Unlock Key Strategies For Whole Body Healing

Introduction and JJ Virginu2019s Background 0:00

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

So, JJ, is there anything else you wanted to write about you? You know, it's super fun, Ann 'cause I feel like everything's coming full circle. Like I started out in the world of exercise and I was getting my my masters in biomechanics and I went in to my my doctoral work in exercise foods and started focusing on nutrition and aging. But everything was exercise and nutrition. And I remember then I got into functional medicine and started studying all that, and I felt like I didn't have the tools.

I was like, They've got such cool stuff over there and the functional medicine side of things, right? With the IVs and, and the testing. And I'm just this lowly person over here who's got diet and exercise. And I'll tell you what I've really seen over the last four decades of doing this is it all starts with diet and exercise and and truly diet, exercise and mindset. And so all of a sudden, it took me it took me up until now to go, oh, wow. Like, if you really look at anything in health, I don't know how someone can be truly healthy unless they have the foundation, you know, that strong foundation, the fundamentals.

And yet when you really look at it, most of the time, the fundamentals have been passed over. And that's really 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 really hard to get them totally. Well. Yeah, I mean, I would I'd be so bold as to say, and I've gotten this way in my own career, maybe just getting older, but probably just getting older where there's very just specific non-negotiables.

And early on in my career it was like, okay, you you don't want to change your diet, you just want to exercise, okay? Or, you know, oh, you just want to work out one day a week and you're not going to sleep well, okay. And I won't do that any of that anymore. Like there's just non-negotiables and and the big thing I'd say is, okay, if you

Foundational Health: Diet, Exercise, and Mindset 2:53

if you look at all of this and go, you know what? I'm just not willing to change my diet and like, okay, well then what we should do is just design a health program where you just slowly get worse instead of get worse quickly. Like, let's see how we can work with that, that you won't be ever be healthy, let's be honest. And I think we have to be, you know, that tough love with love, because it's a disservice to let someone think that you can actually really be healthy and not exercise or actually really be healthy and not optimize your sleep or actually really be healthy and not eat well.

You can't well, and I love you know, I think your first book was The Virgin Diet, right? That was my third book. Yeah, I know. People are like, That was your first book. I go, No, my first book. No one knows about my second book. I didn't know how to market. And that's why it's so important. Like if you really want to get the message out in the world, you actually have to learn how to do that. And the third book I figured it out. So yes, The Virgin Diet. So when everybody knows. That's the one, everybody knows it's been out for how long?

Ten years. And years. And it's still so relevant today. Right. And it's specially for people that are dealing with chronic illness, things like mold and mycotoxins, like the the principles in that book are so important. So I'd love it if you'd share those. The most important principles that you think around diet based on the ten years of of this book being out there. And then I know you're doing a bunch of new research for that, I guess going to be coming out in a while for fairly near future, fairly new.

Here's what's super. I've been thinking a lot about this because, you know, one of the great things that's happened in the last couple of years is that the scientists have gotten online, and it used to be that we had to search for their papers and, you know, they do some amazing work and 100 people would see it. And now all of sudden, the scientists are rock stars. They've got great podcasts. They're getting the research out. And I love it so much because what we really have to do is have the scientists and the clinicians, the practitioners merge because, you know, a lot of times a practitioner does something because they see it working right?

And then the scientists will grab hold of that and do the research to prove it. So we need all of it put together and writing. Yeah, I mean, the challenge for me, like back when I was in grad school, way, way, way, way, way back when, everything was about weight loss. And if you want to lose weight, you had to eat less. Exercise more, create a 500 calorie deficit for for a pound loss a week. And 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 do super low calorie. And you know what? Where that ended. It's all wrong. It's all wrong. And but so but the thing was, I was in grad school, but I was like the only kid in my grad school who actually was working like they wanted me to come be a grad to. But I was like, No, I can make more money. I'm in the real world and so what I saw was what they were teaching didn't work. And so I started doing I did my graduate work on resistance training, which I had to find someone who would actually, you know, be my be my professor who supervised it because no one wanted to do it.

