Why Building Muscle Is Key to Aging Well After 40

JJ: What's happened in the last 10, 20 years in really looking at what muscle actually does, it's so much more than holding everything in tighter and boosting your metabolism. The very first thing is just making it easier for your body to burn fat by improving insulin sensitivity. If you're trying to use cardio as a weight loss strategy, you will fail. It's going to make you hungrier. And when you stop, now you've done nothing to build your muscle, which is your metabolic currency.

I don't believe most women are under-eating. I know that's an unpopular opinion. Just like I'm not concerned about overtraining; most women are not overtraining. I think that we get a lot of noise out there on the internet on overtraining and under-eating. I think that's a very small part of the population.

Here's the thing. The easiest way to know any of this and the most powerful thing, in fact, I will not work with someone unless they will do this, is to actually... I think this is the most powerful thing that you could possibly do.

Nikkiey: What's going on, everybody? Hey, you guys. Welcome back to The WarriorBabe Show. Today I am very excited for the guest that I have with us. This is a long time coming, and I appreciate that her schedule has opened up to be here to chat. I'm joined by JJ Virgin. Do I even need to say any more? I know a lot of women already know who you are in this space, but she is a triple board certified nutrition expert, a fitness hall of famer, a four-time New York Times bestselling author, and she's also just one of the most respected voices in the metabolic health and aging space.

She's spent decades helping people understand how to build strength, how to support their metabolism and how to age powerfully. And her message is especially important for the women that listen to this podcast, navigating midlife and beyond. She's also host of the top-rated podcast Well Beyond 40, with more than 22 million downloads. So, JJ, I'm stoked that you're here.

JJ: I'm thrilled to be here. I still just can't get over the fact that you're in your 30s doing this podcast for the audience that you do.

Nikkiey: Yes, I know. As we were just chatting, catching up beforehand, you guys, we were joking around about how I landed in this space with menopausal women when I've never been through it.

JJ: But I tell you what, this is so funny, because they were my first audience. And you learn a lot very quickly.

Nikkiey: Yeah, 100%. I've navigated through my education not only through my own learnings, but through their experience.

So, JJ, the first question I've got for you is: you've been in the health and wellness space for decades. What first sparked your passion for helping people take ownership of their health?

JJ: I think the first thing that sparked my passion was I did not want to have a desk job, and I didn't want to have to ask my parents for money. How is that for the truth? No, really, I went off to UCLA on a theater scholarship, and I quickly discovered that that was a really dumb thing to major in, because everyone was leaving UCLA and becoming waiters and waitresses. And I'm like, this is the stupidest thing I've ever seen. I'm not doing that.

Then I started paying my way through school teaching aerobics and catering. And then someone wanted me to come to their house to teach aerobics. So the next thing you know, I'm going to people's houses, taking them through workouts. I was just telling someone today, Mark Sisson is my longest friend in the health and wellness space, and that was back in my early 20s. So 40-plus years ago.

At the same time I was catering, and I actually had to stop catering because I couldn't stand a lot of the way we were doing it. I was trying to make everything healthy, which doesn't work well. I even catered the '84 Olympics at UCLA. It's literally what I'm obsessed with. I love everything around health and wellness. It's always been my thing since I was a little kid, and I just couldn't imagine doing anything else.

Nikkiey: Well, you look incredible. That's for sure. You say on your social media and in the speeches that you do at conferences that muscle changes everything. Can you elaborate on what exactly you mean by that?

JJ: I am so beyond excited that muscle is having its day. I've got to give a shout-out to Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, my pal who wrote Forever Strong, because I feel like she's really helped put it on the map. When I was in graduate school, I kid you not, we were taught that you should never have someone lift weights until they lose the weight. I was the little person who went rogue, because I did my graduate research project on lifting biomechanics and how to build strength quickly. It feels like we've come so far, because back then everything was cardio.

But what I saw very quickly, because I was personal training my way through graduate school and doctoral school, was that if people didn't get better, they didn't pay you. And if they're just doing cardio, the minute you stop doing cardio, you start gaining weight. If you're trying to use cardio as a weight loss strategy, you will fail. It's going to make you hungrier. And when you stop, now you've done nothing to build your muscle, which is your metabolic currency.

So I started back then focusing completely on resistance training as my approach to improving your body composition. I stopped looking at what your weight was. I looked at what your weight was made up of. I would bring skinfold calipers to people's houses. I didn't say it back then because we didn't have Spanx, but for the last 15 years I've been saying muscle is your metabolic Spanx. It holds everything in tighter and boosts your metabolism.

But what's happened in the last 10, 20 years in really looking at what muscle actually does, it's so much more than holding everything in tighter and boosting your metabolism. The very first thing is just making it easier for your body to burn fat by improving insulin sensitivity. But I think what it really does is so much bigger than that, with everything from the muscle contractions that basically produce this incredible pharmacy. If this was a drug, everyone would be prescribing it.

A way to improve your mood that is on par with an antidepressant without all the side effects. And the big difference between the antidepressant and the muscle contraction is the antidepressants don't create lasting effects, and the resistance training actually does. When you look at what it does for your immune system, for your cardiovascular system, for your bones, it changes everything. I can't really think of anything where you'd say, oh, don't go doing that resistance training, because that's going to make whatever it is worse. Maybe if you're initially sick with the flu, but other than that, come on. It improves every aspect of your life.

Nikkiey: Yes, preach on that. Yes, it does. And Dr. Gabrielle Lyon coined this, right? The organ of longevity.

