Claudia von Boeselager (05:12)
Welcome to the Longevity and Lifestyle podcast, JJ. It's such an honor and pleasure to have you with us today.

JJ Virgin (05:17)
I'm thrilled to be here.

Claudia von Boeselager (05:18)
JJ, you've helped redefine aging, which is a topic of keen interest to us all, from something to endure to something to own

and You're a living example, of course, of strength, energy, and So you say aging is a privilege, aging powerfully is a choice, and I love that. Was there a personal moment that made that philosophy come alive for you?

JJ Virgin (05:41)
So it was interesting growing up. So I'm an adopted kid. so I watched my, now, as we know, genes actually don't play that big of a role here, which is kind of good news for all of us. But still, I was like watching these two people raising me, my mom and my dad, kind of watching what they were doing and realizing what your daily habits could do for your life, right? Because I have my who basically moved every day. She didn't do...

real exercise, but she did all the housework, two-story house, all the gardening, like all the stuff and golfed. I just don't call golf, to me golf is not exercise, you know. Yeah, and there always seems to be, now when she first started there weren't, but then by the end, you know, everyone had to take a golf cart so could speed things up. However, and she golfed till 93, which was pretty darn cool. My dad, on the other hand, smoked

Claudia von Boeselager (06:18)
It depends if there's a golf cart involved, I would say.

amazing.

JJ Virgin (06:34)
would start come home at night and literally it was like, I look at this and go, this was so crazy to think about. Like she would get all dressed for him coming home at night. He'd come in the door, she'd get him a drink. They'd sit down together, you know, talk, he'd read the paper. He'd eat those horrible salted peanuts that are fried in peanut oil and then have like eat all that have a couple martinis. And then we would have dinner and every night she made dinner. And we had we always had

White Wonder bread sitting in a basket. I don't know why because no one ever ate it You know you look at him go this was just a thing It could have been the same white Wonder bread for years. It wouldn't have changed or anything and We always had like an iceberg lettuce salad with some kind of craft dressing But then she would always make a starch a veggie and a protein right and my dad would have more drinks during dinner and then quite often an after-dinner drink and he would be and You know so stressed out with work on blood pressure medications

Claudia von Boeselager (07:19)
Mm-hmm.

JJ Virgin (07:28)
you're watching these two people. mean their health could have 180 degrees different and my dad Would always talk about how his ship was gonna come in He was working for a company and when they sold he had stock and then he was gonna get to do all the things You know, he'd get a boat we would go on two weeks of vacation each year. Then we'd go we do more vacations we do all these The company did sell it finally did and his ship came in. However, I

when this all happened, I remember because all this is going down and he's got this cough. And we kept going, you you need to check that cough. And he goes and checks the cough. And of course the cough is lung cancer when you smoke for that And so literally his ship comes in and my last memories of him as this is all happening is him in my parents' bedroom in a hospital bed.

In adult diapers, he had gone from 240 pounds down to like 150 pounds, remember just thinking people, they talk all time, I don't want to get old. I'm like, I want to get old. What's the opposite? It's like, yes, I want to get old. However, I don't want to get old like that. Because I contrast that with my mom who lived 23 years longer than my dad. And I think she would have lived longer, but she got a...

Claudia von Boeselager (08:29)
Exactly.

Yeah.

JJ Virgin (08:41)
wink wink COVID little turbo cancer, you know, which doesn't happen in 93. she literally like was fully aware, totally active, golfing at 93, doing all her own housework, doing up and down the stairs, carrying heavy groceries, all of it, aging powerfully. And that's when I looked at it you go, okay, really, when we find out that genetics has not that big of a role here.

that the majority of this is all within our control. So choose wisely. And what's so funny to me with all of the longevity movement is that so much of what you look at for longevity comes down to, mean, if you had to pick one thing for longevity over everything else, I would pick exercise, hands down. Now I'm an exercise physiologist by training. So I was like, ⁓ finally, we're not the like, you know.

Claudia von Boeselager (09:30)
Yeah, but the science shows

it too. So it's not just yeah.

JJ Virgin (09:32)
It totally shows it, you know,

but you look at all the things that are cool. Hey, I've got my own longevity recovery room at the house with not one, but two saunas and three different red lights you look at what makes the biggest impact, it's going to be sleep and food and exercise and relationships and belief in something bigger than yourself. Yeah.

Claudia von Boeselager (09:51)
And that's what I love as well, that so many things are free, right? So

people are like, what biohacks, what supplements, but actually just start with the basics and you don't even need a big budget for it as well. So yeah.

JJ Virgin (09:59)
Exactly. Well,

I think you should have to earn your biohacks. So this is an unpopular opinion. However, you know, a couple of years ago, was sitting, it was New Year's Eve, and I was sitting next to someone at a party, 70th birthday party for a friend. And this guy was telling about all the things he does. He went to Mark Hyman's conference and he went to this retreat and blah, blah, blah, right? And all the biohacking, et cetera. And I go, that is great. What do you do for

Claudia von Boeselager (10:02)
Mmm.

JJ Virgin (10:25)
Right? And nothing, of course. I love cricket, but I didn't do nothing. And I'm like going, you know what? Like spend the time there first. You're spending all this time, just hire a trainer first. So I love all the stuff, but the stuff is, it's to me, it's like supplements. Use them to supplement your diet. Don't use them in place of, right?

Claudia von Boeselager (10:25)
And it was silence. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

So muscle is now being called the new organ of longevity, which I'm sure you're more than delighted exactly to hear. And you've obviously been saying this for years, yet adults lose three to 8 % of muscle per decade after 30, accelerating after 50, one of the biggest predictors of mortality as we were just discussing. And you often say muscle changes everything. What's actually happening, JJ, inside the body that makes muscle the most underrated biomarker of health in your view?

JJ Virgin (10:49)
Thank you, Gabrielle.

It's so exciting this whole, all the muscle stuff, because literally since grad school, I've been bringing skinfold calipers, I've been doing fat-free mat, like, this has been my focus for over three decades now. It's like, let's put the muscle on. Now, I'm gonna push on these stats a little bit. You've seen the stats. So the stats are basically up to 1 % a year, 3 to 8 % a decade, and then that can start to double at age 60.

Claudia von Boeselager (11:28)
Okay.

JJ Virgin (11:36)
That's just muscle size. That's not looking at strength or power. Strength is twice, twice accelerated loss and power three times. And that's even more, more scary because that's, you know, your gait speed is directly correlated with your cognition, with all cause mortality, same with your grip strength. here's an interesting little N of one, and that's what it is. It's an N of one, I looked at this and I went, well, why is that happening?

