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Hey, it's Christy from Lululemon, and I'm here at the office checking out the Shake It Out shorts. These have been my go-tos, and I kind of think of them as a middle ground between a true run short and a more playful, athletic, sporty short. They have all the performance you want for running, so a comfy liner, our lightweight, swift fabric, even a pocket for your keys. But what I really like is the flowy fit and layered hem. It gives it a little bit of volume, a little bit of fun, so they feel as good on a run as they do just at coffee afterwards. You can find the Shake It Out shorts in-store now or online at lululemon.com.
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Welcome back to Well Beyond 40. This week, we're revisiting one of my favorite episodes, Strong Arms After 40, Science-Backed Muscle Building. I'm breaking down why toned, defined arms after 40 are so much more than looks. We'll talk about why muscle is your metabolic engine, how to train with the right volume, intensity, and progressive overload.
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and why compound movements should come before endless bicep curls and tricep extensions. I also walk you through how protein, creatine, collagen, essential amino acids, daily steps, HIIT, and smart caloric cycling can help you build muscle, burn fat, and age powerfully. If you feel inspired by this episode, be sure to share it with a friend. Let's build our strength together.
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Hey, I'm JJ Virgin, PhD dropout, sorry mom, turned four time New York Times bestselling author. As a certified nutrition specialist, fitness hall of famer, and globally recognized leader in health, I'm driven to keep asking the tough questions and use my podcast to simplify the science of health into actionable strategies that help you thrive.
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I'd also love to hear your thoughts on the show. And here's the fun part. When you send me your review, I'll reply you using my on-demand virtual me. That's right. My team and I created a virtual JJ packed with my books, speeches, and wisdom so I can personally connect with you. Here's how you do it. Subscribe and leave an honest review of the podcast. Take a screenshot of your review.
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Text it to 813-565-2627. That's 813-565-2627. My virtual JJ will reply directly. And trust me, this will make your day. So subscribe now at subscribe2jj.com and text me your review. Let's keep thriving together.
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This episode is brought to you by Google Health. Stop chasing someone else's definition of health. What matters is what's healthy for you. Google Health offers a new kind of coach, built with Gemini for effortless tracking, sleep insights, and holistic coaching tailored to you. Visit googlestore.com to learn more and start a new relationship with your health. Requires Google account, Google Health app, internet, and Google Health premium subscription. Features subject to change. Availability and results vary. Not intended for medical purposes. Works independently of Gemini apps. Check responses for accuracy.
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I get asked all the time, how did you get those arms? And while I like to talk about how to build tone-defined arms, and I know that you want to do it for vanity, the reality is having toned arms, especially after 40, is super important for your overall metabolic health as well. It's not just about looks.
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It's also making sure that you are preserving, or better yet, building your muscle because it's so critical for your longevity, for aging powerfully, and for your overall metabolic health. Why? Because muscle's truly your metabolic engine. And that skeletal muscle does a variety of really important things. Number one is your metabolic spanx holds everything in tighter and helps increase your resting metabolic rate. It's a sugar sponge that gives carbohydrates a place
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It's also this multitasking messenger that tells your body to reduce inflammation, improve insulin sensitivity, and of course, it also helps you move better. And this is important, all of these things, because what do we know about muscle and aging? That starting at around the age of 30, we start to
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I really believe that if we can divide this between people who are actively doing resistance training and people who are not, we would see a big difference here. But I have never seen the studies on that to show it. However, right now what we know for studies is that we can lose up to 1% of our muscle mass a year starting around age 30. The average is 3% to 8%. And when we hit 60, it gets even worse. However,
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Turns out that muscles, the least of what we lose, we lose even more strength, like two to three times the amount of strength and three or more times the amount of power. Strength is the heaviest thing you can lift once. Power is how quickly you can move it. So super duper important that we make sure that we're focusing on this as we age.
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And for so many of us, our focus has been on cardio. And that is kind of getting us looking in the wrong direction. One of the ways that you can gauge where you're at is through something called a grip strength test. And this is a simple hand grip dynamometer. You can literally get these for like 30 bucks on Amazon.
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and you want to be in the highest 25% for your age group. We know that low grip strength is associated with all-cause mortality risk. And in fact, so much so that Dr. Peter Atiyah uses grip strength as one of those functional biomarkers of aging. Now, you may have heard of the importance of leg strength with aging, and this is super true. And I look at grip strength as a proxy for overall strength throughout the body. So,
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It's not just saying, hey, we want to be able to squeeze a tennis ball hard. I'm looking at grip strength as a proxy of let's look at your entire strength throughout the body because we want strong legs. We want strong upper body. We want to be strong in general. The big thing I want you to think about is prioritizing building muscle and building strength and building power over losing weight. I call it the muscle-first approach.
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And I'm really focused on a muscle-first approach to health where what we do is before we start to focus on losing weight, we focus first on building muscle, which then, of course, will boost your metabolism, help you burn fat better, and help you age better.
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healthier, longer. So let's talk about the formula then. How do you get these strong defined arms? Because what's super cool is the things that are going to help you get these strong defined arms are also going to help you up way better metabolic health and age more powerfully. I'm going to walk through the training principles of what you need and really the whole idea of how you need to progress. What's the proper programming to build arms? And people are always surprised because...
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I don't really do biceps and triceps. So I'm gonna explain what I do, the training principles that work, and you can throw some biceps and triceps in there as well, but I would not focus on them to start with. All right, so now here's the formula to build those strong defined arms. And when you look at this, when you look at your training program, you're gonna look at a couple different things.
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The overall volume, this is super important. The intensity, the frequency, and the right exercises, the proper programming. So all of these things matter. Now, if I had to pull one thing out, I'm going to tell you that volume strongly correlates with muscle growth. It is really important. However, you also have to have progressive overload. It also has to be hard enough.
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Volume is the total amount of work that you do. Okay? So I'm going to define some terms because if you're going to go work out, you're going to do a couple different things. You are going to do an exercise. So let's use as an example an overhead dumbbell press where you're pushing weights over your head. That's the exercise. Let's say that you do a set of 8 to 12 repetitions.
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So one set, you do repetitions within that set, and then you take a rest break and you do another set. So you've got your exercise, your set, your reps. You want to get to a point when you're doing those repetitions where you're always maintaining good form. That break in your form is really indicating that you're getting close to failure. You don't need to actually get to failure. What you need to get to is close. Like we call it one to two reps in reserve or a little bit in the tank.
