Unlock Key Strategies For Whole Body Healing

Ann Shippy, MD

Welcome to another episode of the Mycotoxins, Mold, and Chronic Illness Summit. I’m your host, Dr. Ann Shippy. Today I get to interview one of my dearest friends on the planet, JJ Virgin. She’s been on this mission of helping people get better for decades. She’s influenced, I would say and transformed millions of lives. She’s got four New York Times bestsellers and a PBS series, and she’s the founder of Mind Share Collaborative, where those of us who want to help people get their health optimized and get better come together and help each other get the word out. JJ, is there anything else you want to tell us about you?

JJ Virgin, CNS, BCHN, EP-C

It’s super fun, and I feel like everything’s coming full circle. I started in the world of exercise, and as I was getting my master’s in biomechanics, I went into my doctoral work in exercise foods and started focusing on nutrition and aging. But everything was exercise and nutrition. I remember when I got into functional medicine and started studying all that, and I felt like I did not have the tools. I was like, They’ve got such cool stuff over there and the functional medicine side of things. With the IVs and the testing, I’m just this lowly person over here who’s got diet and exercise. I will tell you what I’ve seen over the last four decades of doing this: it all starts with diet and exercise, and truly, diet, exercise, and mindset. So all of a sudden, it took me up until now to go, “Oh, wow. If you look at anything in health, I do not know how someone can be truly healthy unless they have a strong foundation—the fundamentals.” Yet when you look at it, most of the time, the fundamentals have been passed over.

Ann Shippy, MD

That’s when I made my wish list. You came to the top of the list because what I see with my patients is that when they’re not willing to make the foundational changes, it’s hard to get them well.

JJ Virgin, CNS, BCHN, EP-C

Yes, I would be so bold as to say, and I’ve gotten this way in my career, maybe just getting older, but probably just getting older where there are very specific non-negotiables. Early on in my career, it was like, “Okay, you do not want to change your diet; you just want to exercise, okay? You just want to work out one day a week, and you’re not going to sleep well, okay? I won’t do any of that anymore.” There are just non-negotiables, and the big thing I had to say is, “Okay, if you look at all of this and go what?” “I’m just not willing to change my diet,” and, ‘Okay, well, then what we should do is just design a health program where you just slowly get worse instead of getting worse quickly.” Let’s see how we can work with that. You won’t ever be healthy; let’s be honest. I think we have to be that tough love with love because it’s a disservice to let someone think that you can actually be healthy and not exercise, or actually be healthy and not optimize your sleep, or actually be healthy and not eat well.

Ann Shippy, MD

I think your first book was The Virgin Diet.

JJ Virgin, CNS, BCHN, EP-C

That was my third book. People are like, That was your first book. I go, “No, my first book. No one knows about my second book. I did not know how to market.” That’s why it’s so important. If you want to get the message out to the world, you have to learn how to do that. In the third book, I figured it out. Yes, the Virgin Diet. when everybody knows.

Ann Shippy, MD

That’s the one; everybody knows it’s been out for, how long?

JJ Virgin, CNS, BCHN, EP-C

Ten years.

Ann Shippy, MD

Ten years.  It’s still so relevant today. It’s especially important for people who are dealing with chronic illnesses; things like mold and mycotoxins, like the principles in that book, I’d love it if you’d share those. Based on the ten years of this book being out there, I know you’re doing a bunch of new research for that. I guess it’s going to be coming out in a while in the fairly near future.

JJ Virgin, CNS, BCHN, EP-C

Here’s what’s super. I’ve been thinking a lot about this because one of the great things that’s happened in the last couple of years is that scientists have gotten online, and it used to be that we had to search for their papers, and they did some amazing work, and 100 people would see it. Now, all of a sudden, the scientists are rock stars. They’ve got great podcasts. They’re getting the research out. I love it so much. What we have to do is have the scientists and the clinicians, the practitioners, merge because a lot of times a practitioner does something because they see it working. Then the scientists will grab hold of that and research to prove it. We need all of it put together and written. Yes, the challenge for me, like back when I was in grad school, was way back when everything was about weight loss. If you want to lose weight, you have to eat less. Exercise more, and create a 500-calorie deficit for a pound loss a week. We should never lift weights unless we’ve lost the weight. We should only do cardio. We needed to eat low-fat. We needed to eat super-low calories. Where did that end?

Ann Shippy, MD

It’s all wrong.

JJ Virgin, CNS, BCHN, EP-C

It’s all wrong. But the thing was, I was in grad school, but I was like the only kid in my grad school who was working like they wanted me to come be a grad too. But I was like, No, I can make more money. I’m in the real world, and so what I saw was that what they were teaching did not work. So I started doing my graduate work on resistance training. I had to find someone who would be my professor and supervise it because no one wanted to do it. I started changing my dietary stuff. I started shifting into high-intensity animal training instead of all the long, slow-distance cardio because I thought I was not going to get paid to make people worse, which is what they were teaching. What I love now is that I feel like the stuff that I was seeing back in the eighties during the world of fat is bad—eat high-carb foods. I almost died on a vegan diet. It was a horrific thing. do loads and loads of cardio. The stuff that is all of that stuff is like, now we’re going, no, we need muscle mass, and we need protein. Animal protein is critical. I feel like everything’s gone full circle, and everything that I’ve done has been led by this desire to have better outcomes with my clients. 