Claudia von Boeselager (11:44)
Wow.

JJ Virgin (12:02)
You know, we hear there's hormonal shifts and so you're not able to build muscle as easily, but you hear a lot with anabolic resistance that it could be more because of insulin resistance, because of being sedentary. So at 39, I did a DEXA scan and then I did another one at 59. And they were exactly the same. Same weight, same bone density, same fat-free mass, same fat mass. The same, the same. And I went...

Claudia von Boeselager (12:22)
Wow.

Amazing.

JJ Virgin (12:29)
Okay, so are we losing muscle? Are we aging because we're losing muscle? Are we losing muscle because we're aging? Which one is it? Now I think it's because starting at around age 30, I know how my life started to change. You start having kids, you've got a job, like all these things. So you're not as active as you used to You know, before kids, I would spend the weekend biking and just doing all sorts of fun stuff. And all of sudden you're like going to the soccer field.

Claudia von Boeselager (12:53)
And standing on the sidelines, you're not even playing,

right? Chit chatting. Yeah.

JJ Virgin (12:56)
standing there with other mothers who are probably drinking rosé, you know, and eating the kids snacks, right? So I mean,

things shift dramatically. Now you're at Chuck E. Cheese, you know? So I just wonder if a lot of it is just because our lifestyles change so much, our stress goes through the roof, we aren't as sleeping as well, all these things start to shift and this isn't the priority because our kids are a priority. So you just kind of wonder, does it really have to be that way?

that's that's the first part because when you look at muscle and yes muscle changes it muscles three things it's that metabolic Spanx that holds everything in tighter and if one more person says I Don't want to get big but I want muscle tone and I want your arms. I'm like, well that's putting muscle on When you put muscle on then it partially contracts to build tone. That's what muscle tone

Claudia von Boeselager (13:41)
Exactly.

personal trainer friends and they're like, if the next woman comes to me and says she doesn't want to get big, they're like, you don't understand how long it takes to get

JJ Virgin (13:47)
I'm

I was like,

okay, so 40 years, I have been taking people to the gym. I've been taking women to Gold's Gym down in Venice back before there was anything there but, you know, a big room with a lot of weights and big And in all that time, I've never once had a client get too Ever. I've had them get big when they quit and sit on the couch. You know, you get bulky because of fat, not because of muscle. Muscle takes up way less space, holds everything in tighter.

And because it gives your carbohydrates a place to go, now they don't have to be turned into fat and stored, you know, around your visceral adipose, stored around your viscera as, as vat. And then to me, the most exciting part about altogether are, is the myokine story is the messenger story is this idea that your muscles, when they contract, send these messages all throughout your body in the muscles next to them all over all sorts of cool things boost my mood, ⁓ you know,

make new mitochondria, reduce my inflammation, boost my immune system, like build new bone, burn off fat. I mean, just incredible cool stuff. And like it's basically your body making its own pharmacy.

Claudia von Boeselager (14:57)
It's so exciting. And many are still though chasing that fat, that weight loss or fat loss, right? Instead of muscle gain. So why is that especially for women? What would you like people listening to really understand?

JJ Virgin (15:08)
This is actually my whole next book, which the metabolism fix and the whole idea is that we need to take a muscle first approach to improving our body composition that we must ditch the scale. The scale has set up, especially women to fail because it has you chasing losing weight, not fixing what that weight's made up of. And if you want to lose a lot of weight, and in fact this happened when I was on Dr. Phil, we had a contest. And so we had these

weight loss challengers, had 13 of them, we divided them into two groups and the group that lost the most amount of weight in a month was gonna get to go to Canyon Ranch. And so the night before the weigh-in, one group, well that whole day before the weigh-in, they didn't eat or drink. The night before the weigh-in, they went into their hotel rooms, they went into their bathrooms, they cranked their water up as high as it could go and they shoved towels underneath the doors. And the next morning when they did the weigh-ins, because I was using a

bioimpedance scale, I could see that they were super dehydrated. However, I also knew that the contest was about weight. I had a really expensive professional grade bioimpedance machine that I could never talk about the body facts. No one wanted to talk about it it's not exciting. You know, because changing your body composition is like watching grass grow. So I knew here's the craziest part that group won by a half pound loss overall, not per person.

Overall, total dehydration, right? They just did what a boxer would do to weigh in. I was like, well, super smart. You can't fault them for strategy. But I was like, ugh. You know, and in fact, I was, as I was monitoring people going through that challenge, because it was a whole thing of whoever lost the most weight, was like pre-biggest gonna win a big prize. And at one point, one of the guys hit a plateau and I was looking at

cortisol numbers, I was looking at the bio impedance and I'm like, you're gonna have to bump up your calories a little bit and back off some of the intensity and he's like, what, you know, and I go, you just, you're just gonna have to trust me on this. And it was interesting because he did. and I know there's all this stuff all over the internet about people over training and too high cortisol. And you know, the reality is that's like 1 % of the population, maybe like all this fear of cortisol and exercise. I go, you know what? That's not gonna be you.

Claudia von Boeselager (17:12)
Mm-hmm.

JJ Virgin (17:16)
You know, your, your 60 air squats are not the problem. You know, let's be honest. Who's like, I think of everybody I know, I don't know anyone who's over training. There's so few people out there over training. So, but for this contest, he actually was one of those people and you actually could see it. And he said, you know, every time I've ever gone on a weight loss program before, this is the point where I would fail. And I go, all we had to do was kind of take what, uh, Alan Aragon calls it a little diet break.

Claudia von Boeselager (17:27)
Mm-hmm.

JJ Virgin (17:45)
We did a little diet break, let him adjust, and then we went right back at it he was great.

Claudia von Boeselager (17:49)
to that recovery component as I potentially, I mean, I had no one officially tell me, but I used to do the two hours in the gym. And I realized that for me much more effective are those like smaller doses and then lifting the weights and stuff too, which I am in much better shape and in much better health in my forties. I'm 43 now than I was in my twenties. Not sleeping, overdoing. I love it. And like, I'm just so excited about the next 20 years to come as well. It's like, it on, right?

JJ Virgin (18:08)
Isn't that so awesome?

Yeah, I know it's like game on I look at and go,

you know what, like, most people are just going, it's too it's too late. I'm like going, bring it on. I'm going to show you how to be in the best shape of your life at 50607080 like, because all the competition's dropping off. Everybody's going, it's too hard.

