The New Rules of Metabolism

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Hey, it's JJ Virgin. And welcome to the JJ Virgin lifestyle show where I talk nutrition, exercise, mindset and lifestyle with some of the coolest people in the world. Plus, I give you tips that you can put into fast action to uplevel your health so you can go out there and live that big life you're meant to live. Now, today's show is all about metabolism, so specifically the new rules of metabolism, why diets don't work, and how to get the results you want. And I have got an old friend with me today. He's old. I mean, he's been around. We've known each other for a long time. We met, I think a decade ago when I was teaching this course to doctors called overcoming weight loss resistance. And he was in the audience and I was like, oh, my gosh, Dr. Jade Tita is in the audience. He's just brilliant. Well known in the whole world of metabolism and self development. He's been doing this for 25 years, studying strength and conditioning, hormonal metabolism, and the psychology of change and success. He's the founder and creator of the international health and fitness company Metabolic Effect. And he's got several bestsellers. Metabolic Effect Diet, which is an awesome book. Awesome, awesome, awesome book. Metabolic Effect. And then also he's got metabolic aftershock. And he has also contributed to exercise and sports nutrition chapters in the textbook of natural medicine. The guy is amazing. Whenever I have a question on metabolism, he's my go to guy. So I'm super excited to have him here with us today. So again, Today's guest is Dr. Jade Tita. All right, so let's do it. Jay, Tita, welcome to the show. It's so awesome to have you here with me today.

Hey, jj, what's going on? So good to be here. Thanks for having me.

Sure. Well, I had to do this so we could have some chit chat time since we never talk anymore.

I know. I miss you, buddy.

Ridiculous. It's ridiculous. Ridiculous. So you I've known, gosh, what, 10 years?

Yeah, it's been 10 years. Yep. And it's been, it's been an amazing ride watching all the amazing stuff you've done.

And you too. You too. I know we share the same amazing book agent. You've done great things out there. I love everything you do, all around metabolism. And that's what we're going to be chatting on today. So let's just jump in here is because I love this provocative statement here. Diets make people fatter. This is the only thing research proves about dieting. Oh, that's so good. So why is that?

Well, isn't that amazing? People think, right, that we jump around from diet to diet to diet. People are like, I'm going to do this program. I'm going to do that program, doing this new detox. And the funny thing is, they don't realize that the only thing that's ever been proven about diets is that they do not work. I mean, that research shows that conclusively, 95% of people who go on diets will regain the weight within one or two years. And 66% of those people end up fatter in the long run. And the new research is coming out, as I know you're aware of, jj, is that now we're beginning to see that dieting in and of itself may be one of the major contributing factors to gaining fat in the first place. So isn't that amazing? So you start out, you think you're going to help yourself. You go on a diet, you thinking you're gonna do some good, and you end up undoing.

Yeah. End up worse than you end up worse than you started. Well, what I always like to say is, dieting is not a hobby. It's not a hobby. But for so many people, it is. It's their number one hobby. And it also is that other side of, like, okay, we're all insane. Cause we keep doing the same thing and we expect different results. Right? So, all right, so we've agreed we're not gonna diet anymore. Now what do we do? Like, just go off and have a look.

I love the whole thing about you can't diet as a hobby. And that's exactly what people are doing. And then you're right. The first question says, well, I don't get it, jj. I don't get it. Jade, if we don't diet, then what the hell are we supposed to do? Well, there's a different way to think about this. The first thing you need to understand about the metabolism is, is we've had these two sort of two schools of thought. The old school was, hey, you know what? The metabolism is just like a calculator. Calories in, calories out. And then sort of the new School was sort of, oh, you know what? The metabolism is a lot like a chemistry set. And the truth is, both of those are wrong. If we're going to use simplistic models for the metabolism, then we probably want to use something that's more like what it actually does, which would be more like a yo yo or a seesaw or a pendulum or a thermostat, anything that is adaptive and reactive to what you do. And so once you understand that the metabolism is changeable and anything you do to the metabolism, it will push back against you, then you start to recognize that I can't be a dieter, and now I have to be. And this term is going to be interesting, more of a detective. Now, isn't that interesting? Go from a dieter and now start to be a detective. And what I mean by that is if your metabolism is pushing back against you, you now have biofeedback clues that you can tap into that your body is sending you that tell you whether or not your metabolism is balanced and happy, or whether your metabolism is going to push back against you and make you regain the weight. And the three most important of those are what I call HEC H E C. Which is an acronym for hunger, energy, and cravings. And so what we want to do is we want to be reading our metabolism like a detective and then adjusting our approach to get the results we want versus just following this one size fits all meal plan or program.

