On Purpose: w/ Dr. Gabrielle Lyon on Body Reset Blueprint (Transcript)

And I think everyone listening to—just think about that for a second. You’ve been spending the last few decades, every single January 1st, you’re thinking to yourself, “This is the year I lose weight. This is the year I lose weight.” And it doesn’t work.

And all of a sudden, you just said 40% 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.

Muscle: The Only Organ System We Control

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: And it is the only organ system that we have voluntary control over. You cannot tell your heart to beat at 50 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 to squat.

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 of unhealthy muscle first?

JAY SHETTY: Talk to me about that. Yes, explain it.

Understanding Skeletal Muscle as a Metabolic Powerhouse

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: 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.

JAY SHETTY: What’s the difference?

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: Cardiac muscle, striated muscle of the heart. It’s the only area where there is 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 a number of things.

Well, number one, you were talking about sport. We know that muscle’s 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. And when you contract it, it releases these myokines, 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 the thigh, a filet mignon, sounds gross, but just stay with me, is a rich red muscle without fat infiltrated into it versus a wagyu steak or a rib eye which has fat that is infiltrated throughout it.

When we gain weight, we don’t just gain weight subcutaneously that we can see or even viscerally around our organs, but we also can 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 3 diabetes of the brain. But the health of our body and what 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. And if someone is listening, they’re like, “Well, what does that mean?”

You go to your doctor and you get your triglycerides measured or your cholesterol measured. You get your glucose measured, your insulin. But the primary site for control of that is muscle.

Measuring Muscle Health

JAY SHETTY: Can you see that? You can’t measure that, right?

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: You can.

JAY SHETTY: What’s it called? What should you be asking for?

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: Ask for a panel for metabolic syndrome. And everyone’s heard about metabolic syndrome. So it’s fat percentage over 30%. It’s elevated blood pressure, it’s elevated triglycerides, 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 are unhealthy.

JAY SHETTY: That’s why you say that poor muscle health is bigger than the obesity crisis, because that’s what’s at the root of it.

The Street Lamp Effect: Looking in the Wrong Place

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: Exactly. And for the last 50 years, we’ve been chasing obesity. And it reminds me of this. So have you ever heard of the street lamp effect?

JAY SHETTY: No.

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: Okay, well, you—

JAY SHETTY: Actually, I think I have heard of it, but I’ve forgotten what it is.

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: Yeah, you’ve been to New York City and you’ve been to Central Park.

JAY SHETTY: Yes.

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: 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 those 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 says, “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 on their hands and knees looking for the keys, and after 20 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 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. And if we are still asking the question about obesity, then we are absolutely missing the point of skeletal muscle as the primary organ system for a healthy and great strong life because it is at the focal point.

JAY SHETTY: 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. We look at it as something that 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, “Oh, I don’t want to be too bulky, or I don’t want to look like this, or that’s not how I’m meant to look,” or whatever these norms and traditions have been for what our physical appearances should be like.

Breaking Generational Thinking Patterns

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: 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 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.

JAY SHETTY: How hard is it? Talk to me about the difference. How long does it take to gain body fat versus build muscle?

The Reality of Building Muscle vs. Gaining Fat

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: They say that it’s excess of 3,500 calories for every pound. I mean, think about the holidays. The average person, I don’t know, they might gain between 5 and 10 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 two pounds if they are perfect and dedicated of muscle. 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 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 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, they seem to have shrunk. 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 resistant, called anabolic resistance. It becomes less efficient at utilizing protein. It can become less efficient at responding to exercise.

But it’s not to say that it always does. I mean, when you exercise and have a great program, you can be 90 years old and you’ll put on muscle.

How to Build Muscle: Getting Started

JAY SHETTY: 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 when we’re trying to build muscle?

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: There is something that people have to recognize: when you are young, you are very anabolic. My kids don’t have to worry about it. But really I would say the cutoff we say is about 35. And after 35, you have to become much more intentional about both diet and training.

When you’re young, I was talking to you before, showing you videos of my 4-year-old who’s training for the SEAL team doing push-ups.

