What I Actually Eat in a Day: My Daily Nutrition Routine for Women Over 40

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Hey, I'm JJ Virgin, PhD dropout, sorry mom, turned 4-time New York Times bestselling author. As a certified nutrition specialist, Fitness Hall of Famer, and globally recognized leader in health, I'm driven to keep asking the tough questions and use my podcast to simplify the science of health into actionable strategies that help you thrive. Want an ad-free experience? You can now subscribe to my exclusive VIP podcast at subscribe2jj.com for just $4.99 a month or $49.99 a year. It's like your daily latte, but better for your health. I'd also love to hear your thoughts on the show. And here's the fun part. When you send me your review, I'll reply to you using my on-demand virtual me. That's right. My team and I created a virtual JJ packed with my books, speeches, and wisdom so I can personally connect with you. Here's how you do it. Subscribe and leave an honest review of the podcast. Take a screenshot of your review, text it to 813-565-2677. 27. That's 813-565-2627. My virtual JJ will reply directly, and trust me, this will make your day. So subscribe now at subscribe2jj.com and text me your review. Let's keep thriving together. So good, so good, so good.

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Just add a song to your chosen playlist and put your summer on track. Red Bull Summer All Day Play. Red Bull gives you wings. Visit redbull.com/brightsummerahead to learn more. See you this summer. I'm gonna share what I eat in a day, and this isn't about being perfect. It's about being consistent, having great strategy, and knowing what works for your body. So today I'm gonna walk you through what I actually eat from morning to night and why each choice matters. Plus, I'll include my supplements. So first up, my morning routine. I start my day with focus and purpose, and the first thing I put in my body is not food, it is coffee, one of my favorite health foods of all. And you might go, wait a minute, coffee is a health food? What are you talking about, JJ Virgin? The reality is coffee, if you're getting clean coffee— I tend to lean towards Purity Coffee— is mold-free, you know, mold, mycotoxin-free, pesticide-free. So get good clean coffee. Then of course I also take my thyroid medication, my WP Thyroid and my T3, because when I tested my thyroid, just doing the WP Thyroid wasn't enough. I needed to have actually a little T3 boost as well. This is why you definitely want to be working with a very comprehensive thyroid doctor. So that's the first part. I like to wait a little while before I eat, and generally I eat about 90 minutes to 2 hours after waking up in the morning, and My favorite thing to do, of course, is a loaded protein smoothie, but it's not what I only do. In my loaded protein smoothie, so I don't turn this into a milkshake, and this is really important, I am doing things to support a good metabolism and support muscle mass, of course. And what I like to do is take my plant-based collagen and my plant-based protein. So I have protein powders that I have formulated through my company, Reignite Wellness. And so what I put into my smoothie is some of my plant-based protein powder, some of my bone broth protein powder. I add in collagen as well. Even though bone broth's got a lot of collagen, it's not the same as taking collagen peptides. Then I like to throw in some of my extra fiber along with freshly ground flax or chia because I want to get those omega-3s from that as well as the fiber. And then a little bit of some kind of fruit. And generally for me, what I really like to use is a slightly green banana. What I do is I get these and I freeze them before they have a chance to really ripen, because when not as ripe, they are richer in resistant starch. Name that because it resists digestion, helps make butyric acid, which helps you burn fat. So that's my loaded smoothie. Now, if I'm not doing that, and sometimes this is what I like to do on the road, I will have my yogurt option. And my yogurt option— and by the way, I forgot something super duper important that I also put into that smoothie, and it is something called Yoked by Myos. I recently found this and now I'm obsessed, I will admit it. So this is something called Fortetropin. It's fertilized egg yolk protein. And what they found in research is in 3 weeks you increased your muscle protein synthesis by 18%. Now I've been working out forever, literally since I was 16, lifting weights. Trying to put on muscle is really hard. And I got a 2.5-pound fat-free mass increase in 2 months adding this in. So I add this into my smoothie every day as well, or my yogurt. Now if I'm doing a yogurt, here's what I do. I like to do Greek-style plain nonfat yogurt, not any fat in it at all, because I'm going to add some fat with either the flax or the chia or maybe some walnuts. So what I do is I take yogurt, I will stir in a little collagen, a little protein powder to pump it up a little bit, and also to give it