Why I am NO longer a VEGAN! | JJ Virgin

True fact, I used to be a total cardio junkie, endurance trainer, and vegan. Can you believe that? Knowing, knowing me now? So in my early 20s, I ran constantly, long distance, hours every day, endurance, everything. And I really thought I was doing the healthiest thing possible. Now, if you're new here, hello, welcome. I'm glad you're here. I'm JJ Virgin. I'm a 4-time New York Times bestselling author, triple board-certified nutritionist, and Fitness Hall of Famer, and I I focus on helping women build muscle first so they can burn off fat and achieve metabolic balance. And today I'm going to walk you through what was happening to my body physiologically as a vegan endurance athlete and why I no longer believe that endurance training is the answer for longevity. Of course, back then I was in my 20s. Who was thinking about longevity? And what research really shows about muscle metabolism and aging powerfully. So let me take you through my, my phase here. Graduated from UCLA and I was in a program at Cal State Northridge studying biomechanics. And then I went over to USC and I was studying exercise physiology, nutrition, and aging. And I really thought I got it, you know, I knew what was going on. I remember testing my body at, at USC. We spent one semester just doing body composition testing prior to going like full vegan and really doubling down on endurance training. I was still lifting weights, but The majority of my time was endurance training. Prior to that, I was not a vegan. I was eating my protein and I was doing more resistance training and less cardio. And I remember getting my body fat tested then, and I'm like a weirdly lean person. My body fat tends to range between 10 and 13%, which is extremely low for a woman, but it's just where I've always naturally been. So fast forward to here, I met USC. I have full-on gone into a vegan diet. Realized at the time I was in LA and I was working, training people out of the Pritikin Center. I was also training people out of Gold's Gym, so I should have known better because I was watching what those bodybuilders were doing. But at the Pritikin Center, it was very plant-based, very low fat. And so that's the diet I was testing. But I always tend to take things to extremes. I've gotten better as I've gotten older. And so I was eating a very low-fat, vegan-based diet, and it was very— it was kind of what was going on in LA at the time too. But I remember getting my body fat tested because that's what we were doing at SC that semester is all this body composition work. And my body fat came out at 25%. And I was like, what the heck is going on? So that was the first like, uh-oh, light bulb moment. I started to kind of go, huh, you know, all of this, all of this plant-based diet and all of this, this heavy endurance training is not working. Now I will tell you why I was jumping into so much endurance training, that wasn't so thoughtful as it was more, um, kind of a survival thing going on. I was going through a really awful divorce, and I ran my way through this divorce. I just ran and ran and ran. I was escaping, and that was not helping whatsoever, all of this escape. And here's the reality: chronic endurance training, as we know, can be catabolic. And note, I'm not saying not do any, okay? We'll talk about that later. But chronic endurance training is catabolic. It breaks down tissue, and of that tissue it's going to break down is, guess what, muscle. Yes, you'll burn fat, but you also can break down muscle. It's funny, I have a friend who is a HIIT trainer, high-intensity interval trainer trainer, and he says, you know, you look at a couch potato, and it's true, couch potato and a long-distance runner tend to have the same amount of muscle mass. They'll have different, different amounts of body fat for sure, but they'll have about the same amount of muscle mass. If you're an endurance athlete, you're better with not having a lot of muscle mass. It's more to move around. There was actually a review in Sports Medicine that discussed how prolonged endurance exercise increases catabolic hormone signaling when recovery and protein intake are insufficient, which this was the other thing going on with me, and that chronic endurance training increases cortisol levels, especially when it's paired with inadequate fueling. Here I was, undereating, stressed out already, running my way through a divorce and doing over, over cardio. And I remember seeing at the time a study that showed that people who are trying to maintain their weight with cardio alone. The minute they stopped, they started gaining weight back. So then I was like, oh no, I'm definitely not stopping. And again, the key point of this research review— view was that longer duration, higher volume endurance exercise increased stress hormones, including cortisol, and that this cortisol would rise with this prolonged exercise and then tend to stay higher if the body wasn't recovered or the body was underfueled. So remember, it's not exercise, um, promoting cortisol in the moment that's the problem. It's the chronic cortisol that creates the problem. And that's why I'm more of a fan of HIIT training. When you have enough calories, when you have enough carbohydrates, when you're giving yourself enough recovery time, when you have enough protein, then you can, you know, blunt that stress response. It doesn't become chronic. It's just that acute that you want