ATHE_Transcript_Ep 559_Melissa Ambrosini
JJ Virgin: [00:00:00] I am JJ Virgin, PhD Dropout. Sorry, mom, turn four time New York Times bestselling 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 that I uncover with as many people as I can, and that’s why I created the Well Beyond 40 podcast 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.
All right, so you know, when I think [00:01:00] about what is really important as you are 40 plus, like it’s really. Time. Right? It’s it’s time. It’s having great health and then having the time to enjoy it. It’s having all of that. And gosh, time is that one resource. You can’t get it back. And so when I saw that Melissa Ambrosini had written Time Magic, I was like, right on.
And you must come on the show. Here is the. Reading line, the tagline of this book, time Magic. It is Reclaim your time, reclaim your life. And she wrote it with her husband, Nick Broadhurst. And here’s what’s super cool about this book. This is not a time management book. That to me is like, you know, when you hear about stress management, it’s like, no, no, no, no, no.
It is how you take some simple shifts, how you create this structure that creates this freedom so that you find more time, in fact, They said like you can listen to the interview that we do here and just one of the things if you put into place, could get you [00:02:00] a year back of time. So listen to this interview and you can get a year back, how is that for a promise? And the book can give you even more than that. Plus we’re gonna go through some top longevity hacks as well.
So let me tell you a little bit about Melissa and Nick, I have been on Melissa’s podcast before. We will link to that, and Melissa is a self-help guru.
She was named that by Elle Magazine. She’s the best-selling author of Mastering Your Mean Girl, open Wide Comparisonitis, and the Audible original Purposeful, as well as the winner of the best eBooks of all time as voted by book depository. She’s the host of the number one rated podcast, the Melissa Ambrosini Show, where she shares her wisdom and interviews with the biggest thought leaders.
And experts in the world to help her audience unlock their full potential and live their dream life. She’s got a deep commitment to empowering others to become the best version of themselves and believes that awakening is possible for everyone. She strives to inspire others to reclaim their power, bust through fear, step into their truth, live with intention, and move [00:03:00] in the direction of their dreams.
She’s also. Obsessed with health. Yay. You know, I remember the days where we were called Health Nut. You were considered to be a freak if you were into health. And I’m always like, why wouldn’t you be in health? Like, like, hello? So I’m glad that that tide has turned. I hope it has. Maybe it’s just turned in my head.
But if you’re listening to this, I know you feel the same way. And let me tell you about her hubby, Nick. He is a renowned singer songwriter, a music producer, former member of Aria Award-winning band, sneaky Sound System, a visual artist, entrepreneur, father of two, and an author. The driving force behind all his work is a pure expression of creativity through music and the written word.
Time Magic sees him teaming up for the first time with his wife, bestselling author, Melissa Ambrosini. They are such a, an awesome couple too. It’s fun now to have some couples that we’re featuring on the show and, and I should do another show just on how couples are working together too. That has been a fun one now that I’m working with my husband, Tim, I’ll tell you [00:04:00] this is.
An interview that I was like, oh yeah, we’ll just go 20, 30 minutes. I could have gone for a couple of hours. There are some absolute gems in this interview, and you’re going to want to get this book because they have got some very simple strategies that you can put into your life that is gonna help you reclaim your time.
And they’ve also put together some really super cool gifts you can get to. So I’m putting all of that at jjvirgin.com/timemagic, and I will be right back with Melissa and Nick. Stay with me.
All right. I am super excited to have another couple on the show cause I just had Jason and Colleen Wachob of Mind Body Green and now I have Nick and Melissa of Time Magic. So fun. We probably should, by the way, guys at some point get into what’s it like to work together. But let’s just start by unpacking why you wrote Time Magic.
Nick Broadhurst: Well, I mean, for us, we were not always the way we are now. We’ve come from places where I was in a very [00:05:00] successful band called Sneaky Sound System. It was touring, it was, you know, a pretty wild time. And I left that career, went into real estate, which is a very big, big shift.
JJ Virgin: I was gonna say, cause that’s a total natural segue.
Yeah.
Melissa Ambrosini: Natural progression
JJ Virgin: as,
Nick Broadhurst: as you do, and musician to real estate. But I found that. When my little boy was 2, 3, 4 years old, I was with him physically, but I wasn’t emotionally, mentally, really with him. I was closing deals. I just wasn’t present. And it’s one of those things I look back on in my life and don’t regret it, but just wish, gosh, I wish I’d done things differently and I didn’t know what I know now about how to streamline and optimize my life.
And Melissa, you didn’t tell your story
Melissa Ambrosini: For me, I was a people pleaser, stressed out, overworked, overwhelmed. And when we came together, we really optimized every area of our life and we realized that we were [00:06:00] wasting a lot of time. And when we’re actually doing the research for Time Magic, the subtitle is, reclaim your Time, reclaim your Life.
We discovered that there is a lot of common areas. We spend time, 26 years of our life sleeping over 13 years, working over 12 years on our phone. Just, just let that sink in a minute. Over 12 years of your life is spent on your phone. The average person is living to 79 years. So however old you are now, subtracts that from 79, that’s how long you know the average person has left.
