ATHE_Transcript_Ep 439_YT 23
JJ Virgin: [00:00:00] Hey, this is JJ Virgin. Thanks so much for joining me. This is ask the health expert. In each episode, I put the power of health in your hands and share ways to get healthy, lose weight, heal your gut detox and lots more. So you can look and feel better fast if you’d rather watch the video. Hey, I did put on my makeup and do my hair.
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I bet you don’t give a ton of thought to the mix of macros on your plate, right? I mean, you’ve been using a plate your whole life. How hard can it be? But even if you think, you know what you’re doing, just like with everything, when you want to do something. You need the right tools. And if you’re trying to eat better, feel better and get healthy and Hey bonus, maybe [00:01:00] lose a little weight.
Your plate is your main power tool. And if it’s not working for you, it’s probably working against you. So here are some simple hacks to build the perfect plate so you can look great and feel better fast. All right, let’s start with something. We’ve all been told at least once in our life. Look before you leap now that’s good advice in general, right?
But it’s even more important when it comes to your diet, because if you’re just piling on whatever’s within reach on your plate without giving it any. Maybe you’re in a hurry. Maybe your blood sugar’s crashing well, that’s when things can go sideways fast, your health takes a hit. Your weight gets away from you not to mention your mood, your skin, name it.
Even if you think you’re doing everything right, and you have the most organically sourced pasture-raised hormone and antibiotic free food possible on your plate too much. Healthy food is unhealthy. I’m looking at you, keto chicken casserole. [00:02:00] So I’m going to show you how to build the perfect plate with the right macros.
This plate is designed to make sure you feel great after you eat that you’re full and satisfied to keep you from being hungry between meals, to boost your energy and focus and help you burn fat for. Now that’s not all it does, but that’s a pretty good start. So check out this graphic and I’ll also include it in the links below.
Now notice it does not have levels. There’s no second and third and fourth floor. There’s a height limit now. Glad we got that out of the way now also notice the plate is carved up into areas for the right macros, clean, lean protein, healthy fats, colorful non-starchy veggies, and a little bit of slow, low carbs.
You want it to have the perfect combination of healing, energizing, nutrient dense whole foods, because they all work together to burn. Each macronutrient and there are three protein, fat and carbs creates a hormonal response [00:03:00] depending on the quality timing and amount you eat. So here’s a quick overview, and then we’re going to go deeper into each the specific amount and best choices and how they should be put together here on the plate.
All right. First protein. So protein is the building block of lean muscle tissue, and it keeps you feeling full longer by slowing down the time. It takes food to leave your stomach. And fat that releases chemicals in the small intestine that tell your brain you’ve had enough to eat and carbs in a nutshell, carbs, give you energy.
They trigger the release of insulin to absorb glucose from your blood and move it into your cells where it’s either used as energy or stored as glycogen or fat. All right. That was the shorthand. Now let’s talk about how they work on the plate. So we’re going to go into your first macro; Protein. Clean, lean protein.
I want you to think of wild fish and seafood pastured, chicken and pork grass fed beef and lamb. [00:04:00] Okay. How much should you have on your plate? Well, this really depends on a couple of things. So let’s get into that. First of all, I want to emphasize why protein is so important. It’s because your body needs protein or really your body needs the amino acids to make them up, to make your muscles, to make your hormones and your neuro-transmitters.
They keep your hair shiny they give your skin that glow and they keep your bones healthy. But here’s the thing your body can make some amino acids from, but others called the essential amino acids, you have to get those from food and protein is great for filling you up and keeping you satisfied and it’s also a quick fix for sugar cravings.
Meaning when craving sit, you may just be low in protein. And the good news is protein hardly has any impact on blood sugar. So it’s not going to create a big insulin spike. So if you go for protein instead of a sugar fix, you’re going to crush the cravings. But more importantly, you won’t send your blood sugar on a wild.
All right. So [00:05:00] back to how much protein you need now looking at the graphic, showing the right macros on your plate. Generally every meal should include one serving of clean lean protein. So think about four to six ounces of, again, fish, poultry, or meat. If you’re a woman or six to eight ounces of your man.
Now, the way I dose this is I do one gram per pound of lean body mass, which is going to be about 75% of your body weight. If you’re a woman. 80%. If you’re a man. But the challenge here is your protein requirement is dynamic because it’s also impacted of course here by your weight and body composition.
But it will increase too. If you’re under stress, if you’re healing or you’re doing some heavy workout. So I want you to really tune in and listen to your body and you can tell a lot by stepping on a body fat scale too. Now, it can be a little tough if you’re a vegan or vegetarian to get enough protein.
And my preference is that you get some of the animal sources of protein in, if you’re not doing this for spiritual [00:06:00] reasons. If you’re doing that again, organic pasture raised grass fed grass finished no added hormones. Right. But. In there. And especially if you’re a vegetarian and you’re going for things like eggs or dairy, you gotta be careful about that.
You want to make sure that you don’t have an intolerance to them. If they’re going to be on your plate, you want to make sure you’re eating foods that heal you not foods that hurt you, just like if you’re eating fish, you want to avoid farm-raised and fish that are higher levels of mercury, like tuna and swordfish.
You also don’t want to be eating animals that are fed GMOs, and you want your protein to have higher omega-3 fatty acids, higher levels of B12 and other B vitamins. So always choose meat from that animal. That’s been fed its native diet because when they’re happy, you’ll be happy. And then you’re also doing the humane thing that feels good too.
