Dr. Gabrielle Lyon: #1 Blueprint for Building Muscle That Will Change How You Age! (This Will Transform Your Long-Term Health!)

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Muscle is the organ of ondevity. Your survivability against all
cose mortality will be greater the more muscle mouse your health.
It is the only organ system that we have full
control over. We cannot say that for any other organ system.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Hey, everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the place you
come to become happier, healthier, and more healed. I'm so
grateful because our guest today is going to help you
do just that. Today's guest is doctor Gabrielle Lyon, a
physician and a founder of the Institute for Muscle Centric Medicine.
She's the author of Forever Strong and her new book,

(00:40):
The Forever Strong Playbook. Her groundbreaking work shows why muscle
isn't just about fitness. It's the key to longevity, vitality,
and preventing disease. If you want to sort this area
of your life out, this is the book to grab
a six week science based plan to sharpen your mind,
strengthen your body, and get healthy at any age. Go

(01:03):
and grab a copy of the book right now. Please,
welcome to On Purpose, doctor Gabrielle Lion. Gabrielle. It's great
to have you here.

Speaker 3 (01:10):
It's great to be here in.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
The first few moments that you've walked in your In
the first few moments that you've walked in, your spirit
and just your energy is really captivating and it's really
wonderful to be around and some really excited for my
audience and community today to connect with you and be
introduced to your work.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
Well, I couldn't be happier. Awesome, thanks for having me.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
Well, let's dive in. I want to start off in
on purpose fashion by asking you what is the purpose
of your work? What are you trying to achieve for people?
What are you hoping they get out of today by listening?

Speaker 1 (01:43):
I believe that the world can be stronger and more resilient,
And it's not going to be from one person. It's
a collective path forward and so together we can create
a cultural shift and it's available to everybody.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
And what about with this book? What was your purpose
with this book? What were you hoping that people are
going to get by following the six week science based plan?
In our conversation, Yeah, what's the output? What's the result
you want them to get?

Speaker 1 (02:07):
Well, there's a lot of information out there and it
can become very overwhelming. I wanted people to be able
to pick up a book to show them exactly how
to eat, how to think, how to move, how to recover.
It's a playbook.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
Now, you just said three really important things that you said, eat, think,
and move. Where do we start?

Speaker 1 (02:31):
Well, you know, I would argue we start with mind.
People will want to hear about the body. I'll let
you choose because there's a bi directional relationship between both
muscle and your mind. You pull one to push the other.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
So let's start where you think we should start with
your thoughts in our mind. Let's start there, all right?
What challenge do people have in their mind that you
hear most often, that you face most often when it
comes to building muscle.

Speaker 1 (03:01):
Well, I think that people have to feel worthy of
being healthy, and there's a lot of internal dialogue. I'm
too old, i can't do this, I'm too busy, and
these are all distractions. The brain is an organ system,
and the brain is doing what it's supposed to do,
which is produce thoughts. Not all of those thoughts are relevant,

(03:22):
and we have to become very skilled at discerning what
is a relevant thought versus not so that we can
take the next right action. And that takes discipline and then,
of course, after that, you are free to choose and
be able to live how you want physically.

Speaker 2 (03:39):
How do we start doing that? When those excuses feel
so strong, they feel so big, and they feel so real,
right that thought of I'm too old, I've never been
that fit. You know, no one in my family ever
worked out. I don't need to work out. I'm actually okay.
What can convince people to realize that no investing in
their health is the most investment they can make.

Speaker 1 (04:01):
Well number one practice, And you have to prove it
to me that you're too old. I think we have
to start challenging our thoughts because oftentimes they're irrelevant. And
that's why I wrote the playbook, because whether you're having
those thoughts or not, you still have to take action.
And you might not be motivated, but you do have
to be committed. And people will say I don't have

(04:23):
time for health and wellness, and I would say, well,
if you don't have time for health and wellness, how
are you going to have time for sickness?

Speaker 2 (04:30):
That's a great I mean, that's such a big point.
It's it's incredible. How I mean, I was saying it
to you about myself. I met my wife. You know,
we've been together for twelve years now, I'm married for nine.
But she's always been focused on health and fitness. Health
and wellness has been a big part of her life,
especially physically. She's a dietician and nutritionist. And for me,

(04:50):
I came from a world of mastering the mind and
mastering your thoughts, but not necessarily pushing the body. I
was athletic, I played sport, but I didn't really work out.
I didn't have a fitness schedule. And what happened for
me was she said to me, and I was just
sharing that with you offline. She said to me, she
was like, Jay, you're so present, you're so alert, you're
so focused. Imagine how powerful you'd be if you were

(05:14):
to exercise.

Speaker 1 (05:15):
I mean, she is brilliant. She didn't say, Jay, you
have to do this. She gave you the choice.

Speaker 2 (05:21):
Yeah. Absolutely, And I think that's what people need to realize,
is that whatever level you're at, whether you're at a
pain point or whether you feel good, imagine how good
you could feel.

Speaker 1 (05:30):
Yeah. And I think that we have focused a lot
on what we have to lose. I mean, there has
been an obesity epidemic going on, and I don't know.
For the last fifty years or so, we've been chasing
obesity as something that we have to lose as the
root of all of our problems, and it's very disempowering.
And if you think about what women and men have

(05:51):
to go through, the average person has at least fifteen
diet books on their shelf, and can you imagine trying
to lose fat something that you don't necessarily have control over.
But on the flip side, our body is made up
of forty percent muscle. It is something that we can
take action and focus on what we have to gain,

(06:14):
and we can use our mind to do it, or
you can use your muscle to move your mind, and
so either way you will become a stronger, more resilient human.
And if we recognize that muscle is the organ of
longevity and what we need and what we have to
focus on for aging. I mean, you talk a lot
about health and wellness, in order to get there, we

(06:38):
have to acknowledge skeletal muscle as an organ system.

Speaker 2 (06:41):
You know what, You're the first person to say to
me that we've been thinking about it or wrong. I've
never heard it put that way. I feel like every
single book or every single conversation is always about losing
fat and not about building muscle. And even though we're
in this protein rich muscle conversation right now, which is great,
it's still always been And it's almost like telling someone

(07:03):
never to have a negative thought again without having a positive.

Speaker 1 (07:05):
That's exactly right, and that's not true.

Speaker 2 (07:07):
You're always gonna have negative thoughts. That's always going to
be the case. But what if you could lean in
And no one has ever said it that way, And
now that you've said that, it's almost like I've unlocked
a whole new mindset about it, because I think everyone
listening to just think about that for a second. You've
been spending the last few decades every single January first,
you're thinking to yourself, this is the year I lose weight.

(07:29):
This is the year I lose weight. And it doesn't work.
And all of a sudden, you just said, forty percent
of us is muscle. If it's all about building muscle,
building something that we already have. We lose weight naturally, right,
that happens as a byproduct of it.

Speaker 1 (07:42):
And it is the only organ system that we have
voluntary control over. You cannot tell your heart to be
at fifty beats per minute. You cannot tell your thyroid
to produce x number of thyroid hormones, but you can
tell your bicep to curl, You can tell your body

(08:02):
to squad. It is the only organ system that we
have full control over, which makes it extremely empowering. And
you know, when I think about obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease,
what if these external diseases are all in part pathology

(08:22):
of unhealthy muscle.

Speaker 2 (08:24):
First talk to me about that. Yes, explain it.

Speaker 1 (08:27):
Yeah, So skeletal muscle and I say skeletal muscle. People
are like, well, why do you always say skeletal muscle. Well,
because there's cardiac muscle and then there's smooth muscle.

Speaker 2 (08:37):
What's the difference.

Speaker 1 (08:37):
Well, cardiac muscle stride and muscle the heart. It's the
only area where there is again cardiac muscle, and then
smooth muscle is uterus or in blood vessels. But skeletal
muscle that is our powerhouse. That is what we are
built on and as the most important organ system, it
is the center and focal point for an number of things. Well,

(09:01):
number one, you knew you were talking about sport. We
know that muscle is important for sport mobility, yes, and strength,
of course, but what about muscle as our metabolic control center.
Skeletal muscle is the primary site for carbohydrate metabolism, for
fatty acid metabolism, for amino acid reserve. It's our body armor,

(09:24):
and when you contract it, it releases these myokindes, which
are hormones that go throughout the body that affect the
brain and the liver and the bone. But more importantly,
skeletal muscle when it becomes unhealthy. If you think about
muscle cross sectional area of to thigh, a filet mignon
sounds gross, but just stay with me. Is a rich

(09:47):
red muscle without fat infiltrated into it versus a wagou
steak or a ribi which has fat that is infiltrated
throughout it. When we gain weight, don't just gain weight
subpcutaneously that we can see or even viscerally around our organs,
but we also can gain weight should I say gain

(10:11):
weight gain fat within that muscle tissue and muscle becomes unhealthy.
There is no such thing as a healthy sedentary person.
And when that muscle becomes unhealthy, then we see diseases
like cardiovascular diseases, Alzheimer's, which is type through diabetes of
the brain. But the health of our body and what

(10:36):
controls glucose triglycerides relate to the health of our skeletal muscle.
And so I would argue that skeletal muscle at its
core is a root cause of obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease,
and Alzheimer's, because these are diseases in part of metabolism.

