Why Muscle Matters More Than the Scale

This episode is brought to you by Starbucks. That is fire! Whoa, that's good. This might be the drink of the summer. Okay, I like this one too. I'm rocking with it, okay. Try it for yourself. Starbucks Refreshers Concentrates are coming home. Find them in the coffee aisle and make it yours. 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. 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 813-565-2627. That's 813-565-2627. My virtual JJ will reply directly. And trust me, this will make your day. So subscribe now at subscribetojj.com and text me your review. Let's keep thriving together. Hello and welcome to my Ask Me Anything. I'm JJ Virgin. We are going to be talking about muscle and metabolism, metabolic health, mental health, because muscle truly does Change Everything. So we solicited some questions ahead of time. Today we are going to be talking about how muscle changes everything. The questions here are related to that, specifically in body composition, in metabolism, and in metabolic health, where muscle is truly a huge needle mover. I like to say that muscle is 3 things because it's very memorable when you hear these 3 things. First of all, muscle is your metabolic Spanx. What do I mean by that? Muscle holds everything in tighter like Spanx does, but it also is the only way that you can improve your resting metabolic rate. The only things you can do there, that is your sex, your height, your genes, your age, and how much muscle you have on your body. The second thing muscle is, is a sugar sponge. It gives carbohydrates a way better place to land than being converted into fat and stored on your gut or butt. Although some people might like it on their butt. So muscle is a very safe place to put carbohydrates where they're stored as glycogen for energy for the next time you use them. And then muscle is a multitasking messenger, meaning it releases these powerful messages. It's like it's your body creating its own pharmacy that helps reduce inflammation, helps improve brain function, helps improve immune system. I mean, there's all these different things that it does. So that is why I say muscle changes everything and for the better. Kathy O'Brien 5618, who asks, how can you best at home measure your muscle? I've lost a good amount of weight. Is it fat or muscle? So let's start with that because that is a very important question. And if I could leave one thing as my legacy, it would be that we would get rid of the traditional scale, the scale that you step on that just tells you your weight, but it does not tell you what your weight's made up of, which means it's really not giving you any information. I instead want you to get something called a bioimpedance scale. And a bioimpedance scale is something that sends a wave up your body. It checks the resistance to that wave. And from that, it's going to predict two things: how much of your body is fat-free mass and how much of your body is fat mass based on your total body water. Now, I say predict because here's what you've got to know about bioimpedance machines. They're based on total body water, and that fluctuates. Ideally, this is something that you do every day. You get up in the morning, you go to the bathroom, you get on the scale, and then it tracks to your phone, and you take the trend Over time, once a week, you go, what's my trend? Not daily. Daily will make you crazy. And we do not need to be more crazy about weight. What you're looking for is a trend that's saying my total body water is going up while my body fat is going down. And that means you're holding on to fat-free mass and some percentage of that or building it. If your total body water is going up, you are building muscle because in your fat-free mass, you basically— fat-free mass is everything but fat, and your fat-free mass are your bones, your muscles, your organs. Really, the only thing you're going to be able to increase there is skeletal muscle, which is some percentage of your fat-free mass. So if you're seeing your fat-free mass go up, that means you're putting on more muscle. Now, there's two ways you have to look at muscle. You have to look at how much you have, but also the quality of what you have. So what you want to do is you want to test your grip strength, and your grip strength It's a proxy for your overall strength. What we know is that if your grip strength is at the lowest quartile for your age, you have the highest risk for all-cause mortality. We don't want that. So what you do is you test your grip strength on both hands and you want to be an overachiever here. You want to be in the top quartile for your age, right? You also want your strength between your hands to be pretty close. If it's 10% or farther away from each other, That can be a sign of early dementia. And if all of a sudden your grip strength was great and like it goes down over a week, that could be a sign of overtraining. So grip strength is one way we can look at muscle quality. Another way we can look at muscle quality is through doing a very simple squat test. And all you have to do is get yourself a regular height chair, cross your hands over your chest, set a timer for 30 seconds and see how many squats you can do where you go all the way down, tap that chair and stand all the way back up. This is a test of quad strength, but really quad power. How fast can you do this? And when we look at muscle, we want to look at our size, and you see that on the Bioimpedance machine. We want to look at your strength, which is that grip strength, and we want to look at your power, which is what we can tell through that squat test. And the other thing that you can do is a push-up test, and that's where you get into good form on your hands and toes. And if you can't start on your hands and toes, do it on your hands and knees. And if you can't start on your hands and knees, you can do it against a bench or against a wall, and you see how many you can do. And then you continue improve upon that. You could test it once a week, once a month. Hopefully you're doing push-ups 2 to 3 times a week, so you're always testing it and seeing that improve. And if you're doing as many as you can do, that's also a test of your stamina, which is fantastic. Okay, thank you for that. That was the best kickoff question. So thank Kathy, way to go. Let's go over to Diana who says, hello, I am 77 years young and in the past few years have undergone extreme muscle and weight loss. I'm mainly interested in regaining my muscle mass and some weight. My weight is now 93 pounds. Now she's 5 feet tall. So I've always been petite but usually weighed more. My goal is to weigh around, around 150 pounds since I'm 5 feet tall. Is it possible for me at this age to improve my muscle mass and gain weight? Thanks in advance for your advice. Now here's the thing. I love the bioimpedance machine at home. And then once or twice a year, I think it's really important to go get a DEXA body scan and look at your DEXA. So that's the other thing that I like to see is a DEXA body scan. And so I would love Diane Anna for you to get a DEXA scan, plus for looking at your bone density as well. When you say you want to put on basically— I'm gonna have to do math on the fly— like it's 22 pounds of weight, we don't want 22 pounds of fat. What I would rather see is you really starting to work on putting on a little bit of fat, but