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How you know you're there, because the reality is most people don't get anywhere close enough to that. And it's really important. In order for you to build muscle, you want to have the volume, but you also have to have that kind of progression where you only have one to two in the tank. Here's how you can tell. You're slowed down. Like if you're going and doing your exercise and all of a sudden you're having trouble maintaining the speed, that's one of the signs. If you're starting to feel like you're going to lose your form or your form starts to go a little bit, that's the other signs.
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And those are what I'm looking for is, am I losing my form? Am I slowing down? Then I know I'm close to that failure. So I want to go to about one to two reps in reserve. Very, very important. I focus on working within a range. And we used to think that there was a very tight range to build muscle and that, you know, like if you went past 12 or 15, you were doing endurance training. If you went really low, you were just doing strength.
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It's a broad range. It's probably somewhere in the 5 to 30 reps, 6 to 30 reps, 6 to 25 reps. But I think the easiest thing for us is to focus somewhere in the 8 to 12 or 15 repetitions. What you again want to get to is when you get to that point where you can't, you know, you feel like your form's breaking and you're slowing down. That's when you take a break.
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You don't ever push in bat form, by the way. That is super duper important. And I like to talk about lifting heavy, but let's talk about what lifting heavy means. That doesn't mean going and grabbing the biggest barbells or dumbbells at the gym. It means what's heavy for you. That might be five pounds, 10 pounds, 20 pounds. What's heavy for you so that you can do sets of, again, let's say six to 15 in good form. If you're working in an eight to 12 rep range and you can keep going after 12, you need to go a little heavier.
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If you can't quite get to six to eight, you need to lighten the load a little bit. So that's how you think about it. And again, heavy is relative to whatever rep ranges you're doing and how strong you are. So that's super important there. I focus on compound movements first. I want to get the biggest bang for my exercise buck. The reality is when you think about upper body pushing exercises like a pushup, like an overhead press, like a dip,
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These all use your triceps. So I could do overhead presses and push-ups and use my chest muscles, my shoulder muscles, my triceps, or I could just do tricep extensions and use my triceps. I'm going to use compound movements. They are more metabolically costly. They pull more muscle groups in. And if at the end you have extra time and you want to throw some triceps extensions and bicep curls in, go for it. But focus first on the big power moves. Okay.
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And again, that was upper body pushing. Upper body pulling would be things like a pull down or a pull up, a bent over row, a seated cable row, an upright row, multi-joint exercises that cross, again, that are compound. And whether you use machines or free weights,
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For hypertrophy, hypertrophy is the same, but here's the reality. I like to train to get better at life, and in life I'm not bolted to the floor. So quite often I'll do things where I am using more free weights because it requires more of my nervous system to pull in, and it's more duplicating things that I do in real life. So I tend to focus more on that, but you can use machines, especially if you are not comfortable, concerned about getting injured. You know, that could be a great place to start too. Okay.
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When you're just starting out, start with body weight. Start easy. You can always go heavier, but if you hurt yourself, it's really hard to come back from. So I always like to go slow, build up low, you know, and see how you feel. If you are injured, if you are sore at the joint site –
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That's never a good sign, right? And if you're sore more than two days, not a good sign or sore to the touch. So I like to just build on a good base and start out easy with it. For hypertrophy, volume overall during the week is actually the biggest driver. So if you did one hard day a week, but a lot of volume,
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It can work, but I personally think you're better off doing two or three days a week. And I really like to do that where you have a day, like maybe you're doing a push-pull one day, take a break the next or do high-intensity interval training the next or leg day the next, then come back and do push-pull again.
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In my perfect world, you do pushing and pulling two to three days a week, rest day in between, and you'd get 20 different sets for your pushing exercises each week, 20 different sets for your pulling exercises each week. So what that might look like is two days a week. You do two sets of five of push-ups and overhead presses.
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two sets of five of pull-downs and seated cable rows or bent-over rows, right? That's an easy way to think about doing it. I like to think once I've gotten this going at the first 8 to 12 weeks, once I've done that, what I like to think of is in terms of kind of 8-week sessions where I will do specific exercises, then I'll take a week where I go a little light, I go longer and lighter and do what is called a deload.
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and then I'll come back and hit it again. So that's that. Now you can do this at a gym. You can also do this at home. You can do this at home using a TRX machine, using dumbbells, using a chair, using bands. The most important thing is that you are consistently able to do this. So if you are not able to get to a gym,
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then do it at home with the TRX and bands and dumbbells. And if you are injured or you're traveling and you don't have access to weights, I love the TRX, but you could also look at something called blood flow restriction training because that is a very easy way to continue to work out without having to lift the heavier weights.
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If you are short on time, I'm going to give you a little hack that I love to do. One of the challenges with lifting weights is that you have rest breaks in between and you need to take those rest breaks. If you do a set of 15 repetitions of, say, an overhead press and rest for 30 seconds and go again, you really didn't give your body adequate rest and you're working more muscular endurance than working in hypertrophy.
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So what you're going to do is break for about 90 seconds to two minutes. Well, that can take time. But what you can do in the interim is what we call supersetting, where you could do a push-up and then you could alternate that with a bent-over row. Or you can do a pull-down and you can alternate that with a dip. So you can do opposite exercises. So push exercise.
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Alternate with a pull exercise, super setting so that you don't have to, you know, sit there for a break and do nothing. Makes it a little bit more time efficient. The biggest driver for hypertrophy is, of course, actually doing the work. You got to do the work. And in fact, I think it was Dr. Stuart Phillips was saying it was like 75% exercise, 25% diet. But I just recently heard that I think he's changed his mind to it's 90% exercise, 10% diet. Here's the reality.
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you can do the perfect diet, but if you're not lifting the weight, you're not gonna build any muscle. So you gotta do the work and the work itself will trigger muscle protein synthesis. So you gotta do the work. So don't think you can just eat correctly, get your protein in, do all that and you're gonna build muscle. Ain't happening. Okay, so I wanna be very clear on that. However, we do wanna make sure that you're giving your body what it needs in order to build that muscle. And so, of course, you knew I was gonna say this,
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that protein is non-negotiable. Now, one of the things we know that happens at 40 plus is this phenomenon called anabolic resistance. What we don't know right now, and I'm very curious about, is what would happen if you've always been active and you're very insulin sensitive, et cetera. How much would this play a role? That's what I haven't been able to get any kind of data on. So from what I can tell, the more insulin resistant you are, the more sedentary you are,
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the worse this anabolic resistance is. But it also is something that happens with aging. So it's also an issue with aging. And so we can't really get away from it. And so what does that mean? That means we have to work harder. We have to work harder at the gym and make sure we have the protein on board in order to push through that anabolic resistance, which makes it harder for us to build muscle.