And so when we worked with this statistician and we looked at all of these different areas where we are spending our time, We divided it up into a pie chart and we took away, you know, 79 years, we took away the 26 years of sleeping, the 13 years of working the 12 years of social media. Then over nine years watching [00:07:00] tv over nine years, watching TV like that blows my mind.
And so when we took all of that into consideration, we had 1.2 years left. For the things that bring us joy, for the things that light us up, like time with our family, love doing what we love, hobbies, holidays, all of those things. And for us, that was a really big wake up call, a really big smack in the face.
And we realized that we don’t wanna be part of that way of living. We wanna make that 1.2 years of our life way more in our personal life. And so we got really intentional about how to live a meaningful life on our terms and how to reduce spending, you know, 12 years online. And so that’s what the book is about.
It teaches you how to. Get really intentional with your time, how to reclaim up to 16 years of your life, which we promise [00:08:00] in the book, if you implement some of our strategies like Tick and Flick and some of the longevity hacks and all of the things that we talk about in the book, if you actually implement them into your life, you can reclaim up to 16 years of your life to do the things that you will love.
And so the book isn’t just about showing you where you spend your time, then giving you the tools to reclaim it. And then going and making a meaningful life. We also teach you how to take your health to the next level, and we’ve got a whole chapter in there called Everyday Longevity. Because there’s no point in extending your life if you don’t have your health.
JJ Virgin: Amen. Health span versus lifespan. And now that we are well beyond 40, you aren’t Melissa. Yes. Nick, you’re slightly beyond 40. So you guys aren’t well beyond 40, but you’re, you are Nick. Well, beyond 40. There’s something that starts to happen, and I don’t know if it happens at 40 or 50 or 60, but all of a sudden you look at time differently.
Where you start to go, oh, at first it [00:09:00] happened with me with travel. I’m like, I don’t wanna go back to the same place cuz I wanna make sure I get to all the places. But then you just start to take that approach with life. I don’t wanna waste time doing something that doesn’t matter when I could have been with my family, I could have done those things.
So I love that you’re bringing this all up and I think it’s super appropriate for our audience. And Nick, you said something before we started that I was like, ooh. Writer downer. And you said this is not about time management. Yeah,
Nick Broadhurst: totally. Time management really is about how can you cram more stuff into a day.
That is definitely not what we are talking about in Time Magic. This is about creating a spacious life for the things that we love. And when you look at some of these statistics, we can see that technology is a big part of that with the phone and the tv. And that time spent on your phone is taken from an average now.
Of someone who gets a phone at the age of 15. So, and we know that children are getting phones much younger than that, so it’s probably more than that number [00:10:00] now. But it is about creating a spacious life and using technology to our advantage because they can be a weapon of mass distraction or they can be really empowering and they can actually create a lot of space for you.
One thing I found years ago was I didn’t have a system of how to run my life. I just had stuff in my head. I had stuff on bits of paper. I just didn’t know how to actually operate, whether it was personal or business. And I read a lot of different books on time management, on productivity, and I implemented all those things.
And over the years I just kept refining it and refining it and simplifying, and simplifying. And we’d have friends come to us and say, Nick, how do you do everything. How are you writing music and recording and touring and investing and building a home, being a father and a husband and CEO of Melissa’s business, and how do you do this stuff?
And I said, well, first of all, the most important thing is if you have a system that’s effective and simple, you never get overwhelmed, ever. [00:11:00] I
Melissa Ambrosini: can vouch for this. He never gets overwhelmed like, I’m like, don’t you have like, and I still do, like I still need to reread Time. Magic Nick said to me the other day, babe, you need to reread Time Magic.
And often we do. We need to reread our own books. Nick really does live this and I do too, but I sometimes default into old patterns and have to retake my own medicine and then get back on track.
JJ Virgin: Which is normal. Yeah, totally. You know, the fact that you can then re-read the book and get control of that. I, I’m thinking of Marie Forleo came and spoke at Mindshare Summit last year and Marie said, you know, she was doing a talk about time and she said, I don’t do overwhelm and boy, every, I mean this resonated so much with everybody cuz it really actually is a decision.
So Nick, how do you not do overwhelm? Can you give us, I, I’m sure you know, get the book time magic, but can you give us a little hint?
Nick Broadhurst: Yeah, absolutely. Well, it does involve technology, and this is where technology’s so important. [00:12:00] There is, and you can use different apps for this, but there is one in particular, which we love because of its simplicity and how powerful it is, it’s called things.
Okay? So Things is an Apple app, so it doesn’t work on both. So if you have a PC or an Android, you’d want to get Todoist, I think it’s called now. I had read books on how to do this app and all these different types of. Project management, and it was 300 pages long, you know, to understand how to do it. And I just thought there’s gotta be a more simple way.
So when we sat down to write this book, I said to Melissa, look, I’ve gotta teach this in three pages. I have to make it simple. And so I kept refining my process. And it’s interesting. A friend of mine called me the other day, he’s just finished the book and he’s like, Nick, I’ve been doing tick or flick.
