The Truth About Muscle, Protein, and Living Longer | Dr. Gabrielle Lyon

You're not over-fat. You're under-muscled. That single reframe changes how you think about your weight, your energy, and how well you'll age. Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, a fellowship-trained geriatrician and the founder of muscle-centric medicine, has spent her career arguing that we've fixated on the wrong organ. Obesity, insulin resistance, even cognitive decline don't start where you think. They start in your muscle. She breaks down why muscle is your metabolic currency, your body armor, and the closest thing we have to a longevity drug. And why the protein advice most people follow was set during wartime rationing, not built for the life you're trying to live. The hard part isn't the science. It's that the changes stay subtle until one day they're not. This conversation will make you rethink every plate of food and every workout you skip. Forever Strong: A New, Science-Based Strategy for Aging Well Amazon Ebook Audiobook Dr. Lyon on Instagram Dr. Lyon on YouTube DrGabrielleLyon.com In this episode you will: Discover why your muscle, not your body fat, is the real driver of metabolic health and survival Learn the leucine meal threshold and the protein number to hit at your first meal Understand anabolic resistance and why you need more protein, not less, as you age Uncover where the 0.8g/kg protein guideline actually came from and why it falls short Rethink cardio versus resistance training and build a plan that protects muscle for life For more information go to https://lewishowes.com/1940 For more Greatness text PODCAST to +1 (614) 350-3960 Follow The Daily Motivation for essential highlights from The School of Greatness More SOG episodes we think you’ll love: Dr. Mark Hyman Dr. William Li Glucose Goddess TOPICS muscle-centric medicine, skeletal muscle, protein and longevity, leucine threshold, anabolic resistance, sarcopenia, insulin resistance, healthy aging, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon Get More From Lewis! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

• 0:01Lewis Howes?

  I think the stat is more than 75% of Americans are overweight and nearly half of all Americans have health compromised obesity. But I'm curious, with this information, should we be thinking about obesity or should we be thinking more about muscle?

• 0:18Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Yeah, well, what if I told you, I don't think we're over fat. In fact, we are under muscled. And the reality is, as you pointed out, there's been this fixation on fat, adiposity, the diseases related to obesity. Cardiovascular disease, hypertension, insulin resistance, all of these that go along with...

• 0:39Lewis Howes?

  With obesity, right?

• 0:40Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Exactly. Well, what if obesity is actually just a symptom, which in fact it is? And what if I told you that these diseases are actually diseases of skeletal muscle first? And that obesity begins in skeletal muscle. Insulin resistance begins in skeletal muscle first.

• 1:02Lewis Howes?

  What is skeletal muscle?

• 1:03Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Yeah, well, I mean, just even from a general perspective, it's the things that you... It's muscles you have voluntary control over.

• 1:10Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:11Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Right? So it's your biceps, or your triceps, or your quads.

• 1:14Lewis Howes?

  Anything you can flex.

• 1:15Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Yeah.

• 1:16Lewis Howes?

  Is that...

• 1:17Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Yes.

• 1:18Lewis Howes?

  Okay, so the disease starts there?

• 1:20Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Yeah.

• 1:21Lewis Howes?

  Or there's a weakness first there?

• 1:22Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Well, if you think about what skeletal muscle is, skeletal muscle is your metabolic currency.

• 1:28Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:29Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  It's number one for most people makes up 40% of their body weight. For you, maybe 45, for me, maybe 35, you know, you're about a foot taller than me.

• 1:38Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 1:39Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  And when we think about skeletal muscle, we must understand that really, again, as your metabolic sink, what does it do? It is the site for glucose disposal. 80% or more, it is the site of glucose disposal.

• 1:51Lewis Howes?

  Your muscle is the site where glucose...

• 1:53Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Exactly.

• 1:54Lewis Howes?

  ...can be run through.

• 1:55Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Yes. So glucose is a really interesting molecule in the fact that it is toxic, but we need it.

• 2:02Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:03Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  And we have to get rid of it. It can't just hang around.

• 2:05Lewis Howes?

  And if we don't get rid of it, it's stored in the fat.

• 2:07Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Well, if we don't get rid of it, the definition is diabetes.

• 2:10Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 2:11Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  But we got... We have to move glucose out of the bloodstream and into tissue. The main site of that is skeletal muscle. One, if you think about skeletal muscle as a suitcase, if it is overpacked with glucose and fatty acids, everything spills back out into the bloodstream.

• 2:30Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 2:31Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Right? And what we must understand is that healthy muscle will act as the body's sink.

• 2:37Lewis Howes?

  Flush it out.

• 2:38Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Well, yeah, I mean, you gotta.

• 2:40Lewis Howes?

  Or to the clog it, I guess.

• 2:42Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Yeah. So if we are overeating and under exercising, we are having a negative impact on skeletal muscle, which is really the focal point of metabolism.

• 2:52Lewis Howes?

  Got it.

• 2:52Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  From my perspective, from a muscle centric perspective. Well, well, what does that mean practically? Well, that means practically that the healthier your skeletal muscle is, the better your glucose regulation. Everybody cares about blood sugar regulation, right?

• 3:07Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 3:07Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Care about insulin resistance and insulin resistance is, you know, requiring and being able to, you actually need more insulin to be able to put that glucose, which is toxic, back into the, into the cell. Insulin resistance is just, you know, needing more. Well, when we think about skeletal muscle, it's the site for glucose disposal. It's also the site where fatty acids are metabolized, which people don't often think about that. Skeletal muscle is your body armor.

• 3:37Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 3:37Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Should you get injured? Should you have or need or be in a compromised state? Skeletal muscle is, it's what's going to allow for your survivability.

• 3:49Lewis Howes?

  Your recovery too.

• 3:51Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Your recovery.

• 3:51Lewis Howes?

  If you've got more muscle, you should be able to recover faster. Is that what you're saying?

• 3:55Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Yes. Not only that, but your survivability for every injury, for, for nearly every injury, every disease, is going to be based on you will survive better the more muscle mass you have.

• 4:08Lewis Howes?

  Is it important to have more muscle? Or is it the quality of the muscle? Or is it?

• 4:14Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Yeah.

• 4:14Lewis Howes?

  Can you have less muscle and be more efficient with the muscle?

• 4:19Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Yes. So let's break this down.

• 4:21Lewis Howes?

  Pump your muscles with creatine and just swell them up? Or is it, you know, flexibility of the muscle? What is it?

• 4:26Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  All of these points are important. And I love what you said. Is it really about the amount of muscle? Or is it about the health of the muscle? And I would say we know that obese individuals have more muscle because they're required to carry around more weight.

• 4:41Lewis Howes?

  Obese individuals have more muscle.

• 4:43Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  But you mentioned something that was really smart. Healthy muscle.

• 4:49Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Something that happens that we know that affects skeletal muscle is if your skeletal muscle is infiltrated with extra substrates, it turns mar- it's like marbleized, like a marbleized steak. So you can have muscle, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it's healthy, and it's called lipotoxicity.

• 5:08Lewis Howes?

  There's some like fat strains throughout the muscle. You don't want that.

• 5:11Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  No.

• 5:12Lewis Howes?

  You wanna be like the filet.

• 5:13Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  You wanna be like the filet.

• 5:14Lewis Howes?

  Of your muscle.

• 5:15Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  But it becomes very interesting when we think about, is it the amount of muscle? Well, you know, and I've thought about this a lot, and you know, I'm actually working on my first book, and one of the things in clinical practice that I see, and of course every physician will tell you, is that they go in and we look at body fat percentage, or BMI, which arguably, you know, is kind of.

• 5:40Lewis Howes?

  Is that the wrong metric? Is that the wrong metric?

• 5:43Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  It's body mass index, it's the wrong metrics.

• 5:46Lewis Howes?

  What should we be looking at?

• 5:47Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Well, we should be looking at skeletal muscle. And there's ways in which we're beginning to look at it, and that's appendicular lean mass, or skeletal mass index, but they're not perfect, and it's not the standard of care. The standard of care is always focused on the problem, it's what is your percent body fat? In fact, we don't even have great ways in which we measure skeletal muscle that are able to reach everybody. For example, the best way to do it would be an MRI, or CT, or even an ultrasound to look at the tissue quality. That's not feasible.

• 6:23Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 6:24Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  So we've made it very easy to look at fat tissue, and we've become obsessed with fat, which arguably so, there's a reason it's homogeneous, meaning, you know, typically a lot of your fat would look the same as mine, whereas skeletal muscle is different.

• 6:39Lewis Howes?

  So how do we track it then? What's the best way? How do you do it?

• 6:42Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Well, I use a bioimpedance, and that's.

• 6:45Lewis Howes?

  Is that a machine?

• 6:46Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Yep, it's a machine, it's the best thing that we have right now.

• 6:48Lewis Howes?

  Does it scan your body?

• 6:49Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  It does, it does, it scans your body, it's a bioelectrical impedance machine.

• 6:54Lewis Howes?

  It's called bioimpedance?

• 6:55Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Yep, BIA. And it's really interesting, because when you look at, in the literature, there's variations in terms of quality of machine, in terms of what, you know, what those measurements are.

• 7:11Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  But the next phase, if we can shift from fat to muscle centric, we can now start looking at important endpoints.

• 7:19Lewis Howes?

  What I mean by, yeah, important endpoints.

• 7:21Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  So for example, eventually, I hope, we'll be able to look at you and say, hey, Louis, this is how much muscle mass you should be for optimal health. And I'm not just talking about optimal health in the moment. I'm talking about your survivability. So someone will look at you and go, yeah, Louis is healthy. He has enough muscle mass. He's doing great. Well, right now, in your 30s and your 40s, this is the time to build tissue. So the endpoints that we look at during these times of aging are going to be different. So what does that mean specifically?