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So for protein, the calculation, and we have a protein calculator at jjvirgin.com forward slash protein first to help you with this. But it's basically 0.7 to 1 gram per pound of target body weight. Probably 0.7 is going to do it for you. However...
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I have some reasons, and as we talk about how to make sure you can reveal those muscles by dropping fat, I have some reasons I believe we're better off going to the higher levels of protein. But for muscle protein synthesis's sake, 0.7 grams per pound of target body weight will likely give you what you need. That's basically 30 to 40 grams of protein per meal. And if you are...
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more plant-based, if you're sedentary, if you're working out super hard, then I would push it a little bit higher. And again, I'd rather err on the high side than err on the low side. One of the things we're getting from that protein, we're getting the essential amino acids, and it's really the balance of all of those that matter. There is one, leucine. This is the work of Dr. Donald Lehman. It shows that it triggers, helps trigger that muscle protein synthesis, but you can't just take leucine and have that happen. You need all of them.
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as well. So they're all important. So along with eating your protein and making sure that you digest it well, one of the things that I use are my protein digestive enzymes from Reignite Wellness because as we age, our stomach acid goes down and we do not digest our protein as well. If you're just starting to eat more animal-based protein, also helpful to take the enzymes here. But here are some of the other things that I do to help support muscle protein synthesis, help
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support me being able to work out harder, recover better. One of them is creatine HCL. I have a product called Sheatine. I did create a creatine guide at jjvirgin.com forward slash creatine guide that goes through everything you'd ever want to know about creatine, how to dose it, the difference between monohydrate and HCL, why I've chosen HCL. I put it together with creatine HCL with magnesium and taurine because of the exponential effect it has on your body creating and regenerating ATP.
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Really what you're doing is creatine. As you're helping your body have the energy and be able to work out harder, creatine on its own is not going to build muscle. But creatine can help you work out harder and recover better. Creatine HCL, you need a much smaller dose of because it's better absorbed. 750 milligrams to about a gram is basically what you need there. And then if you've got more needs due to stress,
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sleep deprivation, super hard workouts, or any kind of brain stuff going on, then you can kick the dose up a little bit more. The other thing that I love to use is I use collagen, not to build muscle, but to support my joints. So prior to going to the gym, I take a hit of collagen, because I know I'm gonna have more blood flow into my joints, so I take the collagen so I have it on board to help.
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And I also take a joint health formula from Qualia Health because Qualia Life because joints are my issue from doing dumb things in my teens and early 20s and really kind of blowing out knees and breaking feet and all sorts of stuff. The other thing that I take to the gym with me, so I put my sheatine powder in a big jug.
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with electrolytes, with my essential aminos as well, it may be overkill. Here's the reality. I think essential amino acids are kind of this unsung hero we aren't talking a whole lot about, but especially for people who are not getting the protein they need in their diet, it might be sarcopenic.
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This is where I would say, hey, let's get some essential aminos with your breakfast. So if you've got a skimpy protein breakfast, we've got you pumped up a little bit. Maybe same with dinner before bed. So we make sure we know what we have on board. I like to do them, especially if I'm going into the gym in the morning, fasted. I'll go in with that. Overall, if you're getting the protein that you need each day, you're probably fine.
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However, I see with so many women that they're not. So this is my little insurance policy for that. The other thing that I use is protein powder. I use, in my Reignite Wellness company, I have both a bone broth and a pea. I like to mix them together, add some collagen, and that's what I do for my loaded protein smoothie. I throw in there a little bit of something called Yolked as well. This is a fertilized egg yolk protein that's been found to increase muscle protein synthesis.
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some amazing research on this. I noticed a two and a half pound fat-free mass increase in two months by adding it in. So I am on that, as you can imagine. So that's another one that I do. The other thing that I do is, but I don't worry about when I take this as much. I take MitoPure's timeline by MitoPure because it helps
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with regenerating your mitochondria, one of the things that slows down as we age. So really helpful. It's kind of like exercise in a bottle. It helped people build strength without even any exercise. Now, I don't think that's the way to go, but why not add in everything that can help? Along with that, fish oil has been found to be anabolic. I wonder if some of that's because it helps reduce inflammation.
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And of course, you need D3K2. So those are some of the other things that can help support. So we've got how to build the muscle and getting that volume in and progressively overloading. Those are the key points of how to build muscle and really focusing on compound movements first. And if you do want to throw in a tricep extension or bicep curl, do it at the end. Then we've got the diet and...
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and what you need to do to really feed those muscles, the protein, and then the things that I love along with that, like my sheatine, the myosfortotropin, collagen for the joint support, and essential aminos. Here's the reality. If you build a lot of muscle, but you got a lot of fat covering it,
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you're not gonna see it. And that's probably not what you're looking for when you're building those arms. When people talk about toned arms, I think what they don't realize is that the way you create muscle tone is by building muscle so that it's like partially passively contracted all the time. So you gotta build the muscle, but then you gotta strip the fat off, right?
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You don't want to have great muscle with a big layer of fat covering it. Now, one of the cool things that happens as you build muscle is its metabolic spanks boosts your resting metabolic rate by being on your body and helps improve insulin sensitivity and makes you better at burning fat. However, if you're eating too much, you're eating too much and you will still have fat on. So I'm going to defer over to my buddy, Dr. Bill Campbell, who I just adore. Okay.
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Super awesome researcher, and he is at University of South Florida. And I love what he does, which is this idea of caloric cycling. So the reality is we used to think that you could not lose fat and build muscle at the same time. We now know it's called recomping in the biz. We now know that this can happen. What we want to make sure for sure is that if you are losing weight, you're only losing fat and you're holding on to muscle. But bonus points, if you can build muscle, lose fat at the same time,
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which we now know you can do. So here's what I want you to think about. And again, shout out to Dr. Bill Campbell for this. Number one, think about losing one half to one percent of your body weight a week, because more than that will not be from fat. So that's basically what you can lose in order to just lose fat while you're holding on to or building skeletal muscle. Okay, that's the first thing.
