Uncover Your Ideal Protein Intake For Optimal Body Composition

Summit Introduction and JJ Virginu2019s Background 0:00

Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Reversing Type 2 Diabetes Summit. I'm your host, Dr. Beverly Yates, ND It's my distinct honor, privilege and joy to introduce you to JJ Virgin, a good friend of mine and a person who's been in the fitness space and an expert there for a really long time and who lives the actual things that she tells other people to do. There's real integrity in that. JJ Virgin is a triple board certified nutrition expert and a member of the Fitness Hall of Fame passionate advocate of the healing power of nutrition with nutrition as medicine, medicine and nutrition and a mission to drive to change the world and the way it sees aging and longevity.

We really need to change that conversation. She's launched multiple multimillion dollar businesses, including a seven figure personal brand and founded the Mindshare Collaborative, the most influential professional community in health. Having propelled more New York Times bestsellers, PBS specials and seven figure brands than any other community. She's a member prominently of the TV and Media personality group, including those who've hosted various shows on big TV channels and with names that we know and also in particular, looking to have that impact and calling together people who are like minded to help this world be a healthier, happier place.

JJ Welcome to the summit. Thank you for having me. We're delighted to have you here. And one of the things that I really want to make sure that the audience understands is that it's one thing to give people advice. It's another thing to actually do it yourself. You know, go figure. I always use myself as the test. I'm always test subject number one. And one of the things I learned early on, Beverly, and I'm sure you'll agree with this is what I was being taught in school was not what I was seeing out in the world because I had the good fortune to pay my way through school by doing nutrition and fitness.

And it was funny because we learned something and I go, Yeah, but that doesn't work in the real world, right? And so I think it's so super important. I love the juxtaposition of all the great research out there, but then the real world intell because you might have the best study, but if you can't get to work in the real world, it doesn't matter, right? And a lot of times there's a lot of great research, but no one's

Why Individualized Nutrition Matters 2:25

put it all together in a way that you would like live your life with it. So I always say I'm guinea pig number one, and then Tim gets to be my husband, gets to be guinea pig number two. Right? Because, you know, and then we move out to a small group. Exactly. This is how we learn. We try it out on ourselves and then, you know, we can roll it out from there. And you have to course correct, because how life unfurls for all of us is and then is individual, even if we're in the same family, same household, same relationships, same workplace, same whatever, we still have different experiences of it.

Right. And we know when we're talking about blood sugar and reversing type 2 diabetes, if we're talking about pre-diabetes, polycystic ovarian syndrome, resistance, metabolic syndrome, you know, all the various blood sugar centric kinds of concerns, people are impacted differently. And in fact, we even know there's no such thing as one size fits all nutrition, because sometimes a healthy nutritional plan for one person might actually be a blood sugar disaster for another. I'll tell you the funniest thing.

Early on in my career, I was putting people on programs and some people were getting great results and some people were not. And my first thought was, Oh my gosh, they're cheating. Why would they spend all this money and cheat? And then I took a group away for a week and I controlled everything. I controlled their food, I controlled their exercise, I controlled their sleep, everything. And lo and behold, some people lost weight. Some people didn't. Some people gained weight. And that was like the biggest eye opener to me of holy smokes.

You know, we are more than bank accounts here. And I mean, anyone can just see this by just looking in their household. If they have more than one child and going, okay, have two kids, that they're entirely different with their body types, with their with their preferences, with everything. So why would it be any different out in the out in the world, you know? Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's a lost opportunity, a real mistake, because I think a lot of us as practitioners, whether we are physicians of some sort, if we are health coaches, if we're nutritionists, if we're therapists, counselors, whatever we might do, we tend to think that people can all go through.

Let's say, a process and come out the other end the same way, like we put certain ingredients. And if we're making sausage all the time is going to be the same on the other side. And it's not that simple at all. And it is so not that simple. And that is why when you really think about it, the very best nutritionist is going to be you, the very best doctor is going to be you. Like the reality is there has to be a partnership, whether you're doing a program, whether you're working one on one with someone to get all that input.