• 7:55Lewis Howes?

  What do you mean tissue or you mean muscle?

• 7:56Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  I mean muscle.

• 7:57Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 7:57Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 7:58Lewis Howes?

  Building and building it everywhere or focusing on the main muscle groups or?

• 8:03Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  I think that having a way of life that is functional is something that has become optional for us now. One of the reasons that is is because everything is easy. You can take the escalator. We are not required to do physical activity.

• 8:19Lewis Howes?

  You can eat food whenever you want, as much sugar and calories everywhere.

• 8:22Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  But before, we were forced for movement. It was required to survive.

• 8:28Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 8:29Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  So the endpoints and the skeletal muscle that we're looking at now, we don't necessarily know what the optimal skeletal muscle mass should be.

• 8:36Lewis Howes?

  We don't know yet.

• 8:37Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  We don't know.

• 8:38Lewis Howes?

  So just build though and stay flexible, stay healthy.

• 8:41Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Stay flexible.

• 8:42Lewis Howes?

  Reduce inflammation.

• 8:44Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  And understand that it is not about losing fat. That is a losing, no pun intended, game. And if it were correct, we would have solved for it.

• 8:53Lewis Howes?

  We're all, yeah, we're all obese.

• 8:55Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  We haven't solved for it.

• 8:56Lewis Howes?

  So instead of focusing on losing fat, we should be focusing on building muscle.

• 8:59Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  We should be focusing on building muscle. And again, the locomotion aspect of muscle is common in what everybody thinks about.

• 9:08Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 9:09Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  That is only one component of what skeletal muscle is. Skeletal muscle is an endocrine organ.

• 9:16Lewis Howes?

  Endocrine organ.

• 9:17Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  So for example, like the thyroid, it secretes thyroid hormone.

• 9:22Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 9:23Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Muscle is an organ, when you contract it, it secretes myokines.

• 9:27Lewis Howes?

  Myokines.

• 9:28Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Myokines, and these are proteins that go throughout the body and have impact on all tissues.

• 9:35Lewis Howes?

  Not mitochondria.

• 9:36Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  No, I mean, muscle does have mitochondria, which is really important, but think of a myokine as, as you are exercising, you're actually secreting myokines.

• 9:46Lewis Howes?

  Okay, and what is, why is that important?

• 9:47Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Why is it important? I'm so glad you asked. Myo, there's many different kinds of myokines, and I'm gonna give you one example, maybe I'll give you two. Interleukin six is the most well-studied myokine, and this comes from contracting skeletal muscle, and whether it is aerobic or resistance training, the, this amount increases a hundred fold into the bloodstream. And this is work by Penderson, and she, I believe it's in Copenhagen. She is a exercise physiologist, immunologist, physician, kind of incorporating the interface. Interleukin six, when secreted from skeletal muscle, interfaces with the immune system.

• 10:27Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  So macrophages are cells of the immune system that also secrete a cytokine. We've heard of cytokines.

• 10:34Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 10:35Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Interleukin six, when it comes from macrophages, is a cytokine.

• 10:39Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 10:41Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  This molecule, when it's secreted from skeletal muscle, is anti-inflammatory and helps regulate immune response, as well as systemic inflammation.

• 10:55Lewis Howes?

  And so this happens when you're building muscle?

• 10:58Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  When you are building muscle, when you are exercising.

• 11:01Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 11:02Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Let's, let's talk about brain function. Exercising muscle releases BDNF, brain-derived neurotropic factor. Goes to the brain, goes to multiple areas of the body to make impact. Muscle is not just about fitness, it's the organ of longevity.

• 11:19Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 11:20Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  It is responsible for the way in which we age, and the pinnacle, not the peripheral.

• 11:29Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Right now, the way in which the current conversation is, we think about skeletal muscle and we think about exercise as something to look good in a bikini.

• 11:39Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 11:40Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  But that is only one small aspect of skeletal muscle. It is the metabolic regulator. When you think about Alzheimer's disease, type 3 diabetes, the brain.

• 11:49Lewis Howes?

  Did you know muscle was a solution?

• 11:51Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Yes, I did.

• 11:52Lewis Howes?

  How did you know?

• 11:52Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  I happened to be trained by one of the world-leading protein experts. He's mentored me for two decades. His name is Dr. Donald Layman, and he is an academic professor. He's a professor emeritus from University of Illinois.

• 12:04Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 12:05Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  And he actually, some of the nutritional aspects are some things that he discovered. So he has been doing this for, he's gonna be really angry at me, like forty, forty years. Yeah, yeah, forty years, and is really considered one of the finest researchers in this area. So I did my undergraduate with him. I did my undergraduate in human nutrition, vitamin, mineral metabolism, and, you know, worked on a lot of human studies, a lot of rodent studies.

• 12:32Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 12:33Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  And he was focused on muscle. Very early on, I really thought about muscle as the pinnacle, but then you go through medical school, then you do a couple residencies, and then, you know, everything comes full circle.

• 12:45Lewis Howes?

  And come back to nutrition and, yeah, building muscle.

• 12:47Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Right, and then it comes full circle and...

• 12:50Lewis Howes?

  Because at medical school, they didn't teach you any of that, right?

• 12:52Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Right, but I'd already been trained five years in nutritional sciences.

• 12:54Lewis Howes?

  Got you, but they try to teach you everything else about like, just treat the symptom with the medicine.

• 12:59Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Which is a flaw, but important, but is important, because without having really credential training in that way, then I would miss the things that were really dangerous.

• 13:08Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 13:09Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  I really valued that education, but I knew if I really cared about how I was going to move the needle for people, it had to be solution-oriented.

• 13:19Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 13:20Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  So muscle, so at this moment, I had this aha moment and realized that there's, there is a section of medicine, you know, that's obesity medicine.

• 13:30Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Why? Why do we not have muscle-centric medicine as a focal point? If we know it improves all-cause mortality, if we know that we have half a century of research to know that it is going to improve your survivability? The more fit you are, the healthier your muscle.

• 13:48Lewis Howes?

  Longevity, everything, yeah.

• 13:49Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Longevity, exactly.

• 13:51Lewis Howes?

  Probably overall happiness, too.

• 13:53Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Exactly.

• 13:54Lewis Howes?

  Although there are some people who have a lot of muscle who haven't figured out the happiness thing, it doesn't mean it's the cure to happiness.

• 14:00Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  It's not.

• 14:01Lewis Howes?

  But you're releasing, you're releasing hormones, right? From the brain and through the body when you're building muscle.

• 14:08Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  You are, there are, yes, there are influences on your mood that are very important. So muscle really is the focal point, but it has been the most underappreciated organ in the entirety of medicine. And, you know, fitness professionals really have that right. And if we can just take the fitness professional with the medical community and interface and treat muscle like the organ that it is, and really focus nutrition on optimizing for skeletal muscle. And it's very specific, and, you know, it's really interesting, we really have the nutrition aspect wrong.

• 14:50Lewis Howes?

  What are we thinking, what are we doing wrong about it?

• 14:52Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Well, we are, you know, the current RDA for protein is 0.8 grams per kilogram. And people feel that that is the maximum, right? And I'm gonna tell you why. When, well, first of all, I should ask you, do you feel like, when you think about protein, what do you, do you think, how much? You probably think, maybe I should have less.

• 15:14Lewis Howes?

  I never think that I'm having too much protein.

• 15:17Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  You don't?

• 15:17Lewis Howes?

  I, I don't think I have like a protein deficiency or something. But I also don't feel like, you know, I don't really know what I think about protein. I don't think anything, I think I'm just eating a lot of it.

• 15:30Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Do you think, maybe?

• 15:32Lewis Howes?

  Maybe, maybe not, I don't know.

• 15:33Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  We don't know. So, protein, the average American, the, okay, the average male consumes 100 grams of protein.

• 15:41Lewis Howes?

  A day.

• 15:41Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  A day.

• 15:42Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 15:43Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  The average female is about 75 grams.

• 15:46Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 15:48Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  I, I would argue.

• 15:49Lewis Howes?

  Is that a lot, is that a little?

• 15:50Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  We're gonna talk about it.

• 15:51Lewis Howes?

  If you have, if you have too much, does it help you, does it hurt you?

• 15:55Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  So I would say that that is likely the minimum to prevent disease.

• 16:01Lewis Howes?

  The minimum.

• 16:01Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  The minimum. So the RDA, right now, I, I think this is a really important point that we have to clear up. Right now, there's a lot of controversy surrounding protein. Would you agree?

• 16:13Lewis Howes?

  I think controversy around all diets and nutrition in general.

• 16:16Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Yes. You know what? You make a really good point.

• 16:18Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 16:19Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  The concept of food science, let's just take that for one second. When you think about food, you think about emotion, make your grandmother's cookies. You think about religion, food is religious. You think about community.

• 16:36Lewis Howes?

  Family, community.

• 16:37Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  And what else you think about food?

• 16:38Lewis Howes?

  Friends, sports, parties, everything.

• 16:41Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  So you think.

• 16:42Lewis Howes?

  It's a social thing.

• 16:43Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  You think more about food and you don't necessarily think, hmm, it's the biological absorption of nutrients.

• 16:50Lewis Howes?

  Sure. I mean, I do, but I mean, yes, in general, yeah, yes.

• 16:53Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  So there's food and then there's science. And science, we think about as reproducible hypotheses that we can provide and generate a body of evidence. So when you combine the two, it's almost, so food science is almost like the ultimate oxymoron. And there is so much controversy surrounding food nutrition. And part of it is, you know, and when we think about science, I don't think people argue about physics the way they argue about nutrition, do you? But it's a hard science.

• 17:27Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 17:28Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  People don't argue about math or, you know.

• 17:32Lewis Howes?

