Muscle Regulates Your Emotions: The Science of Protein, Strength, and Aging Well | Dr. Gabrielle Lyon

28:20Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Yes, sir, you can. And this becomes very offensive to people because they don't like the idea that one would have to earn it. And it's a tricky subject because food is so readily available. It's not like it's always been readily available like this. And we have a lot of agency. We have a lot of choice as to what we can adjust. And we have to do that responsibly. The most important macronutrient is dietary protein. As we get older, we need more of it. The body rebuilds and repairs itself four times a year. That number, I recommend no less than 100 grams of protein a day. No less than that, regardless of your weight.

29:02Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:and then you can choose carbs versus fat it is personal preference obviously you want to get your fiber intake but how we are consuming right now and in the playbook i make it a very pretty visual because it's been complicated for people and it's been very difficult for people to follow over years one third of your plate should be protein one third of your plate should be fibrous carbs, fruits and vegetables, and one third of your plate can be more starchy carbs, you can increase that amount if you are training. Carbs must be earned because at higher levels, it's toxic. And we have evidence for that.

29:44Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:It's called diabetes. Let's talk about your recommendations for eating because they're really, really interesting, but also pretty hardcore and specific. As you just said, you have a big focus on protein. I believe you say every meal should have 30 grams of protein. I have been very influenced personally by something called intuitive eating. And basically, intuitive eating is the argument that we get really tangled up in what's been called diet culture, you know, just trying to eat by other people's rules in order to achieve arbitrary aesthetic standards. And so in intuitive eating, the thing is, you know, listen to your own body about when you should eat and what you should eat with.

30:26And this is crucial, a background of like gentle nutrition basics. So having said all that, when I encounter very strict guidelines, I sometimes my back gets up just a little bit because I have been so steeped in this intuitive eating thing. So where am I wrong?

30:48Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:You've never had a weight problem, have you? As I sometimes joke, it would take an archaeological dig to get the abs that I had in my 30s. And so I can get into a whole self-critical thing about the way I look in the mirror, et cetera, et cetera. But that's a long answer. The short answer is no, I have not had a weight problem where I'm overweight medically. Which in my mind would mean that you've done pretty well with your nutrition and that your signals aren't super crossed. That's one thing that I would say. The next thing that I would say is, do you track an account for your money and your taxes?

31:33Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Would you also say that it's fair that the more particular one can be, the better that they can control an outcome, whatever that is? Yes, yes. But and I know you don't recommend calorie counting, which which I really love you for. But when I was overly fussy and obsessed with things like calorie counting, I think it was actually boomeranging back and making me less healthy because I it was it was causing distraction at mealtime, which was interrupting my ability to connect with people, connect with the food, et cetera, et cetera. So I worry a lot about what is sometimes called orthorexia, the unhealthy obsession with getting healthy.

32:20Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:That is a real problem. And I wish it was more of a problem. Because again, let's look at the data. The data is that the majority of our contemporaries are either overweight or obese. The majority of people, maybe outside of our circle or in the wellness space, really struggle. And they don't just struggle for a few years. They struggle for an entire lifetime. They struggle for decades. I would also say that intuitive eating, if we define intuitive, in my mind, it's eating what you feel your body needs. Would we agree on that definition if we were to kind of come together? It's close enough. Okay.

33:03Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:What I would say is if you understand foundational principles, then intuitive eating would make perfect sense meaning your body needs a certain amount of protein your body does really well again there is there are so many different ways for people to eat and that's evidenced by think about people in all different cultures they eat a variety of of things and are healthy. But if you have a understanding, if there's an understanding that your body requires these amino acids protein, then it might just be that you are connected to what it is that your body is driving for. The body is very smart. It's actually something called the protein leverage hypothesis.

33:52Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:And the protein leverage hypothesis is the following, is that we have an essential need for amino acids, which we do. And the body will feed until it gets that dosing right. Meaning, and this is one of the reasons why people believe obesity happened is that there's been such a dilution of the quality of the calories. So in essence, they're intuitively eating and feeding to get those amino acids and those proteins. And ideally, we get people to a place where they can intuitively eat, that they understand that this is roughly the amount of protein that I need. This is roughly the amount of fruits and vegetables that I need.