and then comes back down. But if you're doing, you know, a lot of endurance volume without the recovery and without the fuel, then you put yourself into a problem. And what happens when you have elevated chronic cortisol? Well, you're gonna break down muscle and you're also gonna accumulate more visceral adipose tissue. And that was me. Like, if you can imagine, cuz if you know me, I'm like, you know, muscle first, right? But back then, I'm glad I did the science experiment and I'm glad that we tested body composition and I had that wake-up call because it really was like I had to look at every single thing cuz here I was doing all the running, but I also was a vegan and I was a pure vegan and low-fat vegan, so high carb, and I was not getting the balance of essential amino acids that I needed. Here's the thing, like, they've been— have studies comparing plant-based and omnivore athletes, and you can do this as a vegan if you are really, really mindful about what you need in terms of your amino acids so that you're getting that balance, so you have what you need to trigger muscle protein synthesis and you don't compromise it. In fact, there was a randomized controlled study on resistance training in the Journal of Nutrition that looked at healthy young adults and did a comparison on high-protein vegan diet versus an omnivore diet. And what they did was they matched the protein intake. But here's the thing, there's this thing called the DIAAS score, the digestible indispensable amino acid score. And even if you match the protein, you're not going to have the same amino acid balance between a vegan and an omnivore diet. And if you're going to go vegan, you're going to need to really be mindful of the amino acid balance. What they did in this study was they looked at daily muscle protein synthesis. They looked at lean mass, they looked at muscle size, and they looked at muscle strength. So they're looking at that quality there. And what they found was when protein intake's sufficient, that both diets supported muscle protein synthesis and muscle gain, but you got to really dial that in. So that's what I wanna emphasize here. And I wasn't doing that. I was not focused on the quality and the balance of those amino acids. So, uh, I was suffering and I literally just couldn't eat enough. I remember always feeling like bloated. It's really hard to get enough when you're running, when you're burning that many calories. It's kind of crazy. There was also a review that looked at higher protein athlete requirements and it was published in the Applied Physiology Nutrition and Metabolism journal. And they were looking at endurance and resistance trained athletes, comparing them to sedentary adults, and then looking at what protein intake was needed to support performance, support recovery, support holding on to or building muscle mass. And of course, this is not going to be much of a newsflash— athletes require more protein than the general RDA of 0.8 grams per kilogram per day. Now thankfully, I think we're moving away from that lame RDA. Basically, when you're really focusing on improving body composition, higher protein intakes support better preservation of lean mass and greater fat loss, especially if you're restricting energy. In fact, I've seen some information that suggests that we need more essential amino acids when we're restricting energy, not less. And of course, it's not just the protein itself, it's really the balance of those essential amino acids. And that becomes even more important as you restrict calories or as you increase your training. So that can help protect your muscle and can help protect your metabolic rate. And remember, as we age, we also need more, not less. So what happened with me? Well, I talked about that body comp that woke me up. What should have woken me up even more was my weight didn't change that much. I think it changed by about 10 pounds. What changed was I lost muscle and put on fat. Now remember what happens when you lose muscle? You also drop your metabolic rate. Right? And there was a study published in the journal, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, that showed that lean mass is one of the strongest predictors of resting energy expenditure. It is the biggest modifiable thing that you can do to change your resting metabolic rate. So the last thing you wanna do is lose muscle, especially if you're 40+, by the way. Like, I was luckily in my 20s, I got it back, but boy, it gets harder and harder as we go. Even though you can put on muscle at any age, you don't wanna lose it. And what they found was in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition with 22 young males. They looked before and after 100 days of overfeeding, and they found that resting metabolic rate correlated with lean mass and skeletal muscle mass, not really fat mass. So that skeletal muscle was really this best independent predictor of resting metabolic rate. What's the takeaway for you here? Don't lose your muscle mass. Put on more muscle mass. That's why I take a muscle-first approach to all of this, because if you have more muscle, that's where you're going to be able to burn fat. That's where you're going to have a better resting metabolic rate. Right? And that's how you're going to age powerfully. Let's talk about the cortisol side of it, because not only was I stressed out and running to try to manage my stress, but I was doing these long— so I was replacing my