Claudia von Boeselager (18:32)
The best

are like the high school reunions or the college reunions, because then you can see those who've aged and have done something about themselves well, and then the others who've just let themselves completely go. So that's where you have the benchmark.

JJ Virgin (18:41)
I know

it's sort of like making it fair because I don't know about you, but my high school, we had a girl, her name I think was Judy and she smoked, she drank and she ate more candy. Like her whole diet was basically ultra processed food, but a candy and she was skinny and her skin was perfect. And I'm sitting there and my skin doesn't look good. And I'm like always having to do everything I can to keep my weight.

Claudia von Boeselager (18:58)
I know. Super unfair.

JJ Virgin (19:08)
where I want it to be and I'm like, oh, what the heck, you know? And it's like, these things catch up with you, Judy Chung. So that's what I look at and go. It's like the great age is the great equalizer because all those people that could get away with it in their twenties, maybe the thirties is like, no, no.

Claudia von Boeselager (19:10)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

At some point it catches up and you're

like, all those years of hard work are paying off now. Plus you have the discipline. So you set yourself up to win as well.

JJ Virgin (19:31)
Well, discipline, you also have that muscle mass base. there is now muscle memory is a real thing. But I mean, in our perfect world back when I was growing up, you weren't allowed to lift weights. I always thought this was the dumbest thing because I was an acrobat. So I'm like, well, what am I doing then? I'm doing pull ups. I'm doing like all this stuff. What would you call that? And so but remember, they used to think your growth plates would like seal off early all this dumb stuff that we now know is ridiculous. I mean, the thing you want your kids to be doing is

Claudia von Boeselager (19:34)
Yeah.

Mm.

JJ Virgin (19:59)
really getting exposed to as many different types of movements as possible and building that's just what they know to do for life.

Claudia von Boeselager (20:06)
Yeah, let's talk about that, JJ. Like what are some optimal protocols for different stages of life? And I think that's really important because I had a conversation with an exercise recently. He was like, yeah, no, no, when they're growing and the hormones, like you need to be really careful in a gym, et cetera. So would you?

JJ Virgin (20:21)
Why

would you need to be really careful in the gym if anything like it's like you can do just about anything.

Claudia von Boeselager (20:26)
I know, I mean, my kids are here, they're lifting my like, you know, five kilo each weights and I'm kind of like, you know, she's nine and the other one's 11. I'm like, yeah, but they're like enjoying it. The form is important, right? Yeah.

JJ Virgin (20:35)
Well, just about it.

Form is always important. That never changes with age. Form never changes, right? But like, think about this. And this used to just twist my brain. And I remember even in graduate school, we were taught so many dumb things in graduate school. We were taught, don't lift weights till you lose the weight. I was like, well, that's dumb.

Claudia von Boeselager (20:40)
Yep. Yep.

JJ Virgin (20:53)
I just didn't listen to that one at all. I had all my clients doing resistance training, because I'm like, this is how we change your bank account. Now our interest rate is going to be better. But that was absolutely, just have them do lots of cardio. But the other big one was don't let kids lift weights, because again, their bones are growing, and it will close their bones off. Their plates will seal too.

Claudia von Boeselager (20:54)
Good.

JJ Virgin (21:16)
and they'll be shorter and they'll stunt their growth. That was the concept. But then you think about it you go, but kids are climbing. Kids are doing like I was an acrobat and in gymnastics, which is stupid for a six foot tall person, but it was fun. I mean, it's not our sport. It's like just not our sport, but it's like such an athletic sport. And I was always drawn to very athletic things. So how is that not resistance training?

Claudia von Boeselager (21:29)
was a gymnast. Yeah, you're a little bit taller than me. I'm 5'11". So I had to give it up when I got too tall. exactly. Yeah.

JJ Virgin (21:42)
Like, how is it not? Like, I don't know about you, but I could lie on the floor and take myself from flat on the floor to all the way into a handstand. That's resistance training. So, right. So if that held true, I would be like five feet tall. So it doesn't, it's never made any sense. I think the most important thing is to help kids get exposed to as many different things so they find what they love. I mean, if you look at the pro athletes, what the study shows that the kids that have been exposed to the most and actually had

Claudia von Boeselager (21:49)
Yeah, and the strength is... ⁓

JJ Virgin (22:09)
tried the most different sports and did the most different things are the most successful in a single sport later. So I think that's the that's what we do when kids are younger is get them out there because it's such a great it's also beyond just the health aspect of it is the social aspect of it and also the winning to lose learning to win or lose aspect of it like there was a brief time when my kids were young when everybody got a trophy I go no no everybody's not get a trophy. No, everybody didn't win.

Claudia von Boeselager (22:12)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Life is not

like that exactly.

JJ Virgin (22:38)
Not a lesson to teach the kids. Like, yeah,

when if you show up, no, you don't. So I think, you know, that's to me, the most important piece is, is getting your kids off to a good start. So it's just what it's like brushing teeth, flossing teeth. I tend to focus the most and have for years. My focus has always been like 40 plus and what to do in that age group.

Claudia von Boeselager (22:43)
Yeah, exactly.

JJ Virgin (23:02)
⁓ because that's all my clients. When I started in grad school, all my clients were 40 plus. So that's where I spent all my time, 40 plus. To me, that's the most interesting, although the reality is if you look at it, we should really be focusing and twenties and laying down a lot of bone, especially for girls, right? So if I was looking in that age range, I'd be saying, get your girls jumping and doing impact.

Claudia von Boeselager (23:21)
Mm-hmm.

JJ Virgin (23:29)
I still remember the days back when I used to teach high impact aerobics and we were told that impact was bad so we had to move it to low impact. Well, that was dumb.

Claudia von Boeselager (23:37)
what about things like, you know, people are like the power plate or Juvent, right? So the vibrational micro vibration.

JJ Virgin (23:42)
Yes,

I have a power plate and I have another cool thing from that company called a rev bike where the pedals on the bike vibrate. you do lack and it's lactate trainer. So you do a round of three and It's like a wing gate trainer. So you do 30 seconds all out with this vibration. That's really hard. And then you recover and you do it again. And so I use that as one of my ways to do hit training. I love the power plate. I

Can't understand why this isn't a more utilized thing for so many different things. I've been rehabbing an old broken foot injury from when I was 20. So, you know, the power plate's been great for that because it's a lot of it's proprioception. But when you look at it, it's just like pulling your nervous system in way more and making your body have to adapt, which I like to think we train to get better at life. And in life, we have to adapt to shifting surfaces and being able to correct quickly. And, you know, it's really how well our nerves and muscles can.

chat with each other, which the power plate's helping.