34:38And if we can get people there, then it doesn't have to be strict and rigid

34:45Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:because it shouldn't be. And we also have to recognize that there's a huge departure from the way in which we used to get food. And so we have to have a baseline understanding. Otherwise, bodies, when they hit 40, if you do whatever you want, you see a drastic change in weight gain, middle weight gain, and none of that has to happen. And I agree with you, eating shouldn't be super restrictive. And this is part of the problem of diet culture because we've really been so misled. There's been the lucky diet, which is smoking diet. There's been fen-fen. There's been the grapefruit diet and the soup diet.

35:26Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:All of these various diets to control hunger and satiety and weight. But if we frame our eating as to what we can eat and frankly, what we have to gain like muscle, then the choices become much more liberating. Diet culture is what we have to lose and the focus on fat versus a muscle-centric culture is what do we have to gain? What can we eat? And again, it's just much more liberating. Let me see if I can sum up your argument. I think what you're saying is, yeah, Dan, you're not wrong for those of us who are interested in wellness, something like intuitive eating can be a nice corrective against orthorexia.

36:13But I, Dr. Lyon, who is looking out at the sort of broad swath of humanity, specifically in America, but globally as well, where people aren't focused enough on wellness. So they need pretty specific guidelines until they can achieve escape velocity and rely on their intuition.

36:37Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:That's absolutely correct. Because ultimately, we want to build stronger, healthier, more resilient humans. This is what we want. This is what we're going for. But we have to agree that there are some fundamental changes that have to be made. And the reality is most people are not even hitting the bare minimum of activity, which is 150 minutes. The ACSM guidelines just changed, but it's 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity. And it's two days a week of some kind of resistance training. My friend, most people are not needing that. And we know this. And how do we transform the culture, which is, have you ever seen the movie WALL-E?

37:22Oh, yeah. I love it.

37:24Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:but it's terrifying and that's where we're going that's where we're going if we don't make some serious course corrections and we have to acknowledge that we live in a domesticated environment we don't know how to eat we are so far removed from having to go out and hunt our food and go out and pick our berries and do all of these things that really we just go on amazon or DoorDash and it's there. We have to adapt to our environment. And if that adaptation means we have to double down on the amount of protein that we need and understand what that looks like, and then we choose, I'm totally good with that.

38:02Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:But I believe it's our responsibility to really understand what we need and why we need it, and then let people choose. But if we don't acknowledge that protein is the most important macronutrient, that we need more of it as we age. There is no other way. You can't just build your body from thinking about it. You have to consume food and you have to consume particular classes of food, meaning the particular macronutrients, because they're essential. Our bodies can't make it. And then aging, which is the reality as, there's biological age and there's chronological age. It's happening. When we are young, we are driven by hormones and growth.

38:48Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:We can get away with a lot. But as our hormones change and as our activity levels change and as our body becomes less efficient, we have to account for those inefficiencies. It's a must. Otherwise, we're going to find ourselves weaker than we care to be. And unfortunately, if we don't set ourselves up for muscular health, again, this has nothing to do with aesthetics, then it becomes very challenging to manage the health outcomes that become meaningful, like blood pressure, like triglyceride levels, like cognitive impairment or cardiovascular disease. And I would just hate for people to overcorrect in a way that they're so fed up with this diet and that diet.

39:43Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Because at the end of the day, they still need to make fundamental choices and not be distracted by the next shiny object or be so off put by the diet culture that unfortunately we have all grown up in. And so that's that's what I would say to that, you know, as someone who trained in geriatrics. OK, so we've covered diet and people who want to go deeper can and should check out your book, The Forever Strong Playbook. Quick word from Eight Sleep before we keep going here. One thing Dr. Lyon mentions as being super important for muscles is recovery. You can train hard. You can eat all the protein you need.

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42:13Okay, let's talk training. You said something before about 150 minutes a week. I'm not good at math, but I think that's like 30 minutes, five days a week. I have no problem with that. I exercise six to seven days a week for an hour, which I know to many people listening is going to make me incredibly annoying. However, to those people who are annoyed by what I just said and have trouble getting themselves to the gym, what's the minimum effective dose and what should we be doing?

42:40Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:I don't think you're going to like my answer. I don't think you're going to like it. but I don't want to be your most unpopular guest. What is the number one reason why you would say people are not getting in 30 minutes a day? What's the number one reason? Lack of time slash it's hard to form habits. The lack of time is the thing that I hear. I want to just frame this up. Again, I'm not trying to be your most unpopular guest ever, but if you don't have time for 30 minutes a day, how on earth are you going to have time for sickness? If you don't have time for 30 minutes a day of exercise, you think that you're going to save time when you're sick?