mainly fat-free mass, mainly muscle, right? And so let's say that you went up to 105, you might put on like 6 or 7 pounds of muscle and 3 or 4 pounds of fat. That would be amazing. Or even if you put on a pound of fat for every pound of muscle right now, it would still be great. And so what do you need to do to do that? Number 1, you need the right fuel. And here's what I would tell you I think is really important. There is a product called Myoos and it's called Yoked. We have it now on our website because I take it every single day. I literally traveled all over the world with this and I would double that dose. The MD version of it is a double dose. I would be taking 2 packets of Myo Yolk today. It has a product in there called Fortetropin. It's fertilized egg yolk protein, was found to increase muscle protein synthesis by 18%. Helps you build muscle. Very important. The next thing that I would be doing is using essential aminos. I have a product called Amino Power Powder. I would be having a scoop with breakfast, a scoop with dinner. Of course, this is augmenting your diet. We want to make sure that you are getting in 100 grams of protein a day, at least 30 grams at breakfast, at least 30 grams at dinner. And again, a scoop of aminos a scoop of aminos at dinner. If you're missing a meal, have 2 scoops. Then I would be using my chiotine, creatine, and taurine and magnesium product to help you work out. And probably to get your protein up, it would be helpful to use some protein powder. What I did with my protein powders, my plant-based and my bone broth, is I spiked them with essential aminos so they mimic the whey protein powder amino acid blend. And then what I did with my aminos in my amino acid powders, I did— used what was recommended in the NIH review on sarcopenia. Now, I really want to see what your body composition is. That's super important. And if you have any trouble putting on muscle, because you can gain muscle at any, at any age. I was doing my PhD at USC in exercise phys nutrition and aging. We had people in their 90s putting on muscle. The oldest people that I worked one-on-one with, I think were in their 80s putting on muscle. So you can put on muscle at any age. We know a 65-year-old and 85-year-old can put on muscle the same way. You just have to make sure you're getting enough protein. And that's where the aminos can help. That's where the myos can help. And making sure you're sleeping well. Two other things I would look at is Mitopure's Timeline product is really amazing here for mitophagy and improving strength. And then a program called E20. And I don't know where you're located, but if you have access to this, or you could look at Katalyst, K-A-T-A-L-Y-S-T. It's a suit. This is what E20 does for their 20-minute workouts, helps you recruit a lot more muscle fiber. So it would be a good thing to do is 1 or 2 of your training sessions a week. Okay. And I wanna hear what happens. Like, I really wanna hear what happens with this. So report in. CJ Washington says, hello, JJ, why aren't my muscles growing? I'm postmenopausal. I lost muscle through dieting. I use dumbbells, but maybe not enough. I don't feel progress. What's the problem? Okay. So first of all, here's why I want you to monitor with a bioimpedance machine, a 6 to 12 month DEXA scan check-in, and then the grip strength and the pushup and squat Tess, here's the reality. You will be lucky if you haven't been lifting weights at all, or you're fairly new to lifting weights. And when I say lifting weights, I mean challenging your muscles. So that might be body weight, it might be bands, it's whatever it is to challenge your muscles. But when we say challenge your muscles, that means that it has to be hard enough so that when you get to the last couple reps, you start to slow way down and your form feels like it's going to break so that maybe you could eke out another 1 or 2. But if you're not getting to that, you're not training hard enough. And if you do not train hard enough, your body doesn't have to adapt to get stronger. Assuming you're training hard enough, but right there you said maybe not enough. I would question that first. If you're training hard enough, you will be lucky to put on a pound of muscle a month. A pound. Once you're really fit, it's more like a quarter pound to a half pound. It is very hard to build muscle and you've really gotta stress your muscles, challenge your muscles to build them. They have to— you have to do more than what they're used to, so they have to adapt and get stronger. Super important. So again, just like I was telling Diana, think about Myo's, the yoked product, the amino product. But also for you, I just also want to know, are you training hard enough? Now, the other things that could be in trouble here is hormones. Estrogen helps you build muscle and burn fat. Testosterone helps you build muscle, and you need thyroid. So that's the other question is, are your hormones optimized? Because You can still do it without it, but it's a lot harder. It's a lot easier if you've got your muscles, your protein dialed, and your hormones dialed in, right? You got to get it all dialed in. It all counts. So that's the other piece I would look at. Beautiful You asks, can't do push-ups as I shattered both wrists last year. Yikes. What can I do to increase push-ups without being on the wrists? So I wouldn't worry about doing push-ups. I think it's more what types of pushing exercises can you do with your wrists? And this would be a question, get a really good physical therapist or personal trainer. I'm not sure what you're able to do with your wrist like that. At the very least, you could do some push-up, some pull-down, some extension work at the elbow with things on your forearms. You could do some chest work with things on your forearms. So that's what I would look at. Obviously wrists are going to be out for a while. So how do we work around it? I've had to work around so many things over the years between a blown-out knee, broken foot, etc. So you just have to figure out how to do it. And that's where a great personal trainer who's well-trained or a physical therapist can be super super helpful. My thoughts on weighted vests. Okay, I'm going to give you the coolest research on weighted vests and then we're going to go over to AR. So weighted vests may help with bone density. Nothing's really showing it, but you're kind of like, it wouldn't hurt. But here's where weighted vests help. I had this idea. I thought, God, what if as you're losing weight, because when we start to lose overall weight, hopefully you're really losing body fat and holding on to or building muscle and improving your body composition, what your weight's made up of. But again, your total daily energy expenditure, and specifically your resting metabolic rate, is tied to how much you weigh, how much you have to move around. So what if, as you're losing weight, you actually started to replace some of that weight with a weighted vest as you're moving around? Turns out it makes a difference. There was a study that looked at people who did that versus people who didn't, and the people who were replacing their weight with a weighted vest minimized their metabolic adaptation, that drop in calories as you lose weight, and were able to maintain their weight better even if they didn't wear the weighted vest after they lost the weight. So I thought