Claudia von Boeselager (24:40)
Which is great as well. Yeah. have the Juven plate here. So I stand on it sometimes and it's almost feels too easy because you just kind of stand on it as well. And then the Carol bike for the reheats for the via two max training as well. Yeah.

JJ Virgin (24:48)
yes, love the girl vibe. Well, I've been

doing yoga poses on the power plate. That's what I do.

Claudia von Boeselager (24:54)
I love it.

love it. Amazing. so, JJ, can you share a little bit for people interested? Maybe they're relatively new to weight training or they've been a bit cautious and they're like, okay, I'm listening to JJ. She's talking about weight training, muscle training. How do I get started? How do I have a protocol? Assumably they would have a trainer at the gym, but let's just say for financial reasons, whatever it might be, they don't want to go to the trainer at the gym. What are some things that they should start with?

JJ Virgin (25:17)
Okay, I love this. Thank you. This is like my favorite of all time question. I do have a video on YouTube on how to get started on a resistance training program with a cheat sheet on I like to do, here's the thing, whether you're just starting or you're coming back to it, yay. You know, the best time to start working out was like when you were 16 and now the second best is now. And what we now know is that you can build muscle 30 at 60, at 80, at 90. In fact, I...

When I was at USC and my doctoral work, I was working with 90 year old master level athletes. So it's all ages, right? And my favorite ages are really to take the person who's brand new to all of this in their 60s, 70s, 80s and get them moving. Couple important things. Number one, the first thing that you're doing when you start to do resistance training and resistance training is just challenging your muscles so they are doing more than what they're used to so they have to grow and adapt, right?

Claudia von Boeselager (25:50)
Love it.

JJ Virgin (26:09)
That's really what you want to think of it as. It can be your body weight. It can be free weights. It can be machines. It can be bands. The research shows it doesn't really matter. What matters is that it's hard enough so that in the amount of reps you do that you get to a point where if you did another one or two, you'd be totally at failure. You don't have to go to failure failure. And you don't ever want to go to the point where your form breaks. To me, form is failure. That's like technical failure. And I can usually tell when I need to stop because I'm

slowing way down. I try to do movements quickly because I want to incorporate power and if you train slow you go slow. I never understood the super slow training. I know it's time under tension but it's stupid. So I can just, I don't go slow in life. I don't want to train that way. know, if I was going to do, you know, if I was going to do that I just do isometrics, right? Because there's place for those. I look at the body in four planes or four

Claudia von Boeselager (26:38)
Mm-hmm.

J.J.' had him as a man, love it. ⁓

JJ Virgin (27:02)
different body parts, not planes, there's three planes, but basically upper body pushing. So that would be things like pushups or overhead presses or dips, upper body pulling. That would be a bent over row or a high pull or a pull up, hip and thigh hinging. So squats or deadlifts or step ups and then core. And I actually don't really train core because I do pushups and squats and bent over rows. Like I do all the things to pull in my core. And to me, I'm looking at training to get better at life and at life.

I never lie on the floor and crunch into a little ball. Like I just don't do it. but I do pick things up off the floor, you know, I do throw things into an overhead. So I'm always looking at what's functional there. So I don't focus on core. I focus on doing exercises that pull the core in, in a way I would functionally use them. When you're building muscle, there's hypertrophy strength empowered. They're actually trained a little bit differently. Now they cross over.

Claudia von Boeselager (27:35)
You don't need it.

JJ Virgin (27:55)
If you wanted to purely train for strength, you would do very, very short reps with very long rest breaks because there's a really big tax on your nervous system. So you would do somewhere in the one to five rep range with like a three to five minute break and do it again and do like three to five sets of that. Andy Galpin has it, the five by five protocol. If you are training for power, you do longer sets, you you do more on the, the anywhere from 15 to 30 with lightweight.

So you can even do 10 to 30, but lighter weight, like 40 % of what your max would be, and you're doing it with a lot of force, a lot of speed. So you're really focusing on moving as fast as possible. So that might be a medicine ball slam or a kettlebell swing. I start people with high perch fee. I know that they'll get some power and they'll get some strength when they do it, because there's some crossover. The high perch fee range can be anywhere from six reps to 30 reps. I'm old school. We were taught in school eight to 12. So, and I just find that's easy for people to do.

If you can get past 12, make it heavier. If you can't get to eight, lighten it up. Take about a 90 second to minute, two minute rest break. You can do something else in between, like if you're doing pushups. In between those, you could do pull-ups or you could do squats, something that's not using the same muscles. I like to start people with more body weight or light weights to start. I'd rather err on the side of easy, not hard, because the first thing you're learning is form. And the first thing that's happening is your muscles and nerves need to learn how to talk to each other.

I still remember the first time I went to a real gym with this overly enthusiastic trainer. I mean, even lunges had me sore for like a week and they weren't hard. were just like, they were just like, whoa, right. It just wasn't used to it. So, I mean, it's as easy as starting with an air squat over a chair and then a pushup either against a wall, a bench or the floor.

Claudia von Boeselager (29:26)
They're effective.

JJ Virgin (29:40)
and then some kind of a pulling exercise and that could be something as simple as like grabbing water bottles and doing a bent over row. We used your core in all those. We use pushing and pulling and hips and thighs and then you just build on that, right? But the first month you're doing this is a lot of your muscles and nerves learning to communicate. Your strength will jump up a lot.

but it takes a lot longer to start to see muscle actually build. It's usually gonna take you at least six weeks to start to see any of that. And if you're new to this, I mean, you might put on a pound of muscle a month. If you've been doing it forever and you're just shifting things up, then it might be half a pound or quarter of a pound. I mean, that's why when people say, I'm worried about getting big, I'm like, okay, well, if you start to get big, Yeah.

Claudia von Boeselager (30:24)
I know, wait until you get there and then you can stop.

JJ Virgin (30:26)
And it

never happened, so maybe you'll be that one unicorn out there.

Claudia von Boeselager (30:31)
Exactly.

I think for just the overall health, I mean, even like the posture, which means more blood flow to the brain, better oxygenation, like there's just so many benefits as well. And it's been a real game changer for me when I shifted to focusing on weight training, which I'm obsessed with. And actually one of my trainers at Equinox ⁓ here, he's just number two in the world for deadlift ⁓ weight training. Yeah. So he really pushes us when we do the classes as well, which I love. yeah.