  Well, I guess because the science is evolving and changing with food, it seems like over the years, right?

• 17:36Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  True.

• 17:37Lewis Howes?

  There's new discoveries, new findings.

• 17:38Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  But are people arguing about biochemistry in general?

• 17:43Lewis Howes?

  I guess not.

• 17:43Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  No.

• 17:44Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 17:45Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  But.

• 17:45Lewis Howes?

  Is it because there's more of an emotional connection?

• 17:47Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Exactly. So it creates bias. People are unaware of their own biases around nutrition, including the food scientists.

• 17:57Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 17:58Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  It is no, think about it, if it was a non-emotional aspect.

• 18:02Lewis Howes?

  People want to be arguing.

• 18:03Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  I mean, why would we argue? It would be a unifying kind of a thing, like, hey, there's traffic on the 405. What is the solution for that? But food science is not that. And you know what? This dates back to, this is decades and decades and centuries old. Because it is emotional and emotion, one, nearly 100% of the time skews the science. You know, I, I take care of patients in clinic and um a lot of them come to me and are like, this is so confusing. This whole protein aspect and right now we're hearing that red meat is bad for you and we should reduce our protein intake. And I would say nothing could be further from the truth.

• 18:48Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  And when you look back at the history, where did this come from? I mean, you can go back to World War II. And World War II, when we, when I wasn't around then, neither were you, but World War II, when rationing was put into place. They, well, number one, determined what is the amount of protein that we need to keep these soldiers alive?

• 19:08Lewis Howes?

  Just alive.

• 19:09Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Just, well, alive and healthy.

• 19:11Lewis Howes?

  Functional, functional, yeah.

• 19:11Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Functional, right? So there's, they had to figure out a way to, to feed over a million people. How are we gonna do this? So they, you know, the scientists got together and they looked at nitrogen balance studies. They're like, well, what's nitrogen balance? Okay, I'll get there. Well, what they did was, you know, we have to understand nutrition science, like you pointed out, is new. It's ever evolving. It was new then. 1940s, that's only 80 some years, like, that's not that long ago. And in the 1940s, when they, they didn't, they were just discovering that there were different kinds of amino acids. At that time, they really just thought about protein and they looked at these nitrogen balance studies. Nitrogen balance studies, nitrogen is, is an essential

• 19:55Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  component to a human body and typically we get it from dietary protein. And you, it's a very crude measurement and it was extrapolated from and taken from animal husbandry. Which is, we, they were trying to figure out, how do we keep and feed these animals the cheapest way possible? Which meant high amount of carbohydrates and is low amount of protein as possible to allow them to still grow. They then brought the way in which they were doing that over to humans and typically young men, 18-year-old to 25-year-old men and say, okay, well, how much protein do you need to just survive? And this is nitrogen balance.

• 20:40Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  This is where, you know, in part, they started to understand that the amount of protein was maybe 0.8 grams per kilogram. Which, if you look at the literature in the 1970s and beyond, they estimated that they really missed the mark. That it was probably at least 20% higher. But they didn't understand the ways to look at it, right? Nutrition sciences knew. Yet, 0.8 grams per kilogram, as we fast forward, during that time of rationing, they were feeding... And by the way, the average male, guess how much the average male weighed? Your mind is gonna be blown.

• 21:17Lewis Howes?

  In 1940, in the 40s?

• 21:19Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Yeah, yes.

• 21:20Lewis Howes?

  Average male in America?

• 21:24Lewis Howes?

  170 pounds?

• 21:25Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  143 pounds.

• 21:27Lewis Howes?

  Was the average?

• 21:28Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Yes. What about the average female?

• 21:30Lewis Howes?

  Must have been like 90 then, I don't know.

• 21:34Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  121 pounds.

• 21:35Lewis Howes?

  Okay, really?

• 21:36Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Really small people.

• 21:38Lewis Howes?

  121 pounds, the average female. Okay, what's the average female now?

• 21:41Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Great question.

• 21:42Lewis Howes?

  We don't know.

• 21:42Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  We don't know.

• 21:43Lewis Howes?

  We don't know.

• 21:43Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Probably, yeah, who knows? But...

• 21:46Lewis Howes?

  100 and... What was the men?

• 21:48Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  143 pounds.

• 21:49Lewis Howes?

  That was the average size?

• 21:50Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  That was the average size. So they were feeding...

• 21:53Lewis Howes?

  That's tiny.

• 21:53Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  It is tiny.

• 21:57Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  So we went through a period of rationing, 1940s. They were physically, they were moving more. Processed food wasn't totally happening. People were rationed on 3,000 calories a day. That was considered, people were hungry. 3,000 calories a day.

• 22:16Lewis Howes?

  They were hungry at 3,000?

• 22:17Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Yeah, it was the rationing books. The...

• 22:21Lewis Howes?

  Is that what they got, 3,000 calorie diet now?

• 22:23Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Who knows? But if you go back and you look at some of these, I don't know about the new three, whatever this diet is, but looking back, you know, as I'm writing my book, looking back at the history of why we are doing what we're doing, it becomes really important to see where we're repeating. So, they were giving soldiers 1 pound of beef? Or 1 pound of meat, a day? At least. And they were rationed and sending the beef off to the soldiers. People to protect the world, right? It's World War II.

• 23:00Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  There is some evidence, which I was reading, like these older 1940 papers, that they were giving soldiers, as they were accounting these medical papers, what they were giving soldiers. They were giving an injured soldier 250 grams of protein a day. And they were reporting that their survivability and their ability to heal was increasing by 50%.

• 23:21Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 23:22Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Okay? In the 1940s, so they, there was some acknowledgement that dietary protein was so important and that it was good for you and it was valuable. In fact, it was so valuable that people were encouraged to dig victory gardens and go more vegetarian and go more plant-based to then send all the nutrient-rich foods over to the soldiers.

• 23:43Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 23:44Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  I thought it was really interesting as well. Then, fast forward to now.

• 23:50Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Fast forward to now, 80 years later, what I am hearing as someone who is seeing patients and witnessing from a perspective that isn't, you know, bought into either way, right? It's not emotional.

• 24:07Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  I'm not against eating animals and I am not really, you know, like, there's not a moral kind of a confusion for me in that way, because I know how important it is for human health. It's almost fast forward now, according to the Anheuser data, we are 70% plant-based right now. And we are being encouraged by the mass media to consume less animal products.

• 24:29Lewis Howes?

  Why are some of the longevity experts who talk about mitochondria and telemeters and all these other things?

• 24:35Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 24:36Lewis Howes?

  That they, they're, I guess they're saying that the studies are showing the more plants you have, the longer your telemeters. And if you're eating more meat, maybe it doesn't work as much.

• 24:46Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Let's talk, I love, I'm so glad you-

• 24:48Lewis Howes?

  Share with me the studies, yeah.

• 24:49Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Yeah, well, first of all,

• 24:53Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  let's define longevity.

• 24:54Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 24:56Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Longevity is defined as what?

• 24:59Lewis Howes?

  Living as long as you can, I guess.

• 25:01Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Right.

• 25:01Lewis Howes?

  Living longer than expected.

• 25:03Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Okay, so that.

• 25:05Lewis Howes?

  And living healthier.

• 25:06Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Okay, so but now that's not longevity.

• 25:08Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 25:08Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  So now that is a health span issue and not longevity. And I think we have to be very careful about how we talk about longevity. Are we talking about living six hours longer? Are we talking about living six weeks longer? What does that mean? And I will tell you, as a trained geriatrician from Wash U, it is about the quality of your life.

• 25:28Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, you don't want to suffer for 10 years.

• 25:30Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Nothing is going to determine more quality than muscle. Because you must be able to do your activities of daily living. You must be able to be mobile. You must be able to do the things that were once, that you once had the capacity for your own autonomy.

• 25:51Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 25:52Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Now, and let's take a look at the longevity expert, or whatever, you know, we mean by that. The one thing that we know and have control over, right? Directly is what we eat and how we move. Right? In order to protect muscle, you need high-quality protein. This is in the literature.

• 26:18Lewis Howes?

  You can't build muscle without protein?

• 26:20Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  No, you cannot. It would be very difficult.

• 26:22Lewis Howes?

  Just carbs or?

• 26:23Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  It would be very difficult. There is an essential, a need. So protein is an essential nutrient. There are 20 amino acids, and of those 20, you, there are nine essential, and you must get those nine essentials. Now, I, I will say that of those nine essentials, you require, and, and I'm so glad you brought this up, because in those early nitrogen studies and the RDA now, it is not taken into account that we have individual amino acid needs. It is looking at protein as a whole. That is incorrect. I just mentioned that there are 20 different amino acids.

• 27:07Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  The information on nutrition as it relates to protein is archaic.

• 27:13Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 27:14Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  When you look at the back of a label, you will see carbohydrates and carbohydrates will be broken down into sugars and fibers and all kinds of things. You look at the back of a nutrient label and you'll see fat and fat will be broken down into, you know, whether it's, you know, trans fats or saturated fats or whatever. You look at the label and it says protein.

• 27:36Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  But not all protein is equal.

• 27:38Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 27:39Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Let's, let me give you an example.

• 27:40Lewis Howes?

  What's the highest grade of protein and what's the lowest one?

• 27:43Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  So eggs would be considered one of the highest forms of protein. Eggs, beef, chicken, fish, whey protein is the gold standard.

• 27:52Lewis Howes?

  Whey is?

• 27:53Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Yes.

• 27:54Lewis Howes?

  Not plant protein?

• 27:55Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  No.

• 27:56Lewis Howes?

  Why?

• 27:56Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  And, and listen, so when we, plants are notoriously low in the essential amino acids.

• 28:02Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 28:03Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  They are. It, you can eat a diet that is plant-based, but you will require 35% more calories. So for example, let's say you wanted to get your protein from quinoa. You would need six cups of quinoa to equal the amino acid profile of one small chicken breast.

