Simple Steps To Losing Weight & Feeling Better: The Science of Lifting Weights | Mel Robbins Podcast

Order your copy of The Let Them Theory 👉 https://melrob.co/let-them-theory 👈 The #1 Best Selling Book of 2025 🔥 Discover how much power you truly have. It all begins with two simple words. Let Them. — Are you missing the one thing that would make all the difference in your effort to be healthier? I was… and the thing I was missing was weight training. In this episode, you will learn from Dr. Gabrielle Lyon (@DrGabrielleLyon a medical doctor who is fellowship-trained in nutritional sciences and geriatrics. Dr. Lyon is a renowned researcher, pioneer, and founder of the Institute for Muscle Centric Medicine. She is the New York Times best-selling author of “Forever Strong: A New, Science-Based Strategy for Aging Well” and has decades of experience to share with you. In this conversion, Dr. Lyons discusses topics with you, such as: - What is muscle-centric medicine? - How your #muscles are the largest organ in your body and why that matters - What your muscles secrete helps with bone #health, brain health, and nutrient utilization. - The connection between your waistline measurement and brain output - The power of protein and what it does for your muscles - What type of protein counts and what doesn’t - How to get more protein if you are vegan or vegetarian - Protein requirement for better hormone balance - Secret protein recommendations for every meal - Dr. Lyon’s medical opinion about the cause of obesity - How heart disease, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s disease can all begin as diseases of skeletal muscle - Weight training and sleeping better. - How little can you lift to get a result? - How to begin strength training if the gym intimidates you - Why yoga doesn’t make your muscles stronger - What is lysine and why should you be looking for it every day? - What a myokine is and why it is so important for muscle growth, energy, and immune function You can purchase Dr. Lyon’s book, ‘Forever Strong: A New, Science-Based Strategy for Aging Well’, here: https://a.co/d/3zgEDLB Follow Dr. Lyon: - Instagram: instagram.com/drgabriellelyon - Webpage: drgabriellelyon.com Watch the episodes on YouTube: https://bit.ly/45OWCNr My book! ‘The High 5 Habit’, here: https://a.co/d/g1DQ8Pt In this episode: 00:00 Intro 05:32 How is skeletal muscle the largest organ in your body? 07:48 The connection between muscles and longevity. 11:14 The effects of yo-yo dieting on your body. 17:19 Shift your thinking to what you gain instead of what you lose. 19:38 If you’ve been yoyo dieting, listen to this hopeful message. 26:45 What bothers Dr. G about social media health advice. 28:30 5 major health benefits of prioritizing your muscle mass. 33:06 What you’ll feel day to day once you start resistance training. 34:40 How much protein Dr. G recommends in grams. 42:39 Switch out your breakfast for major body composition change. 46:02 Advice for our vegans and vegetarians. 50:55 What is the best type of exercise for your body? 52:32 This is the minimum amount of training for someone just starting out. 55:31 Why women need one high-intensity interval training episode per week. 58:19 What the heck is ‘muscle magic’ and how does it help? 1:04:30 Do this to have a better relationship with your body. — Follow Mel: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/melrobbins/ TikTok: http://tiktok.com/@melrobbins Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/melrobbins LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melrobbins Website: http://melrobbins.com​ — Sign up for Mel’s newsletter: https://melrob.co/sign-up-newsletter A note from Mel to you, twice a week, sharing simple, practical ways to build the life you want. — Subscribe to Mel’s channel here: https://www.youtube.com/melrobbins​?sub_confirmation=1 — Listen to The Mel Robbins Podcast 🎧 New episodes drop every Monday & Thursday! https://melrob.co/spotify https://melrob.co/applepodcasts https://melrob.co/amazonmusic — Looking for Mel’s books on Amazon? Find them here: The Let Them Theory: https://amzn.to/3IQ21Oe The Let Them Theory Audiobook: https://amzn.to/413SObp The High 5 Habit: https://amzn.to/3fMvfPQ The 5 Second Rule: https://amzn.to/4l54fah

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Mel Robbins?

