How To Eat Clean By Listening To Your Body | JJ Virgin

Thank you so much, jj, for all of this wonderful information. It's wonderful to hear how many people are gonna change their life thanks to your talk because I'm practicing most of the things that you're sharing for about a year, and my life is changing dramatically. So thank you so much for sharing it. I would like to ask you because I'm having a vegan diet. I would like to know from you because you always mention about good fat and good fat, what you think is the best. Because I know that soy is not too good. I know Satan is not too good. I know that most of the things.

So vegan diet. And I'm happy to share. Like, I have a vegan guide that goes through how you can do this as a vegan. One of the biggest challenges with a vegan diet, if you are committed to being a vegan because of spiritual reasons, I will absolutely go through and support you. If it's for health reasons, I'm going to absolutely go and say that this is not the healthy diet.

No. The main reason is because they love this planet and they want to take care of this.

So if it's a spiritual reason, then I absolutely support it and I'll show you how to do it. But I always tell people, okay, let's look through, because there's been a lot of misinformation out there on animal products. Here's the deal. Don't eat animals that have been tortured, trashed, fed crappy stuff because you are what you eat ate. Right? I mean, this is just like, we have got to change our farming. Just now. I'm blanking on. Beautiful. Emily's just said, but in terms of a vegan diet, you can do it and be super healthy. You just also have to be super focused with how you do it. And I'm happy to give you this vegan guide that I've put together. The challenge with the vegan diet is to get enough protein. You have to be very careful that you don't over carb, because all of your protein's going to come with either carbs or fat. So I go the higher fat route, of course, with it. And the foods I tend to focus on. Soy is a really problematic food. I am not a fan of soy. No joy in soy. In fact, what the study shows that people who eat more soy have higher rates of dementia. Alzheimer's. They had a study in Hawaii where they looked at Japanese men In Hawaii, just 3 servings of soy a week. Their brains were smaller. Higher rates of dementia. Don't want that that's not one you want smaller. So where I would look at supplementing your diet is using some of the different plant based protein powders like pea protein is a great one and hemp protein, cranberry protein. So I'd absolutely supplement because you're going to have to supplement. Then the other thing that I would do is an amino acid profile and I would look at also supplementing with amino acids customized to use. So that's what I would always do with vegans is look at their amino acid profile and see what they're going to need. Because you're not going to get things that you would typically get from meat like carnitine and taurine. And of course you have to do things supplement with B12. And then the other issues are vitamin D. And if you will do vitamin D3 from, unfortunately you can get some from mushrooms now and you can get some from the sun. But the best vitamin D sources are animal sources if you're taking it. And I find that almost everybody is deficient in vitamin D. Some of it's genetics, some of it's because we're using sunscreen.

JJ so that's a lot of information. And you have a lot of books out. Which book would you recommend for someone like Gregorio, who wants to address this issue and find out what should his diet look like?

I address that both in the Sugar Impact diet and the Virgin Diet. And then both of them also have resources where I have vegan guides that go through. There's like a whole voomp of what you have to do as a vegan. Vitamin D, fish oil, like what things you have to do because you have to get omega 3s.

The people over here, which book should they start with? You know, if you should start with the Sugar Impact diet or the Virgin diet, because I have difficulty with that as well.

I do too. You know, it's like when I wrote it, I was like, all right, if I had it all to do over again, I might have started with Sugar Impact. So Sugar Impact, what happened was the number one thing that happened after I wrote the Virgin Diet is people went, I can't get rid of the sugar. And what I realized was people are either controlled by sugar, like they're addicted to it. It is our number one recreational drug out there, right? Or and it is a drug, let's be absolutely clear, sugar is a drug. It is the number one and most abused drug that we have. Sugar. Or they're confused. Isn't honey okay, it's all natural. What about agave? Agave is the worst thing you could put in you ever. It is so toxic, it's ridiculous. It's being touted as a health food. So I wrote, I realized we were looking at sugar all wrong. And it wasn't about sugar specifically, that was about the impact sugar had. Just like food was information. So what I would say is if you right now are suffering from joint pain, headaches, feel fatigue, gas and bloating, you've got an autoimmune disease. Start with the virgin diet food cravings. If you are just one of those people, that sugar is just your beast, you cannot get rid of it. Start with the sugar impact diet. I'm going to go through both in the workshop this afternoon and how to cross them over.