I’m like, great. I said, how’s it going? He said, I go to bed at night. And there’s nothing on my mind anymore. I’m like, exactly. That’s the whole point, right? If you can go to bed at night and be like, ah, everything’s [00:13:00] in a safe place, everything’s captured, then that’s super empowering and it’s good for your health too.
Mind you, cuz sleeps so important as you know.
JJ Virgin: What, what is the ticker flick? You guys have said this a couple times.
Nick Broadhurst: It’s essentially the process of capturing everything in one place. Okay? So when something comes into your mind, Don’t think about it, don’t let it roll around. Just grab your phone, put it straight in, what’s called the inbox and just forget about it cuz you know it’s being captured.
And this is the power of this system is that if you have somewhere that’s like this holding space, everything that was in your mind, and no longer in your mind, you can let go of it, right? So once it’s captured, and then you need to know what to do with it. And that’s where the, the process of tick or flick, you either get it done, you tick it, or you flick it somewhere.
And flicking it means flicking it into a project or making it or breaking it down into more steps and then ticking it. It’s a very, very simple system and you have to ask yourself a very simple question each time, do I tick it or do I [00:14:00] flick it?
Melissa Ambrosini: And so many of our friends and followers have have tried it and it has already changed their life, which is just so cool to see.
And yeah, when I follow this system, my life is so much more pleasurable actually.
Nick Broadhurst: When she’s overwhelmed, I say, Lemme take a look at your things. And every time she’s overwhelmed, she’s not using it properly every time.
Melissa Ambrosini: And I think, you know, as a mother, this is so important. We have so much on our minds, we’re thinking about.
Lots of different things, work and tiny humans and all of their things. So having some sort of system that can capture all of this and allow you to move through your every day with as much ease and grace as possible. Is what I’m all about because there’s so much noise. We are exposed to way more content and noise than ever before.
So we need systems. We need [00:15:00] systems. We need processes to help us to help our nervous system. You know, we’re all so wired and fried and overwhelmed and stressed, and we need some tools to help us move through our day with ease and grace and without the stress and without the overwhelm. And, and yeah, that’s just not how we wanna live our life.
We don’t wanna live our life in that state. We’ve done it. We’ve both ended up in hospital with. Burnout, chronic fatigue, adrenal fatigue, all of these things. And it’s not fun. Like it’s really not fun. Building yourself back up from the hospital bed is a long, very time consuming and expensive journey, which we’ve both done, so we don’t want other people to get to that place.
JJ Virgin: You think some of it is, and I, you know, you watch this and I think the tide’s starting to turn. But for so long it was like a badge of honor to be stressed out and work so [00:16:00] hard and work like, you know, excessive hours. I mean, look at people who work at law firms, look at residents and hospitals. Look at this insane amount of like, it’s like we celebrate this craziness that, you know, is just the wrong way to live.
You know? Then you look at what they’re doing with some of the new ways of working with employees and they’re doing. Four day work weeks instead and everybody’s healthier and happier and more productive.
Nick Broadhurst: Yeah, I think we should celebrate, and I certainly do when we are down at the beach, cuz we live on the beach and we have our lunches down there every day with our daughter that’s celebrating right there.
Like if we should be celebrating the people who are able to do that because there’s so much joy radiating from those people who are able to do that. There’s also a time and a place, and this is the thing. There is a time and a place for a bit of push, for a bit of hustle. It’s often I found hard to bring something of meaning to life with without a little bit of like, okay, let’s like, let’s dig into this.
For example, the [00:17:00] book Time Magic. It was easy to write in some respects cuz it’s really just our life, you know, and how we, how we live. But also there’s work, you know, there’s work involved in doing these things, in promoting a book, there’s a time and a place. But having the choice. On how much to do and and when to say no.
And we teach this in the book as well, when to say no, like the power of saying no and being empowered to say no to things. That’s also something which is super important as well.
JJ Virgin: Yeah, I think Jomo is a very important concept, as you said, that, that was one of the things I looked at this year and I went this is gonna be my year of nose.
You know? How do, how do you set up more of that, that structure? So you, you’ve mentioned a couple of these, but can you give us a couple other things? Cuz I love the idea of like setting up those boundaries. Any other little changes cuz you’re emphasizing small changes, simple. Which you know, we all love and I, I don’t think anyone wants to be in [00:18:00] overwhelm.
So what else can someone do to. Either shift their mindset or shift their behaviors to free up some time to make them not feel this time pressure.
Melissa Ambrosini: I think one of the best things that everyone could do straight after listening to this is grab their phone and look at how much time they’re spending on certain apps.
This is quite a confronting exercise to do. The average person is spending around six hours a day on their phone. Six hours a day.
JJ Virgin: How? How do you find out how much you’re spending? Like, I’m gonna do this right now. How do you find out how much you’re spending on an app?
Nick Broadhurst: So on iPhone? Mm-hmm. There is an app specifically for that, and there’s also one and Android as well.