• 28:26Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  That is a metabolic disaster.

• 28:27Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, why?

• 28:29Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Because in order to stimulate muscle, you need the essential amino acids. Well, you need all the amino acids, but in order to stimulate muscle, you need one of the branched-chain amino acids. Now branched-chain amino acids, they're leucine, isoleucine and valine. Leucine is necessary in a meal threshold amount to stimulate muscle. And you're like, well, the listener's like, well, what does that mean? That means you need to get thirty grams at a minimum as you age to stimulate muscle tissue.

• 29:06Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 29:07Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Because you need two and a half grams of leucine. And this, you know, I early earlier talked about Don Layman. These were some of his discoveries.

• 29:14Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 29:15Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  This is his contribution to science is that we have an amino acid meal need of leucine, which eludes people. Let's say you are gonna have fifteen grams of a protein for breakfast, fifteen grams of a protein for lunch, and then fifteen grams of a protein for dinner, and the majority of the rest of your meal was carbs and fat. You will not stimulate muscle.

• 29:41Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, so you need more protein to stimulate muscle?

• 29:43Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  It either happens or it doesn't. From a nutritional perspective, you require a certain bolus amount at one time to reach the bloodstream. That is two and a half grams of leucine to begin this as you age. If you are eating sub threshold, you will not stimulate the tissue.

• 30:01Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 30:02Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Nutritionally.

• 30:03Lewis Howes?

  What do you say to the people that these like athletes that were extreme meat eaters?

• 30:10Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Yeah.

• 30:11Lewis Howes?

  Then went plant based?

• 30:12Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Yeah.

• 30:12Lewis Howes?

  And they talk about how they're they're stronger, they recover better, they sleep better. What do you say to some of those cases that are out there of these athletes?

• 30:21Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  I would say everyone is individual.

• 30:23Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 30:24Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  And if they feel better, that's great. I would say that the science doesn't support that in that way.

• 30:31Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 30:31Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  From a muscle recovery, from a body mass, body size, skeletal muscle size. But again, everyone is individual.

• 30:39Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 30:40Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  And I want to be very clear that I am not anti-plant.

• 30:43Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 30:44Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  I'm not. And I am not in at one extreme or the other. I do believe in eating high quality protein. I know its importance. And I think what's happened now, and part of the reason I was so excited to come and talk to you is that

• 31:00Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  What we need in order to have a healthy world is we need transparent conversations.

• 31:07Lewis Howes?

  So you're not extreme either way. You're saying where's the science?

• 31:11Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  I am saying.

• 31:12Lewis Howes?

  How do we lean into the science?

• 31:13Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  I'm saying what is the truth?

• 31:15Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 31:16Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  What is supported by the science? What do we know to be true? And then we can make decisions.

• 31:23Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 31:23Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Whether an individual is plant-based or an individual is eating a high protein diet, which you know I believe in because I've seen it for decades. And also it's in the literature, high-quality evidence in the literature. I believe that to be true.

• 31:37Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 31:37Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  And what's happened now is.

• 31:40Lewis Howes?

  You're saying it's also hard to be a high-protein diet, plant-based.

• 31:43Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  It is difficult and it can be done, but it needs to have very careful, you know, nutrient complex, you know, again, it's not just about a macronutrient. Food is a matrix. You know, for example, in beef, there's creatine, there's components that you won't get from plants in beef. You cannot get it otherwise. There's no creatine in plant products.

• 32:08Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 32:08Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  No, it comes from meat, right? The bioavailability of iron is much higher in red meat. B vitamins, zinc, these are things that are what is offered.

• 32:21Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 32:21Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Taurine, these.

• 32:23Lewis Howes?

  They're not in plants.

• 32:24Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  They're just not in plants. So we have to be able to have intelligent conversations. And right now, what we hear is a lot of narrative. And a lot of, don't eat meat because it's bad for the planet. Well, the reality is if we, in the US, if we care about global warming and we really look at what are the biggest drivers, we're looking at 80% is industry, electricity and transportation. This is, makes up a huge chunk, 80-some percent or more. Agriculture in the US makes up what? Maybe nine percent.

• 33:01Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 33:02Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Wait, maybe nine percent. Of that nine percent, how much you think is, is, you know, related to cattle? Or animal, but maybe it's three percent?

• 33:12Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 33:13Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  So what are we talking about? Those, so the statistics is just not, i- it is a lot of discussion. When the reality is if you look at this book, right? So there's a book here and you take one sheet of paper and that's the entire world. Okay. And then you fold it down to a postcard, like, let's say it's half that. So the entire world, the landmass is one postcard. You take that one postcard and you give me your business card, Lewis. And you say, okay, here's my business card. Now we tear it two thirds and one third. Okay, so we're now down to, we're talking about landmass. We're now down to one business card and two thirds of that business card is called marginal land. Which means we can't grow anything on it.

• 33:55Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 33:56Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  It can only be used for cattle.

• 33:57Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 33:58Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  One third of that land can be farmed.

• 34:02Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  So I bring the point up to this saying, are we looking at the right things? If you care about the environment and you live in Minnesota, then you shouldn't eat avocados. And why? Because of transportation.

• 34:16Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 34:16Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  So those are ways that individuals can make a big impact rather than reducing high quality nutrients. Because ultimately, you know, you live in a beautiful area. You're on a coast and, you know, I'm on the other coast. But it's the people in the middle that we affect the most.

• 34:30Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 34:31Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  So if we tell people to go more plant-based, which they're already eating seventy percent plants. This is according to the NHANES data. Right now, people are eating seventy percent plant-based. Who is it going to affect?

• 34:43Lewis Howes?

  Well, I guess if you're focusing on your vision, which is to help people live a healthier, longer life. You need more quality protein.

• 34:50Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  You do.

• 34:51Lewis Howes?

  Based on the evidence.

• 34:52Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Yes.

• 34:52Lewis Howes?

  And so it's not about having less or more plants. It's about having more quality protein to build skeletal muscle.

• 35:00Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Yes.

• 35:00Lewis Howes?

  If you want to eat more plants, eat as much plants as you want.

• 35:03Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Go right ahead.

• 35:04Lewis Howes?

  But it's also makes you get the quality protein is what I'm hearing you say. Because that is one of the main factors to healthy longevity.

• 35:13Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  And healthy aging.

• 35:15Lewis Howes?

  And healthy aging.

• 35:15Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  And we need more protein as we age, not less. We actually require more protein.

• 35:21Lewis Howes?

  To build a muscle, to stay healthy.

• 35:23Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  To maintain it, to just keep it. So basically, if you don't stimulate that tissue. Right?

• 35:29Lewis Howes?

  Lose it.

• 35:29Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  You're going to lose it.

• 35:31Lewis Howes?

  And it's harder to gain it back when you're 50, 60, 70, 80.

• 35:33Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  I mean, I wouldn't know, but yes, yeah, yes. If we take the narrative that we are looking at right now. Eat less protein, eat less red meat, do all these things. While you are young, you have a much greater margin of error.

• 35:51Lewis Howes?

  What about the inflammation or disease conversation?

• 35:55Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Yes.

• 35:55Lewis Howes?

  Around, I guess, way with milk, you know, milk products.

• 36:00Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Right.

• 36:01Lewis Howes?

  And dairy. I grew up drinking about, I don't know, eight glasses of milk a day.

• 36:05Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Okay.

• 36:05Lewis Howes?

  Right up in Ohio. I think it's the reason I'm a foot taller than everyone in my family. Because of the hormones probably in the milk and the beef and everything I was eating. But I also had a runny nose every day.

• 36:14Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  So this is something separate?

• 36:16Lewis Howes?

  And it was like inflammation from the milk and from these types of proteins potentially. Or maybe there's a number of causes, but I got rid of the milk and I got rid of the.

• 36:25Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  So that's just one source of protein?

• 36:27Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 36:27Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Right? And milk, we know is a, is really, I mean, I personally don't drink milk, but dairy is really important. Dairy is very bioavailable for the bones. A lot of people don't tolerate it, but to.

• 36:39Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 36:40Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  You know, I, I'm not sure that we can equate that with inflammation.

• 36:43Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 36:43Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  So you can equate that with mucus production, but perhaps not inflammation.

• 36:48Lewis Howes?

  Does red, any red meats cause inflammation?

• 36:50Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  There is no quality evidence to support that.

• 36:54Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 36:54Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  And I will tell.

• 36:55Lewis Howes?

  There's suggestion, but not.

• 36:56Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  But, but.

• 36:57Lewis Howes?

  Evidence.

• 36:57Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  So you bring up a really good point.

• 36:59Lewis Howes?

  Or clogging arteries or these types of conversations.

• 37:01Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Absolutely not. When calories are corrected, absolutely not.

• 37:05Lewis Howes?

  What do you mean calories corrected?

• 37:06Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  The biggest driver of inflammation and obesity is excess calories.

• 37:11Lewis Howes?

  Too many calories.

• 37:12Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  It's, yeah, it's, it's not protein and it's not red meat.

• 37:16Lewis Howes?

  It's probably sugary drinks and just sugar in general.

• 37:19Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  It is excess. It, you know, it is not inherently bad if you have, if you have healthy muscle. It's not inherently bad.

• 37:26Lewis Howes?

  Because your muscle will be able to process it and just flush it out.

• 37:28Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  So let's, let's, let's go back to red meat being bad for you. There was a series of papers in the Annals of Internal Medicine by a head researcher named Bradley Johnston. And this, he looked at a tremendously large number of people. And he questioned, well, should be, should we reduce the amount of red meat that we're eating? And right now, I think on average, people are eating one point. Six to 1.8 ounces a day. Do you think that's a lot?

• 38:01Lewis Howes?

  It's not that much.

