The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #4: Featuring JJ Virgin! Understanding Muscle Gain and Body Composition, Debunking the controversy with GLP-1's, Exposing Health Myths, Deep dives into creatine, Peitdes, Biohacking AND MORE!
Sun, 12 Jan 2025
Tune in to The Dylan Gemelli Podcast featuring Triple Board Certified Nutrition Expert, New York TImes Best Selling Author and Fitness Hall of Famer J.J. VIrgin! In the epic interview, Dylan and J.J. discuss MANY myths and misunderstandings from the worry of women getting too big from weight training, to creatine, to GLP-1's and so much more. J.J. gives her sought after advice and guidance on many aspects of diet and provides excellent insight on Creatine Monohydrate vs. HCL. This video provides expert advice and guidance from start to finish and is one you do not want to miss!!Check out J.J.'s Homepage:https://jjvirgin.com/J.J. Virgin Reignite Wellness Product Linehttps://reignitewellness.com/Follow the Well Beyond 40 Podcasthttps://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/well-beyond-40/id911502027Follow J.J. on instagram @jj.virgin______________________________________________________________________Follow Dylan on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Tiktok @dylangemelliHuge thank you to everyone for the support! Please make sure to subscribe, like and comment!!Email [email protected]://rss.com/podcasts/the-dylan-gemelli-podcastApplehttps://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-dylan-gemelli-podcast/id1780873400I Hearthttps://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-the-dylan-gemelli-podcast-249695201/Spotifyhttps://open.spotify.com/show/3In4QlJj4IvHqq0eduKj7mPandorahttps://www.pandora.com/podcast/the-dylan-gemelli-podcast/PC:1001096187Stitcherhttps://www.stitcher.com/show/1096187FM Playerhttps://player.fm/series/the-dylan-gemelli-podcastPodchaserhttps://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/the-dylan-gemelli-podcast-5933919Listen Noteshttps://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/the-dylan-gemelli-podcast-dylan-gemelli-HDjBueWOVvG
Chapter 1: Who is JJ Virgin and what is her background?
All right, everybody, welcome back to the Dylan Gemelli podcast. So today I have an extra special guest. I'm kind of known for my intros. I don't, I would take up too much time to do the proper intro. So I'm going to do my best here. So she is a triple board certified nutrition expert. She's a fitness hall of famer. She's certified in holistic nutrition. She's a certified personal trainer.
She's a New York times bestseller. And there's so many more things that we're going to get into today. while we're interviewing, but I am honored, privileged, and pleasured to bring you JJ Virgin.
I am thrilled to be here.
Chapter 2: What led JJ Virgin to focus on nutrition and muscle gain?
Thank you so much for taking the time. I know how busy you are, and so I am going to get right into it while I have you here. So first things first, I mean, most everybody knows exactly who you are, but I am curious to What is it that got you into health and fitness? Was it something that happened young? Was it something that drew you later in life? Because everybody's got a story.
So I'm just curious what yours is.
You know what?
So I've always been interested in it. And then I got very into diet. This is really actually horrible, but it was a turning point great thing. Because being six feet tall, I kept hearing, oh, you should be a model. So I grew up outside of San Francisco. I went to a modeling agency in San Francisco. And they told me, and by the way, I weigh the same now as I did then.
Chapter 3: What are the myths surrounding women and weight training?
So they told me I needed to lose at least 20 pounds. And I remember at the time I was a teenager and literally I was in gymnastics. And so I was working out with the high school football team because there was no gym for the girls. Right. And this, you know, this agent tells me I need to lose 20 pounds. And I go home and I go to the library. I get diet books.
I start counting my calories, recording them on a calendar. And then my dance teachers thought I was anorexic. And it was a big wake up call. I remember thinking, you know, I was also running track and I just couldn't do the things that I like to do. I was too tired. Right. And I thought, gosh, well, shoot, I could either be skinny.
And, you know, here I was, I remember going to the modeling agency, looking at these girls and they were pale, wafey looking things, right?
Yeah.
And I thought, well, I could either be that or I can be strong. I cannot be both. And I just was like, forget it. I'm going to eat.
Yes.
But I got very into nutrition because it was, you know, I wanted to be at the time I wanted to be a stage actress. And so your body's like your instrument there. And I was very into nutrition and very into exercise and just always have been.
That's awesome. I was a fashion model in my 20s, so I know the strife and I know what you went through and I know it's not healthy and what they want you to do is not healthy. So you definitely picked the right route to go. And I think so many people are thankful that you did go that route.
So, you know, I have watched quite a bit of your work and some of the things that you talk about, and it's kind of inspired me to look more at and focus more on women as they get older, their diets and everything. One of the questions I had for you is why are you focused on aging powerfully and what exactly does that mean to you and just in general for us to understand?
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Chapter 4: Why is building muscle important as we age?