So they’ve got different names. So screen Time on Apple is the one that you go to look at. And Android, I think, is it something to do with health? Yes. It’s in the book. Digital Health. Digital Health. Something like that. Yeah. And so you just need to go and look at that. It gives you a [00:19:00] breakdown of your activity, and again, the friend that I spoke to, he said he was quite confronted with his own phone usage and he’s found himself really.
Turning it off. Now, something that we practice is we have our phones on airplane mode for the majority of the day. It’s actually quite hard to catch us on the phone, on a phone call.
Melissa Ambrosini: No one ever calls us because no one bothers, they can’t call us.
JJ Virgin: But you’ve also set up the right parameters. I remember reading, you know, when I read the four hour work week, which was always my big joke as I read the four hour work week and that there must have been a hidden chapter.
Cause I started working 80 hours a week after reading it. You know, he was like, just return emails twice a week. And that’s what they’ll expect. They won’t expect this immediate answer. If people know that they can’t get you on the phone, then they won’t do that. So you’re teaching people how to respect your time too.
Melissa Ambrosini: Exactly. So once you have got the data on how much you spend on your phone and on certain apps, it’s quite confronting. And then you can pick your drawer up off the floor and ask yourself this question. [00:20:00] Am I okay with that number? Of how much I’m spending on social media, on email, and if the answer is no, then great.
You can do something about it and you can do something about it today. So this is the first place to start. Then we set up boundaries around these things. We talk about time magic batching in the book, which is when you batch emails, you batch tasks. So you might do two email sessions a day, so maybe at nine o’clock and then again at three o’clock When we do this, life is so good with a set time limit.
Yes. So you’ll do like nine till nine 30 and that’s your email time, and then you literally close down, email off your desktop and delete it off your phone.
Nick Broadhurst: It’s actually quite fun. You, you, you should see how fast you can get through your
JJ Virgin: emails. Well, isn’t it that whole principle that time expands to whatever amount of [00:21:00] time, like the task extends to the amount of time you
Melissa Ambrosini: have.
Exactly, exactly right. So you can batch it. You can also do that with social media. So I check social media, say you can say at 10 o’clock in the morning and then you can do it again at four o’clock, whatever. Give yourself a time limit and something that you feel good with. Like what time would you feel.
Okay with dedicating to those things in your life, like I am a mom, I have a two-year-old, I wanna have more children. And for me, that is my most important work, responding to my emails. I’m so grateful for all of my emails. I truly am, but I’m not gonna. Lay on my deathbed and go, oh, I really wish I responded to more emails, or I really wish I wrote more emails, or I really wish I spent more time on social media.
No one says that I’ve had Bronnie Ware on my podcast who wrote the Top Five Regrets of the Dying, and one of the top five regrets is I wish I spent more time [00:22:00] with the people that I love. I wish I did things that light me up more. Time magic really allows you to get clear on your core values, what’s important to you, what is meaningful to you?
Like, do you wanna spend more time with the people you love? Do you wanna spend more time doing your woodwork or your pottery or your knitting, whatever it is that lights you up. And then let’s create space for those things in your life, because we only get one life. This is not the dress rehearsal. This is the gig.
This is the live show, and we only get one opportunity. So we really do need to make the most of it, and we don’t want people to read time magic and feel overwhelmed. Just implement one thing a day, just one thing a day. Start by just reducing your time on some of the apps where you spend a lot of your time, and replacing that with [00:23:00] something that is.
Going to nourish you. We also talk about rest in the book because people don’t rest. Like when was the last time you rested when you literally just laid down, you didn’t have your phone and you just had an afternoon rest, or you know, most people don’t even know what rest is for them. And so we really get clear on what that is for you, how to implement that into your everyday life, and just how to enjoy your life way more.
JJ Virgin: So. The other thing that you, you have in here that of course intrigued me completely, cuz again you said, okay, if we’re living to 79 now, I’m entirely planning to push way past that. I think most people listening were like, oh, we’re way past that. But way past that in health span, not like, you know, having crappy quality of life.
So, Just planning that all of us will get into the like hundred [00:24:00] plus with amazing quality life. You can still go, hold on. You can still start counting down the years, the, the weeks, the days, the hours, and you really wanna make the most out of everything. But we have to get there. So I know you have some longevity hacks that I have to get out of
Melissa Ambrosini: you.
I just wanna also preface this whole conversation with, by saying that, We, especially Nick, are hardcore biohacking, longevity seeking health junkies, and the reason we are is because, like I mentioned before in 2010 for me and just a little bit before that, 2009, both of us, we weren’t together at this time, but both of us were in hospital with not very good health at all.
And, and before that, we were not healthy people. We didn’t care about sleep. We were flogging our bodies. We had no idea what nutrition was. [00:25:00] We just didn’t take care of ourselves. You know, we’d sleep four hours a night and be like, yeah, I had that motto. I’ll sleep when I’m dead. Who cares? I would, we were partying, drinking, all of those things.
Both of our bodies shut down and we really had to rebuild. So this is where our obsession, our healthy obsession with health and wellness and biohacking all came from. So from 2009, we have been on this journey. We have studied it. We studied nutrition, Ayurveda, like everything, because we just are so obsessed with it.