JAY SHETTY: Yeah, it’s amazing.

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: He doesn’t have to worry about building muscle or thinking about a certain amount of protein because he’s so anabolic, meaning 5 grams of protein could be all he needs to stimulate his muscle. Whereas we get older, it’s a minimum of around 30 grams to stimulate muscle protein synthesis.

But when we think about building muscle, we require a certain progressive stimulus. And I typically 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. 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. They are more capable and they’ve been doing it their entire life, but just not in a structured program.

JAY SHETTY: Yeah, it’s a mindset shift. Recognize all those moments that you’ve been doing. And kids are heavy. Sometimes kids can be super heavy.

Starting a Resistance Training Program

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: 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 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity a week and two days a week of resistance training. Roughly 74% of people don’t meet that. 50% of people are sedentary, not moving.

So that 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: you don’t have to go to the gym.

Resistance training can include body weight, weights, bands, 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 is older or if someone who’s listening is older, those heavy weights 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.

You know, it’s just like the mind. The body responds to resistance, and if we create enough resistance, then it has to respond.

JAY SHETTY: Talk to me about that, because I think there’s not a full understanding. You just explained the difference between heavy weights, less reps, low weight, higher reps 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 maybe don’t feel that stretched, or you could do high weight, low reps, and you do feel quite stretched. What’s building muscle?

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: 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—

JAY SHETTY: What do you mean by that? What is building mass?

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: That’s exactly where I was going.

JAY SHETTY: Sorry, I’m asking the uneducated question.

Why Building Muscle Mass Matters

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: These are great questions because I think that the way that we look at muscle in general, we’re doing it such a disservice. But why is it important to build mass? And they argue about this in the scientific community. But you know, I trained in geriatrics, which is people over the age of 65, and this is one reason why 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 the more healthy muscle mass you have, the 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 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 a carry-on. You open it up, you stuff it in there, and instead of packing for four days, I don’t know about you, but I’m a very heavy packer. I pack for 14.

JAY SHETTY: That’s fairly light.

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: Yeah, well, I mean, you probably wear the same pair of shoes. Yeah, I bring at least three pairs of shoes. So here’s a suitcase, and I’m stuffing all these clothes in. And then I packed for 14 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 just like that. If you are overeating carbohydrates, you have nowhere else for the carbs or fatty acids to go. It 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 skeletal muscle is so important. It’s the suitcase of your body.

So now we go back to building mass. How do we do it? Now, I 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 break a bone, if you are hospitalized or in a highly catabolic state—we’ve all had the flu, terrible—your body will pull from your body armor, also known as 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: it’s the site for fatty acid oxidation. 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, so stay with me. There is this cycle of weight gain and weight loss. And each time you hit January 1st and you put on weight, and then you 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 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, 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 coin of how to lose it.

But again, focusing on 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 10 to 12, 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, 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 progress this activity.

Building Muscle: Men vs. Women

JAY SHETTY: Got it. Understood. That makes sense. What’s the main difference with men building muscle and women building muscle?

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: What a great question. Now, there’s a lot of myths out there. And again, this is pretty controversial. Men have more muscle mass at 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 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?

JAY SHETTY: I guess, yeah. No, I don’t think so.

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: 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, you know, wearing a leotard and the bandana and eating salad. And we’ve done this for decades.

Women are afraid to get bulky. It’s never going to happen. I’ve been trying for 30 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 body size.

JAY SHETTY: But the process of putting it on—is the process of putting on muscle different for men and women?

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: 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 data is, you know, it’s difficult because we take randomized controlled trials and we take meta-analyses and then we try to put it into clinical practice.

And we have to recognize that people are individual and there’s individual variability based on people.

JAY SHETTY: Yeah, for sure.

Understanding Muscle Fiber Types

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: Muscle is made up of two main fiber types. There’s Type 1 fiber and Type 2 fiber. Type 1 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 1 fiber types. And that primarily will burn fatty acids.