JJ Virgin (33:59)
Wow!

Well, it's fun. It's fun.

Like, you actually see like, you know, you're on a treadmill or a StairMaster and you don't go, wow, I did a personal best today on that. Like, it's like boring. It's boring. You go in the gym. I mean, it's fun and you can always switch. There's so many different ways to challenge yourself. So when you get to a point where you're not progressing, like, I mean, you do get to that point where you're like going, okay, I can't lift any heavier weight this way, but maybe I can switch over to, you know,

Claudia von Boeselager (34:12)
Yeah.

JJ Virgin (34:31)
a bent over dumbbell row, or I can switch over to a single leg Romanian deadlift. Those are my current nemesis. You know, what is the thing or a Bulgarian split squat? Like there's so many things, right? That are like fun and horrible at the same time.

Claudia von Boeselager (34:46)
Exactly. But you feel so amazing afterwards. And I think that that's the benefit is the endorphins and everything that's going on around it. yeah, can only really highly recommend it. You're listening to one of the world's leading experts here on it as well. So I hope everyone is feeling inspired at the moment. And Gigi, I want to shift gears for a moment and you revolutionize how people think about food sensitivities and sugar impacts. And as we know, over 70 % of adults have some level of insulin resistance, which is just mind boggling.

What do you think is really driving this and what's step one to reverse it for people who are potentially unfamiliar with this realm?

JJ Virgin (35:21)
All right, we'll dig into food sensitivities first, but I just want to say a little thing on insulin resistance that to me it correlates with how many people are, so they say that 20 or 30 % of adults, I think it's 30 % of adults and then it's 20 % when you get down to like 60 or older actually lift weights. And it's so interesting because 70 % are insulin resistant. What's the fastest way to fix insulin resistance? Sleep and weight training.

Claudia von Boeselager (35:37)
⁓

Wow. That's a really phenomenal correlation. Okay. I haven't heard that before. ⁓

JJ Virgin (35:48)
So, mean, yeah,

because, gosh, you, mean, you, that's one of the first places you can start to restore insulin sensitivities in your muscle tissue. And if you like eat pie, go do some air squats. I mean, don't eat the pie, but if you do eat pie, because sometimes you do, you know? And I think that's to me always the takeaway is like, you don't want to become that person who's so, like, they can't handle anything. Like that's not life. So years ago,

Claudia von Boeselager (35:57)
Yeah.

You

JJ Virgin (36:12)
I was teaching for a lab company and one of the tests that I was teaching about was a food sensitivity test. And what we would do is we would, and the doctors actually would come in and I was training them and they would all prick their fingers and we'd send the labs out and you know, and then they'd do the same thing with their patients and we'd wait for the results to come in. Well, the results could take two to three weeks. And what I started to see, because I started to look at so many labs, is that the same foods kept showing up.

The biggest foods that showed up were eggs and dairy. And then the next tier were soy, corn, and peanuts. Now, gluten wasn't looked at. This was an IgG4 test. Gluten is a different type of test. It looked at wheat and that would show up, but it didn't look at gluten per se. And so I kept seeing these things. Now I knew that gluten can cause leaky gut, as can stress, as can things like glyphosate. So a lot of the stuff that we are being hit with

is making our gut more permeable than it should be. And right below our gut, that single lining of the gut, right below it is our immune system, right there. And so if things are passing into circulation that your immune system sees as problematic, it's going to launch an immune attack. And so basically, I would see these same foods and then I would pull them out and people felt remarkably better. And so what I decided to do since it was two to three weeks before the test came back was just pull the foods out in the interim.

And so I started by pulling out gluten because gluten of course was causing a big part of the problem, right? If not the entire problem. And I always wonder here, is it the gluten? Is it the hybridized gluten? Is it the glyphosate? I don't know, but it all matters because in the US that's what you're getting. Because we all go to Europe and we're like, we're fine. But yeah, it's like I can eat any of it in Europe, but I can't eat it here.

Claudia von Boeselager (37:51)
Exactly. I can eat pasta. ⁓

JJ Virgin (37:57)
⁓ So I started pulling out six foods at the time, gluten, dairy, eggs, corn, soy, peanuts. And then it works so well that I started kind of going, I wonder if I really even need to do the test. Cause like I'd have them pull the foods out. Then when they'd come back, they go, I feel great. I don't really like they didn't care. And I go, well, now we'll just use it to know which of these foods you actually have to stay away from. And I realized even more importantly than that is if you pull these foods out,

gave your body time to kind of reset, lower the inflammation, then started pulling in things that are gonna help it heal, like collagen. Then you can go back one by one and see which foods work for you and which foods didn't. When I first was doing this with one-on-one and then with groups, I did it with six foods. And then what I discovered was they started eating a lot of sugar because it wasn't pulled out. So I was like, what are you doing? Why are you eating all this like?

gluten-free junk food. And so I pulled out sugar too, because what also came out was not only does zonulin, gluten trigger zonulin and leaky gut, fructose does too. Fructose can basically cause holes in the small intestine. So those two were the problems. So I cut out sugar, added sugars, doesn't mean you can't eat fruit.

And then I cut out those other six and that's where the food sensitivity thing came from. I was using it purely because we had this time anyway. And then I started using it with my clients who were mainly coming to me because they wanted to lose fat, right? And all of a sudden, you know, people have been using elimination diets for years, but not for weight loss. But what happened that I didn't plan was that people started to use it for autoimmune disease, for all sorts of other things, right? And I'm like, oh.

Well, I wasn't using it for osteoarthritis. Like literally I had a gal with chronic tendonitis who had been going to a PT three times a week for a year, who goes on this and two weeks later he goes, it's gone. Like my tendinopathy is gone. I'm like, I don't know. I don't even, I really, you know. So it's to me kind of a first line of.

Claudia von Boeselager (39:49)
Wow.

JJ Virgin (39:59)
defense is why don't we make sure that what you're eating is really working for you. Now you can dig way deeper than that. Like you can look at oxalates and histamine and all these other things. But I always like to start as macro as possible and then just keep going deeper and deeper if you're not getting to where you need to so many people noticed such a difference quickly. Part of that probably is because they got rid of a ton of ultra processed foods.

Claudia von Boeselager (40:00)
Mm-hmm.

JJ Virgin (40:24)
know, and when I pulled the sugar out, they couldn't eat all that gluten-free junk food that emerged. It's just like now there's all the protein junk food, which thankfully isn't as bad as the gluten-free stuff. But so again, that's where that started. And then I had a group of people who failed on the Virgin diet because they couldn't get rid of their sugar. And I was like, huh, well, let me understand that because I don't have a sugar sweet tooth. However, I was raised, my mom who raised me dessert.

