The Value of Protein with JJ Virgin | 016

Stop using scale weight, and we've got to start using body composition, and we've got to start focusing on putting on muscle before we start thinking about losing fat. If you just focused on eating your protein first, you'll be full. You won't eat the other stuff. If you focus on putting on muscle, you'll lose fat, because muscle is going to burn more fat.

Dr. Fab Mancini: Hi everyone. This is Dr Fab Mancini, and super excited that you're here with us, primarily because I have one of the most influential nutritionists in the world, but somebody that actually shifted my life at a very stage in my life, in teaching me the value of proper nutrition and proper fitness, and that is, JJ, Virgin. JJ, is so great to see you. How are you?

That was like 20 years ago, wasn't it? And you believe it, it's been like, when? Where was that?

Dr. Fab Mancini: It seems like yesterday. But, JJ, I want to talk a little bit about your background, just because for some of the listeners that may not have experienced you, JJ is a triple Board Certified Nutritional expert. She's a fitness Hall of Famer. She's a transformational leader committed to redefining Aging and Longevity. She's a founder of mindshare collaborative, which is the most influential professional community in health and creator of a $2 million businesses, a prominent media personality, that's where we met with Dr Phil. JJ co hosted TLC. Freaky eaters served as a nutritional expert for the DR PHIL. Will knows challenge, and has appeared regularly on PBS, Dr Oz, Rachel Ray Access Hollywood and the Today Show. JJ is the author of four New York Times best selling books, including The Virgin diet. JJ, Virgin sugar and infant diet. A virgin has exceeded over 22 million downloads, and she regularly teaches alongside Tony Robbins. JJ, continues to empower millions of globe people globally through nutrition, education, leadership and resilience. Now I can tell you that we can take the whole show telling you about how great this lady is. But JJ, honestly, the greatest accolade that I can give you is just you're authentic, and you have contributed to this space of health and wellness for so many years, consistently. And I just want to say thank you for that.

Well, you gave me a big opportunity going over to Parker college. And funny story, fab is, you know, you want me to teach, I think, like a little hour on weight loss that turned into this massive two day course that I you know, because I started to really unpack it, and I got to tell you, I'm more excited about where things are now in the field of nutrition and fitness and lifestyle medicine than ever. Like, I think it's the most exciting time. I also feel like it is finally a time where us, I always used to be like the lowly exercise physiologist, and now it feels like the exercise physiologists are the rock stars, right? Because everyone's realizing that the single biggest thing you can do for longevity is exercise, but you have to do it right, so it's it's a good time. I'm having fun.

Dr. Fab Mancini: Well, let's talk a little bit about the early beginnings, because I find that many times our audience would like to know a little bit more about you personally, in the early stages of your career, was there anything in particular that made you aware that the value of fitness and nutrition was going to be something that could be so transformational for millions of people, that led you to want to be in this space, rather than so many other options that you could have had in those days.

And I will tell you, I really deliberated whether I was going to go to three schools. It was funny. I was either going to go to the Culinary Institute of America, okay, like this is, this is kind of crazy when you look at this Culinary Institute of America. Now, I'd already gone to UCLA as a theater major because I wanted to be an actress, and decided that was not where I wanted to spend my time. But I was going to either go to the Culinary Institute because I was catering my way through college, actually catered the 1984 Olympics and watched Nadia Comaneci eat the entire pate for the entire VIP party. Then I was going to go to medical school, or I was going to go to exercise physical grad school. And my friends at the time who were who were doctors, told me that medicine was going down a really bad going in a really bad direction, and not to go that route. And I kind of got frustrated, because I really wanted to do healthy cooking, and it wasn't in vogue at that time at all. And so extra. Science was what I chose. And, you know, I've always been, I've always been obsessed with exercise and diet, but you can't, really, you can't pull them apart. And what's interesting about the exercise physiology world and the nutrition world is that are different. They're totally different programs. And I'm kind of midway through my grad school going, how do you out exercise a bad diet, like you have to put these two together. They're an exponential effect. My doctoral work was exercise science with nutrition and aging. But you know, it's, it just never dawned on me that I go look at anything else besides maybe hormones, etc, because it's really the foundation for everything. It's the biggest lever we can pull. Is diet and exercise

