My Husband Lost 20 Lbs & Got Ripped in 6 Months Doing This…

Hey JJ Here. Every year around this time, I get the urge to make my home feel a little extra special. A space that feels just like the holidays. And Wayfair is my go to for that. Think cozy textures, twinkly decor, warm lighting, and all those little touches that make you want to curl up with a good book and a blanket. You'll usually find my books stacked on a great little end table I got from Wayfair, proof that function and style keep can coexist. Now, whether you're adding last minute hosting essentials, picking out gifts for loved ones, or refreshing your decor for the season, Wayfair makes it easy with beautiful finds, great prices and fast delivery. And when the holidays wind down, Wayfair has everything you need to tuck it all neatly away. Smart storage solutions for every room from the kitchen to the closet. Plus, with free shipping for any order over $35, that that's fast delivery and a total peace of mind. It's the perfect mix of joy and order, bringing the holiday spirit in, then storing it all with ease. If you're ready to make your home feel as good as it looks, get organized, refreshed and ready for the holidays. For way less head to Wayfair.com right now to shop all things home. Wayfair Every style Every home that's W A Y F A I R.com hey, it's JJ here.

You know, I've been talking about environmental toxins forever and laundry detergent is a sneaky one. A lot of them contain harsh chemicals like dyes, preservatives and even UV brighteners. Those brighteners don't actually clean anything, they just coat fabric so your eyes think things look whiter or brighter. That's more chemicals I don't want on my family sheets or skin. And if you've got sensitive skin or allergies around the house, this can be a big problem. That's what got my attention about Earth Breeze. It looks like a dryer sheet, but it's actually laundry detergent. You toss one in the washer and that's it. No pouring, no mess, and no heavy plastic jug. Their packaging is lightweight cardboard, which helps reduce plastic waste. And if you choose the fragrance free option, it's gentle, hypoallergenic, non irritating and non sensitizing.

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I'm JJ Virgin, PhD, Dropout. Sorry, Mom.

Turned four time New York Times bestselling authority.

Yes, I'm a certified nutrition specialist, fitness hall of famer, and I speak at health conferences and trainings around the globe. But I'm driven by my insatiable curiosity and love of science to keep asking.

Questions, digging for answers, and sharing the.

Information I uncover with as many people as I can. And that's why I created the well.

Beyond 40 podcast to synthesize and simplify.

The science of health into actionable strategies to help you thrive. In each episode, we'll talk about what's working in the world of wellness, from personalized nutrition and healing your metabolism to healthy aging and prescriptive fitness.

Join me on the journey to better.

Health so you can love how you.

Look and feel right now and have.

The energy to play full out at 100.

Hey, jj, Virgin here.

Okay, real talk. So often the holidays sneak up on me, travel, gifts, hosting, you know, all the things. And suddenly it's like, wait, who spent what and where? And I know I'm not the only one who's looked at a bill in January and thought, wow, that escalated quickly. If you want to keep your finances under control this holiday season, you need to be using Monarch. It's rated the Wall Street Journal's best budgeting app of 2025. Monarch is the all in one personal finance tool that brings your entire financial life together in one clean interface on your laptop or on your phone. Monarch lets you link everything and gives you real time visibility so you're not shocked later. Right now, I've been checking the holiday spending category so I don't accidentally start the new year with that dreaded debt hangover. And honestly, just seeing everything laid out is already helping me stay more aware. This season, Monarch does the heavy lifting. It links your accounts in minutes, gives you smart categorization and super clear visuals. Yes, that end of year reset could Be a real goal this time. Don't let financial opportunities slip through the cracks. Use the code virginonarch.com in your browser for half off your first year. That's 50% off your first year@monarch.com with the code Virgin.

Some people think nature is like this, but actually it's like this. That's why Columbia engineers everything we make for anything nature can throw at you. Columbia engineered for whatever.

My husband lost 20 pounds of fat and gained 19 pounds of muscle. And get this. In just six months. And I'm going to share exactly what he did. And you're going to want to share this with your husband or your partner or your best guy friend, too. Now, here's the deal. He's always been healthy, right? Yeah. You know, when I met him, he had some family heart disease, risk factors. His dad had open heart surgery in his 40s, died in his 50s. But when I met him, we had a couple issues. He was only sleeping five to six hours a night. He might have had a little bit of a sugar problem. A little bit. Maybe just a little. And he was doing a lot of cardio, wasn't really doing that much weight. And when he was doing weight training, it was what I would refer to as more wimpy weight training. You weren't getting in quite as much protein.

I was not.