And I started changing dietary stuff. I started shifting into high intensity animal training instead of all the long, slow distance cardio, because I thought, I'm not going to get paid to make people worse, which is what they were teaching was doing. And what I love now is I feel like the stuff that I was seeing back in the eighties during the world of, you know, fat is bad, eat high carb, you know, I almost died on a vegan diet. It was a horrific thing. You know, do loads and loads of cardio. The stuff that that all of that stuff.

It's like now we're kind of going, Oh, no, we need muscle mass, Oh, we need protein. Oh, animal protein is critical. So I feel like everything's gone full circle and everything that I've done really was led by this desire to have better outcomes with my clients. And so with my first big book, The Virgin Diet, I was teaching doctors. I was doing this this course called Overcoming Weight Loss Resistance around the country. I don't think you even knew about this. And so I was teaching this course with a girlfriend and and looking at all of the things that could get in the way of you losing weight or cause you to gain weight.

Here's the bottom line. With all of that, I look at weight as just a it's just a symptom. Right. And the idea that we lose weight to get healthy is absolutely backwards. We actually need to get metabolically healthy to lose fat and hold on to muscle. You could lose weight and get way more unhealthy. Right. You know, if you're losing your weight, not your weight. So. Yeah, a yo yo, right. It's all like we've got to look at that whole picture in an incredibly different thing. But everything everything around weight loss.

Now you look at and go, we're starting to look at this in the right way. We're starting to look at where Fat's located. We're starting to look at protein driving, holding on to muscle mass. We're just shifting the whole conversation. And back then I was going around and teaching this, and I was teaching how to use a simple test to identify food sensitivities. And so I got to see the results all the time. And one of the tools that we've had in the diet world forever is an elimination diet, but it's a complicated diet.

So what I always I looked and I go, this is so hard citrus and strawberries and like what's left to eat. And but what I saw when I was looking at the food sensitivity testing is that the classic things I saw over and over and over again were always dairy and eggs. First tier, second tier was corn, soy, peanuts. 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, right in, their gut integrity.

So and 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. So 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. So I thought, well, during that time, let's just take out the most common offenders and see what happens. And I thought the other side of that is, and I think that's such an important thing

The Virgin Diet and Elimination Principles 9:01

for all of us. We ultimately are our best nutritionists, our best trainer, our best doctor, because we intimately know what's going on with our bodies. And so if someone tells me, hey, you do fine with dairy, but I eat it, break out and get stuffed up, I don't do fine with dairy, you know, that's like I can kid myself, but I don't. So I just get you to take the whey protein to say, Yeah. And, you know, I mean, I just went through this because I was like doing so much research round 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.

So, you know, again, when you're looking at these diets, diets are tools you want to use the right tool for the right situation. Right, Right. hammer Right now. And so whether it's intermittent fasting or it's an elimination diet or a paleo AP diet, like what's the situation you're going after and what's going to work best for you and what can you take away from that plan? So that's really like the full circle I went through. And The Virgin Diet was a great first starting point for that because it really the people misinterpreted it.

I will tell you. They were like, okay, I pulled those things out and I've been on it for years. And I go, Well, actually you're supposed to pull them out. Re challenged to see which foods work for you and which foods don't, but they felt so great. They're like, Yeah, I'm not going to do that. I and I go, not the worst thing. Anyway, right? Yeah. I mean, like, you know, most of the ultimately when you pull out dairy eggs, gluten, soy, corn, peanuts and sugar and artificial sweeteners, what you really did was pull out ultra processed foods.

Yeah. So what I find too, is when you pull those out for a while, let the good get healed and you can add the eggs back in. Fortunately, I have been fortunate. Like 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. And I. I thought I was going to go in the hospital. It was like I was like Sigourney Weaver, an alien. And so that's what it's like to do these things carefully. But I can now eat eggs because I peeled my gut.

But dairy will be forever out. Sadly. Same here, same here. But I I'm this because with these conversations it can really inspire people to to make these changes, even though when they're first starting to implement them, it can feel a little daunting. It can. And the big thing that I like to do with whatever I do and I remember I made the mistake of reading reviews on Amazon, never do this. And someone said, you know, this book is so simple as a as a critique. And I go, Yeah, that's why I wrote it that way.