So with my first big book, The Virgin Diet, I was teaching doctors. I was doing this course called Overcoming Weight Loss Resistance around the country. I do not think you even knew about this. So I was teaching this course with a girlfriend and looking at all of the things that could get in the way of you losing weight or causing you to gain weight. Here’s the bottom line. With all of that, I look at weight as just a symptom. The idea that we lose weight to get healthy is backward. We need to get metabolically healthy to lose fat and hold on to muscle. You could lose weight and get way more unhealthy if you’re losing your way, not your weight.

Ann Shippy, MD

Yes, a yo-yo.

JJ Virgin, CNS, BCHN, EP-C

It’s all like we’ve got to look at that whole picture in an incredibly different way. But everything revolves around weight loss. Now you look at it and go; we’re starting to look at it this way. We’re starting to look at where Fat’s located. We’re starting to look at protein driving and holding on to muscle mass. We’re just shifting the whole conversation. Back then, I was going around and teaching this, and I was teaching how to use a simple test to identify food sensitivities. So I got to see the results all the time. One of the tools that we’ve had in the diet world forever is an elimination diet, but it’s a complicated diet. What I always looked and went, this is so hard, citrus and strawberries, and like, what’s left to eat? But what I saw when I was looking at the food sensitivity testing was that the classic things I saw over and over again were always dairy and eggs. Corn, soy, and peanuts ranked first and second, respectively. Possibly there’d be some outliers, but usually, if there was one outlier, there were a ton of outliers, and you knew that the issue wasn’t the food; it was their gut integrity.

You knew that gluten had to play a role because it’s going to make your gut weaker, just like stress and a bunch of other factors. That was where I wrote The Virgin Diet. I was like, we had to wait three weeks for the test results to come back anyway. I thought, well, during that time, let’s just take out the most common offenders and see what happens. I thought the other side of that was, and I think that’s such an important thing for all of us. We ultimately are our best nutritionists, our best trainers, and our best doctors because we intimately know what’s going on with our bodies. So if someone tells me, “Hey, you do fine with dairy, but I eat it, break out, and get stuffed up,” I do not do fine with dairy. That’s like, I can kid myself, but I do not.

Ann Shippy, MD

I just get you to take the whey protein to say, Yes.

JJ Virgin, CNS, BCHN, EP-C

I just went through this because I was doing so much research around muscle and protein, and whey protein can be amazing, but not for me and not for a lot of people, sadly, which is too bad. Again, when you’re looking at these diets, diets are tools you want to use for the situation. So whether it’s intermittent fasting, an elimination diet, or a paleo AIP diet, what’s the situation you’re going after? What’s going to work best for you? And what can you take away from that plan? That’s like the full circle I went through. The Virgin Diet was a great starting point for that because people misinterpreted it. I will tell you. They were like, Okay, I pulled those things out, and I’ve been on it for years. I go. Well, you’re supposed to pull them out. They were challenged to see which foods work for them and which foods do not, but they felt so great. They’re like, Yes, I’m not going to do that. I and I go—not the worst thing. Yes. Most of the time, when you pull out dairy eggs, gluten, soy, corn, peanuts, sugar, and artificial sweeteners, what you do is pull out ultra-processed foods.

Ann Shippy, MD

Yes.  What I find too is that when you pull those out for a while, let the gut get healed, and you can add the eggs back in.

JJ Virgin, CNS, BCHN, EP-C

Fortunately, I have been fortunate. For me, when I first tried to add eggs back in, I did it by accident in Las Vegas, and I was speaking the next day at a forum on food intolerance.  I thought I was going to go to the hospital. It was like I was like Sigourney Weaver, in Alien. So that’s what it’s like to do these things carefully. But I can now eat eggs because I healed my gut. But dairy will be forever out. Sadly.

Ann Shippy, MD

Same here. But I’m here because these conversations can inspire people to make these changes, even though when they’re first starting to implement them, it can feel a little daunting.

JJ Virgin, CNS, BCHN, EP-C

It can.  The big thing that I like to do with whatever I do, and I remember making the mistake of reading reviews on Amazon, never do this. Someone said, “This book is so simple” as a critique. I go. “Yes, that’s why I wrote it that way.” When I’m doing things, I want to make them as simple as possible and focus on one thing. In the Virgin Diet, all you’re doing is pulling these foods out, swapping them for healing foods, focusing on healing your gut, and then challenging them back. You’re not focusing on anything else. Just do that. In the next book, Protein First, the first thing you do is just make sure you’re getting optimal protein based on your target body weight at your three meals a day. That’s your first place. You focus on nothing else, because the minute we start to stack up other things like, Okay, I’m going to eat protein, then I start lifting heavy weights. I have to make sure I get in all my greens, take my fish oil, and get my sleep. I need to make sure I get my meditation. You’re overwhelmed and do nothing.

Ann Shippy, MD

Yes.  then it can be overwhelming, especially when you’re already not feeling great.