emotional mental stress with physical stress. And we know that long duration endurance sessions can elevate cortisol for long periods, right? I'm looking at what happens chronically because it's the chronicle that can increase that, that visceral adipose tissue, you know, deep belly fat, and also impair insulin sensitivity. And then you put that together with not having enough protein overall, not having enough of your— the balance of your amino acids, too much training, not enough calories, and poor recovery, and you have a recipe for metabolic disaster. That is a total muscle loss cocktail. If you want to design a study for people to lose muscle, there it is. And again, you lose muscle, your resting metabolic rate goes down, and your insulin sensitivity activity drops. Remember, and this was a review in Frontiers in Bioscience showing that skeletal muscle is the primary site for glucose disposal in the body. That's why I say that, that muscle is your sugar sponge. It's going to help soak up that sugar and store it away as glycogen, combining glucose with water, so that you have it there when you need it to create energy when your muscles contract. When your muscles contract, they are going to send out all of these important signals, and they can also use glycogen especially when you've got a higher level of activity. But the big important thing here is that skeletal muscle is that place where you have insulin-stimulated glucose uptake, which is important because if you don't have enough muscle, or the muscle you do have is all full, then guess what? You're going to turn that carbohydrate into fat and you're going to store it where you don't want to. So how does this happen? That sugar transport into the muscle depends on on insulin signaling and something else called GLUT4 translocation. But it also can happen just by muscle contractions, which means if you're not contracting your muscles, you know, guess what you're not doing? You are not providing a place for carbohydrates to go. So you do not want to compromise your muscle mass. You do not want to be sedentary because then you have glucose disposal becoming less efficient, insulin sensitivity declining, and then you start to get those blood sugar irregularities. By the way, the fasting insulin, the insulin resistance comes first, and then the glucose problems come. What was happening to me? I was telling my body, hey, get less efficient at being insulin sensitive, get better at storing fat, worse at burning it off, right? And that is no good. And, you know, while you won't see your weight change as much, you will see your body composition shift dramatically. Thankfully, I tested it because what I was doing was basically creating survival physiology, which is the complete opposite of a thriving physiology. That wake-up call of doing that body composition test with all my peers, my student peers sitting around looking at going, "Oh my gosh, you're 25% body fat." I was like, holy smokes. Which 25% body fat can be, it can be a healthy body fat for a woman, but I was a lean athlete. So I made a shift. I took that long-distance cardio. I kept one day a week because I love rollerblade or bike for long distances or hike. But the 2 days a week I put in high-intensity interval training. What is high-intensity interval training? I think now most people know what it is. It's where you go hard for a short period of time, recover actively, and go back and forth. And there's a variety of different ways to do it. I've done videos on this, which we'll link to. But I did this 2 days a week. Why? Because high-intensity interval training has been shown to stimulate mitochondrial biogenesis. You make new mitochondria, and it also improves insulin sensitivity. Activity with far less of time, oxidative stress, or stress load. In fact, a landmark study published in the Journal of Physiology showed that short sprint intervals significantly increase mitochondrial capacity similar to traditional endurance training, but in a fraction of the time. And why don't people exercise? It's the time excuse. But what if you could do in 2 weeks, uh, 2 days a week, you could spend in, say, let's say 20 minutes, even 10 minutes, and make a major difference. And this has really freed me up too when I'm busy. I make sure I'm getting in my non-exercise activity thermogenesis all throughout the day by just moving more. But then if I'm really busy, I can get in some short bursts throughout the day. That is my 10 Minutes to Win It Challenge that I have people go through, where we just do short bursts all throughout the day, little high-intensity interval bursts. When you're doing high-intensity interval training, let's say you decide to do 2 days a week of 20 minutes, maybe you do 1 minute hard 1 minute easy, recover, and repeat that 10 times. Or you do 4 minutes hard, 3 minutes recover, 4 minutes hard, 3 minutes recover, and you do that 4 times. There's a variety of different types you can do out there, anything from the Norwegian 4x4, the 1:1 ratio one, Tabata training— I always say that wrong— um, the Wingate training, which is 30 seconds all out and 3 and a half minutes recover. There's a variety of ways to do this, and I like to do a variety of different ones so that my body doesn't adapt. And you will raise a little bit of cortisol as you do it, but here's the thing— that's good. Your body learns how to handle that stress and recover, so it actually causes a better cortisol