Dr. Fab Mancini: You know, and it's so interesting, because you and I that have been in this space for a while, we know that the solutions are basic, but we make it complicated as individuals, many times we're not willing to sacrifice just a little bit to gain a tremendous amount of return in our health and well being long term. You know, you did something recently, we were together in Florida where you gave us a presentation about the importance of nutrition and many of the new research and developments and discoveries that you are finding about this thing that some people really understand, but I find that the majority of the people don't understand. But let's talk a little bit about protein. And how would you define what is protein, and what are perhaps some of the new discoveries that you have recognized so with a lot of research, and how that impacts our health and our vitality.

So it's really interesting when you look at diet books, because they address usually they'll go after one of the macronutrients. So we have three macronutrients, protein, fat and fiber, or carbs and protein we're eating, for the essential amino acids, fat we're eating, it's a fuel source. So protein, I think of as a function macro that we're really eating for these essential amino acids, which we'll talk about in a moment. Then we have our fuel, macros, fat, but we have essential nutrients in our fat. We have essential fatty acids, omega six is omega threes. Then we have our carbohydrates, and they are not essential. But within there, I'd say what we really need are the polyphenols and the fiber. When you look at the diets out there, what they tend to do is either lower the fat or raise the fat, lower the carbs or raise the fat. It's like it's or carbs, it's it's kind of crazy, and the proteins kind of left to the side. And what's interesting is we can live without carbohydrates. We can't live without protein. And if you're eating animal protein, you're getting the facts. You got to have the fat too. But the reality is, we have a place to store carbs. If we're working out, we're storing them in our muscles. We've got our liver to store them in. We've definitely got a place to store fat, but we really don't have any storage for protein. It's in our muscles, but you know, if you want to break down your muscles to get amino acids, that's like deciding to, you know, break down your walls or your house to get firewood. This would be a dumb thing to do, so we're eating protein every day to get these essential amino acids that provide the building blocks for us to do things like go through muscle protein synthesis to and muscle by the way, changes everything, like you look at right now. What's going on in our metabolic health with before the pandemic, it was less than 7% of us were metabolically healthy. So it's got to be worse. Now and then we've got I remember hearing a statistic that by the year 2030 we'd be 100% diabetic, which we're not, but we're 40% and we're 75% overweight or obese. And if you look at the real challenge we face, it's that we are losing muscle. And one of the big drivers of being able to have enough muscle is protein. The other driver, of course, is resistance training. And yet we have an a recommended daily intake that's about half of where it needs to be, especially when you're 30 plus, and you've got something called anabolic resistance, where it's harder for our body to use the that protein and the resistance training to build muscle. So we need more, not less. And yet, most of the people out there aren't even hitting the RDI for protein, which is crazy. And then we have this big push for plant based nutrition. But if you look at a lot of what people are eating who are plant based, it's basically Ultra processed junk food that doesn't have animal protein in it, right? It's, it's like, plant based would be great if we were eating, say, wild salmon, Grasso beef, plus brussels sprouts, broccoli and blueberries. But you see plant based, and it's like some garbage, you know, created plant burger that's made with, you know, damaged seed oils and corn fiber. Yeah.

Dr. Fab Mancini: Yeah. Well, you know, you have coach so many high profile individuals over your career, and I know that for you, you take a tremendous amount of pride in your outcomes. You work so hard. And I was your client for quite some time in the early days, and I know how diligent you are. Is there a case, or maybe potentially someone that you work with that you realize that when they integrated the proper amount of proteins in their lives made a difference that was very surprising to them, and maybe even potentially to you, when you really understand the value of protein in our diet.