43:26Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:And that is an absolute understanding that people have to recognize that there is no shortcut here. If you think you don't have time for exercise, how the heck are you going to have time for being sick. So they have to understand that. The minimum effective dose is typically set as those ACSM guidelines. That's the minimum to make you not worse than yesterday. Okay? What I cover in the playbook and what I think is really valuable is a three-day-a-week resistance training program. And again, people will argue, no, you want to do cardiovascular activity. I think that walking isn't exercise. Walking is part of your life.

44:05Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:I want you to walk. Human beings, if an individual is sedentary, that is a diseased state in and of itself. Being sedentary is a diseased state. So three days a week of resistance training, and the less you train, the more full body it needs to be. Again, I have put a very straightforward plan in my playbook to just address this. Also, So there's a million plans out there. There's no one right plan. It's how do we think about the foundations? We know that you need 30 to 50 grams of protein in the morning or at that first meal. Secondarily, you have to move your body. You have to challenge it. I don't care how you get there, but you have to do it.

44:50Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Could it be a dumbbell program? Could you go to the local gym and use machines? Yes and yes. as long as you are doing and creating a movement lexicon for your life you're running you should be able to do overhead overhead extension you should be able to squat and move and sit on the floor and get up off the floor these are all basic things to do that i would say three times a week of some type of resistance training again there's a whole continuum million different programs but you gotta you have to have resistance and you can start with bands if you just want to do bands at home i'm okay with it you do have to figure out ways to create progressive stimulus not progressive overload it doesn't just have to be heavier it has to increase in the challenge could be more reps could be slower tempo could be extra exercise progressive stimulus how do we De-operationalize that concept.

45:50Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Yeah. Make it harder. Pick your poison. Pick your challenge. Don't care how you do it. It's got to be harder. If you are someone who goes into the gym and does the exact same thing every day or three days a week, you know, Dan, I'm sure that you've, where are you located, by the way? Is it top secret? No, it's not top secret. I'm about an hour north of New York City. Okay. Hour north of New York City. I've been there. Is that, are there you lots of gyms or are you kind of in, you know, I've been upstate New York, they have like one gym every 10 miles or 20 miles. I'm privileged enough to have a gym in my house.

46:26Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Okay, fine. So then you have no excuse. And no, you don't go down there and see the same person on the treadmill every day, unless it's you. But imagine when you would go to the gym and let's say you're in New York City, the same people, oh, hey, high five, what's up? And their bodies, they look exactly the same. A year goes by, they still look exactly the same. Well, that's not enough stimulus. You must add a stimulus that is varying in degrees of difficulty or challenge. And by the way, first of all, remember we opened up this conversation and I was very graphic about the difference between a wagyu and a filet, and that's what your muscle looks like.

47:05The simple act of doing resistance training improves muscle quality, decreases that fat that infiltrates into that tissue, regardless of your body composition changes or not.

47:17Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:So I want to be very clear. I don't want people to feel like, okay, well, what I'm doing is not enough. Well, I'm glad that you're doing something. And I think that we have to hold ourselves to higher standards that if we become complacent and we just accept that going to the gym and walking on the treadmill three days a week or four days a week is enough, frankly, it's not. During your 20s, it's okay, but it doesn't have to be heavier weights. There are a handful of ways to make things more challenging, whether that is slow down the tempo, speed up the tempo, change the exercise, change the volume.

47:55Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:It's not just lifting heavier. And that's what progressive stimulus is, changing the input to change the output. But three days a week of resistance training, where does cardio fit into this? The bane of my existence? No, I'm just kidding. Cardio's great. Really, the question is, how do you want to do it? And the recommendation is 30 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity a week, or 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity, 30 minutes a day. cardiovascular activity. And I actually covered this on my podcast and I had one of the world leading experts on high intensity interval training. And his name is Martin Gabala.

48:40Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:He's at McMaster University. He's like the OG in the space. And here's what he would say. The number one thing that I hear and that we all hear is time. You can get a robust cardiovascular activity, cardiovascular training when you do high intensity interval training. In fact, one could argue four minutes, four minutes a day or four minutes, depending on your all-out effort, or 10 minutes a day. The more intense it is, again, it's, you want to think about it in a week span, but the more intense it is, the less you need. You could easily do walk, you know, walk around and talk, walk kind of quickly, keep your breath under control, do that 30 minutes a great.