And women anyway, when you really look at it, women, you know, we have two types of muscle fibers, as you know, slow twitch and fast twitch. Well, what the listener might not know is you have slow twitch, fast twitch, and then you have these fibers in between. We used to call them
type 2b fibers i now think they're called x basically of these fibers that are more that are better for long for endurance for there are things we use all throughout the day those are our slow twitch muscle fibers and they're the ones that we're just going to use to stand upright postural easy walking etc then we have our fast twitch muscle fibers that's explosive move fast heavy things
They're exhausted quickly. And then you have these ones in between and they can become slow or they can become fast. And I thought, you know, when you really look at what happens as we age, we start to lose more fast twitch muscle fibers. Well, women have more oxidative, more slow twitch muscle fibers to begin with. That's why we're more metabolically flexible. We can recover easier. But
We also tend to do more slow twitch muscle fiber activities. We're doing more walking. We're doing more, you know, Pilates, more yoga. And not to diss on these things, but the problem is we're now taking the fibers that could have been more powerful and turning them into slower fibers.
And so I looked at this, I'm like, you know, if you really want to age powerfully, if you look at what happens as we start to age, starting around age 30 is we're losing, starting to lose muscle. Muscle is actually not the biggest problem. We're losing muscle. And I believe that, you know, everyone's worried about bone mineral density, but really that's a lagging indicator that we lost muscle.
But we lose twice as much strength and three times as much power. Strength is how much you could move something heavy one time. Power is how quickly can you move something. So I thought, you know, what we really need to focus on as we age, as aging powerfully, is building strength. Not just building muscle, but building quality muscle, powerful muscle.
And as I started to look at that, I went, you know, this is actually really a bigger thing than that. It's kind of a manifesto because women our whole lives, just like I told you the story about the modeling agency, we're always taught to be small, to be skinny, to be, you know, right?
I thought this really, like the goal, and I saw an interview by Jennifer Aniston recently, and she said, I'm trying to pack on as much muscle as possible. Our goal our whole life as women should be to pack on as much muscle as possible, right? To be as powerful as possible, because the more you can put on in your 20s and 30s and 40s, the better off you're going to be in your 60s, 70s, and 80s.
Mm-hmm. The powerful aging started with a let's really build those fast twitch muscle fibers and then kind of turned into a bigger manifesto of, you know, if you don't step up now in your life, when are you going to do it? What, you're going to wait until you're 80? Right.
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Chapter 5: What role does creatine play in muscle gain and health?
Like it is possible to do these things. Well, plus in my 20s, I wasn't taking creatine. I wasn't taking MitoPure. Like there's all sorts of things. I wasn't doing the level of protein that I'm doing. So I was like going, all right, I know so much more now. than I did then. I mean, I was afraid to take creatine back then because the bros did it.
Right. Of course. Scary. Okay. So we got some different, we're going to shift here a different way because you brought that up. So one, I love MitoPure too, by the way.
Right?
It's amazing. Amazing. I've actually spoken quite a bit with a couple people there. I'm interviewing one of the formulators here in a couple weeks because I'm so into it and we've gotten into it. So that alone, we can get into that. But I want to talk about the creatine with you. I have spent the last month putting out content on creatine and explaining all of the myths that are out there.
And one of the major things I'm focusing on is pre and post menopausal women. I've got my mom on it. Yes. And she's 72. I've got my wife on it. And so I want your input because I know where I'm going with this. And there's so many benefits.
I mean, from, you know, with menopausal women, what I'm finding is it's helping with some side effects, some emotional side effects, but also strength and mental clarity and things like that. Bone density. What are you, what are some of the things you're finding in it?
And why are you such a believer in it?
So women have less muscle mass than men. Duh, right? And when you look at creatine, we basically make about a gram a day from eating protein, from getting essential amino acids, right? And then we are going to also ingest creatine from meat or seafood every day. However, We have about 100 to 140 grams of creatine in our body.
And we need to take in, we need to make at least a gram a day and take in a gram or two every day from diet. Now, women have less creatine stores than men because we have less muscle mass than men. We store creatine mostly in our muscle, a little bit in our gonads. We don't have those either. And a little bit in our brain.
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Chapter 6: How do dietary needs change for women as they age?
They found women on antidepressants who took creatine had way better results than people who just took antidepressant alone. So neurocognitive, TBIs, there's so many different applications, basically anything around brain, around inflammation, around muscle protein synthesis, around immune skin, skin wrinkling. So you look at it and go, these are all like energy.
It's all what happens as you start to go into perimenopause and we're deficient in it. Then here's the situation with creatine that I think is so crazy. First of all, there's a bunch of myths out there about creatine, like hair loss.
That's like that stupid, like soccer guys where their DHT was raised, but they don't even know why because they didn't check to see if they were on like anything else, you know? And then They didn't even track that their hair went down, but there's hair loss. There's no hair loss. It's never been shown.
