ATHE_Transcript_Ep 442_Liz Clark
JJ Virgin: [00:00:00] Welcome to beginnings and breakthroughs. This is where I celebrate and coach people just like you, who are on a mission to heal their metabolisms, feel better, fast, and live their best lives. We will be walking through. What’s worked for them and what they’ve discovered on their journeys, and then I’ll coach them on their next best steps.
And if you’re interested in being a guest, stay tuned and I’ll be sharing how you can join me. All right. I will be right back with our awesome guest.
So tell me, give us a little bit of history about where you know, where you were, what you’ve done, and then, then we’re gonna go, where are we gonna go from here? Which is the most exciting part we wanna, but let’s celebrate some success too, right?
Liz Clark: Well, when you [00:01:00] first came out with your Virgin diet, I did that imperfectly.
JJ Virgin: What does that mean?
Liz Clark: it was a real challenge to drop some of the, you know, when you start reading the labels and gluten was in everything, right. And the corn is in everything and it, so it was a very different way of eating and. I probably stayed 80, 90% good after the first detox for maybe a month.
And every time I did it, I extended it a little bit longer.
JJ Virgin: Okay.
Liz Clark: And I got to where I could maintain it for about
JJ Virgin: six months. Well, did you notice because here’s the whole thing and. And I’m really trying to reframe this whole idea of a diet. There’s a couple, there’s a couple things that I’m gonna give you that I think will help make a, a big difference.
And they’re much more mindset shifts. And I think one of the big challenges we have is this idea of a diet and being on it or off it, [00:02:00] or, or I’m perfect, or I’m not because I, I don’t know about you, but like I’ve done nothing perfect in my life. The only perfect thing I did was. Give birth to my two baby boys.
Then I was like an imperfect mom, right? There’s nothing like, no, one’s perfect at anything. So it’s not about being perfect. It’s about using that as a tool. And so it, to me, a diet and I really wish there were a different name from like, you know, the diet is the way we eat every day and then there’s a diet and they’re totally different things.
And the reality is the Virgin diet, just like the sugar impact diet was set up. To take you through a process for a short period of time. , you know, to help you identify during that time, how you feel when you eat certain foods so that you can go, wow, I ate gluten, like, and I’ll just give you personal things.
I eat gluten and I’m like, okay, boom, my fingers swell. And I’ll go up three pounds on the scale overnight. Now did I? I didn’t sit down, eat. Three pounds worth of food. So, you know, I know calories wise, I know that [00:03:00] it was inflammation. I eat dairy, I get mucusy and break out. So I know my reactions to ’em because I’ve gone through, taken them out, given my body a chance to cool off reset, clean up, and then I’ve come back and tried it.
And it was like, bam. right. So that is really what we’re doing, because then it puts the power in your hands to go. All right. I’m here and there’s this gluten containing thing. And I know I’m gonna feel crappy if I eat it. I’m willing to pay the price or you have such an extreme reaction. You go, this is something I should never, ever touch.
Right. You, you learn how to work with food and how to have the right relationship with it. So that’s what really the point is. And you may find that when you pull out, like, I know for me, gluten dairy soy, I just in corn, I feel better when I don’t eat them. Like they don’t do anything good for me. And most of our processed food is gluten, dairy, eggs, corn, soy, peanuts, and sugar.
Right. I didn’t include sugar there cause I just, I’m not a sugar eater, but so that’s really, I [00:04:00] want you just to kind of get that mindset. Because that’s what I’m really, my real goal is for you to go, oh, I eat when I eat this, like I just had a gal, we’re doing the Virgin diet in a group that I’m in.
And she said, you know, I gained a pound and a half eating corn one day. I mean, she didn’t eat. Like, you know, 5,000 calories worth of corn. Right. And then she goes, the next day I gained another pound and half eating corn. I go, yeah. Cuz your body is inflamed from eating corn. Stop it. so that’s the first thing I want you to think about there.
So when you did the Virgin diet, what did you discover about how you felt? Did you go through the process where you pull out the foods and then go back and be challenging?
Liz Clark: I learned so much doing that. And I had also tried the because I think a podcast you did with Sarah Godfried mm-hmm . So I pulled out caffeine, which was a trigger soy.
I never really liked it that much, but I had a vegetarian boyfriend, so I went through a period. So I didn’t miss soy when it went. [00:05:00] Okay. Real sugar addict though. And. I love
JJ Virgin: bread. Okay. Yeah. You know, I don’t really know anyone who doesn’t love bread. , you
Liz Clark: know, so, but I learned that when I would eat gluten, my wrists would hurt Uhhuh.
it’s interesting. I now know when I eat rice, I will gain a couple of pounds. But the last detox I did was last year and I think everything just aligned. So I feel like I was reborn on May 17th, 2021, the first of my detox.
JJ Virgin: Wow. So what happened?
Liz Clark: I had been working on some mindset training mm-hmm and.
Jennifer Jimenez, who does transcendence had said something…Oh, I
JJ Virgin: know, I know Jennifer Mary Morrissey’s daughter.
Liz Clark: Right? Cause I’m a life
JJ Virgin: mastery consultant. Awesome. Yeah, no you know, Mary’s one of my closest friends, so, so there was something that [00:06:00]
Liz Clark: Jennifer said about, I don’t know, it just hit me at a different level about imagining.
Who you are. And I always had this feeling that I was a thin person in a fat body because I was fat as a kid. When everybody around me was a toothpick mm-hmm and. You know, my dad said you’re not fat. You’re pleasingly plump. Okay. So I started dieting in high school and probably screwed up my metabolism from there, then on cuz I was a really active kid.
I did sports. I did ballet. I, I was moving all the time, but I was still fat. So started really bad dieting. Mm. Probably in high school, you know, the sneak diet in the back of my mother’s cosmopolitan magazine mm-hmm . But I, I decided with this mindset, there’s a thin person in there, you know, the next opportunity I get, I’m gonna take this thing seriously.