  Hey, it's your friend Mel and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast.

• 0:07Mel Robbins?

  So 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. And today, we're going to go there. What's the topic? Weight loss. We're talking about weight loss. And 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

• 0:52Mel Robbins?

  and having the same impact. And you start to feel like your weight, your waistline, your attitude, everything's out of control. And I want to talk about it 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 mean, 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. And then the next thing I remember, remember the thigh master, where you're supposed to like squeeze it in and out? And 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. And don't even get me started with the number

• 1:37Mel Robbins?

  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.

• 2:14Mel Robbins?

  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 Lyon 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.

• 2:57Mel Robbins?

  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. And 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, and 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. And 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

• 3:40Mel Robbins?

  starting today to leverage all of the things that she's going to teach us. So, 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 Doc G is in the house. All right. Please help me welcome Dr. Gabrielle Lyon to the Mel Robbins Podcast.

• 4:07Speaker 01

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

• 4:10Mel Robbins?

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

• 4:18Speaker 01

  First of all, skeletal muscle makes up 40% of your body weight, period. Which is- Is a huge amount of your tissue.

• 4:25Mel Robbins?

  Wow.

• 4:26Speaker 01

  And 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.

• 4:51Mel Robbins?

  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 skin wings? Or do I have nice, tight, you know, biceps and triceps and all that stuff? So I have thought in such a, I don't know, I'm sort of embarrassed about how little I know because I honestly did not even know that muscles were an organ. And 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, you know, anybody that's intimidated

• 5:33Mel Robbins?

  by the gym, anybody that can't see, you know, any muscle definition, we're not here talking about a beach body 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 like five pound weight here. Like when you do a bicep curl or you walk up a flight of stairs, what is actually happening as I am, you know, curling my muscle here and attempting to strengthen the bicep?

• 6:15Speaker 01

  There's a ton of things that happen and we're going to break it down very simply. Number one, you get stronger, which is the obvious.

• 6:25Speaker 01

  Number two, the non-obvious is that when you contract skeletal muscle, it secretes these myokines.

• 6:31Mel Robbins?

  Yep.

• 6:32Speaker 01

  Myokines are a molecule that are released from exercising skeletal muscle that mediate the communication between skeletal muscle and other organs.

• 6:42Mel Robbins?

  Yep.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  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.

• 7:18Mel Robbins?

  You know, 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?

• 7:40Speaker 01

  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.

• 7:55Mel Robbins?

  Oh, cool.

• 7:56Speaker 01

  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.

• 8:16Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 8:17Speaker 01

  My life changed because serendipitously I landed in the lab of Dr. Donald Lehman. He is one of the grandfathers of protein metabolism. Huh. A lot of the things that we take for granted now, he discovered in his lab 20 some years ago. And 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, postmenopausal 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.

• 9:01Speaker 01

  And 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. And 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.

• 9:46Speaker 01

  I was doing that during the day. And then in the evenings, I was doing obesity medicine research where I was running a weight management clinic and we were also looking at brain imaging. We were looking at the influence of obesity and brain function. And 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 to 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

• 10:32Speaker 01

  and reduce her calories. And by doing that, what ended up happening is we destroyed her muscle. She would go through yo-yo dieting. And 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.

• 11:17Mel Robbins?

  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?

• 11:33Speaker 01

  Right.

• 11:34Mel Robbins?

  It was?

• 11:35Speaker 01

  That they had unhealthy skeletal muscle.

• 11:38Mel Robbins?

  Wow. And 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.

• 11:54Speaker 01

  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. And I know that together we can change the trajectory of aging. We've been trying to combat this, quote, obesity epidemic 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.

• 12:39Mel Robbins?

  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?

• 12:48Speaker 01

  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.

• 13:19Mel Robbins?

  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, 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. G. Stay with us. Welcome back. I am here with Dr. Gabrielle Lyon. She is a medical expert. She has two fellowships in nutritional science and the science of aging.

• 14:01Mel Robbins?