I when I'm doing things, I want to make it as simple as possible and focus on one thing. In the Virgin Diet, all you're doing is pulling these food out, swapping them for healing foods, focus on healing your gut and then challenge them back. You're not focusing on anything else. Just do that. You know, on 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 nothing else, because the minute we start to stack up other things like, okay, I'm going to eat protein, then I'm I start lifting heavy weights.

I got to make sure I get in all my greens, take my fish oil, get my sleep. I need to make sure I got my meditation. You're like, overwhelmed and do nothing. Yeah. And then it really can be overwhelming, especially when you're already not feeling great. Exactly. So you pick the top needle mover to start. You'd get nailed that one. And then you go to the next one and you just avoid. And I think that's a really important thing for practitioners too. I still remember the first time I started working with people.

I totally overwhelmed them, overtrained them, overwhelmed them over, over, over. And I went, All right, what if we don't do it that way? You know, 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 totally different place. And 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 that because it was such a major thing for me to incorporate into my life, I would I wanted to make sure that it actually happened, that I did not add any other stuff because I knew then I wouldn't do it.

Would you like to talk a little bit about that? I mean, because these are all really important tools in the toolbox. So would you like to talk a little bit about your path with meditation and how Tucker spends. His. Life? Yeah, this is quite like diet and exercise are my easy ones. I mean, obviously that's my whole world. So I got those ones and I have had shortness of breath since I was 25. So I went to a doctor sure that it was exercise induced asthma. And he's like, No, it's not. It's anxiety. I'm like, No, it's not.

It puts me on Zoloft. I feel like garbage. Mike I can't do that. I'll live with this. And I lived with it literally till I was, what, like 55, 56, maybe 57. I mean, how long have we been doing Dr. Joe together? Yeah, 20, 21. So 58. I lived with shortness of breath. And, you know, when I went to Dr. Joe the first time with you and, you know, going to thank. You, by the way, for making me go. Well, thank you for being there because you showed me what was possible. So I go to this meditation retreat and we're supposed to listen to all these trainings and do these meditations, which I didn't do the meditations because I'm going to a meditation retreat.

So why would I bother? I'm going to do them there, Right? So I'm sitting there, try like I am in in my head, struggling. I have a week of this. Meanwhile, you are off floating out in the quantum and having amazing results. And and so is my husband and everybody else around me. And what was great about that was I saw what was possible. Now, you could have looked at that two ways. And that's why it's so important to look at these things and look at how you can reframe things. Because when you really look at how thoughts become things and everything, ultimately becomes our choice, you know, there are no victims, only volunteers.

So I want to be a victor, not a victim. And 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 take a client. Right. You know, 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. And so same thing. I went, All right, I'm going to commit for six months to do this. And 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. And three months after that, we went back. And I mean, the first six months, I will tell you, that was I didn't know if I was doing it right. I'm in my head. I'm like having all these conversations. And then I started getting out of my own way. And I remember being in the at the event in September going, I'm breathing like I'm breathing like, I'm not sure like it's so interesting and I've seen this with so many clients. I always make them take as a whole like self self avowal before they start because they forget things like I haven't taken a good deep breath for 30 years, you know, they just forget those things.

All of a sudden, I don't have shortness of breath anymore like that. That is the most amazing thing ever. And the crazy part of all of this is I you know, I don't change anything, so I'm eating the same. I'm exercising the same. I just have made this commitment to meditate every day, drop five pins. And I tell this to Dr. Joe at dinner, I go, I dropped £5. Now I understand stress. And you know what it does to leaky gut, what it does to insulin, what it does to causes 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's still it still blows your mind to see it right, to know. How effortless it really didn't. It didn't do it like I went. Jason Making time for it once a day.

Mindset Training and Meditation Practice 17:28

Right. Right. And you know, like when you really think about whatever is going on in your life because as you know, I just got a weird diagnosis. And fortunately, I was walking into a Dr. Joe retreat and I just went, All right, 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. And 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 right? What if I just focused on and they do.

We know they do, right? So perception creates reality. So I am just going to see myself in perfect health. I'm going to see this is the best thing that possibly could have happened to me, that it's happening for me, not to me. And I think that is one of those things we might look at meditation, God, I don't have time for that. Just like exercise or eating healthy or any of these things. I had a mentor early on and you said, whenever you say that, just tack right after that so I don't have to. So I think one of the things that I'm so impressed about JJ is how you have this awareness of what your thoughts are.