(10:56):
And if someone is listening, they're like, well, what does
that mean. You go to your doctor and you get
your triglystrides measured or your cholesterol measured, you get your
glucose measured, your insulin, but the primary site for control
of that is muscle.

Speaker 2 (11:12):
Can you see that you can't measure that right?

Speaker 1 (11:14):
You can?

Speaker 2 (11:14):
What's it called? What would what should you be asking for?

Speaker 1 (11:17):
Ask for a panel for metabolic syndrome? And everyone's heard
about metabolic syndrome. So it's a fat percentage over thirty percent,
it's elevated blood pressure, it's elevated triglytrides, insulin, and glucose.
What's fascinating is people feel as if that is related
to obesity, but it's a clinical indication that your muscles

(11:40):
are unhealthy.

Speaker 2 (11:43):
That's why you say that pull muscle health is bigger
than the obesity crisis, because that's what's at the root of.

Speaker 1 (11:50):
It, exactly. And for the last fifty years we've been
chasing obesity and it reminds me of this. So have
you ever heard of the street lamp effect?

Speaker 2 (11:58):
No? Okay, well, actually I think I have out of it,
but I forgot what.

Speaker 1 (12:03):
You've been to New York City and you've been to
Central Park. So imagine that it's two in the morning
and there's a guy who's drunk and he's looking for
his keys, and you know, there's lamp posts, and a
cop comes over and he sees this guy on his
hands and knees and he's looking for his keys. The
cop comes over and is, well, what are you doing?
Can I help you? And he's like, yeah, man, I
lost my keys. So the cop and the guy are

(12:27):
on their hands and knees looking for the keys, and
after twenty minutes, the cop goes, are you sure you
lost your keys here? And he was like, no, I
lost it over there in the park, but it's too dark.
I can't see anything. So aside from wasting time and
probably the cop got really frustrated. It's a metaphor for
the fact that obesity is easy to see. We don't

(12:48):
feel when our muscles become unhealthy, it doesn't affect us,
but we see when we put on weight, and that
has then become the primary focus. And the only way
we're going to solve something is if we ask the
right question. Yeah, and if we are still asking the
question about obesity, then we are absolutely missing the point

(13:12):
of skeleton muscle as the primary organ system for a
healthy and great, strong life because it is at the
focal point.

Speaker 2 (13:23):
Wow. I mean yeah, No one's ever explained it like
that to me, and I feel like it's a breakthrough
to hear it that way, because we've just been looking
in the wrong direction, focused on the wrong thing. And
I would add that another reason for that is because
it's aesthetic, like we look at it as something that

(13:43):
will improve the way we look, etc. And feel good
about ourselves, and so it becomes an easier thing to
focus on, whereas there may be a feeling of like, oh,
I don't want to be too bulky, or I don't
want to look like this, or that's not how I
meant to look or whatever. These norms and traditions have
been or what our physical appearances should be like.

Speaker 1 (14:02):
And you said something really important, and you know this
better than anybody. Humans become really good at thinking the
same way. And because we've been talking about obesity for
so long and well, we should lose weight, then that
is passed down generation after generation, as opposed to I'm
going to go out and I'm going to do my

(14:23):
best to build muscle. And let's face it, first of all,
it's much easier to gain body fat than it is
to build muscle.

Speaker 2 (14:30):
And they're hard is it?

Speaker 3 (14:32):
How is it?

Speaker 1 (14:33):
How?

Speaker 2 (14:33):
What is how hot? What is how long does it
take to gain body fat versus build muscle? Right?

Speaker 1 (14:39):
They say that it's an excess of three hundred thirty
five hundred calories for every pound I mean, think about
the holidays. The average person, I don't know, they might
gain between five and ten pounds over this season. They
could be training for a month and it might take
depending if they're new to training, they might gain one
to few pounds. If they are perfect and dedicated of muscle.

(15:04):
And then the fitter you are, the more skilled you
are at training, the more difficult it is to put
on muscle. But those same people. It's discurgin, But those
same people could go out and eat a cake and
do all this other stuff and put on fat. The
body finds it very easy to store body fat. It's
this protective mechanism. Arguably, I would say it's a design

(15:26):
flaw that it's so much more difficult to put on muscle.
But even with that being said, if we reorient ourselves
to muscle, then as we think about aging, there's a
natural decline in muscle and muscle health. And we know
that consciously. If you look at your parents or your grandparents,

(15:48):
they seem to have shrunk, right, I mean, you've experienced that,
And there's this natural progression, especially when people don't train
because skeletal muscle tissue it changes. It becomes more resistance
called anabolic resistance. It becomes less efficient at utilizing protein.
It can become less efficient at responding to exercise. But

(16:13):
it's not to say that it always does. I mean,
when you exercise and have a great program, you can
be ninety years old and you'll put on muscle.

Speaker 2 (16:21):
So let's talk about how to build it. Now that
we've shifted everyone's focus to this conversation being all around
building muscle as the priority, as the focus. We know
it's not easy, we know there's a challenge to it.
What's the first thing that we do that we was
trying to build a muscle?

Speaker 1 (16:36):
There is something that people have to recognize that when
you are young, you are very anabolic. My kids don't
have to worry about what's young five Okay, but really
I would say the cut off, we say is about
thirty five, and after thirty five you have to become
much more intentional about both died and training when you're young.

(16:58):
You know, I was talking to you before showing you
videos of my four year old who's training for the
CELT to push out yea. He doesn't have to worry
about building muscle or thinking about a certain amount of
protein because he's so anabolic, meaning five grams of protein
could be all he needs to stimulate his muscle. Whereas
we get older, it's a minimum of around thirty grams

(17:22):
to stimulate muscle protein synthesis. But when we think about
building muscle, we require a certain progressive stimulus. And this
typically I think about resistance training, and for people who
are listening, they're like, well, the women will say this
to me. I've never lifted a weight in my life.

(17:42):
I feel very uncomfortable and hesitant to start. And do
you know what my answer is, you've been lifting weights
your whole life. Do you have a toddler, do you
have luggage? Do you have groceries? People have to stop
believing this repetitive narrative. They are stronger than they think,

(18:03):
they are more capable, and they've been doing it their
entire life, but just not in a structured program.

Speaker 2 (18:10):
Yeah, it's it's and again it's a mindset shift. It's
a mindset shift to recognize all those moments that you've
been doing it. And kids are heavy sometimes kids kids
discussing to be super heavy.

Speaker 1 (18:20):
So now we know that people have been doing it,
So what do they have to do to build muscle? Now?
I will say that the current recommendations for exercise are
one hundred and fifty minutes of moderate to vigorous activity
a week and two days a week of resistance training.
Roughly seventy four percent of people don't meet that. Fifty
percent of people are sedentary, not moving. So why that

(18:44):
sets us up for an opportunity. As soon as they
begin to implement a program, they should see success. And
I like to start with two to three days a
week of a resistance training program, and you know, I
put that in the playbook. They don't have to go
to the gyms since training can include body weight, weights, bands,

(19:05):
anything that you are moving your body against some kind
of force. It's simple, not complicated. The lighter the weight,
the more reps you have to do. The heavier the weight,
the less you have to do. And there's ways in
which you can change up the stimulus. You don't have
to always progress to heavier weights because if your audience

(19:26):
is older, or if someone who's listening is older, those
that heavyweights could set them up for injury. It's not
about is this weight too light or too heavy. It's
about the stimulus to the tissue.

Speaker 2 (19:40):
You know.

Speaker 1 (19:40):
It's just like the mind, the body responds to resistance
and if we create enough resistance then it has to respond.

Speaker 2 (19:48):
Talk to me about that because I think there's not
a full understanding. You just explained the difference between heavyweights,
less reps, low weight, higher rep to build muscle. What
are you trying to feel after the completion of a
set number of reps to know that you're building muscle?
Because you could do a low weight high reps and

(20:11):
maybe don't feel that stretched, or you could do high
weight low reps and you do feel quite stretched. What's
building muscle?

Speaker 1 (20:20):
Well, I think that regardless, you're building strength and you're
getting technical skills. And again, if we're talking about hypertrophy,
because building mass is important, people will say, and you know,
they argue about it.

Speaker 2 (20:33):
I mean by that building Yes.