No, not at all. More of a carb guy. He looked good, he looked healthy, he looked fit. You know, maybe we'll show pictures a little soft around the middle, but, I mean, you wouldn't have been like, oh, whoa, you know, you looked great. And that is why it is so important to use dexas and biompedance. Now, here's the thing is biompedance scale at home said he was 18%. And I have a good one. It's a Teneda segmental, but it's not the gold standard. The gold standard is dexa. And this is his DXA report. And in his DEXA report, we both went and did this and his DECSA. What was the first thing that it said?

25%.

And what did you think when you.

Saw that this is wrong?

I know we did. We're like, this has got to be wrong. It's gotta be wrong. Mine was how much?

I forget. I blocked. All right, 14.

Right.

All right, mine was 13.9%. But who's counting?

Who's rounding up?

His was 25%. And once we got over the fact that, no, the machine's not wrong, he got inspired. Right. And finally was willing to do the things I'd been just letting him know he should do. And so one of the first things that you did was started to do macro tracking was to use an app, which you wouldn't do before.

I wouldn't do before.

No, you wouldn't. So what happened when you did that?

I started realizing what I was eating was not good for me. Like I was blowing out my numbers.

Like, what were you doing?

I was eating a lot of nuts, like almonds and cashews. Siete chips. I love that. Little afternoon, late afternoon, 4 o', clock, 4:30. And then in the evening it was zero sugar coconut ice cream, which I'm like, this is like free food.

Yeah. And this is important because too much healthy food is unhealthy. So was the first thing of just kind of doing that macro audit where you're like, oh, let's check this out. Where are things happening? But along with that, the next thing you made sure you did on the app was you increased your protein. Now we have you do 0.7 to 1 gram per pound of target body weight. His target body weight, we're still kind of figuring out, but it's somewhere in the 175 to 1 80. So now he's going to eat 180 grams of protein a day. How much do you think you were eating prior to this?

Oh, probably maybe at most 100, 120.

Okay. Yeah. And what about in the morning? How much were you getting in?

Hardly any.

Okay.

It was a car boost. It was. There was a lot of granolas and things like that.

That's really a problem in the morning. Because remember, in the morning you've gotta have that bolus of protein so that you get the leucine, 2.5 grams or more. This is Dr. Donald Layman's work. So that you can trigger MTOR to trigger muscle protein synthesis. Otherwise you're just in that muscle protein breakdown. You're still in turnover and you gotta shut that off. So that was a big deal. Yes, yes. And you've been eating four meals.

Been eating four meals.

Yeah. Because think about it. He needs to get in a lot of protein. So that's a lot to get in in three meals. The other thing that we did was we did a gut test, and this was very funny because we did a GI Maps stool test and a food sensitivity test, and we happened to get the results back when we were on a cruise.

Yes, we did. Which I was not too happy about, but realized that I needed to stop after the cruise.

Yeah. So what happened was he decided what happens on the cruise, stays on the cruise. I'm like, all right, you know what? I'm not going to fight this battle. However, what we discovered was that he had leaky gut and he was still sneaking in a little bit of dairy and gluten. It was really more gluten. And so that showed up on the test. And after the cruise, he pulled out dairy, gluten, and eggs. He doesn't eat soy or corn or peanuts. And he's really gotten low sugar impact. As long as I'm around, still, do.

Not cheat on me.

I am not. And so there was that. The other thing that we did was start to shift up exercise. So let's talk about that because we need to get rid of some of that vat fat. So what'd you do with the exercise?

I started playing volleyball again because I grew up, you know, my entire life playing beach volleyball. And I just stopped it and wasn't getting enough cardio in. So that was a great way for me to really work the cardio side as well as increase my weight training and the frequency.

And here's what's cool about the volleyball is he was not doing much in the way of cardio at all. Like, he kind of went from doing loads of cardio to only doing weight training, but doing moderate weight training. So he started doing high intensity interval training on the beach, in the sand. He was doing one on one lessons. And then we also started going to hit classes where we were the old cute couple in the class getting our butts kicked. The other thing was that you'd been.

Kind of phoning it in at the.

Gym with the weight training.

Absolutely.

Yep. And so what did you do?

You know, I really got serious. I mean, I was checking in with you as well, but I was there lifting, you know, more free weights versus the machines and really trying new things every time I was in the gym and really mixing things up, which, you know, you were making mention. That's really cool.

And he did. He checked in with me because I used to go in and kind of give him some advice and he was like, stop it. So now he's like, hey, can you help me?

I'm like, okay.

We also have some supplements. You take creatine. You've been religious about. You're always been good with supplements.

Yes.

