I Need Help With Weight Loss. I'm 44 Years Old and I Need to Lose 10 Pounds. Where Do I Start?

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Your education should be a right, not a competition. At University of Phoenix, you'll get the best scholarship or savings you qualify for. Simple as that. Explore scholarship options at University of Phoenix I Need help with weight loss. I'm 44 years old. I need to lose 10 pounds. Where do I start? This is JJ Virgin, four time New York Times bestselling 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. Christian Buscemi Leach from Facebook asks, I need help with weight loss. I'm 44 years old. I need to lose 10 pounds. Where do I start? Yes, I do love a glass of.

Wine in the evening.

All right, you and me both, Christian. However, I love me some dry farm wines in the evening. And you know, I'll tell you a little story and then I'm going to be back to answer this question. But I'll tell you when I made the shift over to Dry Farms. Oh my gosh. I gave up ever having a little.

Hangover, but I also dropped a little weight too.

So check out dry farm wines.

That's what I have to say about that.

Shout out to my buddies over there and I will be right back to answer this question. Stay with me.

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Alrighty, we are back to talk about where do I start? So first thing, let's just get the wine out of the way because you say, I do love a glass of wine in the evening. Now I did a really funny video a couple years ago with Dr. Sarah Gottfried where I got this glass that you could pour a whole bottle of wine in. And one of the things that I've seen is that as people, you know, like our portions can tend to expand if we do not pay attention. So it's one thing to have a glass of dry farm wines. Can you tell how much I love dry farm wines? Dry farm wines in the evening, you know, a 4 max 6 ounce glass of wine, it's another thing to like pour yourself a super big gulp and go with it. So careful with that. And I'd also look at that and make sure that it's not impacting your sleep and it's not impacting your hunger. It's two things that alcohol can do that can mess you up and really mess up your ability to lose weight. Weight is they can make you hungrier the next day and then they can interrupt your sleep. So neither of those things are going to be supportive here. So I always think it's a great thing to have at least a. You know, I love the dry Januarys and the sober Octobers where you just take a little breather and see how it goes. So that's the first thing that I would say is let's just look at that and go. Something to look at and let's see if nothing else is working. That's where I would pull out. But just right now, make sure that you're drinking clean wine and not too much. All right, where would I start? So here's where I'd start. Number one, I'd start by making sure that you are weighing in every single day. I never used to say this and I want you to use a body fat scale so we can see what's really going on here because there's a whole big difference between losing five pounds of muscle and losing five pounds of fat. You want to make sure that as you are losing weight, you're losing fat and holding onto or building muscle because that changes your body composition and changes the way your body handles calories and fat. So super duper important is get yourself a body fat scale and weigh in every day and track that. And once a week check your waist and your hip measurements because you want to make sure that if you're losing weight, you're losing your waist. If you're losing weight but your waist isn't changing, you're actually making yourself worse, not better. So super important there. Next thing, first thing that I would like you to do is start keeping a food diary. I know this sounds like a drag, but it is amazing how enlightening it is. And it's so funny because you know, over the years, I mean I've been at this for 30 plus years, 35 plus years if we're counting. And I've had people just like, oh no, I, I, you know, they'll write down their food on the good days. I go that's, I don't care about the good days. Like write it down every day when you ate and what all you ate and what all you drank. Super enlightening. When you have to mindfully write it down. Okay, that's the first thing. Next thing I want you to add before you take away. So I want you to start with making sure that you're getting in a load of non starchy vegetables, 5 cups or more a day, getting clean protein at each meal. Things like wild salmon, grass fed beef, pastured chicken. Eat some healthy fats, nuts and seeds, avocado, olive oil and get as much as you can of non starchy of fiber. And that would be those non starchy vegetables and then a little bit from slow low carbs, things like wild rice, butternut squash, et cetera. I detail this out in both the virgin diet and the sugar impact diet. How this plate looks like this is the satiety trifecta. Helps your blood sugar balance, helps you keep fuller longer. So the first thing I like you to do is start to focus on getting the snacks out, getting those meals incorrectly and getting yourself stopping eating three to four hours before bed. Shut it down, it all goes down. And then don't eat until an hour after you wake up the next morning or so. Then you're going to do the virgin diet and you are going to pull out the top seven high Fi high food intolerance foods. And the first week is really a detox. And then after that first week you'll have another 21 days. Now I've always said two more weeks, but I'm extending it of keeping those foods out and swapping for healthier, healing, detoxifying foods. Then you go back and rechallenge so that you can figure out which foods work for you and which foods don't and create a diet that is going to support you for the long haul. Every year. You should do the virgin diet every year. But this is how I want you to use it. Here is to really be able to make sure you're eating foods that are not creating inflammation and intolerance in your body. Once you've done that, then you move into the sugar impact diet and you really find out all the places sugar sneaking in. We did some of that in the virgin diet, but now you're going even deeper and then it's really helping you shift from being a sugar burner to a fat burner. And the reason is, is then you'll be able to add some intermittent fasting for caloric variability into your life into your diet. And if you do want to do flipping a little keto, you can do that too. Your body will be really good at doing that and you won't like fall apart if you try to do that. Along the way we start to incorporate exercise. The first thing is moving more. Now I will tell you what, when you change what's at the end of your fork, that is the first thing that's really going to make that big difference in your body. But long term, if you do not add in the exercise, you will be struggling. In fact, you might become tofi which is thin outside fat inside. Not on my watch, my friend. That's when someone tries to control their weight through diet alone. And plus it sucks. It's no fun. You can't eat anything. So you're going to incorporate exercise in. I talk about this in my fast fitness program. First by moving more, then by adding high intensity interval training, then by adding resistance training which changes your whole body's bank account. It helps you use more calories, boost your metabolic rate and then making sure you've got good restorative yoga and flexibility in there. You also want to make sure you're getting good sleep, quality sleep every single night. Use something to track it. Use an Oura ring, use a Fitbit, use an apple watch. Track it. What you measure and monitor, you can improve. Check your stress. If you're not sure if you've got stress issues. I've got a stress quiz on my website. You can take an adrenal salivary index, but if you are stressed out it's going to raise your blood sugar, raise your insulin, cause you to store belly fat, break down muscle, mess up your sleep blah you can see and it will start to mess up your thyroid. Make sure your thyroid's working well. If your thyroid's not working well, you're not going to lose weight. And then if you are heading into any kind of a hormone thing like at 44 you could be heading into perimenopause and that's where things start to get really crazy. You want to make sure that you've controlled for thyroid for adrenals, that you're eating healthy and that you're doing things that help detoxify the bad estrogens. Things like freshly ground flaxseed meal, lots of deep green leafies Dim I like a product from Designs for Health called Dimavail. So there's some things to get you started. Here's the thing. As you can tell, like the quickest fix I know is doing the Virgin diet. It's a quick fix that gets you in the game and started moving. And on that path of self discovery where you are your own health detective, figure out which works for what works for you and which doesn't. The idea that there's a one size fits all that works for all of us just doesn't make any sense. The person who can best figure this out for you is you. So this is putting that power back into your hands to do it and let me know how it goes.

This is JJ with Ask Health Expert.

I do this five times a week, so make sure you never miss a show by going to subscribetojay.com.

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