Claudia von Boeselager (40:34)
Yeah.

JJ Virgin (40:51)
every night after dinner, like every night. And I was raised every morning for breakfast, I'd Captain Crunch or Pop Tarts. My nickname was Poppy, because I ate so much, so many Pop Tarts, right? So I knew that I'd had a sugar issue in the past, but I don't anymore, right? And, you know, happened when I was 12 and I got into dance and I started being really careful about what I would eat. So I looked at what we could do to retrain people's taste buds, because I figured that's what you have to do. You can't white knuckle your way through this.

Claudia von Boeselager (40:58)
dear.

JJ Virgin (41:18)
What I discovered is if you eat more protein, it can really get rid of your sugar cravings. So can sour, so can savory. So basically I did a two week, you know, kind of sweet detox, getting rid of all that sweetness because even things that are healthy sweets like alulose can make you want more sweet. And then got them really into savory, spicy, sour, and then we retried things at the end of two weeks and taught how to eat.

lower sugar impact overall, which is basically eating foods closer to nature, like not choosing fruit juice, eat a piece of fruit, right? That type of stuff. The obvious stuff, but people are still falling prey to the green drink that's got more sugar than a Coke because of the marketing.

Claudia von Boeselager (41:59)
exactly. And so I just want to clarify one point because you were talking about sugar and then you mentioned fructose, but I'm assuming also glucose you are putting under this category.

JJ Virgin (42:07)
Well, sugar was

all sugar, but fructose gets a special dishonorable mention. Now that is not, I'm not talking about don't eat blueberries. What I'm talking about is don't unwrap the fruit and turn it into candy by drying it or, you know, soda by juicing it. And what's really happened with fructose is, you know, we see it with high fructose corn syrup, yet apple juice is higher in fructose than high fructose corn syrup. We see it with them using a natural healthy products.

Claudia von Boeselager (42:12)
Mm-hmm.

JJ Virgin (42:35)
that facetiously, they will use things like apple juice concentrate or agave. These are very problematic because fructose is metabolized than any of the other sugars are. So fructose can only be metabolized by the liver and so it goes to liver where it's converted and stored in the liver as glycogen. And if there's not enough space there, not a lot of space in the liver for glycogen, then it gets converted to fat.

Right? And by the way, to store it as glycogen, you're going to have to go fructose to glucose to glycogen. Much easier to just fructose to fat. So in any kind of caloric excess, this will get easily stored as fat, which is why we have so much fatty liver. used to be, you know, that fatty liver was for alcoholics. Now we have non-alcoholic fatty liver disease that I think we actually were looking for it and diagnosing it would be ridiculously high. What the stats seem to point to.

Claudia von Boeselager (43:26)
Yeah. Yeah. So I

think that's a really important thing, especially like also drink. I've had Dr. David Perlmutter on who had his book, Drop Acids. Yeah, David's wonderful. And so I think that was a real... fun. Have fun. And I think that's so important about drinking sugar, which includes fruit juice. And I had a conversation with my cousin last week and she's like, but it's apple juice. And I think that that's the...

JJ Virgin (43:32)
I love David.

That was his birthday party I was referring to actually.

The worst!

The worst of the worst! The worst of the worst of the worst.

Claudia von Boeselager (43:51)
issue.

There's an apple in it. It might be in there somewhere, but the majority of it, the fructose is actually super detrimental. And I wonder, JJ, do you recommend people to, as non-diabetics, or hopefully there's still non-diabetics, to try a CGM, a continuous glucose monitor, to actually track and see?

JJ Virgin (43:56)
Yeah.

It's so funny. was, you know, like, I guess two years ago when we all started playing around with them, I was wearing one, watching all these things, and I got reamed by these diabetics who said I was stealing their CGMs. I go, there's not a shortage of CGMs. mean, if there was a shortage, I could get it, but there's not a shortage. you know, like everyone, everyone's so triggered by everything. I think that

Like I love all sorts of wearables. I think we just have to get to the point where we're not using them in an orthorexic way, right? So I wore one a couple of times to spot check. And where I really found the most interesting data was at the gym. So what I wanted to see was how high I could get my blood sugar at the gym. And it's funny, because one of my buddies who has this company, Thea, that's a blood sugar, he was like...

Claudia von Boeselager (44:48)
Mm-hmm. Ooh.

⁓ okay.

JJ Virgin (44:58)
kind of watching going, what the hell are you doing? Because he could see my reports. And I'm like going, how high can I get my blood sugar? Which was the answer was really high if you really go intense, right? So.

Claudia von Boeselager (45:08)
And intense in terms

of running on a treadmill or intense in terms of like reps.

JJ Virgin (45:11)
hard,

hard, hard reps, yeah, pushing it out, doing power moves, etc. And so I think this is really important for people to understand is you want to use the right fuel for the right situation. And sometimes you'll want your blood sugar to go high because you are doing intense exercise. And that's good. And you're actually depleting it's bringing out glycogen out of your muscle stores, it's depleting it so that guess what you get to do, you get to have carbs to put it back.

How fun is that? What you want to also do is just kind of know what your fasting blood sugar is in the morning. That was probably one of more interesting things for me to really help me just absolutely do not put anything in my mouth after dinner because boy, you see it in your oil ring and you see it in your CGM. Like it is like, wow, I had friends over, we ended up eating late and the next morning it's like, there's a CGM, my blood sugar is like a hundred, you know, and my sleep sucked and like great.

Claudia von Boeselager (46:05)
You

JJ Virgin (46:06)
So I think it's very helpful. I get concerned about all the, like, what do we really wanna do? We wanna have a tight control on our blood sugar, you know, like 80 to 120. We wanna have a slow rise and bring it back down. And we wanna make sure that if there's something you're eating that spikes your blood sugar for some reason, and you see it, then go do some air squats. And don't, you know, it's like, but I also think we can get kind of whacked with some of this stuff.

Claudia von Boeselager (46:26)
I love it.

JJ Virgin (46:32)
you know,

Claudia von Boeselager (46:32)
And get obsessed with it too. I think, yeah, like, I mean, during,

and this is back in 2021, I decided to try from Levels Health, I tried the CGM and an Oura ring. And two things were really interesting. One, homemade sweet potato soup, which I thought was going to be super healthy, nutritious. Like we're all N of ones, but it was totally spiking my blood sugar. So I was like, okay. But also I was doing longer periods of intermittent fasting at the time, because I assumed it's great at all times of the month. Well, now I know better.