So creatine, GG and timelines might appear they're urolithin A. But there's another thing that you added. Cause you're working with Dr. Tracy Kapman. Yep. And so he added in some testosterone Maybe we'll talk a little on that.

I'd always see the low T commercials. Like, that's not me. Until I get my testosterone levels checked, I'm like, that's me. So he got me on a really nice dose that really just supercharged. More energy, more focus. The body weight started to fall off. Like, I really felt like, you know, I was back. And that's one of the reasons why I was able to go out and train so hard in the heat here in Florida for volleyball, because I had that energy.

And this is important where estrogen's important for women, for building muscle and having great mood, testosterone's for men. So if it's low, and that does not mean that it looks normal on the lab test, normal on the lab test is low. So that was one big thing. Now, we'd already fixed the sleep situation, and we'd started with Dr. Joe Dispenza a couple years earlier. So we'd been doing the meditation, so all that stuff was happening. And the other interesting thing on this DEXA is it does something called an Android gynoid ratio. Now, obviously, women will have more gynoid fat, that's hips and thighs. But what was crazy is this actually showed that he had a low T because he had high gynoid fat, which shouldn't be if you are a male with good testosterone levels. So it was another indicator when he started, which he's lost significantly. But we went in November of 2022, and that was when he was 25.4% body fat. Then we went back the next year in April, and he had gone down to 18.9% body fat. And then we went back again in June, two months later, and he was down to 14.3% body fat. And I guess, I'm guessing now you're more like 12%. Now, here's the deal. Some of this, of course, is testosterone. So I want to be really clear. Testosterone is going to play a role, but it's not all testosterone. Like, normally you'd gain maybe a pound of muscle a month. And this is him putting on 19 pounds of muscle. So you've got probably 10 pounds of that. Is testosterone driven, Hormone driven, But, like, what a dramatic shift. And his waist, his waist had been measuring at 35. And guys, if you're measuring your waist, if you're going to say to me, oh, you know, my waist is 32, because that's what my pants are, that is BS. It's about usually 2 inches bigger than that, because you're bringing that down Underneath your belly button and pulling it tight. So add two inches. His waist was 35 at the time. Now it's down to 32. What have you noticed about just your strength?

20 to 30%. Like, more efficient in the gym. So. And it's amazing that, you know, I would go back a week later if I'm service on that and I'd put more plates on that I didn't think I could put on and. And lifting those.

Okay, so what, what would you say to other guys at this point who are like, looking at that going, huh? Because they're not going to listen to me.

I would say, number one, go get your testosterone checked. That is most importantly, secondly, increase that protein, you know, 0.7 to 1 gram per ideal body weight.

Do you have the protein calculator? We'll link it below.

Yep.

Starts tracking macros. I think that was the big differentiator. I was fighting that until I finally got into it and realized what I was eating was the wrong things.

Yeah, your wife is always right.

She is always right. Almost always right. But that really became, like, the catalyst for me to really start to check in. And now it's, like, so easy for me. And I'm tracking the protein, I'm tracking the fats and the carbs, and it's now a lifestyle and, you know, can't.

Eat like you did in your 30s and 40s. All right, like, there's the deal. Now, all you gals watching, I know you want the same results for yourself, but of course, the approach has got to be a little different, right? So this next video is for you. It's all about my best tips for losing that menopausal belly fat so that you can both age powerfully and feel great till you're 100. Right? I want you to be built to last, so check out the next video. Be sure to join me next time for more tools, tips, and techniques you can incorporate into everyday life to ensure you look and feel great and more. More importantly, that you're built to last.

And check me out on Instagram, Facebook.

YouTube, and my website, JJvirgin.com and make sure to follow my podcast so you don't miss a single episode@subscribetoj.com See you next time.

Hello, listeners, this is Anne Bogle, author, blogger, and creator of the podcast what Should I Read next? Since 2016, I've been helping readers bring more joy and delight into their reading lives. Every week, I tag all things books and reading with a guest and guide them in discovering their next read. They share three books they love, one book they don't, and what they've been reading lately, and I recommend three titles they may enjoy reading next. Guests have said our conversations are like therapy, troubleshooting issues that have plagued their reading lives for years, and possibly the rest of their lives as well. And, of course, recommending books that meet the moment. Whether they are looking for deep introspection to spur or encourage a life change, or a frothy page turner to help them escape the stresses of work, school, everything, you'll learn something about yourself as a reader, and you'll definitely walk away confident to choose your next read, with a whole list of new books and authors to try. So join us each Tuesday for what Should I Read Next? Subscribe now, wherever you're listening to this podcast, and Visit our website, whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com to find out more.