LIVE MASTERCLASS - How to Build a Plate That Supports Fat Loss and Building Muscle | JJ Virgin

Hello, welcome to today's live. We are going to be talking about how to build a plate that supports building muscle and losing fat faster at the same time. By the way, sneak peek to my upcoming book, The Metabolism Fix. You'll see the tagline: restore your body's ability to build muscle and lose fat faster. So we've got that going on. I will be taking questions live as well as I walk you through all of this. So what we're going to be talking about today is what if the reason that you're not losing fat or building muscle has got nothing to do with your training? Now, caveat, you gotta do the reps, right? If you want to build muscle, you're not going to eat protein, sit on the couch, and have magic happen. I wish. It doesn't happen. But the reality is, if you're working out hard and you're not seeing the results, it may be that you are not giving yourself the right fuel. So that's what we're gonna talk about today. I'm JJ Virgin, and after 4 decades in the health and fitness world, I can tell you this, and it's a phrase I said years ago, that your body is not a bank account, it's a chemistry lab. Now I say, Your body's not just a bank account, it's a chemistry lab, it's a history book. So it is all of these things. And so we want to make sure that we're giving the right inputs into the body because food is information, right? We know that it's not just about eating less and moving more, that the types of foods you eat, when you eat, how much you eat, what you're eating, these all matter because they are signals. Now, the first place it's got to always start— this is not going to be a big aha— is with making good choices. And while that seems like kind of duh, obvious, the challenge right now is there's so much misinformation out there. You're like, well, what the heck is— are the right choices? Can I eat ultra-processed foods if they're high in protein? Uh, cuz There was a study showing that that was okay. You know, where— what is it that I'm supposed to actually be doing? And that's what we're going to be talking about today, you know, because here's the truth: you can crush it at the gym, you can kick up your HIIT, your high-intensity interval training, you can get all those daily steps to get your NEAT up, but if your plate isn't built to support all of this, to support you building muscle and losing fat, you could be spinning your wheels a bit. And I don't want that for you. I want to make sure that all your hard work is paying off. And while when we're younger it seems like you can just do one thing, you know, eat a little better, move a little more, and things work— gosh, you get 40-plus, that ship sailed. Your margin for error has shrunk down to almost nothing. So I'm going to walk you through exactly how to build a plate. That's why I've got a whiteboard right behind me that does both these things. Now we're going to talk about protein first because it's non-negotiable. We'll also talk about the right fats because of inflammation, fiber, and also how to ditch the hidden sugars. I wrote a book called The Sugar Impact Diet because that could be quietly sabotaging everything that you're working towards. And speaking of sugars, if you've ever grabbed a healthy granola bar or a smoothie from the store thinking you made a great choice, only to wonder why you're still battling your cravings and belly fat, remember that book, Sugar Impact Diet. Grab it, cuz it will walk you through how to identify these hidden sugars and how to lower your sugar impact, which means it's going to be a lot easier for your body to burn fat. So it can be a total game changer. It literally shows you how all these different types of sugars— carbohydrates turn to sugars, right? Impact your body, and then it helps you find the ones that could be sneaking in in crazy places. A lot of them, I will tell you, are in dressings and syrups and drinks. And please don't drink your sugar, oh my gosh. Um, but some of them can be hiding in a lot of these health foods, things that are posing. I always like to pick on the Green Machine, uh, drink because it has got more sugar than a Coke, and it's posing as a green drink. So this book is cool because it gives you literally, uh, in 10— in 2 weeks you are going to drop a lot of bloat, reduce a lot of inflammation, do some simple swaps. But most importantly, I think the average person lost 10 pounds. Now you're not losing 10 pounds of fat in 2 weeks. What you're doing is dropping a bunch of inflammation and you're losing some fat. But the cool thing was people lost about 2 inches off their waist. That's a major thing. So you can grab a copy of this Sugar Impact Diet at reignitewellness.com, because once you see what sugar is doing to you, you cannot unsee it and you will stop doing the craziness. All right, let's get into exactly how to build your plate. I've got some colored little crayons here to be able to do this. This can be fun. And what I'm going to start with is— let me make sure you can see this. Your plate equals your results. Okay, your plate equals your results. Now again, most people think it's just eating less. It's actually eating right. Part of what I'm going to show you is if all you did was transfer some of the calories away from ultra-processed foods and high carb, high fat and over to clean protein and fiber, you will— even if, even if you're keeping calories the same, you're going to initially start to drop some weight. But the reality is you won't keep calories the same because you're eating way more satiating food. You'll be full, and that's really important. I did a podcast recently with Dr. Jason Fung, whose latest book really hammers the fact that our biggest challenge is hunger. This is why the GLP-1 drugs are, you know, flying off the shelves. But we can do a lot of that and really manage that satiety and satisfaction by doing our plate right. So let's start with the plate. There's a plate. This one's not very bright. I'm going to use a brighter color. So here's our plate. And again, I promised that I'd start with protein. Protein