  She has written a book, Forever Strong, and she is unpacking the groundbreaking research and science about leveraging what she calls muscle-centric medical approach to your health. So, Dr. 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

• 14:29Mel Robbins?

  The fitness industry that is very much about surface, at least when it's marketed, and by men.

• 14:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:39Mel Robbins?

  And this is such an imperative aspect of living a healthier life, creating a better life for yourself. Their implication here, they 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 like, I can't do that, that's not for me. And we have been robbed of a very important,

• 15:20Mel Robbins?

  actually, your work says, critical frontline habit that every single human being needs to put front and center in their lives, which is strengthening your muscles.

• 15:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And keeping them healthy. There's no such thing as a healthy sanitary person. There was some earlier research that looked at 18-year-old, quote, "healthy sanitary 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 skeletal muscle, which, by the way, there's really two primary ways to do that. Dietary protein, really nutritional planning, and then exercise training.

• 16:09Mel Robbins?

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

• 16:15Speaker 01

  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. And we're not talking about, again, bodybuilding, slamming protein shakes, none of that is necessary. These are things that are super simple. Incredibly simple.

• 16:42Mel Robbins?

  Well, you're gonna 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 like do, do, do," that you actually said, "I need to put on about five pounds of muscle. That's what I need to do."

• 17:25Mel Robbins?

  I mean, that's such a positive reframe. How did you arrive at that?

• 17:30Speaker 01

  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.

• 18:04Mel Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 18:05Speaker 01

  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.

• 18:14Mel Robbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 18:15Speaker 01

  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 as 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 gonna fall and break a hip, you're not worried about, you know, "I can't eat that." You're not worried about these other things.

• 18:59Speaker 01

  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.

• 19:14Mel Robbins?

  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 put taking care of your muscles and making them stronger, the most important thing you could do at the center of your health?

• 19:56Speaker 01

  Number one, it's never too late. And 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?

• 20:08Mel Robbins?

  That's right. Did you hear Dr. Lyon, damn it? She's selling 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. So if we're going to stop yo-yo dieting, what are we going to do?

• 20:26Speaker 01

  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.

• 20:40Mel Robbins?

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

• 20:45Speaker 01

  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.

• 21:04Mel Robbins?

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

• 21:13Speaker 01

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

• 21:18Mel Robbins?

  I've been working out for this. I did a set just so they'd look really, you know, 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?

• 21:45Speaker 01

  That's right, but before I tell you that, I'm going to tell you why. Just overarching why protein is important.

• 21:49Mel Robbins?

  Yes, yes.

• 21:50Speaker 01

  And then we'll get to the nitty gritty.

• 21:51Mel Robbins?

  I love it.

• 21:52Speaker 01

  You like that?

• 21:53Mel Robbins?

  Yes.

• 21:54Speaker 01

  Sand gritty.

• 21:55Mel Robbins?

  Oh, oh, I didn't even get it, see?

• 21:56Speaker 01

  Come on, some mom jokes coming in here hot. Cannot 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 know, you could probably eat that forever. You are not hungry from eating dietary protein.

• 22:36Speaker 01

  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. And then the need for fat is not huge, right? 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.

• 23:19Speaker 01

  It's very difficult to ultimately gain weight from a diet that is high in protein.

• 23:26Mel Robbins?

  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. So 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?

• 24:00Mel Robbins?

  Um, 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 you know, 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. And you're not saying you have to be vegan or you have to be a meat eater.

• 24:43Mel Robbins?

  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. And like me, you didn't know better. You didn't know the science. Like, I had no idea any of the stuff that you're talking about. And so there is no controversy in my mind

• 25:26Mel Robbins?

  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 button shape for a bikini. You're talking about it based on the science around the way that your brain works and your body works. So, 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.

• 25:55Speaker 01

  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 wherever 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

• 26:40Speaker 01

  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. So that is why I wrote the book, because I wanted to really put something out there to end confusion.

• 27:10Mel Robbins?

  You know, Dr. G, let's take a pause real quick. Let's hear a word from our sponsors. And when we come back, more from the amazing Dr. Gabrielle Lyon. Stay with me.