Speaker 1 (20:35):
That's exactly where I was going. But these are great
questions because I think that the way that we look
at muscle in general, we're doing it such a disservice.
Why is it important to build mass? And they argue
about this in the scientific community, But you know I
cheat I trained in geriatrics, which is people over the
age of sixty five, and this is one reason why

(20:55):
I became so passionate about talking about muscle. Muscle mass.
The amount of muscle you have is important for a
number of reasons. If you bought into what I said
about muscle being this metabolic control center, then you recognize
that muscle. The more healthy muscle mass you have, the

(21:19):
more of an opportunity the place you have to store glucose,
because if you can't remove glucose out of the bloodstream,
into cells after two hours. You know, we have a
disease for that. We have a name for that, and
it's called diabetes. The more healthy muscle mass you have,
the better your metabolic control. So think about it this

(21:41):
way and again this is setting the stage for why
building muscle is so important. Think about it as a suitcase.
Your muscle is a suitcase. You are going on a
trip for four days. You're bringing just to carry on.
You open it up, you stuff it in there and
instead of looking for four days. I don't know about you,

(22:01):
but I'm a very heavy packer. I packed for fourteen Well,
I mean you probably wear the same pair of shoes.
I bring at least three pairs of shoes. So here's
the suitcase and I'm stuffing all this clothes in and
then I've packed for fourteen days. I close the suitcase
and I can't get it to close. My clothes are
falling everywhere, half the shoes are out. Your muscle is

(22:24):
just like that. If you are over eating carbohydrates, you
have nowhere else for the carbs or fatty acids to go.
Stays in the bloodstream for a period of time, and
then over time it deranges metabolism. You put on body fat,
and that is one reason skeleton muscle is so important.

(22:45):
It's the suitcase of your body. So now we go
back to building mass. How do we do it? Now
I've told you that it's really important because of your
metabolic control center. There's a number of other reasons why
building mass is so important. If you get sick, you know,
if you get pneumonia, if you you know, break a bone,
if you are hustlized or in a highly catabog sty.

(23:08):
We've all had the flu terrible, terrible, terrible. Your body
will pull from your body armor also known as a muscle.
To get those amino acids out for repair and rebuilding.
That's critically important. So then we go to one more
thing that's very important is the site for fatty acid oxidation.

(23:32):
At rest, healthy muscle burns fat. The more muscle mass
you have, the more all of these things are accounted for.
If we focus on obesity, and I'm going somewhere with
this to stay with me, there is this cycle of
weight gain and weight loss. And each time you hit
January first and you put on weight and then you

(23:55):
crash diet and then half the weight that you lose
is muscle, and you do this year after year, over time,
you are left with less muscle than you started with.
And then you start to see blood glucose increase, fatty
acids increase, visceral fat increase. All of a sudden, it

(24:18):
makes perfect sense. So then we turn our attention to
what do we do to fix it? Whether your body
composition changes, the moment you begin to engage in exercise
and movement, you're emptying the suitcase, you're using that fuel.
So while we are talking about resistance training for hypertrophy,

(24:41):
which is building mass, recognize that the moment you choose
to do something physical, you are improving in that moment
the health of that tissue. Because what I don't want
to happen is people to be hyper fixated on how
to build it, because then we're just the reverse reverse
coint of how to lose it. But again, focusing on

(25:05):
resistance training two to three days a week of providing
enough stimulus. And you talked about this is it light weights?
Is it heavy weights? And you know I love the
rep range ten to twelve where you have one or
two reps in reserve where you can't go one more
rep without a technical failure without your form breaking down,

(25:28):
you just can't quite do it. You do this over
time and you become stronger, you become more skilled at training,
and more importantly, you will find ways to then to
progress this activity.

Speaker 2 (25:59):
The main difference with men building muscle and women building muscle.

Speaker 1 (26:03):
What a great question. Now there's a lot of myths
out there and women, and again this is pretty controversial.
Men have more muscle massive baseline, but relative to their size,
there is data to suggest there's no difference to the
amount that a woman could build versus a man relative

(26:25):
to size, and same with strength. But culturally we have
to recognize that. I don't know about you, but when
you go to the gym, do you see a lot
of women in the weight room?

Speaker 2 (26:37):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (26:38):
Yeah, I mean it's not based on just traditionally women
are if you. I mean, it's changing now and I'm
so grateful that it's changing, but really, women are you know,
I don't know about you, but I remember my mom
wearing a leotard and the bandana and eating salad. And
we've done this for decades. Women are afraid to get bulky.

(27:01):
It's never going to happen. I've been trying for thirty years.
And if you talk to any guy who's reading any
of the muscle mags, they've also been trying. It is
very difficult to put on muscle, but it's not impossible.
And to answer your question, men and women can both
put on size and both be strong relative to their

(27:22):
body size.

Speaker 2 (27:23):
But the process of putting it on is the process
of putting on muscle different for men and women?

Speaker 1 (27:28):
No, No, And that's important to recognize that a good
foundation program, with enough stimulus, you will see data to
support that men and women can put on muscle comparatively,
But it doesn't mean that it's always that way. But again,
there's a lot of factors and a lot of the

(27:50):
data is you know, it's difficult because we take randomized
control trials and we take meta analyzes and then we
try to put into clinical practice and we have to
recognize that people are individual and there's individual variability based
on people. Yeah, for sure, muscle is made up of
two main fiber types. There's type one fiber and type

(28:12):
two fiber. Type one fiber you can think of as
endurance fiber. So my husband, he's really big into marathons.
He's crazy, but he loves running marathons, and he has
a lot of type one fiber types and that primarily
will burn fatty acids. And then there's the type two
fiber type, which I think of two and two biceps,

(28:34):
So it's the bigger, bulkier fiber that is used for
lifting weights. And over time, as we age the type
two fibers for power and strength, they naturally decrease and
we're left with more type one fibers, which again are
this thinner more think of it as a endurance athlete.

(28:57):
This is why resistance training is so important, is to
maintain and build those type two fiber types.

Speaker 2 (29:03):
If someone wanted to test their strength today, what could
they do for them to know whether they're doing well
or struggling?

Speaker 1 (29:11):
Okay, now there's the hand grip test, so basically, and
you can buy one of these on Amazon and it
tests your hand grip strength and it will give you
a range if you are strong or weak, It'll give
you a range. But that's great. However, what I would
rather have people do is pick an exercise like a

(29:33):
push up and see how many push ups that they
can do at baseline, and then begin to train or
do a pull up or a dead hang ways that
we can increase grip strength. I mean there's a million
different ways to do these things and people should figure
out one thing that works for them and test it.
For me, it's a push up. I say everybody should do.

(29:53):
See how many push ups you can do and then
you train for it for.

Speaker 2 (29:56):
A healthy amount of a healthy woman. How many push
ups should they be able to do?

Speaker 1 (29:59):
We don't have a number. Okay, we don't have a
number that I can confidently say. I mean there is
some data that if a man can do and I
don't remember this number, so I don't want to misspeak.
But they've done a few studies in men that if
men can do I think it's ten or more push
ups in a period of time that they have a
lower risk of heart disease. And really what it's relating to,

(30:20):
and don't quote me on that number, but what it's
related to is I think their muscular health and strength.
But again, we should pick one or two exercises and
set that as a standard of something that you work
to achieve.

Speaker 2 (30:35):
Yeah. I also think that's just a great place to start.
I think sometimes the challenge with this is we try
and start out a workout regimen and the challenge with
that is is like you're like going from doing nothing
for years, it's now saying I'm going to go to
the gym three times a week. I'm going to do
two days of resistance training, one day of cardia. And
it's like, this is it's so much. And I remember

(30:57):
when I was recovering from a surgery and I couldn't
do one push up unless I was on my knees
because of my surgery. And I remember just getting on
my knees and doing one push up every night, and
then the next day I could do five, and the
next day I could ten. And now that my surgery's
held and everything, it's like I'll comfortably do twenty five
thirty push ups whatever it is in one round and

(31:18):
can do more. And it's just so fascinating to me.
How like, just I love that advice. So just pick
one thing because what it does is a few things.
The first thing it does is you actually get to
see how strong you are, and you get to feel
and measure growth. You're not measuring now do I have muscle?
Have I lost weight? You're like, I can do one
push up. The second thing is it builds your confidence

(31:39):
as soon as I could get off my knees and
start doing proper push ups again. After my surgery, I
was like, wow, I'm making progress. My body didn't look
any different, didn't have an amazing chest or didn't have
abs or whatever. I just felt better about myself. I
was like, wow, I went from doing ten push ups
on my knees to doing ten push ups without. Oh.
Now I can do thirty push ups in one go,

(31:59):
and I do four rounds within a thirty second break
of each. Oh wow, I feel really good. And I
feel like that's what so many of us. And I'm
speaking of someone who has not worked out since I
was young, has not gone to the gym. Now, I
have a five day week weight training program, play pickaball
three times a week, have a high protein diet. But
like having gone through that, for me, it was those

(32:21):
little moments of picking one activity that just started to
make me feel better. Does that make sense?