Yes, I love this. I call it going through a personal discovery process. And I realized I started to really do some work with the business coach about what is my big mission. And it was really like, take health into our own hands, which is really what you're saying. Be your own personal health detective. If you're hungry, if you're craving stuff, if your energy sucks, there's something wrong. That's what your body's trying to tell you. So check in on all that stuff. So is that how you use. Is the heck what you use to figure out if something's working for you or not?

Absolutely. Well, here's the thing, and it's not just heck, but there's some other things as well. So if you said, okay, well, how do I know, jj, how do I know if something's working for me? Because the truth of the matter is you can start anywhere, right? You can start with Paleo, you can start with Primal. You can start with one of my books. You can start with one of JJ's books. You can start with any program. The problem is, is that every program is Going to be written in sort of a one size fits all fashion. We have to do that because we're trying to kind of grab the masses. But the truth of the matter is we're all individual. And so how do we individualize this? One way is through heck. So there's three ways really to know if something's working for you. I'll go through those really quickly. First, if your HEC is in check, your metabolism is balanced and you're operating from a place of strength. So that's the first way that you know what you're doing is working for you, but that's not enough. The next way is, are you losing body fat and or maintaining the body composition you want. That's the next thing you need to know to really sort of ascertain whether this program is working for you or not. And the third and last thing is, are your vitals, blood pressure, heart rate, temperature, thyroid numbers, blood labs, all optimizing in the right direction? If those three things are true, then I don't care if you're eating M&Ms. And jelly bellies, that program works for you. Now, I say that sort of facetiously and jokingly because JJ and I both know that's probably not going to work for anyone on the planet. But the point is, if it did, if it kept your HEC in check, if it optimized body composition and it sort of optimized all your vitals, then that's what you should be doing for you, in my opinion, versus following these off the shelf programs that may or may not work well.

So what happens if you're kind of in the groove, it's all working, and then bam, it just like things stop working for you.

That's the question, isn't it? Because that's always what's going to happen. And I think that's my point about this whole thing about metabolism. It does not matter what you do, the metabolism is ultimately going to change. It changes all the time. Actually, women are more in tune to this than men because it changes for a young woman every month. It changes with illness, it changes with sleep deprivation. It changes when you go through andropause or menopause. It changes after pregnancy. And so here's the thing.

Let's face it, this is what I like to say. Jade is like, we women, we are like Lamborghinis. We're like, you know, we are finally especially you.

Yes.

There's a lot of stuff going on under the hood. You guys are like vw, you know, so it's like, okay. Oh, that's off. Oh, fix it. We got, like one little thing. Triggers, like, just this cascade of crazy, right?

You know what, jj? It's really interesting you say it because that. Here's the. As you know, because you and I have known each other a long time. You know, I mostly work with women, and most people who do the work that you and I do mostly work with women. And the interesting thing is I'm this big, bald, linebacker looking dude, and I have become an expert in female metabolism because women get this and they come to you. And when I was young and sort of dumb and just saying, hey, just eat less and exercise more. And it's got nothing else to do with that. It's just calories in, calories out. They were looking at me, grabbing me by my shirt collar, slapping, you dummy. There is way more to me than that. And, you know, as a guy, as a young guy and sort of an arrogant sort of guy and sort of like a stubborn guy, I didn't get it. But I was a conscientious practitioner. Practitioner. And women basically brought me into sort of this metabolic work that I do to figure this out. So women get this on an intuitive level way more than guys do. So I agree 100% with what you're saying.

Exactly. I remember I've, over the years, worked in my private practice. I used to have half men, half women. The guys were easy. You go, okay, go do this. They go, do that. It worked. They were done.

Oh, okay.

Sort of like you felt like, gosh, I should charge them like, 10% of what I charge the women. You know, we got all this other stuff going on, and the other side of the female part that I feel like the men don't really have as much is we've got all the hormonal issues, and then we've got also just some body image stuff and some emotional stuff. There's just a whole lot more going on there. Wouldn't you agree?

Yeah, I agree 100%. And the interesting thing is that, you know, as we know, the hormones, estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, these sort of. We think of them as reproductive hormones, but they have receptors all over the body, including in the brain. And so these things are going to impact self esteem, mood and motivation and all of this kind of stuff as well, which really, we talk about diet and exercise all the time in this work, but mindset and habit change comes into this as well, and these hormones are playing a role there as well. So you have to look at all this and I guess my major point would be, wouldn't it be nice if you can come to someone like J.J. or myself and be taught a process that you can use forever versus a protocol that you only use for eight to 12 weeks, which goes back to your point, J.J. like, don't make this a hobby. And the way you don't make it a hobby is that you create a process out of this. You learn how to read and adjust, and it's sort of this tinkering, sleuthing, adjusting process. And once you find it, it's not going to last forever. But what's really the value is, is that you have this process to find it again and again and again. So if you get pregnant, you can find it again. If you go through menopause, you can find it again. If you get ill, you're able to find it again. And this is what naturally lean people do, whether they arrive there consciously or.

