I Used To Be Vegan

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I used to be a total cardio junkie endurance trainer in vegan.

Can you believe that?

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Hey, I'm J.J. Virgin, PhD dropout.

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So in my early 20s, I ran constantly.

Long distance, hours every day, endurance, everything,

taught aerobics classes, ran, and rode bikes.

I was also a vegan and I really thought

I was doing the healthiest thing possible.

Now, if you're new here, hello, welcome.

I'm glad you're here.

I'm J.J. Virgin.

I'm four-time, New York Times best selling author,

triple board certified nutritionist

and fitness hall of favor.

And I focused on helping women build muscle first

so they can burn off that and achieve metabolic balance.

And today, I'm gonna walk you through

what was happening to my body physiologically

as an vegan endurance athlete.

And why I no longer believe that endurance training

is the answer for longevity.

Of course, back then, I was in my 20s

who was thinking about longevity.

And what research really shows

about muscle, metabolism, and aging powerfully.

So let me take you through my phase here.

I was graduated from UCLA and I was in a program

at Cal State Northridge studying biomechanics.

And then I went over to USC

and I was studying exercise physiology, nutrition, and aging.

And I really thought I got it.

I knew what was going on.

And I remember testing my body

and we spent one semester just doing body composition testing

prior to going like full vegan

and really doubling down on endurance training.

I was still lifting weights,

but the majority of my time was endurance training.

Prior to that in my earlier 20s,

I was not a vegan.

I was eating my protein

and I was doing more resistance training and less cardio.

And I remember getting my body fat tested then

and I'm like a weirdly lean person.

My body fat tends to range between 10 and 13%,

which is extremely low for a woman.

But it's just where I've always naturally been.

So fast forward to here I met USC.

I have full on gone into a vegan diet,

realized at the time I was in LA

and I was working training people out of the pretty consent

or I was also training people out of the gold gym.

So I should have known better.

So I was watching what those bodybuilders were doing.

But at the pretty consent or it was very plant-based,

very low fat.

And so that's the diet I was testing.

But I always tend to take things to extremes.

I've gotten better as I've gotten older.

And so I was eating a very low fat vegan-based diet.

It was kind of what was going on in LA at the time too.

In my defense.

But I remember getting my body fat tested

because that's what we were doing at SC.

That semester is all this body composition work.

And my body fat came out at 25%.

And I was like, what the heck is going on?

So that was the first like a life-ball moment.

I started to kind of go, huh.

All of this plant-based diet

and all of this heavy endurance training

is not working now.

I will tell you why I was jumping into

so much endurance training.

That wasn't so thoughtful as it was kind of

a survival thing going on.

I was going through a really awful divorce.

I ran my way through this divorce.

I just ran and ran and ran.

I was escaping.

And that was not helping whatsoever.

All of this escape.

And here's the reality.

Chronic endurance training, as we know,

can be catabolic.

And note, I'm not saying not do any.

Okay, we'll talk about that later.

But chronic endurance training is catabolic.

It breaks down tissue.

And some of that pre-tissue,

it's going to break down.

And guess what?

Muscle.

Yes, you'll burn fat,

but you'll also can break down muscle.

Who are the best runners?

It's funny.

I have a friend who is a hit trainer,

high-intensity interval trainer or trainer.

And you used, you know,

you look at a couch potato and it's true.

Couch potato and a long-distance runner

tend to have the same amount of muscle mass.

They'll have different amounts of body fat for sure,

but they'll have about the same amount of muscle mass.

If you're an endurance athlete,

you're better with not having a lot of muscle mass.

More to move around.

There was actually a review in sports medicine

that discussed how prolonged endurance exercise

increases catabolic hormone signaling

when recovery and protein intake are insufficient.

This was the other thing going on with me.

And that chronic endurance training

increases cortisol levels,

especially when it's paired with inadequate fueling.

So here I was,

under eating, stressed out already,

riding my way through a divorce

and doing over cardio.

And I remember seeing at the time a study

that showed the people who were trying to maintain

their weight with cardio alone,

the minute they stopped,

they started gaining weight back.

So then I was like, oh no, I'm definitely not stopping.

And again, the key point of this research review view

was that longer duration,

higher volume endurance exercise increased stress hormones,

including cortisol,

and that this cortisol would rise

with this prolonged exercise

and then tend to stay higher

if the body wasn't recovered

or the body was under fueled.

So remember,

it's not exercise promoting cortisol in the moment

that's the problem.

It's the chronic cortisol that creates the problem.

And that's why I'm more of a fan of hit training.

Now, when you have enough calories,

when you have enough carbohydrates,

when you're giving yourself enough recovery time,

when you have enough protein,

then you can blunt that stress response.

It doesn't become chronic.

It's just that acute that you want

and then comes back down.

