The Magic Bullet for Fat Loss, Building Muscle, and Overall Health

Hey, it's J.J. 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. I really like how simple it is and how fresh and clean everything comes out without those unnecessary chemicals. Right now you can try Earth Breeze for up to 40% off with free gifts@earthbreeze.com virgin that's earthbreeze.com virgin for up to 40% off plus free gifts on your first order. 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 book stacked on a great little end table I got from Wayfair, proof that function and style 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'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 EAs 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 this.

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With your host, celebrity nutrition and fitness expert and New York times bestselling author, J.J. virginia.

Okay, there is one thing that we all do every day that makes the biggest difference in our overall health. In our ability to burn fat in our mood, our energy levels, our cravings, our hormonal balance, our immune system. Do you know what it is? It's sleep. I know. So not sexy. I have got to tell you, I found with working with tens of thousands of people that it is the thing that people are like, oh, no, don't make me sleep, J.J. it's like, it's the thing we steal from, it's the thing we discount. We just don't put it as this top part in our schedule. In the show, I'm going to explain why getting a good night's sleep is the single most important thing you can do for your overall health and then give you some simple strategies to help you do just that. And I'll also share a few things that you shouldn't do that could be getting in the way of a good night's sleep. So why is it so important? Well, just one poor night of sleep sets you up for weight gain, even if you're eating right and exercising. And it does this because of what it does to your hormones. So one poor night of sleep, here it is. Your cortisol goes up. And you know when your cortisol goes up, you're storing more fat around your waist, you become more resistant to insulin and leptin, and your ghrelin increases. What happens when those three things hit like that you are hungry. And by the way, not for salmon, Right? We all know that, like, you have a poor night's sleep, you're sitting around going, give me a latte, give me a muffin, give me a latte, give me a muffin. Right? And it's a huge stressor on the body. So not only have you increased cortisol, you also lower your serotonin. And when you lower your serotonin, you want More sugar, your gut gets more permeable. So now you are going to have more food intolerances. So now you're reacting more to the foods you're eating, getting more inflamed. And then you have lower immune system. This is where you tend to get sick. And I know I always do. I start to steal from my sleep and bam, I get sick. All right, so the net effect, you're hungrier. And not for Brussels sprouts and salmon. You're tired. So now you're less likely to work out. You're cranky, right? And because you feel this way, now you're more likely to go for that extra cup of coffee or two or three during the day, the extra sugar during the day. And then you do that that day to kind of rescue you. But now it's the next night. And now you're tired and wired and you can't fall asleep. So you think, okay, I gotta go to sleep. I'll hit myself with some alcohol. That then wakes you up in the middle of the night and gives you crappy sleep. So the next morning, then you have the fatigue again. So now you get on this treadmill of fatigue, of sugar cravings, of caffeine all day long, of alcohol at night, and again the alcohol at night. I'm not talking a little glass of wine. I'm talking you have two or three will give you some rebound hypoglycemia. And the next thing you know, you're waking up at 3 in the morning. All of this just causes this horrible, horrible cycle, this horrible treadmill. And so what I want to share with you is how to break that cycle. Even if you haven't gotten into that cycle yet, if you're just on this, you know, not getting what you should be getting. So let's first go through. What does a good night's sleep look like? Okay, you should be sleeping seven to nine hours a night. Now, there is a very, very small percentage of the population. I think it's one half of 1% of the population that are short sleepers. They need like four or five hours of sleep a night. So it's probably not you or me. It is a miniscule amount of population I have met in all of my life. Two people like this, two. The rest of them are stealing from sleep. And how do you know? You go on vacation and you see what you need when you don't have alarm clocks, when you don't have any agenda that you're just allowed to sleep, see where you end up. I end up at about eight and a half hours of sleep a night. And so, and we're going to end up somewhere between seven and nine. The average apparently is eight hours and 15 minutes of sleep a night. That's just what you need. You should be going to bed around the same time each night and getting up around the same time each morning. That's really important. And in fact, you'll find that even if you go to bed later, you'll probably still wake up at the same time in the morning. But you should fall asleep within an hour of your head, or not an hour, I'm sorry, that's wrong. You should fall asleep within 30 minutes of your head hitting the pillow. And you should wake up in the morning without an alarm, feeling refreshed, ready to take on the day. And you shouldn't be getting up all night long, like maybe once. But you really shouldn't be waking up throughout the night. And you can wear, there's a lot of different little devices now that you can wear to track your sleep throughout the night that really track your movement to see what kind of sleep you're getting to make sure you're really getting into the deep sleep that you should be. All right, so that's. Are you getting a good night's sleep? And now let's talk about some things that you can do to help you make sure that you are actually getting a good night's sleep. All right, so the big thing you have to do is create a routine. And I'll tell you, I travel all the time. About 50% of the time I'm on the road. And so what has totally saved me here is creating this routine. Because no matter where I am, I have this nighttime routine. And what the nighttime routine is, is I putter, I do all that non real important thinking stuff like I know what I need to do. I make sure I've got my schedule set up for the next day, what I'm going to wear, if I'm going to do a TV or something in the morning. I've got that all set out for what I need for the next morning. I have my hygiene routine, which keeps getting more extensive as the years go on. It'll be like a 10 hour hygiene routine. But you've got what you like. Wash your face and your lotions and all that kind of stuff. Guys, I know you do it too. Flossing special stuff for your teeth, all that kind of stuff. So you do your puttering stuff, you're putting your stuff away, you're getting your Stuff set up for the next day. You've got turn down the air down to 68 degrees. That's the best sleeping temperature. Keep it cool, turn the light down and then I take a hot bath because then your body at night is going to cool down while the hot bath makes your body work to cool you down faster. I make sure that I've got my room pitch black and comfortable mattress. So if I'm in a hotel, you have to watch that. And by the way, I've been foiled so many times. Check the alarm clocks in those hotels. I think there's always like one, you know, I don't know, one like mean maid or something housekeeper that decides to turn the alarm on for 4am but I always make sure the alarms are off. I've got earplugs if I need them. I've got an eye mask. So be prepared because you never know what you're going to face in hotels. But in your own room, make sure it's pitch black and things are comfortable. Watch your sleeping partners. If you've got a spouse with snoring problems, send them over to get sleep checked so that gets fixed. I unfortunately sleep with a cat and a dog. Not recommended, but I've got them now trained to not mess with me in the middle of the night. So we all sleep through the night. They actually sleep better than I do, I think. So setting up really good mattress pillows. By the way, you should be changing your pillows out probably every six months. Your mattress every. I forget what the years are. I can't say that on that. Michael Bruce B R E U S the sleep doctor is the good resource on that. But just make sure you've got soundproofed, dark, cool room for sleeping. So critical.