And this is now how we live our life. And so, Putting a chapter in the book about health and longevity is so important because like we said at the very start of this, there’s no point in living to 110 if you don’t have your health. What is the point? We wanna be still doing yoga when we’re 110.
Nick Broadhurst: To talk to some of those points to make it into the book.
For the everyday longevity chapter, I set some criteria. And I wanted to make [00:26:00] sure, cuz there’s some pretty, you know, you can read Life Force by Tony Robbins. Mm-hmm. And. It’s super interesting, but there’s like stem cells and, but it’s super not doable as well.
JJ Virgin: I know. It’s like the guy right now. What, who is that billionaire who’s spent like millions so far?
Like, cuz he wants to be like 20 and he’s 50. And, and what I find with so many of these is that they are, they haven’t gotten the majors right yet. I’m so glad you said that. Right? Like, okay. I’m like, all right, you’re gonna go over there and do that, but you’re, Diet’s not even dialed in and you’re not sleeping well and you’re not exercising.
What am I missing?
Nick Broadhurst: I’m so glad you said that because we literally, I felt like we, we needed to develop like a separate program just to teach the basics, because I don’t blame people for getting confused. I’ve been confused as well in the past because there’s so much conflicting information, out there.
JJ Virgin: There’s a lot of noise. There’s a lot of noise, but I wonder if some of it’s conflicting. Here’s my theory is that, you know, all my friends are diet book authors, let’s be [00:27:00] honest. And everyone writes the book for them and then they think it’s the book for everybody. And the reality is there’s some foundational truths.
Yes. But then there’s the tweaks for you. Yes. And your tweaks will be different than other people’s tweaks. Right. And I think it’s, it’s way simpler to go. I’m just gonna try this hack over here, but I don’t think you should do any hacks till you’ve addressed the foundation. That’s like trying to decide what paint you’re gonna put on the walls and you haven’t figured out like where the walls are going yet.
Nick Broadhurst: Yeah. Let’s talk about foundations first then. Because
Melissa Ambrosini: we call, we call them, sorry. I was just gonna say, we call them the low hanging fruits.
Nick Broadhurst: Yeah, it is. It’s such low hanging fruit. And something we say in the book quite a lot is the easy things. They’re easy to do. They’re also very easy not to do .
You can choose if you get into bed, like we’re in bed at seven 30, hands down every night. We’re reading, we’ve got our blue blocking glasses on and our little red lights. Mm-hmm. And we’re reading our book and you know, we are getting time together and [00:28:00] everything’s dimly lit and we’ve stopped eating three hours before that.
We’ve got these sort of processes in place. So let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about sleep, because I think if you are gonna pull one lever in your life, I think the two biggest leave, well you said them before. There’s probably three levers. There’s sleep, diet, and exercise.
JJ Virgin: Really? And I put sleep at the top.
I’m right there with you. Yeah. Like if your sleep sucks, everything sucks. Everything sucks. You’ll be insulin resistant, you won’t wanna work out. Like it’s all, it’s all gonna fall apart.
Nick Broadhurst: So, and it’s funny cuz last night Melissa was backstage with Jay Shetty on his tour. And she got home at 1:00 AM which she never does,
Melissa Ambrosini: Which I’ve never, like, I can’t even, I can’t even tell you the last time I did that, probably like 15 years ago when I was on the dance floor in some nightclub.
But you know, it was a one off and I really enjoyed it. But most of the time we are in bed at, at seven 30
Nick Broadhurst: this morning was the first time I’ve seen her look a little bit tired. Like seriously, because we’re so, we’re so particular about our sleep, [00:29:00] so, Here’s some quick sleep hacks, which I think these are foundational for sleep, and that is, and you would’ve heard these before potentially, but.
Stop eating three hours before you get into bed. This is a big one, right? Yes. Such a big one.
JJ Virgin: I always like these to be hit because I want people to hear it and hear it, and maybe they’ll hear it from you going, I heard them say this and I’m gonna do it. I’m like, amen. Totally. And, and tell everybody why.
Because I’ve tracked, I’ve tested it with my Oura ring. Yeah. I’ve tested eating right before bed to see what happens.
Nick Broadhurst: It’s important because there are certain things, there’s certain stages of the day that your body should be performing certain tasks. When you’re asleep, it should not be digesting food, right?
That’s a totally different time of day. When you fall asleep, you should be assimilating all the nutrients from the food cause they’ve already passed through digestive process. You want to get to around that sort of 2:00 AM time, whereas this prime detox time where your liver’s doing all the work. But that doesn’t really happen if it’s still trying to digest food that you had at [00:30:00] nine o’clock before getting into bed at 10.
Especially in Ayurveda if you look at Ayurveda, the different phases of the day from Vata, Pitta and Kapha it’s the same all the way through the evening into your sleep time. There’s different phases, your body’s doing different things, so essentially, and also you’ve got more powerful digestion at different times of the day.