some flavor. And then I will add in a little bit of a seed like a chia or flax. And then I have my little favorite thing. There's a product called Catalina Crunch. Now personally, in my old life, they used to call me a Poppy because of the amount of Pop-Tarts I ate. But what really I ate was a lot of Pop-Tarts and Captain Crunch. I used to love cereal growing up, so when I found Catalina Crunch, I was super excited because it is a high protein, high fiber cereal. So what I do is I'll put a little bit of that— I might sprinkle a little bit on top of my smoothie or sprinkle a little bit on top of my yogurt to add in fiber and to add in a little bit more protein. So that's how I make my yogurt, which I adore. So it's one of those two things, always using some protein powder and collagen and that yolk that I talking about, the yoked Fortetropin product. Now alongside that, I take supplements. And in the morning I'm taking my Timeline Mitopure, and that is a product that increases urolithin A production, which is a postbiotic that triggers mitophagy, which means it's helping your mitochondria regenerate, which is super important because that's a big thing that happens as we age. I use NAD+ from Qualia. That's another one, like our NAD levels plummet, they drop, I think like 50% as we age. So I take that, take that one in the morning because if you take that in the evening, you will not be happy with yourself. I also take my Joint Formula from Qualia Health, vitamin D3 with K2, and my fish oil. And then go into the gym. And I also take my foundational dose of my Sheatin. And Sheatin is my creatine HCL magnesium taurine product. I like to eat about 90 minutes after waking up to 2 hours and then go to the gym about an hour later. That's my perfect life when things work perfectly, which is, mm, I don't know, 25% of the time. But this is what I always take to the gym, whether it's first thing in the morning, in the afternoon. I take my big bottle, my 64-ounce bottle, and I put in the following. I put in a little bit of my chiatine, so a scoop of chiatine, sometimes 2 if I'm sleep deprived or, you know, had jet lag or whatever. I put in a scoop of my Electro Replenish electrolyte drink. And a scoop of my essential amino acid, Amino Acid Power powder. I especially do that if I'm training fasted. And then I also put in my Peak Life green tea. Now there's a couple different ones I've been using lately. I've been using more of their— I think it's called Pure. I don't know if I can say it right, but that, or I use their Sun Matcha. But I especially love to do that because I try to get in a couple servings of green tea every single day. And I do it by using Peak because they're these little containers, super cool. That you can just dump into anything. You can make it hot, you can make it cold. I prefer cold green tea, so that's how I do it. So those are the things that I love there. I will put all this in the show notes too. I know I'm just going through things, and where I have a connection with the company, I'll get you some codes for savings. After a workout— and again, this isn't my perfect thing— because after a workout, about an hour afterwards, then I come home and I have some lunch. And what I find for me is that I do better having a lower carbohydrate breakfast. I find that if I eat too many carbs at breakfast, like more than, say, a half of a green banana. I'm hungry, quick. Like, it just has never worked for me. I do much better with a higher protein, more fat, and then fiber for my breakfast. So that's what I like to do at breakfast. At lunch, I like to get some carbs in. So what I like to do at lunch is I always get in a serving or two of berries. We always have blueberries and blackberries, so that's where I tend to, to go is when I come home is I have my berries and then I have leftovers. This is the biggest saving grace is whatever you're making for dinner, make extra. So case in point, I just had some cauliflower rice with mushrooms and chicken for lunch with some blueberries and blackberries because we had leftover from the day before. And so that's generally my thing is leftover protein, maybe with some salad, or ideally we've got leftover vegetables as well. And I just make that all for lunch. If that is not the case, if we ate it all, then the other thing that's always in reserve is to do an egg and egg white scramble. And I say egg and egg white because if you just do eggs, you will push way too high on the fat and calories before you get to the protein you need. One egg is about 7 grams of protein, so you can see that you need like 6 eggs, 5 eggs. That's a lot of eggs. So what I do is I do 2 eggs, and then I generally do 6 egg whites, and I buy the boxed cage-free egg whites. So I do pastured eggs too with egg whites, and then I might put a little bit of feta cheese in there, and then whatever leftover vegetables or whatever vegetables I have in the fridge. My favorite thing is mushrooms and onions. That's my favorite of all time for an omelet. But if there's also leftover ground beef or