Okay, you're gonna love this one. It's my husband. So here's what's funny. Fab. So for my 60th birthday, I was 58 and I thought, You know what, I'm gonna go get a DEXA, because I wanna be in the best shape of my life at 60. If you start listening to the statistics out there, boy, it is doom and gloom as to what goes on as you age. And I'm like, yeah, that no, I'm gonna prove just the opposite of that. Do you remember on Dr Phil, he would always talk about, you can't be what you were in high school? I'm like, Yeah, well, what if you could be better? I'm like, what if you could be better? So I knew my decks at 39 which I was, I'm a very, very lean woman, like, kind of genetically frequent, freakishly so. But in my 20s, I'd been 10% body fat, and in at 39 I remember I was, I was 13.9% body fat, 154 pounds. So I do a DEXA, and I'm exactly the same at 58 as I was at 39 my husband is 27% body fat. Now, men, he was, he's an athletic guy. He's always been athletic. And I was expecting him to be 12 or 15% body fat, and he was 27% body fat. It was shocking. He was what we call a skinny fat, normal weight, high body fat, lean muscle, because, again, for a man, he should have been way less than that. Now, there were a couple things going on. His testosterone had dropped some, but one of the big things he was doing, and I talked to him about that, but I wasn't going to be the Prophet in my home, right? I was like he would, before dinner, he'd get out the siete chips and the hummus and the cashews and, you know, nom, nom, nom, nom, right. And so when he sees the DEXA, now it's not me saying anything, it's the DEXA, you know. So I said, Well, can I help you here? And so the first thing we did was we gave got him to eat one gram per pound of where he wanted to be his target body weight. So he's now eating 100 grams of protein a day. And I said, My rule is you need to eat this first. So now he's not plowing through a bag of ciatta chips, right? And because people will tell me, I can't eat that much protein, I go, Yeah, because I just saw you eat, like the bread at dinner, the salad that turned into a sundae, like all the stuff, just eat the protein first. And if you get full, who cares? So that's what he did. He flipped it and crazy. He dropped he dropped four pounds on my students he went to he dropped three pounds. However, he dropped 27 pounds of fat, and he put on 24 pounds of muscle, and he dropped down to 10% body fat, and he looks better than he's ever looked in his entire life. So this whole idea that you cannot, you know, you peaked at high school, all this ridiculous stuff. No, you just have to know how to do this correctly. And literally, here he is, you know, just turned 60, and he is like he never looked like this. And so, you know, that is my favorite case study to show because, like, I win.

Dr. Fab Mancini: Well, I love it in a couple of ways. Number one, many times. You know, as we get older, we don't think that we're capable of making that drastic of a change, and we talk ourselves out from really doing or searching for the right answers to help us achieve the outcomes that we want. But secondarily, I love the fact that as a couple, you can support one another with each other's expertise, where he was seeing in you the level of optimum health that you can have, and all of a sudden he was open to trying some new things, and any paid off. And now look at what an amazing journey is going to be able to have for the next 3040, 50 years, instead of feeling the opposite,

I know, and so keep him around. Created, yeah, you know, it's interesting, like I just had another gal, and she she she has been kind of stuck mid 140s at, you know, five six. So, I mean, you know, but stuck there, and had always been between 140 and 150 clothing, size eight to 10, five, six, and she just decided she was going to track her macros. And I find that's the first thing I like people to. Do is, let's just do a macro audio audit. Just be curious, not judgmental. And the first thing you're going to start to focus on is eating your protein first. And if you are focusing on putting on muscle, let's get a gram per pound of target body weight, that ideal body weight you want to be at. And that's all she did. And started lifting heavy. She literally had been so many women fab, as you know, do a lot of cardio and lots of reps of weight, right? And so she stopped that. She started dead lifting and squatting. And literally, she was telling me today she's like six, six months later, she's dropped 20 pounds. She went from a size eight to a size four, right? And it was. And instead of that struggle that people go through where they're counting everything and try No, it just it just happened, but it happened, and this is something I really want people to understand, is we got to stop using scale weight, and we've got to start using body composition, and we've got to start focusing on putting on muscle before we start thinking about losing fat. If you just focused on eating your protein first, you'll be full. You won't eat the other stuff. If you focus on putting on muscle, you'll lose fat, because muscle is going to burn more fat. So it's just it makes it so easy, and it's so much more motivating to notice yourself getting stronger, right? It's fun, well, and

Dr. Fab Mancini: Let's talk a little bit about some of the popular things right now, there seems to be a big push right now for the carnivore diet. You know, a lot of people are switching to just eating meat. Tell us a little bit about, in your opinion, as far as what are the values of what are the best sources of protein, and the are you in agreement that maybe switching to all meat may be a good answer, or does that need to be reconsidered with a different level of understanding of what proteins value is and what sources we should consider when we're putting that in our bottles?