And then there’s the Type 2 fiber type, which I think of 2 and 2 biceps. So it’s the bigger, bulkier fiber that is used for lifting weights. And over time, as we age, the Type 2 fibers for power and strength, they naturally decrease and we’re left with more Type 1 fibers, which again, are thinner, more—think of it as an endurance athlete.

This is why resistance training is so important: to maintain and build those Type 2 fiber types.

Testing Your Strength

JAY SHETTY: If someone wanted to test their strength today, what could they do for them to know whether they’re doing well or struggling?

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: Okay, now there’s the hand grip test.

JAY SHETTY: So tell us about that.

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: So basically, and you can buy one of these on Amazon, it tests your hand grip strength and it will give you a range. If you are, you know, 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 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 push-ups. I say everybody should see how many push-ups you can do and then you train for it.

JAY SHETTY: For a healthy man or healthy woman, how many push-ups should they be able to do?

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: We don’t have a number. 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 10 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, 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.

The Power of Starting Small

JAY SHETTY: 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 like, you’re going from doing nothing for years to 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 cardio. And it’s like, this is so much.

And I remember 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 pushup every night, and then the next day I could do five and the next day I could do 10. And now that my surgery is healed and everything, it’s like I’ll comfortably do 25, 30 pushups, whatever it is, in one round and can do more.

And it’s just so fascinating to me how just—I love that advice of 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 pushup.

The second thing is it builds your confidence. 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 10 push ups on my knees to doing 10 push ups without. Oh, now I can do 30 push ups in one go and I can do four rounds within, you know, a 30 second break of each.

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: Oh, wow.

JAY SHETTY: I feel really good. And I feel like that’s what so many of us, and I’m speaking as 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 pickleball three times a week, have a high protein diet. But like having gone through that, for me it was those little moments of picking one activity that just started to make me feel better. Does that make sense?

Muscle as the Foundation of Mental and Physical Power

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: I love that. And also you’ve reoriented everyone listening or watching to the fact that it was under your conscious control. You can’t control how much muscle you’re going to 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 muscle is this organ of longevity and we’ve so far pushed it to this vanity metric that we’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 you are going to be in your mind.

We use the body to build the mind because sometimes the mind is crazy. I’m going to 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. I mean, listen, Jay, you might be more skilled at thinking your way out of a negative headspace than 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 why I wish I hadn’t done this and it’s just spiraling out of control. The fastest way to stop that and the most effective way to stop that is not thinking my way out of it. But it’s taking 30 seconds to do something so physically hard that you cannot possibly think of anything else.

JAY SHETTY: Yeah.

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: Imagine trying to think of those negative thoughts when you are doing a 10 second max out sprint where you want to die because you just work so hard, you’re not thinking about any of that. Or do you cold plunge at all?

JAY SHETTY: Yeah, I was just there yesterday. I love it. It’s amazing.

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: Could you think of anything else that second?

JAY SHETTY: All I can do is focus on breathing.

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: That’s it.

JAY SHETTY: That’s all I can do is focus on my breath. That’s it.

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: And you’ve now leveraged your body, your muscle, to change your physiology.

JAY SHETTY: Yeah, absolutely.

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: 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 anything negative when you are jumping in that cold pond.

The One Activity Challenge

JAY SHETTY: Yeah, 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 push 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 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?

The Hidden Epidemic: Sarcopenic Obesity

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: 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 GLP-1s. They are a medication called an incretin. It does a number of things. They are more effective for weight loss than nearly anything we’ve ever seen, except for bariatric surgery.

With the use of these GLP-1s, 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, 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 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 sarcopenia. 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 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 triglycerides, higher insulin. All of those things at the core of Alzheimer’s, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and low bone density. 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 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, they talk about lifespan, but it really is about muscle span.

JAY SHETTY: Interesting.

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: And you have less of that.

JAY SHETTY: 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.

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: Totally.

JAY SHETTY: And so outwardly, it looks like you ticked all the boxes and you got it right. And whether you did it through a GLP-1 or whether you did it just through fasting or whether you’re naturally built that way, like, I’m naturally skinnier. Like, that’s—I’m a leaner person. Ever since I lost weight when I was a teenager, I’m a leaner person.