But if you're doing a lot of endurance volume

without the recovery and without the fuel,

then you put yourself into a problem.

And what happens when you've elevated chronic cortisol?

Well, you're going to break down muscle,

accumulate more visceral adipose tissue.

And that was me.

Like, if you can imagine,

because if you know me,

I'm like, you know, muscle first, right?

But back then,

I'm glad I did the science experiment

and I'm glad that we tested body composition.

And I had that wake up call

because it really was like,

I had to look at every single thing

because here I was doing all the running,

but I also was a vegan.

And I was a pure vegan and low fat vegan,

so high carb.

And I was not getting the balance

of essential amino acids that I needed.

Now, here's the thing.

Like, they've been to have studies

comparing plant-based and omnivore athletes.

And you can do this as a vegan

if you are really, really mindful

about what you need in terms of your amino acids

so that you're getting that balance.

So you have what you need to trigger muscle protein

since this and you don't compromise it.

In fact, there was a randomized control study

on resistance trading in the journal of nutrition

that looked at healthy young adults

and did a comparison

on a high protein vegan diet

versus an omnivore diet.

And what they did was they matched the protein intake.

But here's the thing.

There's this thing called the diet score,

the digestible, indispensable,

amino acid score.

And even if you match the protein,

you're not gonna have the same amino acid balance

between a vegan and an omnivore diet.

And if you're gonna go vegan,

you're gonna need to really be mindful

of the amino acid balance.

What they did in this study was they looked

at daily muscle protein synthesis.

They looked at lean mass.

They looked at muscle size

and they looked at muscle strength.

So they're looking at that quality there.

And what they found was when protein intake sufficient

that both diets supported muscle protein synthesis

and muscle gain.

But you got to really dial that in.

So that's what I want to emphasize here.

And I wasn't doing that.

I was not focused on the quality

and the balance of those amino acids.

So I was suffering.

And I literally just couldn't eat enough.

I remember always feeling like bloated.

It's really hard to get enough

when you're burning that many calories.

It's kind of crazy.

There was also a review

that looked at higher protein athlete requirements.

And it was published

in the Applied Physiology Nutrition and Metabolism Journal.

And they were looking at endurance

and resistance trained athletes

comparing them to sedentary adults.

And then looking at what protein intake was needed

to support performance, support recovery,

support holding onto or building muscle mass.

And of course,

this is not going to be much of a newsflash.

After each require more protein.

Then the general RDA.

0.8 grams per kilogram per day now.

Thankfully, I think we're moving away

from that lame RDA.

But basically when you're really focusing

on improving body composition,

higher protein intake's better preservation

of lean mass and greater fat loss,

especially if you're restricting energy.

In fact, I've seen some information

that suggests that we need more essential amino acids

when we're restricting energy, not less.

And of course, it's not just the protein itself.

It's really the balance of those essential amino acids.

And that becomes even more important

as you restrict calories

or as you increase your training.

So that can help protect your muscle

and can help protect your metabolic rate.

And remember, as we age,

we also need more, not less.

So what happened with me?

Well, I talked about that body comp

that woke me up.

What should have woke me up even more was

my weight didn't change that much.

I think it changed by about 10 pounds.

What changed was I lost muscle and put on fat.

Now, remember what happens when you lose muscle?

You also drop your metabolic rate, right?

And there was a study published

in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition

that showed that lean mass

is one of the strongest predictors

of resting energy expenditure.

It is the biggest modifiable thing

that you can do to change your resting metabolic rate.

So the last thing you want to do is lose muscle,

especially if you're 40 plus, by the way,

like I was luckily in my 20s, I got it back.

But boy, it gets harder and harder as we go,

even though you can put on muscle at any age,

you don't want to lose it.

And what they found in the American Journal

of Clinical Nutrition with 22 young males,

they looked before and after 100 days of overfeeding

and they found that resting metabolic rate correlated

with lean mass and skeletal muscle mass,

not really fat mass.

So that skeletal muscle was really

this best independent predictor of resting metabolic rate.

What's the takeaway for you here?

Don't lose your muscle mass.

Put on more muscle mass.

That's why I take a muscle first approach to all of this.

Because if you have more muscle,

that's where you're gonna be able to burn fat.

That's where you're gonna have a better resting metabolic rate.

And that's how you're gonna age powerfully.

When you have less muscle,

you have a lower metabolic rate at rest.

And that's why I started to gain weight

as I was losing muscle, eating the same,

gaining body fat.

And you know, it's obvious what's gonna happen.

Now, let's talk about the cortisol side of it.

Because not only was I stressed out

and running to try to manage my stress,

but I was doing these long.

So I was replacing my emotional mental stress

with physical stress.

And we know that long duration endurance sessions

can elevate cortisol for long periods, right?