And the pandemic really helped because when we went into lockdown, [00:07:00] I started rebounding every single day. And so I had a habit now of rebounding because in the past, when I would do detoxes, sometimes I would, especially during that transition, when you’re letting all the bad stuff off, I wouldn’t exercise.
When I was detoxing. So this time I said, no, I’m gonna keep doing my rebounding. And I just decided to follow it all to the letter and being that I had no temptation because we were in lockdown and I was already in the habit of cooking for myself and. Your recipes are a stretch for me because I’m not used to cooking, but they’re delicious.
And I, I found a few favorites that I really liked and could carry on after the detox. So on May 17th, 2021, I was 135 pounds, but I felt awful. I felt slow and fat and my joints hurt. [00:08:00] And now this morning I was 109 pounds and I feel great and all the, my joints don’t hurt and I have energy and I’ve eliminated completely corn and soy eggs don’t seem to bother me.
So I’ve added those back in. I don’t do dairy. A little butter, but I usually use ghee. Yeah. And I’ve just learned so much about ingredients. I wouldn’t have tried if it hadn’t been for your recipes and your, I have the sugar impact and the Virgin diet cookbook, and they’re like, Posted noted and tabbed and, and they’re out
JJ Virgin: all the time.
oh, this warms my heart. I’m so thrilled. So corn, soy dairy. What about gluten? Do you do gluten? Not do gluten? What’s your story with gluten gluten? I
Liz Clark: have found that if I do it maybe once a week, but I, I don’t even think about it unless For example, I went out to dinner on the weekend and I knew there [00:09:00] was Pharaoh in this grain bowl that had quinoa and farro.
And I knew I could do that one cuz it had a lot of really good, fresh vegetables in it and
JJ Virgin: olive oil. And Pharaoh’s an interesting one. It’s kind of this low gluten grain. So it’s a little different, I wouldn’t, if someone’s gluten intolerant or celiac, I. It, but there’s a couple things like farro sourdough bread that, that you can tend to handle.
Even if you’re, you know, even if you find you feel better without gluten, if you’re not gluten intolerant or celiac. All right. So there’s that. So, so, I mean, those are some pretty tremendous shifts you’ve made now question for you. And this is some of the stuff that’s gonna be my next book. So we’re gonna give it to you early.
So I, my big thing that I wanna get out in the world is that. It’s kind of like forget aging gracefully. We need to age powerfully [00:10:00] and my whole life I’ve been focused on, you know, and even in grad school, when everything was about cardio and doing cardio, it was always let’s, let’s get strong, let’s do weight training.
And back then it was like, don’t let people do weight training and put muscle on until they’ve lost the weight. And I actually think that that’s the exact opposite of what we need to do, but I also think now. With where you’re at and you had a couple hints early on that made me also go, we need to look at this is I want you to move from just looking at your weight to what your weight’s made up of.
It is. So mission critical you know, remember way back when, when we used to look at total cholesterol as a marker for health, and then they realized, oh, wait, it’s not total cholesterol. We gotta look at HDL and LDL weights. The same. You see, we wanna make sure that what you’re, what you’re weighing in right now that you’ve got enough muscle for you to age powerfully, to be able to have great bones, great insulin sensitivity, and be able to do all the stuff [00:11:00] you wanna do every single day.
And that’s my one big concern because of the history of dieting, which the reason I remember reading something is where they go. Diets don’t hurt your metabolism. I’m like, of course they hurt your metabolism. If you, if you don’t do them correctly, because diet’s done incorrectly where it’s not done as a therapeutic tool is really about how much weight can you lose.
Well, if you wanna lose a lot of weight, you really wanna lose muscle, cuz it weighs a lot and fats fluffy. But the reality is that’s so damaging to your metabolism. If you think about how most weight loss programs happen, big calorie restriction, you drop muscle. Then you go back to eating the way you were.
You put on fat and over time you shift your body composition so that you’ve got higher fat, less muscle. And one of the biggest things that you really wanna make sure you have is you wanna make sure you have. Lean body mass. That means when you step on a scale, you’ve got fat and you got everything else, which is called your lean body mass.
And the thing we can control in lean body mass [00:12:00] is how much muscle we have. And literally as we age, if we’re not using it, we’re losing it. And it is what it’s, where we first become insulin sensitive and have great glucose tolerance. It’s what protects our protects our bones and our organs. So one of the first recommendations to you is I wanna know what that weight’s made up of.
You
Liz Clark: probably the best thing about that detox I did was the Deborah Atkinson bonus at the end. I
JJ Virgin: love hearing that. I’m gonna tell her she’ll be so
Liz Clark: thrilled and I am continuing to work out twice a week with weights. Excellent. So, so last oh
JJ Virgin: a year ago, may and that’s Deborah Atkinson for everybody flipping 50.
She’s amazing. So I
Liz Clark: started out at 31.4% fat. Okay. And 28.1% muscle. And I am now [00:13:00] 16.8% fat and 33.9% muscle.
JJ Virgin: So I’m gonna do a little math here, but just, I flipped them. That is. You dropped almost half, like it’s so close, half your body fat. That to, this is like amazing. Like this is gold star go to the top of the class.
You win all the awards. I mean, this is unheard of. So just so for perspective, for people to understand. And, and it’s funny. I go back when I was in doctoral school, we had spent a whole semester doing body composition testing it was like, it was like, that’s what we did. And the norms that we used back in the eighties are completely different than what we have now.
And I think it’s just like blood values where all of a sudden our lab normal ranges are, are, are not where they used to be. I don’t want you to be normal if you’re listening and I [00:14:00] want you to be ideal. And so I’m gonna give you what the ranges should be, and don’t listen to the stuff you’re hearing out there because it’s the whole thing we’re doing here is so that we can.