• 27:27Mel Robbins?

  Welcome back. I'm Mel Robbins and I'm here with Dr. Gabrielle Lyon. 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. So 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?

• 28:10Speaker 01

  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. And 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. And one of the things that happens as individuals age is that efficiency of sensing protein and those amino acids

• 28:55Speaker 01

  decreases. So 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. So 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 twenties.

• 29:40Mel Robbins?

  Wow. What is another health benefit?

• 29:43Speaker 01

  It's incredible.

• 29:44Mel Robbins?

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

• 29:48Speaker 01

  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.

• 30:11Speaker 01

  So 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. So that's number two. Number three, healthy skeletal muscle makes us strong and capable, which I would say arguably that's the obvious. And of course, healthy skeletal muscle, it is the tissue that you leverage through exercise to improve brain health. You know, we talked about those secreting molecules, myokines, they make your bone

• 30:55Speaker 01

  healthier, they make you more efficient and effective at metabolizing foods. It's incredible. They also impact the brain. And this is where some of the confusion comes into this 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?

• 31:24Mel Robbins?

  Not very.

• 31:25Speaker 01

  That's right, because I didn't tell you the other thing. I think we're at number five.

• 31:28Mel Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 31:29Speaker 01

  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?

• 31:41Mel Robbins?

  Your muscles.

• 31:42Speaker 01

  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 cachexia, which is this highly metabolic state which ends up destroying skeletal muscle? You cannot survive without skeletal muscle.

• 31:59Mel Robbins?

  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 forward, we're going to explain this more, and you were to start resistance training.

• 32:18Mel Robbins?

  What are you going to feel day to day? Like, what are the benefits of doing this almost immediately on your day to day life?

• 32:25Speaker 01

  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 see 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 cupcakes or donuts, which you better not be at 10 a.m., but if you were. And then the other aspect of that is you will not be hungry.

• 33:07Speaker 01

  You are using nutritional science to leverage willpower.

• 33:14Mel Robbins?

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

• 33:24Speaker 01

  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.

• 33:37Mel Robbins?

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

• 33:40Speaker 01

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

• 33:44Mel Robbins?

  What?

• 33:45Speaker 01

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

• 33:50Mel Robbins?

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

• 33:53Speaker 01

  So 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.

• 34:14Mel Robbins?

  I feel like I'm going to gain weight. There I said it. There I said it.

• 34:17Speaker 01

  No way.

• 34:17Mel Robbins?

  I said I'm going to gain weight. That sounds like a lot. See, 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 gotta start taking care of my muscle organ. I'm in. I want to think clearer. I want to lose the belly fat. I want to have more energy. God forbid something happened to me. I want to be strong 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

• 34:56Mel Robbins?

  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 weeble wobble on legs, Dr. Gabrielle. And 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.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 35:25Mel Robbins?

  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 gonna speak for me, but everybody listening has no idea that this is what your muscles do.

• 35:40Speaker 01

  Right. And 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?

• 35:48Mel Robbins?

  Okay, lay it on me.

• 35:49Speaker 01

  So let's say you increase your dietary protein to 100 grams of protein a day.

• 35:54Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 35:56Speaker 01

  That would be a total of 400 calories.

• 35:58Mel Robbins?

  Wait, what?

• 35:59Speaker 01

  Now.

• 36:00Mel Robbins?

  What are you eating?

• 36:01Speaker 01

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

• 36:04Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 36:04Speaker 01

  What I didn't tell you is that the thermic effect of food, meaning when you eat dietary protein, it, because of its impact on muscle, increases metabolism.

• 36:17Speaker 01

  So while you're thinking, well, I'm gonna eat 100 grams of protein and I'm gonna get 400 calories. Sometimes, depending on how you dose it, you will use 20% of that energy. Just metabolize that protein. It would be very difficult to gain weight. And 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. So they've done overfeeding protein studies. Do you want to know what happens when people, quote, "overeat protein"?

• 36:50Mel Robbins?

  I do.