I will tell you, and I don't have the study published yet, but there is a study coming out that I have been told about that shows that 76% of women who go on creatine monohydrate will struggle with fluid retention or gas and bloating.
Really?
Here's the reality. Here's the crazy thing. So I said that you needed probably a gram of creatine a day. By the way, you take extra if you have sleep deprivation, jet lag. It's amazing if you're under more stress. But when you look at creatine monohydrate, the recommendations are three to five grams a day.
Right.
And you'll hear that it's all absorbed. Well, it's not all absorbed. Because if it was all absorbed, you wouldn't need three to five grams a day. You'd need a gram. Turns out it's about 15% absorbed. And that's why you're getting some of the GI issues, the fluid retention, but you'll always hear to use creatine monohydrate because it's the most studied form. It doesn't matter.
We're not looking at the form. We're looking at the effect that creatine has on your body. And so a year ago, I was doing a talk for a medical conference. And afterwards, this creatine formulator came up to me. And started to show me, he goes, you know, there's a better creatine out there that doesn't cause all this stuff. And I thought this is, you know, we should take creatine monohydrate.
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Chapter 7: What are the benefits of different forms of creatine?
So let me just explain something to people, then me and you can get a good laugh at this. So for instance, before right now, I just had 12 ounces of sea bass before we started. I'm already 70 grams of protein. There were 65, 70. And then when I'm done, I'm going to have half a pound of bison. That's another 60 or 70. So I'm at 140 in two meals.
So I was like looking at it going, where am I at today? Because I'm just like a little like I hear this. I go, I understand. I'm at 140, 136 grams of protein already and I haven't had dinner. me too. Like, what is hard? It's not hard. Just eat it first. The reason you're not eating, like, here's the thing, Dylan, this drove me nuts.
I was doing a talk very similar to the eudaimonia, powerful aging talk. And then I went out to dinner with a lot of the people from the talk. And I watched this woman sit down. She was at the talk in the front row. Okay. So I'm like, now I'm just curious. We all order. I order a steak.
And I'm now sitting down watching her and she has an appetizer, which is like, you know, I don't know, some breaded terrible thing. Then she has a salad, which she's turned into a sundae because it's got like candy garbage on it. And then she's going to have eggplant because she's full and she's having a glass of wine. And I'm looking at her and she's looking at me looking at her.
And she goes, you're going to protein shame me, aren't you? And I go, absolutely. Like, I absolutely am going to protein shame you. Good Lord. I go, actually, what I'm just going to do is give you part of my steak. She goes, oh, but I'm so full. I go, what she didn't realize is like that breaded eggplant garbage that she was going to eat, which eggplant. Eggplant's just a nasty tasting thing.
Let's be honest. The only way to make eggplant taste great is if you soak it in olive oil, bread it, throw some cheese on it. So by the time you're eating it, you're getting like, I don't know, a thousand calories of fat.
Right.
And five calories of eggplant. So she somehow thinks she's going to eat light with this, you know, fat bomb on her plate instead of her four ounces of steak.
I just, I am at a loss sometimes. And, you know, when you said that people say, how am I going to get my protein? I think they just like to say that and don't look at numbers. And, I mean, you could just do 10 egg whites. You take 10 times 3.5. I mean, you're already 35 grams of protein and 10 egg whites is not. It is not hard.
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Chapter 8: What should women know about protein intake for muscle building?
I just feel, and I've, it was interesting. I've always felt better that way. I've always eaten that way. And I remember I did a biome test years ago and they're like, you have the genetics that just do better with lots of protein. I'm like, I don't know. I think everybody has the genetics that just does better with lots of protein.
I agree. I've been doing some really deep studies like, well, with CGMs and then also I've done breath analysis to see how my body's responding to things and changing things up. And I've battled eating issues a lot of my life and I've just finally snapped out of it. And What I'm finding is for me personally, I'm kind of like almost like a 45, 40, 15, where it's like 45 protein, 40 fat, 15 carbs.
And that's where I'm really, I'm doing about 275, 285 protein because I weigh 185 is kind of where I'm at. And I'm normally about like,
80 to 100 fats depending on the day and then my carbs are maybe 100 to 150 but i'm thriving on it i haven't been cut up since i was like using performance enhancers you know which i haven't done forever but i am that cut up now just from the diet switch alone it's it's amazing but you have to kind of learn your body but the protein to me is the backbone and the key it always has been
Well, and the thing is, if you're eating healthy, clean protein, you're going to get fat with it because all animal protein comes with fat. And even if you're doing egg whites, like I'll always do a couple eggs with egg whites because I can't get enough protein just from eggs. I'll so overload it.
Right.
But, you know, you think about it and go, all right, you know, tonight we're having grass fed beef. We'll get some fat there. You know, I had the egg, egg white thing. So I got some fat. So you'll get fat with the animal protein. And then you'll use a little extra virgin olive oil and cooking and you're good.
Yep.
That's it. You know, you don't need to go put a pound of butter on your steak.
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