And I was becoming hypoglycemic at night. was dropping down to 40, which was causing a cortisol spike to basically kick my liver up and to be awakened and to keep me alive essentially as well. so at the time, back in 2021, I was like, show, find me a physician. And we know there's a few of them that at the time as a non-diabetic would have looked at my oar ring data. It feels like a lifetime ago, it's only four years and my CGM to pick up on something like that. And so for me, a workaround was just making sure to have like,

JJ Virgin (47:01)
⁓ boy.

Claudia von Boeselager (47:25)
seed oil free sugar free almond butter closer to bedtime still making sure I had the gap But it just allowed those stable blood sugar levels and you feel so much better So I encourage people like you know just to slap on a CGM for two weeks Even just a month every now and then just to see what's happening in your body, right?

JJ Virgin (47:43)
Yeah, and every now and then because you can become insulin resistant. these are moments in time. Doesn't mean you're gonna be like that forever. You can develop a food intolerance. You can become insulin resistant. You know, these things don't happen overnight. They happen over time and they're gradual. So this allows you to pick things up before it becomes a problem. And also they help you lock in better habits, just like you said. We used it with my son because he was waking up at a crazy time each night. We're like, okay, is this hypoglycemia? And sure enough, that's what it was. So, you know.

Claudia von Boeselager (47:51)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

JJ Virgin (48:12)
And I think when you said that and described

them, like my buddy, Dr. Sarah Sals would have found that one out and told you in a heartbeat what was going on.

Claudia von Boeselager (48:19)
Yeah. And so

I'm glad that more and more doctors are awakening to, let's look at the data because it's there and understand it as well. And I think unfortunately, traditional medical school does not allow doctors to advise on something that they're not trained in. and look at what's there and available as well as more and more people are interested in tracking their own data as well. So.

JJ Virgin (48:25)
Yeah.

Claudia von Boeselager (48:38)
Yeah, it's exciting times ahead. I want to shift gears again to look at mindsets, JJ, and you're a big speaker on this and I think it's so fundamental. And as we know that Harvard research shows a positive aging mindset can extend lifespan by up to seven and a half years. And your philosophy blends muscle, metabolism and mindsets and the mental state is often overlooked. So what would you say, what does aging powerfully actually look like day to day for someone in their forties, fifties and sixties? Can you set that?

that bar what people should be aiming towards.

JJ Virgin (49:07)
Well, I think everything has to start with vision. So I've had these amazing mentors in my life. The first one was actually when I was 30. And she just put so many things into who I was that it's just how I live now and I don't even think about it. Everything from the only limitations or the limitations in your mind. I'll tell you when she first laid that one out on me, go, that's not true.

I was like very black and white and she's like, you know, there is no right or wrong. There just is. I'm like, yes, there is. So it was interesting kind of like going through a lot of this because I was like, you know, my little my little very left brain, black and white brain was like, what? But it really something I owned and I now work with Mary Morrissey and she has this great question. She wrote the book Brave Thinking.

And she has a question I think is the question that you really operate from and it's the what would I love question. And I think what happens 40s, 50s, 60s, for me when I was in my 30s and 40s, I was just so, from like 34 to 48, I was just so busy with kids and everything going on with them that I couldn't, like I couldn't even think really till 49. And so it was, I kind of put everything about me on the

on the side burner. If it wasn't helping my kids, I wasn't doing it, which I think is a mistake, honestly. So I think if we start with the what would I love and everything is created from there, because if you don't have that figured out, then you're not going to get that. And that you can actually do that and it's not selfish. So and I was actually working on that this morning. I'm like, OK, what's the next, what are the next things? I had a big bucket list thing happen already this year. And I'm like, OK, what's the next what would I love?

Claudia von Boeselager (50:49)
Congratulations.

Yeah.

JJ Virgin (50:50)
What are

the things that I want to do? What's fun? What's exciting? And it's just a really, something happens around 50. It happened for me right at my 50th birthday where you just really stopped caring about what people think and asking for permission on anything. And I wish people in their 40s, I wish that was a 40th or a 30th birthday thing rather than a 50th, because it's a great place to be.

That to me is really, powerfully means that you are continuing to learn, continuing to grow, continuing to challenge yourself. You're never better than when you're challenged. Why I love lifting weights so much is when you do hard things physically, you can do hard things mentally, and everything really worth having is gonna be hard. It's the reality, you know, it's hard, you know? Otherwise it's like it won't mean anything to you. So it's continuing to really.

Claudia von Boeselager (51:28)
Yep.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

JJ Virgin (51:41)
stretch yourself. Like literally my big thing was I wanted to speak in an arena through for like tens of thousands of people and so I got to do it and I got myself totally worked up about this. And then I two days before I kind of had this moon strike slap your face and knock it off I was like stop it just stop it it's the same thing it's no different. You've spoken for 5,000 people this is gonna be different. I remember walking on the stage for the little rehearsal earlier in that day I oh this is

Claudia von Boeselager (51:51)
amazing

JJ Virgin (52:05)
No different, you know, and it really wasn't. But you know, you create these things. So I think it's just really kind of looking at all of this going, what are the things? What would I love? What do I want to create? What do I want to go for? And then going for it, because it's not like anyone else. There's no white knight coming. You know? It's like...

Claudia von Boeselager (52:20)
I love that.

what would I love? I know one of Mary Morris's mentees as well, who was a mentor of mine. And she also reiterates this as well. Yeah, Maya Camorota she's actually been on the podcast as well. don't know if you know her. She speaks with Tony and Dean too.

JJ Virgin (52:28)
cool.

No, no,

Claudia von Boeselager (52:34)
And I also love the shift in the mindset of doing hard things. So I tell my girls also that like we do hard things and we love doing hard things. And it's just kind of appreciating that because that's how you grow. And that's how you do these out of the ordinary experiences. We might be signing up for a Murph challenge, which you'll appreciate. Although it's doing a hundred things that are hard for you.

year on Memorial Day. let's see, because it definitely feels out of the comfort zone. It's going to be an improvised version. lovely.

JJ Virgin (52:58)
Wow. I'm, I gotta look for things. Like I'm going to the Amazon with 25

pounds of, like a 25 pound backpack, which last summer I went on a boat with Jeff Bland and David Perlmutter and they said, you can bring 25 pounds. They were laughing at me because, know, 25 pounds is my purse. And so I'm like, okay, you know, so, but I'm going deep in the Amazon on boats. I mean, deep. I was like, okay, this is so hard.