Live live longer, younger and live younger longer. Right. And, and when we finally do go out, we go out like a light bulbs. So we feel great. We can do all the things we wanna do. And muscle is key for that. So you gotta have a good body composition. So there’s actually two sides to this. One side of this is how much body fat do you have.
And. For what we wanna have is ideal ranges for women is 18 to 22%. Now we would let them go up to 25%, but when they got up higher than that, and especially like 30, 30, 2%, that was metabolic syndrome. And 25% to me is kind of like the highest I’m gonna go. Because I think after that you start getting into all sorts of metabolic syndrome, types of [00:15:00] things.
Athletic women are in the 15 to 20% range. Right. So you’re now in athlete range. Super cool. And you’re actually gonna get yourself even better, because my sense is because you are five, five, right? How tall are you? Yes. 5, 5, 5, 5. And you weigh how much? 1 0 9, you said yes this morning. So, so yeah, you’re a real, lightweight, a featherweight we’d call you, right?
Liz Clark: I have small feet. I
have
JJ Virgin: small wrists. Okay. So you’re a small boned person. But I do wanna do this one thing. So bear with me And it requires math. So everyone’s gonna have to wait a moment while I get the math. So, so right now that means that you have 90 pounds of lean body mass a little bit more than that, but around that, right.
Let me just check my math just to make sure I didn’t totally boo, boo, this thing. Yeah. And. [00:16:00] So what I would, what I would look at with you is in your waist measurement was went down to, I mean, amazing 32 down to 24.5. I mean, amazing shifts in everything. You’ve got a great hip to waist, to hip ratio where your waist is 24.5.
Your hips are 35. You’ve got a great body fat percentage, but I’m just gonna like, just for the. Give you something to just think about here? I would really focus on seeing if you could add in another day of some resistance training and start to focus, and we’re gonna look at your diet next and go, could we add a little muscle?
And that’s why we’ve gotta really look at weight differently because we all tend to, oh, we don’t wanna lose weight actually at this point, your weight, you know, your, your weight, if you’re small bone and I want to let everybody know that, cause they’re going, oh my gosh, she’s 109 pounds. But if you’re small bone, right.
However, you could probably add a pound or two of muscle on and [00:17:00] it would be even better for you.
Liz Clark: Yeah. I’ve wondered about that. Cuz it seems to be hovering. Just about there. And I don’t know if I need to eat more protein, but my visceral fat…Let’s talk about that.
JJ Virgin: Yeah. Your visceral fat. Yes. Well, I
Liz Clark: have one of those smart scale things and I started out at six, but I’m down to two,
JJ Virgin: so, and that’s so good.
So visceral fat for everybody listening. This has been, this is so, and this is why I love the type of scale you have, where you can look at. Body fat. You can look at your lean body mass and you can also look at visceral fat because the reality is if you’re losing weight, but you’re not losing your waist, then you’re in trouble.
Now, you know, for you, you went from a 32 inch waist to a, is this right? A 32 inch waist to a 20, 24 and a half inch waist.
Liz Clark: Yeah, I was, I think I was pretty inflamed when
JJ Virgin: I started the detox. Oh, holy. I mean that, it like. That’s fall off my chair level here. like, that is really amazing. So, and to drop that [00:18:00] much visceral fat cuz visceral fat’s the scary stuff.
That’s the stuff that can really start to cause bigger health problems. So I mean the things that you’ve shifted here, like are, are just, I, I can’t celebrate you enough. You’re you’re like, I’m like, it’s really quite incredible. So We can look at a couple things now to help with saying adding muscle.
Have you had a recent, like all your labs done, everything checking out there. Do you know how you’re doing with all that? I haven’t
Liz Clark: recently.
JJ Virgin: Okay. There’s a couple things that you just wanna make sure of that we always wanna look at. Obviously you wanna look at the, the bigger markers and this is where I love to do I’ll do things at home, but I, I’m gonna give you a couple things to track, and then I’m gonna have a couple things to look at.
Of course, when you get your labs done, you’re gonna wanna look at a hemoglobin A1C, your fasting, glucose, your fasting insulin. I’m guessing from what’s going on with you, that they are beautiful, but we always wanna know same with a whole cholesterol panel, but also within that, looking at something called [00:19:00] LP little eggs, it’s a very athrogenic type of cholesterol particle.
And then LPPL-A2 to see if you’re plaquing those two. Cause the one thing that I do, like the things that I would look at with you, that I go, okay, these are what we need to check is anything cardiovascular, because you know, women, we get so concerned about breast cancer, but our biggest death rate is from heart disease.
So we wanna make sure that you’re good there. And the other thing is to do, have you done a bone density scan? No, I have not. Okay. We must do that. Because for most people, the first sign of osteoporosis is a broken bone. So we do not want that. So those are the things that I really wanna make sure because they’re, they’re hidden
now in terms of like, You know where you are now and where you’d love to be from here. What are some of your goals? Cuz you feel great. You look great, but where, where, where would you like to go from here?
Liz Clark: [00:20:00] I compete in dog
JJ Virgin: agility. I know I was gonna show you my well, I was gonna get my new little puppy up and I’ve got my 15 year old down here.
So you were gonna get a dog show. Cause I saw that dog
Liz Clark: so I wanna stay competitive. I wanna be able to run with my dog.
JJ Virgin: So that’s great. You’re doing some hit training, right? You do. Perfect. Okay.
Liz Clark: And I’m my agility instructor tells me, it’s kind of like the same muscles you’d use playing soccer. Fast, slow turns,
JJ Virgin: you know, so that’s so great.
So for everybody listening, if you don’t know what high intensity interval training is, it’s a fantastic way to do cardiovascular training because it’s much more real world where you burst and then recover and burst and recover. And if you look at all the major sports like soccer, basketball, that’s what they do.