that was pretty cool. I think it's also a great way to add some work to an outdoor walk. I will give you an example. I've got a girlfriend who is a foot shorter than me. She's, she's 5'2", I'm 6 feet. And so obviously my stride's a little longer than hers. And when we go out for a power walk, her power walk is my stroll. So I throw a weighted vest on to make us even steven. So that's another way you can use it. But I think it's a cool thing. Totally new to weightlifting. Please recommend an easy to follow workout to get started. I am so happy you're starting. Yay! Couple things. Number one, in April, I hope I'm right, team. Sorry if I'm not. We're gonna start our arms challenge. We've actually been trying to figure out what to name it. And so stay tuned for that and jump in. But I don't want you to wait till then. We have on YouTube, I have a how to get started on a resistance training routine and also a guide that goes with it. So on YouTube you'll find that and maybe we can drop it into the chat as well so that you can get started right away. I have something I call the 2x2x2, a very easy way to get started. Basically, I've divided the body into 4 parts and then I focus on 3 and I'll explain why. I then divide the body into upper body pushing, that would be things like a push-up or chest press, an overhead press, upper body pulling, uh, would be things like a pull-up or a bent-over row or a high pull, and then hip and thigh hinging, things like squats or step-ups or lunges, and power core, you know, abs and back. Here's the deal. If you're doing push-ups or you're doing squats, you're using your core. So I don't have you focus on that. I'm gonna have you focus on big multi-joint, big mover exercises that have big metabolic cost to them that make a big deal with your body and help you train to get better at life because we're not training to get better at training. And I know that if you're better at squatting, you're better at getting out of the car, you're better getting off the toilet, you've got better balance. I know if you're doing a step better balance, better at charging up the stairs. I know that if you're doing a bent-over row, you can pick stuff up easier, and an overhead press, you can throw things into cabinet easier. So that's why I really look at how do we do things that mimic activities of daily living. So the 2x2x2 says 2 days a week, do 2 exercises twice through per body part. So maybe Monday and Thursday you're going to do 2 sets of push-ups, 2 sets of overhead presses. 2 sets of bent-over rows, 2 sets of high pulls, 2 sets of squats, 2 sets of step-ups. All those things I just talked about could be done at home with dumbbells as well. And when I say 2 sets, when you're first starting out, you do just 2 sets of easy, move your body through the motion, get your muscles waking up, get your muscles and nerves connected and talking to each other. Then as you start to get comfortable in the movement, then what we're going to do is do 1 moderate warm-up set and 2 working sets that challenge your muscles. Okay, is calorie deficit the only option for fat loss? So here's how I like to walk into this. I like to think build, burn, balance. So before I ever worry about burning fat, I'm going to worry first about building and building specifically focused on what we need to do for muscle. How do we take a muscle-first approach? Because I know that if I have better quality muscle, this is where I'm going to burn fat. This is where I'm going to increase insulin sensitivity. That'll make it easier for my body to burn fat. What I find is if we support that building by eating protein first, which is going to improve your thermic effect of food, improve your satiety so that you're actually probably less hungry. And then we're adding in the resistance training to improve insulin sensitivity. You will likely— and then we're making sure you've got good NEAT, that you're doing the foundational work for your metabolism of just moving more through all throughout the day. Then we look if we need to start to do any kind of caloric cycling. But I always start there first because sometimes things just work out when you're putting on some muscle, when you're becoming more insulin sensitive, which is what will happen first, when you're improving your metabolism through the thermic effect of food, and you don't actually have to go into as much caloric cycling. But if you're then doing that and you go, now I need to really, I want to get some more fat off, the thing that can really work here, once you've really dialed in your macros, so you've got, you know, you're not eating processed food that just reams your metabolism and drops your metabolic rate and make sure you're eating protein first. Then fiber, and then augmenting the rest of that with a little bit of healthy fats or a little bit of slow low carbs that are fiber rich as well. Then we look at what we need to do in terms of caloric restriction. So it's not the only option, but generally in order for you to shut off stored body fat, you got to be in some kind of a deficit in order to do it. I'm a vegetarian. Can you recommend a collagen source? Well, if you're a vegetarian, then you could do marine collagen if you eat fish. I don't know if you eat fish. If you eat fish, you could do a marine collagen. If you don't, If you only eat dairy and eggs, then no, I can't. So then you're— I don't know how to help you on that one. And what do I think about berberine? Berberine is a really cool supplement for a variety of reasons. The biggest reason people use it is for blood sugar. It can help with insulin sensitivity and lowering the blood sugar response to a meal, but it's also great for your gut, great for your brain. So I think it can be really helpful. My thoughts on vibration plates for increasing bone density. I think we have to think of increasing bone density in an integrated approach, of which vibration plates are one thing that can be super helpful. I especially love— I have one at home, I have a Power Plate, and I think we have a special deal on my website, which you can put a link to. But what I really love about doing on a Power Plate is standing on a Power Plate, doing some squats, and doing some overhead presses. So doing things that load the spine and the hips while on the vibrational plate, I think, is a super cool thing to do. But I think this has to go along with a good optimized vitamin D3 with K2. So optimize your vitamin D3, take D3 with K2. Make sure your fish oil omega-3 is optimized. That helps with bone turnover. And then also eat your protein with your plants for acid-alkaline balance. And then creatine actually has been found— a couple studies are showing that creatine can help with bone mineral density. Now, the Creatine HCL that I use and chiotine, you can basically use a microdose compared to creatine monohydrate because it's so much more soluble. So, you know, somewhere between 750 milligrams 1,500 milligrams there. And then of course magnesium, super important as well. I like to get calcium from food. I don't like really to take it. And then the biggest, most important thing for bone mineral density is going to be hormones. So sex hormone replacement, estrogen being the key winner, progesterone and testosterone also helping there. Okay, let's go to— I'm doing weight training twice a week and getting— instead of getting lean, I'm getting bulky. What could