• 38:01Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  That's like, that's like this much.

• 38:03Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 38:04Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Okay, so to say that we need, you know, so are, is this data true? Is, do we really need and believe these negative influences that we're hearing? So he went through the literature and he, he did something and put it through something called the GRADE system. The GRADE system is the global gold standard for evaluating evidence. Doesn't get better than that. And do you know what he found? That there was no reason for us to be cutting back our red meat consumption.

• 38:38Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 38:39Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  And it created so many issues.

• 38:42Lewis Howes?

  When was this?

• 38:43Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  This was 2019.

• 38:45Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 38:45Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Pretty recent. They went after him, people went after him. They tried to not get it published.

• 38:51Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 38:51Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  They were, people were so up in arms, again, food science.

• 38:56Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 38:56Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  We should just call it, we should replace this with something else.

• 38:59Lewis Howes?

  Emotion.

• 38:59Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Exactly.

• 39:00Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 39:01Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  And they were so up in arms. And we have yet to see one randomized controlled trial with humans to support red meat being bad. It doesn't exist. There's a lot of epidemiology data talking about, you know, this is where all that information comes from. But epidemiology is not high quality data. And we have many randomized controlled trials talking about the importance of protein, whether it's from Don Lehman's lab, or Stu Phillips, or Doug Patton Jones, or Kevin Tipton. These guys are like, people that have been looking at it, or Heather Leidy, these,

• 39:41Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  there are some really good researchers out there that are putting together information for the, that, you know, that's available.

• 39:48Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 39:48Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  And again, it's not to say that plant is bad, or animal is bad. The point is, we must have transparent conversations.

• 39:57Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 39:58Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  So if the evidence is in fact that this is bad, then we should, that, that, that red meat is bad, or that protein is bad, we should be able to prove that.

• 40:12Lewis Howes?

  And I guess the only thing I go back to is the the Blue Zone, I guess, research of mostly plant-based vegans who are living.

• 40:21Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Is it though? I was, I was pretty sure that they eat.

• 40:23Lewis Howes?

  Some fish or something or?

• 40:24Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  I'm pretty sure that they eat protein. And I'm pretty sure that.

• 40:29Lewis Howes?

  For meat or?

• 40:30Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Yeah.

• 40:30Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 40:30Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  I mean, I haven't looked at some, at all of it, but.

• 40:34Lewis Howes?

  I guess that would be my only thought is like, I don't know 100% of it, but I know it's mostly vegetarian is what I was, what I thought, but.

• 40:41Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Yes, and, but the, the question then becomes is how can you contribute that to one thing?

• 40:47Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 40:49Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Right? How can we say that? But also we have randomized controlled trials to support the evidence in the opposite. That we know if you are aging, that you need 1.6 grams per kilogram. So that is replicatable. That is in the literature. Do you know that if someone is 65 and up and falls? She has a 50% chance of never walking again?

• 41:12Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 41:13Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  If you put her on a.

• 41:13Lewis Howes?

  Is it because of muscle or is it because of?

• 41:15Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Yes, muscle.

• 41:17Lewis Howes?

  And because if you have weak muscle, then your, is your bones gonna be a lot weaker, I'm assuming? Is it gonna be harder to recover?

• 41:21Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Yes, but you're definitely not going to recover the way that you should. Again, we have to talk, we have to go back to Blue Zones. Blue Zones is epidemiology data. So we should be able to take that information and put it through the rigors of science.

• 41:35Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 41:36Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  And the rigors of science support a higher protein diet for, for aging.

• 41:40Lewis Howes?

  If someone is above 60 or 70 right now and they're listening to this and they've been, maybe they haven't been well with their diet or they're working out at all. They're just kind of like living and a little obese and have some minor health challenges. What can they be doing right now for over 60? To try to live a better, healthier, longer life?

• 42:03Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Well, let's pretend they're not over 60, but we'll, we'll go there. Let's pretend they're 35 or 40 and they're slightly obese and they have a couple number of health problems and, you know, they're all in the, you know, cause we're all in this together. What are we gonna tell this person? Here's what I'm gonna tell them. I'm gonna say, okay, the first thing that we need to focus on is metabolic correction. And we're gonna do that by optimizing your protein. So you are a, you know, what are they? They're, they're probably not eating a ton and, or maybe they're eating a lot of carbohydrates. I'm gonna say, well, the first thing we're gonna do is I'm gonna say, we are going to ideally, and again, they might not do this, one gram per pound ideal body weight,

• 42:46Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  which if this person is 150 pounds, it would be 150 grams of protein. That is high, right? That is on the higher end. So this guy might be like, I don't wanna do that. I'm gonna say, you know what? That's fine. Here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna focus on metabolic correction. So I am gonna start you at three meals a day. I don't care when your first meal is, but that first meal after you are coming out of a fast is the most important. And you are gonna optimize that for dietary protein.

• 43:15Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, interesting.

• 43:16Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  And the reason it's the most important is because they are catabolic, they are fasting. At that moment, if we get that threshold, that nutrition, that protein threshold right, you will stimulate their muscle.

• 43:29Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, so what should be eating the first meal of that?

• 43:31Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  So that could be, I would want them to hit 40 to 50 grams of protein.

• 43:35Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 43:36Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  And that could be a whey protein shake, which you could probably get a little bit less. It could be a beef patty. It could be eggs. It could be chicken and eggs. It could be whatever.

• 43:48Lewis Howes?

  Okay, 40, 50 grams of protein, your first meal.

• 43:50Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Just get that right. Just if any of the, if the listener would do that for me.

• 43:54Lewis Howes?

  No matter how bigger you're, how much you weigh?

• 43:56Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  How big or, that's right.

• 43:58Lewis Howes?

  40 to 50 grams. If you're 150 pounds or 250 pounds, just try to get in that range.

• 44:02Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Yeah, I mean, listen, could it be between 30 and 50? Yes.

• 44:05Lewis Howes?

  Okay, gotcha.

• 44:06Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Between 30 and 50 would be great. If you are older, you know, if you are that 60 plus, you know, the muscle goes through a normal physiological change called anabolic resistance. You want to push their protein a little bit higher. If you are younger, like you, you could probably get away with 30 to 40 grams of protein.

• 44:26Lewis Howes?

  Okay, do you wanna?

• 44:29Lewis Howes?

  Does it matter if you work out first in the morning?

• 44:31Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  It doesn't matter. I don't care.

• 44:32Lewis Howes?

  Or fast for five hours in the morning?

• 44:33Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  I don't care.

• 44:34Lewis Howes?

  It doesn't matter. Just your first meal when you eat, when you, after you wake up?

• 44:36Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Yeah.

• 44:37Lewis Howes?

  Whether it's right away or 10 hours later?

• 44:39Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Right. That first meal should be optimized for protein.

• 44:42Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 44:42Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  And I would argue that that, if that meal is not around training, our target carbohydrate load, and if they're not training, would be 40 grams or less, that first meal. So you keep the carbohydrates lower, that first meal. The reason is, is it ends up being about a one-to-one ratio of, you know,

• 45:01Lewis Howes?

  Carbs the same or less?

• 45:02Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Um, it could be, it would be less, right? Because anything really above the 50 grams of carbohydrates creates a more robust insulin response.

• 45:11Lewis Howes?

  A spike, yeah.

• 45:11Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  And you don't want that for your first meal. You want that first meal to be very smooth and stable.

• 45:16Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 45:16Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  And not only that, and Heather Leidy, who I had mentioned earlier, has done some very interesting FMRI research that, you know, one of the things that protein does is it's very satiating. And I always tell patients not to worry about their strengths, but to plan for their weaknesses.

• 45:34Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 45:35Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  And when you augment willpower by leveraging dietary protein, you plan for it.

• 45:41Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 45:41Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  You're much less likely to overeat.

• 45:43Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 45:45Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  So you nail that 40 grams of protein first, maybe a little bit lower carbs and some, and some fat. Then that next meal is maybe four or five hours later, right? So you stimulate muscle. You now have robustly stimulated muscle. That next meal will be another, again, depending on what you need, I like to target around 30 grams at a minimum.

• 46:06Lewis Howes?

  Protein?

• 46:07Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Yeah.

• 46:09Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 46:10Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  The data, you know, it's interesting. So a lot of the literature doesn't actually support much discussion on that lunch meal. It's really that first meal. And then, but again, if we're talking about maintaining healthy skeletal muscle, We're also talking about maintaining blood sugar, right? Compliance is really important. Protein, it's very hard to store protein as fat. There it, there's a high thermic effect of food, meaning it takes more energy to utilize it. And part of the reason, I believe, is because it stimulates muscle. So it's, it's, it takes anywhere from 20% of the food that you eat, right? To actually, it takes 20% of that energy.

• 46:50Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 46:51Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  So if you're eating 100 calories of protein, you know, there is some contribution.

• 46:56Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 46:56Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  To that.

• 46:57Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha.

• 46:57Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Then that last meal of the day, I would say, I would make that more robust. Again, that 40 to 50 grams. And any listener could do this. The younger you are, you can, you know, muscle is typically healthier. You can get away with a little bit less. The older you are, the more protein you need at once to overcome anabolic resistance. You know, skeletal muscle is fascinating, in case you were wondering what I really thought about it. It's actually a nutrient sensor. It's, it senses our nutrients. And it senses leucine.

• 47:34Lewis Howes?

  Senses what?

• 47:35Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Leucine, which is that branch, which is that amino acid. And that's really how we need to think about protein is, is we really need to understand that protein requirement as we age is really about a meal threshold. 24-hour protein is very important. Secondarily, having protein in discreet meals is incredibly valuable. Because if you don't, you won't stimulate your tissue.