JJ Virgin, CNS, BCHN, EP-C

Exactly.  You pick the top needle mover to start. You’d get nailed on that one. Then you go to the next one, and you just avoid it. I think that’s an important thing for practitioners too. I still remember the first time I started working with people. I totally overwhelmed them, overtrained them, and overwhelmed them over and over. I said, What if we do not do it that way? What if it were easy and simple and we could just build on wins and they’d end up looking back over a year and they’re in a different place? It’s just like you and I with our Dr. Joe Dispenza stuff. I only added that in, and that was the only thing I changed for six months because it was such a major thing for me to incorporate into my life. I wanted to make sure that it happened and that I did not add any other stuff because I knew I wouldn’t do it.

Ann Shippy, MD

Would you like to talk a little bit about that? Because these are all important tools in the toolbox. Would you like to talk a little bit about your path with meditation and how Tucker spends his life?

JJ Virgin, CNS, BCHN, EP-C

Yes, diet and exercise are my easy ones. That’s my whole world. I got those, and I have had shortness of breath since I was 25. I went to a doctor, sure that it was exercise-induced asthma. He’s like, “No, it’s not. It’s anxiety.” I’m like, “No, it’s not.” He puts me on Zoloft. I feel like garbage. Mike, I cannot do that. I will live with this. I lived with it literally till I was, like, 55, 56, maybe 57. How long have we been doing Dr. Joe together?

Ann Shippy, MD

Yes, 2021.

JJ Virgin, CNS, BCHN, EP-C

58. I lived with shortness of breath when I went to Dr. Joe for the first time with you.

Ann Shippy, MD

I was going to thank you by the way, for making me go.

JJ Virgin, CNS, BCHN, EP-C

Well, thank you for being there because you showed me what was possible. I go to this meditation retreat, and we’re supposed to listen to all these trainings and do these meditations. I did not do the meditations because I was going to a meditation retreat. Why would I bother? I’m going to do them there. I’m sitting there, and I am in my head, struggling. Meanwhile, you are off floating out in the quantum and having amazing results. So is my husband and everybody else around me. What was great about that was that I saw what was possible. Now, you could have looked at those two ways. That’s why it’s so important to look at these things and see how you can reframe them. When you look at how thoughts become things and everything ultimately becomes our choice, there are no victims, only volunteers. I want to be a victor, not a victim. So I looked at this. I went, “Okay, so I’m going to look at this as though my nervous system needs to go to the gym consistently.”

Now, I would never say to a client, “Hey, you know what? You just need to go to a boot camp for a week and check it off your list. You’re done.” I went, and I’m going to commit to doing this for six months. So again, we went, but two months later, we went to Cancun, and three months later, we went to separate. We went to Marco Island. Three months after that, we went back. The first six months, I will tell you, I did not know if I was doing it right. I’m in my head. I’m like having all these conversations. Then I started getting out of my way. I remember being at the event in September. I’m breathing like I’m breathing, but I’m not sure. It’s so interesting, and I’ve seen this with so many clients. I always make them take things as a whole, like self-avowal, before they start because they forget things like I haven’t taken a good deep breath for 30 years; they just forget those things. All of a sudden, I do not have shortness of breath anymore. That is the most amazing thing ever. The crazy part of all of this is that I do not change anything, so I’m eating the same and exercising the same. I just made this commitment to meditate every day. Drop five pins. I told this to Dr. Joe at dinner. I went, and I dropped five pounds. Now I understand stress. what it does to leaky gut, what it does to insulin, what it does to corts, like everything that it’s doing, keeping me in flight or fight, breaking down muscle, storing fat around my belly, all of that. But it still blows your mind to see it.

Ann Shippy, MD

How effortless it was. Like I want Jason to make time for it once a day.

JJ Virgin, CNS, BCHN, EP-C

When you think about whatever is going on in your life because I just got a weird diagnosis, Fortunately, I was walking into a Dr. Joe retreat, and I just went. I know how to do this. I did this when my son got hit, nearly died, and was in the hospital for four and a half months. I, from the first night, saw my son 110%. I saw him better than before the accident. I went, What if, like, if thoughts become things? What if I just focused on them, and they did? We know they do. Perception creates reality. I am just going to see myself in perfect health. I’m going to see that this is the best thing that possibly could have happened to me—that it’s happening for me, not to me. I think that is one of those things we might look at in meditation, God. I do not have time for that. Just like exercise, eating healthy, or any of these things. I had a mentor early on, and you said, whenever you say that, just tack after that so I do not have to.

Ann Shippy, MD

I think one of the things that I’m so impressed with about you, JJ, is how you have this awareness of what your thoughts are. I think that’s one of the things to start with: for the people listening to take the time to listen to what they’re saying to themselves. Because most of our conversations have been with ourselves for over a year. What do you do so well that you’re aware of what it is that you’re telling yourself? Can you talk a little bit more about, like, how this works in your head when you have an awareness that you’re going down a path that you do not want to be on, especially with what’s been happening in the last couple of weeks? How do you make that shift to the thoughts that you want to have?