• 36:51Speaker 01

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

• 36:57Mel Robbins?

  So 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.

• 37:11Speaker 01

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

• 37:20Mel Robbins?

  You know, 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. And 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 gonna, how am I gonna 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 you can activate the healthy human being

• 38:03Mel Robbins?

  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.

• 38:18Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 38:19Mel Robbins?

  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 like somehow dieting and shrinking.

• 39:02Mel Robbins?

  What you're actually seeing is the muscle health emerging.

• 39:06Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 39:07Mel Robbins?

  I just got it.

• 39:08Speaker 01

  You got it.

• 39:11Mel Robbins?

  That is so cool.

• 39:12Speaker 01

  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.

• 39:27Mel Robbins?

  Why is this so important for women specifically?

• 39:30Speaker 01

  I think women have really gotten a constant narrative about, oh, you've hit menopause, now you're gonna have a menopausal belly, and you're gonna gain about 30 pounds, and it's gonna be, this is how it's gonna 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.

• 40:14Speaker 01

  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 kind of 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 midlife women, and I've seen a lot of success.

• 40:48Mel Robbins?

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

• 40:58Speaker 01

  Here's what they're gonna do. They're gonna make it super easy. Their first meal a day is gonna have between 30 and 50 grams of protein. Easy. I don't care if it's a whey 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 collagen, while great for other things, is not great for muscle health. Okay?

• 41:19Mel Robbins?

  Got it.

• 41:19Speaker 01

  So collagen is a different, separate kind of protein. It is, it has a protein score of what is considered zero. It's still great, but we're not gonna, we're not gonna put it in the category of muscle health.

• 41:30Mel Robbins?

  Thank you for saying that. Because I, 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. And I put in the collagen. I'm thinking that's another 10 to 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 eh. So now I'm learning something. This is really good.

• 42:00Speaker 01

  You're like a pro, homie. You are a pro.

• 42:02Mel Robbins?

  Thank you.

• 42:04Speaker 01

  So all these women in a million different countries, you've got your dial turned up, you're gonna 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 gonna have over 30 grams or so of carbohydrates for that first meal, because we don't wanna kind of skew this insulin and give you this robust response. Again, I'm giving broad generalizations.

• 42:27Mel Robbins?

  Got it, okay.

• 42:28Speaker 01

  But, you know, we're just going to define it and design it so that people can execute right away.

• 42:33Mel Robbins?

  Great.

• 42:33Speaker 01

  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.

• 42:42Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 42:43Speaker 01

  You've done that. You're doing great. Maybe you want some kind of 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. You know, it could be whatever it is you want. I'm not so crazy about that one. I love you for that. Thank you. Yeah, 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. Okay. So you've woke, 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

• 43:26Speaker 01

  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. You know, 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. Oh, I, I thought you said it was smaller. You know, your middle meal is smaller. Okay, got it. So now I'm doing my 30 to 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. Easy. Great. You have now nailed it. Okay. By the way, if people understand the concepts in this book, you will lose body

• 44:11Speaker 01

  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 isocaloric, meaning people both had the same amount of calories. They were both taking in 1,600 calories. And the postmenopausal women, what one group did was change the first meal of the day to have an optimal protein. It was around 40 grams

• 44:54Speaker 01

  of protein. And then the second group had around,

• 45:00Speaker 01

  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. And the body composition effects were negative for the carbohydrate group versus the protein group, they lost weight. And again, calories were the same. So it was simply changing around the macronutrients.

• 45:20Mel Robbins?

  Okay. 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?

• 45:36Speaker 01

  Yes. All dietary protein is not created equal. Ideally, you are eating whole foods. So 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.

• 46:08Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 46:09Speaker 01

  And what defines high-quality protein is we talked about that there are 20 different amino acids.

• 46:16Mel Robbins?

  Got it.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  We're obviously not going into those 20, but there are a handful of essential amino acids.

• 46:22Mel Robbins?

  And are those not present in plant-based proteins?

• 46:24Speaker 01

  They're very low in plant-based proteins. So what would you have to do? You would have to overconsume or increase your consumption of these plant-based proteins to bring up that level of essential amino acids.