So for me, putting on muscle’s hard, it’s very easy for me to naturally be skinny fat. And it takes a lot of effort to turn that around. But I’m glad that we’re addressing it because I think that’s where it comes back to your mom wearing the headband and the salad.

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: She’s going to kill me when she listens to this, by the way.

JAY SHETTY: 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.

Eating Out of Alignment with Muscle Health

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: Right. And I’m going to take it one step further. So the average American eats around 300 grams of carbohydrates. And I talked a lot about metabolism and that 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. And we eat about 300 grams of carbohydrates a day. According to the healthy eating Index, we are eating 98% more refined grains, processed carbohydrates than we should.

JAY SHETTY: That’s crazy. That’s actually crazy.

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: The average 98%. No, no. So the average person is eating 98% more grains and processed foods than they should.

JAY SHETTY: Wow.

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: 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, the majority of individuals are eating a highly processed food diet.

JAY SHETTY: That was the challenge. I was going to say. Also it’s also processed.

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: It’s highly processed food, highly palatable, highly addictive. But what happens is muscle is 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 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.

JAY SHETTY: Oh, no, tell me now. I want to know that now. Forget my wife. Sorry, Rad. But no, that’s really interesting to me now. Yeah.

Practical Carbohydrate Guidelines for Muscle Health

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: 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 50 grams at max over a two hour period. 50 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 50 grams. So if anyone is listening, think about that. 50 grams. Your one processed doughnut probably has 75 grams of carbohydrates.

Anything above 50 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. Yeah, my first meal of the day. I don’t like to have more than 35 grams of carbs every other meal. You know, there’s no reason to go over 130 grams of the RDA set at 130 grams per meal. Per day.

JAY SHETTY: Per day.

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: Per day. But really.

JAY SHETTY: So you’re splitting, you’re doing 35 grams, then 45 grams, depending on if I’m active.

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: Yeah, I’m a tiny person. If I’m not active, I’m not having a bunch of carbohydrates.

JAY SHETTY: Right.

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: The body requires about 80 grams a day, and we don’t have an essential carbohydrate 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 health because you do not want to derange metabolism. We know what that does over time.

JAY SHETTY: And I’m assuming obviously, what’s the protein intake across those meals then for you?

The Importance of Protein Timing and Quantity

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: Typically, that first meal of the day is around 45 grams of protein. Anywhere from 35 upwards. If you’re a bigger person, 50 grams. And the first meal of the day, I would argue, is the most important. You are coming out of an overnight fast and your body is primed.

Now, I also mentioned earlier that if you are older, anything over the age of 35, that your muscle, and it’s probably a little young, but I like picking 35 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 health and muscle protein synthesis is at that first meal of the day. And that number should be between 35 and 55 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. 100% of people are doing it. It seems like exercise is optional, but 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-1 of the macronutrient. 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 stimulate GLP in a meaningful way is around 30 grams. The dietary protein intake and the GLP-1 release is about 30 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 like augmenting willpower. And that last meal of the day is the next most important before you’re going into an overnight fast.

JAY SHETTY: What would you suggest for that?

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: Around 50 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 to prevent disease. That’s the floor at 0.8 grams per kilogram. 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 some of these early studies back in 2009, 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 metabolism, which is hilarious. I used to sit in the front row and just take notes. I was that person. But anyway, 20 years later, he’s still my mentor.

And we worked on a study where it had the Food Guide Pyramid. Remember that? The Food Guide Pyramid, which really correlated with this rise in obesity. It was a really bad social experiment. And the study was designed isocaloric, so each group had the same calories. They also had the same carbohydrates. 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 those individuals that had double the protein lost more fat mass, maintained more lean tissue than those that had the minimum amount of protein.

JAY SHETTY: Wow.

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: 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.

Protein Intake and Gut Health

JAY SHETTY: Yeah. 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 intake and gut health. So there seems to be some really…

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: This is a really important conversation.

JAY SHETTY: Yeah.