because my mantra is eat protein first, right? So we want to start with protein because I want to make sure you get it in. So I know if you eat it first that you got it in. And here's the other really important thing with protein and making sure that you get it in, because when you eat it first, you tend to make better food choices on the next things that you eat. So super cool. Okay, non-negotiable. Next thing, non-starchy veggies. Non-starchy veggies. Okay, non-starchy veggies. These are things that are high in fiber and high in polyphenols. These are both super important. When I think of these, I think of fueling your microbiome, and your microbiome is going to determine your mood, your immune system, how well you're able to burn fat, how well you can absorb nutrients. So fiber— and remember, protein and fiber work together to slow down stomach emptying to help you feel fuller longer. That is what GLP-1s do. That's what eating protein and fiber today together do. The next thing is some healthy fats. Now I'm doing a little sliver here Because fats are much more calorically dense, so a little bit goes a long way. This doesn't mean that you have to eat like very low fat, but I want you to pay attention to it because it's really easy to go overboard with nuts, with avocado, with olive oil. Ask me how I know. Okay, so next thing here. So healthy fats, this is where you— I call it make an oil change— because the right fats are going to reduce inflammation. And they're also going to send a little signal to your brain, say, "Hey, I'm full." And they also help you have better mood. The right types of fats— remember, your brain is 50% or higher in fat— the right types of fat, good mood, reduced inflammation. So super important and also good for satisfaction and satiety. And also you need protein and fat to make and carry hormones. So these are fats. We'll talk specifically about which ones in a bit here. And then these are your— what I call here your slow low carbs. What are slow low carbs or smart carbs? And I'll stand right here so you can see this. They are minimally processed carbohydrates. There's things like wild rice, sweet potatoes, legumes, things that have a lot of fiber so that you are getting a very slow release of the blood sugar. And when you eat them and what you do afterwards matters. So this is every single meal. This is what your plate, your bowl, your cup— this is what it looks like every single meal. Okay, there you go. Okay, so with that, next up We are going to talk protein. Now I'm going to do protein over here. So for protein sources, what you want to think of here is you are what you eat ate. You are what you eat ate. What on earth do I mean by that? We store toxins in our fat. Animals store toxins in their fat. If you eat an animal that has been raised in a factory, close quarters, injected with growth hormone and different types of antibiotics. This is going into their body and into their fat, and you're getting it too. So toxins store in fat. This is why we wanna get lean protein, but we also wanna eat as clean as possible. What does that mean? Wild fish, smaller fish, grass-fed, grass-finished meat, pastured pork and chicken. So as clean as possible. In the dairy department, this is looking for A2 milk as much as possible. So things that we can do here, we're talking about wild fish and seafood. So I'm going to put seafood because that encompasses shellfish and fish. We have pastured pork, chicken, turkey. We can have lamb, grass-fed lamb, duck meat, bison, and then pastured eggs. Now, I wrote the Virgin Diet, and the key foods that people tend to be intolerant to are, um, eggs and dairy. But if you are not intolerant to them, if you've healed your leaky gut— because that's what causes food intolerance— And then pastured eggs, and I especially love eggs and egg white combo to get the right amount of protein and get the phosphatidylcholine from the egg yolk. So, and then Greek yogurt, especially if you can find A2. Shout out, I've been using this A2. My first of all, my husband's been making A2 Greek yogurt at home. Oh my gosh. But I also found this Painter Sisters A2 Greek yogurt that I'm kind of obsessed with. So it could be either this, could be some cottage cheese. And then on the plant-based realm, uh, and a little note on the plant-based realm and something called dia. So, so here some of the things I didn't put in were, um, protein powders. So I have two different types of protein powders. I have paleo and I have plant. So the paleo-inspired, um, one is from beef bone broth. And then what I did was I spiked it with essential amino acids to make it mimic the amino acid profile of whey. Because whey is really kind of the gold standard for essential amino acid profile, and I'm gonna explain that in a moment. For my plant-based, I did the same thing. It's spiked with amino acids to make it resemble whey. Because the reality is bone broth protein is richer in collagen and low in a couple, essential amino acids like tryptophan, and plant-based is low in things like methionine. So I just made them, boosted them up a little bit so they mimic essential amino acids. So we eat protein to get essential amino acids. All proteins are not created equal. Also, when you eat protein and you eat it like we normally do with fiber and fat, you, you absorb less of it. Ultimately we need specific essential amino acids every single day. We can't get them, we cannot make them. So we have 9 essential amino acids, and then— or is it 11? I'm blanking right now. Uh, it's 9 essential amino acids that we make, and we have some conditionally essential. So we need to eat the essential amino acids. We can make some of the other amino acids from the essential amino acids that we take in from diet. But you got to get these every single day. If you don't, you have no reservoir except for your muscle to get these amino acids out. And we do not want to break down our muscle to get essential aminos that we should be eating from diet. So the first thing you do is you get them from food. Now, if you're not getting enough protein in, or you're eating protein