• 46:40Mel Robbins?

  Got it.

• 46:41Speaker 01

  And I'm going to give you a very clear example.

• 46:43Mel Robbins?

  Great.

• 46:44Speaker 01

  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.

• 46:58Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 46:59Speaker 01

  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.

• 47:09Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 47:10Speaker 01

  One of those amino acids is leucine. And leucine, what's so fascinating is that it requires a certain amount to trigger skeletal muscle. So essentially, if you're eating under that amount, then you're not actually stimulating this mechanics of skeletal muscle.

• 47:28Mel Robbins?

  Oh.

• 47:29Speaker 01

  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.

• 47:53Mel Robbins?

  Wow.

• 47:54Speaker 01

  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.

• 48:00Mel Robbins?

  Carbicide is a word?

• 48:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, well, it can be now.

• 48:04Mel Robbins?

  Wow, that's, 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?

• 48:19Speaker 01

  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.

• 48:29Mel Robbins?

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

• 48:48Speaker 01

  You are. You are. Mel, I'm going to interrupt you because you're doing great. Thank you. So, 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.

• 49:03Mel Robbins?

  Oh, okay.

• 49:04Speaker 01

  So this is a way to do it.

• 49:06Mel Robbins?

  Great. You're talking about if you're doing whole foods, like you gotta be really...

• 49:10Speaker 01

  If you're doing whole foods, exactly.

• 49:11Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 49:12Speaker 01

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

• 49:20Mel Robbins?

  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 actually lifting weight. And what I would love to know is for those of us that feel bombarded...

• 49:39Mel Robbins?

  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? Do I, are the weights different than the hot mom walk wristband things? Do I need to squeeze the thing? Should I do HIIT? Should I do resistance? Like, it is so overwhelming. So if you were to talk first to people, 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.

• 50:20Speaker 01

  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. So that could be body weight. You could be doing pushups. 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.

• 50:50Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 50:51Speaker 01

  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, you know, 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.

• 51:32Mel Robbins?

  Gotcha. 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's a starting point for somebody where this is like a whole new world?

• 51:48Speaker 01

  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.

• 52:13Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 52:13Speaker 01

  Okay. I don't necessarily think that people need to start with that. But again, I've been training for, you know, a period of years. So for me, deadlift. But for, you know, 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.

• 52:49Mel Robbins?

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

• 53:08Speaker 01

  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 six to eight weeks.

• 53:22Mel Robbins?

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

• 53:27Speaker 01

  You will feel better immediately.

• 53:29Mel Robbins?

  Okay, that's all I need to know.

• 53:31Speaker 01

  You'll 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.

• 53:49Mel Robbins?

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

• 53:57Speaker 01

  That's a great question. There was a period of time where I believed 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, you know, she's not on her phone and she's not kind of distracted, but going to where she really goes to fatigue.

• 54:18Speaker 01

  Then I think that it's not necessarily for women, but here's one other thing that I think women should do.

• 54:24Mel Robbins?

  Tell me.

• 54:25Speaker 01

  One high-intensity interval training session a week.

• 54:29Mel Robbins?

  Okay, what does that actually mean?

• 54:32Speaker 01

  So this could be on, say, an Airdyne 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. And 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. So 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.

• 55:15Speaker 01

  Over a period of time, you are going to be stronger from following that.

• 55:18Mel Robbins?

  I love this, and I love that you're saying 10 to 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, just, you know, you can do resistance training for 20 to 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 like 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?

• 55:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, yes.

• 55:53Mel Robbins?

  Great.

• 55:54Speaker 01

  And 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 kind of just all-out 80 to 90% more effort, that's good. It could literally take you four minutes. It doesn't have to take a ton of time.

• 56:14Mel Robbins?

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

• 56:19Speaker 01

  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 to 20 air squats. 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, easy. You literally, if you had a glucose monitor, you ate lunch,

• 57:03Speaker 01

  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.

• 57:23Mel Robbins?