JJ Virgin, CNS, BCHN, EP-C

I had this mentor when I was 30. When I was 27, I met her, and she just stayed my mentor for years. What was crazy was when I went through the issue with my son and I wrote Miracle Mindset, and people said, I do not know how you did that. I do not know how I did either. Then one day I was doing an interview, and I went, my gosh, this is all from Casey Smith. how she taught me. I moved in with her, and she taught me how to think. She trained me on mindset. She was one of the top mindset trainers in the world, and the things she did first with me were so easy to do. But this changed everything from how I think. What she did when I first moved in was put rubber bands around my wrist, and she said, Any time you have a negative, judgmental, or limiting thought, I want you to snap the rubber band. Here’s the reality, snap, snap, snap. I snapped my rubber band all day long.

Because if you are not careful about it, and if you’re out in our world, it’s a negative place if you’re not careful. That’s what she taught me. She said, You’ve got a very carefully managed environment—what you listen to, what you read, the people you are around—every single bit of it. That’s what I started to do. I stopped. I remember my mom at the time saying, “You’re not watching the news?” I go, “No, never.” She goes, “What if something happens?” I go, “I’m sure you’ll tell me” and I will find out. Someone will tell me. But no, I’m not going to do that. I just stopped all of that.

Ann Shippy, MD

That alone makes time for meditation.

JJ Virgin, CNS, BCHN, EP-C

Think of all the times. If you just weren’t on social media and you weren’t doing the news or that stuff, Holy smokes all the time. But, in the hospital, we would have doctors come in and tell us what they thought would happen with my son, Grant, who had 13 fractures and multiple brain injuries, like diffuse axonal injuries in a coma. I said to them, If you cannot see him 110%, you’re not on the team because he’s an athlete and he’s going to be 110%. Yes, you can think I’m crazy, but you have to have the vision. Otherwise, I will find someone else.

Ann Shippy, MD

There are some possibilities in the field.

JJ Virgin, CNS, BCHN, EP-C

I had doctors say, I’ve seen kids with half their brain gone, and they’re perfect. I go, “Good; you’re on the team. You are on the team.” Because you have to believe that if a doctor comes in and goes, “We’re just trying to get him to be able to walk again.” I was like, “Yes, you’re not on the team.” No, no, I do not want the least possible. I want the most possible.

Ann Shippy, MD

It’s just so applicable to the people listening to our viewers because of something important: for the best that you can support yourself, you have the support of people in your inner circle, and then everybody else at least gets pushed out for now until you get to the hundred and 10%.

JJ Virgin, CNS, BCHN, EP-C

Well, they might get pushed out forever because, as you start to manage your environment and notice what you’re noticing, like what Mary Worsley talks about, people who are more negative, critical, and judgmental, it’ll be repellent to be around them. They won’t like to be around you either, because you’re not engaging in all that judgment and criticism. It’s no fun. No fun for them. You’re not complaining. You won’t buy into their thing. My mom tends to go to the negative, like, It’s so funny. She lives in Northern California, and if it’s raining, she will call because it’s raining every day. If it’s not raining, it shows, “Oh, my gosh, we need rain.” “How do we win here?” I’m always asking her, “What’s great about today, Mom?” It just completely throws her for a loop, because it’s just not her. Not her normal. That was what I had to leave and work with. Kate Smith to break because I was so used to being around what’s wrong with things rather than what’s right about things.

How could this be happening to me rather than to me? I think, especially when we have a tough diagnosis and we’re going through the mold, mycotoxins, or something chronic, it can be easy to get into that victim place. But I think that’s like the thing I always looked at with Grant, especially when the doctors gave him a 0.01 to 5% chance he’d make it. It wasn’t zero. All you need is a spark, and then you’ve got to grab a hold of that hope, and you just have to focus on what’s possible. You’ve got to let everything else get out of your head, and you’ve got to stay around people who support that image too. the other ones, bless them on their path, be kind to them, but do not let their negativity end well.

Ann Shippy, MD

This is a thing with mold because so many people do not understand it. When it’s something you cannot see, it’s pretty challenging for people who are concrete in their thinking to understand it. So I love that you’re bringing this up because it is permission to surround yourself with people who are seeking to understand and are supportive. It’s so, so important. The other thing that you’re emphasizing here is how important it is to have a goal. With Grant, you had such a clear goal.

JJ Virgin, CNS, BCHN, EP-C

Yes, a crazy goal. He’s going to be better than before the accident. This was my son, who at 16,  was hit by a car while crossing the street and left for dead, with 13 fractures, and a torn aorta that was going to rupture sometime during the night. Multiple brain bleeds in a deep coma, and a doctor at Palm Springs Desert Hospital who is used to people coming in at 80 and 90 years old who, of course, wouldn’t make it in that situation. But he was a 16-year-old who’s the most stubborn person I’ve ever met in my life, which is a good thing here. He went in super strong and super healthy. All we needed was that point zero, one to five chance. I thought, Well, if we’re going to go for it, why not go for something like super big? Let’s go for better than before, because what happens if we just do not quite make it? Cool. Better than the alternative, where they just wanted us to leave him at that hospital that night and wait until he passed. It gives me nightmares.

Ann Shippy, MD

That’s so inspiring, though, because it just shows that you have the power to hold that space and have people around you. 