that isn't the right balance of essential amino acids, or is low in specific ones, Uh, that can be problematic. I have a hack for that, and my hack for that is my essential amino acid product called Amino Power Powder. Now here's what you can do before breakfast and dinner, or before the meals that you know you classically don't get quite enough protein, but especially breakfast. This is your most important one. You've been fasting overnight for at least 12 hours. You are catabolic and you need that. Our body needs to build up and break down, build up and break down. You shouldn't be always building But you definitely don't want to be always breaking down either. It's, it's the balance of the two. And so what I do is I have some aminos in the morning, or later in the day if I'm going to go to the gym, I will do them too. I want to have some on board so I have something for my body to work with when I'm at the gym. If you're just starting to up your protein, one of the things I advise is adding in some protein digestive enzymes, because if you haven't been eating a lot, especially a lot of animal protein, you may not have the hydrochloric acid that you need in order to really break it down, and that can be problematic for your digestion. So I think amino acids are essential— I'm sorry, enzymes, protein digestive enzymes— make a ton of sense because they are so incredible for dealing with things that happen as we age. Number 1, hydrochloric acid tends to go down with age and stress. We also get worse at digesting fat. So I created a more comprehensive enzyme product that also really focuses on protein to help you break down proteins and fat so you don't have those issues as we age. But especially if you haven't been eating much protein, your body adapts. And so if you're starting to raise your protein up, raise up your enzymes too. Now, what I use to make sure I'm getting enough protein is I'm aiming for 0.7 to 1 gram of protein per pound of target body weight. If you want some help with that, I have a calculator that I have put at jjvirgin.com/proteinfirst that will give you your range of protein that you should be eating. And think about 30 to 40 grams minimum at each meal, 40 if it's plant, 30 if it's animal, because the animal-based proteins are higher in something called leucine And that leucine level needs to be at like 2.5 to 3 or above in order to trigger muscle protein synthesis. It triggers mTOR to trigger muscle protein synthesis. What I use to make sure I'm getting there is a food scale. These food scales are super inexpensive. You can get them on Amazon. They're like $10. I have one in my travel suitcase. I have one at home. And that's how I make sure that I'm getting what I need. Don't count on packages. And I weigh after I cook, not before. All right, so that is protein. Now, Diane wants to know what the physical size of the plate is. It's, it's a normal size plate. It really— this is just much more of a visual here to see how things lay out. But what I really want you to do as you're doing this is I want you— I'm going to give you amounts for each one, but I want you to use a food scale. So you have your plate, and I'll tell you how I do this because I'll, I'll have dinner and we take the food scale. First thing I do is I measure out my protein, and I make sure that I'm getting somewhere— depending on what I'm eating, higher in fat, I'll eat a larger portion because it will have lower pure protein. Lower fat, I'll eat a, a smaller portion because I'll have more protein. But generally, I'm probably eating 5 to 6 grams— 5 to 6 ounces of protein, depending on what it is, sometimes up to 8. And so that's the first part of the meal. Then I put down my non-starchy veggies. I want you to eat at least 5 servings of non-starchy vegetables a day, but ideally 10. And that's the non-starchy. So let's talk veggies now. I'm gonna erase this. We're going into veggies. And we're gonna put— vegetables are a carbohydrate, but I really distinguish between carbohydrates from things like fruits and legumes and all that, and non-starchy vegetables, because you can eat a heck of a lot of non-starchy vegetables before they ever start to add up to anything. And I don't want you to edit your non-starchy vegetables. The only time you get in trouble with non-starchy vegetables is when you load them with healthy fats. Case in point, me in Italy with arugula and olive oil. I can eat like probably 600 calories of olive oil and 5 calories of arugula, right? I don't think I'm unique there. So this is non-starchy veggies plus other carbs. And when I think of other carbs, I'm thinking of starchy and fruit, legumes and grains. So I'm going to go through all of those. So veggies, I want you to eat. These are unlimited, and I want you to get 5 to 10 cups a day. Now, what is a serving? A serving is 1/2 cup cooked or a cup raw. So 5 to 10 servings of non-starchy vegetables a day, as much color as you can get in there— red peppers, Brussels sprouts, asparagus, green beans, mushrooms, eggplant, which I think is just kind of yucky, but I'm going to throw it in there. Zucchini. Tonight we are having, um, we're having summer squash, red onion, some kind of green in there. So we just— green beans, arugula— use as many different types of vegetables as possible. You really want to follow what the American Gut Health Project talks about, which is 30 different types of veggies plants a week. By the way, herbs count in there too. We've been doing a lot of different herbs. But you can have as many as you want of this, but I want you to get minimally 5 servings, but ideally more like 10. And again, go for the diversity of 30 different types of plants in a week. You can count the herbs and spices in there too. Each day, I also want you to think about fiber. Now you're gonna get some fiber from your non-starchy vegetables. It's not a whole lot. You You could eat, I think, a cup of broccoli and get 2 grams of fiber. Contrast that with things like sweet potato, wild rice, lentils, legumes, um, root vegetables, squashes, like the winter squashes. Those are going to be much higher in fibers. There's