Unconsciously, and they just. They feel that subtle shift, and they. And they go back and revisit and then they feel that subtle. Right? And so important to know that especially for women right in their 40s, because a lot of shifts are going to start happening. Oh, my gosh. So let's bring one more thing up. And I actually, in almost all my talks, I have the slide of the woman on the floor crawling in cupcakes, and she's got, like, frosting all over her. And it is my conversation about willpower. What's your thought on willpower, Jade?

Willpower is not what we think it is. It's probably better described as skill power, because what we know about willpower is that our willpower is a lot like a battery. And so it can be drained and it can be charged. And some of us have these big honking batteries with a lot of charge, and others of us have these little tiny, like, you know, AAA batteries with very little charge. And what we don't realize is that just like we can build up our muscles and get them stronger, we can actually build up our willpower batteries by learning certain skills. And so in my work, what I do is I do things like instead of telling people, which is to avoid food, for example, and make food evil, you can do willpower workouts in the same way you do muscle workouts, where you do exposure therapy to certain foods that has sort of mental control over you. And through sort of a process of slowly exposing yourself to these foods and taking sort of the mystique out of them, you can do the same thing the same way you can reprogram your metabolism. You can start to reprogram your mental battery, your willpower battery as well. And again, become one of these people who is not food obsessed. And this, again, is a process that many people have mastered. You know, one of the things I'll bring up you here, jj, which always is funny, because when people, you know, I'd say, yeah, I'm close with J.J. she's a good friend of mine. And they'll just say, oh, well, she's just genetically sort of gifted, right? She's just. She just sort of genetically gifted. It always sort of makes me laugh. I'm like, yeah, I guess she's genetically gifted. She's a beautiful woman, but she has mastered this over many, many, many years, both metabolically and in the mindset. And so what people forget is that when they're looking at people like you or me, people who have done this work, this isn't genetics. This isn't something we weren't born with, just a big willpower battery. We have practiced this. A lot of us have the same food issues that our clients have. And I would say that most of us, to get over that, have developed sort of this willpower muscle through this process that I'm talking about. So once again, it's very individualized, by the way, and I will say this as well, and again, it's a tricky subject because I know you talk a lot about food elimination, and there are certain foods that can have some addictive tendencies. We know that that is the case now through science. However, we also know that by training this willpower battery, you can really eliminate much of your food obsession and that cupcake image that you have this idea that a cupcake has to control you for the rest of your life. There are people who can go from cupcake eaters who eat them all the time, by the way. I'll tell you my story. I was one of these who can now go and have a bite or two. Don't you hate those people? I used to be one of these people who I wanted a dessert. I wanted pastry. I was very carb sensitive. I had to eat this stuff. And what I did was I would avoid it. And I call this the banana effect, actually, because what would happen is I loved bananas, still love bananas, but I wouldn't have them because I'm like, well, I'm a strict low carb, paleo guy. This is back, you know, whatever, eight years ago, 10 years ago. And as a result of not having the banana, guess what would happen? I would then eat worse foods later.

As a result of that, you'd eat around the banana.

I should have just had the banana instead of eating. Eating a cheesecake later.

But this is a different thing, Jay. This is a very different thing than, say, someone with a food intolerance or a food sensitivity or food allergy, you know, I mean, that's a different thing. And I think this is so important because this idea of relying on willpower creates the banana effect just like you're talking about. So I think it's a very interesting skill to develop because you do. You have to make friends with food. These things are going to be around, you know, it's not like you're not going to be around these things and they'll haunt you. And I've found the exact same thing. If I just ate the damn thing in the first place, I get over it. If I sit there and avoid it, then I eat a million other things because I just wanted that. It's not a banana for me. I actually hate them.

But what the hell's wrong with you?

I don't know. I don't. I'm a texture person. I don't like bananas. Maybe it has to go with that whole genetically blessed, Although I love, you know, I don't know, I was like going. But there's a whole lot of things I love, like cheesecake and ice cream, so I don't think so. That's why I'm chuckling at the whole, like, genetically, genetically blessed. I'm like, well, could it be the choices we've made? I don't know, because, boy, I sure had the binge eating problems earlier in life. So. All right, I know we're up against the clock now. I want to send everybody to your website. It's jaded.com that is spelled J-A-E T-E-T A.com jteeta.com.

What you got there, Jade for everybody?