And so I think that's one of the things to start to be, you know, for the people listening to, to, you know, take the time to really listen to what they're saying to themselves. Right? Because most of our conversation is with ourselves over the course of a year. Right. And so what you do so well as you're aware of what it is that you're telling yourself, can you talk a little bit more about like how this actually works in your head? Like when you have an awareness that you know you're going down a path that you don't want to be, especially, you know, with what's been happening in the last couple of weeks.

Like how do you make that shift to the thoughts that you really want to have? You know, I had this mentor when I was 30, actually when I was 27, I met her and she just stayed my mentor for years. And what was crazy was when I went through the issue with my son and I wrote Miracle Mindset and people like, I don't know how you did that. And I got I don't know how I did either. And then one day I was doing an interview and I go, Oh my gosh, this is all from Casey Smith. And 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 is so easy to do. But this changed everything for how I think. And what she did when I first moved in is she 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, snap, snap. Oh, right. Like snapping my rubber band all day long. Because if you aren't careful about it, and if you're out in our world, it's a negative place if you're not careful.

And that's what she taught me. She was you know, you've got a so carefully manager environment, what you listen to, what you read, the people you are around, every single bit of it. And so that's what I started to do. I stopped. I remember my mom at the time was like, you're not you're not watching the news. And I go, No, never. She goes, What if something happens? I go, I'm sure you'll tell me, like I'll find out. Someone will tell me. But no, I'm not going to do that. Like, I just stopped all of that.

And when my son was. In alone makes time for meditation, Right? Right. I mean, 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, you know, 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, multiple brain, you know, multiple brain injury, like diffuse axonal injuries in a coma, you know, And it was in I said to them, I go, you know, if you can't see him 110%, you're not on the team because he's an athlete and he's going to be 110%.

And yes, you can think I'm crazy, but you have to have to hold the vision. Otherwise, you know, I'll find someone else. That there's some possibility in the field. But he's right. Some possibility. I mean, I literally had doctors say, I've seen kids with half their brain gone and they're totally perfect. I go, good, you're on the team. You are on the team, Right? Because, you know, you got to believe that if a doctor comes in and goes, we're just trying to get him to be able to walk again. And I was like, Yeah, you're not on the team.

No, no, I don't want the least possible. I want the most possible. It's just so applicable to the people listening to our viewers because that something really important, right, for the best that you can to really support your 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%. Right. Well, they might get pushed out forever because as you start to really manage your environment and notice what you're noticing is Mary Worsley talks about like you actually people who are more negative and critical and judgmental, it'll be repellent to be around them.

And they really won't like to be around you either, right? Because you're not engaging in all that judgment and criticism. And it's no fun. No fun for them. You're not complaining. You won't buy into their thing, right? You know, my mom tends to go to the negative like, it's so funny. She lives in Northern California, and if it's raining, she'll call because it's raining every day. If it's not raining shows, oh, my gosh, we need rain. And like, how do we win here? You know? So I'm always asking her what's great about today, mom?

And it just completely throws her for a loop, you know, because it's just not her. Not her normal. And that was what I had to leave and work with. Kate Smith to break because I was so used to being around the what's wrong about things rather than what's right about things. How could this be happening for me rather than to me? And I think especially when we have a really tough diagnosis and we're going through mold or mycotoxins or we have something chronic, it can be really 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's it wasn't zero. And all you need is a spark, and then you've got to grab a hold of that hope, and you just got to focus on what's possible and you've got to let everything else get out of your head and you've got to stay around people who support that, that image too. And the other ones, you know, bless them on their path, be kind to them, but don't let their negativity end well.

And this really is a thing with mold because so many people don't understand it. You know, when it's something you can't see, it's it's pretty challenging for, you know, people that are kind of concrete in their thinking to understand it. And so I love it that you're bringing this up because it really is permission to to surround yourself with the people that are seeking to understand and are supportive. It's so, so important. And the other thing that you're really emphasizing here is how important it is to really have a goal.