I be doing wrong? All right, so it's really hard to build muscle. As we know, if you're really working out hard, you might put on a pound of muscle a month. And remember, it's metabolic spikes, it holds everything in tighter. So when someone tells me— and in 40 years of doing this, working with people, I haven't had someone get bigger lifting weights. So if I hear that, I always want to go back and let's, let's make— unpack all of it. The first thing I would have you do is track your macros and calories. So first thing I would want you to do is do your bioimpedance every single day and take the trend over the week. So we want to know what's shifting in your body. Are you holding on to and building muscle mass? Are you losing fat or are you gaining fat while losing muscle? What is going on, right? That's step 1. Number 2, I would have you track what you're eating. And the only way to do this that really works is to do it with a food scale. Everything else is a guess and we are terrible at guessing. Turns out that on a good day, we underestimate what we're eating by anywhere from 25 to 40%, and I believe we overestimate our protein intake. So you got to be first tracking to really see where you're at and make sure that you are where you need in terms of calories or underneath it. If you're over it, yes, if you're working out, you don't exercise to lose weight. You exercise to improve insulin sensitivity. You exercise to build muscle. You exercise for your brain. You exercise to produce myokines. But don't think of exercising to burn calories. It's a losing game because here's what happens. If you're not careful about how much you move all throughout the day, your non-exercise activity thermogenesis, what tends to happen is, as we exercise, is we move less and we get back to exactly where we were, homeostasis. So what you really want to do is you want to increase, add on top of your non-exercise activity thermogenesis, which is the biggest modifiable thing we can do for our metabolism, by the way, is Just move more all throughout the day. And then we just need to see if— are you going to need to reduce your calorie sum without stealing from your protein? And if you're not gaining muscle, why not? Do we need to look at your hormones? Do we need to look at your protein? Do we need to add things like Fortetropin, that myosin yolked? Are you taking chiotine that can help you work out harder and recover better? Maybe you need some collagen for your connective tissue. So you gotta look at all that stuff. And I think we all should be doing some aminos. That's why I use my amino acid powder every day. And then sometimes I'll add a little booster dose at night. Depends on what's been going on with food, especially when I'm traveling. And sometimes protein's hard to get enough of at a meal. Okay. Linda, I have a question. What are optimal percentages for skeletal muscle, muscle mass, body fat for a postmenopausal woman? So here's a sneak peek. I'm very excited about this. This is my upcoming book, The Metabolism Fix. Now in there, I have a body composition assessment that we will have a GPT-4 to walk you through. But basically the first thing you have to look at is, am I more of an ectomorph, a naturally lean person, thin person? Am I more of a mesomorph, a naturally muscular person, or am I more of a curvy person? I will tell you a funny story. I am adopted. I met my birth mother when I was 25. I get off the plane, back then there was no TSA or any of that. Literally, this woman had the same haircut, was wearing the same outfit, had the same body. I'm a mesomorph. I'm very easily put on muscle, always have. I always wanted to be the endomorph. I wanted to be curvy. No such luck. No curves. So first thing you have to identify is what's my natural body type? Which one of those things am I? Because based on that, what your best body composition is will vary. And that's the thing. You've got to find what's best for you, right? Someone who is more naturally curvy will have a higher natural body fat. Maybe they're more like 25 to 27%. Someone who's more lean, maybe they'll be somewhere in the 18 to 20%. Someone who's more muscular, 20% to 22%. So it's really where you are. Ideally, what I was taught in grad school is— has changed and I'm not buying into it. What I was taught in grad school is that 18 to 22% was the athletic fit person, up to 25%. Now we're saying up to 30%. I'm like, you know what? That's just ridiculous. Our health and genes haven't changed. We're just making it acceptable. So I think somewhere in the 18 to 25, maybe to 27, but I'd rather 25% would be a good body fat. But I'm more concerned about you having enough muscle mass, which is a percentage of your fat-free mass. You are better off having more body fat and more muscle than being lean and not having enough muscle. So the first thing you want to do is focus on muscle first. That's the most important thing. Sherry, so are you someone who thinks GLP-1 is useful and should be used? I'd like to hear more about your thoughts. It's being sold on every platform for people who need to lose a few pounds, and frankly, I'm the one who worked out my entire life and still tend to hold fat on my thighs. Also, I've gained 5 pounds since menopause. I've been the same weight for years with so much work. First of all, the thing about weight, and my husband is such a great example of this, he's the poster child for this. My husband had weighed basically the same amount all of his adult life. I did a body comp on him. I don't know what he was like younger because I didn't meet him until 10 years ago, but he was a skinny fat. My guess is that over the course of the last 20, 30 years, he has been losing muscle, gaining fat, because that's what happens. So your weight might be the same, but your body composition shifts. As far as GLP-1s, I think the GLP-1s used correctly are amazing, but for so many different things, not just for fat loss. So if you were using it for fat loss, where it gets exciting are two things. It's, it's good for someone who has had food noise, hedonic food issues, and needs to dial that down a bit. Not so much that they're not hungry, but so much so they can make good choices. Where it's also exciting is improving insulin sensitivity, helping your body release insulin at the right time, not the wrong time, and reducing overall inflammation that can block muscle protein synthesis and make you more insulin resistant. The exciting things to me in the field of GLP-1s is more what it's doing for all the other body systems, from bones to brain. I have my son on it because it helps with cognitive decline, has made a major difference for him. So there's a lot of different applications for it. The challenge I see with it is that the big pharma companies don't have you the ability for you to dose it in all these different ways. They only have this like big dose. And for a lot of people that maybe that just need a little food noise turned down or a little improvement in inflammation and insulin, I use a teensy bit for osteoarthritis. I am very aware of how much I'm using because I do not want to shut my appetite down. And so, and it doesn't impact my appetite, it impacts my osteoarthritis because I have like did some really bad damage to my joints when I was dumb teenager and young 20-year-old. So that's using tiny bits. It's like way below the starting dose of what they