a lot of different types of fiber, and basically there's resistant starch— named that because it resists digestion. Things like cooled potatoes, cooled rice, slightly green bananas. There's soluble fiber and insoluble fiber. Insoluble means— is more like the grains. Soluble fiber can be more of some of the fruits, but a lot of them have both, right? You'll have things like pectins. You have prebiotic fibers from things like onions, leeks, Jerusalem artichokes, sunchokes. So So you want a mixture of all of these, and most of them aren't just one, they're a multitude of different types of fibers. I actually created an extra fiber product that is a blend of fibers, but predominantly resistant starch, because I find that's the one that's hardest to get in the diet, because most of us aren't eating a lot of potatoes or rice or bananas, slightly green bananas. So I do a couple servings of that a day, and I'm going to walk you through how I get enough How I get enough fiber. But my goal is for you to get 10 grams of fiber or more at each meal with at least 30 grams of fiber overall. More is better, but don't bump it up overnight, bump it up over time. So if you're right now a wimpy fiber eater— and how would you know? If you're tracking what you're eating on a food app, which is a great way to see where you're at, I call it the macro audit— see how much fiber you're getting in. And if you're not where you need to be, then work on bumping it up over a week, not overnight. And when you bring your fiber up, you also want to bring your water up because you got to keep things moving around— along. When you have soluble fiber, it acts like a sponge in your intestines, in your gut, to help both absorb toxins but also absorb water. Insoluble fiber helps move things through. So that's why we, we need to have all of them. The resistant starch, again, goes to the colon where it makes butyric acid, which can help us burn fat. And then the prebiotic fiber can go into your gut, into your colon, helps feed the microbiome. So one of the things that I like to do is I will start in the morning, and whether I'm starting with a smoothie with my protein shake, or I'm taking some Greek yogurt and stirring in some of my protein— I like to stir my bone broth protein into that— I will then top it with some of my, my granola. And I made this protein fiber granola that I'm kind of obsessed with in chocolate and vanilla that in just a third of a cup, 100 calories, 10 grams of protein, 11 grams of fiber. So it's really easy to take some Greek-style yogurt, a scoop of my Paleo Bone Broth Protein, add in the Greek yogurt, and you've got the protein you need. The granola adds in the fiber and the protein. And then the paleo protein. So we get great essential amino acids, leucine triggering from those, plus the, um, plus the Greek yogurt, plus we get the fiber. So that's a little one that you can do. You can sprinkle some blueberries on the top too, because one of the other great places for fiber is berries. So my favorite fiber— every day I eat usually 1 to 2 cups of berries. I do a serving of this granola that I was talking about, my Reignite Wellness Granola, and then I will do a lot of non-starchy vegetables and a little bit of slow low carbs. Last night it was this Kaizen rice, that's this lupini bean rice that's rich in fiber. So I'm always looking for different types of things that I can use. But again, things like quinoa, brown rice, wild rice, lupini rice, oatmeal, berries, legumes, lentils, lentil pasta, sweet potatoes. There's lots of different options out there now. You're eating these carbs for, again, a couple different reasons. Number 1, the different types of fiber, 30 grams or more a day, 10 grams at each meal. You're getting the different polyphenols from the different colors of the vegetables. Every color represents different plant nutrients, antioxidants that do different things in the body. And then you're also doing it for the— so I said the fiber, the polyphenols, all the different colors. And then one more piece to this is if you can get any of this fermented. Now I talked about Greek yogurt, that would be a ferment, but if you happen to love kimchi, sauerkraut, um, any of these types of things, pickles, anything that has to be refrigerated that's been fermented is also amazing for fueling the gut microbiome. So Laura wants to know, what do you suggest the best food fiber besides my fiber supplement? Well, I don't think my fiber supplement is the best fiber out there. First of all, it's not just one. You want to eat— just like you want to eat an array of vegetables, you want to get the soluble, insoluble, and resistant starch and prebiotics. So that means you're eating a variety of things. Berries, I love. Legumes and lentils, I love. Shout out to this Kaizen rice that I found, this lupini bean rice, super low in calories, high in fiber. My granola is great. That's another one. It's, it's some nuts and seeds, and it's controlled so you don't go overboard with it, which we can sometimes do with some of these. Avocado can be a great source of fiber as well. So really, it's a lot of the, um, and quinoa, of course, wild rice. Those are the ones that I look at the most. Rockaway Writer says 10 cups a day. No, 5 cups, a half a cup cooked or 1 cup raw. So 1 serving, 5 to 10 servings of non-starchy vegetables a day. And this isn't the Sugar Impact Diet, by the way. Sugar Impact Diet has a lot on fermented foods and vegetable servings and some really good recipes. In fact, the Sugar Impact Diet cookbook. Amazing. Okay, Jen says, does timing carbs at night really cause weight gain? Okay, new study came out about when you eat and what does it cause. So first of all, I'm going to give you some of the latest research, and then you're going to see that the biggest, the biggest thing is it depends, right? One of the things we know is that it's more that the absolute amount of calories you eat throughout the day is probably the biggest driver, right? So if you barely ate anything all day long but ate a bunch of carbs at night, but you only ate a couple hundred calories, it