Like with Grant, you had such a clear goal. Yeah, a crazy goal. Like he's going to be better than before the accident. And this was my son who had 16, was hit by a car while crossing the street and left for dead 13 fractures at torney, or that that was going to rupture sometime during the night. Multiple blamed brain bleeds in a deep, deep coma and a doctor who 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. Right. And went in super strong and super healthy. And all we needed was that point zero 1 to 5% chance. And I thought, well, if we're going to go for it, why not go for like super big? Like, let's go for better than before, Because what happens if we just don't quite make it cool, right? Better than the alternative where they just wanted us to leave him at that hospital that night and wait until he passed.

Gives me nightmares. That's. I mean, that's so inspiring, though, because it just shows that you the the power that of holding that space and having the right people around you. It's really, really right. And if I could do that in that dire of a situation, we can all do it. And we also need those lifelines around us. I was very lucky that I had people around me who absolutely 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 are, you know, in perfect health?

And this is all resolve because it will be and, you know, 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. Well, and I really do think that that is what's possible with with mold and micro toxin illness. It's what I've seen of myself and many of my patients. So I, I think you're, you know, explaining how you approached it in such dire straits. I think I hope it makes it feel doable now. Well. Besides doable, here's the other part to that.

For so much of this, it feels like things outside of our control. Right. Right. And 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. Like ultimately, I couldn't control whether Grant was going to survive the airlift to that hospital that night, but I could control my thoughts. So that's all I focused on, is what I could do. Well, and you learn in such a deep way to do that for your son. And now, now that you've learned it in that situation, it seems that you can also do it for yourself.

Yeah, 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. And I think that's a super important reminder for all of us. We all here, put your oxygen mask on yourself first, like we never do it. Like everyone's like, you know, 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 first with yourself. And I love that. Get clear on what your goal is on the other side of this and then find the meditation techniques and find Now how long after using the rubber band did you really start to see a difference in your thoughts when you were with K.

You know, I was living immersed in all of this because I was living with this woman who was coaching me and everyone around us was positive, etc. So it was really quick, like a matter of weeks.

Supporting Healing Through Clear Goals and Environment 28:38

This does not take long to do at all, but you have to be committed. I mean, I literally changed everything around me to do this. So and I tend to do that. I'm an all in type person. Okay. So 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, you know, taking steps and building on one thing after another. So if you could give some examples and the approach to, you know, maybe in three months, six months, you've got a lot done.

But it might, yeah, Today. I think we have a what we really need to do is make a priority list. And here's the thing, if your mindset is not dialed in, I don't know how to do anything else. Like you can't, you know, you look in terms of the priority list and that's the very top because everything comes off of that. And so that's the very first step. Now, how long it will take you to shift that? It doesn't really matter, honestly. It's like so it might take you a day, a week, a month, three months.

The important thing is that you prioritized it and you're focusing on it. Right. And that's your commitment. And once that thing's done, then you can go all right, what's the next thing within my control that I can start to do? Is it that I need to really look at my diet? And then one by one in my diet, fix things. And again, I one by one in the diet, I and in diet, I really believe the first thing that we need to do is add before we take away. And what the research has really clear on is that if you optimize your protein, add more protein in, 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.

So just increasing protein can make a big shift, right? So again, it's like, all right, looking at looking at diet, looking at exercise, looking at meditation, looking at what's the next biggest rock and again, we just keep going down the list of the things that you know, that you have in your control. But you do one at a time. And it doesn't it doesn't matter if it takes you a week, a month, six months, took me six months to kind of even get to a glimmer with meditation. And now it's been how long we've been doing this year now two years.

Two year, Year. And a half. Yeah. We're now I'm considered to be an advanced meditator. I'm like, I keep looking around going, Where are they talking about? You are. You're doing great. I'm an advanced meditator. It's like wild because I still don't feel like I'm doing it right, which is the funniest thing, right? So, you know, it's just a matter of prioritizing what's the next big rock? And really, when you look at these things, they're small steps, but these little hinges, swing big doors. When they really become part of your life.

They really do. It changes what's going on in an epigenetic and cellular level and really gives your body more resources to heal. Yes. That's that's really great. So there may be some people listening that are still kind of in that old paradigm about, you know, meat being bad or beef being bad or eggs being bad. Can you just dispel that myth? Wow. I still think back, you know, back in the eighties when it was all the high carb fat free, I went vegan. I literally went to a doctor because my eggs were so I had higher body fat.