JJ: Yes, that is her line. I remember I was coaching her on some other stuff in business, and I said, have you trademarked all of this? Trademark this. So that is absolutely her line. And I think it's been so powerful for people to understand.

Here we are now looking at body composition, which is super important. But the latest research on GLP-1s not causing muscle loss has really exposed the challenge with how we look at body composition nowadays. It's better than it was, but it still leaves a lot missing. You know the story that GLP-1s were causing muscle loss, right? My whole contention was, well, are they really, or are we misusing them and crashing someone's appetite? It's just a poorly designed diet.

And now we come to find out it might not even be that. It's actually a testing problem. When you test someone on a DEXA, and I'm assuming bioimpedance would be the same, you're looking at fat-free mass, and you don't know what's within that fat-free mass. You can still have intramuscular fat. And then you have all the tissue supporting the fat that's called fat-free mass, not fat mass, so capillaries, et cetera. And then you also have the organs. If you have an enlarged organ and it starts to shrink and get normalized, it would look like you lost fat-free mass and it was bad, but it was good.

So I think it's really important now to look at all of this and realize we've got to focus on muscle quality and things like grip strength. We're now going, okay, grip strength is a great marker for all-cause mortality. And then you see people starting to walk around trying to strengthen their grip. And it's like, no, it's not your grip strength. That's a proxy for your overall strength. You squeezing tennis balls is not going to extend your life. Or those little mechanical things.

Nikkiey: Oh yeah. I remember those. That's what I really respect about you. You dive into the data and the research, and that's why you're such an authority figure in this space. Can you elaborate a little bit more on muscle being an organ in terms of the latest science and the role it's playing in things like inflammation, all the things it's making better? What is the latest research telling you?

JJ: It's so exciting. When I was in school, most of my graduate work was in biomechanics, because exercise physiology was like, okay, are you producing lactate? It just wasn't that exciting. So I really focused on movement patterns. But we also didn't have exercise endocrinology back then. I didn't start to learn about how cortisol and exercise were intertwined until I started working with an endocrinologist who was very focused on insulin resistance and any kind of adrenal dysfunction. That's when I started to learn all this stuff.

If you look at muscle and all of the things it can do, and by the way, I just heard about a study coming out on exercise variety, which is a really cool thing too. What we need to look at is that it's so much more than helping you move. That's what most people think of muscle: it helps me move. I'm like, that's the minor thing that it does. The most important thing is that when it helps you move, its contractions are doing all these amazing things.

It can help with building new mitochondria, refurbishing your mitochondria, mitophagy. You look at everything about aging and it all comes down to your mitochondria, those powerhouses of the cell, and how much energy you can create. And then you look at something like insulin resistance. If you have, what, 93% of the population, and this was pre-GLP-1s, metabolically unhealthy, that's basically insulin resistance. And you have a mechanism here. If you combine resistance training with good sleep and a higher-protein, whole-foods diet with fiber, you can fix that pretty quickly.

So I think the most exciting thing with muscle is the stuff you wouldn't really think about, because you're just thinking about getting better toned arms, or being able to lift heavier things. But that stuff translates into changing everything from how well you think, to reducing your risk of cognitive decline, to reducing your risk of cancer. Everything's impacted by this.

Nikkiey: To piggyback off of what you said there, you also mentioned a little bit ago muscle being directly correlated to our metabolism. I love to preach on this, that our muscle is active tissue. A lot of women, when they think about eating better or eating more protein, are dramatically under-eating in those things. They're not eating enough. Can you talk about how it impacts things like your metabolism? And then, why do you think women are chronically under-eating? I guess these are two totally separate topics and questions.

JJ: And I'm going to circle back at some point. I made a note to make sure we talk about variety of exercise, because there's some super cool stuff there too.

Nikkiey: Quick break. If you're finding this episode helpful so far, it would mean a lot if you could hit pause for just a second, leave a quick rating or review, or share it with someone who could benefit from it. Your support helps more women discover these tools to build muscle, lose fat and feel confident. Thank you so much for being a part of this journey with me.

JJ: So here's the first thing. I don't believe most women are under-eating. I know that's an unpopular opinion. Just like I'm not concerned about overtraining; most women are not overtraining. I think that we get a lot of noise out there on the internet on overtraining and under-eating. I think that's a very small part of the population. When you look at the fact that only maybe 20% of the population, men and women, are actually getting in two times a week of resistance training and 150 minutes of exercise a week, I don't think we have an overtraining problem.

In all the years, 40-plus years of working in this field, there's been such a small audience that I've worked with that have been under-eating and overtraining. And even if you are under-eating, unless you're using a GLP-1, you're not going to be able to carry it off for long. I think part of the reason this is so out there is that people who work with more of the athletic population would see more of it, and especially the younger population, younger girls. In my teens, I was definitely one of these people. I was under-eating and overtraining, hands down. I was the poster child for it.

But for a lot of women, shoot, they're too busy to do that. A 30, 40, 50-year-old woman has got too much stuff to do. Name a woman like that who's not busy, who has time to work out a couple of hours a day. I don't know any.

I do believe we're under-eating on protein. I definitely believe that. And here's the thing. The easiest way to know any of this, and the most powerful thing, in fact, I will not work with someone unless they will do this, is to actually track what you're eating using a food scale. I think this is the most powerful thing that you could possibly do, because without this, you're just guessing. And we know that even dietitians tend to underestimate what they eat by 30 to 40%.

