What I Eat Every Day as a Nutrition Expert

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I'm JJ Virgin, PhD dropout, sorry, mom turned four time New York Times bestselling author. 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.

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The number one thing I get asked is, what do you eat? And then it's followed up by, okay, and what do you do when you cheat? So I'm going to share my personal food rules that keep me on the straight and narrow. The foods I make sure I eat every single week. Some every single day. And why? I think cheating is just the total wrong way to think about things. And honestly, it sets you up to fail and puts you into that crazy diet mentality that drives me nuts about a good day. I had a bad day, I'm having a cheat meal. So we're going to deal with that too. But first, the rules. Now, I tend to be one of those people that likes to break all the rules, but remember that when you have this great structure, the structure actually creates freedom. So that's what I want you to think of. If you tend to be kind of one of those renegade rule breakers. Remember, what we're giving you here is really good structure. And so here's how I do this. I start with protein first. So as I'm building my plate, I always start by building protein first. I want to eat protein first because I want to prioritize protein, make sure that I get in what I need at each meal, which is at least 30 grams and at least 100 grams overall in the day. Now, the way I dose my protein is to do a range of 0.7 grams to 1 gram per pound of target body weight. So I'm weighing in at 145. I eat about 140 to 145 grams of protein a day. And I divide that again between the three meals and I make sure that my bumper meals, breakfast and dinner, are where I really load more of my protein in. In the morning, I'm breaking that fast. And in the evening, I'm making sure that I have some protein on board. So while I'm sleeping, I'm minimizing muscle protein breakdown. So there's the reasons for it. Also, there's more to it. When you eat protein first, it is more satiating. The umami taste actually makes you eat less too. And it helps with blood sugar balance. And it is the most thermic of all of your macronutrients. I want to make sure that you're getting in enough protein. So that's why I have you eat protein first. It turns out there's this thing called the protein leverage hypothesis. And what these researchers found is that we will keep eating those carbs, those fats, to try to get enough protein in our diet, which then causes us to overeat and get way too many calories. And remember, while where your calories come from counts, most calories count too much. Healthy food is, guess what? Unhealthy. So that's the first rule. Protein first. The second one, what comes after protein? Non starchy vegetables. Now, my goal is minimum that you eat 5 servings of non starchy vegetables a day. Now, what does that look like? A non starchy vegetable serving is a cup of raw or a half a cup of cooked. And non starchy vegetables are things like onions and mushrooms and deep green leafies and broccoli and cauliflower and brussels sprouts and asparagus and peppers. Here's what's important here. Why are we eating all these non starchy vegetables? You've heard eat from the rainbow. You know, is this just some cute little phrase? No. The reason that we have you do that is because of the polyphenols, these different plant nutrients in these vegetables that go and feed your gut microbiome. And so you have a better balance of the bacteria that you want as opposed to the ones you don't want. You're always going to have some of the good and some of the bad. You want much more of the good. So that's the first part. Those polyphenols that do all sorts of stuff, they're antioxidants, they can be anti inflammatory, they can be Gut healing, all sorts of amazing things. The other thing you're going to get from these non starchy vegetables is some fiber. And we're going to look for getting fiber within our diet, all throughout our diet, because we want to get minimumly 35 grams of fiber a day, ideally 50 grams plus non starchy vegetables are one of the starting points. You're not going to get a load from non starchy vegetables, but you will get some. And remember, fiber is the fuel for your gut microbiome. Right? It feeds it. And whenever we can get prebiotic fibers like onions, garlic, then we also give the fuel for the good bacteria to feed off of. So that's the next part. We went protein first, non starchy vegetable second. At least five servings. I really try to hit 10 or more. And I'm always looking for a diversity across the day. 10 different types of plants throughout the day. Spices count, thankfully. Otherwise that might be a little tough. And then 50 throughout the week. Next up, fruit. Two fruit servings a day. The only time I break this rule is if I'm going through the Sugar Impact diet. Now, I've already done that. I've already figured out where my sneaky sugars were. I, you know, I got rid of my sweet tooth. So this is for