JJ Virgin, CNS, BCHN, EP-C

If I could do that in that dire situation, we could all do it. We also need those lifelines around us. I was very lucky that I had people around me who held that same vision, and that’s what we all need. It’s like you get that clear vision. What would you love? What would life be like when you were in perfect health? This is all resolved because it will be, and just get so clear on what that is and just see it when you go to bed at night, see it when you wake up in the morning; that’s where you live as if.

Ann Shippy, MD

Well, and I do think that’s what’s possible with mold and mycotoxin illnesses. It’s what I’ve seen in myself and many of my patients. I think you’re explaining how you approached it in such dire straits. I think I hope it makes it feel doable.

JJ Virgin, CNS, BCHN, EP-C

Besides doable, here’s the other part of that. For so much of this, it feels like things are outside of our control. This is the one that you can control, being a bit of a control freak. I was like, “Well, what’s mine to do? What can I control here?” I can control my thoughts. Ultimately, I could not control whether Grant was going to survive the airlift to that hospital that night, but I could control my thoughts. That’s all I focused on. That’s what I could do.

Ann Shippy, MD

Well, and you learn in such a deep way to do that for your son. Now that you’ve learned it in that situation, it seems that you can also do it for yourself.

JJ Virgin, CNS, BCHN, EP-C

Yes, and it’s interesting. It’s so much easier to do it for someone else than it is quite often to do it for yourself. I think that’s a super important reminder for all of us. We are all here. Put your oxygen mask on yourself first, like we never do. everyone’s like, but it is a critical thing. It’s like these are tools that can work for a loved one, but these are tools that, ultimately, you have to start with yourself.

Ann Shippy, MD

I love that. Get clear on what your goal is on the other side of this, and then find the meditation techniques. Now, how long after using the rubber band did you start to see a difference in your thoughts when you were with Kate?

JJ Virgin, CNS, BCHN, EP-C

I was immersed in all of this because I was living with this woman who was coaching me, and everyone around us was positive, etc. It was quick, like a matter of weeks. This does not take long to do at all, but you have to be committed. I changed everything around me to do this. And I tend to do that. I’m an all-in-one type of person.

Ann Shippy, MD

Okay.  In hopes of not overwhelming people, because we’ve covered a fair amount of ground, I know one of the things that you teach is about taking steps and building on one thing after another. If you could give some examples and the approach to, maybe in three months or six months, you’ve got a lot done. But it might today.

JJ Virgin, CNS, BCHN, EP-C

I think what we need to do is make a priority list. Here’s the thing: if your mindset is not dialed in, I do not know how to do anything else. You cannot if you look in terms of the priority list, and that’s at the very top because everything comes off of that. So that’s the very first step. Now, how long will it take you to shift that? It does not matter, honestly. It’s like, so it might take you a day, a week, a month, or three months. The important thing is that you prioritize it and focus on it.   That’s your commitment. Once that thing’s done, then you can go all in. What’s the next thing within my control that I can start to do? Is it that I need to look at my diet? then, one by one, in my diet, fix things. One by one, in the diet, I believe the first thing that we need to do is add before we take away. What the research has clear on is that if you optimize your protein, add more protein in, and make sure you’re getting the right amount for you, you actually will eat less, you’ll make better food choices, you’ll have better blood sugar stability or better satiety, and you’ll have a better thermic response.

Just increasing protein can make a big shift. Looking at diet, looking at exercise, looking at meditation, looking at what’s the next biggest rock, and we just keep going down the list of the things that you have in your control. But you do one at a time. It does not matter if it takes you a week, a month, or six months. It took me six months to even get to a glimmer with meditation. Now it’s been how long we’ve been doing this? Two years?

Ann Shippy, MD

Two years.

JJ Virgin, CNS, BCHN, EP-C

A year and a half. I’m now considered to be an advanced meditator. I’m like, I keep looking around. Who are they talking about?

Ann Shippy, MD

You are. You’re doing great.

JJ Virgin, CNS, BCHN, EP-C

I’m an advanced meditator. It’s like being wild because I still do not feel like I’m doing it right, which is the funniest thing. It’s just a matter of prioritizing: What’s the next big rock? When you look at these things, they’re small steps, but these little hinges swing big doors. When they become part of your life.

Ann Shippy, MD

They do. It changes what’s going on at an epigenetic and cellular level and gives your body more resources to heal.

JJ Virgin, CNS, BCHN, EP-C

Yes.

Ann Shippy, MD

That’s great.  There may be some people listening who are still in that old paradigm about meat being bad, beef being bad, or eggs being bad. Can you just dispel that myth?

JJ Virgin, CNS, BCHN, EP-C

Wow. I still think back to the eighties, when it was all high-carb fat-free, I went vegan. I went to the doctor because my eggs were so high that I had more body fat. I remember making my body fat. I was at USC in their doctoral program, and I was 25%. For me, I’m like this crazy genetic freak with my leanness. So, for example, if I’m overweight, for me, this is not normal. It’s like 15%. I was, like, so metabolically dysregulated. I was hypoglycemic, and having all sorts of problems. A doctor said, “You either go get a chicken or I’m going to hospitalize you.” I’m like, “I will get the chicken.” But there is so much misinformation about animal protein. I had a great mentor early on who said, The sicker you are, the farther back in your ancestry you need to go in terms of how you eat. I think if we just looked at it, what’s crazy now is that we are now eating an 85% plant-based diet in the United States. We’ve dramatically dropped our consumption of meat and animal products, and our health has plummeted, like we are now, say, 6.8% of the population’s metabolically healthy.