wouldn't matter. But that's not what most people are doing. Most people are eating their breakfast, their lunch, their dinner, and then all of a sudden at night they're bored and they're hanging out and they're watching TV, and then they start eating So is it the carbs or is it the fact that you are eating late at night, you're not moving afterwards, you're now getting, preparing for bed, so cortisol's down, melatonin's up, your body is not producing insulin, your blood sugar is rising. So, you know, and now where you should be digesting, now you've got higher, higher blood sugar, higher insulin. Actually, your insulin's tougher at night. Higher blood sugar, it makes it hard for you to burn fat. So not conducive to really helping you lose fat, right? That's the first thing. But here's the other one that came out. The one that came out that I think is most interesting right now talked about meal timing and when we're most thermogenic. And what they found was that people who ate during the light ate more in the morning. You know how you always hear, eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper. They found that people who did that, who ate, you know, more of their calories— it was like 70% breakfast and lunch and then less at dinner— were— it was easier to maintain weight. They had a higher thermogenic effect from the food in the morning than the people who flipped it and ate more at night. So what does that mean? It's just like protein. We know protein has a higher thermic effect of food than carbs or fat do. So if you're eating during a time when you're burning more of those calories off, hey, at the end of the day, you're gonna probably be— it'll be easier for you to be into a maintenance mode or net negative, right? Which is where you'd want to be. If you are eating more at night and your metabolism is lower and you're not as thermogenic and it's easier to store them, well, then, you know, you might store some of that as fat. So That's the answer, but I think the more of it is I really look at it as a habit. And what I find for most people is eat your breakfast, lunch, and dinner, shut the kitchen. Ideally, eat more at breakfast and lunch, eat a moderate dinner, shut the kitchen, right? That's the biggest thing. Shut the kitchen after dinner. Stop eating 2 to 3 hours before bed, even 4 is better. Next, from Thomas from Instagram, how quickly can fiber decrease blood sugar and LDL cholesterol levels? Blood sugar, like right away. Like if you're talking about you're watching your blood sugar throughout the day, not your hemoglobin A1C, not the marker of it over 3 months, but just watching blood sugar throughout the day. Your meal, there's a second meal phenomenon. So if you ate a breakfast that was high in simple carbs, like let's say you just had a donut and a latte, your blood sugar would be higher and it would also push you to have higher blood sugar with your next meal. If you instead ate, say, a high-fiber breakfast like I described, maybe you had the Paleo Protein Powder stirred into some Greek yogurt topped with some granola, maybe a couple berries, that would put you probably 15 grams of fiber, you'd have a slow blood sugar response. And if you wanna even take it further, do some air squats after you eat or go for a walk, and then you'll have even better blood sugar response. This is where using a CGM can be really helpful. And the reason that CGMs work so well is because you can manipulate your blood sugar in real time based on fiber and based on movement. Now, LDL cholesterol is a different story, um, so that one I don't know how quickly you would shift it. I do know Even things like being stressed when you walk into a doctor's appointment can impact your LDL cholesterol. So I don't know how quickly you can see it with diet, if it could— if you could literally push it with one, one day of shifts. But that's not how you test your LDL anyway. And when you really look at it, LDL is not the thing I'm really going to focus on there. I'm going to focus on a variety of markers if I'm going to look at things that would help with cardiovascular health, I'm going to look at ApoB. I'm going to look at your LP. I'm going to look at LDL and HDL particle size. I'm going to look at your omega-3 index. I'm going to look at your ferritin. I'm going to look at your hs-CRP. So, you know, your vitamin D levels. So there's a lot more to this than just the LDL. And again, LDL, it's particle size and then it's plaque. Are you laying down arterial plaque? Do you have soft plaque? There's way more to the story than just LDL. Okay, uh, how much protein would be considered excessive in a day? So here's the interesting thing with protein at this point, uh, we don't know an upper limit. And in fact, from the physique and bodybuilding world, there hasn't really— it really— I would look more at the upper limit being more related to are your kidneys healthy. If you've got healthy kidney function, it's hard for me to believe that you could actually hit an upper limit because you just get full first. If your kidney function isn't healthy, then that's another story. And this is something important to note because you want to make sure kidney function's optimal here, right? And most of us, just like every other blood marker, you know, it isn't being in normal range, it's being and optimal. So as long as you've got good kidney function, optimal kidney function, I don't— I'm not worried about how much protein you eat because it's really hard to OD on protein. You just get too full. Where I'd see an issue is if you're not able to get in your other things that you need nutrient-wise. Now most of the time protein comes with fat, so making sure you're getting fat that's rich in omega-3s and then making sure you're getting the plants for the fiber and the polyphenols. Else. What's the deal with seed oils, Karen wants to know. So the deal with seed oils, it's such a story. I do think that Kate Shanahan's book Dark Calories is a great one to read about this. There's a couple different viewpoints on seed oils because when you look at the research— and Ben Greenfield actually