you. You do the Sugar Impact diet. If you've got this sugar sweet tooth, you're like, I cannot get rid of it, or you've got issues with blood sugar imbalances and insulin sensitivity, et cetera. Then you do that and there'll be two weeks in there where we drop your fruit down to basically zero, except for lemons and limes, non fruity fruit. Besides that, I want you eating two servings of fruit a day and prioritizing berries, because not only do they have that deep, rich color, but they also have the polyphenols. And you get a diversity by having blackberries and blueberries and raspberries, not eating blueberries every single day. So 2 servings of fruits, about a cup. So it's a big apple, it's a cup of berries every day. Next up is hydration. In a lot of my YouTube videos and also on Instagram, I talk about hydration because hydration is super key for your body to be able to be metabolically flexible, use fat for fuel, to help with hunger, to help with detoxification. Turns out if you're only even mildly dehydrated, we're talking 1%. That's way before you actually feel thirsty. Your body can start to break down glucose and turn it into fructose. This is really bad. It's like going the wrong way. And store that fructose as fat on your body. Okay? Just like a camel stores fat to be able to get through the desert, your body will do the same thing. We do not want to do that. Right. And it turns out that every time that you drink some fluids, especially water, you're going to boost your metabolism a little bit. In fact, it can be as much as 30% for 30 minutes. So iced green tea, black coffee in the morning, sparkling water, water. Drink this all throughout the day. Here's your goal. Half ounce per pound of body weight. This is not target body weight, your actual body weight. And then you add in more based on exercise. You add in half an ounce to an ounce per minute of exercise and go to the ounce. If you're exercising somewhere like, I live in Florida, hotter and sweatier here, Right. I do hot yoga. I'm definitely going to the ounce plus there. Okay? So that is hydration. I especially like you to focus on doing that in between your meals. Get up in the morning, start your water, then have your black coffee in between your meals. Do your ice cream tea before a meal. Bonus points if you do your ice cream tea. Put in a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar because it's going to lower the blood sugar response to the meal. Simple little hack. And then we're going to talk about timing. Now, just brief on the timing because I could do a whole video on this. In fact, I did. I'll guide you to this at the end of the video. But what you want to think about here is making sure that you are not doing. What Dr. Sachin Panda found out was that, you know, some crazy percentage of us, I think it was something like 90% of Americans were eating 15 hours or more a day. Like, that's wild. What you want to do is wait about anywhere from an hour to three hours after waking to eat. I think, you know, 90 minutes to two hours is really a sweet spot spot. Because you want to give your body time to wake up. Cortisol's coming up. It's waking back up your pancreas, getting insulin going again, right? So you want to do all that. So you're waking up, you're seeing the sunshine, you're starting to drink your water. Then you're adding in the coffee. And then have your first meal. Eat every three to five hours. You do not want to be a continuous feeding machine. Right? You want to eat, let your blood sugar come up, have insulin, bring it Back down to normal. Give your body time and rest, then eat again and do your three meals a day. You can compress it to two if you're careful about your protein. If you want to do a bigger autophagy trigger again, I'll share the next video on that. You can do it to four if you're really working on putting on muscle. But here's what I want to make sure that you do. You stop eating three to four hours before bed. Because if you eat too soon before you go to sleep, it is going to impact your sleep. Test it and track it. I know, I've tested enough times. I know what happens by deeply sleep. Sleep is a mess. I'm hot, I'm sweaty, it's just awful. So you're going to stop eating three to four hours before bed. And remember you're eating every three to five hours. So think about it. You might wake up at 6:30, eat breakfast around 8:30, nine, eat lunch around 1 1:30, eat dinner around six, go to bed at 10. Super easy. And what we also did there was we took your feeding window and we made it somewhere in in the nine to 12 hours. And that should be your just every day. Again I will guide you to learning more about intermittent fasting and how you can use that as a dietary tool here and there. But what I want you to really focus on as a hard and fast rule is eating within max a 12 hour window. That shouldn't be called intermittent fasting. That should be called how we should normally eat like we used to. Right? With those timing windows of waiting a little bit when you wake up, stopping eating before bed. Okay, there you go.

Timing.