whatever, sometimes I'll just make a scramble and throw everything in, kind of a kitchen sink, uh, Joe's Scramble. Then I like to use my Protein Digestive Enzymes at lunch and dinner. And there's also— it's got betaine, and there's also some definite benefits to betaine anyway, potentially for homocysteine. So I like to take my betaine with meals. I don't do it in the morning with my smoothie or with my yogurt, easy to digest. I do it more at the— when I'm eating these more animal protein heavier meals at lunch and dinner. And then in the afternoon, depending on how I'm feeling, I will do another dose of chiatine, green tea, electrolytes. Depends what's going on. Like a lot of times I'll have sat in the sauna in the morning or I'll have gone to a hot yoga class, I've sweated a lot, and so I will do a double dose of electrolytes. Sometimes it's just electrolytes and that and green tea from Peak Life. So I just kind of decide decide what to do there, whether I do a snack or not. So I really like to do breakfast, lunch, dinner, and call it quits. But sometimes I will do a snack in the afternoon if I'm hungry. I'm hungry. And generally what I like to do for a snack is a small protein and fiber hit. So, you know, we'll see when I get my bars back again, we'll see if we do those again. But in the meanwhile, I haven't found any bars out there that I really think are amazing. So it may be some Paleo Valley beef sticks and some berries. You know, that's one of the easier things to do. Um, it may be just a little bit of a leftover something, like if you have some chicken thighs in the fridge or whatever, some berries. So, but again, snacks aren't really my thing, so I prefer just doing breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Speaking of dinner, what's really important with dinner is dinner is going to set you up for a good night's sleep. Like, I don't know about you, but if I'm going to bed hungry, I have a big challenge sleeping. It does not work for me. And so I want to make sure that I hit a real hormonal winner at dinner. Look how that rhymed. And I also know that when I have a little bit of more carbs at dinner, I tend to sleep better as well. So I'm looking at blood sugar balance. I also look at, just like I said, I like to eat about 90 minutes to 2 hours after waking up in the morning. I like to stop eating around 3 hours before bed. What that gives me is that natural time-restricted feeding window of about You know, I'm eating in a 9 to 10 hour window and really stopping eating after dinner, shutting the kitchen down. I think for most of us, if that's all we did, it would make a big difference because nothing good really happens in the kitchen after dinner. Have you noticed that? Like, that's when your evil twin's in there sniffing around, digging in for things that they shouldn't be digging in for. So we have dinner really set at the house, and I'll tell you what we do as we travel. At the house, what we do is Tim, my husband, is in charge of protein. We pretty much cycle between pastured chicken thighs, pastured pork. We have found these pastured pork tomahawks from Piedmontese that are insane. Grass-fed, grass-finished steaks, mainly New Yorks, sometimes hanger steaks. I'm kind of obsessed with those right now, and picanhas. Wild salmon or wild sea bass, we use Vital Choice for that. So we kind of go between Vital Choice, ButcherBox, Piedmontese. Those are our easy peasies. That is pretty much like what we rotate through. We might do a big brisket or some ribs on Sunday when I have my whole family over for dinner, my ex-husband and my kids. But generally during the week it's that. Every once in a while we might do some ground beef. We tend to save the ground beef for lunch if we ran out of protein. That's one of our easy things to do. So Tim makes— is in charge of making those. And then what I do is the veggies. I'm always in charge of that. And what I generally do is focus more on non-starchy vegetables. Last night was roasted broccolini with a little red pepper and olive oil, and then it was was, um, a cauliflower pilaf with mushrooms and some different stuff. I like to get in, like, I'll roast some carrots. I like to do a little bit more root vegetables when possible, but we tend to eat more on the just non-starchies. And we do kind of rotate between roasted broccolini, broccoli, cauliflower pilaf where I throw in all leftover vegetables, um, asparagus, green beans with mushrooms, mushrooms and onions, like That's our big jam. And then the occasional roasted potatoes. I like to let them cool a little bit, or I'll throw some lentils into the cauliflower pilaf, or we'll do a little bit of black beans with onions and peppers. So that's the easy peasy. That's ideally a couple hours before bed. What I really love to do is get out for a walk after that. It's been rainy and muggy in Florida, so that hasn't been happening as much, but when we travel, it makes it easier, especially for a walk into a restaurant. In the evening, I always take my sleep candy. It is melatonin and theanine and 