49:25Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Or you could really push yourself and do a high intensity interval training. I like adding that in two days a week. And that will also improve your VO2 max. Again, we're talking about the action, but what we really want is the outcome. We talk about protein, but I don't care about protein. I care about the muscle. We talk about resistance training, but it doesn't really matter how you get to the endpoint of healthy muscle. It just matters that you do it. And then when we think about cardiovascular activity, could you be someone who does zone two cardio every day? Totally. You can. Will you improve your VO2 max?

50:06Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Yes. Will you improve your cardiovascular base? Yes. But it's the overall time and what your end goal is. For me, I don't do a ton of zone two cardio. I might do one day a week, I do a high intensity interval day. Two days a week, I might do some kind of lower intensity, maybe three days a week, which are a week. You know, zone two is different for everybody, but that's enough to maintain my baseline level of fitness. People should be moving every day. Start with resistance training. Again, this is controversial. Many of my fellow fitness people will say start with a cardiovascular base, but for me, I want you to have healthy musculature.

50:49Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:And then hopefully you'll be inspired enough to do some kind of cardiovascular activity. But getting people over the threshold of actually doing resistance training, I think is the most challenging. Let's talk about recovery. You're saying we should be moving our bodies every day. I'm totally down with that. I will tell you at age 54, I tend to get hurt more easily. So what's the role of recovery in all of this? Did you train when you were younger? Have you been like a lifelong athlete? I mean, athlete would be a little grand to describe me, but I have, yeah, I'd say maybe fell off a little bit in my 20s, but starting in my 30s all the way for the last 25 years, very, very avid.

51:34Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:And then, you know, in your 20s, you wake up and you can just go run. You're not having you know, roll your wrists and like your hip. It's a whole thing. And then all of a sudden, right, it happened to me. You just wake up and you're like, I'm 40 and now I got to do this whole mobility program. When you're young, it just seems as if we have this flow, right? That recovery doesn't seem as important. Arguably depends on the level of the athlete, but maybe it's less important. But as we age, we have to recognize that our joints and our tendons have to keep up with our muscle health and strength. And oftentimes our muscles outpace our ability of our joints and our tendons and this other fibrous tissue to keep up.

52:21Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:So when I think about recovery, I don't think of a warm bubble bath. I think of moving. I think of active recovery. I think of walking. As we talked about walking, recovery is simply allowing your body to downshift. Sleep is important. Dietary protein, again, active recovery is allowing your muscle groups to get a bit of rest because you don't grow in the act of doing the activity. You don't grow bigger muscles while you're lifting. You grow bigger muscles while you're resting. And that's how I think about active recovery. And then there's a handful of tools and things that I love to use. I love a cold plunge.

52:59Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:I love a hot sauna. I love a good Netflix legs with my feet up. I love a lot of outside time. I think we're going to start to see more and more the impact of our environment on our ability to recover and our central nervous system. And I would say that the harder the training, the more robust the recovery. Recovery is not the following. After a soul cycle or after a peloton, it is not a massive carbohydrate smoothie. That is not recovery. If we don't have access to a cold plunge, how does a cold shower strike you? I'm good with it. I'm good with it. It could be cold, get it on the back of the neck.

53:39Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Again, I want to be clear, the data on a cold plunge, why do I like a cold plunge? It reduces inflammation, helps me be less sore. You could definitely fill up a bathtub in cold water. It doesn't have to be super cold. It could be 54 degrees. That's not super freezing. It doesn't have to be 39. Put some ice in it if you want. It feels really good if you are a woman in menopause or carrying menopause. Maybe you're having hot flashes. This is something that one could utilize. It doesn't have to be a cold plunge. Most of us have bathtubs. If you don't have a bathtub, you can face plunge. The question is, how are you using it?

54:19Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:For me, I use it for mental resilience. Nothing gets me out of a mood or a state. You cannot think of anything else when you dunk yourself into a cold. You just cannot. If I'm having the worst day, the second I immerse myself in a cold, I don't even remember what time it is. I couldn't even tell you what month it is. It is so cold that for that moment, it completely interrupts whatever repetitive thought, whatever is happening. There is a moment of interrupt. You know, there was some, Viktor Frankl, I'm sure you read the book, Man's Search for Meaning. and he talks about the stimulus and the response.

54:57Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:The cold plunge creates just enough stimulus for you then to pause and choose a response. And I have found that to be true. Again, your question is, could a cold shower work? Yes. Could also a cold bath work? Yes. Could you also get a trash bin and fill it up and put ice in it? Yes. Where there is a will, there is a way to execute. Final thing I want to ask you about, we kind of did this in Ask Backwards because the playbook starts really with how to think before moving on to eating, exercise and recovery. People, again, can go check out the playbook. But there's one aspect of the how to think part that I want to get you to talk about.