So it gets weaker and weaker as you go into the evening. So if you look at, our average time of going to bed is around seven 30. We stop eating at five 30. Now we’d like to do it three hours. We do two. Because it’s a bit early for us to eat at four 30,
JJ Virgin: but you’re not actually falling asleep at 7:30.
No. Mine’s kind of, the rule of thumb is like three hours before you fall asleep. Yeah, you’re good. You’re, you’re doing, you’re amazing. Okay, so I, I, now I wanna know, okay, like what time do you wake up? If you’re going to, you fall asleep around 8:30?
Nick Broadhurst: Yes. 8, 8 30. Melissa tends to wake up anywhere from four till five o’clock.
I’m anywhere from five to five 30.
Melissa Ambrosini: He, he needs a little bit more sleep [00:31:00] than me.
Nick Broadhurst: Yeah. It’s body types.
JJ Virgin: We’re all unique. Yeah. When I first met my husband, he was like sleeping five to six hours a night. I’m like, this is not going to work. Like this is, this is a major problem. Because he thought, oh, I just don’t need to sleep that much.
I go, yeah, I don’t buy that. Mm-hmm. Right. And as he started to let his body sleep, it was like, whoa. Low and behold. Yeah. We generally are on nine thirties to six 30 s the ours. Yeah. Perfect. It was earlier on the west coast, by the way, east coast. We get up a little later West coast. We were going to bed like nine o’clock and getting up at 5 36.
Nick Broadhurst: Right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Everyone’s unique. You gotta find your routine. You know? If you live in Europe, it’s different because of twilight, you know? So find your rhythm. And the other thing is liquids. Be super mindful of how much liquid you have, because there’s just no point getting up to go to the toilet in the middle of the night for no reason, cuz it’s just gonna break that beautiful deep sleep in the r e m sleep, the REM sleep that we all want.
So that is generally two hours before, but honestly, we don’t have many liquids [00:32:00] from probably three o’clock onwards because again, we value our sleep so highly. If I have to get up to go to the toilet, I’m actually kind of annoyed. I’m like, oh, far out I must have, where did I go wrong there? You know, the other thing of course, is devices.
So getting off your phone and your tv. Honestly, there’s probably no hard and fast rule, but it’s as early as you can because if you’re exposing your eyeballs and your body to that blue light, you’re making your body think that it’s midday and it’s just not. So you’re not producing the melatonin that you need to get a beautiful, deep sleep.
Melissa Ambrosini: So in the book we have the 3, 2, 1 rule, and we talk about this the time Magic 3 21 rule. So stop eating three hours before, stop drinking two hours before. No devices one hour before. If you can do more, great. But. As a general rule, 3, 2, 1. Think of those things and that will really help your sleep. And then there’s so many other things that we talk about in the book, like the temperature in the room, making sure it’s [00:33:00] cooler.
You know, wearing earplugs if you need to. The blue light blocking glasses and lights all around your home. These are all little things that are going to help you optimize your sleep, getting rid of the tv, getting rid of all of the devices outside of the bedroom. Just all of these little tweaks can really move the needle.
And for me, like, like I’ve said before, I’m a mom of a toddler and I need my energy. One of my goals is to be the best mom that I can be, and in order for me to be the best mom that I can be and still be an entrepreneur, means that I have to get into bed early. Otherwise, I am not showing up as the best mom I can be and the best boss that I can be.
And so it’s a priority. So we don’t go out for dinners at night, at, you know, eight o’clock at night. We don’t go out, we don’t do those things, and it’s just not a priority in our life. Like, we still are incredibly social, but we have [00:34:00] lunches with friends. When we invite friends over for dinner, they come at four o’clock in the afternoon.
So, you know, it’s, it’s just about. Doing what is in alignment with you, changing your habits from unhealthy ones to healthy ones that are going to help you
JJ Virgin: thrive. It was funny, I was speaking at an event in the Maldives and. Walking through circadian rhythm and eating by the clock and living by the clock, and also just the window you should be eating in.
And lo and behold, they’re having dinner at, you know, eight, nine o’clock at night. Wow. I’m like, I’m going like this is. When I go to bed. Mm-hmm. You know, and you’re having, and I thought, oh gosh, we should have had a conversation before, before I came here. So we could have designed this thing appropriately where everyone’s not scratching your head going, wait, you told us to eat three hours before and not go to bed three hours later cuz I ate late and now you did this.
And I’m like, sorry. So it is funny cuz you know, [00:35:00] all my friends are health friends, so we go out to dinner and. They’re like, can we meet at 5 36? You know, we all go out early, so,
Nick Broadhurst: and JJ, you know, I think your audience would love this, and I’m, I don’t know if you’re familiar with the DNA company, have you come across them yet?
Yes. Yeah. Yes, yes. And the reason I mentioned that is because it actually shows you, according to your dna, your ideal eating patterns, but also time, so the windows of time for eating for your body, which is super interesting. I’m still working to nudge my body into that window. I’ve sort of used to eating in a bigger window.