would have you do. So there's different things you can use it for if you find a great doc who's well-versed in peptides. They can guide you on some of that stuff. But I think it can be really amazing. And I think for a menopausal woman, honestly, it's like a godsend because you think of what happens as you start to go through menopause. And I'm glad the, the info is coming out now because for so long it was like menopause doesn't cause weight gain. I'm like, this is a dude saying this, you know. No woman anywhere who's gone through perimenopause is going to try to say that because what starts to happen as you go through perimenopause is you start to get inflamed, you start to become insulin resistant. Just that alone is going to cause you to store more fat. We know you move or you start to, to lose muscle, you start to gain fat around your midsection. So yeah, your weight might not change that much, but what your weight is made up of has changed dramatically. If you've got something that can make that shift for you, that can help you reduce that inflammation, improve that insulin sensitivity, awesome. So that's my feeling on it. I am a big fan of them used correctly in lower doses. Maria, how many days of resistance training per week and hours total is ideal? Well, It depends. I know we hate that answer. It depends what you're trying to do. I always like to think what's the least amount that could get the biggest result? And the least amount that could get the biggest result is doing 2 days a week, hitting each of those 3 areas, upper body pushing, upper body pulling, hip and thigh hinging, and hitting at least 10 sets per area overall, but 20 sets per area overall would be even better. So that would be the minimum viable product that I would say is that. But here's the question. Are you new to this or have you been doing it for a while? Are you plateaued? Quite often when we get to a point, because once you've gotten yourself strong and you've got good muscle on you, here's the good news. It's easier to maintain. The bad news is it's harder to increase. I personally am trying to pack on as much muscle as possible. I will be lucky if I can put 2 pounds of muscle on this year. I don't know that I can't. It is really, really hard. And so the fitter you are, the harder it is to change it, but it's also the easier it is to maintain it. So yay for that. So the bigger question is, where are you in your training? Are you trying to increase it? Are you trying to maintain it? You know, et cetera. Could you go over the drink you take to the gym with you? Thank you. Here's what I take to the gym. I wish I had that big old bottle that I take. I take a 64-ounce bottle to the gym. I drink a lot of fluids. So I have since I was a little kid, I will tell you, I've always been one of those people that drinks a lot of fluids. I put in Electro Replenish. That is my electrolyte formula I formulated. And by the way, I went through and reformulated every single product in my line to support metabolism, muscle first, powerful aging. So my Electro Replenish, which all of my powders that are built to work together, they all have this like orangey lemon flavor to them, but they're subtle. So it's not obnoxious. You don't feel like you're getting like an orange thrown at you. And then a little— I do 2 scoops of chiatine, and then I do a scoop of my Amino Power powder. Now, depending on what is going on, if I'm traveling, which I travel like a crazy person and I flip time zones, and if that is happening, in the afternoon I like to hit myself with another scoop or 2 of chiatine. And I especially like to throw that in sparkling water. It's like a soda. I love it. But that's what I take to the gym. Where else I will use Amino Power powder is if I am not working out that day, but like I'm traveling and I got like 2 eggs for breakfast, which is not enough protein. I'll give myself a scoop of aminos. Or if I'm not going to get to eat till, you know, mid-morning, I'll have some aminos in the morning to make sure that I'm not catabolic. So that's how I use it. JJ Virgin, what do you advise for women Taking hormone blockers as post-cancer treatment, we need to really build muscle and take calcium supplements, but how can we work on building our muscles and bones? Okay, so I am not a doctor and I'm especially not an oncologist, but in what I will tell you is I would highly, highly recommend my friend Dr. Jen Simmons. We have done a podcast, probably done a couple podcasts on Well Beyond 40 with her. She's a breast cancer surgeon, and so I would talk to her ensure that you do need to take hormone blockers, because I know for a lot of people it's standard of care. Confirm that you actually need them, because I know that that makes things super duper challenging. Then all the things that I talked about here, I would look at the potential. I believe that what we're going to find out with GLP-1s is that lower dose GLP-1s can help with a little bit of myostatin that can, that can help you build muscle. But I would look at that fortetropin that I talked about, the YOGT, 2 packages of those. I would look at making sure you're getting your protein in. I'd augment with aminos and I do resistance training. I do all the other things because they're still going to work. You just don't have the hormonal support. And then I would also see if you can do things with soy isoflavones. I'm not sure what they let you do and not let you do, but if you can, I'd look at that too. But again, Jen Simmons. Okay, I'm 61. My BMR, my My basal metabolic rate is 1049. I've been strength training but having trouble gaining muscle. I need to lose 20 pounds. I eat 100 grams of protein a day. Help and thank you. Okay, so the 61-year-old with a BMR of 1049 is 5'1", 142 pounds. Her Hume scale says body fat 58.5, lean mass 77. So what we would want to do here is— so here's the thing with fat-free mass. Fat-free mass is not all skeletal muscle mass. And when you have higher body fat, a lot of your fat-free mass will be infiltrated with fat, which then reduces the quality of your muscle. So my goal with you is that I wouldn't worry so much about gaining muscle. I'd improve the strength that you have. So I would, I'm thinking about the quality of muscle. And what we want to make sure of is that you are holding onto quality muscle as you're losing fat. So you're going to lose as you drop weight. Here's the reality. Some of that fat-free mass is supporting fat mass. It's, it's giving you the blood flow, et cetera, to your fat mass. So you might lose 3% of your fat-free mass as you're losing that fat. That's okay. What you want to do though is lose the majority of your weight from fat, teeny bit from fat-free mass, and see your strength increase. That would be your goal. If your strength's increasing, you're able to do more at the gym. Or do more when you're home challenging your muscles, then you know that you're barely losing fat-free mass and you're losing a lot of fat. You did it. You win. Okay, let's see. "I need to be able to buy quality protein bars. I aim for ones that are low in sugar and no almonds due to food intolerance. Are there any that you recommend?" I am, full disclosure, like, I have been working on a new protein bar here for a while, but I'm using more of a protein-fiber approach because I don't want these— these to me are like the emergency food you carry with you. I think one of