And ultimately and of course, the other side of that is the target moves. It's not like we stay the same. I am not like doing the same things at 60 that I was at 20 because, boy, that wouldn't work, you know? I mean, boy, I could really get away with things in my twenties that I couldn't do now. So, you know, it really is a constant refining process. And that is why I love all these new tools. You know, I love the tools of having the CGM, I love the tracking tools, I love the the bio impedance scales because you can get so much biometric information that will give you, you know, insight into your own chemistry lab to know what's working and what isn't.

Exactly, exactly fine tuning. You know, even if we are twins or triplets, quadruplets, we're still individuals. It's just really fascinating. You know, we have a lot more information, but I think sometimes we have information overload and people get a little frozen because they're not sure what to pay attention to when, like, what's the order that might be most helpful to them? Like, for instance, we talk about the gut microbiome and how it can regulate or contribute to blood sugar and glycemic issues, right?

Diabetes, things like that. But we don't necessarily talk about it in the context of that. People may have had multiple exposures of antibiotics, like, let's say as a kid, maybe they had multiple rounds for tonsillitis or ear infections and now here they are, an adult maybe who struggles with their weight, who struggles with their mood, metabolism, etc. Their blood sugar is not right.

Tracking Food and Body Composition 6:32

And lo and behold, maybe the root cause was multiple back to back rounds of antibiotics. But meanwhile, now they're in their forties, their fifties, their 60, their seventies, and here come their problems. Right? And you would never go, Oh, this must have happened, you know, back when I was two, which I don't remember anyway. So I think it's really important. I do think that the first way we can start to heal and start to notice the biggest difference is by really paying attention to what's at the end of our fork and to do something at one of my first nutrition mentors taught me that I thought was such an important concept.

And I'll share a little story as to why this is so important. Back when I was seeing a lot of people one on one, inevitably they would come in and I always want them to bring a few days of what they'd been eating before I saw them and inevitably they'd come in and it was a horrific thing because basically what they want to do is empty out the fridge and pantry before they saw me because they thought I was going to take all these things away. Right. But the emptied it into themselves so they didn't waste.

And I said, You're going to be really disappointed cause I'm not going to tell you to cut out anything right now. All I want you to do is start to focus on what you're going to add. I know that if we add before we take away, first of all, the diet quality is going to get gone, right? Like, I'm so sick of that that piece. But what would happen if we started to eat like we were when we were children where you actually got full, right? So if we started eating protein first, having better satiety, better thermic effect of food, then we made sure we got our non-starchy vegetables and a little bit of fruit like you're full.

All of a sudden things don't you don't have the issues that you do before. So I do think that for some so many of us, gosh, you start to make a couple of shifts at the, you know, with your fork and you start to feel better fast. And that's the key, right? What's on your fork, What's on your plate? What's the portions? And some of us are just dragged all around in terms of how we respond to things like cravings and other urges, because we don't ever feel that sense of fullness of satiety. It's really kind of amazing to me.

I remember as a kid, you and I are about the same age. I remember as a kid. I know you do too, that if you had a bag of chips as a kid, like a small bag, let's say it was probably, I don't know, 25, seven, 15. And obviously prices have changed, but the portion like 8 to 10 chips, you can't possibly have overeat, man. It wasn't this giant bag of chips that you could, you know, like kill somebody with it. Do you remember? And then I want to talk about tracking, but do you remember going to McDonald's?

First of all, it was like a treat and it was kind of expensive. Yes. You would go to McDonald's and you would get that little tiny cup of either punch or orange soda. It was tiny. Tiny. That little bag of French fries and that little burger. Like it was a tiny little thing. There wasn't any of this big super size me situation. I will tell you, I've started to work a little bit with one on one with clients again and in preparation for my next book. And I'm really testing things out and I've there is a piece to the program that is non-negotiable for me, and it has made such a major difference that I'm like, Where has this been all my life?

Now, granted, I've always made people keep food records, but you know, prior to what, ten, 15 years ago, they were handwritten and they weren't really using food scales or measuring. They were just guesstimating. We know that people underestimate what they eat by like 40%. That's been proven time and time again. State So now what I've done is I've said non-negotiable. You want to work with me, you have to have a food scale. In fact, we're traveling right now. We've traveled from you know, we started in Palm Springs with you, went to L.A., went to San Francisco, went to Seoul, Korea went to Bali, went back to Seoul, Korea.