I have found personally that a 12 hour fast is kind of my, that’s it for me. I don’t really need much more. I have this sort of tendency to be more sympathetic dominant, more catabolic. So for me, I have to eat a lot of food, do resistance training to maintain my muscle mass, and if I go for long periods without.
That it doesn’t actually serve my particular body type very well.
JJ Virgin: I’m really glad you brought that up, because that is, first of all, intermittent fasting is not [00:36:00] fasting for 12 hours. That’s normal. Yeah. It’s normal behavior. Yeah. Right? Yeah. But everyone all of a sudden thinks they should skip breakfast, which I don’t believe in skipping breakfast.
No. I will tell you, like we’re all wagging our head no, but all of a sudden it’s like, Eat one meal a day, eat. And I go, well what about people 40 plus who are losing muscle? Totally. Yeah. Like what? Let’s go through each of these things and what are you using ’em for? And then how do you use it in the right thing for you?
And don’t just blindly grab everything cuz it’s, you know, okay, if we wanna restore some insulin sensitivity quickly, but think about like, if you are someone who. Loses muscle quickly, has to really work to put it on. Like when I’ve worked with athletes, I have a meeting four meals a day to make sure they’re getting in what they
need.
Nick Broadhurst: I eat four meals a day because, you know, the way that I work is I’m, I’m physical, so I stay really fit. And I’m also a creative, so I’m writing music at the moment. I’m doing a big project for, I can’t actually say yet, but it’s a big project and to be honest, it’s taking up a lot of my brain power and I’m just finding, [00:37:00] I’m eating.
Probably 50% more just to get through this period, because there’s so much going on in my mind, and I’m also sitting there creating and singing and writing and doing all these sorts of things. Everyone is so unique and to say that we’ve all gotta get fif, you know, 16 hour fasting window, whatever, it just makes no sense.
And also, mm-hmm the, the idea of skipping breakfast again is totally, if you look at Ayurveda for example, there’s no way they would suggest to do that, especially if you’re going the other way, which is skipping dinner. It’s probably a healthier way to do it because you’re gonna get a better sleep. And even then I’m still like, oh, I don’t know.
Just have a light dinner.
JJ Virgin: Think about when you skip dinner and now you don’t have those amino acids on board. And granted, we need to break down muscle build up, but you know, you don’t want to be overly catabolic either. No. Yes, there’s always more to these stories. Mm-hmm. So we talked about the big lover of sleep and I love 3, 2, 1.
That’s so good. I love that you created such simple things in this great structure. You know, structure [00:38:00] creates freedom, so this is fantastic. What beyond sleep, would you pull out as a important longevity move?
Nick Broadhurst: Well, I think we mentioned diet and exercise and jj, you’ve got that covered on this show, so we won’t go into too much depth there.
But there’s a lot of things you can do every day that are incredibly simple. I mean, even just the simple thing of watching your Omega-3 ratio. So if you, there’s a great test you can do. I think it’s Great Plains Laboratory, I’m pretty sure it’s great plains. The Omega-3 test index. Yeah. That to me is shockingly good because if you are low, if, let’s say for example, your ratio is six to one in terms of omega six’s and three’s you know, guaranteed you’re in an inflammatory state, so you’ve gotta do something about it.
Right. If you know that you are arachidonic acid’s high, you gotta do something about it. This is one of those simple levers you can do with a simple little, you know, finger prick blood test at home. And we recently did it and we hadn’t been supplementing like we usually did, and we were just a bit low.
[00:39:00] And we are sort of planning baby number two, so straight away, oh yes. Important. We know what we have to do. So we are like massively upping the omega3s. Not, not stupidly, but sensibly. To make sure that we get our levels back into balance. So it’s ideal, you know, that three one
JJ Virgin: ratio. So I’m glad you brought that up.
I will link to that in the show notes. When my son got hit, I was giving him 20 grams of fish oil in the hospital. To bring his brain back, and I think one of the reasons he made it through the unsurvivable in the first place was I had him on five grams of fish oil a day to begin with, so it, it protected his brain.
What I see a lot when I look at omega-3 index tests with people and they’re not really paying attention when they’re dining out, is they may be supplementing with omega-3 s, they’re eating healthy, but then they go out and they have salad dressings and they don’t pay attention and they don’t realize, like these restaurants.
The garbage oils and even nice restaurants in the States. I’m like, you’ll ask what the oil, I always say, what’s is this olive oil? It’s a [00:40:00] blend, which means no, it’s an omega six total inflammatory trash. You know?
Nick Broadhurst: I’m so glad you said that, JJ. We are like, we’re oil. Freaks. Like we, everywhere we go, we’re asking about
Melissa Ambrosini: oils and, but to be honest, we don’t really eat out much.
No. Like really we, we have like one or two organic cafes that we go to, but we don’t eat out for that reason purely because 99.9% of places use canola. Mm-hmm. And just very unhealthy seed oils. And if we do ever go out, that’s the first question we ask. What oil do you cook in? And usually they’ll have some olive oil.