Burst and recover, burst and recover. So dog agility training is hit training, so that’s fantastic. Okay. What else?
Liz Clark: So it helps me concentrate on balance because I know as I get older falling is, is an issue.
JJ Virgin: Well, [00:21:00] that’s why we’re gonna check your bones too.
Liz Clark: so you know, my goals are just to maintain energy, you know, maintain my strength.
I know the, the weight training made a huge difference. I can easily get. On and off the floor from playing with my dog now. Nice. I don’t have to be helped up. I don’t have to use furniture to get get me up all of those things. And I wanna maintain that.
JJ Virgin: Yes. No, you don’t wanna maintain it.
You’re gonna get even better. I wanna get
Liz Clark: better. I really wanna increase my one day I was doing something on the computer and I, I put my hand over on my arm and I was just freaked out because I felt a muscle. And I kind of wanna, I can feel it. I want more definition.
JJ Virgin: okay, cool. Awesome. It’s
Liz Clark: just a
JJ Virgin: ego thing.
So no, that’s not an, well, actually it’s an ego thing maybe, but you know, what’s awesome. This is also really important for health. So we’re writing down, you’re gonna go get a DEXA scan. You’ll get new lab work just to make sure everything’s cool there, because are you on biodentical hormones or not. No.
Okay. Because one of the things that happens as you go through and you don’t have the estrogen levels that can [00:22:00] reflect back to cardiovascular brain and bones. So that’s why we always wanna do things to protect. I’m gonna make some supplement recommendations that can help there too. And eating getting some flax.
I put some flax meal, couple tablespoons every day into my smoothie, so that can help too. It’s a great phytoestrogen. Do you take supplements? I do. What do you take?
Liz Clark: I take the new multivitamin that you
JJ Virgin: have. Okay. Zinc
Liz Clark: 5,000 units of D3.
JJ Virgin: Okay, good. Have you had a D3 test done? Yes. Okay.
Where were you at?
Liz Clark: I don’t remember the number, but the recommendation was that because I live in Oregon, we don’t have sunshine here.
JJ Virgin: right. So that’s why I asked cuz 5,000 may not be even enough. And remember when you’re taking D3 you’re always taking it with K1 & 2 because you gotta make sure that it’s going in the right places.
Yes. When you’re getting the calcium absorbed. Okay. So, so D when you say the multivitamin, you’re [00:23:00] doing the Packet or the bottle? The bottle. Okay. And then what else?
Liz Clark: And then I have a couple of other supplements that I take from another company. One is called youth. It’s a pharma
JJ Virgin: product. Okay. It is.
Liz Clark: Comprised of nine foods from the blue zone regions around the world.
JJ Virgin: Okay,
Liz Clark: cool. So it has omegas in it. Mm-hmm and then depending on how I’m feeling, cuz sometimes there’s too many pills to take. I also have extra vitamin B that I take. I have some particularly for hair, nails and skin.
JJ Virgin: Oh, when you do get your labs checked, make sure you check your thyroid too.
A TSH free T3 and T4.
Liz Clark: Yes. I’ve had thyroid issues in the past because of a medication that I got put on once that kind of knocked out my thyroid. Mm. Okay. But it’s been much better since then.
JJ Virgin: Cool. Than number. Well, I’ll tell you what I love for hair, skin and nail. So we’ll go to that next, but any other supplement stuff, just
Liz Clark: thinking down through all the list other than Protein powders and green [00:24:00] powder and flax and chia and all of those things.
JJ Virgin: Okay. And how do you sleep? And do you take any extra magnesium?
Liz Clark: I don’t, I’ve tried it at, I haven’t found, I guess the right time of day to take it.
JJ Virgin: I take mine at night, so I actually take three before bed. We call it body calm for a reason. You probably only need one or two. You’re a little bitty thing.
I am not. I’m a six footer. So But it, it is one of those. When I look at deficiencies, you know, we do a good multi pack, so you get the majority of it, but the reality is it’s not gonna have enough magnesium. It’s not gonna have probably, you know, vitamin D really is dosed per labs and then extra fish oil.
Depends. You know, so it sounds like you’re taking some fish oil, so that’s good. So then what are you talk, walk me through your typical week of exercise, what your schedule. [00:25:00]
Liz Clark: So I rebound six days a week. Okay. For anywhere between five and 10 minutes. And it’s a, I use an app on my phone that actually does the interval training so that oh, cool.
Okay. I just follow that. Then I have a dog, so we walk once to twice a day. Generally. At least one of those walks is a mile, mile and a half. Okay. Once a week I walk five miles with a girlfriend dog agility that’s one lesson a week and then a couple practices of probably 10 minutes. Okay. On my own.
Which I don’t call those workouts for me because they’re drill type exercises for my dog.
JJ Virgin: Okay.
Liz Clark: So the class is the only thing where I’m sprinting and running and doing crazy
JJ Virgin: stuff. Okay.
Liz Clark: I’m experimenting with hoop dancing.
JJ Virgin: hoop, dancing, hoop dancing. What is hoop dancing? [00:26:00] Well, it’s a weighted hula hoop.
Oh, wow.
Liz Clark: And okay. I’ve learned to keep it up on my waist and my hips, and now I’m learning to move it up and down and do some other things with it. Very impressed. But it’s totally out of my
JJ Virgin: comfort zone. I totally want a video of that. That’s really great. okay. And then when, when do you do the weight training?
I
Liz Clark: do it every 72 hours. Okay.
JJ Virgin: So
Liz Clark: it kind of moves cuz sometimes depending on whether I’ve done a, a harder workout. I just know, oh, I did one this day. Okay. Four days later, I’m doing this one. So, so
here’s,
JJ Virgin: what’s interesting. First off, I, I would love to see you add in a yoga class. Now, the type of yoga I’m talking about is not like restorative, easy yoga.