That's why I say I don't really believe it, because I also watch people everywhere. In 40 years of doing this, I used to have clients say, I'm not eating anything, I don't understand. And I would go over to their house and help them cook and watch them mindlessly eating while they're cooking and not even paying attention. So I think there will be those people that under-eat. But the very first thing to see if that's you is to use a scale and a food tracking app.

I had one client years ago who had so damaged her metabolism. The number one way we can improve and support our metabolism is by muscle. This idea that our metabolism is slowing as we age, we now know really doesn't happen. Why is it slowing? It's muscle. Now, you do get a little shift with estrogen going down, and that impacts things. But it's really more that you're becoming more insulin resistant, and cortisol might be coming up higher, and you're not sleeping as well. All that hormonal stuff is making you better at storing fat. So during that hormonal transition we may gain like five pounds, but it's really not that we're gaining five pounds. It's that we're losing muscle and gaining fat, and the fat we're gaining is really around the midsection and more visceral.

But back over to the food thing. I think the first thing we do is track what we're eating. I like to do one thing at a time so that someone can actually see what it's doing for them and have success. So the first thing you do is track what you're eating and just pay attention. We know that if all you did was track what you're eating, you'd start making better food choices because of the attention.

The next thing you'd do is really prioritize your protein and make sure you're eating it first so that you get it in. In 40 years of working with women, I hear all the time, but I'm too full. And I'm like, but I just saw you eat a muffin. You ate all this stuff, and then you were wondering why you couldn't eat the yogurt or the chicken or whatever. So just eat it first, because you're going to likely make better food choices, and then if you're full, you got your protein in.

I think your benchmark needs to be 0.7 grams per pound of target body weight. Higher, better; lower is not. If you're having trouble getting that in, augment with essential amino acids before your meal, because then they'll be better absorbed. I'd rather see someone go higher than lower, because as we age there's anabolic resistance, and it's harder for us to get those signals from protein, digest that protein, really trigger muscle protein synthesis, and have all the aminos that we need. It's not just leucine that does that. That's where I would start.

Then as far as exercise, there's all this stuff going on online right now about exercise and cortisol. There's all this cortisol fear. And the reality is, no cortisol, no life. We die. If you have no cortisol in the morning, you don't get out of bed. You want to get out of bed and go look at the sun and raise your cortisol. We've got to have cortisol going in the morning. We just want the normal pattern. And one of the things that can help restore the normal pattern is eating during the normal circadian rhythm, eating more during the light, exercising more during the normal circadian rhythm, really exposing yourself to light, and switching off the light later in the day.

We need to have that cortisol response. And it turns out that when you do intense exercise, yes, you might have a higher cortisol response. You actually want that, but then you'll have a compensatory lowering, so it balances it better. It's not bad to do that. I was wearing a CGM for a while just to see how high I could get my blood sugar during the workout and how much I could push it, because that's one way to tell too. You're going to have better HRV and a better cortisol rhythm if you're putting in that intense workout, because your body learns how to handle stress and get better.

So I'm so curious. I'm still back on the under-eating. You're in the "I think everyone under-eats" camp. Where are you at?

Nikkiey: Well, with WarriorBabe, there are 5,000 women inside our VIP program, and we've had over 100,000 women come through our programs at some point. The first thing that we make them do is track.

JJ: Amen. Yes.

Nikkiey: It's a requirement. If we're giving them their nutrition goals off of a blank slate, how can we possibly do that?

JJ: I would not know. Are they weighing? Are they using a food scale? Great.

Nikkiey: Oh yeah. Sometimes they're like, well, I don't want to have to weigh food, it sounds so restrictive. They have all the excuses in the book.

JJ: You're saying all you're doing is being curious. This is not forever. It's just being curious. Would you go to a doctor when you're about to get surgery and not do labs to see where everything is?

Nikkiey: Yeah, exactly. That's not being restrictive. It's having the data to make the right decisions.

JJ: So what happens with your people?

Nikkiey: Our people are eating anywhere from 900 calories to 1,200 calories. Now, I would say a decent amount of them are probably overeating, in the sense that that's why they're overweight. They're in a calorie surplus. But a decent amount are amazed, because we go through a retraining process with their metabolism. We want to get them up to like 1,800 to 2,000 calories. A decent amount of them, when they're tracking, come back to the coaches at the end of the day and they're like, oh my gosh, I can't believe it. It brought that awareness. I can't believe that I was only eating this amount, and only eating like 60 grams of protein in a day. So I'm just so intrigued.

JJ: I see the protein, but literally in all these years, the ones under-eating are the minority. And the ones who have really damaged their metabolism, where they've got that metabolic adaptation you heard about with The Biggest Loser, I've had those, where they've messed themselves up so much. They're at like 1,200 calories, and then you have to do, shout-out Alan Aragon, that reverse dieting to pull them back up again. But a lot of that is getting their muscle mass going, doing all that stuff to heal them. But maybe you're also attracting them. There must be something you're doing to attract more of those people.

Nikkiey: Yeah, rightfully so. It totally could be from our content or the way that we're speaking about it.

JJ: I'm not saying I don't believe they're out there. I just don't think it's the majority of people. And it might be my feed. My feed on Instagram is chihuahuas, Pomeranians, ball gowns, and cortisol and exercise. I'm like, what is going on?

Nikkiey: That's great. Well, while we're on the exercise topic, let's circle back to the variety of exercise you were mentioning earlier. Let's elaborate more on that.