5-HTP and inositol and B6. And I take 3. The serving size is 2. I'm 6 feet tall, and I'm one of those people who's a very fast metabolizer. I find I do better with 3. I also take some magnesium. And what I've been playing around with right now is doing a little bit of aminos before bed just to see if that kind of helps with any recovery, muscle mass, etc. I'm kind of thinking It's— this would be good for someone with sarcopenia eating a lower protein diet. Since I get optimal protein, probably won't make a difference, but I'm just checking it out to see how, how I feel. So I always like to test, test things out on myself. If we're traveling, what we like to do, like, generally when we're traveling, we're out to dinner so much that we try to figure out how to not go out to dinner. And quite often we'll find like a Sprouts or a Whole Foods and get stuff, or we will find like a Sweetgreen or some of the other great chains that don't have garbage with in their food, and we will order things in and then we'll stock stuff in the fridge. So that's my favorite thing to do. A lot of times when I'm traveling, it's yogurt for breakfast. I'll get some pastured hard-boiled eggs. We'll get some berries. We'll get some Primal Valley, Paleo Valley beef sticks. So we have a lot of that stuff, and then we'll order things for dinner that we can have around as well. Basically, I travel about 70% of the time, so how I live on the road is how I live at home. It's the same thing. I just travel with all these things I'm talking about here. It just makes it easier. Big thing here is you can see that I've like— this routine travels with me wherever I go, and I've really kind of honed in which supplements are really making a difference for me over time. As I've been really focusing on muscle health and metabolic health, it's come down to, you know, Qualia's joint health, huge for me. And then, and I do their Synalytic also every month, and their NAD for the energy and mitochondria support. Of course, Timelines, Mitopure, that yoked Fortetropin for muscle mass, MyCollagen, MyShiitine for the creatine HCL, magnesium, and taurine. This is a better form of creatine that is 7 times more bioavailable than monohydrate, and so you don't need to use anywhere near the same amount, which is super cool. And then of course the basics: magnesium, That's why I put it in the chia tea, because most of us need way more than we're getting. Magnesium and electrolytes and D3, K2, and fish oil. So that's what I'm really, really focused on. I have created a supplement guide, so we will link to that in the show notes. And I have a group, a Facebook group, where we do a lot of cool stuff. So I tend to go in there live when I'm not traveling every week— depends on how much I'm traveling.. So I go in there and do Ask Me Anythings in there. We do special deals in there. We link to all our guides in there. So I'd highly recommend checking out our Facebook group. It's the JJ Virgin Lifestyle Group. And I'd love to hear from you. What are you doing? Like, what fuels you daily? What are the key things you make sure you incorporate in your diet? As you can see, I've— I'm incorporating my optimal amount of protein for me, plus the 30+ different types of plants each week, and lots of hydration. The key things along with supplements. What are you How you doing? Love to hear from you and make sure you subscribe. Be sure to join me next time for more tools, tips, and techniques you can use to look and feel your best and be built to last. Would you prefer an ad-free experience? Join my VIP podcast at subscribe2jj.com for just $4.99 a month or $49.99 a year to unlock uninterrupted ad-free access to all the episodes and insights you love. Also, I'd love to connect with you and hear your thoughts on the podcast. Here's how. First, subscribe to the podcast and leave an honest review. Second, take a screenshot of your review. And third, text it to 813-565-2627. That's 813-565-2627. When you do, I'll reply using my brand new Virtual JJ Virgin. It's my on-demand virtual self built from my books, talks, and years of experience so I can interact with you directly. You'll make my day and I can't wait to hear from you. Thanks for tuning in and I'll catch you on the next episode. Hey, JJ here. And just a reminder that the Well Beyond 40 podcast offers health, wellness, fitness, and nutritional information that's designed for educational and entertainment purposes only. You should not rely on this information as a substitute for, nor does it replace professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. If you have any concerns or questions about your health, you should always consult with a physician or other healthcare professional. Make sure that you do not disregard, avoid, or delay obtaining medical or health-related advice from your healthcare professional because of something you may have heard on the show or read in our show notes. The use of any information provided on the show is solely at your own risk. 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