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: It depends on where you are getting your 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, the minimum amount of protein I would recommend for anybody would be around 100 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 is absolutely nothing wrong with it. And a well designed diet can support muscle health with a more plant based diet.

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 look at the back and there is no protein in this amazing drink 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 unsaturated fat, maybe it has trans fats which no one should eat. And then you get all the way down. And the last number is protein. But protein isn’t one thing. It’s made up of 20 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?

For example, if you were to think about an animal based product, it has the most similar amino acid composition, which, these are the building blocks. There are 9 of which are essential, which means we must eat those proteins, we can’t make it. And when it comes to muscle health, 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 30 grams, this 50 grams, because leucine triggers muscle.

But there are a whole bunch of other essential amino acids. For example, threonine, for gut health, it makes mucin. There’s tryptophan, 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 makes it easy. But the reality is we are turning over around 250 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 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, will help protect muscle and will allow your body to help repair and rebuild itself.

Balancing Protein Intake with Exercise

JAY SHETTY: And if you’re taking in that much protein, how much do you need to be exercising in order to burn that into muscle?

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: 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, 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 are sedentary because you are not pulling the leverage 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 1 gram per pound of target body weight for a number of reasons.

Number one, it’s more satiating. It’s the GLP-1 of nature. And number two, it has a higher thermic effect, meaning 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. So your body kicks in these 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, protein’s not just one thing to do various other things like gut health and all these other things 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 hit your protein need. If you’re designing a diet and it’s 0.7 to 1 gram per pound target body weight, very easy. The rest of your calories, you decide as long as you’re getting enough fiber and micronutrients, you get to pick whether it is fat or carbohydrate. So there’s a lot of flexibility in how we design a diet for optimal health.

Habits That Kill Muscle Gain

JAY SHETTY: Which habits kill muscle gain?

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: Being sedentary. If you are sedentary, that will kill any kind of muscle gain.

JAY SHETTY: And what’s the definition of being sedentary?

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: I would argue less than 3,000 steps a day. And it’s not that it just kills your gains. You get something called intermuscular adipose 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 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. 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 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 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 he’s doing pushups before he’s going on stage and he’s listening to loud music and he’s 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 and 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 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, “Doc, I’m depressed. I don’t feel like working out, I don’t feel like eating well, I don’t feel like 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, Doc? I thought we were talking about muscle and protein and how to manage our carbohydrates. Because if consistency matters, 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 you know, trough, it takes him four months to get back in exercise. And you know, you’ve, you know, we all know people that have experienced this, they get super pumped chasing the novelty of January 1, starting a new diet and exercise program and then crash and burn. As opposed to the people that are steady chopping wood and carrying water stay on their plan for years.

JAY SHETTY: How does skipping meals affect muscle gain?

The 24-Hour Protein Strategy

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: Well, we want to think about how you’re eating in a 24-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. 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 in an eight to nine-hour window is where I wouldn’t really go beyond that, meaning I wouldn’t fast for 24 hours. But again, if you are younger, you can get away with it.

So my dad is 74, 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, 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, he’s creating hormesis and he’s creating stress. And I’m like, dad, you’re 74. You shouldn’t go 24 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 don’t need to do a lot of things, but you do have to commit to this area of your life so that you age well.

Walking vs. Resistance Training

JAY SHETTY: Does walking 10,000 steps a day build muscle?

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: This is a very hot topic, by the way. Walking 10,000 steps a day is good for you. And that would maintain our type 1 muscle fibers, type 2 muscle fibers, which is again, when you see people just walking, you don’t necessarily see them build muscle.

The type 2 fibers, they do require resistance training. So will walking build and maintain those type 2 muscle fibers? No. 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.

JAY SHETTY: Do Pilates and yoga count as strength training?

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: 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. There are carbohydrates were, the meals were isocaloric, but the protein is what changed.

In that study, they also added exercise, and the exercise was just this. And this is how easy it is. It was five days a week of 30 minutes of walking and two days a week of yoga. Yoga involves body weight and resistance training, and it involves stretch to the muscle. And those people were able to maintain their lean body mass.

It is not hard, but you do have to be committed and you have to be intentional.