Speaker 1 (32:27):
I love that. And also you've reoriented everyone listening or
watching to the fact that it was under your conscious control. Yeah,
you can't control how much muscle you're gonna put on,
you can't control how much fat you're going to lose,
But the one right thing. Is that one next action
that you can take, because if we can understand that

(32:51):
muscle is this organ of longevity, and we've so far
pushed it to this vanity metric that you're missing what
it really is, and it's the foundation for our health
and wellness. And it's this bi directional relationship you just
said confidence. Yes, the stronger you are, the more effective

(33:15):
you are going to be in your mind. We use
the body to build the mind, because sometimes the mind
is crazy. I'm gonna give you an example. Think about
you're in a negative headspace and everyone listening, they've all
been there, right, You can try to think your way
out of I mean, listen, Jay, you might be more

(33:35):
skilled at thinking your way out of a negative headspace
than say the rest of us. But I know, for me,
if I am struggling with a thought that is ruminating,
or I did something and now I'm thinking about, well,
I wish I hadn't done this, and it's just spiraling
out of control. The fastest way to stop that, and

(33:56):
the most effective way to stop that is not thinking
my way out of it. But it's taking thirty seconds
to do something so physically hard that you cannot possibly
think of anything else in imagine trying to think of
those negative thoughts when you are doing a ten second

(34:18):
max outsprint where you want to die because you just
work so hard you're not thinking about any of that.
Or do you cold plunge it all?

Speaker 2 (34:27):
Yeah, I was just there yesterday. I love it. It's crazy.

Speaker 1 (34:30):
Could you think of anything else? That's seconding it?

Speaker 2 (34:34):
That's it? Focus on that's it.

Speaker 1 (34:36):
And you've now leveraged your body, your muscle, to change
your physiology, your mental constructs, and so people have to
recognize that muscle is at the focal point for our
physical power but also our mental power. And if you
can't move your mind, you can definitely move your body.
And I challenge anyone to try to think of any

(35:00):
anything negative when you are jumping in that cold plund Yeah.

Speaker 2 (35:02):
Well that's the challenge I want people to do. While
you're listening to this right now, here's what I want
you to do. I want you to use Gabrielle's insight
of just choose one activity. I think bush ups are
the easiest one, and just see how many you can
do today, and then see how many you can do tomorrow,
and see how many you can do the third day,
Just take one activity. You don't have to start going
to the gym three times a week if you're not
already doing that. Now. I know a lot of our

(35:23):
audience loves going to the gym, loves walking. Hopefully this
is shifting in the direction of muscle building and helping
you understand what that's going to require. The question I
wanted to ask you was what are the dangers of
being skinny fat?

Speaker 1 (35:35):
You're talking about sarcopenic obesity, which, by the way, I
think is going to be the new epidemic. We have
largely been able to and I don't want to. I
want to be very careful about what I'm saying here.
We have now the use of jolpi ones. They are
a medication called an innkreton does a number of things.

(35:56):
They are more effective for weight loss than nearly anything
we've ever seen except for bariatric surgery. With the use
of these vlp ones, individuals are able to lose weight.
Part of that weight is fat, and part of that
weight is muscle. When we lose muscle like that at
any kind of rapid pace, or really at all, we
now are a smaller version of ourselves, with less muscle

(36:22):
and this becomes extremely detrimental. So while we work on
treating obesity, we are treating one epidemic obesity for sarcopenia,
which is low muscle mass and function. The dangers of
that are astronomical number one. Low muscle mass is poor

(36:43):
metabolic health. Number two, muscle pulls bone. When you have
low muscle mass, that is an indicator that you will
have lower bone density. We've all heard about the people
that fall and break a hip and oftentimes low muscle
mass and strength and function, which is defined as cyclopenia.

(37:04):
We think about as diseases of aging. They're not. We
are going to see sarcopenia as diseases of youth, and
it is terrifying and we are not ready to deal
with it. Because if the majority of the population is sedentary,
and there are two ways to stimulate muscle, which is

(37:24):
diet and exercise, those are the two main ways diet
and resistance training. If an individual becomes skinny fat, we
know that they have an increased risk of higher glucose,
higher triglis threads, higher insulin, all of things at the
core of Alzheimer's diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and low bone density

(37:47):
we have to address it because muscle. I think about
why muscle is important in kind of a three prong
bucket area. Number one muscle mass and strength. If you
are skinny fat, you probably don't have that. Number two metabolism.
If you're skinny fat, you definitely don't have that. And
number three plumbing. You need to have activity, not just

(38:10):
resistance training, but also cardiovascular activity to have good blood flow.
And if you don't have any of those things, then
your muscle span. You know, people talk about health span,
talk about lifespan, but it really is about muscle span.

Speaker 3 (38:30):
Interesting, and you have less of that.

Speaker 2 (38:32):
Yeah, I mean, but that's what's so hard about it
because you think you look healthier because we've made people
believe that healthy means like like no fat totally and
so outwardly it looks like you ticked all the boxes
and you got it right. And whether you did it
through a gop one or whether you did it just
through fasting, well, whether you're naturally built that way, like
I'm naturally skinnier, Like I'm a leaner person in ever

(38:56):
since I lost weight when I was a teenager, I'm
a leaner. So for me, putting a muscles hard. It's
very easy for me to naturally be skinny fat, and
it takes a lot of ever to turn that around.
But I'm glad that we're addressing it because I think
that's where it comes back to your mum wearing the
headband and the.

Speaker 1 (39:14):
Salady kill me when she listens to this by.

Speaker 2 (39:17):
Sorry mom, But no, it's that idea of like, yeah,
if I eat salad every day and you know, I
walk or run, I'll be fine, But I'm not actually
building any muscle because there's no resistance training.

Speaker 1 (39:28):
Right, And I'm going to take it one step further. So,
the average American eats around three hundred grams of carbohydrates.
And I talked a lot about metabolism and the muscle
being the focal point, and I would argue that we
are eating out of alignment with our muscle health. So
when we are eating, if you believe muscle as this
suitcase analogy, and that is the place where carbohydrates go.

(39:52):
And we eat about three hundred grams of carbohydrates a
day according to the Healthy Eating Index, we are eating
ninety eight percent more refined grains processed carbohydrates than we should.

Speaker 2 (40:07):
That's crazy, that's actually crazy.

Speaker 1 (40:10):
The average the average No, no, so the average, the
average person is eating ninety eight percent more grains and
process foods in the show. Wow, the majority of us
are not eating fruits and vegetables. We have a low
intake of seafood and a lower intake of dairy. I mean,

(40:31):
the majority of individuals are eating a highly processed food diet.

Speaker 2 (40:36):
That was the challenge. I was going to say, Ah,
so it's also processed.

Speaker 1 (40:39):
It's highly processed, highly palatable, highly addictive. But what happens
is is muscles not prepared to be able to deal
with that. If you are sedentary, which we know based
on the statistics, most people are sedentary, and then we're
giving them highly processed foods, there is no way to

(41:00):
be set up for success. And I can share with
you because I know that your wife is so interested
in nutrition. I can't wait to chat with her. How
many carbohydrates one should have at the first meal, which
is breakfast, and at any additional meal, and what they
would have to earn after that, which is going to
be surprising.

Speaker 2 (41:17):
Oh no, tell me now, I want to know that
I forget my wife. Sorry, right, but no, that's really
interesting to me.

Speaker 1 (41:22):
Now, Yeah, because it's practical takeaways for people. Well, if
you think about glucose disposal, where it goes, what uses
carbohydrates or what uses glucose. You have your obligatory use,
which is brain and red blood cells, and then you
have your organs, and then you have your muscle. If
you are sedentary, your body is using about fifty grams

(41:44):
at max over a two hour period. Fifty grams of
carbohydrates at a two hour period. It's probably a little
bit lower because if you're not exercising, there's nowhere for
the glycogen to go the carbohydrates to go. Imagine fifty
ground So if anyone is listening, think about that fifty grams.
Your one process donut probably has seventy five grams of carbohydrates.

(42:09):
Anything above fifty can derange metabolism if you are sedentary.
So a practical takeaway would be how many carbohydrates are
you consuming? Yes, over the day, but even more important
per meal the first meal of the day. I don't
like to have my I still see patients, by the way,

(42:29):
my first meal of the day. I don't like to
have more than thirty five grams of carbs. Every other meal.
You know, there's no reason to go over one hundred
and thirty grams of the RDA set at one hundred
and thirty grams.

Speaker 2 (42:40):
Per meal per day a day.

Speaker 1 (42:42):
Yeah, per day, but really.

Speaker 2 (42:44):
So you're spreading doing thirty five grams than forty five grams.

Speaker 1 (42:48):
And depending on if I'm active, I'm a tiny person.
If I'm not active, I'm not having a bunch of carbohydrates.
The body requires about eighty grams a day, and we
don't have an essential carbo hyde requirement. By the way.
The body can make all it needs, but if you
were to eat it, you just have to be very
aware at how you are treating muscle help because you

(43:10):
do not want a derange metabolism. We know what that
does over time.

Speaker 2 (43:13):
And I'm assuming obviously what's the protein intake across those
meals then for.

Speaker 1 (43:18):
You, typically that first meal of the day is around
forty five grams of protein, anywhere from thirty five upwards.
If you're a bigger person, fifty grounds and the first
meal of the day, I would argue the most important.
You are coming out of an overnight fast and your
body is primed now. I also mentioned earlier that if

(43:38):
you are older, anything over the age of thirty five
that your muscle and it's probably a little young, but
I like picking thirty five as a cutoff marker. It's
really important to have enough protein at that first meal
because a lot of the data, I would say arguably
almost all the data for muscle holme health and muscle

(44:00):
protein synthesis is at that first meal of the day,
and that number should be between thirty five and fifty
five grams of protein. People are like, oh my gosh,
what is that and why? Because you want to stimulate muscle.
You are utilizing your diet, which, by the way, everybody eats.
That is the one constant one hundred percent of people

(44:20):
are doing it. It seems like exercise is optional, that
dietary protein is really important, and that first meal will
stimulate muscle. If carbohydrates are lower, you have an opportunity
to be more satiated. So we joke in our office
that protein is the GLP one of the macronutrient, right.