I'm not looking at the acute cortisol elevation.

I'm looking at what happens chronically.

Because it's the chronicle

that can increase that visceral adipose tissue,

you know, the deep belly fat

and also impair insulin sensitivity.

And then you put that together with not having enough protein

overall, not having enough balance of your amino acids.

Too much training, not enough calories and poor recovery.

And you have a recipe for metabolic disaster.

That is a total muscle loss cocktail.

If you want to design a study for people to lose muscle,

there it is.

And again, you lose muscle.

You're resting metabolic rate goes down

and your insulin sensitivity drops.

Remember, and this was a review in frontiers in bioscience

showing that skeletal muscle is the primary site

for glucose disposal in the body.

That's why I say that muscle is your sugar sponge.

It's going to help you soak up that sugar

and store it away as glycogen

combining glucose with water

so that you have it there when you need it

to create energy when your muscles contract.

So remember, when your muscles contract,

they are going to send out all of these important signals

and they can also use glycogen,

especially when you've got a higher level of activity.

But the big important thing here is that skeletal muscle

is that place where you have insulin-stimulated glucose

uptake, which is important because if you don't have enough

muscle or the muscle you do have is all full,

then guess what?

You're going to turn that carbohydrate into fat

and you're going to store it where you don't want to.

So how does this happen?

So that sugar transport into the muscle

depends on insulin signaling

and something else called glute-for-translocation.

But it also can happen just by muscle contractions,

which means if you're not contracting your muscles,

you know, guess what?

You're not doing.

You are not then providing a place

for carbohydrates to go.

So you do not want to compromise your muscle mass.

You do not want to be sedentary

because then you have glucose disposal

becoming less efficient,

insulin tends to declining

and then you start to get those blood sugar irregularities.

By the way, insulin resistance comes first

and then the glucose problems come.

So what was happening to me?

I was telling my body,

get less efficient at being insulin sensitive,

get better at storing fat,

worse at burning it off, right?

And that is no good.

And, you know,

while you won't see your weight change as much,

you will see your body composition shift dramatically.

Thankfully, I tested it

because what I was doing

was basically creating survival physiology,

which is the complete opposite

of a thriving physiology.

So that wake up call

of doing that body composition test

with all my peers,

my student peers sitting around looking at going,

oh my gosh, you're 25% body fat.

I was like, holy smokes,

which 25% body fat can be a healthy body fat

for a woman, but I was a lean athlete.

So I made a shift.

I took that long distance cardio.

I kept one day a week

because I loved roller blade

or bike for long distances or hike.

But the two days a week

I put in high intensity interval training.

What is high intensity interval training?

I think now most people know what it is.

It's where you go hard for a short,

period of time, recover actively

and go back and forth.

And there's a variety of different ways to do it.

I've done videos on this,

which we'll link to.

But I did this two days a week.

Why? Because high intensity interval training

has been shown to stimulate mitochondrial biogenesis.

You make new mitochondria

and it also improves insulin sensitivity

with far less of time,

oxidative stress or stress load.

In fact, a landmark study

published in the journal physiology

showed that short sprint intervals

significantly increased mitochondrial capacity

similar to traditional endurance training.

But in a fraction of the time

and why don't people exercise?

It's the time, excuse.

But what if you could do in two days a week?

You could spend, let's say, 20 minutes,

even 10 minutes and make a major difference.

And this is really freed me up to when I'm busy.

I make sure I'm getting in my non-exercise

activity thermogenesis all throughout the day

by just moving more.

But then if I'm really busy,

I can get in some short bursts throughout the day.

That is my 10 minutes to win it challenge

that I have people go through

where we just do short bursts all throughout the day.

Little high intensity interval bursts.

When you're doing high intensity interval training,

let's say you decide to do two days a week of 20 minutes.

Maybe you do one minute hard, one minute easy recover

and repeat that 10 times.

Or you do a four minutes hard, three minutes recover,

four minutes hard, three minutes recover

and you do that four times.

There's a variety of different types

you can do out there any free from the Norwegian four by four,

the one to one ratio one,

the Wingate training, which is 30 seconds all out,

three and a half minutes recover.

There's a variety of ways to do this.

And I like to do a variety of different ones

so that my body doesn't adapt.

And you will raise a little bit of cortisol as you do it.

But here's the thing, that's good.

Your body learns how to handle that stress and recover.

So it actually causes a better cortisol profile overall.

Because you got to raise your cortisol in the morning

or you're not getting out of bed, right?

But you want your cortisol to come up at the right times

and then come back down.

Hit stimulates growth hormone,

supports anabolic signaling without causing

that chronic cortisol that you do not want.

It also improves your chronic cortisol balance.

So I made resistance training my foundation.

