Diet Cookbook, I have plant-based options as well. Ditto my shake. My shake is plant-based protein that's been optimized in its amino acid profile, which is super important. And then I would also tell you my Amino Power powder is really important for you. So I've got my cookbooks, I've got those things. Now I've got meal plans in those programs for you. So in those books, in those programs, you've got recipes, you've got meal plans. There's another thing I want you to think about here for plant-based that you really want to consider, and that's making sure for plant-based, you know how I say 0.7 to 1 gram per pound of target body weight? I want you to go to the higher end because you're working on getting these essential amino acids that are not going to be in as good of a quality balance as you would get in plant or an animal. There's something called the Digestible Indispensable Amino Acid Score, and this looks at how well your body can digest and utilize amino acids. And you look the score up and you will see that like dairy ranks the top. And then animal protein. And then we start to get down to plants. Soy is one of the higher, then pea, but then it goes really low down. You basically want things 100, um, 100 or higher on the DIAAS score, and there's no plants that do that. So that's where, again, that essential amino acid blend that I have can fall into place and support you and help you out. So next question is, what are fiber-rich foods? So we have a fiber challenge coming Stay tuned. I know we've been— we're in the ARM Challenge right now, but the next step will be the Fiber Challenge. And really with this idea— and I got to give you some other important information about fiber and the gut microbiome, because when we think about the body, you think about eating protein as a function macro to help your body rebuild, restore, build muscle, right? Carry hormones, build bone, build hair, skin, and nails. Then you've got your plants for your microbiome. And when you're eating plants, you're doing it for the polyphenols, all those plant nutrients and the fiber. Now it turns out that one of the really important things for your gut microbiome is actually fermented food. So fermented foods gonna make the biggest difference alongside these fiber-rich foods. The challenge I have is us getting in 10 grams of fiber at each meal and 30 different plants a day. As far as fiber goes, there's a couple things to look at. Number one, there's four different types of fiber. Now it's not like one food, so yes, Yes, slightly green banana or cooled potatoes have more resistant starch, but it's not like any type of plant is all one type. There's soluble fiber, there's insoluble fiber. Soluble fiber tends to give bulk to your stools. It's— it gets more water. Think of it like a sponge. Insoluble helps move things along, improve transit time, kind of like Scrubbing Bubbles. Prebiotic fibers help feed the gut microbiome. They can be gassy too. And then resistant starch tends to resist digestion and go to the colon where it makes those short-chain fatty acids. So you want all of these things, and that's why we're gonna do this challenge. And we do have a fiber guide. So all of that stuff will be coming. Watch, be in the community, especially be in the Facebook group community, and you will learn first about the free challenge coming up on fiber. But along with that question, there was a, how can we naturally increase our own body's GLP-1 with fiber? Now here's the thing. So your body produces GLP-1. We believe that a couple things may happen over time that get in the way of this. Number one, when you are more insulin resistant, you might not produce as much GLP-1, or, you know, you might become more GLP-1 resistant. Your body's producing it, but your body's not reacting to it. Don't know which ones yet, but the, um, your body should be making GLP-1 in response to you eating fiber and protein. Those tend to be the things that cause the best GLP-1 response. It's a couple of minutes though. You release this thing and GLP-1's out and then it's gone. Exercise increases GLP-1 as well. Turns out there's a couple things here that can help. Pendulum's Akromancia product can help get your body better at producing GLP-1, probably helps something with the L cells that produce GLP-1. And then Calicurb and RX Sugar both have been shown to release more GLP-1. Now Calicurb shows— does it for about 4 hours, which is amazing because most of these things are again transient. Couple of minutes. I'm not sure how long the RX Sugar one hangs out, but I'm obsessed with RX Sugar. They make these amazing syrups that are great to cook with or use for desserts, use for toppings. They have these GLP-1 gummies that you can take that will lower your blood sugar response to the meal. They have a brownie mix that's crazy good. And then they have, um, their sugar, and I use their allulose sugar to cook with. So that's another thing that you can do. But again, with with all of these things is going to be very different than taking a GLP-1 because a GLP-1 doesn't stay around for a couple minutes, it stays around for days. And that's the difference. And that's why this thing is working so well. And the big thing, if you are taking a GLP-1, is just ideally you're fixing all these other things in the background, like repairing your gut. That's where that acromancia from Pendulum could come in. Getting the fiber and protein on board so you're actually getting natural satiety happening, improving your body composition position with doing resistance training, adding in things like chiotine and yolked and Amino Power powder, and then using the least amount of that GLP-1 you need to kind of cut the food noise down, reduce the inflammation, improve insulin sensitivity. So there was a question here about how to calculate how much fiber your body actually needs, and to be honest, I've never seen anything around this. I don't believe anything like this exists. And again, that recent research that was really looking at gut microbiome Diversity, which is the key thing here, found that 30 different plants, but also eating— the biggest thing that made the difference was fermented food, and then 30 different plants, and then about 30 grams of fiber for women, 40 grams for men. I would bump that up to about 40 to 50 grams of fiber, but not overnight, over time. I've created the extra fiber product that I