(44:42):
It increases these gut hormones like pyy and these hormones
that send signals to the brain and the body that
you are getting a caloric load and that you are
more satiated and Interestingly, that number in order to ste
mumulate GLP in a meaningful way is around thirty grams.

(45:05):
The dietary protein intake and the GLP one release is
about thirty grams. You are not chasing the ebbs and
flows of blood sugar, and you are set up for
success and less likely to grab donuts or something sweet
at that second meal, which is it's like augmenting willpower. Yeah,
and that last meal of the day is the next

(45:26):
most important before you're going into an overnight fast.

Speaker 2 (45:29):
What would you suggest for that.

Speaker 1 (45:30):
Around fifty grams of protein? People are thinking that's probably
a lot. And part of the reason people think this
recommendation is a lot is we have been trained, just
like to be trained to be focused on obesity, that
our current recommendation for protein is high. It's not. The
current recommendation for protein is set at the bare minimum

(45:54):
to prevent disease. That's the floor at point a grams
per kg. I don't know about you, but I'm not
looking to be at the minimum. I want to be
able to design a diet that allows for healthy muscle
aging and just aging in general. And the data would
support closer to double that. And I actually worked on

(46:16):
some of these early studies back in two thousand and nine.
Believe it or not, these studies started or even before that.
But these studies looked at and this is out of
Don Layman's lab, who's the og, the goat of protein metabolsm,
which is hilarious. I used to sit in the front
row and just take notes. I was that person. But anyway,

(46:36):
twenty years later, he's still my mentor. And we worked
on a study where it had the food Guide pyramid.
I remember that the food GUYE pyramid, which really correlated
with this rise in obesity. It was a really bad
social experiment. And the study was designed isochloric, so each
group had the same calories. They also had this same carbohydrates,

(47:01):
but the difference was that one group had the minimum
protein recommendation and the other group had double the protein recommendation.
And what they saw was that that those individuals that
had double the protein lost more fat mass maintained more
lean tissue than those that had the minimum amount of protein.

(47:27):
And so we have to acknowledge that if we want
to protect ourselves and have healthy aging, that it requires
dietary protein in a more robust amount than we are
being told, Now, yeah.

Speaker 2 (47:44):
What about those A lot of people I know right
now are saying that they're struggling with and I experienced
this myself. They're struggling with some level of protein in
trake and gut health. So there seems to be something.

Speaker 1 (47:55):
This is a really important conversation. It depends on where
you are getting protein, and it is a challenge for people,
and there's a lot of discussion is it animal based
or plant based. At the end of the day, it
doesn't matter. The more plant based you are, the higher
your protein need is going to be overall. So, for example,

(48:17):
the minimum amount of protein I would recommend for anybody
would be around one hundred grams. If an individual is
eating a more plant based diet, then with that comes
fiber and just more overall caloric load and carbohydrates. There's
absolutely nothing wrong with it, and a well designed diet
can support muscle health with a more plant based diet.

(48:41):
Animal based proteins have a higher biological value, they're more
easy to absorb, and they typically require a lot less
food to meet those amino acids. So when I say protein,
it's not just one thing. If we were to pick
up a back of a label and we get the
back and there is no protein in this amazing drink

(49:03):
which I'm about to have. What we expect to see
is just protein. So you'll see the carbohydrates. Carbohydrates might
have sugars, it might have fiber, fats, might have saturated fats,
might have unsatury fat. Maybe it has trans fats which
no one should eat. And then you get all the

(49:24):
way down and the last number is protein. But protein
isn't one thing. It's made up of twenty different amino acids,
all of which have various compositions depending on the food.
It is very misleading to show protein as one number. Interesting, right,

(49:45):
for example, if you were to think about a animal
based product, it has the most similar amino acid composition,
which these are the building blocks. There are twenty nine
of which are essential, which means we must eat those proteins.
You can't make it. And when it comes to muscle health,

(50:07):
we're eating for this amino acid called leucine, and it's
about two and a half grams of leucine. That's where
these numbers come from. This thirty grams, this fifty grams
because leucine triggers muscle. But there are a whole bunch
of other essential amino acids. For example, three aene for
gut health, it makes muscin. There you know, there's tryptophan,

(50:31):
and there are neurotransmitter precursor, there's phenylalanine, there's cysteine that
is a precursor for methionine, which is the master antioxidant
which our bodies become less efficient at making. So we're
thinking globally about protein, and we're thinking it from a
lens of muscle, which makes a lot of sense and

(50:52):
makes it easy. But the reality is we are turning
over around two hundred and fifty grams of protein a day.
Your body will replace itself roughly four times a year.
And why protein becomes so important is that we become
less efficient at this and that is why twofold we

(51:14):
need a protein diet that is higher than what we
are being told. And as we are aging, I would
argue that getting that first meal to stimulate muscle and
that last meal before we're going into an overnight fast,
just from practical application that everybody listening or watching could do,

(51:35):
will help protect muscle and will allow your body to
help repair and rebuild itself.

Speaker 2 (51:43):
And if you're taking in that much protein, how much
do you need to be exercising in order to great question?

Speaker 1 (51:49):
Great question, And what you're talking about is how do
we make protein decisions. If I was going to go
down the list of how to make protein decisions, the
first thing that I think about is age. The older
you are, the more protein you need. And then physical activity.
Believe it or not, the more physically active you are,

(52:11):
the less protein you need. Because it's all about muscle stimulation.
And if there's two main ways to stimulate skeletal muscle
dietary protein and exercise, primarily resistance training, which again cardiovascular
training is very important too, but you are leaning on
resistance training to improve muscle health. And then if you

(52:34):
are sedentary because you are not pulling the lever of exercise,
then you require more dietary protein. And then it comes
down to personal choice. Right, you can have a higher
protein diet. I prefer a higher protein diet which is
closer to one ground per pound of target body weight
for a number of reasons. Number one, it's more satiating,

(52:57):
it's the GLP one of nature. Number two, it has
a higher thermic effect, meaning you know, when you eat
protein it is not easy to metabolize, and it's very
important to the body. And let me say this in
a better way. When you eat dietary protein and you
begin to stimulate muscle, that is an energy expensive process.

(53:20):
So your body kicks in these you know, mechanisms to
begin to utilize it. And then in addition, when we're
eating a higher protein diet, we are allowing our body
to have enough amino acids. Again, it's protein is not
just one thing to do various other things like three
you know, like gut health and all these other things

(53:42):
that we need. And so it does come down to
personal choice. And I would argue, and this is going
to be surprising to people, that carbohydrates and fats are interchangeable.
As long as you know your target calories, then you
hate your protein need. If you're designing a diet and
it's zero point seven to one one ground per pound
target body weight, very easy. The rest of your calories

(54:03):
you decide. As long as you're getting enough fiber and micronutrients,
you get to pick whether it is fat or carbriadry.
So there's a lot of flexibility in how we design
a diet for optimal.

Speaker 3 (54:16):
Health, which habits kill muscle gain being sedentary.

Speaker 1 (54:37):
If you are sedentary, that will kill any kind of
muscle gain.

Speaker 2 (54:41):
And what's the definition of being sedentary.

Speaker 1 (54:43):
I would argue less than three thousand steps a day.
And it's not that it just kills your gains. You
get something called intermuscular outipus tissue. It's called imat and
imat is fat that is deposited in your muscle. Your
muscle then becomes like a marbled steak. Whether you're skinny

(55:05):
fat or not, there's fat in that muscle. If you
are not taking action, and it doesn't have to be
difficult action. For example, let's just say you are doing
your pushups or you are doing something to increase that flux.
That's what's really important. And that can be done anywhere anytime.
There's only one wrong way to do it, you know
what that is to not do it. That's the only way,

(55:29):
and so that becomes really important. Another habit that kills
your gains is to be inconsistent is to talk yourself
out of it. You know, we have to as humans
be prepared for mental friction. And you know, I still
see patients and one of the most valuable attributes of
the patients that I see that are able to become

(55:51):
the best at what they do. They have one attribute
in common, and they're neutral. They never get too high
and they never get too low. They don't have to
wait for motivation. They commit to something and this just
becomes their new standard. They're not always setting goals. They
become the type of person that trains, the type of

(56:13):
person that prioritizes their exercise. And when they do that,
they're not negotiating with themselves. They're very neutral, because you know,
this is a really interesting experience that I've seen over
years of seeing patients. I'll give you an example. I
had one patient that every year he would put on
this massive event and he would hype himself up, and

(56:36):
he's doing push ups before he's going on stage, and
he's listening to a lot of music, and he's you know,
overdosing caffeine. You couldn't possibly get enough. And right before
he goes out for this big talk, right at that
pinnacle of that drive, in that pursuit, he's most vulnerable.
He's thinking about the next thing that he's doing. He's
thinking about the next car he's buying. He's doing all

(56:57):
this risk taking drive behavior to help satisfy this dopamine urge.
That's a point of vulnerability. Right after the event, I
put my phone down, I wait for the call. The
call is DK. I'm depressed. I don't feel like working out,
I don't feel like eating well, I don't feel like

(57:17):
exercising or spending time with anybody. I'm feeling so depressed.
And at the lull, that is his vulnerability. And as
high as you allow yourself to go is as low
as you will fall. And why am I bringing this
up by doc? I thought we're talking about muscle and
protein and how to manage our carbohydrates. Because if consistency matters,

(57:41):
you have to prepare yourself for the human vulnerabilities that
are deeply predictable. You cannot be surprised by your own behavior.
You have to be able to modify those and there
are very particular ways that you can train yourself to
be more neutral. So anyway, at that lull, at that

(58:02):
you know troth, it takes in four months to get
back and access and you know you've you know, we
all know people that have experienced this. They get super pumped,
chasing the novelty of January first starting their new diet,
an exercise program and then crash and burn, as opposed
to the people that are steady chopping wood and carrying

(58:27):
water stay on their plan for years.

