How Do We Cut Down Fat (Especially Belly Fat or Visceral Fat) Without Losing Muscle Mass?

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How do we actually cut down fat, specifically belly fat, without losing muscle mass? This is JJ Virgin, four time New York Times Best selling author, celebrity nutrition expert and Fitness hall of Famer. I've been on a lifelong quest for answers to the toughest health questions and now I'm sharing what I found with you. Welcome to Ask the Health Expert. This is fiction from Instagram asks How do we actually cut down fat, especially belly fat or visceral fat, without losing muscle mass? It feels like I'm carrying extra weight on the belly and it's frustrating. Well, I will be right back with the answer.

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Thank you, thank you, thank you. This is fiction. I love this. This is one of my favorite all time questions. And I'm going to start by saying your body's not a bank account, it's a chemistry lab. And one of the challenges with low calorie dieting to try to lose fat is that you can lose fat and you can lose muscle. But more importantly, you'll downshift your metabolism over time and so you cannot sustain that type of weight loss. What you need to do is change your body's interest rate. And that is why I love putting on muscle so much. And so you've asked these super important questions. How do I lose body fat without losing muscle mass? Because the thing you want to do is teach your body how to burn off fat while holding onto or building muscle mass. Because muscle mass is everything. It's key to having a good jammin metabolism, a good healthy metabolism. You got to have muscle. So let's go through the different things again, your body's not a bank account, it's a chemistry lab. And let's look at all of the things that could get in the way of you losing weight. And I'm going to say fat specifically, and I'm glad you made that differentiator or could cause you to gain fat. The first big one. And since you're talking belly fat, we gotta bring up cortisol and insulin. So the first thing is cortisol. Now if cortisol is out of whack, it can cause you to store more fat around your belly. So that is exactly what we don't want to have happen. And I always look, by the way, the way I can tell if things are not going well with me is I look at my belly. My belly is my indicator of, you know, is life going well or is life too stressful. And I'll tell you that when the pandemic hit, boom, baby, five pounds and right around my waist, I was like, darn it, I know what's going on here. I'm not stressed, I'm not stressed. I'm not stressed, right? So this is why it's so important to make sure that you're getting good sleep every single night. Because poor sleep is one of the biggest causes of stress. And it's also one of the big ways that you help heal from stress and then that you're doing things on a daily basis to help your body handle stress better. What is that, you ask? Those are things like high intensity interval training, tapping, meditation, breath work, restorative, yoga, all of that and of course making sure that you're eating blood sugar balanced meals, you're taking good vitamin C, etc, okay, that's cortisol. Next step, insulin. Other reason that you could be carrying more belly fat is because you have got elevated blood sugar and insulin. And what you really want to do is help restore blood sugar balance. That means you eat by the plate. I talk about this in the sugar impact diet that you want to eat protein, fat and fiber because those really work as a trifecta for blood sugar balance. You want your body to be super insulin sensitive. That means it can, you don't have to jack up your insulin as much as super high if you are eating a higher sugar meal because your body's so sensitive to it now, you don't want to eat a higher sugar meal either. So big things here that are important is eating a low sugar impact diet. So see my book, the Sugar Impact Diet. And also what's key here is resistance training which helps improve insulin sensitivity quickly. Good sleep to see how these things all go together. And vitamin D, which is so important for your immune system too. Next up, reduce inflammation. It's interesting. Obesity creates more inflammation, more inflammation creates obesity. So how can we start to support lowering inflammation? Well, by eating better, getting the sugar down, removing any hidden food intolerances. That's the virgin diet. And then eating anti inflammatory foods. Again, I detail all of that in the virgin diet. All right, next up, sex hormone imbalances. Oh my gosh. If you are a female, going through the change, if you're a male going through the change, when your hormones start to go wonky, especially for women here, it can cause you to get more belly fat and makes it difficult for you to build muscle and hold onto muscle. So that's key important too. I also want to just do a shout out on the muscle thing. You just want to make sure you're getting optimal protein and you're digesting it well. Quite often as we age, our hydrochloric acid's going down. So even though you're eating protein, you're not digesting it, breaking down and being able to utilize it. So make sure that you're doing a trial of digestive enzymes too to see if that helps. I find that for the majority of people this is something that is helpful. All right, so sex hormones are super important. If you are going into menopause andropause I highly recommend working with a functional medicine doc on how to optimize your hormone balance so that you can get that regulated. Next up is toxicity, because toxicity can actually lower your metabolism and make you hold on to fat. So that's where regular detoxification strategies are super important. And of course, your gut microbiome, there are actually gut bugs that can make you hold onto fat, that can make you store more fat and make you more glucose intolerant. So optimizing your gut microbiome, taking a good. I do a variety of different probiotics. I'm rotating them on a regular basis to make sure, along with doing prebiotic foods and lots of fiber, that I'm keeping my gut microbiome super happy, super healthy, which helps you burn fat and can can also help have a good immune system. Okay, so here are a couple hacks. Now that you've gotten the basics. Notice that I gave you the basics before. The hacks do not hack without doing the basics. Got it? Promise. Here we go. Number one, cold exposure. Cold exposure. Okay, this is gonna be one of my new presents to myself. I'm going to get a cold plunge because I know if I get it, invest in it, then I'll make myself do it because it's super painful. But here's the thing. Getting. Submerging yourself, either by doing cryotherapy or getting into a cold plunge can help change your white fat to brown adipose tissue, which is the easy, more metabolically active fat to burn. So cold exposure is super great here. 3 to 5 minutes ice bath. You can't get a shower cold enough, but an icy bath or cryotherapy, I love that. Is perfect. Next up, intermittent fasting. And really what you want to think of here is a couple different things. Number one, varying your calories. Do not eat the same every single day. Mix it up, shake it up, just like we would have a thousand years ago. And make sure you're not snacking. Make sure you're giving yourself four to six hours between meals and ideally go two to three meals a day. So maybe a couple days a week you do two meals. Couple days you do three meals. So later, breakfast early dinner, 12 to 16 hour overnight fast. All right, next up, mentioned them already, but high intensity interval training creates a big metabolic deficit that your body has to recover from. So burns more calories doing that and also helps your body handle stress better. And I call that burst to blast fat and then resistance training because you become more insulin sensitive. Sensitive right at the muscle. Yay. So those are all the different things. It's a checklist. Go through it, work on it one by one. Improve your body's chemistry lab so you create a body that burns off fat and holds onto or builds lean mass.

This is JJ with Ask the Health Expert.

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