I remember doing my body fat. I was at USC in their doctoral program and I was 25% Right now for me, you know me, I'm like this crazy genetic freak with my with leanness. And so, like, for me, if I'm I'm kind of more over fat. For me, this is not normal. It's like 15%. So I was like, so metabolically disregulated. I was hypoglycemic, all sorts of problems. And a doctor said, You either go get a chicken or I'm going to hospitalized you. I'm like, All right, I'll get the chicken. But, you know, there's so much misinformation around animal protein.

And 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. And I think if we just looked at it and what's crazy now is we are now eating an 85% plant based diet in the United States. So we've dramatically dropped our consumption of meat of animal products and our health has plummeted like we are now, what, 6.8% of the population's metabolically healthy. It is a disaster. And I'm sorry, but like one of the biggest ways you change your health is by changing what's at the end of your fork.

So clearly, clearly, there is a super big issue with this. And if you look back and go, all right, well, so if I'm not doing well, I'm going to go back on my ancestry. I'll go back 10,000 years. There were no vegans 10,000 years ago, they would have died. We're omnivores, we eat everything. And if we don't get animal protein, and I would argue that if you had to cut out anything like we can live solely on animal protein if we eat all of it, but we can't solely live on plants, we'll have nutrient deficiencies that will kill us right?

I mean, even the research on red meat shows that people who do not eat red meat have higher levels. Depression. These are the most nutrient dense foods on earth. And I think where the challenge comes in with animal protein is they compare a factory chicken or a factory cow to a grass fed grass finished cow like they they think they're all the same. They are different. And that would be you know, that's like acting like apple juice is the same as a whole. Organic apple one's a soda and one's a whole really nutritious food that feeds your gut microbiome.

They're totally different foods, right? One a junk food, one's a health food. I'd say the same factory cow versus grass fed grass finished cow, you know, farmed fish, wild fish. And so I think when we look at this, they start to conflate these these different types. And you can't do that. You can't. It's apples and oranges. Thank you. That's great. The same kind of data with the eggs. I think it's more looking at what people are doing with the eggs rather than actually getting properly farmed eggs.

Right. Bodies which are entirely different. Food. I remember early on I decline to go, Listen, you have to get pasture raised eggs, not cage free eggs, pasture raised. She goes, Oh, I don't like them. The yolks are too yellow. I go, That's what yolks are supposed to look like. Like, you know, we go to Europe and all the yolks or yellow because they don't do what we do to our chicken eggs. And it was interesting early on with the Virgin Diet and looking at food and terms,

Protein, Animal Foods, and Debunking Nutrition Myths 35:48

what I found for a lot of people was when they pastured eggs, they were fine. When they ate factory eggs, they were not. It's entirely different food. And that's exactly what happened with me way back when as I had to cut out eggs. But then I could I could go to the farmer's market and get the duck eggs. Yeah. It's like, Huh? Is it the egg or. No, it's. We've junk food and the stuff. It's it's every time I travel out of the country into places like Peru or Europe, I'm like, Gosh, I feel great. So and then, of course, it's another area of your expertise is on sugar.

And that's really when I get the common themes that I see a lot of times when people are toxic, overloaded from poor mold, they could slip on sugar. They just crave it so badly. So can you talk just a little bit about how to overcome those cravings and what to do to get the sugar out? And you wonder if they're craving it because the toxicity has created insulin resistance so that they can't access their stored body fat for fuel. And they really have to use that sugar, which is making them, crave it.

And I think that's an important point because sometimes we get down on ourselves and go, Oh my gosh, I'm just a bad person, I'm craving sugar, but I always like to unpack and go, Why is that happening? And, you know, we can crave sugar for a variety of reasons. Genetics, there's genetically people. In fact, you know, you know, I'm adopted. My adopted mom has the sweet tooth genetics I was raised with starting out the morning with Pop-Tarts or Captain Crunch. And every I had dessert in my lunch every day and deserted every single night.