JJ: Okay, this is so cool. And I just heard another one from my buddy Ben Greenfield. I just did a podcast with this amazing gastroenterologist from UCI. I was out speaking at their women's wellness event, and they had this speaker on their program who was talking about exercise and gut health. I'm like, oh, I want her on my podcast. So this woman's a gastroenterologist who's heavily interested in exercise too. One of the studies she talked about on the podcast was that people who do a bigger variety of exercise actually have a more diverse gut microbiome. That's bizarre and wild to me.

Then I was listening to something Ben Greenfield was talking about today. It was a new study showing that if you did a bigger variety of exercise, and he actually gave the statistics of how much it reduced all-cause mortality or cardiovascular incidents, but it really just lends to what we've said in the world of exercise science forever: cross-train.

So I kind of have my exercise hierarchy of priority. I recently got in a lot of trouble online, apparently. I was just talking to my team and they go, what did you do? I go, I might've said Pilates doesn't build muscle. And I'm sorry, that's not what it's great for. It's great for mobility and stability. Don't shoot the messenger. If you want to build muscle, challenge your muscles. If you're building muscle with Pilates, it's because you're not very strong. Now I'm going to get in trouble again, because I did it again.

Nikkiey: No, I will back you up on that 100%, because I've had women say the same thing. Can I just do F45, or can I do Pilates, or can I do this class at my gym that is 90% cardio and 10% little weights? That's not going to get you to build the muscle that you need to build on your body. So no, I would back you up.

JJ: Okay. The reality is, here's what the study was. Do different forms of cardio. We've always known that, because your body adapts and you want to keep pushing. Do different types of resistance training. I think you get your core foundation in the hypertrophy range, and then you can start pushing heavier with lower reps. You can start doing lighter power moves. You can do all sorts of different stuff. But that's the big thing: our body adapts, so keep changing things up and do a bunch of different stuff.

I do yoga on Fridays. I hate yoga. Hate, hate, hate it. But I know it's stuff I won't do on my own. We've got to do things that challenge us. And yoga isn't going to build muscle either, because there's a very clear range for building muscle. If you're building muscle in yoga or Pilates, it's because you're deconditioned. Once you get well conditioned, it's a great foundation for being able to build muscle doing resistance-style training. You're challenging different things. Your core, your stability, your flexibility, your mobility, it's great. Just not for building muscle.

Nikkiey: So strength training is the only gateway to build muscle.

JJ: Strength training is, but there's a variety of ways you can do it. Now, do I think you're going to build a bunch of muscle using resistance bands? No. I use them when I travel. I have bands and a TRX that I take with me if I end up in some bizarro place that has no exercise equipment. But I always have my body too, and that's enough to maintain. But nothing's going to take the place of pull-ups and push-ups and squats and all that kind of stuff.

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I want to circle back to the metabolic health concept, because that's where we were earlier, when you talked about insulin resistance and people having blood sugar problems. I hear these complaints all the time. What is the connection between metabolic health and muscle? How can people understand a little more in depth how and why they're so intimately connected?

JJ: First of all, if I was the benevolent health dictator of the world, we would be doing fasting insulin and vitamin D tests instead of looking at fasting blood sugar as the indicator, because by the time your fasting blood sugar is elevated, you have been slowly becoming insulin resistant over time. So how muscle connects here is, number one, your muscle is the first place you can start to become more insulin sensitive again.

So what happens? You're higher stress, eating a higher-carb, ultra-processed food diet, especially if you're eating all throughout the day. One of the big things that happened during my 40 years is we went fat-free for a while there. I don't know if you were even born during that time, when fat was the villain.

Nikkiey: I wasn't born during that time, but I've done my research on it.

JJ: It's also ridiculous. Now we've got protein soda. I'm like, what is going on?

Nikkiey: We've got protein Pop-Tarts as well. Crazy.

JJ: When I wrote The Virgin Diet, everything was gluten-free. I remember this client coming in super excited. She found gluten-free cupcakes, gluten-free cookies. I'm like, they're cookies and cupcakes. Those are Pop-Tarts. They might be keto Pop-Tarts, but come on. Ideally we're eating real food and minimally processed food. I put it into the real food and then use a couple of things. I like to use Catalina Crunch cereal for my crust with some protein powder. It's the best, incredible. But don't live on processed protein foods. You didn't fix the problem. Although we do know that higher-protein processed foods are better for you than lower-protein processed foods. So there is that.

So you're eating the traditional way that we eat, which is 70% processed food, higher carb, all throughout the day. Most people, according to Dr. Satchin Panda of The Circadian Code, eat 15 hours a day. Fifteen hours a day. That's crazy. So you eat, you raise your blood sugar, and your insulin has to come up to bring that blood sugar down. Blood sugar is toxic. As we know, just slightly elevated blood sugar can increase your risk of dementia. And if you're eating all throughout the day, while your blood sugar is coming down, your insulin is a slow-acting hormone, so it never really gets to come down.

Every time, you're pushing that blood sugar into your muscles, or into your fat, which is worse, converting it to fat, and you're hungry again. When insulin's high, you can't access stored fat for fuel. You're driving sugar into your muscle cells or into your fat cells or into your liver. And so you're always hungry. So you're just bumping up that insulin. It's having to go higher to get the same effect until it finally can't really get the effect anymore. And that's when blood sugar starts rolling up higher and higher.