• 48:00Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 48:01Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  And as you age, that tissue becomes more marbled with fat. You know, it, it becomes more challenging. The other thing is resistance exercise is another way to stimulate tissue. And this is where you get with a great trainer. I know, I typically recommend between three and four sessions of resistance exercise.

• 48:21Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  A week, but again, having someone evaluate you as it relates to training. And then another thing that's overlooked is mitochondria. And that's really the cardiovascular aspect. And the current recommendation is 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity now. And I think as, you know, again, we're very split. People are really into resistance training or they're really into cardio. But when we think about longevity, we must address both.

• 48:49Lewis Howes?

  Is cardio, and when I think of cardio, I think more about people trying to lose weight.

• 48:54Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Right, that's not a great strategy.

• 48:55Lewis Howes?

  Is it helping you build muscle when you're running and riding a bike?

• 48:59Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  I mean, not really. I mean, muscle to grow requires metabolic stress, requires mechanical tension. Exactly. Metabolic stress, ribosomal biogenesis, protein and calories.

• 49:14Lewis Howes?

  Then why do people focus so much on cardio? Is it for heart health? Is it for other benefits?

• 49:19Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Yes, I believe that number one, it's very easy to do. You don't have to have advanced knowledge of training protocol. And that's hard. That's hard for people. There is that barrier to entry. Cardiovascular, a lot of the literature, a lot of the data has always been done on cardio. Again, because it's easy, you know, you first use rodent models, then you transition to humans. But cardiovascular activity is very valuable as it relates to mitochondrial function, as it relates to energy, and there's a natural decline as we age. Again, aging doesn't get easier.

• 49:52Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 49:52Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  But being able to be strong and capable and optimizing for dietary protein will be the ultimate in longevity. And there's so much confusion about the narrative that my fear is, you know, when you address it in your later life, you're missing this huge opportunity in midlife. Alzheimer's, cardiovascular disease, they don't develop later in life. They start in your 30s.

• 50:22Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  When I was looking at that participant's brain, when I was looking, we'll just call her Sarah, when I was looking at Sarah's brain, it didn't start then. It started in her 30s.

• 50:33Lewis Howes?

  From nutrition or from?

• 50:34Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Yes, from excess, from being overweight. You know, had she built muscle, it would have been a metabolic buffer.

• 50:42Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 50:43Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  You know, when you look at diseases of aging, it's not the aging. These diseases like Alzheimer's, cardiovascular, these start in your 30s. Sarkopenia, which is the big one, where, you know, sarcopenia is loss of muscle mass and function. You know, which is, we see people get much smaller. That doesn't start then.

• 51:01Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 51:02Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  It starts much earlier. So if you eat the way that you did in your 20s, you have no chance of protecting your muscle. The changes will be subtle until one day, they're not.

• 51:16Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm. You just start shrinking and getting weaker?

• 51:19Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  You have increase in adipose tissue. You now fall into the general category of one of the millions that are overweight. Have high blood sugar, insulin resistance, you name it. And it's, it's something that happens over time. And if we continue the conversation that is very distracted about, well, we'll take this, and we'll take this, and we'll do that, as opposed to do the foundational things that we have direct control over, which is train hard, optimize and prioritize for a protein-forward plan. You do those fundamental things, everything else is gravy.

• 52:04Lewis Howes?

  That's it. So if you focus on protein and you're trained consistently.

• 52:08Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Yes.

• 52:09Lewis Howes?

  You should be.

• 52:10Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Able to protect your muscle.

• 52:11Lewis Howes?

  And it sounds like eliminate a lot of the health problems or risks that could come your way.

• 52:16Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  This is the ultimate in a muscle-centric approach.

• 52:21Lewis Howes?

  Because you don't see a lot of people with muscle getting really sick.

• 52:25Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Well, that's true, and if they did, their ability to survive, you can think of muscle. Yes, muscle is the body armor. Muscle is an individual's body armor.

• 52:36Lewis Howes?

  What about for women who are like, why don't I want to look that muscular, you know?

• 52:39Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  That is, you know, it's so funny, right? It's like.

• 52:41Lewis Howes?

  When I lift heavy weights, I'm going to get big and bulky is the big thing for women.

• 52:45Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  You show me one woman that that has ever happened to, that doesn't happen by mistake.

• 52:50Lewis Howes?

  Where they get big involved.

• 52:51Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  It doesn't happen, how difficult that is.

• 52:52Lewis Howes?

  They have to be training for this.

• 52:53Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Absolutely. I think what's more impressive is the midlife muscle crisis. You know, people hit forty and they're like, oh my God, what happened to me? What happened to my body? There are changes that happen to skeletal muscle. And that is really powerful and really important to address. You know, if you don't hit those meal thresholds, you don't stimulate the tissue. It's a non-negotiable.

• 53:16Lewis Howes?

  What about the whole conversation around fasting these days?

• 53:21Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Okay.

• 53:21Lewis Howes?

  So many people are focused on fasting, or at least

• 53:23Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Yeah.

• 53:24Lewis Howes?

  fasted windows of eating, or you know, sixteen and eight, or or spending two days fasting, or twenty-four hour fasts for longevity.

• 53:34Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Right.

• 53:34Lewis Howes?

  Is there a benefit to fasting consistently? Or a benefit to fasting once in a while to help with overall health functionality and longevity?

• 53:43Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  The idea, from my perspective, fasting is a tool. Fasting is a tool that helps maintain weight.

• 53:51Lewis Howes?

  But you shouldn't need it.

• 53:52Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  It's not magic. It's not magic.

• 53:54Lewis Howes?

  You shouldn't need it if you're just

• 53:55Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  There are many other ways to implement stressors in the body that could possibly promote stress enough to help promote longevity. But again, the question is, what is the benefit? Could someone use time-restricted feeding? Absolutely. Could someone go through periods of lower protein? Absolutely. There is a, you know, a stress response that can happen. Does that mean that that is a way of life? Not necessarily. There's nothing wrong with eating in an eight-hour window. Right? It does allow for calorie control. You can still meet your protein needs. You can still optimize for protein.

• 54:36Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  I will say, the older, you know, my dad, he's seventy, seventy-three, sorry dad, maybe you're seventy-four. And he lives in Ecuador. He walks everywhere and he fasts. He won't get into a car if it is if it is four hours or less, and he's gonna correct me, he's gonna be like, I think it's three. He will not, if he can walk there in three hours, he'll walk there.

• 54:55Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 54:56Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  He has this cutoff, right? He was a mathematician by training. Yeah, anyway. And he went through periods of fasting, really long fasting. When you are older, we must understand if you are going to fast and that destroys skeletal muscle. Right? There's no free lunch. It becomes much more difficult to get that back. Right, it becomes much more difficult. So if an individual wants to fast, first of all, there's nothing wrong with time restricted feeding, the sixteen eight like you were talking about, eating in an eight hour window. Again, that's a tool for weight loss. As it relates to optimizing for skeletal muscle, can someone fast and optimize for skeletal muscle for two days or three days?

• 55:39Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  I think that perhaps when I think about longevity, I would say there's a way in which you can implement all of these. But my primary focus would be to protect muscle at all costs.

• 55:54Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. So your dad, my mom's early seventies. What, what recommendation would you have for him or her to be focusing on in your seventies then?

• 56:05Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  He eats two very large meals with high protein. So he hits fifty, minimum of fifty grams.

• 56:12Lewis Howes?

  Is he lifting also?

• 56:13Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  He does lift.

• 56:14Lewis Howes?

  It's just more resistance bands or is it?

• 56:16Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  He does a lot of pushups. He does a lot of walking and he does lift. But he hates being inside. He's very much a, it's interesting. He, he went to Wharton and graduated top of his class, but the guy is like a mountain man.

• 56:28Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 56:29Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  He's a mountain man.

• 56:30Lewis Howes?

  He lives in Ecuador now.

• 56:31Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  He lives in Ecuador, goes spend time, he like spends time in the jungle.

• 56:35Lewis Howes?

  That's cool.

• 56:36Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  He's cool. He's very cool.

• 56:37Lewis Howes?

  That's fun.

• 56:38Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  For him, he eats a high protein diet. He's very focused on longevity. He's very focused on mental health. He is, you know, he doesn't eat any processed foods and he doesn't snack. So he sticks to those two main meals. High protein, eats fat.

• 56:57Lewis Howes?

  Why is it so hard for people to, to not snack?

• 57:00Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Habit. You have to train yourself.

• 57:03Lewis Howes?

  There's a training.

• 57:03Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  And this goes back to be prepared for your weaknesses. Nobody gets better if they're preparing for their strengths.

• 57:08Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 57:08Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  If you know that you are a snacker, then there are rules in place where you're not able to do it.

• 57:14Lewis Howes?

  Right. Sounds like you're married to Navy SEAL.

• 57:16Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Oh, yeah. I did.

• 57:18Lewis Howes?

  Train for your weaknesses.

• 57:19Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  You know, it's really funny as I'm sitting here, uh, writing my book and I'm like, honey, you know, I have two very little children. And I'm like, this is so hard to get this done. And he's like, well, honey, and I'm like waking up at five to start writing before I then go train and then get the babies ready. He's like, well, you know, if it's important enough to you, you'll do it. You should just wake up earlier.

• 57:39Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 57:39Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  He's like, you should just wake up at four.

• 57:41Lewis Howes?

  It's still hard.

• 57:42Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  You should just wake up at four.

• 57:45Lewis Howes?

  Means you gotta go to bed at like eight, right? Cause sleep is just important for recovery, for muscle growth, for all these things, isn't it?

• 57:52Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  It is for brain function. That's when the brain cleans itself. That was, you know, when we were analyzing patients for risk of Alzheimer's, those kinds of cognitive deficits. One of the questions is that we always asked was, you know, that's part of a fellow's job is to run and participate in geriatric neurocognitive clinics. Do you sleep with your phone by your head? And do you get sleep? These are all risk factors for cognitive impairment and dementia.

