Hey, it's your friend Mel. Welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. I've decided that you and I have been at this podcast thing for long enough that we can cover a topic that everybody talks about, everybody wants advice on, but for some reason, we're not supposed to talk about it. I don't know why this is so controversial, but it is. Today we're going to go there. What's the topic? Weight loss. We're talking about weight loss. The reason why I want to talk about this is because we've all been there. We've all been at that point in our lives where we're frustrated with how our clothes feel, where we feel like shit, where everything we're trying is not actually working or the things that we've been doing forever, in my case, this is me, are no longer working and having the same impact. You start to feel like your weight, your waistline, your attitude, everything's out of control. I want to talk about today. If you're like me, it probably means that you've spent most of your life trying to either lose weight or trying to stay in shape. This goes all the way back to when I was a little kid.

I can remember my mom on the living room floor, and Jane Fonda was on the television. She had those leg warmers on, and my mom was doing all the stuff. Then the next thing I remember, I remember the thighmaster, where you're supposed to squeeze it in and out. Then as I got older, I've tried everything: step class, spin class, jazzercise, which I think we now call Zumba. I've gone to classes in person online. I've done pilates on a mat, on a reformer. I've tried everything. Don't even get me started with the number of diets. Anybody remember the Cabbage soup diet? Why on Earth was that a thing? Eat for your blood type, I've done that. Low fat, high fat, no carbs, complex carbs. No wonder we are all yo- yo dieting. I mean, simply listing all of this off makes me start to feel like a human yo- yo. And as I've been thinking about this topic and researching it, it occurred to me. If this is such an enormous problem for almost all of us, maybe we've been thinking about it all wrong. In fact, the expert that you are about to spend an hour with says that you and I are going to stop talking about losing weight right now.

No more, it's the wrong approach. You and I need to start leveraging what she calls a muscle centric medical approach to our health. Dr. Gabrielle Lion is a medical doctor. She has completed two research and clinical fellowships, one in nutritional science and one in the science of aging. She has spent 20 years conducting groundbreaking research and treating private patients in her clinical practice. Her first book, Forever Strong, is filled with evidence-based strategies, and you're going to learn a lot of them here during our conversation today. Doc G is here to teach you about the largest organ in your body. I know you're thinking, What is that? What is the largest organ in your body? Believe it or not, that's your skeletal muscles. Your skeletal muscles are not only the largest organ in your body, they are key to effective weight loss, to boosting your energy, burning fat. She's going to talk to you today about how you can use a muscular centric medical approach to reverse diabetes and to fight heart disease and cancer. My job in all of this is to translate all that she's saying into simple, actionable takeaways. In fact, I'm going to try to reduce all this research to two changes that you can make starting today to leverage all of the things that she's going to teach us.

If you want to lose belly fat and live a strong, long, healthy life, there is no more important thing for you to do than to listen to this conversation right now. Get your pens out and get ready to change your life because Dr. G is in the house. All right, please help me welcome Dr. Gabrielle Lion to the Mel Robbins Podcast.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm thrilled to be able to sit down and talk with you.

I'm so excited that you're here. I just want to start with the basics. What significance does it have that your muscles are an organ?

First of all, skeletal muscle makes up 40% of your body weight, period, which is a huge amount of your tissue. Wow. I think that this is a really important point that when we think about skeletal muscle, we often hear about just exercising the bicep, and really just is it toned or not? Can I see it or not? And that's why this concept of muscle as the organ of longevity is so critical to get out to the public because skeletal muscle is so much more than that.

Well, I'll be honest. I have only ever thought about muscles in a one-dimensional fashion. Can I see them or not? Do I have a six-pack? Which I do not. Do I have flabby arms that flap like skinwings? Or do I have nice tight biceps and triceps and all that stuff? I have thought in such a... I don't know. I'm embarrassed about how little I know because I honestly did not even know that muscles were an organ. There is so much research that you have in your new book, and we're going to dig into it. But I wanted to start at that baseline so that anybody that's intimidated by the gym, anybody that can't see any muscle definition, we're not here talking about a Beachbody Blast workout program. We're talking about using muscle centric medicine as a way to unlock all of these health benefits that I personally, I had no idea that that's the major benefit of doing weight training and why we all need to do it. I've got a little five pound weight here. When you do a bicep curl or you walk up a flight of stairs, what is actually happening as I am curling my muscle here and attempting to strengthen the bicep?

There's a lot of things that happen, and we're going to break it down very simply. Number one, you get stronger, which is the obvious. Number two, the non-obvious is that when you contract skeletal muscle, it secretes these myokines. Myokines are a molecule that are released from exercising skeletal muscle that mediate the communication between skeletal muscle and other organs that go throughout the body that help with bone health, brain health, and nutrient utilization, which just means when you contract skeletal muscle, it moves glucose, which is simply the sugar in your bloodstream into the cells, into skeletal muscle. That's incredible, especially with this epidemic of obesity that everybody is talking about, this idea of insulin resistance that everybody is talking about, skeletal muscle is your architectural infrastructure of everything.

You've got so many medical degrees and fellowships. What the hell made you go from psychiatry and a practice that was in general medicine and all of these degrees that you have? What had you make the connection between muscles and people's health?

Thank you so much for that question. This has been a very long journey, which by the way, I don't recommend anybody doing that. I graduated high school at 17 pretty early. I moved to Hawaii, and I moved in with my godmother, who was a functional medicine OG. Oh, cool. And she was and is a PhD in nutritional sciences. I began sitting in on her patients, and I believed that nutrition from a very young age was the key. Fast forward to then going to my undergraduate, which was in human nutrition, vitamin mineral metabolism at the University of Illinois. My life changed because serendipitously, I landed in the lab of Dr. Donald layman. He is one of the grandfathers of protein metabolism. A lot of the things that we take for granted, now he discovered in his lab 20-some years ago.

You were standing there?