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The second thing is make sure you're keeping that protein up. And this is where I find it better to be a little bit on the higher side and even maybe even higher than one gram. It's not that it's going to give you more muscle protein synthesis. We probably saturated all of that.
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What it is going to give you is, and it may not even give you more satiety because there's a question mark of protein's the most satiating of the macronutrients, but once we've gotten that point of satiety, can you be more and more satiated? But if you're satiated, you're satiated, so don't know that that matters. But here's where it does help. Protein is the most thermic of the macronutrients. About 25% of the calories from protein are used just in the digestion and absorption and assimilation, so...
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If you're eating protein, you actually can eat a little bit more and you're generally not as hungry, so you're eating less. So I find that it's just easier for people who are focused on getting into a little caloric restriction to eat more protein. And basically, like protein fiber for the win, right? So you'll have great blood sugar control.
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Bill taught me that I love is this concept of caloric cycling, where five days a week, you do a 20 to 25% caloric deficit. Think if you're at 2,000 calories as your maintenance calories, that you would go to 1,500 calories five days a week, then go to normal on the weekend. Now, caveat, this does not mean become a piggy and go all out on the weekends. This is not what we're talking about.
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It is just eat normal during the weekend and then come back to the 25%. So that's part of it, that kind of cycling. The next thing is to make sure that you are getting in your non-exercise activity thermogenesis. When we look at your total daily energy expenditure, it comes from resting metabolic rate. We can impact that with...
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more muscle. It comes from thermic effect of food. We can impact that with more protein. And then it comes from activity. Some of that's exercise, but more of it is non-exercise activity, thermogenesis, just flat out moving more all throughout the day. So got to make sure you're getting in those steps. And the more steps, the better. It's just a nice way to use fat for a fuel. And just, you know, this can be the difference of a couple hundred or more calories a day.
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So I track that every day and make sure that I'm getting in at least 8,000 steps a day. My goal really is more like 12,000 steps a day or more. The other thing I like to throw in here is a little HIIT training. So if you're doing your pushing and pulling for your arms two to three days a week, I love two days of HIIT training in there as well.
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The reason that I like the high-intensity interval training is it can rip off that visceral adipose tissue. It really helps your body use fat for fuel and helps you train your sympathetic nervous system to handle stress better too. So I really love a little HIIT training, plus it's good for VO2 max training. So that's what I like to do. Final thing here, when should you eat? How should you fuel for your workouts? This is like one of the most hotly debated things online. Should you
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Here's the reality. Consistency in your training and consistency in getting in your protein, that's what matters most. So it's the overall protein each day and it's the volume of training with progressive overload each week. That is what matters most. Fasted versus non-fasted, what the research actually is showing, and there's just a new study that came out. Shout out to my buddy Vanessa Spina of the Ultimate Protein Podcast, because the
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This recent study showed slight advantage maybe for doing fasted, but that it really doesn't matter. Here's my take on fasted versus not fasted workouts. You do what works best for you. When I'm traveling, I have to generally work out at 6, 630 in the morning, which I hate, by the way, but I do it because it's the only time I'm going to get a workout in.
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And when I do that, I'm not going to eat. Like I just woke up. So what I have is coffee. I throw a little collagen in my coffee because I really like to have collagen on board when I'm working out. If anything I can do to get more collagen into my joints, I'm doing it. And then I throw my essential amino acids, my Electro Replenish, and my Sheetine creatine powder. I throw those three products. Those are all my own products I made into a water bottle with a little Peak Life green tea. And I go to the gym with that. That's how I deal with it.
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I feel the best a couple hours after waking up, eating, then going to the gym, but it doesn't always happen like that. So I say do what feels where you notice you have the most energy to work out because the most important thing of all is how hard you can work out, right? So that matters the most. As far as fasted workouts to burn more fat, that's ridiculous, just so you know.
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So fasted workout, the big theory before was, well, do fasted workouts because you'll burn more fat during the workout. Well, you might burn more fat, but overall, will you lose more fat? There was no indication that that was the case. The reality with losing body fat is that's the overall, at the end of the day, are you in a deficit? So your body had to use stored body fat for fuel. That's what matters. All right. So you figure out what works best for you. That's the key takeaway. You are the N of one.
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here. So let's put this all together in a strategy that can work for you. Number one, I've got a cheat sheet for you that I'm going to link in the show notes of how to start a resistance training program because you want to do those big compound movements. Number two, make sure you're getting in that protein overall at least 100 grams a day,
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0.7 to one gram per pound of target body weight. Ideally, break it into your meals and make it more even. The research supports that that's probably the better way to go. I like to use the chronometer app and a food scale to ensure I'm getting what I need. Think about those supplements like sheatine, aminos, that fortitropin I was talking about, the collagen. Like, think about the supplements that really can make a difference here. Get those daily steps in. That's going to help you with getting the fat off, and that is super-duper important.
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along with making sure that you're doing that caloric restriction cycling if you're trying to lose body fat. And then, you know, make sure that you have enough protein on board either before the workout or after the workout. But sometime around the workout, get that protein in and then get those carbs in. That will help you with having the energy on board, first of all, and your muscles being able to repair and having the energy on board for the next time. But it doesn't have to be like within this amount of time or right before. It's actually not as important as we...
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thought it would be. My big question to you is, okay, what's the big change you're going to make now so that you have these amazing tone-defined arms? I'd love to hear. And if you'd love more information like this, I know you would, right?
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Be sure to subscribe and join my Facebook group because we do a lot of stuff in there too. I've been doing some Ask Me Anythings in the Facebook group where you can ask me any questions. We try to do those every week or so. So be sure to join my JJ Virgin Lifestyle Facebook group too. And I'll see you next time.
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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 and leave an honest review. Second, take a screenshot of your review.
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And third, text it to 813-565-2627. That's 813-565-2627. When you do, I'll reply using my brand new Virtual JJ. It's my on-demand virtual self built from my books, talks, and years of experience so I can interact with you directly.
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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.
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Hey, JJ here, and just a reminder that the Well Beyond 40 podcast offers health, wellness, fitness, and nutritional information that's designed for educational and entertainment purposes only. You should not rely on this information as a substitute for, nor does it replace professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. If you have any concerns or questions about your health, you should always consult with a physician or other healthcare professional and ask you to do it.