profile overall because you got to raise your cortisol in the morning or you're not getting out of bed. But you want your cortisol to come up at the right times and then come back down. HIIT stimulates growth hormone, supports anabolic signaling without causing that chronic cortisol that you do not want, and it also improves your, your chronic cortisol balance. So I made resistance training my foundation. It always was there, but I was kind of, kind of stealing from it because of so much focus on the catabolic cardio. And multiple studies, including a 2022 systematic review and meta-analysis in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, show that resistance training is independently associated with reduced all-cause mortality. In fact, if I was going to do one thing, it would be number 1, improve your non-exercise activity thermogenesis. Move more all throughout the day. Incorporate as much movement into your day as you possibly can. Then I would add in resistance training, because check this out: any resistance training versus none, lower risk of all-cause mortality— this was just any resistance training— 15%. Cardiovascular mortality by 19%. Cancer mortality by 14%. But if you can get yourself to more like 30 minutes twice a week, that is going to be amazing. And that's not much. Remember, muscle's protective. It regulates glucose. It creates that sugar sponge, improves your metabolic flexibility. It supports better bone mineral density, and which gives you more independence. And you're not going to get that from endurance training. You get that from resistance training. So let me tell you what my training program looks like now. Lots of movement all throughout the day. 10,000 steps is my goal each day. Um, 8,000 is my bare minimum. And if I can get it up more like 12,000, 15,000, even better. I like to hit each body part at least twice a week. Sometimes I'll go for 3. I do usually splits, but today I did all of my body parts. I did my push, my pull, and my hinge. I do 2 days a week of high-intensity interval training, and I do 1 day a week of a longer session. I eat animal protein first at every meal. I make sure I get in, I get in about 100 and between 120 and 150 grams of protein a day. I split it between my meals, but I really emphasize my morning and evening. Remember, as we age, we need more, not less protein because of anabolic resistance. In fact, there was a study in the Journal of Gerontology that showed— that looked at older versus younger men. The older men, 70s, the younger men were in their 20s, and they looked at single meal protein doses, and then they looked at muscle protein synthesis. And what they found was that older dudes had a blunted muscle protein synthesis response to the lower protein doses and required higher relative per meal intake to achieve that max muscle protein stimulus as compared to the younger guys. No great surprise there. This is why I think one of the most underutilized tools that is so, so, so important is the use of essential amino acids. I think that for, you know, pretty much most women over 40, unless you are really, really good about getting all your protein in, I view essential amino acids— I use something called Amino Amino Acid Power by Reignite Wellness. I formulated it based on the literature from the NIH about sarcopenia and the best amino acid balance. And what I view them as is a muscle insurance policy. If you are eating a skimpy protein meal, have a scoop of my essential aminos. If you are not eating, maybe like you ate lunch and you're not gonna have dinner, then have 2 scoops. If you are not eating breakfast in the morning and you want to go for a workout, have 2 scoops. Super important. To help you maintain and build muscle. You just got to do the work. It's 75% doing the work, but you need to have the fuel, the substrate too. There was an American Journal of Medicine study that showed that lower muscle mass is directly correlative with higher mortality risk. So we got to do everything we possibly can to support that muscle mass. More muscle, longer life, better life, higher quality life. Remember, we don't need smaller bodies. It's not— about weighing less. It's about improving what that weight is made up of and improving quality muscle. We need stronger bodies as we age. And I'm not saying you should never run. What I'm saying is you need to understand the signals you're sending to your body. When I was running long distance constantly and under-eating protein, being that vegan, I was telling my body to break down and to shrink. And that's exactly what happened. I lost muscle. I gained fat. My metabolism slowed down, and thankfully I had a humiliating body composition test in front of my friends, and that was my wake-up call. And I'm so grateful to that. And that is when I made the big shift to my muscle-first philosophy and making sure I was getting in that protein and using that high-intensity burst training instead of chronic cardio. And everything shifted. My body composition improved, my energy improved, my stress levels improved, my mood improved. Reality is, if you want to age powerfully, and I'm sure you do if you're here, then muscle has got to be the priority. And if you want more science-backed strategies on how to build that muscle, protect your metabolism, enhance it, let's say, and stay strong and powerful as you age, make sure you subscribe to this channel because I'm dropping all sorts of wisdom on that.