So I’m like, please just use that. Just use, don’t use anything else. But most of the places they have canola
JJ Virgin: and they, they don’t even understand. I. I travel like half the time. So we figured out, we haven’t quite started the traveling with your own bottle of olive oil yet. A lot of times I’ll have sea salt in my purse.
I had sea salt in my purse then that spilled [00:41:00] and I’m like, oh my gosh. At some point, you know, I’m just gonna have to bring my stove to the hotel.
Melissa Ambrosini: It’s hilarious when we travel like we have. Hardly any clothes and suitcases of supplements and our toxic free pots and our water filters and our olive oil and our salts, and like everyone just laughs at us, but we don’t even really think about it anymore because we just do it like we love feeling good.
Well, it’s a core value and it is, yeah. It’s a core value for us and for us, feeling good is everything, because if we don’t feel good, like no one wants to not feel good. And so we do everything that we talk about in the book because it makes us thrive and life is just so precious.
JJ Virgin: You know what it felt like to feel bad?
Exactly. You did that. You already checked that off. You know how they say, you know, Hugh, as his health has a thousand dreams. Hugh doesn’t only as one. You already went and experienced that early. That was a gift to experience that early because a lot of people [00:42:00] don’t experience till, till later and they, they can’t do as much about it.
You got it early and got the lesson. And now you know what it feels like to feel really good, which I think most people don’t really know what that feels like. Mm-hmm. And so they won’t make as big of a commitment, you know? But once you’re there and you get it, you’re like, oh, I’m not giving this up. So we are traveling.
People are like, oh my gosh, you guys bring so much luggage. But we have one whole suitcases just like protein powder and collagen. And all the sudden, like, we’re going out for 60 days this summer, and you know, month of it is Korea and Bali. And I’m like, oh, we have. We’re gonna have to bring so much stuff, you know, cuz who knows?
So we’ll be prepared. So I love that you said that. And you know what I’m taking from this is that you’ve created a book with very, very practical, applicable, easy to do and techniques that will make a big difference. And it’s the little hinges that swing the big doors. And I think people always look for the big thing and I go, it’s the little things that compound.
It’s like [00:43:00] compounding interest. So I love that you’ve done that and you’re also giving a handout something about, so help me with this. It’s about successful morning strategies or what successful people do to start their day. Right. Tell me what the free gift is that I’ll tell everyone how to get.
Nick Broadhurst: Yeah, so if you go to timemagic.me, there is on that page a very simple form where you can just put your name, your email, and your order number for the book.
And we’ll send you two things. We’ll send you the Time Magic Toolkit, which has a full list of every single thing we’ve mentioned, plus all the things we actually use ourselves and haven’t mentioned in the book that we wanted to add in there that we just love and highly recommend. So it’s like a bit of a hack in terms of getting straight to the source of the best stuff and the how successful people start their day is things over two hours of audio of some of the greatest thought leaders, athletes, doctors, scientists in the world.
And essentially it’s their morning routines and we look, we love hearing other people’s morning routines and so we’ve [00:44:00] compiled that into something which is super interesting to hear because to be honest, we didn’t put all the ones in there that were just aligned with our belief systems. We put everything in there cuz it was interesting to see that some people actually just have a coffee for breakfast.
Some people have eggs and bacon, whatever. And we found it really interesting just to. See the broad spectrum of how people start their day. The majority of them though, are pretty optimized and pretty interesting, so you can also get that audio when you go to timemagic.me as well.
JJ Virgin: Cool. And I’m gonna put everything at jjvirgin.com/TimeMagic
all of Melissa’s books. I think we’ve done, haven’t we done some other podcasts, Melissa, over the years?
Melissa Ambrosini: You have been on my show, which was incredible. That conversation was amazing and we should definitely link to that for, for everyone to go and listen to. But yeah, I loved having you on my show.
You’re amazing.
JJ Virgin: Oh, well you guys are amazing. I, this is like such an important book and [00:45:00] especially right now for everybody. For everybody. 40 plus, like I can’t think of the thing that’s the most important to us. It is time, like time and health are it. So you put it together in one book with very simple strategies.
It’s like a game changer. So I super appreciate you doing that. Plus the gifts, and again, I’m gonna put all of this at jjvirgin.com/TimeMagic. And I appreciate you two coming on. I know I went overboard on my time with you too, but I was like, I couldn’t, I couldn’t stop. There’s just, I could keep going with this.
You got so much good stuff, so thank you.
Nick Broadhurst: Yeah, thanks for having us. Yeah, we could go forever. It’s, it’s an amazing topic and as you said, there’s a lot in the book. It’s super practical. Just pick a few things if you get a year back of your life. That was $20 very well spent. That’s all I can say. Yeah.
JJ Virgin: I would definitely pay 20 bucks to get a year.
I think pay 20 bucks to get a week, you know, to get an hour. Think about it. Mm-hmm. You know, again, time is that the one thing that you just [00:46:00] can’t get back. So anything you can do to get more of it that’s ethical and high integrity and healthy, I’m in. Thank you.
Nick Broadhurst: Yeah, us too.
Melissa Ambrosini: Thank you for having us.
JJ Virgin: Thank you. 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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