It is a disaster. I’m sorry, but one of the biggest ways you can change your health is by changing what’s at the end of your fork. There is a super big issue with this. If you look back and go, all is well, so if I’m not doing well, I’m going to go back to my ancestry. I will go back 10,000 years. If there were no vegans 10,000 years ago, they would have died. We’re omnivores; we eat everything. if we do not get animal protein, and I would argue that if you had to cut out anything we can live solely on animal protein if we eat all of it, but we cannot solely live on plants, we’ll have nutrient deficiencies that will kill us? Even the research on red meat shows that people who do not eat red meat have higher levels of depression. These are the most nutrient-dense foods on earth. I think where the challenge comes in with animal protein is that they compare a factory chicken or a factory cow to a grass-fed, grass-finished cow like they think they’re all the same.

Ann Shippy, MD

They are different.

JJ Virgin, CNS, BCHN, EP-C

That would be, that’s like acting like apple juice is the same as a whole organic apple. One’s a soda, and one’s a whole nutritious food that feeds your gut microbiome. They’re different foods, One is junk food; one’s a healthy food. I had to say the same factory cow versus grass-fed, grass-finished cow, farmed fish, and wild fish. I think when we look at this, they start to conflate these different types. You cannot do that. You cannot. It’s apples and oranges.

Ann Shippy, MD

Thank you. That’s great. The same information applies to the eggs. I think it’s more about looking at what people are doing with the eggs than getting properly farmed eggs.

JJ Virgin, CNS, BCHN, EP-C

They are entirely different food. I remember early on I declined to go. Listen, you have to get pasture-raised eggs, not cage-free eggs; pasture-raised eggs. She goes, “ I do not like them. The yolks are too yellow.” I go, “That’s what yolks are supposed to look like.” We go to Europe, and all the yolks are yellow because they do not do what we do to our chicken eggs. It was interesting early on with the Virgin Diet and looking at food and terms. What I found for a lot of people was that when they pastured eggs, they were fine. When they ate factory eggs, they were not. It’s an entirely different food.

Ann Shippy, MD

That’s exactly what happened to me way back when I had to cut out eggs. But then I could go to the farmer’s market and get the duck eggs.

JJ Virgin, CNS, BCHN, EP-C

Yes. It’s like, Huh? Is it the egg? No, it’s. We’ve got junk food and stuff. It’s every time I travel out of the country into places like Peru or Europe that I’m like, “I feel great.”

Ann Shippy, MD

And then, of course, another area of your expertise is sugar. That’s when I get the common things that I see. A lot of times when people are toxic overloaded from mold, they could slip on sugar. They just crave it so badly. Can you talk just a little bit about how to overcome those cravings and what to do to get the sugar out?

JJ Virgin, CNS, BCHN, EP-C

You wonder if they’re craving it because the toxicity has created insulin resistance so that they cannot access their stored body fat for fuel. They have to use that sugar, which is making them crave it. I think that’s an important point because sometimes we get down on ourselves and go. “I’m just a bad person; I’m craving sugar.” But I always like to unpack and go. Why is that happening? We can crave sugar for a variety of reasons. Genetics: there are genetic people. I’m adopted. My adopted mom has the sweet tooth genetics I was raised with, starting the morning with Pop-Tarts or Captain Crunch. I had dessert in my lunch every day and dessert in dinner every single night. That’s my mom. At 12 years old. I was like, I’m not eating any of that stuff anymore, Mom. I do not have a sweet tooth. I will eat it. But I do not think I care about it. So there is that genetic piece. Now, that does not mean that you’re going to be trapped there. We can still make decisions, and some things take your sweet tooth away, thankfully.

But then, of course, stress is going to make you crave sweets. Cortisol, of course, can lower serotonin. you crave sweets. That’s a big one. But the biggest one is exposure. Exposure equals preference, and the more sweet you eat, the more sweet you want. That’s the challenge. Even though I think allulose among fruit and stevia have a place, we have to be careful because they still tell our brains, “Wow, I want more.” If you think about it, we’re hardwired to, like, go grab a bunch of honey so that we can and fruit during the summer so we can get it all in, so that we can store fat, so we can survive the winter. So we are going to go after sweet. The big thing here, especially when you’ve got instant resistance due to toxins, is to be doing what you need to do to detoxify regularly. One of the cool things is to build muscle because muscles are a sugar sponge. It’s a place for us to store carbohydrates, but it’s the first place we can start to restore insulin sensitivity, which is super important. then, on the dietary side, things that can help take the sweet tooth away. First of all, put protein first.