Where muscle comes in is a couple of different things. More muscle means more places you can store sugar that aren't your liver and your fat cells, especially your visceral adipose tissue around your organs. Muscle has something in it called glycogen. These are stores of carbohydrates bound with water. It's why, if someone goes on a diet and it looks like they just dropped some fat-free mass very quickly, no, they dehydrated themselves. Because one of the first things that happens when you go on a diet, as you know, is you drop carbs.

So when I do bioimpedance with someone, I go, we're going to throw out the first day's number. We'll use the scale, but we know it takes about a week to normalize your fluids, and then we'll know what your real body fat is, because it won't be correct. And in fact, if you want to hijack your DEXA results, all you have to do is carb load the day before. I heard some doctor going, okay, so this is how you get a really good DEXA. I'm like, are you kidding me?

So more muscle means more places for carbs to be. That means they don't have to get converted and stored in your liver and your fat cells. That's the first thing. The second thing is just improving insulin sensitivity. When you contract your muscles, you improve insulin sensitivity, so you're lowering blood sugar. We know that 30 to 60 air squats is like going out for a walk in terms of sucking those carbs into your muscles and lowering your blood sugar response. Hugely effective. But you're also now more insulin sensitive, so you don't need as big of an insulin response when you're eating carbohydrates, and you have a place to use your carbohydrates. So in terms of metabolic health, if you look at the biggest driver as how insulin sensitive you are, muscle is really the best thing you can do to start restoring that.

Nikkiey: Yes, I love it. Preach on all the muscle aspects, please.

JJ: Well, I was teaching a resistance training class with Dr. Vonda Wright at Eudemonia last year, and a woman literally came up to me and said, I want to do this, but I'm afraid I'm going to get big.

Nikkiey: Yep. Oh, I hear this all the time.

JJ: I don't want to get bulky. And then do they say to you, but I really would love to have your arms?

Nikkiey: Oh yeah. All the time.

JJ: And I'm like, okay, well, let me tell you what I do for these. I just don't know what to say, because in 40-plus years I have literally never had a woman get bulky. I've never had a woman lifting weights and eating correctly get bulky. I've had women who aren't working with me get bulky, because they're not doing any of the things. You want to get bulky? Don't exercise.

Nikkiey: Eat in a surplus.

JJ: Yeah. Don't exercise. I mean, sure, if you lift weights and go eat a load of Pop-Tarts, yeah, you'll get bulky, but it's not the muscle.

Nikkiey: On top of it. Yeah, I hear that all the time. Actually, when I first started my journey, I looked at my coach and I was like, I don't want to look like a man.

JJ: Well, don't take steroids then. When I started all this, I was working with a bodybuilder trainer. I first started lifting weights with the high school football team, because the girls had the lamest gym ever, because girls did not lift weights. Then when I went off to college, I started working out at the gym there. And then I went to Gold's Gym in Venice. I'm six feet tall; I am not a little petite thing. But the thing I loved most about Gold's Gym in Venice is I felt like this little petite thing. The women were incredible, but they had very deep voices, because they were all on steroids. So we can't build like that unless we manipulate things.

Nikkiey: That's always what I say. They either look at the men who look very bulky, and we don't have as much testosterone as they do. And if you're looking at anything else in the online space with women, they're most likely taking drugs. So it's very hard to get bulky. You've been at this for decades, and you're not bulky. You've never been bulky. So it's more of the mindset game.

JJ: I got bulky once. And now I'm going to get myself in trouble again, but I'm going to do it. In my 20s, I decided to go vegan. Now, I will tell you, my natural body fat is 10%. If I'm not paying attention and not training hard enough and not really dialing it in, it might go to 14%. But just my normal sitting around is usually about 10%. This is really low for a woman, but it's where I've always been without trying. Normal periods, everything.

Then I went and did a vegan diet for a couple of years. And granted, I wasn't a good vegan. I was not doing the supplementing that I needed to do. And that's always my argument: if you go on any diet, I don't care if it's carnivore or vegan, if it's a diet you must supplement in order to not become grossly nutrient deficient, then I think that's a problem. Maybe short term there are some reasons to do it, but long term?

So a couple of years in, I'm really deficient, iron deficient, B12 deficient, feeling like crap. One of my friends who was a doctor ran all my labs. He goes, you can either go get a chicken or we're going to the hospital. Pick. I'm like, got myself a chicken. But I remember testing my body fat at the time, because I was at USC in their PhD program, and I was 25% body fat.

Nikkiey: Wow. 25% body fat.

JJ: And I might've put on 10 pounds. So I shifted my entire body composition.

Nikkiey: Okay, so unpack that a little bit more. Why do you think that happened? It's wild, because in that age group you really shouldn't.

JJ: And I also had cystic acne. It just wasn't working for me. I think I became insulin resistant, because the challenge is with eating a high-carb diet. I wasn't using protein powders, so I was doing everything just from food. I was eating hummus and bread and muffins. I wasn't a good vegan. And think about how high carb those things are. When you look at plant protein foods, they're either high in fat or high in carbs. Well, this was the days when fat was evil. So I was basically eating pasta with tomato sauce and vegetables. I was eating super, super high carb. So cystic acne, getting insulin resistant, doing loads and loads of cardio.

Nikkiey: Your body was very stressed out.