All right. Now, back to vegetarian and vegan, if you’re doing this, make sure you’re doing loaded smoothies with the plant-based protein powder, then adding some [00:07:00] legumes and non-gluten grains like lentils and quinoa which is actually a seed or nuts and other seeds to your meal. Super important and supplement with B12 since B12 is only an animal.
Okay, fat the next macro, by the way, you have to have protein and fat and water to survive. You can live without carbs, might be crabby, but you can’t so fat. I hope, you know, by now that fat doesn’t make you fat, that sugar is the real culprit in making you fat. The fat is your friend. Of course. We’re only talking about the good fats here.
One of the most therapeutic things you can do for your health is to make an oil change. Fats are going to help curb sugar cravings because they don’t spike your blood sugar. Insulin. Even protein will raise your insulin a little bit, but not so much healthy fats. Reduce your appetite and help stabilize your blood sugar because they slow the release of sugar into your bloodstream.
And fat also sends out satiety signals during digestion to tell your brain you’re [00:08:00] full. It also can lower your blood pressure and triglyceride raise your good HDL cholesterol and reduce inflammation. But obviously these are the good fats we’re talking about. I want you to stay away from seed oils, damaged fats and trans fats and processed foods.
See, there’s no carve out here for cookies, crackers, chips, or cake on your plate. They’re more like your mean France. So looking at the plate graphic, you can see two to four servings of healthy fat at each meal. And that’s about how much you need, especially if you’re trying to lose weight, you’ll want to go a little on the lower side.
And when I say a serving here, think about 10 nuts, half of a small avocado tablespoon of olive oil. And if you’re having something like grass fed beef, a fattier cut, or a fattier wild fish, make sure you count the fat in there as well. So like if you’re having wild salmon, you might be getting too fat servings in there just.
Now if you’re a vegan or vegetarian, you’re going to want to focus on a mega rich foods like flax and chia seeds and [00:09:00] walnuts, and take an algae omega-3 DHA, EPA supplement, because you’re not going to be able to get all you need from your. All right, the third macro carbs. So your plate will also have zero to two servings of slow, low carbs, and two or more servings of non-starchy veggies.
There’s no limit. There more is better. And you’re going to adjust a few more carbs if you’re more active or athletic. Right. And I find that if you’re over the age of 40, 45, you tend to do better with less carbs. So let me get into carbs. I starting with this fun fact; Carbs aren’t just starch and sugar.
Fiber also counts as a carb, even though we can’t digest it and think of it like this, all sugars are carbs, but not all carbs. Start as sugars, sugar, and starches get converted to glucose and. But we don’t have that digestive enzymes to break down fiber, which is a great thing because it stays intact to our digestive system and keeps [00:10:00] your blood sugar stable and helps us feel fuller longer.
So that’s why, when you’re building your plate with the perfect macros, you have to think about the sugar impact of fast carbs versus starches. And. Here’s the difference. Fast carbs, having much bigger sugar impact, fast carbs, like refined sugar, give you a quick hit of energy because they’re packed with glucose and no fiber to slow down sugar and insulin spikes.
Some can be stored for energy, but the rest gets stored as fat. Now there’s going to be none of that on your plate. Okay. Now starches starches are plant-based and fiber rich. So their sugar impact is. So starches are slow carbs because they take longer to digest and your body has to work harder to get at the glucose.
So your blood sugar and insulin stay low. And there’s also resistance starch from potatoes, bananas, and rice, which is really hard to digest. Hence the name resist. So it curbs your appetite and improves your insulin sensitivity and feeds the good bugs in your gut. And [00:11:00] lowers your blood sugar. So again, think beans and lentils, which are also great because they’re high in fiber, too.
Those are the kind of slow, low carbs that will be on your. Now you can have up to two servings here. And I find I do better with very little in the morning. A little bit, one to two at night helps me with sleep. So play around with that bit more on fiber. So fiber is a secret weight loss weapon. It makes you feel fuller longer.
It keeps your blood sugar stable and it feeds the healthy bacteria. So how much should you have? I’d really like to see you try to get in at least 50 grams of fiber a day now to give you an idea, most people are getting about 15 grams of fiber a day, but that’s just because you’re probably not paying attention to fiber.
And that’s a bummer because it’s a really easy thing to increase. And one of the easiest ways to increase it is just eat close to nature. With more whole foods, because if you do that, you’re going to get more fiber [00:12:00] automatically and it’s going to bring down your sugar impact. So to do that, one of the easy ways is to have two or more servings of non-starchy veggies at every single.
And I want you to check out this space. They take up on the plate, but in this case you can go high. Like you can go up the levels on the veggies because the more, the better, and you can also toss in a little fiber blend, some chia seeds or freshly ground flax seed meal into your loaded smoothie. So those are two changes alone between the non starchy veggies and the loaded smoothie that should easily get you to 50 grams or more of fiber a day.
And just in general, too, if you’ve been having trouble getting healthy and losing. It could be inflammation caused by food intolerance. So it’s important to know if you have any issues with my seven high five that’s high food intolerance, foods, gluten dairy, soy, corn, eggs, peanuts, and sugar, and artificial sweeteners.
If you do. They can cause fatigue, bloating, digestive problems, joint pain. So if you’re feeling [00:13:00] any of that, you’ll need to sus that out first with the Virgin diet. So you stop eating foods that are hurting you and you swap those for foods that will heal you. So there’s your perfect plate. It’s a great way to fast-track eating your way to better health and most importantly, enjoy it all along the way.
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