the best protein bars out there is Primal Valley's beef sticks, grass-fed beef sticks. That's like nature's ultimate protein bar, right? So one of these grass-fed, grass-finished fermented beef sticks, that would be my top choice. And then once I have mine, which I think we're about 2 months out, they're delicious. There'll be 12 grams of protein with 8 grams of fiber. And so if you're trying to use this, it would be a kind of a I'm missing a meal, I'll do this instead. Or you could add it to a meal if, let's say, that you had 2 eggs, and then you could also have a hit of aminos. But those would be the ones that, that I would recommend those to. The only other things I found lately, there is a bar called Jiga Bar. I took it when I went to the Amazon, so that's an option. And then there's another bar, it has a little bit of seed oils, but teeny weeny, and that's the No Cow Bar. I only have one functioning kidney. Is it possible that I could take creatine? So I always have to say the caveat of you must talk to your doctor, but creatine doesn't impact kidney function. So, and again, remember, if your creatinine goes up when you're taking creatine, it's just that your body's getting rid of the excess. It's normal. I know you're not a doctor, but what do you know of the peptides, Smarlin? Are you talking about Tesamorilin or Smarlin? So I have been playing around with different peptides. I'm about to— I'll probably start talking more about what I've been taking. When I did my facelift, I did BPC-157 plus TB-500 plus CJC. I did CJC-1295 twice a day, and then plus ipamorelin at night. I'm going to switch my ipamorelin over to tesamorelin. From what I've heard in my friends, the peptide people, who are not me, by the way— Dr. Betsy Yerse, Dr. Elizabeth Yerse, we did a podcast with her, she's great. Dr. Rajka. She's great. And I think Shaleen just did a great podcast with Betsy Earth. But I would probably personally do Tesamorilin over Semoralin. I know that's what most of the peptide people are doing. And then I'm doing some topical GHK copper. I also did some injections when I was going through the facelift. So those are the ones I'm playing around with. I'm going to start Epitalin twice a year. So I'll give you my whole protocol once I get going on it, why I'm doing what I'm doing, and then how I've learned all of this, which is, you know, mainly from Dr. Elizabeth Yurth and Dr. Raika Gelbreth. But a lot of the conferences I go to, obviously they talk peptides. So there you go. I'm 61 and 131 pounds. I had my first DEXA last year. My T-score was -2.3. Started weight training 4 days a week for only about 20 minutes, 4 days a week. Rechecked DEXA last week, Still 2.3. Okay, let's manage expectations, please. Trying to change your body composition is like watching grass grow. Trying to change your bone mineral density is even more so. Bone mineral density is so slow to shift. The fact that it didn't decrease is good. Think about if this was an annual check, you know, in a year you might see some progress, which you should. So hopefully this was, this was less than a year away, but give yourself about a year. And in terms of bone mineral density, Hormones, D3, K2, optimized to, to your 25-hydroxy vitamin D to somewhere between 50 and 80, even up to 100 ng per ml. Balance your protein with your plants. Get your— make sure you're getting your protein levels up. Very important. The collagen that I make, a Collagen Plus C, actually has Fortigel in it, which has been shown to help with bone mineral density. That's why I put Fortigel and Verisol in there to help with connective tissue and bone and skin. So all of those things help and it takes time and also some impact. So if you're okay to do it, and this is always great to have doctor clearance, it's really good to add in some impact, a little jump training 3 days a week, and it can start very simple, like just hopping from side to side or skipping, but adding in some impact really helps your bones have to rebuild, get stronger. So the message it sends to your bones is we have to get stronger, we have to remodel. So that would be my other thing that I highly recommend. Okay, let me see where we're at. Thank you guys for all the questions. I really, really am honored that you're here with me. Okay, so what weight should the weights be? Oh my gosh, this is a question. How heavy should I lift? What weight should the weights I can be? Can I tell you full disclosure? I really don't like, and I must admit I was saying it too and I stopped. I do not like the lift heavy weights or lift heavy shit thing going on out there because I think it scares people. They see like this 80-year-old woman doing like deadlifts with knee straps and huge plates and they're like, I'm not going there. So the reality is you wanna lift the heaviest weight you can lift in good form. That may be your own body weight to start. It doesn't matter. You're challenging your muscles to do more than what they're used to so they get stronger and repair. Now here's the thing, you do it carefully. The worst thing you could possibly do is get injured. That's why I'd say you train to get better at life and you do it by building on this. As you first start to lift weights, your muscles and nerves need to learn to talk to each other. Once they're learning to talk to each other, the next thing that has to happen is your connective tissue has to get strong. This is where collagen really plays in. What I do in the morning before I go work out is I take collagen in my coffee because I want collagen on board because I'm having more blood flow to my joints. I take my Yoked packet, I do my collagen, my coffee, I do my Amino Acid Power with my chiotine and my electrolytes. That's my thing. But it's the heaviest weight you can handle in good form. And when you're first starting out, don't try to go heavy yet. Just learn the movements, get your body talking, get your muscles and nerves talking to you. Form is always going to be your limiter. That's the most important thing. Never sacrifice form to lift heavier. Okay. How many steps per day are recommended? So when you look at the literature, the sweet spot seems to be about 7,000 steps. I think there's a little more to this story. I think there's a couple of things we should look at. Whenever I hear this, I always want to see how many steps I managed to take today. If I've got a day where I can't do a workout, like yesterday, I flew back from Miami. Which seems like it should have been an easy thing since I live in Tampa. However, we had to get off a cruise ship at early in the morning because I was speaking on a hormone cruise the day before. So we got off this cruise ship at like 8 and then we went to the Miami airport. We walked all over the Miami airport, which is easy to do. So we got steps there. Then we got home, walked more. And when I'm not working out, like I knew I wasn't going to get to work out yesterday, then I really upped my steps. So yesterday, what'd I get? 12,000, almost 13,000 steps. Today, where am I at? Today is not good. So today I'm at like, well, it didn't count and I did StairMaster HIIT training this morning, which didn't get counted in. So reality is I'm probably, I'm at 4,500 steps for just the day. But where I think we need to look at, but I will end at about 8,000 and that's where kind of my floor is. But there's a bigger piece to this. You want to establish