Speaker 2 (58:31):
How does skipping meals affect muscle gain?

Speaker 1 (58:34):
Well, we want to think about how you're eating in
a twenty four hour period, and what I would recommend
for people is to be very consistent. Do not have
a chaotic, erratic eating schedule, because again, protein is an
essential macronutrient. I think that it is very important that
you have protein every day. You don't need carbs every day.

(58:57):
You can probably get away with not having fats every day,
but dietary protein. If you are focused on protecting this
organ of longevity, then you want to be very consistent.
Now I get a lot of questions about fasting. Is
fasting good? Fasting is not good or bad? But if
your primary goal is to protect your muscle, then eating

(59:21):
in an eight to nine hour window is where I
wouldn't really go beyond that, meaning I wouldn't fast for
twenty four hours. But again, if you are younger, you
can get away with it. But if you know so,
My dad is seventy four, he lives in Ecuador, and
he will not take transportation unless it is four hours
or less. So if he can walk there in four hours,

(59:44):
which is why I never go visit him, I make
him come here, then he'll walk it. And why do
I say that Because he's very interested in health and wellness.
So in his mind, if he fasts, then he's doing
you know, he's creating hormesis and he's creating stress. And
I'm like, Dad, you're seventy four. You shouldn't go twenty

(01:00:04):
four hours without eating food or without eating protein because
your body is already struggling to keep that muscle on.
And is it okay to skip a meal here and there? Yes,
But think about what is your structured plan and commit
to it. You know, you don't need to do a
lot of things, but you do have to commit to

(01:00:25):
this area of your life so that you age well.

Speaker 2 (01:00:28):
Does walking ten thousand steps today build muscle?

Speaker 1 (01:00:31):
This is a this is a very hot topic. By
the way, walking ten thousand steps a day is good
for you, and that would maintain our type one muscle
fibers type two muscle fibers, which is again when you
see people just walking, you don't necessarily see them build muscle.
The type two fibers. They do require resistance training. So

(01:00:52):
will walking build and maintain those type two muscle fibers?

Speaker 2 (01:00:56):
No?

Speaker 1 (01:00:56):
Is walking great for you? Is it something that we
have to do? Yes, but we have to become very
intentional about building our body armor. It requires effort.

Speaker 2 (01:01:08):
Do pilla is in yoga account of strength training.

Speaker 1 (01:01:11):
They are in the strength training category and they also
provide stretch for muscle. And it was really interesting the
study that I had mentioned earlier, there was also an
exercise intervention and by the way I misspoke it, their
carbohydrates were the meals were isochloric, but the protein is
what changed. In that study, they also added exercise and

(01:01:35):
the exercise was just this, and this is how easy
it is. It was five days a week of thirty
minutes of walking and two days a week of yoga.
Yoga involves body weight and resistance training, and it involves
stretched to the muscle, and those people were able to
maintain their lean body mass. It is not hard, but

(01:01:56):
you do have to be committed and you have to
be intentional.

Speaker 2 (01:02:00):
Is cardio killing people's muscle gains?

Speaker 1 (01:02:03):
That's a really good question. It depends, but a good
training program has both. It has cardiovascular activity because they
all do different things. Cardiovascularctivity is great for mitochondria, great
for metabolism, great for maintaining this fatty acid, this fat
fatty acid oxidation, fat burning. You know, you want muscle

(01:02:24):
to be flexible at rest, you want muscle to burn
fat and during things like lifting or power type activity,
then you can switch to glucose. A lot of cardio
is good, but also lifting weights is critical because they
do two separate things. So I never want to be

(01:02:45):
so dogmatic where I discourage people from doing cardiovascular activity.
But again, if I think about muscles, impact, and exercise
and I think about it in three buckets, I think
about it as mass strength, and then I think about
it as mitochondrial and metabolic health, and cardiovascular activity can

(01:03:06):
kind of fit in there as well, but also plumbing,
vasculature and blood flow. We recently published a study, and
this is to get all the guy's attention. Okay, ready,
So myself and my colleagues published a paper recently and
it showed that the more healthy muscle mass and better
strength you had, the greater your sexual function.

Speaker 2 (01:03:27):
That makes sense, I mean makes sense if.

Speaker 1 (01:03:29):
You are not on board for having more healthy muscle.
Then I don't know what's going to convince you. But again,
there are those two multiple aspects resistance training, cardiovascular activity,
high intensity interval. And I put this in the playbook
so people know it's called a playbook, not because it's
a work book and not because it's a dense, heavy book.

(01:03:49):
It's a playbook. It will show you exactly what you
need to do to be very discerning and avoid distraction
to take action on these things. High intensity interval training
is great if you are short on time, and it
can be where you're working at eighty five percent your
VOTWO max, so you're working hard and let's say you're

(01:04:10):
working for you can pick it forty sixty seconds and
then sixty seconds off. You do ten minutes of this. Yeah,
and it's very effective at improving insulin sensitivity, which is important.
And also that muscle health.

Speaker 2 (01:04:26):
How to hit workouts affect women's hormones? Is there any
correlation between the two.

Speaker 1 (01:04:32):
So I will say this. I'm going to say this
in kind of two ways. Skeletal muscle is very important
for fertility, especially when it relates to polycystico variant syndrome.

Speaker 2 (01:04:46):
Interesting, I didn't know that.

Speaker 1 (01:04:47):
Polycystico varian syndrome. And there's a few types. There's metabolic
and then there's a you know, a brain type. But
when you're looking at metabolic, what you're really looking at
is twofold. It's insulin sensitivity, but also muscle health. And
on my podcast, and I actually learned this for the

(01:05:07):
first time. On my podcast, I interviewed one of her
name is doctor Melanie Creede, one of the world leading
experts in pcos. So there are ten studies on pcos
and GLP ones and she's written two of them. And
I was sitting down with her in my podcast and
I said, Melanie, at what body fat percentage do we

(01:05:29):
know that people will affect fertility? You know who's going
to get better? Does their body fat percentage need to
be twenty five or less? Or are they at more
risk of never being able to conceive if they're for
thirty five or other or over? And I'm like, what
body fat percentage do people get better? And she said

(01:05:49):
to me, she looks at me, she goes, Gabrielle, it's
not a body fat percentage, it's the intermuscular aud of
post tissue. It's the fat within the muscle percentage. The
lower the fat in the skeletal muscle, the greater likelihood
that we will be able to manage PCOS. Why do
I say that, because all activity helps with the health

(01:06:12):
of that muscle. High intensity interval training does it directly
affect hormones? Not in that way, but it directly affects
a woman's ability to conceive if she has PCOS. Now,
another aspect is female athletes that have hypothalamic amenorrhea, meaning
their brain and their ovaries are somewhat suppressed because they

(01:06:34):
are overtraining. If a woman is overtraining and let's say
she's doing tons of high intensity interval training or the
volume of training is over what her body can handle,
and let's say she's also under consuming calories, then this
will negatively impact her hormones.

Speaker 2 (01:06:52):
But that must be like a really expence.

Speaker 1 (01:06:54):
Yeah, and I think no. And we cannot discourage people
to avoid training because of mechanistic data, right, We have
to really think what do we see in clinical practice?

Speaker 2 (01:07:08):
Yeah, well, we look through about athletes here like people do, and.

Speaker 1 (01:07:11):
That's not the population that we're looking to. It's much
more important to have a healthy muscle tissue than it
is to think about training in extremes and if anything,
and the same thing goes for men. The more healthy
muscle a guy has and the activities he engages to
have that the more healthyest sperm is going to be,

(01:07:32):
the more healthy his sexual function is going to be.
Is it going to affect him negatively? Now? So again,
it's very careful. I'm very careful as to how we
approach it. It's all about the context.