What I see with people is that the more sweets and carbs we eat, the more sweets and carbs we’re going to want, and you train your body to always need those things. Protein first with some fiber will help with blood sugar stability. Doing some apple cider vinegar or lemon juice before the meal will have a better blood sugar effect. Berberine, which I know now, is like berberine is all over the place because it’s like they’re calling it a semaglutide mimetic. I’m like, “Yes, not really, but okay,” it’s like off the charts now on the sales.

Ann Shippy, MD

With changes in people’s labs with it. 

JJ Virgin, CNS, BCHN, EP-C

Amazing. I think Berberine is one of the greatest things ever. I’m like, good, they’re using it for blood sugar control and gut health for brains like it’s been this little quiet supplement that no one’s using. I think it’s one of the greatest things ever. I’ve been using it for years. But two other things can help. You can take your sweet tooth away. Lemon juice or fermented foods are a great hack for taking your sweet tooth away. When I wrote the Sugar Impact Diet, I did not plan to write that book. But, one of the foods I pulled out of the seven foods I pulled out was sugar and artificial sweeteners. Artificial sweeteners have no place on the planet. Yes, like, how are they here? It’s,  of course, a political situation. But they shouldn’t be here. Yes, they’re horrible. They’re horrible. I cannot understand how anyone and I still hear health professionals saying, “No, Splenda is okay.” No, it’s not. It changes your gut microbiome in a week.

Yes. You’ll want more. But sugar, you’re going to get sugar from the foods you eat. You want to make it from the foods you eat, not mainline it. You want to get sugar from blueberries, you want to get sugar from an apple? You want to get sugar from your sweet potato or your squash. You do not want to get sugar because you drink apple juice. You want to make it slowly from the foods you eat. You do not want to mainline it from what you’re doing. We have never done that in the history of time. The only thing we ever had access to in small amounts was honey. All of this makes zero sense. If you look at what’s super changed in our diet in the last like 50 years, that’s the only time we are eating the most obesogenic diet, which is high carb, high fat, which occurs nowhere and nowhere in nature. In nature, we’ve got fat with protein and animals, and then we’ve got carbs, but we do not have high-carb, high-fat things. We only have them when the food manufacturers come and play and say, This will be something that you will be addicted to. You’re eating ultra-processed food. If you have some, you want more, and you’re never satisfied.

Ann Shippy, MD

You’re masterful at that. 

JJ Virgin, CNS, BCHN, EP-C

Yes.

Ann Shippy, MD

It’s like, the young kids who are just learning how to eat healthfully are sabotaged. That’s what starts.

JJ Virgin, CNS, BCHN, EP-C

Yes, I think there was looking at a study that said we eat like five or more calories a day when we’re eating a high ultra-processed food diet because we’re not satisfied.

Ann Shippy, MD

Yes.  Let’s talk about fat because that is also another myth where fat is bad and there are bad fats, but there are good fats and we need fat. I would love for you to share your thoughts on that.

JJ Virgin, CNS, BCHN, EP-C

I think everything in the diet gets super simple. What I never know with someone is that they’re going to be like, to me, protein’s an absolute, and you should build your protein from 0.7 grams to one gram per pound of target body weight somewhere in there, and then divide it over three meals, getting at least 30 grams in the morning and evening. That’s your protein level higher if you’re 50 or older if you’re not working out because you’re more anabolic resistant. If you’re healing from something but point seven is still low, then you should be getting in at least five servings of non-starchy vegetables, a rainbow of colors a day, and two servings of fruit. When you eat that way, you’re going to use some things, like extra virgin olive oil or maybe some coconut oil or ghee, in your cooking and your dressings for those things.

You’ll have some healthy fats in your protein, which is why you are what you eat. It is mission-critical to have the grass-fed grass finish and have the wild. You’re getting those good, healthy fats. That’s my favorite way to consume fats: whole, like within the animal, within the avocado, within the nut. But the other ones that I will use are coconut oil, avocado oil, extra virgin olive oil, and ghee. But I pretty much keep it to extra virgin olive oil and ghee. Those are my two favorites. After you do that, then I look at, “Okay, what do you need from here?” Depending on how you fare better, there is a lot in genetics about this, but it also has to do with your adrenal health, your fitness, and how much you’re exercising. You have to earn your carbs. Then we figure out how many more, like more non-starchy vegetables, are better, but how many more slow, low-carb you might eat or how much fat you never go high-fat, high-carb. That’s the obesogenic diet. You figure out where you tend to do better, or you’re better on the low carb or you’re better on the lower fat, but it’s never low fat.

We need those healthy fats, but we need to focus on making an oil change because, most likely, if you’re like everybody else, you probably have a higher omega-6 ratio just from eating out. When you look at what they use for cooking salad dressings and eating out, they’re using cheap oils, and you’ll ask them, What’s the salad dressing made out of? They won’t tell you it’s an olive oil blend. When they tell you that, they just told you it was canola oil, It’s just garbage stuff. I’ve gotten to be so picky. I was looking at going; should I start traveling with my own extra virgin olive oil? Maybe this is like, What are we going to do here? 