So I think that's really important for us to look at diets in a different way. I think we have to look at diets as tools. And quite often, the diet you might use to get a certain outcome or to heal you is not the diet that you are then going to use. Long term, I think in the short term, the carnivore diet can be enormously effective. It can shut up a lot of food noise. It can help you heal from food intolerances long term, I really want to support your microbiome with the polyphenols and fibers from plants. So I think it's got a place. I interviewed Dr Sean Baker on well beyond 40. He's awesome, but I think it's probably got a place for three to six months. And then I really want to get your gut microbiome going up with I want, I want the fiber and the polyphenols, whether you're carnivoring or not, and I you, I've used carnivore when I was working with a morbidly obese person with a lot of food noise, I was like, All right, tell you what we're going to do. Because it did it. He wasn't hungry, and it shut off all those other choices that were creating problems for him. I think that where we need to focus with anything we're choosing is the best quality sources of whether it whatever it is. And with protein, if you're eating animal based protein, you are what you eat, ate. And so you do want to make sure you're getting clean, lean sources of animal protein. So that is the grass fed, grass finished, pastured, wild types of things. So for us, we have a freezer stocked full of grass, fed grass finished beef and pastured chicken and pastured pork and wild fish, and that's what we focus on. And we basically animals plus plants. You know, it's it's pretty simple when you get down to it, but we do eat the protein first. We sit down. Last night, we had grass fed, grass finished Porter houses with wild mushrooms and onions and broccolini, and we sat down and ate the protein first, and then we ate the other stuff.

Dr. Fab Mancini: I love the idea of protein first. Let's talk a little bit about one of my biggest concerns right now is the increase of numbers of mental health challenges and the disorders, especially depression, that anxiety, maybe potentially suicidal thoughts. I mean, I've seen statistics grow over the last couple of years. In your opinion, could there be a relationship between the level of protein that somebody's taking and their mental health status or well being

Well, I know there was a study done on red meat showing that people who ate more red meat had lower levels of depression. When you think about if your brain is about 70% you know omega threes, and you're getting omega threes from grass fed grass finished beef and seafood. It just makes sense, I would also put another piece into this puzzle, because this is a complicated issue with a lot to unpack, and I think a lot of the problems are, yes, we're nutrient deficient, and that is not helping, and we're isolated and sedentary, and that's hugely problematic. And I was doing a podcast with Eric igmedes. Have you had Eric on yet? You know, Eric could be these, right? Yeah, yeah. Okay, so Eric was talking about when he was with the hasda Hadza, and he said, You know, I was asking them about depression, and they looked at me like, I don't know what you're talking about. He goes, You know, when you feel sad, you know, do you have people feel sad for long periods of time? And they go, oh yeah. He goes. Well, how long he goes? Oh, three days he goes. What happens at three days he goes, they get hungry and they have to go run and chase and give their food, and they're not depressed anymore. So I think we've gotten so far away from moving the way we need to move, eating the way we need to eat. You know that we're over here nutrient deficient and sedentary and insulin resistant, which means now we really can't get the nutrients to our brain, and we're just it's a complicated mess of all of that.

Dr. Fab Mancini: One of the things that I've seen with this new administration is a really awareness, especially in the United States, how our chronic diseases are 90% of our healthcare costs. We know that many people are struggling with our disease, diabetes, cognitive decline, obesity, of course, what do you think are some of the things that an individual can should consider right now implementing in their lives in order to prevent some of these chronic diseases, which, as you know, many experts and scientists have determined that many of them are epigenetic or lifestyle in nature, and they could be prevented, and they can maybe even be put in remission, or even me reverse or or even at least greatly improve. What are some of the in your opinion, daily habits, potentially or good choices that we could start thinking in order to maybe reduce that level of inflammation, and also maybe not position ourselves to be one of those statistics? So