Cardio and Muscle Gains

JAY SHETTY: Is cardio killing people’s muscle gains?

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: 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. Cardiovascular activity is great for mitochondria, great for metabolism, great for maintaining this fatty acid, this fat, fatty acid oxidation, fat burning.

You want muscle 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 so dogmatic where I discourage people from doing cardiovascular activity. But again, if I think about muscle’s 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 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 guys’ 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.

JAY SHETTY: That makes sense. I mean, makes sense.

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: If 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 workbook and not because it’s a dense, heavy book. 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.

So high intensity interval training is great if you are short on time and it can be where you’re working at 85% your VO2 max. So you’re working hard and let’s say you’re working for, you can pick it, 40, 60 seconds and then 60 seconds off, you do 10 minutes of this. And it’s very effective at improving insulin sensitivity, which is important. And also that muscle health.

HIIT Workouts and Women’s Hormones

JAY SHETTY: How do HIIT workouts affect women’s hormones? Is there any correlation between the two?

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: 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 polycystic ovarian syndrome.

JAY SHETTY: Interesting, I didn’t know that.

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: Polycystic ovarian syndrome, and there’s a few types, there’s metabolic and then there’s 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 pod, and I actually learned this for the first time on my podcast, I interviewed one of her name is Dr. Melanie Cree, one of the world leading experts in PCOS. So there are 10 studies on PCOS and GLP-1s 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 know that people will affect fertility? Who’s going to get better? Does their body fat percentage need to be 25 or less or are they at more risk of never being able to conceive if they’re 35 or other or over? And I’m like, what body fat percentage do people get better?

And she said to me, she looked at me, she goes, Gabrielle, it’s not a body fat percentage. It’s the intermuscular adipose 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 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 are over training. If a woman is over training 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.

JAY SHETTY: But that must be like a really extreme.

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: Yeah, that’s not common. 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?

JAY SHETTY: Yeah. Well, we look to my athletes here like people who are.

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: And that’s not the population that we’re looking to.

JAY SHETTY: Yeah.

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: It’s much more important to have 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 healthy his sperm is going to be, the more healthy his sexual function is going to be, is it going to affect him negatively? No.

So again, it’s very careful. I’m very careful as to how we approach it. It’s all about the context.

The Benefits of Building Muscle

JAY SHETTY: Is there any negative apart from that extreme, is there any negative impact of building muscle?

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: I can’t think of one negative. In fact, your survivability 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 is the one 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 tissue through training.

And I’m not talking about the extremes, I’m not talking about hormone use. And again, we are not talking about extremes. If you want to live long and they’re stated to support the stronger you are in midlife, you have a two and a half times greater chances of living to 100. But if you are in the weakest quartile, you have a much higher likelihood of dying.

Creatine and Supplementation

JAY SHETTY: Yeah. When should people consider creatine in their diet?

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: Whenever they want.

JAY SHETTY: Okay. So you don’t have to have a workout level or a.

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: No. And it’s very difficult to eat enough creatine. So creatine comes primarily in red meat. Even if you ate 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 supports between 3 and 5 grams of creatine for women, probably closer to 5 for muscle, and for men, also closer to 5. But for brain health, between 10 and 12 grams of creatine.

JAY SHETTY: Oh, I didn’t, I didn’t know that.

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: And also creatine is one of the OG supplements that’s been studied for decades. Very safe.

JAY SHETTY: That’s great. I didn’t know. I didn’t know its impact on the brain at all. Well, so obviously you’re into supplements.

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: I love supplements, yes. But I’m very particular. Yeah, I have a handful of supplements that I love.

JAY SHETTY: Yeah.

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: Do you want to hear them?

JAY SHETTY: Yeah, please.

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: Creatine is great. The older you are, the more benefit you’ll likely have from those higher amounts of creatine for brain function. I think fish oil is really important. Omega-3 fatty acids. There’s good data to support for brain function and there might even be some extra benefit for women.

Urolithin A is a very interesting compound. And what it is, it’s a postbiotic, so roughly 40% 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 postbiotics within that, and it could be pomegranate, it could be walnut. Your body requires this enzyme and somewhat of a complicated process to get urolithin A.