did a great exposé on this on his podcast Boundless— because it showed that people with who ate more seed oils had better LDL. But then when they really got to it and unpacked it, it appeared that they— while they did, they had more oxidized LDL. And so this wasn't a good thing. Here's what you want to look at. So there are two fatty acids that are essential. We must get them from our diet. We can't make them. We can make saturated fat all day long, but we can't make omega-3s and omega-6s. Apparently, in the perfect world, we'd have a ratio of about omega-6 to 3, 4 to 1. We're eating more 6s than, than 3s. 6s are more pro-inflammatory, 3s are more anti-inflammatory. Our brain is made up of more of these 3s, EPA and DHA, and specifically in the brain, DHA. So here's the argument with seed oils, is that we're eating way more of these than we used to eat in a— before we started eating all this ultra-processed food. Now that we eat 60 to 70% of our diet is ultra-processed food. And because we're eating way more of this, we are now more inflammatory. So the first argument with seed oils is that we're eating way higher amounts of omega-6s. It's like 20 to 1, 6 to 3, versus where we should be, 4 to 1. So that's issue number 1. Issue number 2 is the way that they have been extracted. And that's one of the problems that, um, Cate Shanahan talks about is that in order to extrude some of these oils, the processing they have to do creates these harmful toxic byproducts that are problematic. And so, um, the question with them that is up on the table is, is do they create more insulin resistance? Do they create more problems? And that's the big question. I think that if you are I focus at home on extra virgin olive oil as my primary oil. I use a little sesame oil and I use a little avocado oil. I use a little coconut oil and a little ghee. That's it. Those are the only oils I eat. When I'm out, I always ask if they're using extra virgin olive oil because I don't want them to cook with a blend like canola, because canola is an omega-3 that's been manipulated and that will oxidize. What I don't want to do is eat these oxidized omegas because those are damaged fats, and damaged fats damage you, create inflammation. So I think that if you get a little bit here and there, you know, I'm not worried about it. But I would say ideally we're getting more 6s in our diet anyway. I don't think that we need to add to it, especially in some of the different animal proteins that we're eating. And Kathy D wants to know, why does my plate need to change during perimenopause and menopause? Well, I don't know what your plate was looking at before. The difference as we age is something called anabolic resistance, where it becomes harder for us to be able to build muscle, get enough amino acids to build muscle. Uh, so that's the first one. Now, that happens pre-perimenopause. Like, that should really be something you're thinking about in your 30s, is starting to bring your protein levels up. The only other things you might want to think about during perimenopause, menopause, is eating more soy isoflavone-rich foods, things like tahini, and making sure that you're getting— I think the bigger thing is that because we're getting more inflamed, because we're getting more insulin resistant, you just have to be better with your food choices because the things you might have gotten away with when you were younger, you won't get away with anymore. So that's just it, your margin for error goes down. All right, let's do math. That sounds fun. We're going to do some macro math. Are you ready for this? Clean off the whiteboard. Okay, full disclosure, math is my favorite subject, hands down. Funny thing is, my son Bryce is getting his PhD in math and everyone assumes it's because of my husband, who's not a math guy. So they just figure his dad must— he must have gotten it from his dad, like girls can't do math. I love math. Anyhow, let's talk about what you're going to need in a day. So let's just make it easy. I'm going to say let's start with body weight, target body weight of 150, because remember, you always base it on your target, okay? And how much protein you're going to get, remember, it's 0.7 to 1 gram per pound of target body weight. What does that look like? 105 to 150 grams of protein. 105 to 150 g protein. Then you're gonna break that into meals. So if you're having 3 meals a day—breakfast, lunch, and dinner—what does that look like? That looks like, you know, 30 to 50 grams protein at a meal. Okay, how much fat? So really, when you think about fat, your bare minimum— do not go below this because remember, you need the essential fatty acids, omega-3s, omega-6s— do not go below 30 grams. I doubt you will. I still remember the fat-free days and Stopdee and Sandy, and we're all trying to eat as low fat as possible. That did not do me well. I did Not— I had cystic acne, irregular periods, felt like crap, depressed. Don't do that. Kind of the low end for me on the minimum is 0.3 to 0.4 grams per pound. So for fat, 0.3 to 0.4 grams per pound. Now that's the minimum, okay, minimum. So that would be 45 to 60 grams And then what about carbs? So the way I think with carbs is if you are keto diet, um, you know, if you're doing some kind of a keto diet, you're cycling that in, that's 50 grams of carbs or less. But for most of us, we're probably doing more of a balanced type of approach or a low-carb type of approach where I tend to think of it more around 130 grams. So basically I think of 100 grams as my benchmark. I add 30 for my first exercise. And then if I do more workouts, I bring it up higher. So I do around 130 grams of protein— I'm sorry, of carbs. Now here's the thing, you don't mess with the protein. The protein can go up higher, right? The, um, but you're somewhere in that, that range. You're not ever going to drop it down. You always get your minimum of fat, and then you can play around with on the rest of it of how many calories you're eating per day. You might feel better a little higher carb and moderate fat. You might feel better with higher fat, moderate carbs. It may be based on