ATHE_Transcript_Ep 600_Stop Counting Calories, Do This Instead
JJ Virgin: [00:00:00] I’m JJ Virgin, PhD dropout, sorry mom, turned four time New York Times best selling author. Yes, I’m a certified nutrition specialist, fitness hall of famer, and I speak at health conferences and trainings around the globe, but I’m driven by my insatiable curiosity and love of science to keep asking questions, digging for answers, and sharing the information I uncover with as many people as I can, and that’s why I created the Well Beyond 40 To synthesize and simplify the science of health into actionable strategies to help you thrive.
In each episode, we’ll talk about what’s working in the world of wellness, from personalized nutrition and healing your metabolism, to healthy aging and prescriptive fitness. Join me on the journey to better health so you can love how you look and feel right now and have the energy to play full out at 100.[00:01:00]
So if calorie counting worked long term, You probably wouldn’t be watching this video, right? There’s a different way of tracking your food intake that works so much better. And I’m about to show you why. I mean, calories count, but where they come from counts way more. And it turns out that your macro ratios, that’s protein, fat, and carbs can impact your metabolism by as much as 30 percent and eating the wrong foods, things like ultra processed foods can actually lower the thermic effect of that meal by as much as 50%.
I mean, these are. Huge swings can make a dramatic difference in your body composition. So while eating too much healthy food is unhealthy, and too many calories can cause weight gain, eating the right amount of macros for you and avoiding or minimizing metabolism zapping foods can make fat loss practically effortless.
So the secret is to go [00:02:00] beyond counting calories and shift to tracking macros. Especially protein. Now I’m only talking for a short while. I want you to think of this like a macro audit so that you can dial in the right formula for you. I’m going to give you a couple reasons why you want to do this. So there’s a Duke study that showed that people who tracked consistently lost more weight than those who didn’t.
And Kaiser Permanente’s Center for Health Research published a study of nearly 1, 700 participants, in which it was found that individuals who kept daily food records… Loss twice as much weight as those who kept no records. In fact, the more food records kept by participants in the study… The more weight they lost.
And then there was a new study led by Stanford Medicine that showed that at least one thing is super clear. No matter which weight loss tactic you choose, you’re typically more successful if you track your progress with digital health tools. [00:03:00] According to this study, the closer people tracked their weight loss efforts with things like smartwatches or digital scales and diet monitoring websites, The more weight they tended to lose.
The analysis also revealed that individuals who track their diet or physical activity digitally were more engaged, meaning they were more consistently active in using their tools than those who track their behavior through more traditional means, like they wrote it down, right? So that is all to convince you that just for a short amount of time, like give me a month.
That you should be tracking. Now, hopefully that’s convinced you. So what should you be tracking? Here’s what we’re going to do. So you’re doing macro tracking. Again, I want you to think of this like an audit. So what are the important things here? Well, there’s protein, there’s carbs, there’s fat, and there’s fiber.
So we’re going to look at fiber and goal of being at least 30 grams or more a day. We’re going to look at carbs. And by the way, a lot of these apps will have, do you want to have carbs or net [00:04:00] carbs, just do carbs. And then you’re also going to look at overall calories because you want to kind of get a feel, even though this is an imperfect science because of the thermic effect of food, et cetera, you still just want to get a feel for like, how much do I really do?
What, where do I feel my best? So one of the things that you’re going to need is a food scale and some cups and spoons, right? You got to weigh in and you got to measure. Here’s the deal. We tend to underestimate what we eat by 40%. Once you start to do this and you see, oh, this is what five ounces of chicken breast looks like.
Ah, this is what a cup of almond milk yogurt looks like. You’ll get it. But left to your own devices, those little amounts get bigger and bigger. Now remember, this isn’t forever. So here’s how I want you to start. The first thing that I want you to do is you’re just going to track. Without changing a thing, you’re just being curious and gathering information.
So you’re tracking again, your [00:05:00] protein, your fat, your carbs, your fibers, and your overall calories. Just do this for one week, because what you will find just doing this for one week, Is you will make better choices. I saw this with my husband. He was like fighting me to track. And then finally he gave in.
And what he discovered was he was eating a lot of fat and carbs he wasn’t thinking about. He was doing, you know, some siete chips with hummus, just kind of stuff, healthy food. But again, too much healthy foods, unhealthy. So it really helped him become aware of how much extra stuff was just kind of getting added in, especially on the fat zone.
So that’s the first week. And you get really clear of like, how much fiber am I getting in average per day and carbs and protein? How much protein am I getting average when I get up in the morning and have break my fast? So that’s the first part. Second part is protein. So all I want you to do for one week is focus on getting the right amount of protein for you.