consistency and I think 8,000 At the very least, 7,000 should be the floor, but I'd rather see 8,000 or 10,000. And I like to establish this so that when you start to add layer on workouts, you don't steal from your NEAT. You're still moving. You just got used to moving all throughout the day. Now notice I said all throughout the day. What you don't want to do is sit on your butt all day long and then move in the afternoon, right? You want to get up in the morning, move some, then move some. I love the— we did this 10 Minutes to Win It challenge where we had you doing short bursts of activity all day long. This is the best for your blood sugar control, your metabolism, your brain, your focus. Do you know when you do short bouts of exercise, you actually improve your processing speed, your cognition for the next 4 hours? So all throughout the day is best. And you can do this in bursts. It is— I have an office upstairs, which is where I'm at. And when we were first moving into this house, I was like, oh, there was a nook where I was like, oh, I could put a fridge and I can put an espresso maker and it'll be amazing. And I thought, no, I'm going to put it all downstairs. I have to go up and down all day long, which is what do. So think of how to incorporate— force yourself to incorporate more steps throughout the day. Does walking in a weighted vest count as muscle building? No, it does not. I'm so sorry. When you want to think of building muscle, it is something that you can do generally anywhere from a rep one time to up to 30 times. But really, for actual building of muscle, kind of the sweet spot somewhere in the 6 to 15 rep range. You could go up to 30, but think of, I always go like, go 8 to 12. You're not using a weighted vest for 8 to 12 reps. You're wearing it all throughout the day. So that won't work for muscle building. Remember, you have to challenge your muscles by doing more than what they're used to for a short period of time. So they recover and get bigger. If you do not challenge a fiber, it doesn't grow. And so it's short things. It's, it's generally 10 to 20 seconds of something, maybe up to 30 seconds. And then you recover for, you know, 2 minutes or so. Then you do it again and again because you want to recruit more and more fibers. Okay. Is it all right to take a day off the day after the gym? I'm 72. Oh my gosh, I love you, Shannon. Yes, you may do that. But you know, it's interesting. Back when I first started in this world and in graduate school, it was like you did a workout day, a rest day, a workout. Like it was— we had all this weird programming. Now I look at it and I go, I don't think it's really necessary. So I'll I'm always flipping my program around to try to get my body to, you know, not adapt. And so yesterday I did nothing. I did 12,000 steps. The day before I did a full body workout. Oh no, I did a leg workout. The day before, an upper body workout. Then the day before that, a HIIT workout. So I'm always trying to vary things. So I might do a full body workout, then maybe I'll do a moderate cardio session, then maybe I'll do a HIIT session. So think about how you can do things. Like a lot of times if I do a really hard workout, I'll go do more of a yoga class afterwards to move around. 'Cause the big thing is feel into what you need. I know I can't work out super hard multiple days in a row. My body will be like, knock it off, right? I've also found that sauna can really help with recovery. We know it's anabolic and as opposed to a cold plunge, which will shut down muscle protein synthesis if you do it after a workout, a sauna can actually help with recovery and muscle growth. Okay, Krista asked Pilates, does that count towards strength training? Well, it depends. Not really once you get strong at it, because same with yoga, it's a different type of endurance as opposed to strength. When you look at the continuum, you have strength on one end, which is super hard, super short things like, you know, doing— picking up a weight 5 times and you can't pick it up a 6th time. Then you've got building, which is anywhere from like 6 reps to 30 reps of moving. Then you've got power, which is how fast you can do things. Generally it's lower weight fast. And then you've got endurance and stamina. Which is really more what Pilates and yoga will do with these long holds, right? Lighter weight, long reps like barre and Pilates. So it's a different thing. It's not going to build muscle. It's not going to build long lean defined muscles and tone. That makes me insane when I hear that because muscle tone comes from two things: built muscle that then is partially contracted, which is what happens to muscle without fat on it. Like, so when you're leaner, you've lost some body fat and your muscles partially contracted, which is what happens when you build muscle. That's a— that's what a lean muscle looks like. And as far as long, you can't make muscles different than what they are. There is no, I'm gonna do this exercise and make a long muscle. It's crazy. What do you think about rebounding? Rebounding is super cool, but not for what people think it is. I like it for the whole lymph circulation thing. I think it's great. Is 60— so Cajun Louisiana Lady says, is 60 too late to start? I have little muscle tone, very postmenopause, flat and loss of muscle. 60 too late to start? What the heck? I'm 62. Are you kidding me? 85 is not too late to start. My oldest client though, I started one woman, I think it's 75. So I would start, I would very comfortably start a 90-year-old on resistance training. I think when I worked in physical therapy, I'm trying to think of the oldest people I got started on this. So the answer is no, it's never too late. It's never too soon. Get moving. But just do it, you know, again, how we talked about, you're going to move into it. Don't go lift heavy stuff, right? Move into it. Work on form first. Teach your muscles and nerves how to connect to each other first. Roxanne says, hard to build muscle with back pain. So frustrating. I knew I need to do it. So my whole background in exercise phys was all in spinal biomechanics and back pain. And the reason I did that was I was like, well, everybody seems to have back pain, so I'll focus on this, right? And what we were taught back then, now this was the '80s, so there it is, leg warmers, the whole thing. But what we were taught was that you should only do flexion exercises like crunching if you have a bad back, you should avoid all extension. I thought at the time, I thought this is dumb because if you do that, your back muscles will get weaker. And then they'll hurt more. The big thing I did my graduate project on was that if your quads were strengthened more, it would help your spinal lifting biomechanics. But also, if we strengthen your back, it's going to help your back be better. So what I would tell you to do is, first we have to know what's causing the pain. Do we have any kind of a bulging disc or anything like that? So we know what you're working around. But I'm one that believes that when you have these types of things, it's the reason that you need to move, not vice versa. That. That this is when we need to really optimize our body composition so we don't have to carry around anything more than what we need to in terms of weight. And this is where we wanna make sure that we strengthen everything as much as possible to support