Next up are carbs and fat. When you think of protein, protein we eat for function. This is going to help us build muscle. This is going to help us make hormones. This is going to help us with bone health. Carbs and fat are for fuel. I think Don Layman says this, Dr. Don Layman that you have to earn your carbs. There's a baseline of carbs that you're going to have. But here's what's interesting. You cannot live without protein, fat and fluids. You can't. But you can live without carbs. I'm not saying that you should. And I'm going to show you how they vary. But what I make sure of is that the carbs I get every day are from those non starchy vegetables and from those two fruits. And that's going to put me somewhere around 50 grams of carbs depending on how many I really Try to push my vegetables up so I get to more around 70 grams. You're going to be somewhere in that 50 to 130 grams a day. You're. If you've got adrenal exhaustion, if you are working out a lot, remember you're earning your carbs. Bring it up and you're going to get your carbs from as close to nature as possible. This is where you want to really think of more whole foods. Lentils and legumes, hummus, wild rice, winter squashes, root vegetables, beets. So that's where you would put the carbs and then the healthy fats. What I do is I'm eating clean animal protein, so I know I'm going to get some healthy fats there. I'm using extra virgin olive oil with my vegetables when I'm cooking, so I'm getting my healthy fats there. I may add a little bit of whole fats like avocado or nuts and seeds, but the reality is, with how I'm eating, I'm not really needing to add much more than that. I'm throwing in some freshly ground flaxseed meal into my shake. So I'm getting in some whole fats. I'm eating the fats from animal protein, and then I'm using extra virgin olive oil as I'm prepping things. You can also do ghee or avocado oil. The reality is, when you do that, you probably don't need to go, oh, I need to add more fats. Especially if you're female and you're looking to be able to burn off fat, you don't need to add more. Burn your own. Let's talk about things that I make sure that I get into my diet each week. And I've been really experimenting with this. I want to give a shout out to two people who I think are great with this information for you to check out. One is Dr. Sarah Ballantine, and she created this nutrivore scoring system. Super great for looking at, like, the value of different foods. And that's where, you know, enough times of talking with her, I'm like, okay, okay, okay, I will eat the mushrooms. And then the other one is Deanna Minick, who really talks about the colors of the different plants and how important that diversity is. She was the one who was like, 50 different things a week. I'm like, 50. She goes, don't worry, spices count, too. And I'm like, well, thank God for that. So what I make sure that I include weekly, a couple times a week I have been using a lot of mushrooms in my cooking and I've been doing maitake and shiitake and portobellos. Different types of mushrooms, different types of onions because I love the onions because again, I'm getting prebiotic fibers there. I've been also getting beets into my salads a couple times a week and eating rainbow colored carrots. Now, cauliflower, broccoli, brussels sprouts. These are absolutely my go to, so I don't have to worry about getting those in. I get a ton of them in with the deep green leafies. I always have a couple different types at home, but I especially focus on arugula. Amazing nutrients in arugula berries. Again, I want you to think about not just getting stuck on one type of berry. Like don't just be have the blueberry, go to try the rotation of the blueberries, the raspberries, the blackberries. And maybe you're in a place where you can get things like gooseberries, strawberries. All right, different apples. We do at least 3 servings of wild fish a week and seafood. And again, we do at least 3 servings of grass fed beef a week. Now I know there's a lot of hoo ha about red meat, but here's the thing. Making all red meat seem the same is like comparing wonder bread to creating a whole grain bread at home. They're entirely different foods, right? It would be like saying apple juice is the same as eating an organic apple. Totally different. Grass fed grass finished beef is a health food. Now you want to make sure you prepare it correctly. You're not charring it, but grass fed grass finished beef has a lot of nutrient density in it. So this is one that I want you to include in your diet. And lamb comes in there as well because lamb is amazing. Especially it's generally grass fed grass finished. Other thing that I include is some flax and chia, extra virgin olive oil, some legumes, especially lentils. And if you are not dairy sensitive, because if you're dairy sensitive, this will change. But if you're not dairy sensitive, and I find for a lot of people they might be cow's milk dairy sensitive, but they can still do feta or goat, you know, so they could do manchego or goat cheese. So if you can, a little bit of that can be great to add to your salads. I do