• 58:19Lewis Howes?

  Really? Sleep with the phone, right?

• 58:20Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Do not do that.

• 58:20Lewis Howes?

  How many people sleep with on their bed? Lots?

• 58:22Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Do you, you should not.

• 58:24Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 58:24Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  That is a bad strategy.

• 58:26Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 58:27Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  That's a bad strategy.

• 58:27Lewis Howes?

  Do people sleep with it on the bed?

• 58:29Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  I shouldn't be actually within four feet of your head.

• 58:31Lewis Howes?

  Four feet of your head? Wow.

• 58:33Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Interesting.

• 58:34Lewis Howes?

  Maybe mine is right at four feet. I gotta move it out a little farther away. Um, yeah, sleep is, how important is sleep for protein? Or muscle growth? And I guess for protein to be able to be assimilated into the muscle.

• 58:50Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  I mean, we know that sleep is necessary for growth and recovery. Humans, you know, it's interesting. We don't necessarily know what happens so much when we sleep, but we know, you know, when you look at night shift workers, when you change that circadian clock. When I used to do rounds at the hospital, I would listen to a lot of the nurses that then had shifted to nights. They would eat the same and they actually gained weight.

• 59:13Lewis Howes?

  Oh, man.

• 59:13Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Because it, it changes the way in which glucose metabolism works.

• 59:17Lewis Howes?

  Everything, huh?

• 59:18Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Cortisol. They ate the same diet.

• 59:20Lewis Howes?

  The night shift has gotta be the worst thing for people.

• 59:22Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  They believe it's a cancer risk too.

• 59:24Lewis Howes?

  What was the biggest lessons you learned from working with, um, people who were on their deathbed, really?

• 59:31Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Um, have really good relationships and care about your family.

• 59:36Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 59:37Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  You know, it was so interesting to see that one of they, the majority of the patients, they weren't like angry. They had accepted it and they all wanted to see a family member.

• 59:51Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 59:51Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  You know? They really cared and it didn't matter if there had been gripes in the past. It was like, you know, life is so short and fragile.

• 1:00:03Lewis Howes?

  They're ready to let it go and just be around me.

• 1:00:05Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  And so the biggest lesson is why not do that sooner? Just in general, you know, the things that we feel that are important, make them important.

• 1:00:13Lewis Howes?

  Do it now.

• 1:00:14Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Yeah, and don't be so distracted. I feel right now, individuals are very distracted from the things that are actually truly important. And it's the distraction that makes us miss the moment. And that moment is not just moment within the dynamic of a family, but it's within, you know, the moments of health and comparison to other people. If, you know, really just tuning out those distractions and executing forward, I think is really important.

• 1:00:42Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. So what is the main thing for you is protein and muscle?

• 1:00:48Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  And muscle and really reframing. We got the paradigm of thinking wrong. Fat is a symptom of impaired muscle. We have completely missed the mark. And if we can prioritize muscle, we can change the trajectory of aging, we can protect people when we really talk about longevity. It's what, it's muscle that matters. And we are so far behind from understanding, evaluating those endpoints, that if we care, we must impart nutritional strategies and execute on them.

• 1:01:28Lewis Howes?

  If this is so important and really the main thing, why are not that many people talking about this? Why is it not talked about in general?

• 1:01:37Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  It's hard, right? It's hard. It is.

• 1:01:40Lewis Howes?

  Well, here's the thing, I mean, I remember, again, playing sports and growing up, it was all about protein and muscle. That was what I was talking about, right?

• 1:01:47Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  And that's where it stays and that's where it lives. It is in this nebulous world of the twenties, flexing muscles in the gym, which is a mistake. That's where it still lives. And if we can understand that muscle is so much more than looking good in a bikini or looking good on the beach, that it is actually this endocrine organ and the organ of longevity. If we can interface the two, you know, like I told you before, how it helps modulate and it makes an impact on immune regulation. We must protect it at all costs.

• 1:02:20Lewis Howes?

  Protect your muscle, protect your protein.

• 1:02:21Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  So why is it not talked about? I think because it is, I think for two reasons. Number one, we are so fixated on symptomology in medicine as opposed to root cause and truly muscle is root cause. It's difficult to measure. It challenges the paradigm of thinking. You know, there's that part. And then the other part is it is, then we talk about the food science is completely convoluted. There are narratives and agendas above and beyond what the average person is thinking about and what the average scientist or physician is understanding. There are much bigger players at work.

• 1:03:04Lewis Howes?

  And if someone is vegan, they can still be plant based and try to focus on getting more protein.

• 1:03:09Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  You can absolutely be vegan and do these things.

• 1:03:12Lewis Howes?

  And get protein.

• 1:03:13Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  You must get more iron, you must get more creatine. You must think about how you're going to get your omegas and your fat soluble vitamins and bioavailable nutrients.

• 1:03:23Lewis Howes?

  It's so funny you're talking about creatine because, what was it, Dr. Andy?

• 1:03:28Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Galpin.

• 1:03:29Lewis Howes?

  Yes, he was on here.

• 1:03:30Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Andy is a phenomenal scientist.

• 1:03:32Lewis Howes?

  And he was talking about creatine. And it was probably the first time I heard about creatine since I was like 25 or something. And I was like, he was like, creatine is the supplement. He was like, if you're going to take something.

• 1:03:42Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  It protects your brain.

• 1:03:43Lewis Howes?

  Creatine for everything. And I was like, really? I was like, I feel like this is what we did in high school. You know, you just drank the creatine.

• 1:03:51Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  But isn't that interesting? The people that don't really need some muscle is very.

• 1:03:55Lewis Howes?

  We didn't need it because we had human growth hormone.

• 1:03:57Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Well, you were young, exactly. But there is this transition that happens where insulin is no longer a growth promoter. You don't get higher, you get wider. The hormones and these anabolic hormones decrease. We must account for that by optimizing for protein because you have to trigger that muscle.

• 1:04:14Lewis Howes?

  And it sounds like if you're, if you're doing this, you're eating more protein, you're, you're training with resistance training and building muscle, you're going to burn fat.

• 1:04:25Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  You will, yes.

• 1:04:26Lewis Howes?

  You're going to be burning fat.

• 1:04:27Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Yes, we must, you will be, yes, and you will improve body composition.

• 1:04:32Lewis Howes?

  Your body composition, you'll look better and.

• 1:04:36Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  You'll have more energy, you're maintaining your blood sugar.

• 1:04:38Lewis Howes?

  Sleep better, and it sounds like you'll create metabolic.

• 1:04:42Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Health.

• 1:04:42Lewis Howes?

  Uh, correction also when you're starting to increase this.

• 1:04:45Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:45Lewis Howes?

  And your metabolism will start to work in your favor by continually, I guess, burning fat, but really it's not burning fat, it's just building muscle, which is, is it kind of integrating the fat throughout in a different way?

• 1:04:56Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  So, building muscle in and of itself is a highly metabolically challenging feat.

• 1:05:02Lewis Howes?

  And it'll, it'll just naturally get the fat to burn away.

• 1:05:05Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  And you will be training and you will correct for calories, right? So you're not going to be over consuming calories. You optimize for protein, it's very hard to over consume protein. Protein in of itself is not easily stored. There's, uh, there are so many reasons to prioritize for protein. And, and I have to say, you know.

• 1:05:27Lewis Howes?

  Can you be protein deficient?

• 1:05:29Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Of course you can, of course you can.

• 1:05:31Lewis Howes?

  And what happens if you don't have enough protein?

• 1:05:33Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  I mean, um, those are the times when we saw quashiorcore, right? Quashiorcore with the big bellies, this muscle, you know, protein wasting. There are subtle levels, there's all kinds of degrees of deficiency. You will utilize the skeletal muscle that you have. Um, as you move into more depletion, you will find your hair falls out, your hormones will go. You know, you might have fractures or bone issues. Your teeth, right? Bone is, uh, made from protein, 40% protein.

• 1:06:02Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:06:03Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  There are all kinds of problems that will begin on a subtle level. Yeah.

• 1:06:07Lewis Howes?

  Protein and muscle, protein and muscle. So what supplements would you recommend then? Creatine is one?

• 1:06:12Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Creatine is phenomenal. I think fish oil is phenomenal. I think vitamin D, there are vitamin D receptors on muscle. I think that that's really important. Um, I think having a great multivitamin. And someone's gonna say, if you are, and I would say if you are vegan or vegetarian, having either an essential amino acid profile, or adding in a straight branched chain amino acid mix of leucine, isoleucine, and valine to a lower protein meal, one scoop, five grams, would be very beneficial, because now you raise that amino acid threshold. Remember, we're not just talking about protein in a 24-hour period. We are talking about and advancing the conversation to a meal requirement.

• 1:06:54Lewis Howes?

  Every meal having protein.

• 1:06:56Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Well, well-

• 1:06:57Lewis Howes?

  Or every day consistently having it.

• 1:06:58Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Consistently, it's not, right? It's a daily need.

• 1:07:01Lewis Howes?

  A daily need.

• 1:07:02Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  And it's about at least getting those two meals corrected for higher protein.

• 1:07:07Lewis Howes?

  Now, what about protein shakes, protein bars, and just protein from food? Does it matter where you get it from?

• 1:07:15Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  It doesn't, but remember, protein in a matrix whole food is phenomenal, because, for example, there's, for example, we'll take beef, because you're talking about creatine. There's creatine in beef. There's taurine, there's B vitamin, there's iron. Shakes are also great. If it's a plant-based shake, you need to make sure it has at least two and a half grams of leucine, or you need to augment leucine-

• 1:07:40Lewis Howes?