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Hey, it's Christy from Lululemon, and I'm here at the office checking out the Shake It Out shorts. These have been my go-tos, and I kind of think of them as a middle ground between a true run short and a more playful, athletic, sporty short. They have all the performance you want for running, so a comfy liner, our lightweight, swift fabric, even a pocket for your keys. But what I really like is the flowy fit and layered hem. It gives it a little bit of volume, a little bit of fun, so they feel as good on a run as they do just at coffee afterwards. You can find the Shake It Out shorts in-store now or online at lululemon.com.
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Welcome back to Well Beyond 40. This week, we're revisiting one of my favorite episodes, Strong Arms After 40, Science-Backed Muscle Building. I'm breaking down why toned, defined arms after 40 are so much more than looks. We'll talk about why muscle is your metabolic engine, how to train with the right volume, intensity, and progressive overload.
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and why compound movements should come before endless bicep curls and tricep extensions. I also walk you through how protein, creatine, collagen, essential amino acids, daily steps, HIIT, and smart caloric cycling can help you build muscle, burn fat, and age powerfully. If you feel inspired by this episode, be sure to share it with a friend. Let's build our strength together.
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Hey, I'm JJ Virgin, PhD dropout, sorry mom, turned four time New York Times bestselling author. As a certified nutrition specialist, fitness hall of famer, and globally recognized leader in health, I'm driven to keep asking the tough questions and use my podcast to simplify the science of health into actionable strategies that help you thrive.
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I'd also love to hear your thoughts on the show. And here's the fun part. When you send me your review, I'll reply you using my on-demand virtual me. That's right. My team and I created a virtual JJ packed with my books, speeches, and wisdom so I can personally connect with you. Here's how you do it. Subscribe and leave an honest review of the podcast. Take a screenshot of your review.
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Text it to 813-565-2627. That's 813-565-2627. My virtual JJ will reply directly. And trust me, this will make your day. So subscribe now at subscribe2jj.com and text me your review. Let's keep thriving together.
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This episode is brought to you by Google Health. Stop chasing someone else's definition of health. What matters is what's healthy for you. Google Health offers a new kind of coach, built with Gemini for effortless tracking, sleep insights, and holistic coaching tailored to you. Visit googlestore.com to learn more and start a new relationship with your health. Requires Google account, Google Health app, internet, and Google Health premium subscription. Features subject to change. Availability and results vary. Not intended for medical purposes. Works independently of Gemini apps. Check responses for accuracy.
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I get asked all the time, how did you get those arms? And while I like to talk about how to build tone-defined arms, and I know that you want to do it for vanity, the reality is having toned arms, especially after 40, is super important for your overall metabolic health as well. It's not just about looks.
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It's also making sure that you are preserving, or better yet, building your muscle because it's so critical for your longevity, for aging powerfully, and for your overall metabolic health. Why? Because muscle's truly your metabolic engine. And that skeletal muscle does a variety of really important things. Number one is your metabolic spanx holds everything in tighter and helps increase your resting metabolic rate. It's a sugar sponge that gives carbohydrates a place
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It's also this multitasking messenger that tells your body to reduce inflammation, improve insulin sensitivity, and of course, it also helps you move better. And this is important, all of these things, because what do we know about muscle and aging? That starting at around the age of 30, we start to
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I really believe that if we can divide this between people who are actively doing resistance training and people who are not, we would see a big difference here. But I have never seen the studies on that to show it. However, right now what we know for studies is that we can lose up to 1% of our muscle mass a year starting around age 30. The average is 3% to 8%. And when we hit 60, it gets even worse. However,
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Turns out that muscles, the least of what we lose, we lose even more strength, like two to three times the amount of strength and three or more times the amount of power. Strength is the heaviest thing you can lift once. Power is how quickly you can move it. So super duper important that we make sure that we're focusing on this as we age.
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And for so many of us, our focus has been on cardio. And that is kind of getting us looking in the wrong direction. One of the ways that you can gauge where you're at is through something called a grip strength test. And this is a simple hand grip dynamometer. You can literally get these for like 30 bucks on Amazon.
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and you want to be in the highest 25% for your age group. We know that low grip strength is associated with all-cause mortality risk. And in fact, so much so that Dr. Peter Atiyah uses grip strength as one of those functional biomarkers of aging. Now, you may have heard of the importance of leg strength with aging, and this is super true. And I look at grip strength as a proxy for overall strength throughout the body. So,
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It's not just saying, hey, we want to be able to squeeze a tennis ball hard. I'm looking at grip strength as a proxy of let's look at your entire strength throughout the body because we want strong legs. We want strong upper body. We want to be strong in general. The big thing I want you to think about is prioritizing building muscle and building strength and building power over losing weight. I call it the muscle-first approach.
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And I'm really focused on a muscle-first approach to health where what we do is before we start to focus on losing weight, we focus first on building muscle, which then, of course, will boost your metabolism, help you burn fat better, and help you age better.
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healthier, longer. So let's talk about the formula then. How do you get these strong defined arms? Because what's super cool is the things that are going to help you get these strong defined arms are also going to help you up way better metabolic health and age more powerfully. I'm going to walk through the training principles of what you need and really the whole idea of how you need to progress. What's the proper programming to build arms? And people are always surprised because...
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I don't really do biceps and triceps. So I'm gonna explain what I do, the training principles that work, and you can throw some biceps and triceps in there as well, but I would not focus on them to start with. All right, so now here's the formula to build those strong defined arms. And when you look at this, when you look at your training program, you're gonna look at a couple different things.
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The overall volume, this is super important. The intensity, the frequency, and the right exercises, the proper programming. So all of these things matter. Now, if I had to pull one thing out, I'm going to tell you that volume strongly correlates with muscle growth. It is really important. However, you also have to have progressive overload. It also has to be hard enough.
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Volume is the total amount of work that you do. Okay? So I'm going to define some terms because if you're going to go work out, you're going to do a couple different things. You are going to do an exercise. So let's use as an example an overhead dumbbell press where you're pushing weights over your head. That's the exercise. Let's say that you do a set of 8 to 12 repetitions.
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So one set, you do repetitions within that set, and then you take a rest break and you do another set. So you've got your exercise, your set, your reps. You want to get to a point when you're doing those repetitions where you're always maintaining good form. That break in your form is really indicating that you're getting close to failure. You don't need to actually get to failure. What you need to get to is close. Like we call it one to two reps in reserve or a little bit in the tank.