Now we're in Bellevue, Washington. Then we're going to Malibu. And I've been traveling with cups and teaspoons and and a little measuring scale, a food scale, which has been very funny to pull out of breakfast in Bali. They're like, What are you doing? Am I protein powders and other stuff? But one of the things I made is non-negotiable is that you must track and I'll tell you, the person who wouldn't do it is my husband. And then. Wouldn't do that. He wouldn't track. He wouldn't track who's been a big baby about it.

And then we went and got it. DEXA And we discovered that Tim and men have 3 to 5% essential fat that they have to have on their body. And ideally, an athletic male will have somewhere between like five and 12% and a good healthy male somewhere in the 10 to 18% range. This was these were the ranges I learned in doctoral school. They've totally pumped these ranges up now. And I go, No, no, no, that didn't change. We can't say because we've gotten over fat that all of a sudden it's healthier to have higher fat percentages.

But the bottom line is we did his DEXA and, you know, he's like, he you would never guess this, but he was 25% body fat. It's a DEXA. DEXAs are accurate so you know. So guess test like. We are tracking your protein and we're tracking all your food now and between tracking his food and really making sure he's getting optimal protein getting in creatine, exercising correctly, he dropped 20 pounds of fat and put on 19 pounds of muscle in six weeks. That's a great twist. That's a swan. Isn't that awesome?

And one of the key things so really now I've done it with so many people that it's like non-negotiable is to use and there's free apps out there.

Protein First for Satiety and Blood Sugar Control 12:14

I've been using chronometer with people that you just get and use this app and all you do to start with this tracking app, the first thing you do is just write down what you're eating. You don't judge it. You don't have like the mean girl on your shoulder come out and say anything about it. You just track it. And once you've tracked it and really watched for a week and kind of see where you average out in terms of your protein, fat, carbs and total calories, then you go, okay, now I'm going to make sure that eating somewhere between 0.7 to 1 gram per pound of target body weight and protein grams, and I'm going to make sure I get minimally 30 grams in each meal, especially breakfast, ideally more like 40 at breakfast.

And I'll track that. Then once you've really nailed that, which I find people, I make people eat protein first because it's so satiating that they get full. Yeah. You and I totally agree on this one. Sorry. It's like just eat it first. Don't you know I don't if you heard it that these guys out of Australia these locust researchers locust. No So they found this thing called the protein leverage hypothesis. What they discovered in bugs and then found it was to be the same in rodents and the same in humans.

And once you hear that, she'll go, well, of course is that we will overeat, carbs and fat to try to get enough protein in our diet. So if we're eating the typical US diet, which is 85% plant based now, by the way, the time as we've moved into higher plant based, we've moved into higher obesity. So we've had that shift. Grant. It's a lot of ultra processed, very powerful foods. But if we're eating low protein, which most of these hyper palatable foods are, because protein so satiating, you won't want to eat more.

What will start to happen is you'll just keep eating until you get enough protein it so you'll overeat, right. And ordered into that protein. So if you just eat your protein first, then you made sure you got enough protein in. And likely once you eat your protein first, then you. Okay, the next thing I'm going to do is make sure I get in my non-starchy vegetables with five servings a day. Being minimum like ten is goal. And I know you are like the queen of this with your veggie recipes. And so you add that in once you're there, like I double dare you to be able to even eat more than that, You'll be full.

You know. That's how it works. You have a little dark chocolate and call it a night, man. Yeah. Yeah. And it's interesting, right? Because if you're traveling, you know, eating out, if you had a party, if you're with your friends, depending on your friend's habits or family, this might be the sort of thing where you need to bring your food or have a plan with you, which is why I'm such a fan and know you are to a meal planning. Make sure you don't leave as of the accident. Otherwise you're just way too vulnerable to these highly processed, highly palatable, but nowhere near safe satiating kinds of foods.

It's just a disaster, right? Well, you I mean, if you get hungry, all bets are off. So literally, we checked into this hotel room here and we have our protein powders. We've gotten this siggi's four grams of sugar, high protein, coconut, plain yogurt. We went and got a chicken like, you know, we are we are in there probably like, who? That What are you doing in our hotel room? But we're set so that we are covered no matter what. And then we make sure we know. Like a lot of times we go to Whole Foods for dinner and we just eat there rather than going out because we're kind of sick of eating out.