Great. And just to add to that, sugar is one of the most interesting things out there. I so love what you said about it being the biggest draw that we take, especially in America. I was talking to Mark Hyman yesterday and he downright said Coca Cola is evil and you gotta understand what sugar does to your body. Eric at Meadies who will be speaking on day four, I was talking to him and he said we evolved as human beings when we 7,000 years ago when we were hunter gatherers, evolutionary biology wise, as we would roam the jungles and the safaris and the plains and we would see fruit, our natural biology would be to grab that bunch of bananas and stuff it all in our stomach. So you store fat because we don't know when we're gonna see that next giant bushel of fruit. And it's not eat one banana, it's eat all of them. So sugar has an addictive quality. Once you start eating sugar, you have to keep eating and eating and eating and eating and eating. Seven thousand years ago this made sense. Today, when sugar is everywhere, what food companies have figured out is that when you add sugar to something and they'll.

Buy more because you can never get away from it, right?

You, you, it creates that addictive reaction to keep consuming it. So you get hooked on sugar and sugar is what causes weight around you, not fats. Right?

Fat does not cause weight. We all laugh about it because we eat, all of us health, the health mafia eat tons of fat.

So it's not, it's.

But it's the right fat. You've got to make an oil change. We're not, you know, we're not sitting.

There eating completely unnecessary.

Low fat milk is liquid sugar. It is the most ridiculous, heinous food. No one should. The only worse than low fat milk is fat. Free milk is worse than low fat milk. Or fat free chocolate milk was worse. Or soy milk.

So basically, basically.

I guess you could put some Nestle's Quick into the soy milk and then it could probably be worse than all that.

But giving up sugar is really easy. So I gave up sugar in my coffee at a fest two years ago. Anton, are you here? Anton Koning? No. You're Anton Smacko. Anton. Okay, so Anton. Anton is Mia's dad. So we were sitting having coffee and Anton, stop blushing. Let me share this story. And Anton saw me take a satchel of sugar, rip it open and pour the entire thing in my coffin. He's like, what did you tell me, Anton? Exactly. He said something like that. That's pure poison. And my reaction was F you. Nobody tells me how to appreciate my coffee. But Anton said something else. Anton said, you know, try not doing that. I'm like, look, I like it this way. Don't mess with my style. This is how Vishen drinks his coffee. Anton.

Poisons himself.

Let me do it. But Anton said something really smart. He's like, you know, well, it's easy to get rid of it. Just start cutting it down. So at that a fest, I started cutting it down in three days. In three days. So that was like day two, day four, I was drinking coffee without sugar. And now it's been two years and I still drink coffee without sugar. I completely got off it. And that's how easy it is to unwind that addictive reaction to sugar.

You made a very important point though.

That I was doing it for critical thing. I unwind it for three days.

One of the big things I teach in the sugar impact diet, when I started to look at like, why are we so stuck on sugar? Besides the fact that I don't believe it's the thing like adding the sugar to the coffee. It's where it's sneaking into places you'd never suspect, like the marinara sauce that's got more sugar than the Oreo cookies and the fat free dressings that basically you turn your salad into a sundae or all that dried fruit. So those are the issues. But you can't just pull it all out altogether because you'll crash. Because you've turned yourself into a sugar burner. So if you transition like you just did, where you taper it down, it's fantastic.

So to give you guys an idea of how important this is, okay, so I mentioned on day one of afest how I took my body fat down from 22% to. Which is actually not bad to 15%, which is actually pretty lean. And how I lost seven pounds in six weeks, which is tough because I'm not overweight. But I did want to at least have a more V shaped figure. Now, how I did that. So this was my hack in the morning. It was JJ virgin shake. So I would take your shake, the chocolate JJ virgin shake. I would add fiber to it. There's a JJ virgin fiber. Explain why is fiber important?