the joints. All right. Rose Gold says, what about inflammation? I thought I was doing the right thing by joining a certain type of lifting gym, not realizing the way I was doing it was making my body inflamed and made me gain weight. I wanna know what you mean by that when you say I was making my body inflamed. So you might have an initial inflammatory response from a workout, then your body recovers and gets, you know, your inflammation goes way down, just like your cortisol comes up when you work out and then rebounds and balances. Same with inflammation. So I would wonder about that and how you're knowing that you're inflamed because a couple of things happen on a bioimpedance scale. Your total body of water is going up because your muscle mass is going up. If you have a, you might have an acute reaction to a hard, hard workout, but that would rebound itself like basically in hours. If you're seeing chronic inflammation, you would see things like creatinine, hs-CRP, IL-6. You'd see blood markers. And so that's what I want to see is what did you see actually change? Because I think a lot of people talk about this inflammation, but I don't know how they're actually looking at it. So that's the question. I've been diagnosed with endometrial cancer and a hysterectomy is next. It seems with every health event, my strength takes a step back when I'm unable to be in the gym. Any ideas on what I can do to work through recovery and keep from backsliding physically? Yes. I'm so sorry you're going through this. I had to have a total hysterectomy a couple years ago. I trained for the total hysterectomy, and then I made sure directly after the hysterectomy that I was doing isometric work and that I also was doing collagen, aminos, the yolked, all the things to help maintain muscle. And the thing I would tell you is look at that E20, the Katalyst suit. I don't know where you're located, but E20, you can look it up, um, E20 exercise. They do it out of Lindoras in Southern California, but it's moving around the country. But it uses a Katalyst suit, K-A-T-A-L-Y-S-T. It's electrical muscle stim. So it's a way that you could do this without creating the issues that they have when you have a hysterectomy. And when you have a hysterectomy, they want you to be careful with lifting heavy things so you don't trigger a Valsalva move that then could cause to like impact your pelvic floor, right? But this could help you do exercise and stimulate those muscles without that happening. So then you don't have to go through that. Also, with the hysterectomy, you still can do cardio, bike riding, walking, all those things. So you can keep all of that up as well. And, you know, again, talk to your doctor, but like it was just how heavy could you lift. So that's where I say Catalyst Suit, and you're still able to do things like squats, etc., just Not with heavy weight. Patty, I'm 57. I had my DEXA scan done for the third time. I have osteopenia and it's 2.1. Of course, the doctor wants to put me on Fosamax. I definitely don't want to do that. I work out, do strength training, walk with a weighted vest, take creatine. I also take skin and bone collagen. I don't know what else to do to prevent it from getting worse. What do you recommend? Yes, I would recommend these things. I don't know about your vitamin D. Make sure your vitamin D is optimized. Make sure you're doing hormones, estrogen, talk to your estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone. Talk to your doctor about those. Get your vitamin tested. Make sure you're optimizing that to make sure you've got optimal protein on board. Maybe supplement with aminos as well. And then as far as the strength training, make sure you're doing overhead presses, loading your spine. Make sure you're doing squats, especially with a bar on your back, and then add some jumping. That's what I would do. Shannon, since my diagnosis of osteoporosis, I always injure myself when I try to work out to gain muscle. I don't know if you worked with a very qualified personal trainer or exercise physiologist or physical therapist, but that's what I would start with. I think that the best thing you can and maybe get a friend or something, but go in, get a program, make sure that you're in good form. And here's the thing, I love free weights because I think they, you know, we are not bolted to the floor in life. However, you can build muscle, you can load your body using machines too. So, and they're safer. So that might be the better thing. And especially with someone with osteoporosis or osteopenia, they've got specific machines that really load the eccentric that can be even better for bone mineral density. So this might work really well. As well. Oh, and there's also a new thing that my girlfriend, Dr. Kat Toops, who's this amazing doc, showed me because she's, um, looking at some issues around— she's been studying, you know, if you can't take hormones, what about osteoporosis? And she found this company, osteoboost.com. I think that might even be covered by insurance. That's got good validation for bone mineral density, but it's a vibrating belt. So check that out too. Final question, we already went through this. How can we check muscle mass? Okay, Okay, we went through it, but let me just really go through it again. The only really real way you're checking muscle mass, I want to be really clear, when you're doing a bioimpedance machine, you're getting a prediction. You're getting a prediction of your fat mass versus fat-free mass. Then from your fat-free mass, based on your sex and your age, they're going to predict your skeletal muscle mass. So it's all predictions. That's why I want to put it together with quality muscle testing, like grip strength, like squat tests, like push-up tests. Yes. ADEXA is also a prediction. There are two ways that you can actually know how much skeletal muscle mass. An MRI, not likely going to do that, or something called a D3 creatine test that's not commercially available yet. So those are the things that we can do right now. But here's the reality. When you're doing bioimpedance and you're getting fat-free mass, if you're monitoring your muscle quality, grip strength, push-ups, squat tests, and you're watching your fat-free mass and your fat-free mass is going up, your body fat's going down, and your muscle strength's getting better, guess what you're doing? You are building more quality muscle. And that's the important thing. All right. So thank you so much for doing this. This was a little test that we did for the first time. So we will start doing this on the regular and make sure that you subscribe, pretty please. Also, we have our Facebook lifestyle group. Group. So we remind everybody about what's going on in there as well. So jump into the Facebook group. It's JJ Virgin Lifestyle Group. Make sure that you subscribe here and turn on notifications, and we will let you know when the next one's coming up and let you send in your questions in advance as well. And thank you all so much for being here with me and asking all these great questions. I really, really appreciate it. All right, bye-bye. 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. 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 to 2813. 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. 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. 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