a lot of vinegar. I love to do vinegar before a meal too. So doing that apple cider vinegar and green tea before a meal, again, simple way to lower the blood sugar Response to the meal, same with sea salt. Another one I put in because I want to help my adrenals. And then you can use herbs, because herbs are a way to hack that 50. So one of the cool things with herbs is if you throw in some rosemary, some basil, some turmeric, you just are getting yourself to that 50 diversity way easier. So let's address the cheating, shall we, before I show you my actual meals, because we're going to have a little show and tell here. I know that there are diet plans out there that have you do a cheat meal, but I also work in the world of food intolerance. And what I wrote the virgin diet about was leaky gut. And this was way back when when it was really talked about. But what I saw was that, you know, people have leaky gut due to a variety of reasons. Can be stress, could be poor diet, could be pain medications, could be all the above, which usually is your gut gets more permeable. Food sneaks through the tight junctions in your small intestine, triggers your immune system that lies right underneath it to get into action, and you start to crave the very foods that are hurting you and triggering this inflammation that can last for days. Now, when you think about what someone's going to cheat on, and I've never heard this in my 40 years of doing this, I binged on salmon last night, jj. I feel rotten, right? I just have never heard it. What people tend to cheat on are the very foods that hurt them, right? And then it starts a bad cascade. What if we just threw the whole idea of cheating out? Depending on what your goals really are for how you're eating, you know how tight your margin of error can be. But for most of us, we're going to do well. If we're getting an A minus, B plus on our diet, that means there's rooms for certain things. Now, are there rooms for artificial sweeteners? Are there rooms for bad fats? You know, like, it's just hard to say. Yes, that's a super good thing. You should totally put that in, especially the artificial sweeteners. But here and there, is there room for, like, I just had my 60th birthday and they brought this key lime pie with this massive meringue. Yeah, I had some of it and I included it into my daily. What I did, I didn't eat the entire thing. I didn't eat it. I had a couple bites, but it was totally cool. If it had been a trigger food for me, though, like, let's say it was Buttered popcorn or something that the minute I eat it, I'm like, I need 20 more of those. I would not have done it because it's just not worth it. So I want you to think about that whole mentality of good days, bad days, cheating, and instead go, all right, I'm going to look at my overall, how I'm eating to support having a flexible metabolism, one that can burn fat for fuel and burn sugar for fuel when I'm doing a hard workout, one that effortlessly holds onto and builds muscle, one that has great energy throughout the day. And what do I need to do that? Remember the rules. Protein at each meal, non starchy vegetables, those two fruits, healthy fats. And guess what? When you do that, you crowd out all that other stuff. You don't have the cravings. And if you want to have a bite of the key lime meringue pie after dinner, it's like, no big deal. All right. Can we agree to that? Cool. So now I'm going to show you my different meals so you can see how easy this is to put into action. Okay, so I'm going to show you how easy it is to get 40 grams or more of protein in your loaded smoothie. That's what I call them, loaded smoothies because we are loading them up with everything that you need. The clean protein, healthy fat, lots of fiber. So here we go. Ready? So going to we're. First thing, and this is just a little hack, is put fluid in first in your smoothie container so all the stuff doesn't stick on the bottom. Here's how I'm pumping up my protein. I've got this good karma flax milk that's got 8 grams of plant protein. So I go to 10 ounces, so I get 10 grams. So that's the first thing. Then I'm adding in my protein powder. I'm using my Reignite Wellness Paleo inspired protein powder. And that's going to get you over 20 grams of protein. Next thing I'm going to do is add in some of my collagen. So now I'm, I've got between that, the flax milk that I'm going to add up to 10 ounces, the collagen, the shake mix, I'm over 40 grams right there. So now let's get some fiber. Let's get our fiber on. And so what we're going to do here is I add in my extra fiber. And the reason I like that is this one's a blend of 11 different fibers and resistant starch. So I'm getting a whole bunch of different ones. Diverse fiber, good for diverse gut microbiome. I'm also adding in some flax meal. Now, I don't need to freshly grind this because I'm using a nutribullet, but if you are not using a nutribullet or something that really can grind everything up, grind it up. And the reason I like flax flax is hormone balancing. It's got phytoestrogens and it also has a load of fiber. It's also got Omega 3s. I put in some