That's my mom. At 12 years old. I was like, I'm not eating any of that stuff anymore, Mom. Like, I do not have a sweet tooth. I'll eat it. But I don't think I don't really care about it. And so there's definitely that genetic piece. Now, that does not mean that you're going to be trapped there, Right. You know, we we can still make decisions and there's things that 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. So that's a big one. But the biggest one really 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 your brain, Ooh, sweet. Wow, I want more. And 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.

And so we are going to go after sweet. So obviously 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. And 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 really start to restore insulin sensitivity, which is super important. And then on the dietary side, things that can help take the sweet tooth away. First of all, leading protein first.

What I see with people is like the more sweets and carbs we eat, the more sweets and carbs you you're going to want and you really train your body to always need that incoming. So 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 right now, is like brains all over the place because it's like they they're calling it a a semaglutide mimetic. I'm like, Yeah, not really, but okay, you know, So it's like off the charts now on the on sales, but Burberry.

With changes in people's labs with it. So it's. Amazing. I think Bahrain is one of the greatest things ever. I'm like, Oh good, they're using it because for blood sugar control and for gut health for brains, like it's been this little quiet supplement that no one's using. And I think it's like one of the greatest things ever have been using it for years. But two other things can help. Sour can take your sweet tooth away. So lemon juice or fermented foods are a great hack for taking your sweet tooth away.

So I think it's just when I wrote the Sugar Impact Diet, I didn't didn't plan to write that book. But, you know, 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 anywhere. Yeah, like, how are they here? You know, it's of course, a political situation. You know, But they shouldn't be here. Yeah, they're horrible. Like, they're horrible. I cannot understand how anyone and I still hear health professionals saying, Oh, no, Splenda is okay. No, it's not.

No, it's not. It changes your gut microbiome in a week. It's not. Okay. No. So. But sugar, huh? Yeah. And you'll want more and more and more. But sugar, you know, 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. Do you want to get sugar from an apple? You want to get sugar from your sweet potato or your squash. You don't want to get sugar because you drink apple juice. You want to make it slowly from the foods you eat.

You don't want to mainline it from what you're doing. We were we never did that in the history of time. We never the only thing we ever had access to in small amounts was honey. So all of this makes zero sense to do. And if you really 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 don't 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. And you know, you're eating an ultra processed food. If you have some and you want more and you're never satisfied, you're. Masterful at that. Yes. Oh, my. Gosh. It's like, you know, the young kids that have that are just learning how to eat healthfully are totally sabotage. That's starts. Yeah, I think there was I 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.

Yeah. So let's talk about fat, because that really also is another myth where fat is bad and there are bad fats, but there are good fats and we need fat. So I'd love for you to share your thoughts on that. I think everything in diet actually gets super duper 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 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 that your morning and evening.

So that's kind of a that's your protein higher if you're if you're 50 plus if you're not working out because you're more anabolic resistant if you're healing from something but point seven still low then you should be getting in at least five servings of non-starchy vegetables, 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.

Sugar Cravings, Blood Sugar, and Fat Quality 43:08

And you'll have some healthy fats in your protein, which is why, you know, you are what you eat. Eight It is mission critical to have the grass fed grass finish and have the wild. So you're getting those good healthy fats. And that's my favorite way to consume fats is whole like within the animal, within the avocado, within the nut. But the other ones that I will use is coconut oil and avocado oil and extra virgin olive oil and ghee. But I pretty much keep it to extra virgin olive oil and ghee. Those are my two tend to be my most favorite.

So after you do that, then I look at, okay, what do you need from here? And depending on how you fare better and there's a lot in genetics about this, but it also has to do with your adrenal health and and 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 is 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 better on the low carb or you better on the lower fat, but it's never low fat.

We need those healthy fats, but we really need to focus on making an oil change because most likely, if you're like everybody else, you probably have a higher omega six ratio just from eating out. Like when you look at what they use for cooking for salad dressings, eating out, they're using cheap oils and you'll ask them what's the salad dressing made out? Not tell you it's an olive oil blend. And when they tell you that they just told you it was canola oil, right. You know, it's just it's just garbage stuff.