But you can navigate this with the menu, you know, you just look at the menu, you see what clean protein they have on the menu. It's like if they've got wild fish or gosh. In Seoul, Korea, all the beef is grass fed, grass finished. It's the most amazing. So I ate beef at lunch and dinner every day and loads of vegetables and very like a low fat, high, high protein, lots of veggies. You know, they're they're fats basically from the meats that you're eating and a little bit of, you know, extra. In fact, they we went had to have their fried chicken because Dr.

Tony Youn's like you must have the fried chicken and Seoul like really when we go to get this stuff and it's everything is cooked in olive oil. And I was like, it's so different. And all the chickens are on farms where they can eat what they want. There's right. I know. So when you first find that clean protein at a restaurant, then I scan the menu and I go, What sort of really cool, yummy vegetables do they have? If they've got mushrooms, I'm in. I see that they can saute things in olive oil and make sure it's olive oil, not some silly blend.

And I always have salad oil, salad with extra virgin olive oil on the side and some lemon juice. I have, you know, extra veggies, drop the starches and have protein. Easy does easy. You have to be intentional and don't, you know, decide. Oh, you know, because the thing I don't think people appreciate is when you go through those ultra processed, highly palatable foods, they almost always have other chemicals that aren't listed on the ingredients that are meant to excite your tongue and your brain into hyperdrive, to consume more of whatever it is.

You can't win that way. So what JJ Sam take is true. Take notes, friends. You got to stick with the nutrient dense real foods for. Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy. So mommy flavoring, what they'll do with a lot of these foods just don't give it that umami flavoring that tastes like protein. But there won't be any protein in it. Like barbecue potato chips are a great example. And then the next thing you know, you're sniffing down a whole huge bag of these barbecue potato chips. But you're still hungry. Right?

I noticed that years ago, before we had the behind the scenes info like we do now, I remember I think I was in my teens, maybe twenties when they started introduce those barbecue flavored chips and some other things. And I wasn't. I had nothing to do what started with health care. I was in engineering at the time and I noticed if I ate them I wanted more and I was like, This is weird because I never struggle with that. And so thankfully I was quick to notice, Hey, this isn't right for me. But I think for a lot of people, they have no clue.

No, it's it's the cereal box. Like who's ever gotten full from cereal? No one. No one, no one. Captain French, the boxes, the serving size. So I think that the key message we're sharing here is, you know, make it easy on yourself. I like to say don't bring the enemy into the house. Any of us sitting here faced with like Ben and Jerry's ice cream or some cookies or what? Or chips or whatever. And hey, if they say they're healthy, if it's something that's a trigger food for you, like if it's a baked chip, it's still a chip.

If it's a gluten free cookie, it's a cookie. Like we have to be so careful with these poser health foods out there. There's very few of these ultra processed foods that are going to be okay for you. And the key checking point is, do you eat this and feel satisfied or do you eat it and want more and if it's the second, get it out of the house. That's exactly right. So, friends, you know, just trust your own body, your own gut. Notice how you feel if you've got a crazy busy or a really stressful life.

Take some deep breath, Slow down. And before you eat, you know, take that pause. There's a reason why in many places around the world, people pray. They take deep breaths, they hold hands. They do something to acknowledge they're getting ready to bring things in to eat. Take that pause, settle and then notice how you feel. And if you struggle with it, take 15 minutes after you finish your first plate of food. Don't eat anything more and then check. And after 15 minutes has gone by and see how do I feel?

Are you actually still hungry? Because these chemical triggers and tricks and these additives in these foods, I mean, this is just no joke. It's hard to win with that.

Meal Planning, Restaurant Strategy, and Avoiding Ultra-Processed Foods 19:48

Yeah, I was just listening to a podcast this morning where they were talking about people who are not paying attention while they're eating, you know, hanging out, reading stuff, watching TV, whatever, eat 15% more are well-documented. And that the way the food companies work, the amount of time they spend in developing these foods right down to the wrapper, the way that things sound when you crunch it, you know, all of it, so that you just can't put it down. You can't have just one and whatever that can remember that one.