Yes. As an undergraduate, I was working in his lab, and I was deeply influenced by this idea of dietary protein and skeletal muscle as it relates to women's health, women and men. But the studies that I was working on were women, post-menopausal women. Fast forward through medical school, did two years of psychiatry, realized that that was not my bag, so did family medicine for three years. Then finally did a fellowship at Washington University in St. Louis in nutritional sciences and geriatrics, which looked at aging individuals over the age of 65. I was a combined fellow. I was seeing geriatric patients, but also doing obesity medicine research. This concept of muscle-centric medicine had been building, but there was a flash of insight, and I would love to share how it came about and what really changed everything for me.

Absolutely. What was the insight?

Well, at the time, I was seeing patients in the hospital and in the nursing homes. I was doing that during the day. Then in the evenings, I was doing obesity medicine research, where I was running a weight management clinic. We were also looking at brain imaging. We were looking at the influence of obesity and brain function. There was just one participant in particular. We'll just call her Betty. Betty was in her mid-50s. She had big brown eyes, dark curly hair. She was a mother of three. She was someone who had struggled with yo- yo dieting her whole life. Had been told to lose the same 10-20 pounds that she put on after her first baby. She had been cycling through diet after diet. The information was to lose more weight, exercise more, do this cardiovascular training, and reduce her calories. By doing that, what ended up happening is we destroyed her muscle. She would go through yo- yo dieting. Seeing all of these patients cumulatively, I realized that this obesity epidemic that people have been trying to fix for the last 50 years wasn't obesity at its core the problem. But the one thing that the patients that I was seeing from the Alzheimer's patients to the cognitive impairment patients to the obesity, the struggling with weight, wasn't being over fat.

It was actually about being under-muscled, and it was the unhealthy muscle that was driving everything else.

Wow. I want to be sure everyone gets the benefit of that epiphany. Can you say that again, that from your medical and research background, you had this epiphany that the problem wasn't that people were too fat?

Right.

It was?

That they had unhealthy skeletal muscle.

Wow. I gather that what you're going to prove to us today is that developing healthy skeletal muscle turns it around and unlocks all kinds of health benefits.

Yes, Mel. And in fact, it's never too late to start. And that's actually where I got the title of the book, which is Forever Strong. It's never too late to be forever strong. I know that together we can change the trajectory of aging. We've been trying to combat this, quote, obesity epidemic. We've looked for the last 50 years, and we haven't gotten anywhere. And in fact, we've gotten worse. And one thing I know for sure is that if you are trying to fix the wrong problem, you'll never get there. If you are working under a paradigm of thinking about a problem and you are not making any improvements, then perhaps we are looking at it from a perspective that really needs adjustment.

I want to make sure I'm following you. Are you saying that when we talk about obesity, obesity is not at the core of some of the major health issues that people face?

So what I would say is that obesity in and of itself, in part, obviously it's very complex, but a huge portion of obesity and the issues that ride alongside with obesity, like cardiovascular disease, like hypertension, like Alzheimer's disease, all of these common diseases that we're beginning to see more of, they're not diseases of being overweight.

They're diseases of skeletal muscle first that begin decades before.

I think you're so cool, and I love your passion and your heart. But let's take a quick pause because I need to digest this ha ha ha ha. We also have to hear a word from our sponsors because they bring us all of this goodness at zero cost. Let's take a listen, and we will be right back with more groundbreaking science from Dr. Jay. Stay with us. Welcome back. I am here with Dr. Gabriele Lion. She is a medical expert. She has two fellowships in nutritional science and the science of aging. She has written a book, Forever Strong, and she is unpacking the groundbreaking research in science about leveraging what she calls muscle centric medical approach to your health. Doctor G, one of the reasons why I was so excited to talk to you is because I feel like the conversation about muscle and strength has been hijacked by the fitness industry that is very much about surface, at least when it's marketed, and by men. And this is such an imperative aspect of living a healthier life, creating a better life for yourself. There are implications here to go way beyond the diseases and the issues that your patients were talking about.

The biggest organ in your body, most of us have ignored, and women in particular, I personally speak for myself. I'm intimidated by the gym. I hear muscle, I think weightlifting, I think a neck a mile wide, I think veins popping out of my arms. I think that I can't do that. That's not for me. We have been robbed of a very important, actually, your work says, critical front line habit that every single human being needs to put front and center in their lives, which is strengthening your muscles.

Yeah, exactly, and keeping them healthy. There's no such thing as a healthy, sedentary person. There were some earlier research that looked at 18-year-old, healthy, sedentary college students. The research shows that these individuals were beginning to have signs of unhealthy skeletal muscle with no overt signs of being overweight. If we address this early, if we address the health of muscle, which by the way, there's really two primary ways to do that, dietary protein, really nutritional planning, and then exercise training.

Wait, Dr. Gabriel, are you saying that you can strengthen and build muscle simply by changing your diet?

You can simply build muscle if you are protein-deficient by increasing the dietary protein of your nutrition plan. The other thing is when you design a nutrition plan that is protein-forward, you will be able to support the health of skeletal muscle. We're not talking about, again, bodybuilding, slamming protein shakes. None of that is necessary. These are things that are super simple, incredibly simple.

Well, you're going to make it simple. That's why we have you here because I already love what you said, which is there's two things we need to focus on. The dietary protein, which we will unpack, we'll get into the science and focusing on exercise and strength training that will help you build a healthy skeletal muscular system. I also love something that you wrote about in your book that you say, We all need to stop looking at how much fat we need to lose, and we need to start talking about, How much muscle do I need to gain? And how liberating would it be if instead of going, I need to lose 10 pounds. I need to do that, that you actually said, I need to put on about five pounds of muscle. That's what I need to do. I mean, that's such a positive reframe. How did you arrive at that?

I realized that number one, the strategies that have been put in place have failed people. And when you focus on losing weight, which I don't know one person that hasn't done that, over years and years of yo- yo dieting, you actually destroy skeletal muscle. As we age and become more mature, it becomes much more difficult to put it on and regain the health of skeletal muscle if you've spent years yo- yo dieting. By thinking of always what we have to lose, it becomes very demotivating for people. This really crazy thing that creeps in is sometimes they don't feel worthy of health and wellness in the way that potentially we would want them to feel. So by shifting the conversation as it relates to what people have to gain and understanding that muscle is this currency of health. And in fact, it's the only currency that you can't bargain for. You can't buy it, you can't sell it, but you have to earn it. And by thinking about the skeletal muscle, this currency you earn and put in effort, this crazy thing happens. You begin to cultivate a lot of internal strength. You begin to cultivate this can-do attitude and this way of confidence because you're not worried about if you're going to fall and break a hip.