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How you know you're there, because the reality is most people don't get anywhere close enough to that. And it's really important. In order for you to build muscle, you want to have the volume, but you also have to have that kind of progression where you only have one to two in the tank. Here's how you can tell. You're slowed down. Like if you're going and doing your exercise and all of a sudden you're having trouble maintaining the speed, that's one of the signs. If you're starting to feel like you're going to lose your form or your form starts to go a little bit, that's the other signs.
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And those are what I'm looking for is, am I losing my form? Am I slowing down? Then I know I'm close to that failure. So I want to go to about one to two reps in reserve. Very, very important. I focus on working within a range. And we used to think that there was a very tight range to build muscle and that, you know, like if you went past 12 or 15, you were doing endurance training. If you went really low, you were just doing strength.
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It's a broad range. It's probably somewhere in the 5 to 30 reps, 6 to 30 reps, 6 to 25 reps. But I think the easiest thing for us is to focus somewhere in the 8 to 12 or 15 repetitions. What you again want to get to is when you get to that point where you can't, you know, you feel like your form's breaking and you're slowing down. That's when you take a break.
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You don't ever push in bat form, by the way. That is super duper important. And I like to talk about lifting heavy, but let's talk about what lifting heavy means. That doesn't mean going and grabbing the biggest barbells or dumbbells at the gym. It means what's heavy for you. That might be five pounds, 10 pounds, 20 pounds. What's heavy for you so that you can do sets of, again, let's say six to 15 in good form. If you're working in an eight to 12 rep range and you can keep going after 12, you need to go a little heavier.
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If you can't quite get to six to eight, you need to lighten the load a little bit. So that's how you think about it. And again, heavy is relative to whatever rep ranges you're doing and how strong you are. So that's super important there. I focus on compound movements first. I want to get the biggest bang for my exercise buck. The reality is when you think about upper body pushing exercises like a pushup, like an overhead press, like a dip,
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These all use your triceps. So I could do overhead presses and push-ups and use my chest muscles, my shoulder muscles, my triceps, or I could just do tricep extensions and use my triceps. I'm going to use compound movements. They are more metabolically costly. They pull more muscle groups in. And if at the end you have extra time and you want to throw some triceps extensions and bicep curls in, go for it. But focus first on the big power moves. Okay.
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And again, that was upper body pushing. Upper body pulling would be things like a pull down or a pull up, a bent over row, a seated cable row, an upright row, multi-joint exercises that cross, again, that are compound. And whether you use machines or free weights,
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For hypertrophy, hypertrophy is the same, but here's the reality. I like to train to get better at life, and in life I'm not bolted to the floor. So quite often I'll do things where I am using more free weights because it requires more of my nervous system to pull in, and it's more duplicating things that I do in real life. So I tend to focus more on that, but you can use machines, especially if you are not comfortable, concerned about getting injured. You know, that could be a great place to start too. Okay.
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When you're just starting out, start with body weight. Start easy. You can always go heavier, but if you hurt yourself, it's really hard to come back from. So I always like to go slow, build up low, you know, and see how you feel. If you are injured, if you are sore at the joint site –
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That's never a good sign, right? And if you're sore more than two days, not a good sign or sore to the touch. So I like to just build on a good base and start out easy with it. For hypertrophy, volume overall during the week is actually the biggest driver. So if you did one hard day a week, but a lot of volume,
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It can work, but I personally think you're better off doing two or three days a week. And I really like to do that where you have a day, like maybe you're doing a push-pull one day, take a break the next or do high-intensity interval training the next or leg day the next, then come back and do push-pull again.
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In my perfect world, you do pushing and pulling two to three days a week, rest day in between, and you'd get 20 different sets for your pushing exercises each week, 20 different sets for your pulling exercises each week. So what that might look like is two days a week. You do two sets of five of push-ups and overhead presses.
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two sets of five of pull-downs and seated cable rows or bent-over rows, right? That's an easy way to think about doing it. I like to think once I've gotten this going at the first 8 to 12 weeks, once I've done that, what I like to think of is in terms of kind of 8-week sessions where I will do specific exercises, then I'll take a week where I go a little light, I go longer and lighter and do what is called a deload.
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and then I'll come back and hit it again. So that's that. Now you can do this at a gym. You can also do this at home. You can do this at home using a TRX machine, using dumbbells, using a chair, using bands. The most important thing is that you are consistently able to do this. So if you are not able to get to a gym,
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then do it at home with the TRX and bands and dumbbells. And if you are injured or you're traveling and you don't have access to weights, I love the TRX, but you could also look at something called blood flow restriction training because that is a very easy way to continue to work out without having to lift the heavier weights.
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If you are short on time, I'm going to give you a little hack that I love to do. One of the challenges with lifting weights is that you have rest breaks in between and you need to take those rest breaks. If you do a set of 15 repetitions of, say, an overhead press and rest for 30 seconds and go again, you really didn't give your body adequate rest and you're working more muscular endurance than working in hypertrophy.
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So what you're going to do is break for about 90 seconds to two minutes. Well, that can take time. But what you can do in the interim is what we call supersetting, where you could do a push-up and then you could alternate that with a bent-over row. Or you can do a pull-down and you can alternate that with a dip. So you can do opposite exercises. So push exercise.
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Alternate with a pull exercise, super setting so that you don't have to, you know, sit there for a break and do nothing. Makes it a little bit more time efficient. The biggest driver for hypertrophy is, of course, actually doing the work. You got to do the work. And in fact, I think it was Dr. Stuart Phillips was saying it was like 75% exercise, 25% diet. But I just recently heard that I think he's changed his mind to it's 90% exercise, 10% diet. Here's the reality.
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you can do the perfect diet, but if you're not lifting the weight, you're not gonna build any muscle. So you gotta do the work and the work itself will trigger muscle protein synthesis. So you gotta do the work. So don't think you can just eat correctly, get your protein in, do all that and you're gonna build muscle. Ain't happening. Okay, so I wanna be very clear on that. However, we do wanna make sure that you're giving your body what it needs in order to build that muscle. And so, of course, you knew I was gonna say this,
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that protein is non-negotiable. Now, one of the things we know that happens at 40 plus is this phenomenon called anabolic resistance. What we don't know right now, and I'm very curious about, is what would happen if you've always been active and you're very insulin sensitive, et cetera. How much would this play a role? That's what I haven't been able to get any kind of data on. So from what I can tell, the more insulin resistant you are, the more sedentary you are,
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the worse this anabolic resistance is. But it also is something that happens with aging. So it's also an issue with aging. And so we can't really get away from it. And so what does that mean? That means we have to work harder. We have to work harder at the gym and make sure we have the protein on board in order to push through that anabolic resistance, which makes it harder for us to build muscle.