I’m talking, I’m talking hard yoga, and I think Deborah’s got some yoga classes in there, but what I’d love to see is like, you actually. Shorten [00:27:00] that time. And I’m gonna give you some things that are gonna help you recover faster. Obviously one of the big important things with weight training is the rule of thumb is 48 hours.
And if it was really hard, 72 hours, or if you’re sore, like sore to touch sore, a joint site, you know, that’s your body saying, Hey, Too hard, but what we really I’d love to see you do is get your weight training in, and it may even be that you flip it so that you do say upper body one day lower body, the next, you know, and just start flipping it.
Cause you’ll be able to work out harder in a shorter amount of time. Right. And get more in. And it really depends on your schedule, but I’d love to see you doing that. And then once a week, adding in a yoga class, and there’s so many different ones, you know, we had just started doing yoga when the pandemic hit.
And so we went online and did it at home. And then. We went back out and it was funny cuz we convinced ourselves that we were really great yogis. Me and my husband were like, oh, [00:28:00] we’re so good. And then and then we go out and we go, we’re in staying in San Diego for the summer and I didn’t pay any attention.
I just saw a class that was. Like at the right time near the Airbnb we were at. So we go in there and it’s like this advanced hot yoga class. It was like, I was like, holy smokes. We need to run outta here. And my husband was like, we’re staying, but I will tell you it, it was really hard. It was super challenging, was especially hard.
Cause we didn’t bring towels or water that time, but it really changed everything. And so I would love to see you challenge yourself with getting into a yoga class. And, you know, like I’d like to see you doing something resistance training every other day. So that could be weights. One day, two days later is yoga.
Two days later is weights again, but just starting to really kick that up some because, and then we are gonna do some stuff that’s gonna help you hold onto or build muscle supplement wise. And. Because you gotta go hand [00:29:00] in hand, you gotta do the, the, the resistance training, which yoga done correctly is definitely resistance training.
I’m not, and again, I’m not talking the restorative stuff, I’m talking the Vinyasa flow type of stuff. And the reason I like it is it puts you into all sorts of positions. You would never be put. And for what you’re doing with agility. And as, as we age, I kick myself every time we did yoga this morning and I was like, why did I ever stop doing this type of stuff?
Because, you know, you’re, you just, you gotta do it. So it helps you hold positions on one leg, you know? And again, it’s stuff, you’re not gonna do this yourself. You gotta have like a class and you can do it online, but it’s not like I doubt. I know I wouldn’t do it myself. So that’s one I’m gonna highly recommend now diet wise.
And, and one other thing before we go to diet, how is your sleep?
Liz Clark: My sleep is okay. I’m I’ve never been able to get it past seven hours.
JJ Virgin: Well, you might not need to get past seven hours. [00:30:00]
Liz Clark: But I’m pretty consistent at seven
JJ Virgin: hours. You might be one of those lucky people that feels great at seven and I’m jealous cuz I’m not.
Have you tracked your sleep to see what kind of quality you’re getting? Yes. And how’s the quality?
Liz Clark: I’m generally in, somewhere in the eighties.
JJ Virgin: So on the, it gives a sleep score on fit. Yeah. So, and I don’t know, is that 80 out of a hundred?
Liz Clark: I think so. Yeah. I’ve gotten into the nineties a couple times and the little thing says excellent. So,
JJ Virgin: all right. And what did you do differently when you got into the nineties?
Liz Clark: I went to bed earlier.
JJ Virgin: What time do we go to bed? Well,
Liz Clark: if I go to bed earlier, it’s 10 mm-hmm . If I don’t go to bed earlier, it’s 11 or 1130.
JJ Virgin: And do you tend to get wake up at the same time every morning? Yeah. Okay. And what time is that? Is that six? It is. All right. So if you go to bed 10, you still wake up at.
Mm-hmm I would just look at what I would do is this, I really watch and [00:31:00] look at your HRV and your deep sleep and REM sleep and start to watch what happens. Like it was very interesting. Couple months ago, I ended up eating late and my aura ring basically next morning said, looks like you ate late last night.
I’m like, oh my God, what are you? Are you in my house with me? What are you doing? But you’ll start to, it’s really cool to start to go. What are the things that impact my sleep? Now it might be that you only need from 11 to six. However, the sleep score that you’re getting, isn’t like, I want, we want the excellent sleep score, especially if we’re gonna kick your exercise up, we need the recovery.
So. It really comes down to what’s the sleep quality. How’s your deep sleep. How’s your REM sleep, which is part of what they’re giving you in that score. It’s not just time because, you know, time with crappy, deep and REM is not gonna give you a good score. Right. So look at that. What time do you finish dinner?
I
Liz Clark: try to finish dinner by seven, but sometimes it’s not till seven 30 or eight.
JJ Virgin: Yeah. So that’s part of it. It’s [00:32:00] really getting, drawing a hard line now and going, I’m gonna be done with dinner by. Because you really need that time between dinner and bed. It’s super duper important. You wanna make sure when you’re sleeping, you’re healing, not digesting.
The next thing is, what time do you eat when you get in the morning? When do you, when do you break your fast? What time?
Liz Clark: Usually by 8:00
JJ Virgin: AM. Okay. And are you hungry by 8:00 AM usually,
Liz Clark: but I find that. I’m not, I am hungry now and I’m not craving now. Okay. So it,
JJ Virgin: and walk me through a typical, like gimme what your typical eating day is like.
Liz Clark: When I do break, the first thing I do when I get up is I usually have some lemon water or some water with some amino acids in it. Okay. Then when I do have breakfast, it’s generally a smoothie. Okay. Uh, In the summer, in the winter it’s usually the same ingredients in a, like with oatmeal.