You can't have just one. Yeah. So but again, it's, it's really clear and I think where we can get in a lot of trouble is a lot of the poser health food things that you know we'll tell you they're they're keto or whatever and it's like okay well that's fine if you have one of them and call it a day like we have this amazing dark chocolate we love called Exo exo, this dark chocolate almond sea salt, but I can have just a half an ounce of it and I'm totally fine. So that it's like that little thing that you want after you're like, Oh, I'm good.

You know, I don't have to have the bar. If I have to have the bar, then I know it's not okay for me. That's right. That's right. It's just this basic, basic feedback. And you know, when you think about it, years ago, it used to be if you had if you went to a restaurant, if you were at home, there were those juice glasses and juice glasses that were like literally four ounces. They were small. So they came in little bottles or cans of maybe six ounces or so, is what I recall. Small and like you said before earlier, this whole idea of super sizing things are giving people more value for their money has been a complete trap because a lot of us, when we start something, particularly depending on how we were raised, we may have had the messaging that said, you have to clean your plate, you have to eat everything.

People are starving in some other part of the world. Whatever the messaging was, none of that was helpful. And now this is with the chemical hooks that have been added in. This is really unfair. So, you know, it's not a shock that people are struggling with their metabolism, struggling with blood sugar. We've got so many more people now, this rising, just shocking incident, at least to me, of prediabetes and type two diabetes. And the way to turn it around and reclaim that power is making sure you pay attention to what you eat, what's on your fork.

So in there, what do you think are some of the things that are just these hidden pieces that people might not know? Those nuggets that could make that difference? Because I'm hoping that when people are watching this episode, they recognize themselves and they also feel empowered, maybe even joyful, because they'll be like I, I always knew something wasn't right with that. Well, I'm going to like double, triple dare you watch it now? I'm going to double, triple dare you to do this for one week. Just one week, one week.

Get out a tracking app. And again, I've been using Chronometer because it's a free one. So you can't say, Oh, it's it last. Nope, you can't say it is free. So you start in on that and for the first week you're not paying any attention to, you know, like you're not paying attention and trying to follow the macro targets or anything like that. So if you can give me one, we can just track that step one, give me another week. And this week now you're going to go now I'm going to optimize my protein because I think protein is the biggest lever that we're not using.

When you increase your protein and the research is there's so much research on protein that is being ignored. Number one, when you eat protein first, you make better food choices. Overall, study just came out like this. When you eat protein first, you have less cravings. When you increase the amount of protein your diet. Now, what's interesting is the most obesogenic formula for weight gain is having a protein intake of like 10 to 12% and then the rest with fat and carbs. That is what the standard American diet my plate tells us to do.

If all you do is increase that up to 18 to 20% and you kept calories the same, you actually lose weight if you push it up to 25%, even more so because protein, so protein, fat and carbs all have a thermic effect to them. And one of the things with our metabolism, our motto, capitalism has our basal metabolic rate. A lot of that has to do with how much muscle you have and how your thyroid is functioning. Then you have your activity level both working out. But the bigger mover and activity is just moving more all throughout the day, right?

That non exercise activity thermogenesis. I like to say when you're working out put on muscle because that has a bigger metabolic cost. But the third thing that burns calories is food. Now fat 0 to 3%, none. It's negligible. Don't even pay attention to it. Carbs 10 to 15%. But again, we have the impact that they have on blood sugar and insulin protein 20 to 30%. So if all you did was up your protein, push out a little bit of fat and carbs, you will burn more calories just from that alone. And we also know that, you know, in order to build muscle, you need to lift weights.

But 25% of your body's ability to hold on to and build lean mass is diet as party. So even if all you did was add more protein, you actually help hold on to or build more lean mass, which then put muscle protein turnover very energetically costly and muscles where we first restore our insulin sensitivity. So that second week, which you could do in the first week, but I really love you just to track that first week and go, Wow, here's what I really do then. Now you're doing a little science experiment.

You're going to get 0.7 to 1 gram per pound of your target body weight. I'd really like to be one gram. It's going to be better off for you and you are going to divide that. But ideally your first and last meals make them top heavy because your first meal's going to shut down muscle protein breakdown. So you need to have ideally more like 40 grams, at least 30 grams of protein. You're trying to get enough of an amino acid called leucine to shut down that breakdown. You have that at breakfast, you have another dose at dinner and then you have lunch to accumulate your total.