JJ: Yeah, it was not a happy body. But luckily I turned that one around in six months. I don't remember how long it took me to get back to normal body composition, but skin-wise and energy-wise, fairly quickly. And I just say that because whatever you choose to do, make sure you're running your labs and checking those things. I have some vegans who do it for religious reasons, and we're just going to supplement. But don't get mad at me for suggesting supplementation. It's in the literature. If you're not getting it from food, then you have to get it from somewhere else.

Nikkiey: Okay, so we talked about fat being the villain. Carbs have been the villain lately. How do you feel about carbs?

JJ: Here's the biggest challenge with fat or carbs or protein: it's a blanket term. It's like saying exercise, or saying diet. There's a big difference between eating a French fry and a slightly cooled potato, between eating fresh fruit and dried fruit. So we have to look at what these things are. I'm a big microbiome fan. I think carbs are really important for three things: the polyphenols, the ferments, and the fibers. Now, you can get ferments from things like kefir and Greek-style yogurt too, and you can get fiber from avocados and nuts and seeds. But I think it's the diversity of the fibers and all the different polyphenols. And it's also just more fun to eat blueberries and blackberries and arugula and broccolini and mushrooms.

I don't need a high-carb diet. I get about 100 grams of carbs in a day. I've always felt better there. It's funny, I had a microbiome test years ago where they're like, you're one of those people who just does better on high protein. And I go, yep. I do best around 160 to 200 grams of protein a day, about 100 grams of carbs, and fats around 100.

Nikkiey: I love that. It's so unique. Nobody can walk around having the same type of nutritional profile.

JJ: No, find what works for you. What do you like, and how do you feel your best? That's where diets are experiments, or tools. Try a higher-carb, lower-fat diet. Try a higher-fat, lower-carb diet. See how you feel. You can play around with vegan if you want to, or play around with carnivore. But I worry about anything that cuts out something massive, like fiber, for the long haul. What type of diet do you do? Protein, fats, carbs?

Nikkiey: It's just the basics. I eat my body weight in protein, a little bit more. And then I have high carb, because I just love eating a lot of carbs because of the way that I train and work out. Back in the day when I was bodybuilding, I used to do very low fat, and I landed in the hospital multiple times because my fat was way too low. As I've gotten older and as my hormones have shifted, I've learned that my fat is a little bit higher, usually around 90 in a day. That works. I can feel when I need carbs. I'll come home from a big session and I'm like, I just feel like I need them. It might be psychological. But it was on social media that I was watching what you said about carbs at the end of the day. I'm very curious about that.

JJ: Going to bed and sleeping. You'll sleep so much better.

Nikkiey: Yeah.

JJ: And for men, I think it's going to be helpful for a little testosterone production. I just find I do better with a little bit, not tons. I don't know, 25, 50 grams of carbs.

Nikkiey: At the end of the day.

JJ: Yeah. And think about where you're getting them from. I get them from blueberries and blackberries. I'm obsessed with those. A lot of cauliflower rice and mushrooms and broccolini and all that kind of stuff. A little bit of lentils, and I play around with little purple potatoes. Those tend to be the ones I like. But I don't go crazy on any of that.

I was just in Switzerland, and I went absolutely insane with bread and cheese, and somehow lost weight every day. I'm like, what is going on here? I'm living on chocolate, cheese and bread.

Nikkiey: That's amazing.

JJ: I was sitting up on this hill in Annecy in the French Alps, taking bread and dredging it through cheese fondue while the other cheese is baking that you're putting on the other bread. And I go, this is the most ridiculous thing I've ever done. And not feeling crappy. Think about what would happen if you ate that here.

Nikkiey: Oh yeah.

JJ: They had all these cows. You're sitting there eating cheese and the cows are grazing on the grass right next to you.

Nikkiey: Oh, that's incredible.

JJ: It was incredible.

Nikkiey: That's amazing. I want to pick your brain on HRT. I'm very curious how you feel about it and what your thoughts are.

JJ: I was so lucky. You're in a great position, like I was. My first clients were all perimenopausal, so I saw what was going on. And then I met this doctor who was Suzanne Somers' doctor, and I worked with her to create a hormone certification course. I was teaching the nutrition and exercise part of it. So I learned all this stuff way ahead of time. This was 25 years ago. And then I used to teach a course called Overcoming Weight Loss Resistance. So I knew all the things that would happen when your hormones start to shift.

And I love the people saying nothing happens to your metabolism. Well, it's not metabolism. It's your hormones. And yes, something really dramatic happens that makes you store more fat around your gut, start to lose your muscle, and not sleep well. Things go sideways. So don't try to tell me it doesn't. There's the rare unicorn who doesn't have that happen.

Fortunately, when my thyroid started to shift, I already knew all the science because I'd been teaching it. My TSH was 2.3 and I had hypothyroidism symptoms, and I treated it.

Nikkiey: Same boat. That happened to me last year.

JJ: Oh my God. I was going, what is going on? The good news was I stopped sweating. I'm someone who always sweats. The funny thing is I've always worn sleeveless because I sweat all the time and would just sweat through everything. All of a sudden I'm not sweating anymore. I'm cold. I'm like, what the hell is going on?

Then I had this amazing doctor I was working with at the time. I realize now that in my thirties I had an indication I missed. I was doing a stretch, a down dog yoga pose, and I looked at my thighs in bike shorts and went, when did my mom's thighs show up here? What is going on with my skin? It was skin tone, estrogen. But it was really in my mid-forties that I noticed I wasn't recovering from my workouts. It was just bizarre. And then my gums started to bleed.