how much you're working out. If you're doing a big huge exercise day, you might feel better pushing your carbs up more. Feel it. Start to lean into it. This is where food tracking makes such a big difference because you really start to connect the dots between how you're feeling, what you're doing, right, and what you're eating. And I feel like a lot of the diets out there have disconnected us from that. Everything that I've written, from the Virgin Diet to the Sugar Impact Diet, and pretty soon you'll see with the Metabolism Fix— yay— is connecting the dots between what you're eating and what you're able to do, right? You're fueling, you're fueling your microbiome, you're fueling your brain, you're fueling your muscles. So This is super important. So I want you to be connecting this. Use a food app. You don't have to use it forever, but use it for a while to really connect the dots. See how you feel. Okay. We have the protein calculator. We've dropped it into chat. If you are watching this live, if you're not, it is in the show notes and it is jjvirgin.com/proteinfirst. We've got you. Plus with that, you'll also get some meal plans. Who Who doesn't love meal plans and recipes? Um, so Rachel wants to know what's more important, calories or macros? I like to say calories count, where they come from counts more. It's all important. I start with macros because I find for most people, if you get your protein right and then add in your non-starchy vegetables and up your fiber and watch where your fat's coming from, you may not have to get into the calorie piece of it. But if you get through that and you're like, I'm just not dropping fat like I need to. If you're doing your resistance training, you've got your non-exercise activity going on each day, 7K steps or more, doing some HIIT training twice a week, and you're still like, things are not where I want them to be, um, and you want to drop some fat, then I start doing some caloric cycling. And I do about 25% restriction 5 days a week, go back to normal 2 days a week. I learned that from Dr. Bill Campbell. Shout out to him. And I have a podcast on that. Find my interview with him on Well Beyond 40. Jill on TikTok wants to know, how soon after a workout should I eat? You know, this really depends on what you're eating and how you feel. If you ate a huge meal with a lot of fat and protein, you are probably not going to feel like going to the gym for a while. But if you ate a little meal and it was like a pretty balanced meal of carbs, protein, fat, or you ate a little carb bump before going to the gym, you probably feel fine. So it really depends on how much and what it is. Are there certain fats that you would prefer, full fat or low fat? So it's interesting, I've been playing around with this because again, you really wanna think about you are what you eat, ate. So if you're eating an animal product that's higher fat, you wanna make sure you're eating a clean animal product, wild fish, right? Grass-fed, grass-finished beef. Now, on the dairy side of things, there's some pretty interesting information coming out about dairy fat, specifically in cheeses and yogurts, and health benefits. And this is where I think it comes down to looking at very clean, grass-fed, grass-finished, organic. You wouldn't have to worry about grass-finished. It would be grass-fed for dairy cows, and A2 cows. This is where I'm looking more at those, and I am doing a full-fat or low-fat dairy as opposed to nonfat. So if I can't tell where it's coming from, I might have more of a nonfat, but otherwise I've been eating full-fat Greek-style yogurt. My husband's actually been making A2 yogurt, which is pretty amazing, and cottage cheese. So again, see where your fat's coming from. And, um, John Francis 365 55 on YouTube. So as a general rule, more protein intake and less carbs. The general rule is the right protein intake, eat it first, non-starchy vegetables, get some healthy fats. They're probably coming in your carbs, you probably use, or in your animal protein, probably using a little bit and making your non-starchy carbs. And then see where you feel best, a little more carbs, a little more fat. So that's how I build the plate. And then you do you, you see what feels best for you. And then, um, do I have many clients who started weight training in their 50s? I've had clients start weight training in their 70s, which made my heart sing. I was working in Palm Springs for years, 20, and so I had a lot of clients starting 50s, 60s, 70s. Haven't had any starting beyond that. When I was at USC in their doctoral program, we had people in their 80s and 90s. But it is never too late to start. And we should do a whole episode just on how to start resistance training if you've never started, because I have a definite program for that. Staying on this today, but here's the thing, it's never too late and it's never too soon. So start now. You can build muscle at any age, by the way. As we get older, past those peak muscle-building years, you'll build it at about 50% rate you would have, like, when you were younger. But there's a lot of assists that we can do here, like, you know, my shiitake product, HMB, uh, MyoYoked works amazing, um, some different peptides. So there's a lot of stuff that you can do, optimizing your hormones, Although the research doesn't support a whole lot of that, but I think it does some other things that helps you work out harder. But really, if I had to choose, it would be my OSE, Yoked, my chiatein product. I've been using some HMB. I use Qualia Timeline. I think all those things help. So let's talk about a couple things that really can just crush your fat burning. Number 1, alcohol. If you drink alcohol, your body goes, "Oh, I'm not going to burn fat because I have to metabolize this alcohol." So while your body is metabolizing alcohol, burning fat's on hold. Eating all the time. Every time we eat, we raise blood sugar. If you raise blood sugar, insulin's got to come up to deal with it. If you're eating all the time, insulin never has time to come back down to resting levels. If insulin's high, it basically locks the