  Or any exercise of choice, just resist the band, people.

• 57:27Speaker 01

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

• 57:32Mel Robbins?

  I have a question. So, a lot of us have these wrist weight things, you can hear me opening it up. They were 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 like something that I can do that will help, or is that not a good thing?

• 57:51Speaker 01

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

• 57:55Mel Robbins?

  Okay. And when you said-

• 57:57Speaker 01

  I think you could put like, I think we could put a little more-

• 58:00Mel Robbins?

  Probably. Given that you've practiced as a psychiatrist and 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. So, Vicky writes, "Doc G, 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?"

• 58:45Speaker 01

  Well, first of all, don't worry, we've got this, and I'm gonna 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,

• 59:28Speaker 01

  charge hard and burn out, it goes like this, right? And 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. So one of two things are gonna happen. Number one, you're gonna get too early, and you're gonna say, listen, you care about being successful. You are so driven. You have external discipline. So 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,

• 1:00:12Speaker 01

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

• 1:00:29Mel Robbins?

  Dr. G is 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

• 1:01:15Mel Robbins?

  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'll be in a very, 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.

• 1:01:59Mel Robbins?

  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?"

• 1:02:16Speaker 01

  That is a very deep question, and I absolutely can relate because when I was her age, I also struggled. And 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 Maddie has to do is limit time on social media. And I mean really limit it to what is she trying to gain out of it? And 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 back for more.

• 1:03:01Speaker 01

  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 Maddie should do because comparison...

• 1:03:15Speaker 01

  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 Maddie's going to be throughout her entire life. And ultimately, she's going to go through a period where, you know, each decade, we compare less, right? Right now, Maddie, you're at the height of comparison.

• 1:03:52Mel Robbins?

  So true.

• 1:03:53Speaker 01

  And that's 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.

• 1:04:29Mel Robbins?

  Right.

• 1:04:29Speaker 01

  I don't see progress in the gym. Well, what about saying, you are going to do 10 dead hang pull-ups? 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.

• 1:04:46Mel Robbins?

  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. And one thing that helped me a lot, because I struggled, like everybody, with... Profound comparison is if you're going to compare yourself, right?

• 1:05:30Mel Robbins?

  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 three 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,

• 1:06:11Mel Robbins?

  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. And, you know, 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."

• 1:06:55Speaker 01

  Siddhakshi. Mental neutrality. Have a neutral mind. This next meal is not that big of a deal. This one last cheat meal, this, "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 some stuff that we made up. 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.

• 1:07:38Speaker 01

  And ask yourself, are these actions and these behaviors, is this in line with who I want to be?

• 1:07:46Speaker 01

  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 yourself for 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,

• 1:08:29Speaker 01

  of strength, and resilience.

• 1:08:33Mel Robbins?

  Dr. G, 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. And 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.

• 1:09:18Mel Robbins?

  And so, what a frickin' 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. And everybody, the book is Forever Strong, a new science-based strategy for aging well. Dr. G, everybody.

• 1:09:36Speaker 01

  Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

• 1:09:38Mel Robbins?

  I love these conversations, don't you? When it's like pew, pew, pew. 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. Okay, so, 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.

• 1:10:22Mel Robbins?

  So, take what she says, try it out if you feel inspired, and make sure that you're constantly checking with yourself. And I'll be checking in with you about this, too. All right, I gotta go prepare a snack that's about 30 to 50 grams of protein, and now I know the collagen is eh, zero protein. I feel so empowered, and I hope you do, too. And the reason why is because I love you, and 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. And 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.

• 1:11:06Mel Robbins?

  Hey! Oh, my God. Okay, I gotta 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 absur-. 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. 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 curls. I'm really liking that form.

• 1:11:51Mel Robbins?

  So, what is my- myter- mytercrumbia? What, mytercrumbia? I'm sorry, I can't talk. That's like, wait, that's like Abercrombie? Yes. Call them Abercrombie? Yes.

• 1:12:08Mel Robbins?

  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.

• 1:12:42Speaker 01

  Stitcher.