I had a really smart naturopathic medical doctor, Dr. Alan Christensen, and the first thing he put me on was testosterone. I was fine with just testosterone for a while, until I started to tank more. And then I went on estrogen and cycled progesterone. I am a progesterone-intolerant person, and it turns out this is a thing. I take progesterone and I gain weight, I cry, and I break out in cystic acne.

Nikkiey: It's really tiring too. It's awful.

JJ: Yeah. And I know people like that. Oral progesterone converts, and I'm going to forget the name, it starts with an A. I might have it wrong, but I learned this from Dr. Felice Gersh. So I actually do progesterone suppositories, and I don't have this problem. I know a lot of people like it at night. But for me, if I use oral progesterone, I will break out in cystic acne.

Nikkiey: Wow. Interesting.

JJ: So you still need to protect, and it's not just protecting your uterus. It's protecting your bones. Progesterone is not just for your uterus. So I use cycled progesterone. I'm on all the things. I'm on the vaginal estrogen, the progesterone suppositories, I use estradiol face cream, I do an estrogen patch, and I do testosterone shots.

Nikkiey: I love that. Thank you.

JJ: I will never not.

Nikkiey: I appreciate you being open about that. I think a lot of people need to learn more about HRT and learn to advocate for themselves with their doctors when they're talking about it.

JJ: Yeah. Just learn about it. I was fortunate. I actually started taking A4M hormone courses like 20 years ago. And there was all that Women's Health Initiative stuff, and I just knew that wasn't true. It was so clearly not true. And I think the most important thing is that you don't have to suffer. If you take really good care of your adrenals and really manage your stress well, that's the biggest thing you can do, and do everything you can lifestyle-wise. It's going to make it way easier to have someone come help you with the hormone side of things. You don't want to compound the problem with crappy lifestyle stuff. So fix your lifestyle stuff now, so that when you get to this point, it's easier to go, all right, what do I need? And once you get into menopause, it's so much easier, because then you're not a moving target.

Nikkiey: Yes.

JJ: It just gets simple.

Nikkiey: Yes, I love that point. Can you also let the listeners know that you're not as jacked as you are because you're on HRT?

JJ: I've been this way forever. Thank you. I wrote a book on being sleeveless years ago. My husband laughs about it, because everywhere we go, someone will come up about my arms, all day, every day, wherever we are. The other day we were going out to eat in Austin, and this waitress comes up and goes, oh my God, you're... and we both were like, wait for it. And she goes, your legs. We were like, what?

Nikkiey: Oh, wow.

JJ: But here's the thing. I have very good genetics. I am blessed. I do not have much fat on my arms. I never really have. So that means you're going to look more muscular. But I also do pull-ups and push-ups. I do 25 to 30 reps of push-ups, just to show the strength side of things. I do heavy, heavy weights. I'm lifting what I lifted when I was in my twenties. So this whole idea that we've got to decline, I'm not buying into it.

I just do a lot of heavy stuff. I don't really do much in terms of biceps and triceps, because I do push-ups and pull-ups and dips and overhead presses. I do big compound, heavy, energy-costing exercises. I want to spend the most I can with my exercise buck. I know if I do a push-up, I'm getting my triceps and my chest. If I'm doing a pull-up, I'm going to get my lats and my biceps. So think about what you can do that's going to use more of your body. I know it's kind of fun, and I do an arms challenge where I'm like, okay, now you can do the little accessory things. That's fun, but that's not going to make the big difference. The big difference is the big moves.

Nikkiey: Yep. Compound moves all along. And I love the exercise buck. And you just said you're not buying into declining. I love that. What do you think is something about aging that women should actually look forward to?

JJ: So here's what's crazy. My 50th birthday was a girls' weekend in Miami with Dr. Anna Cabeca, Dr. Sara Gottfried, a bunch of, it was actually all hormone docs. Pretty funny. I'd been so fired up about my fifties. I'd had all these goals and hit the goals, but I never did a reset to 60. In my early fifties I was like, this is great. Then all of a sudden it's 56 and you're like, oh.

At 58, I was talking to my buddy Dr. Mark Hyman, and he goes, you know, people who are fired up and positive about aging live seven and a half years longer than people who aren't. And it was kind of that light bulb moment of, oh, I didn't do anything to get fired up about this. And I believe I'm so much smarter and wiser now than I was in my twenties and thirties and forties. Who wouldn't be? I've continued to learn this whole time and challenge myself. My kids are out of the house, but they live nearby, so I've got the best of both worlds. I've got a fantastic husband. I'm doing everything I love to do career-wise. Things are really amazing, and this can really be your best time.

I just decided to flip everything and go, what if this is the biggest biological upgrade you can have? Because the reality is having your period freaking sucks. I don't know about you, but I would always break out, because progesterone messes up my skin, and that bloaty feeling.

Nikkiey: I had to get on progesterone because my mood in my luteal phase was terrible.

JJ: God, I was just the opposite. You give me progesterone... I remember a doctor once was like, oh, all you need is some progesterone. It gave me 12 pounds, crying and cystic acne. I'm like, oh my God. That's why you've got to find someone who knows what the heck they're doing to work with you, because we're all hormone snowflakes, just like we're all diet snowflakes. There's no one diet. It's you going through this curious detective phase to see what works best for you at this moment in time, because things will shift.

But here's the cool thing with things shifting. You get past menopause, that one beautiful day that's menopause, and everything stabilizes. It's fantastic. To me it's the biggest upgrade ever, because there's none of that weird moodiness and garbage you had to deal with. It's all stable. And plus, now we have all sorts of cool things like peptides. So it's getting better.