And urolithin A is a compound that is produced in the gut, or you can take it. Again, only 40% 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 controlled trials and there’s a ton of clinical data. The kind of urolithin A I use is from a company called Timeline because they have randomized controlled trials. They have decades of research that shows this form of urolithin A improves endurance, strength, and mitochondrial health outside of exercise.

So all of those 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.

JAY SHETTY: Yeah.

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: Okay. I have more for you, please. Beta-hydroxybutyrate, a ketone. It can preserve muscle mass, or some data that it can preserve muscle mass, but also incredible for brain function.

And I think as people age and when women are going through perimenopause and they don’t quite know that they’re going through it, their brain function suffers. Ketones are amazing. Vitamin D, magnesium. And I think that I’ve, and a protein shake. I love a protein shake. And that’s it.

JAY SHETTY: 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. Everyone’s always like, do you think it’s a placebo? 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 placebo 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. I sleep well. Whereas there was a point where even though I was sleeping well and working out and 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 that.

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: What’s been the biggest one for you?

JAY SHETTY: Vitamin D was huge for me. Like, huge. The Omega 3s were huge for me. Creatine’s been great for me. Like those three have been game changers.

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: So you know there are vitamin D receptors on skeletal muscle. And when I did my fellowship in nutritional sciences and geriatrics, 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 at the time was that the vitamin D receptors on the muscles, if someone was deficient, it would contribute to falls. I mean, I just thought that was mind blowing.

JAY SHETTY: Yeah. And that’s so scary as you get older. It’s so scary. 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.

What’s the, there’s such a big rise of protein ice creams, protein cereal, protein chips. Do those even count?

The Truth About Protein-Enhanced Processed Foods

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: 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 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.

And then I think about carbohydrates. Right. So you can also get protein in rice and beans. But the reality is it’s a very high caloric load and so we just want to be very careful. But adding extra protein with just extra calories, I think is, now we’re just diluting the message.

JAY SHETTY: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: 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, I’m so glad you said that. It confuses people because now 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 have a recipe for protein ice cream in my book, but it comes from a whey protein shake. It’s amazing.

But I don’t need chips with protein. I don’t need protein in my ketchup. I just, I mean, I’m trying to cut back as it is and that is really important that we have to recognize that we are chasing novelty.

Why We Chase Diet Fads and Novelty

And you know, as I’ve been thinking about this a lot, how did we get so off base? And you bring up a good point. Have you ever heard of the Lucky diet? I think this is like 1920 or 1940. 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.

And then of course we’ve all heard of fen phen. 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?

JAY SHETTY: I’d never heard of that.

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: Two eggs and a glass of wine for every meal.

JAY SHETTY: What?

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: It’s bananas. I mean, the eggs sound alright, but when you pair that with wine. My whole point 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. When I think about the biological drive for protein, humans have a biological drive to eat about 20% of 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, when we are aware of something we can recognize, hey, 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 you asked me simply was protein ice cream. And now I’ve gone on this tangent 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 it’s plant or animal. And this is how we structure it.

JAY SHETTY: Yeah.

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: 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 from doing and having that next right meal.

JAY SHETTY: 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 it and it makes you feel, oh, yeah, great, I’m being healthy.

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: That’s right.

JAY SHETTY: You’re still eating something fried. You’re still adding the extra calories. It’s not a natural source. It’s still highly processed. It’s packaged, but all the rest of it.

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: It’s marketed well.

JAY SHETTY: Yeah, it is.

The Marketing Imbalance: Whole Foods vs. Processed Foods

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: And can I share with you why? Okay, so whole foods are considered a commodity. That is almonds, that’s dairy, that’s beef, that’s chicken. Any whole foods, soy. They are under this, what’s called the USDA, and they have checkoffs. So a certain amount of the 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 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 than, 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, these whole foods, last time I checked, was $750,000 total collectively. Whereas one company like PepsiCo that 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 $2 billion.