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So for protein, the calculation, and we have a protein calculator at jjvirgin.com forward slash protein first to help you with this. But it's basically 0.7 to 1 gram per pound of target body weight. Probably 0.7 is going to do it for you. However...
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I have some reasons, and as we talk about how to make sure you can reveal those muscles by dropping fat, I have some reasons I believe we're better off going to the higher levels of protein. But for muscle protein synthesis's sake, 0.7 grams per pound of target body weight will likely give you what you need. That's basically 30 to 40 grams of protein per meal. And if you are...
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more plant-based, if you're sedentary, if you're working out super hard, then I would push it a little bit higher. And again, I'd rather err on the high side than err on the low side. One of the things we're getting from that protein, we're getting the essential amino acids, and it's really the balance of all of those that matter. There is one, leucine. This is the work of Dr. Donald Lehman. It shows that it triggers, helps trigger that muscle protein synthesis, but you can't just take leucine and have that happen. You need all of them.
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as well. So they're all important. So along with eating your protein and making sure that you digest it well, one of the things that I use are my protein digestive enzymes from Reignite Wellness because as we age, our stomach acid goes down and we do not digest our protein as well. If you're just starting to eat more animal-based protein, also helpful to take the enzymes here. But here are some of the other things that I do to help support muscle protein synthesis, help
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support me being able to work out harder, recover better. One of them is creatine HCL. I have a product called Sheatine. I did create a creatine guide at jjvirgin.com forward slash creatine guide that goes through everything you'd ever want to know about creatine, how to dose it, the difference between monohydrate and HCL, why I've chosen HCL. I put it together with creatine HCL with magnesium and taurine because of the exponential effect it has on your body creating and regenerating ATP.
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Really what you're doing is creatine. As you're helping your body have the energy and be able to work out harder, creatine on its own is not going to build muscle. But creatine can help you work out harder and recover better. Creatine HCL, you need a much smaller dose of because it's better absorbed. 750 milligrams to about a gram is basically what you need there. And then if you've got more needs due to stress,
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sleep deprivation, super hard workouts, or any kind of brain stuff going on, then you can kick the dose up a little bit more. The other thing that I love to use is I use collagen, not to build muscle, but to support my joints. So prior to going to the gym, I take a hit of collagen, because I know I'm gonna have more blood flow into my joints, so I take the collagen so I have it on board to help.
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And I also take a joint health formula from Qualia Health because Qualia Life because joints are my issue from doing dumb things in my teens and early 20s and really kind of blowing out knees and breaking feet and all sorts of stuff. The other thing that I take to the gym with me, so I put my sheatine powder in a big jug.
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with electrolytes, with my essential aminos as well, it may be overkill. Here's the reality. I think essential amino acids are kind of this unsung hero we aren't talking a whole lot about, but especially for people who are not getting the protein they need in their diet, it might be sarcopenic.
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This is where I would say, hey, let's get some essential aminos with your breakfast. So if you've got a skimpy protein breakfast, we've got you pumped up a little bit. Maybe same with dinner before bed. So we make sure we know what we have on board. I like to do them, especially if I'm going into the gym in the morning, fasted. I'll go in with that. Overall, if you're getting the protein that you need each day, you're probably fine.
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However, I see with so many women that they're not. So this is my little insurance policy for that. The other thing that I use is protein powder. I use, in my Reignite Wellness company, I have both a bone broth and a pea. I like to mix them together, add some collagen, and that's what I do for my loaded protein smoothie. I throw in there a little bit of something called Yolked as well. This is a fertilized egg yolk protein that's been found to increase muscle protein synthesis.
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some amazing research on this. I noticed a two and a half pound fat-free mass increase in two months by adding it in. So I am on that, as you can imagine. So that's another one that I do. The other thing that I do is, but I don't worry about when I take this as much. I take MitoPure's timeline by MitoPure because it helps
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with regenerating your mitochondria, one of the things that slows down as we age. So really helpful. It's kind of like exercise in a bottle. It helped people build strength without even any exercise. Now, I don't think that's the way to go, but why not add in everything that can help? Along with that, fish oil has been found to be anabolic. I wonder if some of that's because it helps reduce inflammation.
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And of course, you need D3K2. So those are some of the other things that can help support. So we've got how to build the muscle and getting that volume in and progressively overloading. Those are the key points of how to build muscle and really focusing on compound movements first. And if you do want to throw in a tricep extension or bicep curl, do it at the end. Then we've got the diet and...
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and what you need to do to really feed those muscles, the protein, and then the things that I love along with that, like my sheatine, the myosfortotropin, collagen for the joint support, and essential aminos. Here's the reality. If you build a lot of muscle, but you got a lot of fat covering it,
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you're not gonna see it. And that's probably not what you're looking for when you're building those arms. When people talk about toned arms, I think what they don't realize is that the way you create muscle tone is by building muscle so that it's like partially passively contracted all the time. So you gotta build the muscle, but then you gotta strip the fat off, right?
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You don't want to have great muscle with a big layer of fat covering it. Now, one of the cool things that happens as you build muscle is its metabolic spanks boosts your resting metabolic rate by being on your body and helps improve insulin sensitivity and makes you better at burning fat. However, if you're eating too much, you're eating too much and you will still have fat on. So I'm going to defer over to my buddy, Dr. Bill Campbell, who I just adore. Okay.
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Super awesome researcher, and he is at University of South Florida. And I love what he does, which is this idea of caloric cycling. So the reality is we used to think that you could not lose fat and build muscle at the same time. We now know it's called recomping in the biz. We now know that this can happen. What we want to make sure for sure is that if you are losing weight, you're only losing fat and you're holding on to muscle. But bonus points, if you can build muscle, lose fat at the same time,
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which we now know you can do. So here's what I want you to think about. And again, shout out to Dr. Bill Campbell for this. Number one, think about losing one half to one percent of your body weight a week, because more than that will not be from fat. So that's basically what you can lose in order to just lose fat while you're holding on to or building skeletal muscle. Okay, that's the first thing.
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The second thing is make sure you're keeping that protein up. And this is where I find it better to be a little bit on the higher side and even maybe even higher than one gram. It's not that it's going to give you more muscle protein synthesis. We probably saturated all of that.