Being 63: I was adopted, and my adopted mom at 43 felt more old to me than I feel at 63. And there's so much stuff we can do now. There are so many things I want to do. Part of it is having amazing role models. I have a role model who at 70 years old had a bigger success. She'd always been super successful, one of the top transformational leaders in the world, but she made more money in her business at 70 than in all her years before that combined. I'm like, you're my inspiration. And I don't say that about the money. I say that about the impact, because in order to make that income, you had to make a big impact. And she just keeps reinventing herself and putting it out there. This is exciting stuff.

I'm working on a potential project with Alan Hamel, Suzanne Somers' husband, and he's like 90. He said, a couple of years ago I realized I was too comfortable in my business. I made massive changes, got a new team, started new stuff. Let's do it. I'm like, this is so cool. He goes, I don't know what to do with my friends. They just want to sit around and play cards. I've never played cards. I'm not doing that.

So this is a time when you have more freedom and you can feel great. You don't have the margin for error you used to. You're not going to be staying out late. That ship's sailed.

Nikkiey: But yeah, there are a lot of things to look forward to as we get older. Not only the evolving fitness space and the new resources and tools we have at our fingertips, but just the experiences that we continue to grow in.

JJ: But even with all the new cool stuff, and I'm obsessed with my infrared sauna and red light, the reality is when you look at what makes the biggest difference, it's exercise and sleep and friends. It's the same stuff. The basics, which is what the industry has gotten so far away from.

Nikkiey: Oh my God. They major in the minors.

JJ: Exactly. When it's just so simple. I'm sure you get the question all the time: fasted workouts or not? I'm like, just work out. How do you feel? If you eat before you work out and you feel like you're going to puke, don't do that.

Nikkiey: Or I say maybe give it some weeks for your body to adapt to eating. Whatever makes you feel great.

JJ: Yeah. If I go work out without eating, my workout sucks. If I eat something, I work out better. Sometimes I have to work out fasted. I didn't break anything. I'll be okay.

Nikkiey: It's okay. Exactly. JJ, as we wrap up, I just want to say thank you for your time and your expertise. It's been a hoot talking to you and getting to pick your brain a little bit. We talked about a lot of different things. Is there anything we didn't talk about that you feel the listeners would take value from?

JJ: I don't know, did we miss anything? I will tell you one thing, since we were talking about how it's the majors that make the difference. I think there's one thing that's so overlooked, and I'm hoping this becomes a way bigger shift in the whole wellness conversation. I used to scoff and say walking is controlled falling and it doesn't count as exercise. I still don't believe it counts as exercise, but what it does count as is non-exercise activity thermogenesis, NEAT, in your total daily energy expenditure. And this is probably why, in Switzerland, along with the healthier food with no garbage, we were also walking. So we could eat fondue with loaves of bread.

I think one of the most underrated things is just moving more all throughout the day. When we talked about muscle as this metabolic engine, if you let it contract all throughout the day, you're going to have better blood sugar balance, better brain function and better mood. I find that what you measure, you can improve. I'm the big measuring person. So I have an Oura ring, and I make sure that all throughout the day I'm moving and getting my steps. 8,000 is the bare minimum, and I really try to hit 10,000 to 12,000. When we travel, we're at 15,000 to 20,000. Just see how much more you can move.

We created a little 10 Minutes to Win It challenge. It was based on research that showed that when people do four and a half to 10 minutes of bursts of exercise throughout the day, in one-to-two-minute intervals, they reduce their all-cause mortality by like 40%. Just little things like doing some air squats or going up and down the stairs. This all counts.

Nikkiey: So again, like you said, don't overcomplicate it. Just move more.

JJ: Just move more.

Nikkiey: I love that. And I love the data part you just mentioned, paying attention to the data.

JJ: Well, because you'll think you're moving a lot. Just like you think you're not eating that much. You think you're getting in a lot of protein. You think you're doing well with your sleep. I don't want people to become data orthorexics, but if you use it just to get a feeling for where you're at, then you can go, okay, I need to up my game some. Great.

Nikkiey: Love that. Well, JJ, thank you for hanging out and pouring into the people who are listening. I appreciate your time. And to any of the listeners who have listened to this conversation, first, go check out JJ. Where can people find you?

JJ: jjvirgin.com.

Nikkiey: Cool. And on socials?

JJ: On socials, I have the Well Beyond 40 podcast. I'm @jj.virgin on Instagram. I have a Facebook group called JJ Virgin Lifestyle Community. I don't know what it is on TikTok, JJ Virgin something official, maybe. And I have a YouTube channel. Most of my stuff is put onto YouTube. I have a great little simple workout on YouTube called 2x2x2. It's the excuse-buster resistance training workout. That's JJ Virgin videos.

Nikkiey: Good stuff. Well, everybody go follow JJ and check out her stuff. And if you take anything away from this conversation, I hope it's that muscle is very important. It's a muscle-centered conversation, and focusing on strength training and your overall metabolic health are some of the greatest investments you can make for yourselves and your future selves. JJ, thank you again.

Really quick before you go, I have one small favor to ask. If this episode brought you value or sparked something in you, take just a moment to hit that review button. Your rating and review make all the difference in helping more women discover the tools they need to transform their fitness and their confidence. It takes less than a minute, but it can change the path of someone else's journey. Thank you so much for leaving that review. I appreciate you so much.