But again, with 32 to 60 gram boluses at your meals, do that. If that's all you did. Listen to all of this. You will see a shift from that. You'll be more satiated. Your blood sugar will be under better control and you will not have the cravings. Your metabolism will be better. Just that alone. And then we can build on that with non-starchy, vegetables and fruit and everything else. But just that, just that is so simple. And what I really like to always look at is giving people one thing and just one thing going.

That's the thing. Just do that thing. Exactly, exactly. Just do that thing. Keep it simple, but specific people make the mistake of thinking if something is really simple, that is therefore also easy. And I think that that's a trip up for folks because simple is not always easy, right? Nope. Nope. Sometimes simple can be very, very challenging. But once you get used to eating this way, you'll crave it. You'll feel so much better, but you'll also feel like, you know, the minute I started doing this with Tim, he had to actually go to four meals a day now because he the amount of protein that he needed to get in was really about 50 grams that a meal.

And what was crazy is, you know, here he is dropping body fat, eating these four meals, putting on muscle. Right. It's counter what you would think. But I actually just looked at a study where they increased someone's calories, gave them more protein, and they they lost weight.

Muscle, CGMs, and Reversing Diabetes 27:28

So I think when I look at what makes people fail on a program, it's being hungry and having cravings. And so here's the way that you can solve that problem with one thing, one lever, one thing. And if you look at most diets out there, they either lower your fat or up your fat or they lower your carbs. Are they up your carbs? And they don't really talk about protein or they talk about protein as a percentage of calories when protein is really much more of an absolute right. It's based on you and your target body weight.

And everybody kind of knows that weight that they'd love to be. And then I have to Beverly say, if we're going to talk about weight, that in my perfect world, scales would get blown up. I've been I've had to go to the doctor a couple of times in the last month, a couple of months, and I'm amazed. They always put me on a scale. I'm like, This is so stupid. How are we at this stage in the game doing that? Would we literally now draw someone's blood and look at their total cholesterol and make any kind of determination from that? We wouldn't do that.

We know better, but yet we are stepping on a scale. And, you know, I could step on a scale and someone else could step on a scale. And I can tell you this because I had a client like this, I had a client who weighed the same as me was my height. And at the time we were both £150. The difference was I was 15% body fat and she was 25% body fat. We looked entirely different. It makes a difference. It makes a complete difference. So we have to stop looking at weight. We have to start looking at what that weight is made up of.

We have to track that very carefully because as we know, as we age, starting around 3540, we can lose up to 1% of our muscle a year and even more strength and power. And when we're talking about blood sugar and diabetes, the fastest way you can start to turn that around is with muscle, the fastest way to restore insulin sensitivity and give sugar a place to go because your muscles are sugar sponges is by building muscle. And when you're building your muscle, you're going to help take that muscle.

That probably is a rib right now and turn it into a flesh, which is what we want right? Kettlebells. So, you know, that's the other piece of it is that we have to be tracking and looking at a scale not as some mean person, a scale is a biometric tool. You would never have your blood pressure taken a doctor's office and get all this guilt and shame about it. Yet we step on a scale and freak out completely. If we are looking at pulling that scale apart and knowing what skeletal muscle, what's body fat and what's visceral adipose tissue, more importantly.

And then we are given specific parameters on how to improve the muscle, the skeletal muscle, which is way more inspiring and aspirational than sitting here trying to lose weight. I can tend that, you know, I could help someone lose weight, what I'd have them do. So we need to lose a lot of weight quickly. And I actually had to do this getting someone ready for a film. We basically starved them and had them sit on the couch, have them lose as much muscle as possible so they look gaunt and start. If you want to lose weight, that's how you lose weight quickly and dehydrate yourself.

If you want to change your body composition for life you put on muscle and muscle is going to burn fat and muscles can improve. Insulin sensitivity and muscle is going to raise your metabolic rate and muscle will fix everything. So it's a different way of looking at things. Absolutely. And that is how we are built. That's how it works. That's physiology. You know, so much of what goes on in the typical scenario for caring for health in the US, to me is more about disease management and not health care.