I will have a link below. for my protein [00:06:00] calculator so you can figure out exactly how much you need. And all you do this week is make sure you’re getting that protein in. And what I want you to start to watch for is as you’re doing that, what’s shifted in the rest of your macros and calories? So as you’ve started to increase your protein, because likely you will, because most people under eat protein, Anywhere from 30 to 50%.
So as you start to do that, you’ll go, Oh, wow, I started to kick out a little bit of fat, or I started to kick out a little bit of carbs. What’s interesting is the research shows that when you increase protein, especially when you eat protein first, you actually tend to make better food choices, especially you eat more non starchy vegetables.
Now, the other thing that happens as you increase protein is. You have less cravings, you have better satiety, and you tend to eat less because beyond the satiety, it’s also more thermic. It’s using more calories. Protein has a way higher thermic effect of food than fat or carbs, 20 to 30 [00:07:00] percent versus carbs, 5 to 10 percent versus fat, negligible, like 3 percent or less.
All right, so that’s the second thing you do. The third thing you do, and this is week by week, all right? Super easy. Third week, I want to make sure that you’re getting in at least five servings or more, and hopefully more, of non starchy vegetables each day and two food servings. So what is a non starchy serving?
It’s a half a cup of cooked or a cup of raw. So cauliflower rice, cook it up, half a cup, it’s a serving. Salad greens, a cup, a serving. So you can see how easy this is. Like I tend to get five servings at my dinner and five servings at my lunch. I would love to see you get 10 servings a day, bonus points, star student, but at least five, that’s your minimum.
And two servings of fruit. Now for fruit, here’s the rules. Fresh or frozen, not juiced, dried, [00:08:00] syruped, jammed. Okay? So you want to eat fresh or frozen fruit, and ideally look for, you know, always conclude at least a berry serving in there. And then one more thing about the veggies and the fruit. Diversity of colors.
Mix this up. Don’t get into a veggie rut. And then start to as you’re doing this. We’re really adding before we’re taking away. We added the protein. Now we added in more vegetables and some fruit. I want you to look at what else is going on. What’s shifting now in the rest of your macros and your overall calories?
Cause you’re probably seeing that things are starting to look even better. The fourth thing that I want you to do is start to zero in on those carbohydrates. Now, if you need a little bit more help here, this is the Sugar Impact Diet, where I really talk about the right types of carbs to reach for.
Remember, all carbs, except for fiber, turn to sugar. It’s just a difference of whether you’re making them from the berries or the lentils, or you’re mainlining them from, say, the Skittles, right? So you know which one I want you to choose. So carbs are going to be somewhere around 100 [00:09:00] to 130. I do 100 as a baseline, 100 grams.
And then I always say, if you want more than that, earn them with exercise. And I do 25 grams per each 30 minutes of hard exercise. That’s not going out for a walk. Now I’m monitoring fiber in here, but I’m not dealing with the net carbs. I’m just focusing on getting enough fiber. Basically 30 grams is sort of my low point.
I really love 50. That’s like star student again, right there is 50. So that’s the next thing. And then finally, I know I said four weeks. Okay, but we’re into the fifth. But the first week doesn’t really count ’cause you’re just checking things out. The fifth one, we’re really modulating fat. So think about where fat’s gonna come from.
Now when you eat animal protein, you get some fat in it, right? If you’re eating wild fish, if you’re eating grass fed beef, you’re going to get some fat with that. And the cool thing is when you’re eating. These better animal choices, which are the only ones that you want to eat. You’re also going to get more omega 3s and that is super duper important.
So that’s the first place you’re going to [00:10:00] start counting fat in, which you’ll see on the app. The app will do it naturally for you. Then add in what you’re using for cooking. So maybe you’re using a little bit of avocado oil. Maybe you’re using some extra virgin olive oil on your salad. Maybe using some coconut oil for cooking.
That’s what I want you to watch. And what I want you to really watch is. Use those ones and really avoid using more of the seed oils, the omega 6 oils here, just because they’re more refined. They can be more damaged and more pro inflammatory. So I’m talking corn, sunflower, safflower, soy. Let’s focus on instead the extra virgin olive oil, the avocado, and the coconut.
But again, we’re just going to use a little bit for cooking. What I tend to do with cooking is I’ll start a saute with a little bit of avocado oil, and then I will add in some bone broth. So things like that, so I’m not just heaving on a bunch of fat. And finally, if I have room for more fat, this is where I add in my whole food fats.
And these would be things like nuts and seeds, [00:11:00] avocado, coconut, olive, dark chocolate. I put that first. It should actually be dark chocolate than nuts and seeds and avocado, right? And I eat an ounce of dark chocolate at least every single day. That’s the other part of it. Now here’s the thing with fat, it happens up fast.