Speaker 2 (01:07:46):
Is there any negative apart from that extreme? Is there
any negative impact of building muscle?

Speaker 1 (01:07:54):
I can't think of one negative. In fact, your vibe
ability against all cause mortality, all cause disease, your ability
to survive will be greater the more muscle mass you have.
We cannot say that for any other organ system. This
is an organ system and it's it is the one

(01:08:18):
that we have voluntary control over that we can actually
add to. You can't really add to your kidneys. You
can't really add to your thyroid or your lungs physical tissue.
You might be able to add physical tissue to your heart,
but you don't want to add too much. And it's
going to be very difficult to add too much physical

(01:08:39):
tissue through training. And I'm not talking about the extremes.
I'm not talking about you know, hormone use. And again
we are not talking about extremes. If you want to
live long, and there are stated to support the stronger
you are in midlife, you have a two and a
half times greater chances of living to one hundred. If

(01:09:00):
you are in the weakest quartile, you have a much
higher likelihood of dying.

Speaker 2 (01:09:05):
Yeah, when should people consider creatine in their diet?

Speaker 1 (01:09:10):
Whenever they want?

Speaker 2 (01:09:11):
Okay, so you don't have to have a workout level, Laura.

Speaker 1 (01:09:14):
No, And it's very difficult to eat enough creatine. So
creatine comes primarily in red meat. You're even if you
eat a ton, I think for one pound of red meat,
you might get half a gram of creatine. That's not enough.
And the data, the data supports between three and five
grams of creatine for women, probably closer to five for

(01:09:36):
muscle and for men also closer to five. But for
brain health between ten and twelve grams of creating.

Speaker 2 (01:09:46):
Oh, I didn't know that.

Speaker 1 (01:09:47):
And also creatine is one of the OG supplements that's
been studied for decades, very safe.

Speaker 2 (01:09:54):
That's great to I didn't know it's impact on the
brain at all. So obviously you're into a supplement.

Speaker 1 (01:10:00):
I love supplement, yes, but I'm very particular. I have
a handful of supplements that I love. Do you want
to hear them?

Speaker 2 (01:10:06):
Yeah? Please.

Speaker 1 (01:10:07):
Creatin is great. The older you are, the more benefit
you'll likely have from those higher amounts of creating. For
brain function, I think fish oil is really important, Omega
three fatty acids, there's good data to support for brain function,
and there might even be some extra benefit for women.
Eu Lithina is a very interesting compound and what it

(01:10:30):
is is a post biotics, so roughly forty percent of
people can't make it. And it comes from pomegranate, so
your body breaks down or the bacteria, the bugs in
your body break down pomegranate and one of the post
biotics within that. And it could be pomegranate, it could
be walnut. Your body requires this enzyme and somewhat of

(01:10:52):
a complicated process to get eurolithana and Euithina is a
compound that is produced in the gut or you can
take it. You know, again, only forty percent of people
can actually produce it in their gut. Affects mitochondrial health.
It helps with mitophagy, which is the cleaning out of
old mitochondria. But there's also randomized control trials and there's

(01:11:15):
a ton of clinical data. The kind of of eu
lithinae I use is from a company called Timeline, because
they have randomized control trials. They have decades of research
that show this form of your lithinae improves endurance, strength
and mitochondrial health outside of exercise. So all of those

(01:11:36):
things that we were talking about with exercise. You combine
this with exercise, and it supports healthy mitochondrial function, which
again I very particular about the supplements that I use
because there's so many out there and you want to
have good data. Yeah, okay, have more for you, please.
Beta hydroxy buttery a keytone. It can preserve muscle mass,

(01:11:58):
or some data that it can preserve muscle mass, but
also incredible for brain function. And I think as people age,
and you know when women are going through perimenopause and
they don't quite know that they're going through it, their
brain function suffers. Key tones are amazing. Vitamin D, magnesium,
and I think that I've an approaching shake. I love
approaching shake, and that's it.

Speaker 2 (01:12:21):
It's not that many. Yeah, it's not too bad. I've
seen a massive difference in my life since I started
consistently taking supplements. Everyon's always like, do you think it's
a placibo? Do you think this? And I'm like no,
because I'm just taking what I'm recommended, and so I
wouldn't even know what the perceibo would do. I just
know that I don't get tired as much. My recovery
is great. I feel alert and present throughout the day.

(01:12:41):
I sleep well. You know. It's whereas there was a
point where even though I was sleeping well and working
on eating right, I was still feeling fatigued. I was
still feeling low energy. And supplements have made such a
big difference on that. So I'm a big fan of them.

Speaker 1 (01:12:54):
It's been the biggest one for you.

Speaker 2 (01:12:55):
Vimin D was huge for me and huge the Omega
threes were huge for me. Creating has been great for me,
like those those three have been game changes.

Speaker 1 (01:13:03):
So you know, there are vitamin D receptors on skeletal muscle. Yes,
And when I was so, I worked in I did
my fellowship in nutritional sciences and geriatrics, and one of
the things that we would see is falls right, someone falls,
It can be devastating for people, and so we would
always test vitamin D and one of the working hypotheses

(01:13:24):
at the time was that the vitamin D receptors on
the muscles, if someone was deficient, it would contribute to
false I mean, I just thought that was my one.

Speaker 2 (01:13:32):
Yeah, and that's so scary. Is get older? Yes, it's
so scary. Yeah, it's And that's what I mean by
the recovery piece too, because I think everyone knows it.
Like now, if I roll my ankle, it's going to
take a bit longer if I'm not figuring it out
to recover than it did when you were a kid.

(01:14:03):
There's such a big rise of protein ice creams, protein cereal,
protein chips. Do those even count?

Speaker 1 (01:14:09):
That's a really astute point. I would say, you don't
want just extra calories. And a better way to think
about things is how do we eat whole foods and
understand where we're getting our protein. So a high quality
protein source could be whey. Again, a lot of those
ice creams are coming from whey. Could it be a

(01:14:30):
rice pea blend or a soy protein. Could it be
from fish or chicken or eggs or dairy, And that's
kind of how I would bucket our protein. Yeah, and
then I think about carbohydrates, right, so you can also
get protein and rice and beans. But the reality is
it's a very high chloric load, and so we just

(01:14:52):
want to be very careful. But adding extra protein with
just extra calories, I think, is now we're just diluting message.
I mean, if you're going to have your carbohydrate, have
your carbohydrate, but what kind of quality, what kind of
source is that protein coming from? And again it confuses

(01:15:12):
people because now it's almost it's like that next shiny object.
Humans are predictable, and I think if we bring into
perspective our predictability, we love novelty. Oh my gosh, this
is so novel. There is protein ice cream, which, by
the way, I love the idea of protein ice cream.
I actually I have a recipe for protein ice cream

(01:15:33):
in my book, but it comes from away protein shake.
It's amazing. But I don't need chips with protein. I
don't need protein in my ketchup. I just, man, I'm
trying to cut back as it is, and that is
really important that we have to recognize that we are
chasing novelty. And you know, as I've been thinking about this,

(01:15:55):
a lot. You know, how did we get so off base?
And you bring up a good point. You know, have
you ever heard of the Lucky diet? I think this
is like nineteen twenty or nineteen forty. Of course you
haven't because it's terrible. It's smoking lucky cigarettes. Lucky cigarettes
was a diet plan that people recommended to lose weight.

(01:16:17):
And then, of course we've all heard of fen fen.
There were amphetamines, and then there's the cabbage soup diet
and the grapefruit diet, and then the wine and egg diet.
Have you ever heard of that? I had never heard
of that one. It's two eggs and a glass of
wine for every meal. What it's bananas with eggs? I
mean eggs, right, But like you pair when you go
to school, you pair that with wine. My whole point

(01:16:41):
is that we are primed to chase novelty, but we
already have innovation. In this podcast, you and I have
talked about foundational scientific principles that we can count on.
You know, when I think about the biological drive for protein,
humans have a biological drive. Deed, about twenty percent of

(01:17:01):
our diet in protein. You know, decades ago it was higher,
but we have again a biological drive for these amino acids.
And when we begin to dilute our food source, which
all these processed food sources, you know, I consider this
a dilution of dietary protein. We feed on these highly
processed foods to get our amino acids. But look at

(01:17:25):
when we are aware of something we can recognize. Hey man,
am I falling for that? Or do I need to
be discerning? Because at the bottom rung of health and
wellness is the ability to discern good information from not
good information, right choice, and right action. And again, all

(01:17:46):
you asked me simply was protein ice cream. And now
I've gone on this tangent lot about novelty, and I
want to just bring this back, is that we already
have innovation. We have good science and innovation to know
that we can create a diet based on protein because
that protects muscle, helps as we age, doesn't matter if

(01:18:07):
it's plant or animal, And this is how we structure it. Yeah,
and then your carbohydrates or your fat, it's your choice.
But if we are still out there chasing the next thing,
it is going to further divert our attention, yes, from
doing and having that next right meal.