And you're drawing in that great distinction here around how we use some of these tools, these routine measurements that we use that frankly aren't helpful. You know, instead, if you look at people's body composition and guide them on what they need to change specifically so that that can improve and be healthier for them, so they can have a long, healthy lifespan, avoid falls, fractures, all that stuff. It's a completely different mindset, but it's not what most people run into when they go to the doctor's office.

They almost always have to go somewhere else if they're going to really get that kind of insight is what certainly has been my even personal experience recently. I've had some adventures. I'm like, This is not even scientific. What the hell are you all doing? You know, it's somewhat wild. Because you think because we're so away from it, like as it went back in, I went, It's still like this. Like, looks like this. I'm sitting here lecturing the doctors on this, going, Hey, you know, literally this doctor that was giving me my diagnosis, I go, You know, you look a little frail.

Yeah, right. Like and she's writing down the stuff that I'm telling her to do because I'm like, I don't understand. Like, what are you like, why are you like this over here? She's looking at me, you know? And so I think it's really important for us to realize that we really have to be our own practitioner and start this at home. I think everyone should be getting a DEXA scan every six months and then correlating it with the biome scale at home. You can get by on time scales. Now for cheap, it used to be that they were hundreds of dollars.

Now you can get it for like 20, 30 bucks. Yeah, the prices really come down. And you're just correlating it. It's not it's not going to be totally accurate, but you're looking for the relative changes there and then correlating it with the DEXA. But that that between that tracking and that the app tracking all of a sudden you can take your health into your own hands and you can start to see, oh, especially if they're wearing a CGM, you can start to see in real time what you're doing and what you want to do more of. Right?

And what you should do less of. And boy, you know, again, I look at the CGM and go, Oh, we need to really focus on here. If we're focusing on putting our muscle and then understanding like what happens when you go to the gym and really push, push, push, push heavy weights and what's going to happen with your CGM at that time because like I've cranked my blood sugar up at the gym. Beverly to 200. Nice. Yeah. And I was so excited about it. Course, the CGM is like alarming and I'm like, Do I know this?

Good? Yeah, I'm going to suck a lot of sugar into my muscles after this because I'm using a bite. Yeah, people get a little confused sometimes when they see that spike that happens when you do heavy, hard work, you know, when your exercise is more intense and they're like, Oh no, my blood sugar. And they're like, No, no, no, no. Your body is responding. You put on a demand and your body is now giving you the fuel you want that it's not going to stay there forever. If you do it regularly, it'll be so efficient and you'll see it come beautifully and range shortly.

Yeah, if you stop the exercise. So don't get confused about what that means. I know. And then you've just given I like the visual of of your muscles are sugar sponges. Yeah. Let's just write like and all of a sudden you did that workout and really hard and your sponges now been like kind of wrung out and they're ready for it again. So it's give your calves a place to go. You got to earn your calves, right? Yeah, exactly. You know, when we're little kids and we're so active and run around, it's not a struggle.

And then we get on to our adult life. And, you know, for many people, the way they work, it is so sedentary. There's very little physical activity throughout the day. So if you aren't intentional about this, it is easy for this to get, you know, to become very unfavorable. So we're now we want to tip the scales in the other direction, though it's easier to be healthy. Got to be super cool. Thank you so much, JJ, for being part of the summit and helping spread the good word here and helping people to understand, you know, how they can reverse type 2 diabetes, how they can have better control of their blood sugar and other glycemic kinds issues could be PCOS and slow resistance, metabolic syndrome, prediabetes, etc.

all of the things they are related. The good news is that we can all take power back and be in charge of our own health and make sure that what we're doing is effective for us and we aren't identical. And that's awesome. We have to work with whatever. We have to make it better for tomorrow. All right, friend. So as you watch our episodes and our various sessions, please be sure to share them with others that you know that care about their health or who might be particularly interested in these topics.

And it just makes such a difference if you partner with us. You know, my own goal to reach 3 million or more people over the course of time who have type 2 diabetes, prediabetes or other blood sugar problems, it'll just make all the difference. So let's help each other live our healthiest, best life. Thank you so much.