I think the very first thing is to start tracking how much you move, and to get your movement up to at least 8000 steps a day. Like that is such a clear one, and apparently our average in the United States is three to 4000 steps a day, which is crazy. There was a study that came out that looked at vigorous, intermittent lifestyle physical activity. This could be as simple as running up the stairs right doing some air squats, doing some push ups, but literally, four and a half minutes to 10 minutes total of this type of stuff throughout the day in one to two minute increments. And they had one group do it, one group didn't do it. The group that was doing this, they had a 40 to 50% reduction in all cause mortality. So we cannot overcome being sedentary like we have to get moving. That exercise gets it takes care of so much stuff. You know, even though i You can't out exercise a bad diet, you actually can make a big dent in it. So the first thing is just starting to move and just build on it. So let's say that you're someone who's getting 3000 steps a day, like the person who I was talking about earlier, the morbidly obese person, he was at 3000 steps a day. I'm like, All right, let's get to four. All right, let's start you just doing an air squat over the top of, you know, a couch arm, like just the littlest things to get you to start to move, because your muscle is going to then suck that sugar into it, instead of turning into fat. It's going to help you become more insulin sensitive. It's going to as it tracks. It's going to lower inflammation. It's going to boost your mood. It's going to make new brain neurons and new mitochondria. So let's get it moving. That would be the first thing. And then I would just, I think that we need to do things one by one so they become, they become your new normal. And that could be as simple as, okay, first thing, because I know will make the biggest difference, is to eat that protein first, because you'll be satiated, and because as a bigger thermic effect of food, when we look at your overall daily metabolism, obviously your resting metabolic rate is going to be your biggest indicator, and the biggest way to shift that is to have more muscle. But then there's also the thermic effect of food, the effect of digestion and protein is going to be the most costly, but it also is the most satiating. So eat protein first, and then start adding in those veggies, like that American gut project of getting the 30 different diverse plants, I make things fun. So first it was getting in one gram per pound, per pound of body weight, of protein each day, and tracking it. Then it was, okay, can I get 30 different types of plants in a week? Because that's a lot like 30 different kinds of plants. Luckily, herbs count is a lot. Or you can do one of those green drinks and cover a bunch of them at once, but just making it fun, getting the water in just one by one, pick one thing at a week as your challenge, and you'll look back and go, Wow, I. Like you'll look back a year later and go my entire health has changed. But if you try to do that in a week, all of it, you will do nothing, as we all know, right?

Dr. Fab Mancini: Well, you know I love because I do believe that the choices that we make daily really lead up to whether we are making ourselves healthier or making ourselves unhealthier. But let's talk a little bit about how do we engage our children into this mode of health and well being? We have a lot of listeners that are parents. We have a lot of physicians and doctors that are also listening. But one of the questions that I get a lot of times that I know you've been very successful at this raising your own children, what is it that you feel are some of the best practices or tips that we can give our parents in not only making sure that the kids are getting enough protein, and actually at what age should we be introducing what level of proteins, but also making sure that we are encouraging them to have an active engagement role in this, this process of being healthy, because at the end of the day, we set a lot of the premise and the infrastructure as to what our kids will do or not do based upon what we do our home. So what are some of the things that you have done that are very effective, and some of the things that perhaps you recommend other people that they may try doing also. I remember