Speaker 2 (01:18:25):
Yes, Well, to me, it's just the manufacturers trying to
stay relevant to the healthy consumer. So they see that
people are becoming healthier or wanting to skew this way,
and they just want to keep you eating processed foods,
and they'll throw the word protein on it. They'll throw
whatever word they want on it, the low fat, the
less fat, the whatever, so that you go and buy

(01:18:46):
it and it makes you feel, oh, yeah, great, I'm
being healthy.

Speaker 1 (01:18:48):
That's right.

Speaker 2 (01:18:49):
You're still eating something fried, You're still adding the extra calories.
It's not a natural source. It's still highly protested, it's
packaged all the rest of it.

Speaker 1 (01:18:57):
It's marketed. Well, yeah it is, and can I share
with you? Okay, So, whole foods are considered a commodity.
That is almonds, that's dairy, that's beef, that's chicken, any
whole food. Soy, they are under this what's called the USDA,
and they have checkof so a certain amount of the

(01:19:18):
budget goes towards marketing. But because they are regulated by
the USDA, almonds or beef or milk cannot say they
are a better source of protein from a highly processed
protein source in chips, whereas this chip could say this

(01:19:39):
is the best source of protein ever, or they could
say whatever they want as long as they don't make
a disease claim. They could say it's a better source
of protein for you. Then I don't know beef, but
beef or any commodity cannot defend itself. And so we
have to recognize that the total marketing budget for these commodities,

(01:20:00):
these whole foods wrought last time I checked with seven
hundred and fifty thousand total collectively, Whereas one company like
PepsiCo that you know owns a bunch of others and
makes a lot of processed foods that can slap protein
on the label, has a marketing budget of almost two
billion dollars and they are allowed because it's regulated under

(01:20:26):
this because it's a processed food under a different jurisdiction,
can make claims that whole foods can't. Whoa and you
can imagine for the consumer, what is a consumer to do.
The consumer is getting a story that you know, this
whole food is bad for you, eat this process one instead,

(01:20:49):
when at the end of the day, it's a marketing
budget that is allowed to have flexibility in the story
that is being promoted.

Speaker 2 (01:21:00):
I mean, seven hundred thousand versus two billion.

Speaker 1 (01:21:03):
Come on. And also, you know milk can't be disparaging
against almond juice, whereas milk is a highly bioavailable form
of calcium vitamin you know, has vitamin dane. It great
for kids and bones versus say oat milk. It's just
not it's who it affects. It affects our children. The

(01:21:26):
messaging affects our children. And again, humans are very good
at locking onto something they hear. They hear and it
creates a cognitive bias for their life decades later. And
you and I were chatting before that it's so much
easier to build good habits when you were.

Speaker 3 (01:21:44):
Young, Yeah, absolutely, then spend.

Speaker 1 (01:21:46):
Forty years trying to undo bad habits.

Speaker 2 (01:21:49):
Yeah, I loved, I was saying to Gabriel. She showed
me this wonderful video of a husband doing push ups
with that son and he's four years old, and I
was just watching that, going, that's it. That's going to
do what their parents do at that age. They see
he sees his dad working out, I sees his mom
working out. That's what he wants to do. And there
he is doing pushups and showing his muscles and in

(01:22:10):
a really cute, adorable way that that isn't like he's
addicted to it or that he's being forced to do it.
You know, just this really sweet. And I look at
that and go, yeah, I was never exposed to that
growing up, and so it took me intol my thirties
to really take control of my health. And I think
there's a difference between a reminder and your kids watching
you do it. So everyone's parents can say you should

(01:22:30):
be healthy, you should do this, but like when you
see your parents work out and you want to do
it with them, there's something beautiful of it and.

Speaker 1 (01:22:37):
It becomes a way of life. Yeah, my kids love
to lift. I have my kettlebells and they have their kettlebells, right,
and it's hilarious. Me cold plunge and my son likes
to cold plunge. I mean he like jumps in and out.
But he and you ask him, I it's called in
our colplund is set at fifty degrees so it's not
that cold. And he jumps in, dunks his body and

(01:22:58):
jumps out and we're like, is that cold than My
son's name is Leonidas. He's like, nope, not call Yeah,
I mean it is. It's we're building resilient humans. And
it does start with the messages that we send ourselves,
because I think that again, we're talking about protein and
we're talking about muscle, and we're talking about them almost

(01:23:19):
disembodied from actually who we are as humans. And this
muscle centric message is not about working out, it's about
building strong, more resilient humans. And it's not just doing
it in your mind, and it's not just doing in
your body, but this bi directional relationship of becoming a

(01:23:41):
more capable human because we need more of them.

Speaker 2 (01:23:46):
Yeah. Absolutely, I love that doctor Gabriell lyon the books
called the Forever Strong Playbook. Truly, what a masterclass. You
gave me. So many breakthroughs today and connections that I've
never heard before, and I'm so thankful to those because
I think everyone who's going to listen today is going
to feel like they've found that one piece of insight
that they were looking for for that breakthrough to help

(01:24:06):
them on their health journey. And I think you've really
shown us how building muscle isn't just about the esthetics.
It's not just about you know, how you look and
how you feel, and it's a real resistance toward diseases,
real protection for longevity. It's at the heart of it.
So thank you so much. We end every episode of
On Purpose with a final five. These questions have to

(01:24:28):
be answered in one word to one sentence maximum.

Speaker 1 (01:24:31):
Well, then I want to give you something before we
acd Please, there is an ethos to this playbook, and
an ethos is a collective reason for a way of life.
And this is what I just want to leave you
with before my five questions, because if that's how we
end the show, then aging is inevitable and muscle is
the organ of longevity. Weakness is not inevitable. Strength is

(01:24:59):
not a luxury, It's a responsibility.

Speaker 2 (01:25:03):
What said absolutely great, Totally couldn't agree more. These are
your final five.

Speaker 1 (01:25:08):
Okay, okay, I'm ready for it.

Speaker 2 (01:25:10):
Question number one, what is the best health advice you've
ever heard or received?

Speaker 1 (01:25:15):
Train like your life depends on it, because it does.

Speaker 2 (01:25:18):
Question number two, what is the worst health advice you've
ever heard or received?

Speaker 1 (01:25:22):
Take it easy?

Speaker 2 (01:25:24):
Yeah, comfort doesn't help.

Speaker 1 (01:25:25):
Have another bubble bath when what you really need is
hard work.

Speaker 2 (01:25:29):
I used to think that I used to be one
of those people that used to feel I didn't have
enough energy to work out. And a lot of my
friends are in that bucket too, where you're so tired,
you had a long day, you're working hard, and I'd
always say I don't have enough energy to exercise, only
to realize that exercise gave me so much more energy.
And I used to say that all the time. I
used to be like, yeah, of course you've got time

(01:25:50):
to exercise, that you've got energy to exercise, and then
I was like, oh, wait a minute. As soon as
I start exercising, so much more energy. So much so
I fully agree with that great answer a question three,
what do we do about that stubborn belly fat?

Speaker 1 (01:26:03):
For belly fat, you have to control your nutrition, prioritize protein,
and do some kind of training. It's not as hard
as we think.

Speaker 2 (01:26:11):
Question number four. Something you used to believe was true
about health, but you don't anymore.

Speaker 1 (01:26:17):
This is a good one, and this is just for
you and your audience. Okay. I used to believe that
building muscle could only be done with animal proteins, and
it can be done with all types of protein, as
long as you're getting enough.

Speaker 2 (01:26:35):
That's great to know. I'm plum based. Yeah, that it
helps a lot and I feel that way. I feel
that way. It's we found the right sources and it
makes the difference. Fifth and final question, we asked this
every guest who's ever been on the show. If you
could create one law that everyone in the world had
to follow, what would it be?

Speaker 1 (01:26:51):
Be strong? You have to be strong.

Speaker 2 (01:26:54):
Yeah, So it's such a to really make that connection
for everyone today that muscle strength and strength is necessary
for longevity and to beat disease. That through line, because
I still think we think of muscle as visual strength. Yeah,
we think of muscle as someone who looks muscular. We

(01:27:15):
don't think about muscle as every deep type of muscle
you've talked to us today about you know that's within
our body that you don't even.

Speaker 1 (01:27:22):
See, and it's under our control.

Speaker 2 (01:27:24):
The book is called The Forever Strong Playbook, a six
week science based plan to sharpen your mind, strengthen your body,
and get healthy at any age. Go and grab your
copy by New York Times bestselling author doctor Gabrielle Lyon Gabrielle,
It's been such a joy having here today. I've learned
so much. I know this is going to be huge
for our community. I'm so grateful to meet you, and
I hope you'll be back on the show very very soon.

Speaker 1 (01:27:46):
Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 2 (01:27:48):
If this year you're trying to live longer, live happier,
live healthier, go and check out my conversation with the
world's biggest longevity doctor, Peter Attia on how to slow
down aging and why your emotional health is directly impacting
your physical health. Acknowledge that there is surprisingly little known

(01:28:08):
about the relationship between nutrition and health, and people are
going to be shocked to hear that, because I think
most people think the exact opposite.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Dr. Gabrielle Lyon: #1 Blueprint for Building Muscle That Will Change How You Age! (This Will Transform Your Long-Term Health!)