cherries. First of all, I love cherries and my husband loves cherries. But I get no sugar sweetened, no sugar added. Organic dark cherries. They're fantastic, especially with the chocolate Paleo shake. Now, I'm going to add in some ice too, because I like making it thick. You want it thicker, more ice, less fluid. If you want it thinner, more fluid, less ice. Easy peasy. And then you just pour in your flax milk. So again, this has at least 15 grams of fiber, might even be up to 20, 40 grams plus of protein. Tastes amazing. Healthy fats from the flax milk, from the flax seeds. Now you might think, oh, that sounds like a treat. But I am so hooked on this Cacao Calm because this stuff has all of these adaptogenic mushrooms, no sugar, dark chocolate. And I try to get in at least an ounce of chocolate every day. I really try to get more like two of dark chocolate because it's so good for you. But this turns your chocolate into a mocha. You can also use my chocolate protein powder. So that's another way to do this. But this is a great, yummy way to make your coffee, too. So this is my typical way I break my fast is with a loaded protein smoothie and then a little coffee delight here with my living ratio Cacao Calm. All right, I'm going to show you how you can crank up your veggies. Remember, I said at least 5 servings of non starchy vegetables. Well, you can get that at lunch. So the first thing I've done is I've already mixed up a bunch of my favorite greens, which I love. Butter lettuce, and I love arugula. So right there, that's three cups. And you know what? Three cups is three servings. So right, there's three servings of non starchy vegetables. See how easy that was? Now I'm going to add in some radishes because I dig radishes. And I'm going to add in some cucumber And I'm one of those weird supertasters who does not like bitter. So I cut off the skins on that. And so see how easy that is right there. I have four servings of non starchy vegetables. I'm also going to add in some tomatoes. Tomatoes are kind of a weird one because they're sort of a fruit veggie, starchy one. So right there, now we basically have five servings. Now I'm going to add one more thing here for some healthy fat. And I'm going to add a little bit of avocado. So I'm going to get healthy fat two different ways. Doesn't look so pretty. I'm going to get it one from avocado. So this is basically one healthy fat serving. And because I'm eating very lean protein with really not much fat, I'm going to also get it from my olive oil. So here's another thing. I'm adding some avo, easy peasy. And I want you just to note how quickly this is all going down right now. Next thing I'm going to do, I've got loads of veggies. I've got some healthy fats. I'm going to have more healthy fats when we add the dressing. But we need our protein now. I use a food scale. We underestimate what we eat by like 40%. We cannot do that when we get to adding in enough veggies and getting in our protein. So you want, you get a food scale and, and that food scale is going to become your guide for making sure you get enough protein. This chicken breast right here is 5.72 ounces. That means that is about 40 grams of protein right there. And so what I'm going to do is take it, just slice it up right? So slice and dice, put on top of the salad. And honestly, this is like lazy salad. So lazy salad. I get this amazing olive oil from Fresh Pressed Olive Oil Club because I trust them. It's real. It's the real deal. They have this guy, TJ Robertson, who is the olive oil hunter, who literally goes all over the world searching for good olive oil. So I pour my olive oil in. That was about a tablespoon of olive oil. And then you could either use some apple cider vinegar or you could use some red wine vinegar. I'm going to do some red wine in here. I do tablespoon and a little for the counter. All right. And then just like do that up right, Simple. Throw your chicken on top, add a little sea salt. There it is. Easy now, if you wanted to add a little bit of slow, low carbs in here, you could throw on some lentils, you could throw on some black beans, some chickpeas. So you can do that easy, too. Maybe you have some wild rice leftover from the night before. That would be a half a cup that you would add in here. So between the radishes, two different types of salad greens. The cucumber, the avocado, the tomatoes, the blueberries, the raspberries, the blackberries. Right here. I already got nine different servings. Plus I had the cherries for breakfast. I'm at 10 already for the day, and the day is not over yet. See how easy that is? But right here, 40 grams plus. And again, healthy fats from extra virgin olive oil, little avocado, because chicken breast is super duper lean. And I'm having the fruit, so I didn't add in a starchy carb, but I could easily throw in half a cup of chickpeas or lentils or. Or black beans in here. That would be easy, too. Very easy. Lunch, less than five minutes, has everything that you need. All right, moving on to dinner. Now here's a dinner hack. Whatever protein you make for dinner, just make an extra and put it in your salad the next day.

Easy.