You're not worried about, I can't eat that. You're not worried about these other things. You have this capacity to shift to a much more positive mind frame, and it's the one thing that you also have direct control over. The last time I checked, you cannot exercise your liver, but you can exercise skeletal muscle.

That's true. That's absolutely true. So it is within your control. I want to have you talk directly to the person that when you said if you've been spending a lifetime yo- yo dieting, you've really destroyed your muscles, and just tell them the hopeful message here and why it's imperative that if you've been yo- yo dieting, like most people have, if you're frustrated by going up and down and trying this diet and that diet and the other diet and this thing and that thing and the other thing, why is it never too late to taking care of your muscles and making them stronger, the most important thing you could do at the center of your health?

Number one, it's never too late. Number two, just like you said, people have gone through periods of yo- yo dieting. That stops today. Everybody listening to this, they are going to stop yo- yo dieting. This is our deal, right, Mel?

That's right. Do you hear Dr. Lion, Damit? She's telling you, you are stop yo- yo dieting, put the soda down, pay attention, sit up, because we are going to give you the step-by-step way that you can take control. If we're going to stop yo- yo dieting, what are we going to do?

The first thing that we're going to do is we're going to leverage dietary protein. But first, let's talk about what protein is. Protein is actually not one thing. Are you ready for this, Mel? It's 20 different amino acids that make up protein.

What the hell is an amino acid? Everybody throws around these terms. I don't even know what an amino acid does.

Great question. This is brilliant. Amino acids are those little tiny building blocks. Think about a sandcastle and think about all the little grains it takes to build a sandcastle. If you think about the sandcastle as protein, all those little sand grains are the amino acids.

I love you. I get that. Now I'm thinking about the fact that my bicep is tiny little particles of sand. Is that right?

Pretty close. But I don't know, yours looks pretty jacked. So yours is not sand, yours is more like concrete.

I've been working out for this. I did a set just so they'd look really greased up for you when we did this. Okay, so how do I know what protein is the best protein? Because I would reckon you're about to tell us we all need to start eating more protein because these sand, particle, amino acid things are very important for our skeletal muscular health, correct?

That's right. But before I tell you that, I'm going to tell you why. Just overarching why protein is important. Yes. Then we'll get to the nitty gritty. I love it. -you like that? -yes.

-sand, gritty. Oh, I didn't even get it. See? Come on.

Some mom jokes coming in here hot. But not be wasted. This idea that protein is really imperative is important for a few reasons. Number one, protein, again, is made up of these 20 different amino acids. What's so fascinating about protein from the big picture is that dietary protein improves satiety, just meaning you're not hungry.

Here.

Is the test that I tell people. If you're really hungry, go ahead and sit down with that chicken breast. That will tell you immediately, are you really hungry? Versus a bag of chips, and you could probably eat that forever. You are not hungry from eating dietary protein. The other reason why protein is so valuable is that it is very difficult to eat a high-protein diet and actually gain fat. Because protein is so valuable to the body, it is what we call an essential macronutrient, meaning you can't make it. You literally cannot make it, you have to eat it. Versus carbohydrates, your body can make carbohydrates. In fact, your body can make some carbohydrates from proteins. Then the need for fat is not huge. There's some essential fatty acid need, but nothing major. Because of these amino acids that are in protein and just protein in general, it is very difficult to overconsume. It's very difficult to ultimately gain weight from a diet that is high in protein.

The main benefit is that the macronutrient or the 20 sand molecules in a protein when you eat it, it gets used up by the body. It also makes you less hungry. You have this benefit of being more efficient in terms of the fuel that you're putting in versus just snacking mindlessly on all this stuff that ends up getting stored somewhere in your body. Is that correct? Am I following you? Yes.

Okay. You're doing a great job. Protein is very controversial in the nutrition space. Why? And it should be. Well, we'll get into that, but it's just very controversial.

Well, hold on a second. Can we just say something here? You have a fucking fellowship or fellow. You're a fellow. You've earned... What is it called? You've earned... You've literally... You are a fellow in nutritional science. You're a psychiatrist. You have been at Ground Zero studying this in the lab of the dude that synthesized protein for the first time. But like somebody on TikTok that has gotten in shape and is now telling everybody else how to do it that does not have the background that you have, quiet, because you're talking about the actual science here. You're not saying you have to be vegan or you have to be a meat eater. You're saying everybody, from a medical perspective, the biggest organ in your body is your skeletal muscular system. It is the biggest organ. It has a function where it secretes stuff that is the molecules of hope and longevity. And you, by paying attention to this organ that you've probably ignored because you've been yo- yo dieting and worrying about how you look, you haven't been focused on how you feel. You haven't been focused on how your body functions. Like me, you didn't know better.

You didn't know the science. I had no idea any of the stuff that you're talking about. There is no controversy in my mind because you are the authority who has been researching this. You are on the front lines with people with Alzheimer's and obesity. You are talking about this not from how you get your butt in shape for a bikini. You're talking about it based on the science around the way that your brain works and your body works. Thank you for listening to my Ted talk. I'm going to turn it back over to Dr. Gabrielle to tell us why a protein-forward diet matters.

I've been in nutritional sciences for 20 years, and I started seeing with this influence and this social media that the information that is put out there is extraordinarily damaging. Where I really had to put my foot down was that the information that let's say a 50-year-old woman is going to be hearing, and she's hearing it from the influencers on Instagram or TikTok or Facebook or whatever she's hearing it, that window of getting it right closes. There comes a time where we have to, which is exactly what we are doing today, is we are getting it right so there's no longer confusion and there's no longer this distraction of trying to figure out what to eat or why we're eating it. Ultimately, the way in which we age can be strong, can be resilient, doesn't have to be riddled with obesity, diabetes, insulin resistance, all the ways that we think an individual has to age. It doesn't have to be that way. That is why I wrote the book, because I wanted to really put something out there to end confusion.

