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JJ Virgin: [00:00:00] What if you found out that as hard as you've been trying to lose weight, it may have nothing to do with your diet. Welcome to the series about all the things that are keeping you from losing. That are not what you eat now. Next up is number three.
Hey, there I'm JJ Virgin and four times New York times bestselling author and a fitness hall of Famer. And I am here to help you live your healthiest life. And if you want to keep up with things that will help you do just that let's stay connected. All you have to do is hit like on this video and subscribe to this channel.
So you're trying to lose weight. Huh? Have you ever tried a diet? All right. You can stop laughing hysterically. Now, pick yourself off the floor and guess what? You may not be able to diet your way to weight loss, shocker. Now it doesn't matter how disciplined you are and you definitely can't starve your way [00:01:00] there.
Why would you even upset me? Like. So there are a lot of things that could be causing your body to hang onto those extra pounds. And the other videos we talked about, gut health, your gut, microbiome, and toxins. And now number three, can you guess it it's sleep? If you're not sleeping, you got to fix it. It's horrible and dangerous for your health on so many levels.
And if your issue is clinical, like sleep apnea or insomnia, you have to see a sleep specialist to get it taken. But no matter why you're exhausted, you're set up to fail. The weight will never come off, sleep deprivation, wreaks havoc on your hormones and makes you crave carbs, especially sugar. Now I'm sure you desperately want to sleep, but you may not know why you can't.
It could be that you don't feel like you can find enough hours in the day. So you're overdoing it on the caffeine or you're having a couple extra glasses of wine to help you fall asleep. [00:02:00] Or you can't stop exercising too late at night, or you can't put your phone down and you're blasting yourself with blue light anxiety and depression can also keep her from sleeping or maybe your serotonin is low.
Bottom line though, is if you're not sleeping well, you can't burn fat. You're feeling down, you got no energy and you're craving a sugar. Any of that sound familiar, listen, one single sleep deprived night can throw your stress hormones out of balance. And that alone can make you hungrier and signal your body to just
hold on to fat and right here, right around your belly and stress inhibits sleep and a lack of sleep increases. Around and around, around we go, then you become this stressed out zombie and that hormonal mess spins off fat that sticks to your waistline. Now we can all agree. [00:03:00] That is not what we're aiming for.
Right? So studies, this is crazy. Show that if you only sleep five hours a night, you are 50%. More likely to be obese than people get a full eight hours, 50%. Holy smokes. So sleep has got to be an absolute priority. And by the way, that was, if you were sleeping five hours, but there's clear research showing that failure to get seven to eight hours of quality sleep a night sets you up for obesity.
Now, when you're tired, it's not only harder to make good food choices and exercise choices. Tired, but without sleep, you're never going to look and feel your best, whether you want to lose a few pounds or not. So the sweet spot, if you want to burn fat build muscle and lower, the stress is seven to nine hours of quality sleep every single night.
So if it's like bedtime for Bonzo at your place every night, here are a few. [00:04:00] And just try these they're so easy and I promise they will make a big, huge difference. Here they are. Number one, try to go to sleep and get up around the same time every day. Now, first one is making sure that you get up around the same time every single day.
So here's what we're going to do. Look at what time you want to wake up. Let's say you want to wake up at six in the morning and you know, you need to get seven to nine hours of sleep. Let's do the math; you need to power down at around nine o'clock. Okay. So you've got your power down hour. My friend, Dr.
Michael Bruce, the sleep doctor coined that what you're going to do is you're going to make sure that you power down all your electronics, cause the blue light from your phone or your tablet messes up. Way after you turn them off. So you're gonna put them to bed and throw on a pair of those, like those super cool blue blocker glasses that all the biohackers wear, they're wearing them for a reason.
And. You want to create [00:05:00] some calm there. So you want to lower those stress hormones, meditate, maybe put on one of the Dr. Joe Dispenza sleep meditations journal on gratitude, have some camomile tea. My favorite have an Epsom salt bath with a little lavender cut back on the alcohol note. I didn't say no.