  Leucine is a supplement you buy, or is it in-

• 1:07:43Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  It should be in there. You want to supplement all the branched chains.

• 1:07:46Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha.

• 1:07:47Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Because they deplete it. So if you just use one, then it doesn't totally work. You deplete the others. But again, remember when I told you about looking at the label? At the very end, it just says protein. But protein is much more than that one line. It's 20 amino acids. And we must account for those nine essential that we need. A branched chain amino acid added to, say, a plant-based shake is doable.

• 1:08:15Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  If it hasn't been corrected for those amino acids, a whey protein shake, a protein bar, typically those are a little lower in protein, but there are great bars that hit at least thirty grams.

• 1:08:25Lewis Howes?

  So the powder with in the shake is usually better.

• 1:08:27Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  And also remember the quality of protein matters. A plant-based protein has lower amounts of those essential amino acids. So the way in which you overcome that is you may need a bar and a half, as long as your calories can manage that.

• 1:08:43Lewis Howes?

  What's the best protein powder out there? Whether it's, I don't know, it's a specific brand, but just like, is it whey, is it?

• 1:08:50Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  So I, so I.

• 1:08:51Lewis Howes?

  Is it?

• 1:08:52Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  I work with a company called First Form. They're amazing.

• 1:08:55Lewis Howes?

  Andy's great.

• 1:08:55Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Yeah, yeah. Amazing company. They make amazing whey. They make a natural whey, which is what I use and I recommend.

• 1:09:02Lewis Howes?

  Natural whey?

• 1:09:03Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Mm-hmm. Yeah.

• 1:09:04Lewis Howes?

  As opposed to unnatural whey?

• 1:09:05Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Just depends on what you like, like flavor-wise.

• 1:09:07Lewis Howes?

  Okay, yeah.

• 1:09:08Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  So for me, yeah, yeah, yeah. So for me.

• 1:09:10Lewis Howes?

  No taste, yeah, yeah. No flavor, yeah. Gotcha, okay. But whey protein is where you're saying is probably the better.

• 1:09:17Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Yes, and for people that cannot tolerate whey, like you said, some people can't, that's where you would do a plant-based shake. There are other kind of animal-based shakes that are great. And you can try those.

• 1:09:30Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 1:09:30Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Just make sure, so collagen is not a complete protein. So I don't, I think collagen is amazing, but collagen does not count towards overall protein intake because it is deficient in tryptophan and extraordinarily low in branched-chain amino acids.

• 1:09:45Lewis Howes?

  Is it good to throw in your shake?

• 1:09:46Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Sure, yes. I mean, I always throw it in.

• 1:09:48Lewis Howes?

  What do you put in your shake?

• 1:09:49Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  I put in, well, I mean, so I mostly don't eat, I mostly eat my food.

• 1:09:53Lewis Howes?

  Uh-huh.

• 1:09:54Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Uh, but.

• 1:09:54Lewis Howes?

  You don't take your food?

• 1:09:55Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Not usually, but I do put collagen in my coffee.

• 1:09:58Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:09:58Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  The, if I'm having a shake, I'll do one scoop of whey and then one scoop of collagen, or a scoop and a half of whey. I don't really do a lot of fruits early on.

• 1:10:09Lewis Howes?

  Could you do too much? Could I do four scoops and it's like, okay, now it's just like?

• 1:10:12Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  I mean, your stomach might hurt, and you'll use all of it. That's a myth where, you know, you only, you absorb and utilize all of it. For a muscle perspective, you probably won't get more benefit, or much more benefit, over fifty to fifty-five grams.

• 1:10:27Lewis Howes?

  Got it.

• 1:10:27Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  But it doesn't mean that it is a waste. It's not.

• 1:10:29Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 1:10:30Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:31Lewis Howes?

  So if they say use one scoop, should you do a scoop and a half?

• 1:10:35Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Why not?

• 1:10:36Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:10:36Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Why not?

• 1:10:36Lewis Howes?

  You at least want forty, thirty to forty grams of protein.

• 1:10:39Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  At least.

• 1:10:40Lewis Howes?

  A meal.

• 1:10:40Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Yeah, why not?

• 1:10:41Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:42Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  And again, it's not the protein because there's, you could say, I just ate thirty grams of soy protein. That's not the same. It's the amino acids that matter. It's quality protein.

• 1:10:53Lewis Howes?

  Hmm. What if we eat a lot of protein, but we never work out?

• 1:10:57Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  That's a really not a great strategy, but I don't think that I think it will protect your muscle. But you should train, right? You should. Is there benefit? Yes, because number one, like I had mentioned before, protein is hard to store as fat.

• 1:11:10Lewis Howes?

  So it doesn't convert into fat as much?

• 1:11:12Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  It's very difficult to store.

• 1:11:13Lewis Howes?

  Even if I don't work out at all?

• 1:11:15Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  That's, yes, that would be very difficult. But again, we're not just eating protein in and of itself. You're eating, you know, whatever it is. You're eating all this other stuff. But I don't think that we should think about it in this dichotomous way. You should be resistance training. You should be eating your protein. And I think when we think about longevity and we think about overall health, we must shift the conversation to muscle.

• 1:11:40Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, okay. Well, I'm glad I'm working out. And I'm glad I'm working out and eating protein. So you've got to do more of it.

• 1:11:46Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Yep.

• 1:11:47Lewis Howes?

  Anything else we should be aware of that you think is important to talk about? Or you feel like we've covered a lot of it?

• 1:11:52Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  I think we covered a lot of, a lot of stuff. There's a few things I would love to share with your listener.

• 1:11:57Lewis Howes?

  Go ahead.

• 1:11:57Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  I am launching my, the Dr. Gabrielle Lyon Show.

• 1:12:01Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:12:02Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  And the goal of my show will be to have these kind of transparent conversations.

• 1:12:07Lewis Howes?

  Nice, okay.

• 1:12:08Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  And it's really dedicated to the listener. And it's dedicated to their education and their understanding and really their strength.

• 1:12:16Lewis Howes?

  Where can they watch or listen?

• 1:12:18Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Well, they can go over to my YouTube. It's going to be a show like yours, like a dual show. So it will be YouTube and on all the Spotify, all that.

• 1:12:28Lewis Howes?

  When's it coming out?

• 1:12:29Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Um, well, I...

• 1:12:32Lewis Howes?

  Soon, hopefully.

• 1:12:32Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Yeah, it will be within the next month. Everything is set up. We did an amazing studio setup.

• 1:12:37Lewis Howes?

  That's great, that's great.

• 1:12:38Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  And...

• 1:12:39Lewis Howes?

  If they follow you on social media, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon on Twitter, Instagram, or your website, drgabriellelion.com, then they'll get that information as well there, right?

• 1:12:48Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  And of course, if they would like to be a patient, they can apply to be a patient unless they...

• 1:12:53Lewis Howes?

  On your website?

• 1:12:54Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Yep.

• 1:12:54Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:12:54Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Unless they know someone, we do typically do it by referral.

• 1:12:58Lewis Howes?

  Okay, cool.

• 1:12:59Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:59Lewis Howes?

  And, um... So that's coming out. You're working on a book, so people can look out for that as well.

• 1:13:05Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  That's a while. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:13:06Lewis Howes?

  They follow you on social media, they'll stay up to date on all that stuff. How else can we be of support to you?

• 1:13:13Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  That just spread the message, you know. I know that there are components to this that people will find a bit controversial. And that is not my intention. My intention is that we just are having open conversations that we can tone down the emotion and come together collectively. And that's, if we really want a healthy world, that's what it's gonna take.

• 1:13:34Lewis Howes?

  Well, I want to acknowledge you for diving in on this topic, because I don't think a lot of people are talking about protein and muscle like you are. They're not as passionate and as committed to this as you are. So I think it's really powerful that you're helping your clients really think about longevity in a way so they stay healthy, you know, and stay healthy in a long life as well. And definitely having muscle, having strength is the key that we know of to making sure that if you fall, you can pick yourself back up, that if you get injured, you can recover faster. So you're not just living, extending life and suffering, but you're thriving.

• 1:14:14Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  You have body armor. You have the capacity to live in extraordinary wellness. It's the ultimate in strong medicine.

• 1:14:22Lewis Howes?

  I like that. Yes. Well, I'm really glad that you're doing this work and I acknowledge you for your mission and your service on this topic and everything you're doing with your clients. This is a question I ask everyone at the end called the three truths. So imagine a hypothetical scenario. It's your last day on earth, but you have taken so much protein and you've built your muscles that you live as long as you want to live, right? And you're thriving. But for whatever reason, it's your last day on earth. And you've created and accomplished everything, but you've got to take all of your work with you. So no one has access to this knowledge anymore. Your show, your books, all this stuff is gone for whatever reason. But you have three things you can leave behind, three lessons, or three truths. What would you say are those for you?

• 1:15:06Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Always stay committed to your cause.

• 1:15:09Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:15:10Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Always be committed to your cause. The second truth, I would leave to my children.

• 1:15:18Lewis Howes?

  What would that be?

• 1:15:18Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  And that would be that they are perfect just the way they are.

• 1:15:23Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  And the third truth is know exactly what you stand for.

• 1:15:28Lewis Howes?

  What do you stand for?

• 1:15:30Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Excellence, integrity, commitment to a cause greater than myself.

• 1:15:36Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, that's great.

• 1:15:39Lewis Howes?

  Final question for you, what's your definition of greatness?

• 1:15:42Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  My definition of greatness is to make an impact and make individuals' lives better. It's ultimately to be of service.

• 1:15:53Lewis Howes?

  There you go, Gabrielle. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

• 1:15:56Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:15:57Lewis Howes?

  I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately, that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter.

• 1:16:41Lewis Howes?

  And now it's time to go out there and do something great.