Claudia von Boeselager (53:21)
Bring mosquitoes,

JJ Virgin (53:24)
I was like, yeah,

and they're like, and I'm bringing deep, you you better believe it. You know, this is so beyond my comfort zone, and so many levels. Okay, let's go.

Claudia von Boeselager (53:27)
Yep. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. It's beautiful, though.

I've been to Venezuela in the Amazon there as well, and I had not only the Deet's cream on, but also the spray over. I think like I got one mosquito bite on the one patch I forgot. But it's amazing and it's beautiful.

JJ Virgin (53:45)
Wow, how do they find

that? Yeah, I'm excited about it. I'm excited and completely too.

Claudia von Boeselager (53:51)
Yeah, I think you kind of have to throw comforts away and just kind of embrace, embrace a localness. JJ, a few questions before we finish up today. You teach that peak performance isn't about pushing harder, but recovering smarter. What recovery rituals or tech do you rely on for that?

JJ Virgin (54:09)
So I love sauna. If I had to go down the line on things, sauna is first, red light is second. Those two are big things that I use. And of course, sleep is number one. So those are my big, big things. I use my HRV tracking. have a, when I really want to do it, I do it with the Polar H10 strap because my ring makes me, looks.

looks so low, but if it starts to really go lower than the low it normally is, which when I did my polar, I was like, oh, okay. I talked to Molly Maloof because I'm like, am I dying? What's going on? She goes, no, no, no, you just have to do it at your chest. I'm like, oh, okay. Okay. Because people are like, I've got an 80. I'm like, I got a 10. No, but it's like, I know where it should be. And then if it drops, then I start to just pay attention. I'm like, you know, I've been working out since, God, I started lifting weights at 16, but I started doing like,

Claudia von Boeselager (54:46)
it.

gosh.

JJ Virgin (55:01)
dance and stuff in my, when I was five. So I feel like I kind of know my pace. And if anything, I wish I had more time to work out more. So I don't find, you know, my rec, I'm so good about recovery that it's not an issue. And again,

Claudia von Boeselager (55:09)
Mm-hmm.

For people

like maybe that think they just go, go, go, like how would you tell them they need to prioritize some sort of recovery? Like what would you recommend?

JJ Virgin (55:23)
Well, but it depends. See, know, I think about this. was going to get my hair, I get my hair blown out because I can't blow out my own hair and I can get some work done. And this gal who's blowing out my hair is like, don't you ever relax? And I'm like, no, I actually don't really actually, no. It's not just not like I'd rather go for a walk. You know, she's like, I just like to chill in front of the TV. I'm like, shoot me, just shoot me. Like that's not my, that is not my, like, I don't want to do that.

Claudia von Boeselager (55:38)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, we don't own a TV.

JJ Virgin (55:46)
I would like to go for a walk or I'll go paddleboard or I'll go like there's a lot of things I'd love to do. That's not one of them, you know? And if I'm going to be here, you're working and I'm working. Like we're both working. I'm not going to relax at a hair salon and listen to the dumb chatter of the hair salon. Like that's dumb. Like I don't want to do it. Right. Yeah. And I used to have a hairdresser that came to the house, but then it was like became a whole thing. And I'm like, no, no, I just want you to come in. Okay. Scratch that.

Claudia von Boeselager (55:52)
Yeah. ⁓

Yeah, you're like me, my hairdresser comes to the house and I'm working in front of my computer.

Mm-hmm.

JJ Virgin (56:15)
I think we also have to really consider the end of one there and how much recovery and rest and puttering do we need? know, what I find that I need at night is I have to read a dumb book. So this ⁓ is my shift is I read a rom-com or a like a sci-fi, like some dumb book, you know, it's nothing, no learning, no growth is happening, nothing.

Claudia von Boeselager (56:23)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

you

JJ Virgin (56:41)
Because if I do one of those and I don't go to sleep then I start plotting and thinking and so I have to do something that just goes up up, you know and literally Yeah, it's a 10 to 15 and it can't be an amazing book like it can't be a Dan Brown book because I was up all night. So it has to be uh, you kind of a dumb book

Claudia von Boeselager (56:48)
Okay, switch off, go to sleep.

H. Turner. That's really good too. Yeah.

And that's my issue too, JJ. You're a little bit like me that I love to learn. I'm forever eternal student curious. So the majority of my nightstand are things to learn or to become more educated on, et cetera. So rarely do I allow myself to read one of these romcom or one of these type of books as well. But then I'm always like...

JJ Virgin (57:06)
Right?

Claudia von Boeselager (57:19)
could be doing something better. like, no, no, this is on purpose. I'm supposed to be able to fall asleep afterwards. So I hear you.

JJ Virgin (57:24)
It is it is just giving

your brain a time to go. ⁓ I don't like la la la. So because otherwise. Yeah, so that's that's my guilt free little like that's what I'm going to do. It's like.

Claudia von Boeselager (57:27)
Yeah. Analyze, remember. Yeah.

Recovery moments. Love it. JJ,

I'm respectful of our time and I can't believe the hour's up already. I would love to do part two at one point, but maybe when your book comes out, I'll be excited for that. And you've inspired millions to own their power at every age. So for listeners who want to build strength, resilience and purpose, where would you recommend they start and where's the best place for them to follow you and your work? And we can link everything in the show notes.

JJ Virgin (57:58)
thank you. I do have a very easy starting point. It is our eat protein first challenge because I find that changing it with what's the end of your fork is the fastest way to make some kind of a shift. So that is at jjvirgin.com forward slash protein first, free, easy to do. Like I like to simplify. I'm a simplifier by nature. fact, that's what we're doing with the book right now is simplifying it.

then of course the website's JJ Virgin, but I do a lot on YouTube. I have my Well Beyond 40 podcast and then Instagram. Those tend to be the places that I spend the most time.

Claudia von Boeselager (58:30)
Beautiful, to mom. JJ, do you have a final parting thoughts or message or ask or piece of advice for my audience today?

JJ Virgin (58:38)
Yeah, you brought it up earlier, so I'm gonna just reiterate it that the whole idea of doing hard things, I do believe that we are never better than when we're challenged. And the reality is we are so much stronger and more powerful than we think. So go push it.

Claudia von Boeselager (58:54)
Love it. Thank you so much, JJ, for coming on the show today. Dear audience, thank you for tuning in. It's been such an absolute pleasure.