Dr. G, let's take a pause real quick. Let's hear a word from our sponsors. When we come back, more from the amazing Dr. Gabriele Lion. Stay with me. Welcome back. I'm Mel Robbins, and I'm here with Dr. Gabriele Lion. Her new book is Forever Strong. More importantly, she is the expert in nutritional science. She is teaching us about what's called a muscle centric medical approach to your health and to weight loss. And, Dr. G, let's get back into it. Can you just give everybody a quick list of all the health benefits that happen when you embrace what you're saying and you start embracing a protein-forward diet and you prioritize exercise that strengthens your muscles. What are the health benefits and the cognitive benefits of doing this?

Number one, better blood sugar regulation, better energy, you'll be stronger, you'll have better survivability against nearly any disease or issue or problem that life throws in front of you. Skeletal muscle, again, is the largest endocrine organ, organ system in the body. What else skeletal muscle is, is it's a nutrient-sensing organ. It senses nutrients. Blows your mind, right? It actually senses the quality of the diet. It senses the protein quality of the diet, which is incredible. One of the things that happens as individuals age is that efficiency of sensing protein and those amino acids decreases. How do you overcome that? And what does it look like when that efficiency decreases? From a very visual perspective, it looks like sarcopenia, which looks like skinny, smaller, frail, elderly individuals. But you can overcome that efficiency issue and make older muscles act like younger muscles by increasing dietary protein. Number one. Now you've taken a older, more mature muscle, you've increased the dietary protein intake, and you can get your skeletal muscle to respond as if it was in your 20s.

Wow. What is another health benefit? It's incredible. What's another health benefit of following this protocol and paying attention to this?

The other thing is that healthy skeletal muscle is your metabolic disposal unit. You'll go to your yearly doctor and they'll say, here's your blood sugar, here's your triglycerides, here's your cholesterol. The biggest way you can make sure that those numbers are exactly where you want it to be is by having healthy skeletal muscle. Number one, we take care of skeletal muscle and we improve its efficiency. Efficient muscle is healthy muscle. Number two, we use skeletal muscle, healthy skeletal muscle to make sure we don't get diabetes or insulin resistance and all the things that come alongside with that. That's number two. Number three, healthy skeletal muscle makes us strong and capable, which I would say arguably that's the obvious. Of course, healthy skeletal muscle, it is the tissue that you leverage through exercise to improve brain health. We talked about those secreting molecules, myokines, they make your bone healthier. They make you more efficient and effective at metabolizing foods. It's incredible. They also impact the brain. This is where some of the confusion comes into the space because you're hearing a lot of, quote, longevity experts saying, cut back on dietary protein, you're going to live longer.

Okay, well, let's say potentially that would be true. Let's just say for fun. Number one, how much longer do you think someone is going to live with no or low healthy skeletal muscle mass?

Not very.

That's right. Because I didn't tell you the other thing. I think we're at number five. If you get injured, if you get an illness, what do you think your body relies on to protect you? Where do you think it pulls from those building blocks, those grains of sand? Where do you think it pulls from?

Your muscles.

That's right. Do you know that if an individual were to get cancer, one of the things that they oftentimes pass away from is this thing called cancer coxia, which is this highly metabolic state which ends up destroying skeletal muscle. You cannot survive without skeletal muscle.

The list of benefits from the long term is absolutely, I'm sure you're just getting started. Can you give everybody a sense? If you were to make this change of having protein for, we're going to explain this more, and you were to start resistance training, what are you going to feel day to day? What are the benefits of doing this almost immediately on your day to day life?

If you get your first protein meal right, you will feel better immediately. I mean, it might not be in the first 30 seconds, but after that first meal, you will have more energy. You'll have better blood sugar regulation. You will feel better. We've seen it. And not only anecdotally, we've seen it in the literature. If you design a diet that is protein-forward and balanced with carbohydrates, meaning you're not having too much carbohydrates, so you're not going to have this huge ebb and flow and crash where all of a sudden you're reaching for cookies or donuts, which you better not be at 10:00 AM, but if you were. Then the other aspect of that is you will not be hungry. You are using nutritional science to leverage willpower.

That sounds sexy. Let's use nutritional science to leverage willpower, everybody. I want to keep digging into the protein.

I think that that's really important to understand because the average American, by the way, the average woman is getting around maybe 60 to 68 if I'm going to be generous grams of protein a day.

And how many do we need to be getting as women?

I recommend close to one gram per pound ideal body weight.

What? Yeah.

I even calculated this out for you. Okay, you ready for this? I did this.

Calculation for you. My ideal body weight is 138. That's when I always feel my best.

For you, if you were my patient, I would say, Listen, Mel, in order for us to correct for muscle health, metabolism, satiety, then I would put you at roughly easily a minimum of 100 grams of protein, but between 100 to 120, maybe even 130 grams of protein.

I feel like I'm going to gain weight. There I said it. There I said it. There's no way. I said I'm going to gain weight. That sounds like a lot. I'm so indoctrinated. I don't know if there's a salad lobby that has been petitioning all of us psychologically, but I hear that. Intellectually, I know. I got to start taking care of my muscle organ. I'm in. I want to think clear. I want to lose the belly fat. I want to have more energy. God forbid something happened to me. I want to be strongerlong enough to fight it off. I also look at my 85-year-old mother-in-law who has biceps and exercises and resistant trains, and the woman is an energizer Bunny at the age of 86. I want to be like that. And so I'm in. The second you said, Mel, it's between 100 and 130 grams of protein a day. I'm like, I am not becoming a webowable on legs, Dr. Gabrielle. I think that's exactly what a lot of us women who've been socialized to think that we have to be thin, that's our reaction. But it just goes to show you how fucked up this all is.

Yes, it is. The science isn't fucked up. Our psychology and the mixed messages and the diets we've been sold and the fact that... I'm just going to speak for me, but everybody listening has no idea that this is what your muscles do.

Right. By the way, I calculated the amount of calories that we would be talking about so I could clarify it for you.

Are you ready? -okay, tell me. Lay it on me.

Let's say you increase your dietary protein to 100 grams of protein a day. Okay. That would be a total of 400 calories. Wait, what?

Now, what are you eating? That's it.

Wait, that's it. But there's something I didn't.

Tell you. Okay.