I've gotten to be so picky. In fact, I was looking at going, should I start traveling with my own extra virgin olive oil? And I go, you know, maybe this is like, what are we going to do here? Right? I mean. And you're the I. Know I've got my sea salt while my sea salt keeps pouring out all over my purse. But some point you're like, okay, I need my sea salt anymore. Extra virgin olive oil enzymes, because the challenge with fats is they will store and then you'll have this bigger, higher inflammatory versus anti-inflammatory ratio.

And that's a problem. And then you got to push it out by hitting yourself with more fish oil, by making sure you're using mono and saturated oil. So we really do need to watch this. And I know I've heard from some of the health people that like seed oils aren't 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 get once a year, 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, right? So these are things that we need to be aware of because they're going to make your fat cells more insulin resistant, right? So they're problematic. They're going to make it harder for your body to release fat. And I also think for someone, especially for women, if women are trying to to move into more insulin sensitivity and use more fat for fuel, I think they have to be careful with going high, high fat in their diet, because if you're eating high fat, you don't need to burn your fat.

And it's really easy to overdo. Yeah, a lot of the keto for me there 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. Right and exercising. You know, we all talk about autophagy. I'm like exercise and you'll trigger autophagy. It's like, why don't people who are who are super fit get cancer usually because they trigger autophagy when they exercise. Which so killing off cells that are starting to age, right?

Yeah. Yeah. So you are truly one of the most disciplined humans that I know and pretty disciplined humans. And you never really seem deprived, like you find ways to make things special, have splurges. So can you talk a little bit about that? Like how you navigate those being super disciplined but really enjoying life? So I don't think of myself as disciplined. I got to tell you, I think that's really funny. But here's what I see. I don't 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, right? And it doesn't matter where I am. That's what I do. So, you know, and then I know what I have every day for my breakfast. And I actually will travel with it where I will bring my bone broth, protein and my collagen and just make it easy. So I just keep it super simple and it's like it's really not that hard.

If I know when I sit down to eat, I'm going to have some clean protein and I'm going to have non-starchy vegetables. Like it's easy. This is not like it's so simple, you know? And I really think it's that structure that makes you just it makes it free. And every day I figure out every day in my schedule somewhere, I'm going to move. Now, if I'm traveling and it's crazy day, maybe it's just walking through airports and stuff, but it's it's something like every day is something. Yeah. And yeah, 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, you know, and, you know, carrying some luggage that's a little bit of weight lifting and, you know, keeping it right.

Those airports are huge. And what we do in the airport is I do not take, you know, unless I've got really heavy stuff. I try to take the stairs. I don't take those little walking, you know, walkways like we walk. So it adds up. Everything counts, right? Even if you just do a ten minute thing in the morning, it all counts. And so I just those are my commitments each day.

Structure, Discipline, and Sustainable Daily Habits 49:08

But I didn't start that way. I started one by one, made it super simple. And then when you feel good, you don't you don't want to lose that, right? Like I know people. I did a health network thing with a bunch of our friends like Tom O'Brien and Dave Asprey and Sarah Gottfried And the biggest question they all asked us when they phoned in was What do you do to cheat? And we're like, God, this is going to be so boring. I don't know, an extra piece of dark chocolate, You know, it's a little bigger steak once, you know what Feeling great really feels like.

Why would you sabotage that? Is that's the mike drop, right? Yeah. It's, you know, sometimes getting off track and, you know, with a vacation or that kind of thing. But you and I pretty much follow our routines even on. Vacations and say vacations to me are a time to even double down. We go like you and I go on meditation retreats. So, you know, but even on the meditation retreat, I actually snuck out, went to the gym, and I found other people were there too, with me, we stocks the fridge so we could eat the way we want to eat.

And on my vacations and my business travel, I build all of this in so, you know, I don't like to me going on vacation. It's not going off the rails because it wouldn't be worth it. It wouldn't be fun. So here we are. We're getting ready to go to Bali together, and one suitcase is basically like supplements and shakes and my scale on my TRX and, you know, all the stuff that I do because I want to do that because it's going to make me have a better trip. Of it and a better life. Yes. All right. 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? Well, I would I would challenge you to put a rubber band around your wrist. It still remains one of the most transformative things that I ever did, like a simple rubber band for a week. Do it and see what happens. And well, thank you so much, JJ, I know you've got so much going on. I really appreciate you taking the time to share your wisdom and your light. Thank you, bestie.