Okay. [00:33:00] Protein powder and all the other stuff. Lunch is generally salad or some kind of protein and maybe a I found these wonderful. Almond flour tortillas and I’ll make like street tacos out of them with veggies and some meat.
JJ Virgin: Cool. And how much protein are you getting in at lunch?
Liz Clark: It’s probably only three or four ounces.
JJ Virgin: Okay. And for breakfast tell me what goes in your smoothie. So at least
Liz Clark: depends on generally 22 to 30 grams of protein. In a protein powder and collagen powder. And then oatmeal, flax Chi seed, walnuts and berries. Sometimes an apple. Okay. One or the other. I don’t do two kinds
JJ Virgin: of fruit. Okay.
Liz Clark: And , and if I’m making the smoothie, it’s kind of the same ingredients without the oatmeal, but almond milk.
When I do the oatmeal, I don’t put [00:34:00] almond milk or anything on.
JJ Virgin: Are you doing a plant-based protein powder or are you doing bone broth type protein powder plant-based
Liz Clark: whatever reason the, the animal ones don’t
JJ Virgin: agree with me, rats. Okay. But you’re also doing collagen. Yes.
Liz Clark: I love your
JJ Virgin: collagen. Okay.
I’m glad you’re doing that. Perfect. And all right, so good. We’re getting 30 grams there. So then lunch is a salad with three to four or street tacos, three to four ounces. What are you doing for healthy fats at lunch avocado. Okay. And what time is lunch?
Liz Clark: Lunch is generally between 12
JJ Virgin: and. Okay. And dinner then what’s a typical dinner.
Dinner
Liz Clark: is usually some kind of meat, protein chicken, Turkey
JJ Virgin: how, much fish
Liz Clark: I try to do more like maybe 50% more than I do at lunch. So probably four [00:35:00] to six ounces.
JJ Virgin: Okay.
Liz Clark: More veggies than I thought I would ever eat broccoli, zucchini, Brussel sprouts those kinds of things. Spinach.
And then I have discovered. Chick Pea and lentil pasta. And I love to make some of that on the side and toss it in with probably a little avocado or olive oil.
JJ Virgin: Okay. All right. So the only thing I would pick part, cuz you know, the big things I teach people and is, is I first focus with protein. So the first thing I look at is, all right, where are we in terms of your protein intake with your floor, the least amount of protein you should have is.
A gram per pound of ideal lean body mass. Now, right now, your ideal lean body mass, your lean body mass is 90, but I’d say it’s probably your ideals gonna be more like 95. So that would be the floor 95 grams approaching a day. Then the, [00:36:00] like more of like, you know, the mid point’s gonna be a gram per pound of your ideal weight.
You’re at 109. You put on a couple pounds of muscle. You might end up at 115 and by the way, you’re not gonna be bigger. You’re gonna be tighter. So it was very interesting years ago. This researcher Maryanne Nestle over at Tufts found that women lifted weights and got smaller and I would get so frustrated cause we were like, I don’t wanna get big.
I’m like, you’re not gonna get big. You know, it’s like, you’re not gonna get big. You don’t testosterone at the level that you need to do that. So, you know, I would really look at kind of one 15 as, as You know, kind of your, your goal. I’d raise it up to that, but here’s the thing for you really to be to add on muscle requires more.
Right because we’re gonna be pushing it. And so I look at it and go, I would probably have you even push it a little past that. So I’d have more like 120 grams of protein a [00:37:00] day. So what does that look like when you started in the morning? If you’re having two scoops of protein powder and a scoop of collagen, you’re getting 30 grams right there.
Then I’ve been sneaking in some, I’ve been using the flax milk. P protein in it’s it’s called good karma. So you can, you can do it by that. You’re also using flax, you’re using chia, you’re using Walnut. So you’re getting in a little bit there too. So you’re probably getting in just with what you’re doing somewhere around 35 grams of protein.
So you’re starting out. Great. And then you look at it and go, okay, I’m gonna need at least 40 grams, maybe 45 at each meal. So the three to four ounce would be thing you’re doing at lunch is not gonna work out we need to push it to six. All right. And here’s the thing. If you’re eating something leaner, like you’re eating a super lean filet or you’re eating lean chicken or lean Turkey breast, then you know, you can get away with six ounces.
If you’re eating something fatty, like you’re eating. Fatty piece of salmon. Well, then that [00:38:00] eight ounces, isn’t just protein. It’s also fat. So you’re gonna wanna get a little bit more, right. And count it into your fat grams. Cause the way I teach people to build the plate is go protein first. And by the way, at each meal, lead with protein, start with protein.
There’s really cool research. Now, showing that if you start eating your protein and vegetables first before, before what else you’re going to eat, right. If you just started focusing first on eating protein in fat, you have better blood sugar control. From the meal you don’t have as high of a, a blood sugar rise from the meal, which is super cool.
So, and as we know, why do I love protein so much? Because you need it to build muscle. I love the collagen you’re doing cuz it’s great for hair, skin, and nails. And it’s also the most satisfying satiating and it’s also more thermic than, than fat or carbs Are. It like takes 20 to 30% of the protein you eat to be assimilated on your body.
Now that doesn’t mean go crazy, right? Because if you overate on protein, You [00:39:00] can’t use it all, but with what we’re talking about here, you’re gonna be great. So that’s the first thing I want you to think of as protein first, and then you’re doing everything else. Great. You’re doing a lot of non starchy vegetables, cuz I like people to have at least five servings a day.
And my kind of goal post is 10 and you’ve got that because you’re doing like a serving size is a Cup or a half cup cooked. And then I kinda look at what I’ve eaten and then go, do I need any more fat than that? Like you look at your smoothie and go, all right. I did chia. I did flax. I did walnuts. I’ve got, you know, least two servings of fat.