use in smoothies and add to things purely because it's richer in resistant starch, and I figure most people are not doing banana potatoes and rice. And not only that, slightly green bananas, cooled potatoes, cooled rice. And so it tends to be one we don't get as much in our diet. And then I have my granola. That is an easy way for you to get that 10-gram hit because, again, 11 grams of fiber in it. It's delicious in just 100 calories and 10 grams of protein. It's really fabulous. Should I eat even if I'm not hungry to meet my protein goals? I would wonder why you're— if your satiety signals are off, are you on a GLP-1? If you are not meeting your protein goals, what I I would say is you need to make sure you're meeting your overall, um, if you're trying to lose body fat, we don't want to go down more than say 20 to 25% off of your daily calories. Like, I don't go into too much caloric restriction. Monitor your body composition to ensure you're able to hold on to muscle while losing fat, and then use amino acids, the Amino Power powder, to make sure you're keeping your protein levels up. If you're missing a meal, take 2 scoops of it. You overall want to get minimally 100 grams of protein in a day. You could supplement if you only got to say 60 or 80 with like 2 scoops of, um, 2 to 4 scoops of Amino Power, and that would suffice in there. But I want to make sure you're also not cutting your calories too much. Intermittent fasting. Should women try to intermittent fast? For how long? So this whole idea that there's a perfect number and you, you hit— go into autophagy is kind of crazy because no one knows how to measure? Like, how do you know? And wouldn't it also depend on you and your genetics and what you ate the night before? All sorts of things. So the question with intermittent fasting is, what is the reason you're doing it for? There are some great things around it for producing stem cells, producing growth hormone, producing— taking out zombie cells. So I think there's some really good stuff, taking out the bad damaged cells. I think there's some merit to getting in a 12 to 14 hour overnight fast every day. And I also think there's some merit to pushing it a little bit farther to maybe 14 to 16 hours if you're really trying to help with blood sugar. So, or longevity, I might push it a little bit more, but I want to make sure you're also able to get in the protein and the plants that you need. So that's the big balancing act. I think 10 hours is probably for most people a perfect window because you eat, you know, 90 minutes to 2 hours after waking up, you stop eating 2 to 4 hours before bed. So when you look at that, you know, when you do it that way, if you're in bed 9 hours and you're— because it takes you like 30 minutes to fall asleep, right? Let's say you're in bed 8.5 hours and you eat an hour and a half after waking up in the morning. So right there you're at 10 hours. And then you stop eating 3 hours before bed. Right there you're already at 13 hours. So all we have to do is push you a little bit more in the morning, a little bit less in the evening and we get you to 14. So I would say 12 hours is my absolute, like, least amount. Make sure you're 12 hours. 10-hour window of eating, even better. Okay, last question. How can I gain weight from food sensitivities along with many chronic illnesses from— okay, so you're trying to gain weight. Well, I don't know what's all going on with chronic illnesses. Whenever I hear high food sensitivities, I want to see what's going on with your gut and also check you for celiac. So I would go get a really good gut test and see what's going on with your gut. If you've got really severe leaky gut, then you are going to need to work on healing that gut. Things like bone broth protein can be amazing there. If you're looking to gain weight, you want to make sure that you're gaining the right weight, you're not just putting on a bunch of body fat, right? So I would look at using Yolked product. That's that product I have on my website at reignitewellness.com. You can use your $10 coupon for that, by the way, too. And I would double that dose. That was the dose they used for sarcopenia, was a double dose. I would use that. I would use my protein shake. I would be using collagen. And the reason I'd be using my bone broth and the collagen is really they're great for gut healing. But I'd really dig in with a good GI doc and see what's going on with your gut to make sure you don't have any issues, um, that are causing the problem and making it so you can't gain weight. I'd also make sure I was doing some resistance training so that the weight you're gaining— ideally, we know that if you eat a little higher calories and it comes from protein, you'll put on more weight that'll be from muscle. So got to do the resistance training alongside it. Okay. Just a reminder, we've got our special for you guys. So you can go to reignitewellness.com. You can use SAVE10 and it's SAVE, the dollar sign, 10, 1-0, and you save $10 on supplements and shakes. Hopefully you're seeing that healthy metabolism is not like being perfect or restricting, right? It's really giving your body the right inputs consistently. It's getting a B+ over time. And if you found this helpful, be sure to subscribe. It helps so much. And also, if you can share it with someone who needs it, that would be super helpful too. If you're not in my Facebook community, it's JJ Virgin Lifestyle Community. That will get first access. I know we have our fiber challenge coming right up. And as always, keep focusing on building muscle, supporting your metabolism, and aging powerfully. I'll see you next time. Be sure to join me next time for more tools, tips, and techniques you can use to look and feel your best and be built to last. Also, I'd love to connect connect with you and hear your thoughts on the podcast. Here's how. First, subscribe to the podcast and leave an honest review. Second, take a screenshot of your review. And third, text it to 813-565-2627. That's 813-565-2627. When you do, I'll reply using my brand new Virtual JJ. It's my on-demand virtual self built from my books, talks, and years of experience so I can interact with you directly. You'll make my day and I can't wait to hear from you. 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 on this show is solely at your own risk.

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