Alcohol. All right. I said, cut back. I love my dry farm wine, but I'm careful I'm not having a bottle. I'm having a glass. Of course, you have a bottle you're going to fall asleep or pass out, but you know, what's going to happen. You're going to wake up in the middle of the night. Cause your stress hormones, boomerang, and you got thirsty because you were so dehydrated.
Here's a little trick on drinking. If you're drinking, you have one drink, you have twice as much water. Now, another thing that's really important for helping you sleep is caffeine. No, don't drink a bunch of caffeine to sleep cut back on the caffeine. You might be a slow caffeine metabolizer, and you'll notice this.
If you have caffeine in the afternoon and all of a sudden you [00:06:00] feel very wired. So keep your caffeine to the morning. Cut it off at noon, and then switch over to like decaf green tea in the afternoon. And here's what I do every single night. Every single night I use reignite. Sleep candy. I actually formulated this one, myself and I stay away from pharmaceuticals because those don't help you get deep sleep.
Here's the cool thing with sleep candy. Doesn't give you a hangover. It just calms your nervous system and calms your mind and helps you relax. Plus it's natural and it's delicious. So here are the key ingredients in it. Melatonin combined with 5HTP and vitamin B6 and Inositol and L-theanine. Both of which can help with stress and relaxation.
All right. So that's bedtime. All right. That's really, really important, but here's some things you can do during the day that are going to help you too.. Number one, shut your kitchen down after dinner. Now this is important. Even early dinner, do not go eating at nine and try to go to bed at [00:07:00] 10. You want to eat your dinner at least three to four hours before bed, and you're going to eat by the clock, right?
That three to four hours before bed going to bed at 10. What time does that. Eat dinner at six and then eat by the Virgin diet plate. And that means clean protein, healthy fats, and slow, low carbs. So you have that nice steady blood sugar control. Then after dinner, the kitchen is closed in my perfect world.
The kitchen would be locked down, no snacks after dinner. If you think you're hungry, you're not by the way, just have a glass of water that shuts down your hunger pangs, but have one glass, don't have a ton of glasses. Cause then you'll have to get up in the middle of the night. All right. Next one, exercise.
So exercise helps you sleep, but it matters when you do it. And I remember I lived in Japan, in my twenties and I taught aerobics and I had to teach an aerobics class at eight o'clock. And I went to bed at two in the morning because of this. It had me so wired. So workout early in the day. It's the better time to [00:08:00] do it anyway.
And if you want to do a little walk after dinner, that's fantastic, but don't do a big, hard, intense workout in the nighttime that can impact your sleep. Next one, stress. All right. I know managing stress is way easier said than done, but there are things that you can do. So just like you're creating that whole calm before bedtime.
Think about the other things that are going to help with stress exercise, high intensity interval training helps your sympathetic nervous system handle stress better. So that's a huge one. Meditation is another great one. Find your bliss there, meditation or tapping or Qigong, a gratitude practice, connecting more with your community.
That's super important. And then think about those things that add stress. Maybe you could cut some of those. Kind of a crazy thought. Huh? All right. And then napping, wait your time to nap. I'm so jealous. All right. A little napping can be great, like 10 to 20 minutes, [00:09:00] but more than that can actually kind of mess you up.
So if you want to throw a little nap in the afternoon or maybe a little meditation. Awesome. All right. There, you have it. See how easy these things are and simple to put into your life. This is the goal we're going to get seven to nine hours of quality sleep. That's going to help you crush those cravings and help you burn fat.
I hope you got some great tips in this video. More importantly, I hope that you put them to use and you are sleeping like a baby in no time. And don't forget to like, and subscribe. So you keep the healthy lifestyle, Intel tips and tricks coming in the next video, we're going to take a break from this series, but don't worry.
It will be back after this next one. So if you can't lose the weight and you know, it's not your diet stick with me as we go through the rest of the list of what. In the next video, I'm going to teach you how to intermittent fast and get results without suffering. You heard me. See you there.
Thanks again for [00:10:00] being with me this week for more info on this and other health topics I cover or to rate and review, find me on Instagram, Facebook and my website, JJvirgin.com. And don't forget to subscribe to my show. So you won't miss a single episode. Go to subscribetojj.com.