All right, so again at dinner, we're going to always have protein. Now here's some wild salmon. So this one's five ounces. Now, five ounces of salmon, about 35 grams of protein. Plus I added in some lentils, a half a cup of lentils. And. And I just made lentils and bone broth. I actually made them myself. Like, I didn't get the canned ones. I made them in bone broth to up the protein a little bit and make them taste better. And made a bunch for the week. So I can make a soup or something else from them. But here's some lentils with bone broth. So we're getting a bunch of fiber and we're getting protein in that too. Half a cup is your serving size for that to be a serving of slow, low carbs, depending on your activity level. Maybe you have a go wild and have a cup. Then I made killer brussels sprouts. And I made these brussels sprouts with a little bit of mushrooms, a little extra virgin olive oil. So I count a fat in with that. And this here is a cup and a half of brussels sprouts. So that's three veggie servings right there. Holy smokes. And then I have some salad, too, because I'm Always trying to have more salad so I'd start eating the protein first and eat my vegetables. But here I have probably two cups of veggies here too. So two, five veggie servings. And of course, I added in the brussels sprouts and mushrooms, making it for a grand total of the day of 12 different servings of fruits and veggies. So amazing. And for the day, Definitely got over 35 grams of fiber. We got over 10 servings of non starchy vegetables. We got our two fruit servings in. And for protein, we got over our hundred grams. And really, we got more to about 110, so. So I just want you to recognize that this was easy. This is not hard to do, because I hear people say, oh, my God, I don't have time. Make time. I made that lunch in under five minutes. We timed it here. We're like four minutes and 37 seconds. So you can totally do this. It's all in the prep. I am a lazy, lazy chef. So what I'll do is I'll get the things for my salads. I'll cut up the cucumbers. The rash, I'll do it once, and that'll last me for days. Sames with the salad greens. I'll make protein at dinner. I'll save it for salad the next day. This is easy to do. Again, the structure creates freedom, so just follow that. And then at the end of this, I will probably have a little bit of dark chocolate. A part of my pantry dedicated to dark chocolate, and all the different ones that have either very low or no sugar added, that are sweetened with allulose or monk fruit or stevia. So there's so many great choices out there. Again, I make it my point point to have at least an ounce of dark chocolate a day. I suffer through it, and ideally more like 2 ounces. Okay. There's more that I have during the day, though, that I want to make a point of. So I will be right back with a little show and tell on that. All right, so I got you your three meals, but what else goes down during the day? Because you want to make sure again that you're drinking at least half your weight in fluid and more when you're exercising. So I already talked coffee and ways to make your coffee yummy. Remember, though, you're having black in the morning. But the other things I drink throughout the day. Big fan of green tea. And again, if you do some green tea with a little apple cider vinegar before a meal, lowers the blood sugar.

Response to the meal.

Check it out. Wear a little cgm. I am wearing the Thea CGM and you'll be able to see it. One other one I love, similar to the apple cider vinegar, lemon juice before a meal. Sour takes your sweet tooth away, but it can lower the blood sugar response. I'm a little addicted to these sujas. It's lemon juice, sevia and cayenne. A little pep for your metabolism. You also want to look at where you can get fermented foods in. And so coconut yogurt, almond yogurt. If you are not dairy intolerant, Greek style yogurt. All fantastic. Make sure you're getting plain, no sugar added on these and I like to take them and add some collagen in as well. Or you can do some fermented drinks. There's a whole lot of different probiotic drinks. Just watch and make sure there's no more than five grams of sugar. Generally the fermentation eats the sugar, but I try to make sure I'm getting in some fermented food daily as well. A little bit of legumes a couple times a week and some fermented foods. Couple other things that I do, I do electrolytes every day, I work out every day and I do the sauna a couple times a week. And so I do electrolytes every day. I also take timeline and creatine, mitopure, urolithin A and creatine every day as well. Creatine is super important because you got to keep that tissue saturation up. And then I never go anywhere without a couple of these in my purse. I have them in my car and those are my bars because you never know when you're going to get stuck and you don't have anything. And so my brownie collagen protein bar saves me. So that's the other thing I do. Along with traveling, of course, with my sparkling sea with quercetin. So I've always got my immune system in check. Those are the simple things. Now, I didn't go into detail on the timing of your meals. I talked about it, but I alluded to intermittent fasting. I am a huge fan and believer that you should eat during the normal circadian rhythm. Very, very important. You wake up in the morning, your insulin's coming up, your cortisol's up, better time to eat, you're getting ready for bed, things are slowing down. So there's a circadian rhythm that you want to be eating during. And if you do want to shorten your eating window from that 9 to 12 hours to shorter to trigger that autophagy. There are definitely ways to do this and again, I view diets as tools. If you are looking for maybe some spring cleaning for your body to get rid of the cellular debris, if you're looking to get your insulin sensitivity back quickly, get your blood sugar under control, you can do a lot with intermittent fasting. You just want to balance it if you're working on putting on muscle because because the two don't really go together. I have a video here on autophagy and fasting where I explain all about how this works and how it works for your body composition goals and how it may just be the secret key to fat loss over 40. So check it out. 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 importantly, that you're built to last.

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