doors to fat fat cells, so you cannot burn off fat. Ultra-processed food is engineered to make you eat too often, eat too much, and become more insulin resistant. So there's that. Eating late at night, just because quite often that's the time now your cortisol's down, your melatonin's up, your pancreas is going to sleep, and you're not producing insulin. So it's going to make you have higher fasting blood sugar in the morning, which is problematic. Now, do you have to cut calories to lose fat? If you are training, you may be able to do maintenance calories, build muscle, drop fat at the same time without having to go into a caloric deficit. That's monitoring your body composition using a bioimpedance scale. I really like the PATH scale, and that will tell you, you know, it will tell you what's going on. So you make sure that you can really see, because unless you're monitoring it with something like a bioimpedance scale, you'd have no way of knowing what's going on. All right, so I'm going to give you one more little formula since we're on math, and this is what it would look like to cycle caloric restriction just because we're here. And again, I want to shout out to my buddy Dr. Bill Campbell over at University of South Florida because this is his And let's say that your goal is 150 pounds and that your maintenance calories, because you tracked what you were eating for a couple weeks and you said that, oh, I averaged 2,400 calories a day. So your 5 days a week, you're going to eat 25% less. You do not lower your protein, right? You can lower your carbs, you can lower your fat, try to keep those minimums of the 45 to 60 grams of fat, about 100 grams of carbs, but you can lower those down. And so at 150 pounds, 2,400 maintenance, you would be eating less 25%. You would eat 1,800 calories for 5 days, and then you'd eat 2,400 calories for 2 days. Your protein It's going to be 150 grams. I always push to the higher end when I'm cutting calories. You're better off, you'll be more satiated, right? You want to make sure you're holding on to muscle. You then have, um, 60 grams of fat and you have 130 grams of carbs. And by the way, this still here, this is 600 cals, this is, um, 540 calories. And this is 520 calories. So you still have a little room in there if you want to push up your protein a little bit or push up your fat. So we're still a little under. So there you go. The math. I know you love it so much. So that's it. Protein first with the fat that it contains, right? Because most protein is going to come around with some fat, then fiber with, you know, plenty of non-starchy vegetables. You're going to get those polyphenols. Some smart carbs used strategically. And I find that I do really well when I come back from the gym. I always want a little bit of carbs. I feel like my muscles are, are needing them. They're empty. And then any additional healthy fats that you need after that, you'd play around with your carbs and fat after that. That's the foundation of the plate that supports you holding on to, or better yet, building muscle, having great steady sustained energy and blood sugar. And this all promotes long-term metabolic health and also losing fat around the waist, which is the place that we want to lose it from, which is why tape measure is important. Now, this is what I want you to remember. This is not like a 30-day plan. This is a life plan. I find that to start a life plan, we're best to focus on one thing at a time. That's why we talk protein here. You know, if sugar is your big villain, do the Sugar Impact Diet. Otherwise, start with the protein calculator at jjvirgin.com/proteinfirst. And, uh, do a little challenge of getting your protein right, and then you can move from there. This is the way I want you to think about building your meals for life, because once you get how to put the right foods together, you don't have to worry about like calories, macros, anything else. It just becomes the way that you eat, and you'll notice you just feel good this way. Your blood sugar feels balanced, your brain feels on, and it makes it really easy at things like restaurants where you you can see, you look at, I look at the menu, by the way, at the restaurant, and I look at what protein I wanna eat. And then I look at the vegetables they have at all the different dishes and sides. And then I put my plate together. The waiters and waitresses don't love me, but you know, we do it. And I always check the type of oils they're using. And finally, I do this everywhere. So it doesn't matter if I'm in Spain, I'm in Switzerland, I'm in Cannes, I'm in wherever I am, this is how I eat. It's like it just makes life so simple. It's like just my framework that gives me the guardrails so that I like eat healthy, but I still like eat delicious. Like we just went out to a dinner the other night that was amazing, stayed on the plan and had— I'm trying to remember some of the things— like it was a great Mediterranean restaurant. We had lamb lollipops and these amazing mushrooms and some incredible green beans with like lemon and onions and this great hanger steak. I mean, totally like no one went off the rails, felt delicious, but ate all the things and had a great night. Now, if this was helpful, I hope it was. Subscribe so you don't miss the next live. It'll be July 31st. And reminder, we are doing my Step Into Summer Challenge right now. And it starts tomorrow, July 15th, and the link is in the description. I'm doing it with my buddy Mark Sisson of Peluva. You can win some great prizes, really fun. So this will help just get those steps in. I always like to focus on one thing at a time. We're focusing on stepping into summer right now, so it'll make it fun. And, uh, on July 31st, I'm going to dive into what I do on a day-to-day basis. Especially I travel about 70% of the time. So how I manage to do all this and travel and stay, you know, stay healthy, stay fit, stay lean, how I keep my energy up, what I eat, what I already eat on the road, my workouts, the whole shebang. So again, make sure you subscribe so you don't miss it, and I will see you on the next one. Bye!