There may be three lunch, if you do a salad and let’s say that you did some salmon on there, you’re getting a fat serving there. If you added any olive oil vinegarette, you got another fat serving there. So you’re probably good. So you just look at each one and count. Cause I have people do somewhere between for you two to three servings of fat.
and then loads of non-starchy vegetables and then little bits of slow, low carbs. And that’s what we can really can kind of mess with [00:40:00] depending on where we are with our weight and going okay, is this where I wanna be is as we mess with fat and, and carbs, we might say, Hey, I, I do better at two fat servings, or I do better at lower carb servings.
And for me, slow low carbs are fruit. So we got, you know, I, and I look at one to two, I, it was zero to two per serving. In the morning, if you’re doing oatmeal, depending on the serving size, you may not wanna add any fruit to that. You may just wanna do nuts and protein powder and all of that. And then depending on lunch, like I tend to do.
Little bit of a like little bit of a green banana and a smoothie at breakfast. Most of it’s. And then I do a pretty much vegetables and, and protein at lunch. And then dinner. I might have a little bit of a carb cause it helps me sleep. So play around with it to see what works best for you. It’s important.
Like when you’re working out hard, Your muscles store, carbohydrates energy in them, and you’ll deplete it right as you’re fasting. [00:41:00] And then you work out, you can go and put back, put it back in again afterwards, but you’re gonna need that protein. And ideally, I love to do a workout. Now my very, my very favorite thing to do is get at least a 12 hour overnight fast, which you’re doing, you’re doing about 13, but I’d love to see if we can even push it to 14 and then maybe two days a week, push it to, to 16.
And here’s the reason it’s a very antiaging thing for us to do when you do. What’s called intermittent fasting. Shorten your feeding window down to eight hours, six to eight hours. You trigger a couple really cool processes in your body. One of ’em you’re doing anyway, which is called you’re migrating more motor complex when you don’t eat for a while that comes out and cleans out.
Your small intestine gets rid of the bacteria and the gunk and wicks it off to the colon so you can get rid of it. Other thing that happens is you lower mTOR and you want mTOR to kind of move up and down. This is this thing that people think is, is bad, but it helps us build. [00:42:00] And then it’s important to have it down as well.
So when you’re fasting, it decreases and then when you eat it increases. So it’s a great thing to do a fasted workout and then, and then eat because it activates this and helps you build muscle. And then the other thing is this process called atophagy. And when you do a longer, fast, 12 to 14 hours, and especially into 16, your body starts to do something called a atophagy, which is taking out the cellular trash.
It’s a real deep detox. So that’s one, if we can work it in, it tends to be like for you with the big goal of building muscle. It’s not something I’d have you do all the time, because it’s not gonna be good for that. But if you could do it one day a week, If you’ve got yourself to, you know, at least you always have a 12 hour overnight fast if we can push it.
So it’s 12 to 14 hours and then maybe one day a week or two days a week, you did a eight hour. It would be a very cool thing to do. And what I do on the weekend is I’ll go, okay, I’m going to eat like a little later, like around 11 and a little [00:43:00] earlier, and then I’m done, you know, you could eat, eat at 11 and finish eating by seven and you’d.
In your eight hours and
Liz Clark: you would work out
JJ Virgin: before, if you can do this. Now I remember when I first started doing this, I’m like, I’m not gonna be able to do this. Now I can, if you can work out and then eat, it’s fantastic. Since you’re working out home and you’re doing smaller bursts, you can start to try and, and test it.
See if you can do some fasted workouts. The fasted workouts really deplete your glycogen stores, your energy stores and your muscles. So that now they’re, they’re wide open to put, you know, anything you are eating like oatmeal, fruit goes more into your muscles and you know, it pushes you to use more fat for fuel.
So it’s a really, it’s a, it’s a great thing to do. If you can do it now, you just have to see, like, if I’m gonna do a really heavy, hard weight, It’s not gonna be fasted. I can’t do it. But if I’m doing more of my moderate workouts, then I can pull it off. So it just depends what [00:44:00] level I’m pushing. Okay.
Like Sunday we do a really hard 75 minute yoga class. I do not do it fasted. Today we did a 60 minute one and you know, it’s 45 minutes. That’s really moving. And the rest is the, the namaste stuff. So I was fine. So, and it’s earlier too, so that works. Okay. So there’s that? So the big things are.
Increasing your protein, focusing on protein first and building around that. You’re doing awesome on your veggies. I thought you said you had a sweet tooth, but I didn’t hear any sugar in there.
Liz Clark: That’s because I’ve eliminated it. Oh, okay. I did that because I found this great recipe in one of your, I think it was one of the electronic it’s the pumpkin and the cacoa and almond butter.
Those brownies are so amazing. You
JJ Virgin: [00:45:00] like those? That’s so funny. I told them I’m like, I don’t think these are good. Okay. I like maybe I stand correct. They’re like, I dunno about these. I dunno about these, you
Liz Clark: and I use the Virgin sprinkles in them and it’s taken me a while to figure out that I, I think it’s just under a half tea or between a half teaspoon and a teaspoon of the Virgin sprinkles, but.
Since I’ve eliminated sugar. It’s like, I don’t have a sweet tooth anymore and I don’t crave the cake or the cookies. I still allow myself an ounce of 85 or 90% dark chocolate.
JJ Virgin: So you say allow, and I would say I prescribe it to you. like, I think that we need to have one to two ounces of dark chocolate every day.
The stuff, I mean, if you look at the research behind dark chocolate and what it does, it’s amazing. So I’m very glad you’re doing that. So, so here are the big changes. You’re gonna get a DEXA. You’re gonna look at your labs again, but I wanna get a DEXA. I want you to make [00:46:00] sure you know, what’s going on with your bones.
Super important. You’re gonna look at now monitoring your scale to start to put on muscle. You’re gonna increase your protein. and then the other thing I want you to look at is, and we don’t have ’em yet, by the time this airs, we probably will, but we did a trial. Were you, you were you part of the trial we did with these packets, we call our menopause packs.