Fiber is the number one thing that we can do to make a massive change quickly because it does a couple different things. One thing it does is feed the good bacteria in your gut. Someone mentioned yesterday we have basically, we're more bacteria than cells. Well, that bacteria in your gut controls your immune system, your mood, but also can help with your weight. Because if you have too much bad bacteria, it extracts more calories from the food you eat and stores it as fat. It can change glucose tolerance. One of the reasons that artificial sweeteners are bad, one there's a gazillion reasons, is they change the gut microbiome and make you more intolerant to sugar. So it changes your gut microbiome. It helps with blood sugar balance. So slow release of blood sugar so you don't have that spike that causes a big insulin hit that makes you store fat, and it helps you feel fuller, longer, and it gives you poops that you can be proud of.

That's awesome. And now the other thing is now if you don't have access to Jeju virgin shakes, you could just make an omelette. And what I started doing was, and this was your advice as well, if.

You'Re not intolerant to your omelet, if.

You'Re not intolerant to your omelet, I started adding Himalayan salt, which you advised me to do. Why Himalayan salt?

So sea salt is. So somehow we've gotten this idea, especially in the States, that salt is bad. Sodium, the salt where they pulled all the minerals out and sold them to the supplement company, is bad. But sea salt is actually very good for your adrenals. And it's rare to find someone who's not under some kind of stress because we're driving ourselves too hard. So it's a great mineral source to do a little bit of sea salt.

Now, again with your advice, I took away one thing from my breakfast, and that was juice. I would have orange juice or apple juice. And you shocked me when you said apple juice is as bad as Coca Cola.

It's worse than gut.

Worse. Okay, explain that.

Because it's Higher in fructose. And again, fructose is the most damaging sugar. Not only does it make your gut more permeable, it ages you faster. The biggest thing that you can do to age yourself is high sugar impact. And fructose is the highest of all. The most aging sugar of all causes something called glycation, which is like the crust on bread happening to you. Right.

But orange juice is supposed to be healthy. Apple juice is supposed to be healthy.

Orange juice.

How else am I going to eat our vitamins?

Who told you that apple juice and orange juice was healthy?

Mom. Mom. No, it's true. I mean, it's how we are raised.

The Tropicana have gotten some pieces of that right. You start, you always got to follow the money chain. I hate to say it, but it's like who told us that snacking was important? Was it the snack pack companies? You know, I mean, who told us that fat free was important? So the juice. Juice, yes. There are some vitamins in there. Eat your fruit. You would never sit down and have six oranges. If you eat the fruit, you're actually going to get the white stuff that's got all the quercin and bioflavonoids in it. You're going to get the fiber and you're going to eat it slowly and you won't have sex. One or two pieces of fruit a day should be it. It shouldn't be dried. You just turned it into candy. It shouldn't be juice. You just unwrapped it and turned it into a soda.

Perfect. Now the other things I did, okay, so I took away fruit. That again was your advice Then what was really difficult for me was giving up alcohol for six weeks because I enjoy my red wine.

I don't believe you should give up alcohol. So we have a difference of opinion.

Thank you. That's such a relief.

I am a real world nutritionist. I believe in Coff Dave and Chocolate Dark and these are my favorite food groups. And red wine. But during the Sugar Impact diet, two weeks and during the Verge, we do pull it out. Because if you can't pull it out for two or three weeks, we've got another issue. But long term. Actually, the research shows that people who drink a little bit of red wine are leaner, fitter and nicer than those people who die.

And friendlier and more approachable.

I like myself better with wine, you know?

Right. So, okay, so red wine is okay. What about white wine? What about.

Well, so when I started doing sugar in Sugar Impact diet, that's where you really get the lowdown on alcohols, Because I went through all of them. Because the biggest question I get, like, what can we drink? The problem with white wine is there's more sugar in it. So you want to get the driest. Red wine's the best in the States. It's the more expensive because they'll actually smuggle in some sugar into some of these. So if you're doing the two buck Chuck at Trader Joe's, Anyone don't admit it. They can sugar in there, but you want to do the ones that have the lowest residual sugar. So no champagne.

Okay, Sorry.