What I didn't tell you is that the thermic effect of food, meaning when you eat dietary protein, because of its impact on muscle, increases metabolism. While you're thinking, Why am I going to eat 100 grams of protein and I'm going to get 400 calories? Sometimes, depending on how you dose it, you will use 20 % of that energy to just metabolize that protein. It would be very difficult to gain weight. It would be so difficult to gain weight, you are not going to put on weight from increasing your dietary protein. It would be... And in fact, the studies show that. They've done overfeeding protein studies. Do you want to know what happens when people, quote, overeat protein?

I do.

Their body compositions get better. You know what that means? It means they lose fat.

By eating more protein, the research shows in all these studies and in the work that you've done for 20 years that when people focus on muscle health, resistance training, and a protein-forward diet, they lose fat.

They lose fat. Obviously, calories have to be controlled, but they lose fat and they gain muscle. You gain tissue, your body composition improves.

We keep thinking about this in reverse, everybody. You're focused on losing fat when you should be focused on gaining muscle. And when you gain muscle, you actually lose the extra weight that you don't want. I keep thinking about the fact that you look at somebody that's sedentary or heavy and you see the extra weight that they're carrying and you think about, okay, well, how am I going to get them to diet and do stuff so that we can get rid of that weight. And what I just got is inside that body is an organ called muscles. There's the architecture of a healthy human being. And when you can activate the healthy human being that is inside the unhealthy body, and as you start to really strengthen your muscles, we'll get into resistance training in a minute, that starts to emerge from the inside out. Yes. And all of the extra weight and all of the disease and complications and symptoms that come with having what is an insufficient muscular system. If you start with strengthening from the inside out, it overtakes all of the unhealthy stuff on the outside, and that's what you see emerging.

And if you think about these before and after photos that you see in these challenges online or whatever that people use to market diets or weight loss programs or weightlifting programs, we are looking at them wrong because what we're thinking is we're thinking that somebody is somehow dieting and shrinking. What you're actually seeing is the muscle health emerging. Yes. I just got it.

You got it.

That is so cool.

And it's not about what we have to lose, it's about what do we have to gain. It's this way of leveraging your system to create flux and movement so then this healthy body emerges.

Why is this so important for women specifically?

I think women have really gotten a constant narrative about, You've hit menopause. Now you're going to have a menopausal belly, and you're going to gain about 30 pounds, and it's going to be this is how it's going to be. That does not have to happen. There are ways in which you can manage your body composition through diet and training. Again, we are leveraging protein and food as medicine and movement as medicine rather than taking something external.

Here's.

What I would tell and why it's so important for a menopausal, post-menopausal woman. There is a natural decline in these hormones: estrogen, progesterone. There's an imbalance of testosterone, which can affect body composition. But one of the ways it affects body composition is we move less. We are less active. The way to combat that is through very simply doing some resistance training, which simply means, again, against an external load. It doesn't have to be complicated, and it's not necessarily as difficult as people think. I've been seeing patients since 2006. I have seen a lot of mid-life women, and I've seen a lot of success.

Okay, what do we do? Dr. Gabrielle, I just heard, do you hear that? That was women in 194 countries around the world turning up the dial. What do we do?

Here's what they're going to do. They're going to make it super easy. Their first meal of the day is going to have between 30 and 50 grams of protein. Easy. I don't care if it's a weight protein shake. I don't care if it's Mel's Pea protein shake. I care. I don't necessarily want it to be collagen, because collagens are all great for other things, is not great for muscle health. Okay? Got it. So collagen is a different separate protein. It has a protein score of what is considered zero. It's still great, but we're not going to put in the category of muscle health.

Thank you for saying that, because here I am making my smoothie, and I'm adding the mushroom stuff for the hot flashes, and I'm adding the protein powder, and I don't even know if it's got the lupin thing in it. I put in the collagen. I'm thinking that's another 10-20 grams of protein, so I can put that in the 50-protein column. What you're saying is Mel, that is good for your hair and nails. But when it comes to complex amino acids, that protein scores a big fat... So now I'm learning something. This is really good. Like a.

Pro, homie. You are a pro.

Thank you.

So all these women in a million different countries, you've got your dial turned up. You're going to make it so simple. This is legitimately fail-proof. You are going to have between 30 and 50 grams of protein at that first meal. You're not going to have over 30 grams or so of carbohydrates for that first meal because we don't want to skew this insulin and give you this robust response. Again, I'm giving broad generalization. Got it. Okay. But we're just going to define it and design it so that people can execute right away. Great. You can have a little bit of berries, you can mix it in water, you can mix it in almond juice or whatever it is that you want. Something not major that is calorically dense. Okay, you've done that. You're doing great. Maybe you want some smaller meal in the day. Maybe it has 20 grams of protein and 20 grams of carbohydrates. What does that look like? That could be three eggs. It could be your chicken salad. It could be whatever it is that you want. I'm not so crazy about that one.

I love you for that. Thank you.

You're welcome. The last meal, if you're having two larger meals and a smaller meal in the middle, your last meal is also important because you're getting ready to go into an overnight fast. You woke up in the morning coming out of an overnight fast. Your skeletal muscle, your organ of longevity is primed for nutrients. You stimulate muscle with your dietary protein. You've done an amazing job. You've improved your signaling. You've made your muscle youthful. You are no longer hungry. Your body is now metabolizing things. We're not gaining weight. We are really setting you up for success. Your next meal is a little smaller. Your last meal of the day is going to mirror your first meal.

I thought you said it was smaller.

Your middle meal is smaller.

Okay, got it. Now I'm doing my 30-50. I'm having my protein shake or my hamburger with my salad or whatever else.

The last meal of the day is between 30 and 50 grams of protein. You want your burger, you want your chicken, you want your salmon. Great. You have now nailed it. Okay, by the way, if people understand the concepts in this book, you will lose body fat by just addressing the dietary component of protein, which is mind-blowing. You will improve your body composition by changing your dietary protein for breakfast. By simply doing that, by swapping out your cereal, by adding in dietary protein, we have seen huge changes in body composition. Simply by doing that. And also, by the way, some of this data was isochaloric, meaning people both had the same amount of calories. They were both taking in 1,600 calories. And the post-menopausal women, what one group did was change the first meal of the day to have an optimal protein. It was around 40 grams of protein. And then the second group had around, I don't remember exactly what it was, but it was probably closer to 50 grams of carbohydrates and 13 grams of protein, which is what most women are doing now. The body composition effects were negative for the carbohydrate group versus the protein group, they lost weight.