Mm-hmm because there’s a couple things in there that are gonna be really important for you. And there’s one thing specifically that I really want you to take. So this, this one you can probably just even do separately in that packet is KQ 10, which is so great for cardiovascular. And dim, which is great for detoxify
estrogens may not be an issue for you, but there’s another thing in there. And it’s called Anato E G G. And both of these nutrients Anato E is a type of vitamin E called a Tocatrinol and it’s, it’s two different fractions, Delta and gamma. And then GG [00:47:00] is on the pathway to make K U 10. And what’s interesting about both of these things is GG can help you make your other hormones.
So. It can help with you now increasing testosterone, which can be really important. And it also helps you make K U 10, but both of these things have been shown to help with bone density, so, and big cardiovascular and brain effects from Anato E so Anato E G G comes in 150 milligrams. And you’d wanna take two of those, a.
So that, that would be one thing I’d recommend the company that does just that single we’re gonna do it at some point here, but before we do, you can get it from designs for health. So that would be the one I’d wanna see you add in there. Okay. And then, I mean, other than that, you’re gonna start to pay attention to your sleep, to see what you’re doing, to make sure that you’re doing the right things for it.
And get that score. You’re [00:48:00] excelling in everything else. So we wanna make sure as we push you on your, you know, one of the most important things that you do when you work out hard is you gotta recover hard. And the way you recover hard is what you eat and how you sleep. And then also look at potentially doing magnesium.
Because again, if we’re gonna be working out like this too, magnesium becomes very important.
Liz Clark: And yeah, I have some magnesium I’ll, I’ll start taking it before
JJ Virgin: bed. Good. So like, I would start, you know, 300. To 500 milligrams before bed. See how you feel. I need a thousand, but again, I’m, you know, I’m one and a half times the size of Q
So, so see how you do with that. That would be around it. And then again, you know, have another vitamin D test to make sure you’re between 50 and 80 NGS per ML because of where you live. It’s so key critical for bone health. Like that is super duper important. Okay. Cool. And then report back. And let me [00:49:00] know, okay.
How it’s all going. I’ll hit the bigger success story. Like you’ve already been the big success story than the bigger, bigger, so it’s amazing. I’ve weighed
Liz Clark: myself every day since May 17th. And it’s just like, Nope, I’m on this plan. This
JJ Virgin: is January, you know, what’s so funny. I’ve gotten so much. Flack about about that.
And I’m glad you brought that up because I, we just need to look at, at scales, like there’s so much stuff that swirls around a scale and I go scale is not like a mean friend. Like we gotta remove the shame. No one would look at their sleep score and have all this shame. And yet we get on a scale and I’m like this scale, like we should never just look at weight.
We’ve gotta look at everything and then go, what, you know, what are we looking at for most of. If you didn’t focus on weight loss, if you focused on muscle mass, everything will take care of if you focus on having, you know, holding onto and building muscle, getting great sleep and good blood sugar balance, everything else takes care of itself.
So [00:50:00] I did
Liz Clark: learn something that feeling fat and what the scale says have no relation to each other. And so now when I get on this scale and I can say, You know, maybe I ate a lot and I feel fat, but I’ll notice that, oh, but I’ve got more muscle and my fat has gone down. So it’s , it’s definitely mindset training.
And I never really understood that until now.
JJ Virgin: There’s so much stuff around scales and and I’ve been really vocal about how we need to use scales. They need to be a tool. And I know there’s been cards going out to doctor’s offices, so people could hand to the doctor saying don’t weigh me. And first of all, I think all doctors’ offices should have body composition scales.
You know, why are we looking at this archaic number? Why aren’t we looking at the health metrics? Just like we do with blood pressure, right? like this is health metrics. And this just then teaches you what you can be looking at. And it’s a very big, a very [00:51:00] different shift when you go, okay, how do I, what am I gonna do for my muscle?
It’s a different thing than going, oh my God, I gotta lose weight. Right. And, you know, during the pandemic. I was working out like a crazy person because I was like, I had this great gym at home, so I was like, I’m gonna work out really hard. And I remember I went and I wasn’t testing my body comp and I have a really great scale here, but I’d just been getting on the regular scale cuz I knew where I always was.
This is why you need to monitor your body comp at least once a week. Cuz I went out to another place in San Diego and I dropped like 2% body fat just with all the like, you know, so it is really important to monitor this stuff cuz you’ll your, your mind has been conditioned to tell you otherwise, like, and especially if you were raised, you know, as you were growing up, you were told you were pleasingly, plump and chubby, you know, that’s your identity, which I’m sure we’ve totally unzipped and sheded right.
But every once in a while, it’ll try to pop back in. Right. And it’ll go, well, [00:52:00] look, there’s, there’s you pleasingly pump. And it’s like, you know, and just notice as Mary Morrissey says, notice what you’re noticing.
all right. So keep in touch. Let me know how this all is going. I’d love to have you back and hear about this and hear all the great stuff. And I’m also super excited that, you know, for everybody listening Liz is Liz is part of this really cool program that one of my closest friends, Mary Morrisey created called dream builder and her daughter, Jennifer does the whole health part of it.
So it’s really the mindset behind what you need to get healthy. I should have her on the podcast and. Deborah Atkinson of flipping 50, who I I push out a lot of her information on fitness cuz she’s got great workouts. So that’s another one, another great tool for you. Yay. And look at that. Look at that muscle over there.
next time I wanna see a sleeveless. All right. Cool. Well, thank you.[00:53:00]
I appreciate you.
Liz Clark: Thank you. This has been such an honor and a privilege.
JJ Virgin: Ah, thanks. Love your programs. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Can’t wait to hear the results. Bye. Bye.
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