I know you liked me there for a minute and I was like, or tequila. And I have some great tequila drinks here with you. No, no, I did not bring my bar with me.

I thought that was an invite.

I mean, recipes, they're up in here.

Now, one of the things you've said in previous times I've interviewed you is one of the hardest things for the western mind to give up is cheese. Let's talk about that.

Because it's a drug. So here's your trifecta drugs. Dairy, gluten and sugar all have an opiate like effect on the brain. You know that cereal milk, that is absolutely a drug. So cheese has casomorphins. We get addicted to it. Right. So, and especially then you can also have the intolerance issue where you have the iggs. And that's why when you're pulling these foods out for three weeks, you have to pull them out 100% because just a little bit keeps your immune system fired up and keeps you craving them.

Got it. So it's about pulling them up to ease up the pressure and our immune system and also put ourselves in ketosis.

Well, no, it's not about ketosis. This one's not about ketosis. It's actually about doing a reset. You're pulling these foods out that could be creating an inflammatory response to your body that you could be intolerant to. You've got to clear it out and give yourself a fresh start. So it's basically a three week detox where you're getting rid of all of those immune complexes and the antibodies. When you get through that period, then you go back. The challenge is when people go through the three weeks and they pull all those foods out and they break the cravings. Like, if you really pulled the dairy out, if you really did this fishing, will you do this?

I need a little bit of milk in my coffee. A little bit. Just a little bit. I tried the almond milk in this hotel, it's not.

Why do you need it?

Because. Because milk has a substance that causes the bitterness of coffee to get neutralized. So I like.

If you drink bulletproof, then you wouldn't have this problem.

So at.

But why don't you use Dave's Instamix and then you don't have an issue with this. Thank you, Dave. Dave, have you not been bringing the Instamix for.

Okay, so that's a fair deal. I'll try Dave's Instamix.

So for three weeks, for those of.

You on Facebook, that's Dave Asprey bulletproof coffee, Instamix.

Three weeks. We are not going to have dairy starting now.

Okay. Not even a little bit.

Starting now. Like, no, you cannot have a little bit.

Like a dash. No, Like a raindrop.

It can't be a.

Okay. All right.

So if you knew that something was absolutely toxic to your body, would you.

Have a little bit if it was delicious?

Really?

But I get. But I get what you're saying. I'm just playing devil's advocate because we have couple of thousand people watching us on Facebook and they're going, oh, no, ice cream. What about ice cream? What about Ben and Jerry's people?

Oh, my gosh. So delicious. Has a coconut ice cream with one gram of sugar sweetened with monk fruit.

Say that name again.

The world. So delicious. Dairy, so delicious. Chocolate, vanilla bean. Phenomenal. You can make this stuff at home, too. And you can use either stevia, erythritol, xylitol, or monk fruit as a sweetener.

So, jj, a couple of tough questions. Number one, what is the single biggest lie, the single biggest rule that everyone here is buying into when it comes to the food we put in our body?

It's about calories. At the end of the day, people feel that it's all about calories and that if you lower the calories that you can actually. And I've had people tell me, well, you can have that pie if you count your overall calories. As long as I count this in, it'll be okay. Or I'll eat this pie, but then I'll go run for five miles, which doesn't work either. Remember, our body's not a bank account, so this is a hard habit to break. But I believe we still get caught into this whole idea of calories and endurance training. And some of the biggest issues I've seen with people with metabolism is people who do a lot of endurance training and eat high carb diets.

I think the single. My Favorite quote of yours is, your body is not a bank account, it is a chemistry lab.

Yes.

And what JJ is saying by this is that this whole thing about calories is rubbish. Calories don't matter. Would that be correct?

Well, here's the thing. If you're eating higher fat, optimal protein and slow, low carbs with loads of non starchy vegetables, you will actually feel full. You won't be hungry. You won't ever think about, well, how much should I eat? Can I have this much more? If you start counting calories, it's like an alcoholic. You start thinking, well, can I have this much? It's a complete wrong way to go. You want to get break free of all this stuff. I see so many people in my world who diet as a hobby. Right. And they try this one and this one. You've got to go through your own personal discovery process to find what works for you, which foods work for you, how much should you lower your sugar impact? When do you need to eat again? Are you better at every four hours or every six hours? And really listen to that? And are you drinking enough water? Because so often we're not even hungry at all, we're just thirsty. But we haven't had water all day long. Right. By the time you're thirsty, you really screwed that up.