I know I’ve got my sea salt, but my sea salt keeps pouring out all over my purse. But at some point you’re like, okay, I need my sea salt. I need my Extra virgin olive oil because the challenge with fats is that they will be stored, and then you’ll have this bigger, higher inflammatory versus anti-inflammatory ratio. That’s a problem. Then you have to push it out by hitting yourself with more fish oil and making sure you’re using mono and saturated oil. We do need to watch this. I know I’ve heard from some of the health people that liking seed oils is not that big of a deal. I know they are because if you were doing them once a year, it’s like it’s not the once-a-year birthday cake that matters. When I’m putting someone on a program, they always go. But what about my birthday? Let’s go once a year and have fun. It’s what you do every single day that matters. Every day you go out to lunch somewhere, and you have a crappy salad dressing. We’ve got a problem, These are things that we need to be aware of because they’re going to make your fat cells more insulin-resistant. They’re problematic. They’re going to make it harder for your body to release fat. I also think for someone, especially women, if women are trying to move into more insulin sensitivity and use more fat for fuel, I think they have to be careful with going high-fat in their diet because if you’re eating high-fat, you do not need to burn your fat. It’s easy to overdo.

Ann Shippy, MD

Yes, a lot of the keto for me is a little over the top, whereas being healthy, if you measure your ketones, a lot of times you’re easily going into ketones eating the way you just described.

JJ Virgin, CNS, BCHN, EP-C

And exercising. We all talk about autophagy. I’m like exercise, and you’ll trigger autophagy. It’s like, why do super-fit people get cancer usually? Because they trigger autophagy when they exercise.

Ann Shippy, MD

Which is killing off cells that are starting to age? Yes. You are truly one of the most disciplined humans that I know and pretty disciplined humans. You never seem deprived, like you find ways to make things special and have splurges. Can you talk a little bit about that? How do you navigate being super disciplined while enjoying life?

JJ Virgin, CNS, BCHN, EP-C

I do not think of myself as disciplined. I got to tell you, I think that’s funny. But here’s what I see: I do not know where I heard this line. I wish I could say I could give the person credit, but I love this idea. That structure creates freedom. If you create structure in your world, like every day I get up, I go to the bathroom, I step on the scale, and I come back and meditate, You see easy structure, It does not matter where I am. That’s what I do and then I know what I have every day for breakfast. I actually will travel with it, where I will bring my bone broth, protein, and collagen, and just make it easy. I just keep it super simple, and it’s like it’s not that hard. If I know that when I sit down to eat, I’m going to have some clean protein and non-starchy vegetables, it’s easy. This is not like it’s so simple, I think it’s that structure that makes you feel free. Every day I figure out in my schedule somewhere that I’m going to move. Now, if I’m traveling and it’s a crazy day, maybe it’s just walking through airports and stuff, but it’s something like every day is something.

Ann Shippy, MD

Yes. People love it because, on the day that you’re a little bit more crunched for time, you can at least do a 15-minute meditation or the analogy of walking in the airport, carrying some luggage that’s a little bit of weight lifting, and keeping it.

JJ Virgin, CNS, BCHN, EP-C

Those airports are huge. What we do in the airport is I do not take, unless I’ve got heavy stuff. I try to take the stairs. I do not take those little walking walkways as we walk. It adds up. Everything counts, Even if you just do a ten-minute thing in the morning, it all counts. So those are my commitments each day. But I did not start that way. I started one by one and made it super simple.

Ann Shippy, MD

When you feel good, you do not want to lose that,

JJ Virgin, CNS, BCHN, EP-C

I know people. I did a health network thing with a bunch of our friends, like Tom O’Brien, Dave Asprey, and Sarah Gottfried. The biggest question they all asked us when they called in was, What do you do to cheat? I’m like, “God, this is going to be so boring.” I do not know an extra piece of dark chocolate, a little bigger steaks. Once you know what feeling great feels like. Why would you sabotage that?

Ann Shippy, MD

And that the mic dropped. Yes. It’s sometimes getting off track with a vacation or that thing. But you and I pretty much follow our routines even on vacation.

JJ Virgin, CNS, BCHN, EP-C

To me, vacations are a time to even double down. We go like you and I go on meditation retreats. But even on the meditation retreat, I snuck out, went to the gym, and found other people were there too with me. We stacked the fridge so we could eat the way we wanted to eat. On my vacations and my business travel, I build all of this in, so I do not like going on vacation. It’s not going off the rails because it wouldn’t be worth it. It wouldn’t be fun. Here we are. We’re getting ready to go to Bali together, and one suitcase is like supplements and shakes, my scale on my TRX, and all the stuff that I do because I want to do that because it’s going to make me have a better trip.

Ann Shippy, MD

Love it. And a better life.

JJ Virgin, CNS, BCHN, EP-C

Yes.

Ann Shippy, MD

Well, thank you so much. JJ. Is there any last thought you want to leave our audience with to inspire them on their healing journey?

JJ Virgin, CNS, BCHN, EP-C

Well, I would challenge you to put a rubber band around your wrist. It remains one of the most transformative things that I ever did, like wearing a simple rubber band for a week. Do it and see what happens.

Ann Shippy, MD

Well, thank you so much, JJ. I know you’ve got so much going on. I appreciate you taking the time to share your wisdom and your light.

JJ Virgin, CNS, BCHN, EP-C

Thank you, bestie.