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What it is going to give you is, and it may not even give you more satiety because there's a question mark of protein's the most satiating of the macronutrients, but once we've gotten that point of satiety, can you be more and more satiated? But if you're satiated, you're satiated, so don't know that that matters. But here's where it does help. Protein is the most thermic of the macronutrients. About 25% of the calories from protein are used just in the digestion and absorption and assimilation, so...
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If you're eating protein, you actually can eat a little bit more and you're generally not as hungry, so you're eating less. So I find that it's just easier for people who are focused on getting into a little caloric restriction to eat more protein. And basically, like protein fiber for the win, right? So you'll have great blood sugar control.
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Bill taught me that I love is this concept of caloric cycling, where five days a week, you do a 20 to 25% caloric deficit. Think if you're at 2,000 calories as your maintenance calories, that you would go to 1,500 calories five days a week, then go to normal on the weekend. Now, caveat, this does not mean become a piggy and go all out on the weekends. This is not what we're talking about.
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It is just eat normal during the weekend and then come back to the 25%. So that's part of it, that kind of cycling. The next thing is to make sure that you are getting in your non-exercise activity thermogenesis. When we look at your total daily energy expenditure, it comes from resting metabolic rate. We can impact that with...
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more muscle. It comes from thermic effect of food. We can impact that with more protein. And then it comes from activity. Some of that's exercise, but more of it is non-exercise activity, thermogenesis, just flat out moving more all throughout the day. So got to make sure you're getting in those steps. And the more steps, the better. It's just a nice way to use fat for a fuel. And just, you know, this can be the difference of a couple hundred or more calories a day.
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So I track that every day and make sure that I'm getting in at least 8,000 steps a day. My goal really is more like 12,000 steps a day or more. The other thing I like to throw in here is a little HIIT training. So if you're doing your pushing and pulling for your arms two to three days a week, I love two days of HIIT training in there as well.
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The reason that I like the high-intensity interval training is it can rip off that visceral adipose tissue. It really helps your body use fat for fuel and helps you train your sympathetic nervous system to handle stress better too. So I really love a little HIIT training, plus it's good for VO2 max training. So that's what I like to do. Final thing here, when should you eat? How should you fuel for your workouts? This is like one of the most hotly debated things online. Should you
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Here's the reality. Consistency in your training and consistency in getting in your protein, that's what matters most. So it's the overall protein each day and it's the volume of training with progressive overload each week. That is what matters most. Fasted versus non-fasted, what the research actually is showing, and there's just a new study that came out. Shout out to my buddy Vanessa Spina of the Ultimate Protein Podcast, because the
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This recent study showed slight advantage maybe for doing fasted, but that it really doesn't matter. Here's my take on fasted versus not fasted workouts. You do what works best for you. When I'm traveling, I have to generally work out at 6, 630 in the morning, which I hate, by the way, but I do it because it's the only time I'm going to get a workout in.
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And when I do that, I'm not going to eat. Like I just woke up. So what I have is coffee. I throw a little collagen in my coffee because I really like to have collagen on board when I'm working out. If anything I can do to get more collagen into my joints, I'm doing it. And then I throw my essential amino acids, my Electro Replenish, and my Sheetine creatine powder. I throw those three products. Those are all my own products I made into a water bottle with a little Peak Life green tea. And I go to the gym with that. That's how I deal with it.
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I feel the best a couple hours after waking up, eating, then going to the gym, but it doesn't always happen like that. So I say do what feels where you notice you have the most energy to work out because the most important thing of all is how hard you can work out, right? So that matters the most. As far as fasted workouts to burn more fat, that's ridiculous, just so you know.
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So fasted workout, the big theory before was, well, do fasted workouts because you'll burn more fat during the workout. Well, you might burn more fat, but overall, will you lose more fat? There was no indication that that was the case. The reality with losing body fat is that's the overall, at the end of the day, are you in a deficit? So your body had to use stored body fat for fuel. That's what matters. All right. So you figure out what works best for you. That's the key takeaway. You are the N of one.
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here. So let's put this all together in a strategy that can work for you. Number one, I've got a cheat sheet for you that I'm going to link in the show notes of how to start a resistance training program because you want to do those big compound movements. Number two, make sure you're getting in that protein overall at least 100 grams a day,
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0.7 to one gram per pound of target body weight. Ideally, break it into your meals and make it more even. The research supports that that's probably the better way to go. I like to use the chronometer app and a food scale to ensure I'm getting what I need. Think about those supplements like sheatine, aminos, that fortitropin I was talking about, the collagen. Like, think about the supplements that really can make a difference here. Get those daily steps in. That's going to help you with getting the fat off, and that is super-duper important.
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along with making sure that you're doing that caloric restriction cycling if you're trying to lose body fat. And then, you know, make sure that you have enough protein on board either before the workout or after the workout. But sometime around the workout, get that protein in and then get those carbs in. That will help you with having the energy on board, first of all, and your muscles being able to repair and having the energy on board for the next time. But it doesn't have to be like within this amount of time or right before. It's actually not as important as we...
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thought it would be. My big question to you is, okay, what's the big change you're going to make now so that you have these amazing tone-defined arms? I'd love to hear. And if you'd love more information like this, I know you would, right?
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Be sure to subscribe and join my Facebook group because we do a lot of stuff in there too. I've been doing some Ask Me Anythings in the Facebook group where you can ask me any questions. We try to do those every week or so. So be sure to join my JJ Virgin Lifestyle Facebook group too. And I'll see you next time.
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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 and leave an honest review. Second, take a screenshot of your review.
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And third, text it to 813-565-2627. That's 813-565-2627. When you do, I'll reply using my brand new Virtual JJ. It's my on-demand virtual self built from my books, talks, and years of experience so I can interact with you directly.
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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.
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Hey, JJ here, and just a reminder that the Well Beyond 40 podcast offers health, wellness, fitness, and nutritional information that's designed for educational and entertainment purposes only. You should not rely on this information as a substitute for, nor does it replace professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. If you have any concerns or questions about your health, you should always consult with a physician or other healthcare professional and ask you to do it.
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Make sure that you do not disregard, avoid, or delay obtaining medical or health-related advice from your healthcare professional because of something you may have heard on the show or read in our show notes. The use of any information provided on the show is solely at your own risk. Starting a business can seem like a daunting task, unless you have a partner like Shopify.
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