Right. That was another thing that I did in my biohacking experiment on advice from Eric at Meadies. And you say the same thing. I learned to recognize that hunger pangs are sometimes simply thirst pangs, evolutionary biology wise. If you go back 7,000 years, people got water from fruit, they got water from vegetables. And so when you would feel hungry, it wasn't because your body needed food, it was because your body needed water. So what you can train yourself to do is when you feel hungry, drink a lot of water and it gets rid of that hunger while getting you to avoid that dangerous snacking habit.

Yeah, I actually have people do that in their journal and track it so that you're not drinking while you're eating. You're drinking the majority of your water in between your meals rather than diluting your stomach acid and then tracking that. Because what you measure, you can improve. Of course, what you measure and report on, you improve exponentially. But it's one of these things at a time. If you don't decide, I'm going to do all this stuff tomorrow, you'll just get overwhelmed and a confused mind says no.

Right.

But if you said, okay, I'm just going to start with the shake or I'm going to start with seven foods, or I'm going to start lowering my sugar impact. Pick one thing that you know is your big issue. If it's just water, while you're on this trip, there's water everywhere. It would be an easy way to start.

And studies also show that if you're fully hydrated, your metabolic rate goes up by as much as 3%, which can be significant.

You can burn, like, in terms of just. I'm talking calorie burn. But, yeah, you can burn like 300 more calories a day just from water intake. But if you are even 1% dehydrated, it raises cortisol. And if you're raising cortisol, that's telling your body to store more fat around your waist. It's breaking down muscle, it's making you crave sugar, it's making your gut more permeable. All bad stuff.

So one more tip. At this A Fest, you'll notice that we made available to you a lot of water and a lot of sparkling water. We set a simple rule for the hotel that when waiters are going around with their trays of alcohol, at this A Fest, there should be an equal amount of water option. Sparkling with lemon as well as regular water. And I'm glad you guys like that. And that was one of the single biggest hacks that I implemented in my life. Sparkling water. I used to hate it. My wife introduced it to me because it's very common in European people, in European society. Not as appreciated in the US but sparkling water actually helped me cut down on alcohol, on coffee, on a lot of other things, on these two gallons of milk I drink every day.

Drank.

Just. Just kidding. But it's an incredible, incredible, incredible thing. And it's zero calories, which actually doesn't matter because they don't exist anyway. It's. It's. It's just awesome.

Well, if you had. If you thought that I'd been drinking two glasses of water to every drink, you're fine.

Yeah.

You know, I mean, unless you're just standing guzzling the entire time, which I'm assuming you're not going to do, but then you're fine. So.

Yeah. And if you do need alcohol, you can try a drink that Mia recommends at a Fest, and that is simply soda water with a little dash of vodka. Right. So you can tell people that you're drinking pure sparkling water and look holier than thou, but really inside, you're learning to dance better, but it's also healthier, less calories. So, jj, what would be the final piece of advice you would give to people in this room.

Well, when that happened with my son, you know, it made me realize that what I was doing was so, so much bigger than weight. And again, that so many people I saw would say, oh, I hear what you're saying. And then I'd see them a couple months later, they go, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm going to do that. Right? And I go, okay, well, when the biggest thing I would say right now is start now. You've been so good about what are the action steps? And there's always health is a process we are never done. There's always something that I'm working on in my health, and I'm sure as we've been talking, there's so many something that's come up for you that you know that you need to address. Probably a couple things, but just pick one that you're going to commit to today, not tomorrow. It's very easy to say, well, while I'm here, I'm on vacation, but just do it today and find someone to tell it to, because there's nothing that supports success like an accountability partner. And they're all over the room. Right?

Awesome. Thank you. Jj. Please give JJ Virgin a round of applause. Awesome.