I had a client, and she was a smoker, and I said, Do you want your kids to smoke? She goes, Oh, my kids are never gonna smoke. I go, of course they're gonna smoke. You've given them permission. You know, you are your kid's role model and growing up, first of all, I didn't want to be when I grew up. My mom always had dessert. I actually went the opposite direction, like always, always, always. And we had a girlfriend down the down the street whose mom never had dessert, and she would come to my house and pig out. So I was like, well, that you can't do the total total way that this poor girl, Evelyn, was, but mine was a little bit over the top that way too. So I thought, what if you really just live the way you want your kids to live, which is, eat healthy stuff, eat the good stuff first, and then occasionally you can have dessert. Like life, you're gonna have dessert occasionally. That's fine. And so, you know, we always had healthy stuff, and occasionally we'd make cookies or go out for ice cream. So they had a very normalized way around food. Or, you know, once a week we'd have some pizza, and sometimes we'd make pizza, right? But I always taught them to eat the healthy stuff first. And so they ate healthy stuff. That's what they knew. And in fact, I remember Bryce was at we went Easter egg hunting, and I didn't realize he was eating all the easter eggs as we were doing the Easter egg hunt, like all these chocolate Easter eggs, he promptly goes up. This is my parents Golf Country Club. We're doing the Easter egg hunt. He's like hiding eating easter eggs, and promptly goes and throws it all up because he's not used to eating it. Same with Grant with Halloween candy. He was like, I feel so sick. I never want to touch this again. And so, you know, when you teach them to eat healthy, that's what their tastes are like, and then if you involve them on it, like kids left, cooking is fun. I'll tell you a funny thing, fab. One of my friends came over and he goes, you know, you should check your son's computer because he's probably watching porn. I go, my son is not watching porn, you know? And sure enough, I go on his computer, and he's got, like, videos on how to build rocket ships, and he's got videos on cooking. He's like, YouTube cooking videos. Wow, right? So, I mean, get them involved. Make them let them have fun people. Kids will will, will get involved with what they create. If they create something, they're more likely to do it. So if they're helping pack their lunch, they're making those decisions too. They're helping with one dinner a week too. Then they won't be the people who, during the pandemic were like had never learned how to cook and didn't know what to do. When you look at what is one of the biggest distinguishing factors now between healthy people and unhealthy people is cooking at home, besides just the food cost alone, but cooking at home is such a determinant of whether you're healthy or not, and and you want to make sure that that cooking at home isn't opening a box of mac and cheese.

Dr. Fab Mancini: And then what I noticed with my kids that now that they're living alone, they prepare their own meals. They love sharing recipes, and it becomes a lifestyle for life. It's so cool, isn't that? I mean, I love it. Well, what are you doing next? What is exciting coming up? Is there anything you want to share with our audience? So

I just am turning in my book. Thank God. This book was like, this was like, this was a very long gestation for this book. So that's getting turned in. So I'm very excited about that. It's really about body composition, powerful aging and how muscle changes everything. And then I launched a product that I'm. Super excited about that goes alongside it called shiatine. And it was because I was speaking at a medical conference. I and talking about creatine, and this product formulator came up to me afterwards, and he said he she showed me creatine HCl, and I was super skeptical, because I all the research was done on monohydrate and blah, blah, blah, I was realized, yep, the research is about creatine, not monohydrate. And what he showed me was that creatine monohydrate, only about 15% of it gets absorbed, and that's why it's I got so much blowback as I was promoting creatine monohydrate from people feeling bloated. Turns out about 76% of people get gas and bloating from it. So I, I spent about six months really deep diving into this, went to his plant, learned all about it. It's really cool because it's actually manufactured in the United States, which is the only creatine that is, and created a product that I framed for women. Because women are so scared of creatine, we joke, and we cover the s and say it's heating, guys can take it too, but that is what I've been really pushing out into the world, is that women need to be taking creatine. We have 70 to 80% of the tissue stores that men have of creatine because we have less muscle mass, we have lower creatine stores. And it's huge for muscle, for bone, for brain, for skin, for immune I mean, it's like this amazing nutrient that we should be getting enough from our diet. But unless you're a carnivore, you're not, because you make a little bit each day, like a gram from essential amino acids, and then you need to take in another gram or two, and that's basically a pound of raw meat or two pounds of cooked so women aren't getting it. So that's that's my big project I'm out there now is educating on creatine, especially creatine HCl.

Dr. Fab Mancini: Well, you know, you have a track record of putting some of the most impactful health books out ever, and also selecting some of the most advanced products in the marketplace. So with your permission, we're going to put every all of your links right here. For those of you that are watching this and listening, we encourage you to please click here on the link and seek this woman out. Learn everything you can from her, follow her commendations, because I promise you as being one of her patients and clients for many years, I have benefited greatly over these years by following her formula for being the healthiest that you can be. So JJ, God bless you. Thank you so much for making the time to be with us, and I only wish you the greatest success always.

Well, thank you, my friend. I appreciate you. I'll see you soon.

Dr. Fab Mancini: See you. Everyone.