Well, you know what? The thing, I think based on this discussion that I have for free, if you go to that site, there's a look on the side links. I have a free course called the Metabolism School that teaches you the five new laws of metabolism. A lot of what JJ and I were talking about today teaches you the law of psychic entropy, which is this willpower battery law we were just talking about, teaches you the law of metabolic compensation, basically teaches you all the things about your metabolism you need to know to become this metabolic detective and stop being the dieter. That course is absolutely free. I highly recommend people go and take that because it will change forever. The way you look at this process, instead of being a program and protocol jumper, you'll begin to learn a process and get on a journey that people like J.J. and I have naturally sort of been on over time. And you're going to escape this sort of diet mentality. And I think that will be very valuable for your listeners.

Awesome. That's super. And you've got great books, too. So make sure you go over there. Grab that. And the Metabolic After Effect Diet. Metabolic Effect Diet. The ME Diet is another one you definitely want to. So, Jade, thank you so much for joining me today. We've got to hook up at some point here, so stop blowing me off. Thanks for everything you do. Thank you. So reminder, JTA.com, get that course. Learn it. Learn how to go through your own personal discovery process. Now, after the break, I'm going to be answering a listener's question, so be sure to stick with me.

Fact. The true cause of weight gain is not calories. It's food intolerance. A negative reaction to certain foods, even foods you thought were healthy can lead to a variety of symptoms, including weight gain, acne, bloating and lack of energy. The solution is simple. Avoid the foods your body doesn't tolerate. But which foods? That's the secret JJ reveals in her book the Virgin Diet Drops Seven Foods, Lose Seven Pounds Just Seven Days. Discover the sneaky seven foods by visiting JJvirgin.combooks and be on your way to losing seven pounds in just seven days.

Alrighty. Welcome back. This is the time where I answer a listener's question. And today's question comes from Susan. And Susan says, please comment on exercising for those of us used to going long and hard. For me, it's not an issue of getting going, but how to adjust what I do if current regimen is making me fat. I run 5 and 10ks half marathons. I bike, I lift weights. I generally work out 90 minutes a day, four to five days a week. I've been on the virgin diet for about five weeks now. I lost ten pounds right away, but now nothing for the past couple of weeks. Okay, so I love to do this question when I've just been on the interview with Dr. J. Teda because I know he would agree with me here on overtraining and especially doing loads of cardio. You really want to look at exercise as a drug and it can be therapeutic or destructive depending on the dose. Long, hard cardio can burn up muscle, can raise stress hormones and actually tell your body to store fat, not burn it. And if you're burning up muscle, you're lowering your metabolism all day long. So the cool thing is I'm going to save you a bunch of time. What I'd love to see you do instead is walk easy. You know, like we should be moving every day. So we want to move more. We want to move about an hour a day. That's where it's great to have a dog because you can go walk the dog, but then when you exercise, you want to be short, hard and intense. And so this could be three days a week of doing high intensity interval training or bursting where you go all out for 30 to 60 seconds, actively recover for twice as long and Repeat to accumulate 4 to 8 total minutes of burst training. So if you've been running instead of running, go out and sprint for 30 to 60 seconds, walk it off for twice as long, sprint again, walk it off, sprint again, walk it off. It'll take you about 20 minutes to do that. On the alternative days, go to the gym and do full body, the biggest multi muscle group exercises you can do. Bench presses, push ups, squats, step ups, pull ups, pull downs, upright rows, bent over rows. Do anywhere from two to three exercises for each big body part, upper body pushing, things like chest presses and push ups, upper body pulling, things like bent over rows and pull ups, hips and thighs, that would be things like step ups and squats and power core. And those are different abdominal and back exercises. And do that on the alternate days two to three times a week. But the other thing I'd say here is look at your stress hormones because when I hear this and hear what you've been doing, I would really want you to monitor your body fat and see how your body fat is doing. Remember, we're not just looking at weight, we're looking at body fat. So what's going on there? And then also go have an adrenal test done. You can do this through a functional medicine, doctor. It's called an adrenal salivary index where they measure your cortisol and let's see what's going on with you because if you've been doing a lot of endurance training, you may have burned out your adrenals and that'll cause you to store.

Fat around your waist.

It'll make it hard for you to burn off fat, it'll be hard for you to put on muscle. I actually used to work out the way you're talking about back in my 20s and it's interesting because I am leaner now in my 50s than I was in my 20s and I do the type of exercise I just described to you, so I hope that helps. And if you'd like to submit a question, just go to jjvirgin.com forward/ask and you can leave a voicemail for me. I can't wait to hear from you. And one more way, I'd love to hear from you. I would so appreciate it if you could jump on Stitcher or iTunes and leave a review for me. It helps a bunch and be sure to subscribe and share the show with your friends. This is JJ Virgin signing off and reminding you that you are worthy Dare to live a life that matters.

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