Again, calories were the same. It was simply changing around the macronutrients.

Can you talk a little bit to the vegetarians and folks that have a vegan diet? What are the considerations as you're thinking protein-forward and the amino acid, sand particle aspect of the macronutrient and protein?

Yes.

All.

Dietary protein is not created equal. Ideally, you are eating whole foods. Now this brings us to this category of dietary protein and what makes up dietary protein, how do we score it, how do we think about it? An overarching way to do this very simply is that anything that is of animal nature, that means does it run, does it swim, does it walk, is a high-quality protein.

Okay.

What defines high-quality protein is we talked about that there are 20 different amino acids. Got it. We're obviously not going into those 20, but there are a handful of essential amino acids.

Are those not present in plant-based proteins?

They're very low in plant-based proteins. What would you have to do? You would have to over consume or increase your consumption of these plant-based proteins to bring up that level of essential amino acids. Got it. I'm going to give you a very clear example. Let's say you are going to eat three or four ounces of a beef patty, a lean beef patty that has this essential amino acid, leucine. Leucine is the critical amino acid for muscle health. Now, remember, you and I were talking about how each amino acid had these dual roles and we weren't going to go into all 20, but there are a handful that are really important and critical for health and wellbeing. Okay. One of those amino acids is leucine. And leucine, what's so fascinating is that it requires a certain amount to trigger skeletal muscle. Essentially, if you're eating under that amount, then you're not actually stimulating this mechanics of skeletal muscle. Three to four ounces of a lean beef patty would stimulate muscle, would give you this whatever number, two and a half grams of leucine to trigger the muscle to begin to have this process. If you were to try to do that in quinoa, you would need six cups of quinoa because of the difference in the amino acid profile to trigger muscle the same way.

Wow.

That's not a good plan. First of all, it's a lot of quinoa. Second of all, that's like carbicide. You don't want to be doing that.

Carbicide is a word?

Yeah, no. Well, it can't be now.

Wow, I think you should trademark that. Is there a supplement for our friends that are vegetarian or vegan that they can take to up the lysine or to get the amino acids without having to overdose on quinoa.

Totally. Here's what you want to take, a plant-based rice or pea blend of protein, making sure that you're hitting at least 20 grams of protein in that blend.

It's important to understand because I drink smoothies a lot because they're easy, and I use a plant-based formula. Here I am, dumping more scoops in thinking I'm loading up and I'm protein-forward, and you're sitting here telling me, Not really, not necessarily, but I know I'm doing something, and that's better than nothing.

No, you are. Mel, I'm going to interrupt you because you're doing great.

Thank you.

The plant-based protein powders is a way to begin to balance these amino acids because they've made it in a way where they've balanced these amino acids. Okay, so this is a way to do it.

Great. You're talking about if you're doing whole foods, like you got to be reeling- If.

You're doing whole foods, exactly. If you were doing whole foods and not adding supplements, you may need a total of 35 % more dietary protein.

I love that. Okay, so here's what I want to do next. I want to get into the second piece of advice for muscle health, which is I'm actually lifting weight. And what I would love to know is for those of us that feel bombarded with all different types of ways to exercise, should I do yoga? Should I do pilates? Should I go to the gym? Should I put on a streaming class? Do I need bands? Should I pick up a weight? Are the weights different than the hot mom walk wristband things? Do I need to squeeze the thing? Should I do hit? Should I do resistance? It is so overwhelming. If you were to talk first to anybody listening, it's like, Okay, Doc G, I'm in. I'm in. You got me with the protein. I'm going to check this out. I feel so much smarter. I love you. I get it. But the resistance training.

It's very confusing. Here is the one non-negotiable that everybody is going to take away and build on. No pun intended here. Resistance training is any move against weight. That could be body weight, you could be doing push-ups, you could be doing bicep curls, you could be doing bands, you could be doing any different type of resistance training. That is a non-negotiable for muscle health and body composition. I will say all exercise is important, and anything is better than nothing. But when we are talking about muscle-centric medicine, we are talking about getting stronger and building the infrastructure of our body for the time that we need it. The way that we're going to do that collectively is we are going to do resistance training as a non-negotiable, which again, could be weights, could be machines, could be at-home pushups or band workout. Even if someone really wants to do yoga and pilates, they could, but that is not going to be ideal over a period of time, but it's a great starting place. Got you.

And what's the minimum amount of time? I realize you say some is better than none. But for just somebody going, I'm going to take this seriously. Three days a week, two days a week, one day a week. Where is a starting point for somebody where this is like a whole new world?

Here's what I say. I say that you should be lifting a minimum of two days a week. Okay? And that would be if you're only going to do two days a week, then you're going to do full body. And I love the idea that you are doing what we call multi-joint movements. So for me, what did I do this morning? I go, Oh, man, I'm going to be on Mel Robbins podcast. I'm getting my butt in the gym, and we did deadlift.

I.

Don't necessarily think that people need to start with that, but again, I've been training for a period of years, so for me, deadlift. But for someone who is just starting out, there are still machines. Machines are very safe that they could do a squat on a machine or a leg press on a machine. There are things that involve multi-joints and multi-body parts at once. Super easy. We don't need to overcomplicate it. Two days a week would be the minimum, whether they're doing upper body and lower body. All of those, again, two days.

A week. Got you. And if you were to take a protein-forward diet and you were to do two days a week of full body resistance training, how long does it take for that inner muscular body to start to appear and you to start to see some something happening?

Here's the great news of someone who's just starting out. Those people will get the bigger benefit and see more improvement faster than someone who's been training for a long period of time. How long? I would say maybe 6-8 weeks. You stay with it.

Oh, my God, that long? Can we see a little something better? We're going to feel better, though, right?

You will feel better immediately.

Okay, that's all I need to know.