It always was there,

but I was kind of stealing from it

because of so much focus on the catabolic cardio and multiple studies

including a 2022 systematic review and meta analysis

in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine

show that resistance training is independently associated

with reduced all-cause mortality.

In fact, if I was going to do one thing,

it would be number one,

improve your non-exercise activity thermogenesis,

move more all throughout the day.

Incorporate as much movement into your day as you possibly can.

Then I would add in resistance training

because check this out.

Any resistance training versus none,

lower risk of all-cause mortality.

This was just any resistance training, 15%.

Cardiovascular mortality by 19%.

Cancer mortality by 14%.

But if you can get yourself to more like 30 minutes twice a week,

that is going to be amazing in it.

That's not much.

Remember muscles protective.

It regulates glucose.

It creates that sugar sponge.

It improves your metabolic flexibility.

It supports better bone mineral density,

which gives you more independence.

And you're not going to get that from endurance training.

You get that from resistance training.

So let me tell you what my training program looks like now.

Lots of movement all throughout the day.

10,000 steps is my goal each day.

8,000 is my bare minimum.

And if I can get it up more like 12, 15,000 even better.

I like to hit each body part at least twice a week.

Sometimes I'll go for three.

I do usually splits,

but today I did all of my body parts.

I did my push, my pull, and my hinge.

I do two days a week of high-intensity interval training

and I do one day a week of a longer session.

I eat animal protein first at every meal.

I make sure I get in between 120 and 150 grams of protein a day.

I split it between my meals,

but I really emphasize my morning and evening.

Remember, as we age,

we need more, not less protein because of anabolic resistance.

In fact, there was a study in the Journal of Gerontology

that showed that looked at older versus younger men.

The older men, 70s, the younger men were in their 20s.

And they looked at single meal protein doses.

And then they looked at muscle protein synthesis.

And what they found was that older dudes

had a blunted muscle protein synthesis response

to the lower protein doses

and required higher relative per meal intake

to achieve that max muscle protein stimulus

as compared to the younger guys.

No great surprise there.

By the way, this is why I think

one of the most underutilized tools

that is so, so, so important

is the use of essential amino acids to the rescue.

So I think that for pretty much most women over 40

unless you're really, really good

about getting all your protein in,

I view essential amino acids.

I use something called amino acid power by regnet.

Well, unless I formulated it based on the literature

from the NIH about sarcopenia

and the best amino acid balance.

And what I view them as

is a muscle insurance policy.

If you are eating a skimpy protein meal,

have a scoop of my essential aminos.

If you are not eating maybe like you ate lunch

and you're not gonna have dinner,

then have two scoops.

If you are not eating breakfast in the morning

and you wanna go for a workout,

have two scoops.

Super important to help you maintain and build muscle.

It's gotta do the work.

It's 75% doing the work,

but you need to have to fuel the substrate too.

There is an American Journal of Medicine study

that showed that lower muscle mass

is directly correlative with higher mortality risk.

So we gotta do everything we possibly can

to support that muscle mass.

More muscle, longer life, better life, higher quality life.

It's not just living longer, it's living longer, better.

Remember, we don't need smaller bodies.

It's not about weighing less.

It's about improving what that weight is made up of

and improving quality muscle.

We need stronger bodies as we age.

And I'm not saying you should never run.

I do one long cardio session a week.

What I'm saying is you need to understand the signals

you're sending to your body.

When I was running long distance constantly

and under eating protein, being that vegan,

I was telling my body to break down and to shrink.

And that's exactly what happened.

I lost muscle, I gained fat,

my metabolism slowed down, and thankfully

I had a humiliating body composition test

in front of my friends.

And that was my wake up call.

And I'm so grateful to that.

And that is when I made the big shift

to my muscle first philosophy

and making sure I was getting in that protein

and using that high intensely burst training

instead of chronic cardio.

And everything shifted.

My body composition improved, my energy improved,

my stress levels improved, my mood improved.

So reality is, if you want to age powerfully

and I'm sure you do, if you're here,

then muscle has got to be the priority.

And if you want more science back strategies

on how to build that muscle,

protect your metabolism, enhance it, let's say,

and stay strong and powerful as you age.

Make sure you subscribe to this channel

because I'm dropping all sorts of wisdom on that.

Be sure to join me next time for more tools, tips,

and techniques you can use to look and feel your best

and be built to last.

Also, I'd love to connect with you

and hear your thoughts on the podcast.

Here's how.

First, subscribe to the podcast

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Second, take a screenshot of your review.

And third, text it to 813-565-2627.

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When you do, I'll reply using my brand new virtual JJ.

It's my on-demand virtual self,

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so I can interact with you directly.

You'll make my day and I can't wait to hear from you.

Thanks for tuning in and I'll catch you on the next episode.

Hey, JJ here and just a reminder

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