And so you want to make sure you’re really getting in because we’ve got the essential fatty acids we need, but we really want to focus more there on the essential fatty acids. And where I tend to go with that is I kind of like 60 grams as a starting point, or about 0. 3 to 0. 5 grams per pound of target body weight.
But this is a real sliding scale here, because some people feel better lower carb, higher fat. Some people do better higher fat, lower carb. The thing you never want to do is the high carb, high fat, low protein. That. is the obesogenic formula. It’s kind of the food guide pyramid. We already know what happened there, right?
So that’s something we don’t want to go anywhere near. So you start playing around with that. Protein stays absolute. And then you really go through and you [00:12:00] go, how do I feel here? How do I feel when I eat a lower carb, higher fat diet? How do I feel the opposite? And you should be able to do both, remember, and be metabolically healthy.
Flexible. That’s what’s super duper important. Now I want to again, drive this one home. You gotta avoid the fat storing duo. Again, that’s high carb. Plus high fat. What’s that look like? Cereal and milk. Oh my gosh, a muffin and a latte. Right? Chips and dip. All of that kind of stuff. And then the other thing that I want you to do and monitor on your app is I want you to monitor your water and your fluids.
And again, you want to be drinking at least half your body weight in ounces every day, right? Plus four ounces for every 15 minutes of exercise. So make sure that you’re getting all of that in super duper important. And the other thing that you can do on the app is that you can watch your eating window.
And here’s where I want you to focus. I want you to focus on an eating window, max is 12 hours, but ideally it’s [00:13:00] more in that nine to 10 hour range, following the normal circadian rhythm. Shout out to Dr. Satchin Panda’s work here, where you wake up, you eat breakfast, you break your fast somewhere between.
An hour to two hours after you wake up, you stop eating three to four hours before bed, you eat about every four hours, right? And so if you have to eat higher protein, you’re a bigger person, need more protein. Then you might need to eat four meals or you’re super athletic. So that’s an important thing to know too, is you can do that, but let’s keep that feeding window max 12 hours and it can be somewhere in that eight to 12 hour range.
There is a time of course, when you can work well with doing a little intermittent fasting to add some caloric variability and drop it down to a five to six hour with two meals as well. So here’s the deal with this. This is something that you do for a short amount of time to really figure out. What works best for you and get yourself on track.
I literally have done this on a [00:14:00] cruise ship while traveling. I traveled with a food scale and I just asked a lot of questions so that I really got clear on if I didn’t have a scale, like what was the protein size? How much are they using in terms of oil? And I did my best guesstimates, but man, you know, I went through a cruise, had a great time, ate great, didn’t gain any weight purely, I think, because of tracking.
If you’re doing this and you get yourself all dialed in and it’s fantastic, then you don’t have to do it. However, if you get stuck in a plateau, then it’s time to go back in. And if you get stuck in a plateau, I’m going to give you a little tool that you can use too, and you can use the app to do this.
You can add into each day a little bit, I mentioned this earlier, of intermittent fasting, a shortened window. Doing something more in the five to six hour period. So you just kick out a meal. That will drop your calories right there and cause some caloric variability, but it’s not chronic low calories that’s going to drop your metabolism, right?
So it works way better. And you make sure that you’re eating great high protein at those two meals, like [00:15:00] 40 to 60 grams at each of them. Now, again, you don’t have to do this indefinitely. It’s just to give you a sense of how things work for you. And it’s always this tool in your hip pocket if you need to get back on track.
I like to do this with bio impedance tracking, with a weekly waist measurement, sometimes I’ll even throw in some continuous glucose monitoring in there. And remember, you’re weighing in daily, you’re taking that average of your weight and your average of your body fat so that you can catch it early if things are going in the wrong direction and go back to tracking.
Once you get the hang of tracking your macros, you’re going to have to know what to do with that information, right? The best way to see how it’s working for you. is not by monitoring your weight. You also got to monitor what that weight is made up of, and that means you’re going to be using a body composition scale.
Now I talk all about this in my next video on the best way to measure body fat. You’ll learn how to use testing to fine tune fat loss and muscle gain. How to find your ideal [00:16:00] body fat range and the best exercise for your ideal body composition. So tune in. Be sure to join me next time for more tools, tips, and techniques you can incorporate into everyday life to ensure you look and feel great.
And more importantly, that you’re built to last. And check me out on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube. And my website, jjvirgin.com and make sure to follow my podcast. So you don’t miss a single episode at subscribetojj.com. See you next time.

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