You will feel better immediately, and you will begin to improve while transient those immediate markers like blood sugar, like triglycerides, like HDL that everybody talks about. Again, it's over time, but these will be immediately impacted, which is incredible, which is absolutely incredible.

Are there some aspects to resistance training that women should be doing differently for maximum benefit?

That's a great question. There was a period of time where I believe that you had to lift heavier weights, and I personally prefer to do that. But the evidence would suggest as long as a woman is really taxing herself, she's not on her phone and she's not distracted, but going to where she really goes to fatigue, then I think that it's not necessarily for women. But here's one other thing that I think women should do.

Tell me.

One high intensity interval training session a week.

Okay, what does that actually mean?

This could be on, say, an aeredine bike or a rower, or if someone is at home with no equipment, it could be as many air squats as they could do for a 45-second to a minute session, all-out effort. You're really going to put in high effort for a minute and then you're going to rest. Then you could do that... Again, there's many different ways to do that, but you could do this for a total of 20 minutes and that's your workout. You do 10 rounds with a minute in between, and that's it.

You have.

Taxed your muscles, you've released myokines, you've improved your blood sugar, and you're going to eat your dietary protein, you're going to be stronger. Over a period of time, you are going to be stronger from following that.

I love this, and I love that you're saying 10-20 minutes. I love that you've got resources that we can link to. I love that you've got a playbook in Forever Strong. I know a lot of people were hanging on the words when you said, you can do resistance training for 20-30 minutes three times a week. For women, it's important to go to failure. If, for example, you're doing an online streaming class, and it's one of those small weight things, and you are doing your arms up and down and you've been holding them up for five minutes and you're like, I can't do this anymore, and you drop your arms. Is that what you mean by failure?

Yeah. Great. By the way, if you work hard enough, you could get a great workout in seven minutes. You could get a great workout in one minute. If you gas yourself on some all-out 80-90 % more effort, that's good. It could literally take you four minutes. It doesn't have to take a ton of time.

What are the ways to make muscle magic and what the heck is muscle magic?

Basically, the way that I think about that is, how can we add in snippets in the day to really augment our health? What are we going to do about health and wellness that's going to take two seconds to do and going to be at the forefront of our mind? Number one, you like numbers. Number one, every hour complete 10-20 air squads. Dude, you could totally do that. You could totally do that. Number two, stand at your desk, which I'm sitting right now, but I do have a standing treadmill desk. Number three, get your heart rate up with a brisk walk to the bathroom or water fountain 10 times a day.

Great. It easy.

Literally, if you had a glucose monitor, you ate lunch, you have that glucose monitor on, you can see improvements in your blood sugar just by leveraging skeletal muscle instantaneously. We're at number four, bring a resistance band to your office and get in a quick 10 reps of Mel's bicep curls or any.

Exercise of choice. Just resist the band, people.

Yeah, you could do overhead press. You could do whatever you want to do.

I have a question. So a lot of us have these wrist weight things. You can hear me opening it up. They're very popular when we were all in lockdown, the Hot Mom Walk. So there's a one pound wrist weight. If I just wear these all day long, is that something that I can do that will help or is that not a good thing?

It will help. Is it going to be optimal? Maybe not, but it'll help.

Okay. And when you said- I.

Think we could put a little more. Probably.

Given that you've practiced as a psychiatrist in a family medicine practice and you've spent 20 years and are a fellow in nutritional medicine, I wanted to ask you some questions from our audience and see if you would give people advice. Vicky writes, Docjie, how do I get my 24-year-old daughter to start taking charge of her health? I send her podcasts, I send her articles. The more I do, she turns away as she wants to be in control, which I know she should be. She's a workaholic. She's a perfectionist. I'm worried because she's burying herself in work, and that means she claims she doesn't have much room for exercise or enough sleep. She's put on about 25 pounds since graduating, and I'm just really worried about her. What can I do?

Well, first of all, don't worry, we've got this. I'm going to share with you a little secret. Over time, the most and highest success a person will ever be able to achieve, the one common denominator is their health. So if Vicky's daughter cares about becoming successful, which she clearly does, right now she is making a rookie entrepreneurial mistake. I have seen this over and over and over again. Human beings are predictable. This behavior of late nights, early mornings, little sleep, charge hard and burn out, it goes like this. As people's career goes up, this behavior goes like this until ultimately something breaks, people hit rock bottom, and then they have to rebuild. One of two things are going to happen. Number one, you're going to get to it early and you're going to say, Listen, you care about being successful. You are so driven. You have external discipline. This is someone who is exhibiting external discipline to drive the needle forward. That is a translatable skill. We are going to encourage the external discipline to then translate to internal discipline, not with the goal of weight loss, not with the goal of being healthy, but all of which is going to be framed around this idea of daily success and future success.

She is going to be able to perform better at work and dominate. And that is how you are going to change her mind.

Doctor Give me a chance. I'm in the house. That was genius. You know why? It's manipulative, and it works because you've attached motivation to something that she's demonstrating that she actually cares about, which is her success. And when you carve out a little bit of discipline to start to weight train, by the way, because of all the benefits with sharper thinking, with the discipline that it takes to fit it in, with the fact that you get this rush of endorphins and adrenaline and you're able to focus, it translates directly to you being better at your job or taking care of your kids or anything that you want to do. And in fact, for you stay at home moms, let me tell you something. There is new research out that shows that the best way to help a kid who is struggling is to help the caregiver by helping the caregiver start to take care of themselves and start to become healthier themselves. It translates directly. And so I freaking love that you just said that. I've got another one from Maddie, and I know that you had some issues with binge eating when you were a teenager, and so I think you're in a really important position to make a difference here.

Maddie writes, I'm 19 years old, and my social media feeds are filled with fitness influencers. I enjoy fitness a lot. I love the way the gym makes me feel and the reward of how my body can look, but I get too carried away with my image sometimes and let it control my day and my mood. I struggle with binge eating at night, but I haven't been diagnosed with an eating disorder. Do you have any tips for comparing myself to other people, comparing my body to other people's bodies? And even more importantly, how do I just build a better relationship with myself and my body?