55:40And it really does relate to the cold plunge. and it's something this is a breadcrum I'm picking up from earlier in our discussion where he talked about friction. Modern life has reduced the amount of friction in our lives like we we can swipe for a date for groceries for food all of human knowledge. We therefore don't have to work as hard as we used to for this stuff and your argument is that we need friction. So can you hold forth on that?

56:08Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:We live in a culture where we're constantly trying to remove the hard thing. And we shouldn't. We will thrive on it. And there's all sorts of ways to add friction. People just think of physical friction, of doing the physically hard thing. I'll give you an example of friction. My husband, who is in the Navy, is now a surgical resident. He is training to be a urologist. And he runs to work every day, which is super annoying because he has to wake up very early and the worse the weather it is, the earlier it has to get up. And he said to me, I was like, honey, can you please just drive to work? It is thunderstorming outside.

56:50Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Do you mind driving? He says, honey, what kind of man would I be if I only lived up to my standards when it was convenient? And I thought to myself, hmm, that's pretty cool. And then the second thought was, get the heck out of the room because it's way too early and I need to go back to bed. So, and I say that because it's just an example, a real life example of adding friction. There are a million different ways to reduce it, but it's this idea of setting standards. And we always think about the physical nature of the friction of doing the hard things, but doing the hard thing can come in the bucket of emotional.

57:28Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:It can come in the bucket of social. It could come in the bucket of our own personal discomfort. Friction could be as simple as flipping a coin. heads you get that Starbucks, tails you don't. I am someone who loves to listen to loud music, rock out, have my amino acids, have some creatine, and just hype myself up for the gym. I flip a coin, heads I get that loud music, and tails I don't. It's really annoying the first five times that unfortunately I have flipped the coin where I don't get to actually get the loud music. And then after a while, I have to move on to something that is more friction generating because I've mastered that.

58:10Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Sometimes it's having the hard conversation and I do think that you should pick one domain of friction every single day and challenge yourself. It's really uncomfortable. For example, I'll give, you know, I hate social media. I don't want to force myself to go on social media. It creates, and that's just a little level of friction or call and have a difficult conversation and you're ripping the bandaid off. There's a whole host of ways of generating friction, holding eye contact that you don't want to, or again, doing things that are intentionally uncomfortable, but not just the standard of, you know, putting yourself on a social media detox or, you know, doing something physically hard.

58:54Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:There's a million different ways. Not entertaining all of our wants. Not entertaining the ability. Give yourself a friction challenge. Don't use a microwave or any type of packaged food for a week. That's annoying. You can't have your oatmeal. You don't get to go into the container of almonds. You have to eat the almond or mash it yourself. And in the book, I outline ways to add in friction. And I think it just ends up pushing us to a higher standard. Well, this has been an education. And I think you've pushed us all to a higher standard here. Dr. Gabrielle Lyon is the author of Forever Strong, a new science based strategy for aging well, and then more recently, the Forever Strong playbook.

59:37What's your website so that people know if they want to go get more information from you?

59:40Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Well, first of all, I didn't call it marginally weak, right? I could have written a book that was the opposite of Forever Strong and be like marginally weak. And then maybe the conversation would have been totally different. The reality is muscle and protein is just the Trojan horse for what I believe can call people to a higher version of themselves. And so I just want to leave that on the table that it's just the Trojan horse. It's just the way, it's the entry point. And now I'll tell you my website. If they haven't already turned me off like this crazy lady, it's drgabriallion.com. We have a medical practice that's all telemedicine, strong medical.

1:00:22Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:I have a podcast where we interview MDs and PhDs and have very transparent conversations on the science and emerging science. I have a great newsletter and yeah, social media on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, you name it. Dr. Lyon, thank you very much for your time. Great to talk to you. Sir, thank you so much for having me. Thank you so much for listening to or watching the show. And thank you so much to everybody who works so hard to make this show a reality. 10 % Happier is produced by Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People.

1:01:00Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Kashmir is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme. Also, one last thing before you go, remember to sign up for my app, which is called 10 % with Dan Harris. You can sign up for the app over on danharris.com. On the app, you'll find a growing library of meditations from many of the world's greatest meditation teachers. Add free access to this podcast and our voluminous back catalog. exclusive live stream events and robust discussion threads connect with me and with our teachers and our team and one another there's a free 14-day trial if you want to try before you buy