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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.

Now we want to backtrack through the day because if you try to go to bed hungry, you're not going to sleep well. So I like people to eat about three hours before bedtime. You don't want to eat and go to sleep because then you're going to end up with some esophageal reflux. So you don't want to do that either. And you don't need a snack right before bed. I like something like some hot tea because again, then you'll have to cool down from it. But don't do anything stick stimulating. And one of the most important things to do here is to take it to a power down hour. And I stole that from Dr. Michael Bruce is where you want to get the tech out the last hour before bed because it's very stimulating to your brain. So I'm reading and I tell people I read a good but not a great book because I'll stay up all night if it's a great book. So I'm reading at night. I get in the hot bath, I've puttered, I've done my hygiene, I've done my hot bath. I, I get into bed. I like to do a little intentioning in my gratitude journal because it sets the right framework for going to sleep. And then I read a good but not great book and go to bed. And that is my thing. Now I do take a couple things to help me and I take magnesium at night. And magnesium is really good calming mineral. And then you can also do Epsom salts that will give you some in your bathtub. And I take do a salt bath every night too. And then I also take something with theanine and some 5 HTP and melatonin and GABA in it. Those are all nutrients that can help with sleep. Especially GABA is the neurotransmitter. That's your big inhibitory neurotransmitter in your brain. Theanine Helps raise gaba. So GABA is that inhibitory neurotransmitter that can help with sleep. And 5 HTP helps goes into the brain and raises melatonin. So 5 HTP goes to tryptophan goes to melatonin. So I actually take five HTP and melatonin. But five HTP can help raise serotonin, and serotonin can help then gets made into melatonin. But you have to have it dark for the pineal gland to say, hey, it's nighttime to make melatonin. So that's critical too. And that's why you need to have it pitch black. Very, very important. And just a little interesting aside, it turns out that, and think about this, it makes sense that we tend to lose weight if we're not going into all those winter comfort foods during the winter because we tend to sleep longer in the winter because there's longer nights and it's cooler. And in the summer, when they're shorter nights and it's hotter and you have sweeter fruits, you'll tend to gain weight. And actually we were set up to do this so that we'd eat sweet fruits during the summer, we'd have longer days, we'd be more insulin resistant, we'd store more fat so we could hibernate and get through the winters. So use these winter times when it's winter, the coolness to cool it down, make it darker, mimic that all the time so you get that really good, high quality sleep. And I'll tell you, Dr. Michael Bruce did a study with Glamour where they took a group of gals and all they did, they didn't have them change their diet. All they did was have them sleep seven to nine hours a night and they all lost weight. Remember, this is not a calories game, this is a hormone game. And if your hormones are telling your body to burn off fat and to not crave sugar, which is what happens when you sleep well, you're more insulin sensitive and you're not as stressed. It makes a massive difference. Plus you'll have more energy to work out, right? And you'll be happier. Oh, another thing too I didn't think about is lavender. Lavender is an amazing, amazing herb that we don't think about. And I like to put lavender in my bath. I have a lavender spray. I spray on my pillows. And you can get some lavender oil to put on your pulse points. So that's another great one too. And again, I talked about not going to bed hungry. This is where journaling becomes very, very important because you want to make sure that you're eating well at your LA meal so that you're not hungry when you get into bed. Because if you're hungry when you get into bed, you won't be able to sleep. So that's important too. Now, I hope I've inspired you to put sleep at the top of your priority list. So I created a sleep quiz just to help you track how you're doing. And to take it, just text 58885 and enter JJSleep. Then put a space, put your first name, another space, and your email address again to get that sleep quiz. To check in with how you're doing, text 58885 and enter JJ Sleep Space, your first name space, and your email address. Now in the Sugar Impact Diet, I help you clear up the confusion around sugar and take back the control that sugar has over your life. In just two weeks, you'll lose your sweet tooth and shrink your waistline. Why wait? Start those two weeks today.

Hey everyone, did you like this episode? Be sure to subscribe for the next one and tell a friend. If you like world class training and cutting edge information, Visit the Virgin Diet.com.

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