That is a very deep question, and I absolutely can relate because when I was her age, I also struggled. I think a lot of younger women struggle. One of the things that younger women now that are up against that I didn't have and many of us didn't have, is that social media has no rules. So the first thing that Maddy has to do is limit time on social media. I mean, really limit it to what is she trying to gain out of it? This is going to take some internal fortitude because it is addictive, and that is how these apps, which we all love but are designed, and they allow for dopamine release, and we want to keep going backout for more. I personally have a lock on my social media. I can spend 30 minutes a day on social media max until I'm locked out. And that is exactly what Maddy should do, because comparison is a kiss of death for people, really truly is about being one's best version of oneself and shifting away from the external. Again, this whole conversation hasn't been focused about the external drivers of looking good, but understanding that the better you treat yourself, we only have one body, the better an individual treats themselves from the inside, the more capable Maddy is going to be throughout her entire life.

And ultimately, she's going to go through a period where each decade we compare less. Right now, Maddie, you're at the height of comparison. And that's just also part of being a 19-year-old woman. But this is an amazing opportunity to develop some mental toughness. And what do I mean by develop mental toughness? I mean having a lot of discipline to say, you know what? I am not going to go and look at those things and compare whatever it is that those people are doing. And the other thing is I'm actually going to focus on a goal that I set for myself that is not external. It shouldn't be based on external looks. It could be based on... So she said something very important. She said something about the progress in the gym. I don't see progress in the gym. Well, what about saying you are going to do 10 dead-hang pullups? That has nothing to do with how you look. It purely has to do with embracing the discomfort of becoming more skilled at a movement.

You know what? This actually points to the whole reason why I wanted to have you on, because the reason why Maddie and just about everybody on the planet, particularly in that age group, has trouble with comparison is because they're focused on what they look like versus being in the gym to take care of your muscular health. Being in the gym because of the different amino acids and the way that your neurotransmitters and your thinking and your mood and your mental health are impacted. One thing that helped me a lot because I struggled like everybody with profound comparison, is if you're going to compare yourself, right? If you just have this habit of looking around and laser focusing in on the one person whose body type is exactly the opposite and genetically impossible for you to ever achieve, and then beating yourself up for the fact that you're not 11 feet tall or 3 feet tall or whatever it is that you wish that you were. If you're going to do that with one person, try for a day admiring everybody. Admire everybody in the gym. Admire the freckles on that person over there. Admire the curly hair on that person over there.

Admire the monster calves that that person over there has. Admire the gap between the teeth of the other person over there. Find something that you admire that's unique about every person that you pass by just casually, and you'll start to notice that you can flip it from this seeking of someone looks better than training yourself to see something unique and beautiful in everybody because we all look very different. I think intellectually, we know this, but that's a way to start to train your mind to default in a very different way. Pamela wrote, Mel, I need mental strategies and thoughts to lose weight because I really want to stay in shape. I'm tired of calorie counting. What do in shape women tell themselves? Because the old strategies are no longer working for me, and I need an epiphany. So, Doc G.

Mental neutrality. I have a neutral mind. This next meal is not that big of a deal. This one last cheat meal. I need these cookies. It's so good. I can't not have X, Y, and Z. Neutral. Be neutral. All of this hype around food and dieting is all stuff that we made up. It doesn't have to be that way. Just neutral mind, my friend. It's not that big of a deal. It's just one more meal. Allow yourself to gain control. Take actions to become the person that you know that you can be and ask yourself, are these actions and these behaviors, is this in line with who I want to be? And you close the gap. I think that people always put together and put forward weight loss goals. And when you have goals, that means when you hit a goal of 10-pound weight loss, you're now back at the starting point of what's your next goal? As opposed to putting together standards. What is the standard? How are the standards of how you function? You are going to execute on an appropriate training program. You're going to set a standard for the kinds of foods that you're going to eat.

You are going to set a standard for your sofa how strong you want to be. We're not chasing goals here. We're setting standards for our life that allow us to execute and live a life of longevity, of strength, and resilience.

Dr. J, you have given me so many epiphanies today. You've changed the way that I think about what I'm eating. You have had me learn so much and everybody listening about muscle centric medicine, the importance of this. I feel a sense of freedom and liberation from decades of thinking about calories and losing weight. I really am empowered by what you've taught us today and how it impacts my health, how it could help shape my body and my future and my longevity. And so what a freaking gift. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for spending so much time with us and going into such detail. I cannot wait to have you back. Everybody, the book is Forever Strong, a new science-based strategy for aging well. Doc G, everybody.

Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

I love these conversations, don't you? When it's like, poof, poof, poof, poof, poof, epiphany, epiphany, epiphany. I think the biggest one for me is really thinking for real about my muscles, about this organ I've been neglecting. This is so cool. It has changed me forever. I know you got a lot out of it, and I want to just say something else. Everything that I talk about with you here on the podcast, it is meant to open up possibilities. If you feel inspired and empowered and it's safe to do so, try it. But only you know whether or not it works for you. Take what she says, try it out if you feel inspired, and make sure that you're constantly checking with yourself. I'll be checking in with you about this, too. All right, I got to go prepare a snack that's about 30 to 50 grams of protein. Now I know the collagen is zero protein. I feel so empowered, and I hope you do, too. The reason why is because I love you. I tell you that every time I talk to you, I love you, I believe in you, and I believe in your ability to be smart about the decisions that you're making, especially those that you're making about your health, because you deserve to live a long and strong and healthy life.

Now you have the research and the tools to do it. Let's go get them. I'll talk to you in a few days. Hey. Oh, my God. Okay, I've got to get in here. Let me put these on. All right, are we ready, everybody? Okay, great. And they are the key to effective weight loss. Oh, my God. World class medical upskirts. Okay, let me try that again. The number one change that I need to make in order to start to melt away the belly... The number one thing we all need to do in order to melt body fat. Do you want to say body fat or belly fat? Belly fat. Fuck. Okay, here we go. I don't know who that is.

Good job on those bicep girls. I'm really liking that form.

So what is mitracombia? What? Mitracombia? I'm sorry, I can't talk.

Wait, that's like abacromby? Yes. Call them abacromby.

Yes. Oh, and one more thing, and no, this is not a blooper. This is the legal language. You know what the lawyers write and what I need to read to you. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist, and this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I'll see you in the next episode. Stitcher.