And they are allowed, because it’s regulated under a different jurisdiction, can make claims that whole foods can’t.

JAY SHETTY: Wow.

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: And you can imagine for the consumer, what is a consumer to do? The consumer is getting a story that this whole food is bad for you. Eat this processed one instead. 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.

JAY SHETTY: Yeah, I mean, $700,000 versus $2 billion.

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: Come on. And also, you know, milk can’t be disparaging against almond juice. Whereas milk is a highly bioavailable form of calcium, has vitamin D in it, great for kids and bones versus, say, oat milk. It’s just not.

It’s who it affects. It affects our children. The 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.

JAY SHETTY: Yeah.

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: And you and I were chatting before that it’s so much easier to build good habits when you were young.

JAY SHETTY: Yeah, absolutely.

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: Then spend 40 years trying to undo bad habits.

Building Resilient Humans Through Example

JAY SHETTY: Yeah, I loved, I was saying to Gabrielle, she showed me this wonderful video of her husband doing push ups with her son, and he’s 4 years old. And I was just watching that going, that’s it. Kids are going to do what their parents do at that age. They see. He sees his dad working out, he sees his mom working out. That’s what he wants to do.

And there he is doing push ups and showing his muscles in a really cute, adorable way that isn’t like he’s addicted to it or that he’s being forced to do, 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 until my 30s 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 parent can say, you should be healthy, you should do this. But when you see your parents work out and you want to do it with them, there’s something beautiful about it.

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: And it becomes a way of life. Yeah, my kids love to lift. I have my kettlebells and they have their kettlebells. And it’s hilarious. We cold plunge. And my son likes to cold plunge. I mean, he jumps in and out, but he, and you ask him if it’s cold. And our cold plunge is set at 50 degrees. It’s not that cold.

And he jumps in, dunks his body and jumps out and we’re like, is that cold? And my son’s name is Leonidas. He’s like, nope, not cold. I mean, it is. 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 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 it in your body, but this bidirectional relationship of becoming a more capable human because we need more of them.

JAY SHETTY: Yeah, absolutely. I love that. Dr. Gabrielle Lyon. The book’s called the Forever Strong Playbook. Truly, what a masterclass. You gave me so many breakthroughs today and connections that I’d 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 them on their health journey.

And I think you’ve really shown us how building muscle isn’t just about the aesthetics. It’s not just about 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 be answered in one word to one sentence maximum.

The Ethos of Forever Strong

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: Well, then I want to give you something before we end, 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 not a luxury. It’s a responsibility.

JAY SHETTY: Well said. Absolutely. Totally couldn’t agree more. These are your final five.

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: Okay. Okay, I’m ready for it.

The Final Five

JAY SHETTY: Question number one. What is the best health advice you’ve ever heard or received?

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: Train like your life depends on it. Because it does.

JAY SHETTY: Question number two. What is the worst health advice you’ve ever heard or received?

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: Take it easy.

JAY SHETTY: Yeah, comfort doesn’t help.

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: Have another bubble bath when what you really need is hard work.

JAY SHETTY: 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, but I don’t have time. You’ve got time to exercise or you’ve got energy to exercise? And then I was like, oh, wait a minute. As soon as I started exercising, so much more energy. So much so. I fully agree with that.

Great answer. Question number three. What do we do about that stubborn belly fat?

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: 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.

JAY SHETTY: Question number four. Something you used to believe was true about health, but you don’t anymore.

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: 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, that’s great to know.

JAY SHETTY: I’m plant based. It helps a lot and I feel that way. I feel that way. We found the right sources and it makes a difference.

Fifth and final question. We ask this to 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?

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: Be strong. You have to be strong. Yeah.

The Connection Between Muscle and Longevity

JAY SHETTY: So it’s such a to really make that connection for everyone today that muscle is 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 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 see.

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: And it’s under our control.

JAY SHETTY: The book is called the Forever Strong. 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 best selling authority, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon.

Gabrielle, it’s been such a joy having you 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.

DR. GABRIELLE LYON: Thank you so much for having me.

JAY SHETTY: 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, Dr. 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 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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