The Full Picture

In this empowering episode, we dive deep into "The Full Picture"—a transformative approach to health that goes beyond the number on the scale. Discover how body composition scans like the InBody or DEXA give you a detailed internal snapshot of your health by measuring muscle mass, fat mass, visceral fat, and more.

We break down why this deeper insight is critical to achieving your health and fitness goals—whether you're trying to lose weight, build muscle, or simply maintain long-term wellness. Learn how factors like visceral fat and muscle development can completely change how you feel, perform, and look—regardless of your weight.

You’ll also hear:

• Why visceral fat is so dangerous (and how to lower it)
• How gaining muscle can lead to better results even when the scale barely moves
• What to do if you're overtraining or under-eating
• How body scans help identify “skinny fat” and prevent long-term health risks
• The power of tailoring your nutrition and fitness to your actual body needs

We also share an exciting preview of the upcoming Jolie Grown-Up Summer Camp—a hands-on experience blending cooking, movement, and wellness education.

If you’ve ever felt stuck, confused, or frustrated by your results, this episode will give you the tools and insight to reclaim your power and move forward with confidence. 🌿

📬 Learn more at TheJolieLife.com or email: jolie@thejolielife.com
💌 Subscribe, share, and let us help you thrive.

Transcript

Hi everyone, today we are going to talk about the full picture. This is the view inside your body that will transform your approach to diet, your approach to exercise, and will give you better results by giving you more information. I'm Julia. I am the founder of Jolie and I am passionate about you reaching your health, wellness, and body goals. Super important to me and one of the tools that I love to use for myself as well as for clients and is available to any jewel client is full body. The full picture, which we use in inbody machine to give you that. That full picture can come through a Dexicom. What I am talking about here is body composition scans. What is a body composition scan you may ask? It is a scan that not only tells you your weight, but tells you what you're made of, your inner image, if you may. It tells you your skeletal muscle mass. It tells you your fat math. It tells you how much water is in your body. It tells you how much visceral fat you have. All of these factors are really important as we approach health, because knowing these can really dispel a lot of frustration that you might encounter or you might feel, or a lot of the, I don't know why this isn't working or this isn't working feeling. When an actuality, what you're doing is working, and if you kept with it, you would be amazed by the results, but sometimes you get discouraged because you do not have the full picture of what's happening. So let's break down those factors that get measured when you do a scan, like an inbody scan, or the full picture, as I like to call it. First, I want to touch on visceral fat because that is oftentimes overlooked, but I am always most interested in your health your longevity and you feeling great for your entire life. And so visceral fat for me is super important when approaching clients because it is the most toxic, dangerous fat in your body. Visceral fat is the fat that is inside your abdominal wall, so you feel your abs Behind your abs would be your visceral fat. Your visceral fat is there out of necessity, because it protects your organs. It helps keep them in their place. Think of them as like, think of this real fat as little spacers between your organs as well as a little cushion. They should be like the peanut in a packing box between your organs, keeping them where they're supposed to be, keeping them safe, keeping them a little bit protected from bumps and bruises and falls and like your jog running full speed on, like jumping on you. This is what your visceral fat is there for. However, there are times too many times, I must say, where are visceral fat begins to expand and to grow and we end up with high visceral fat levels. And when that happens, we have a serious problem. In the very, very present, our problem is that this fat is very inflammatory. It, if you suffer from systemic inflammation, visceral fat is adding fuel to that fire. visceral fat because of its makeup, it when it expands. So when you start accumulating visceral fat, it sends out signals of distress, like, oh my gosh, I'm getting filled up with more poor fat. I'm in trouble. That signal of distress causes the body to think oh my gosh something is happening that shouldn't be happening. And it releases cytokines and other inflammatory molecules throughout your entire body. And so you end up with inflammation. So that's what's happening, like right here and now, if you have elevated visceral fat levels. Now, long term, what does visceral fat do to you? Visceral fat is very cardiovascularly dangerous. So high visceral fat levels, directly correlate with cardiovascular events, rather that is hypertension, which is high blood pressure, whether that is a heart attack, whether that is a stroke, visceral fat, because of its inflammatory nature, and because of where it is, it puts a lot of pressure on your heart as well as your vital veins and arteries. So we want to reduce our visceral fat as much as possible. So let's say you are on a jolie optimized program and you've been sticking to it. You are three weeks in, you feel great. You're bloating has decreased substantially. You're like, oh my gosh, I probably lost so much wheat. And you get on the scale and you've lost let's say 4 pounds, but you think, wow, I've been working so hard. I should have been I should have lost more. And then we look at your in body. We look at the full picture, and we see that your visceral fat level has fallen from 17 to 13. And that is a huge dramatic, massive win because you have made such a huge impact on your cardiovascular health. And the cool thing about visceral fat loss is every bit of visceral fat that you lose pays huge dividends. Like, it pays dividends in how you feel. It pays dividends and your ability to exercise because you're increasing your heart health. Therefore, you can exercise better. It gives your liver relief so it helps to protect you from fatty liver disease. You want your visceral fat to decrease and go within normal range, which generally I aim for clients to be eight and below so that's our visceral fat that we get to see when we do the full picture. We also get to see our muscle mass, which I find super important because muscle is heavier than fat and when we gain muscle and we lose fat, we may not see the type of changes in the scale that we want to see. So this happened to me recently because it is nearing summer, and we are doing a little cutting, as well as increasing our workout. And I was disappointed because I was so, so, so good. And I had like 0.2 pounds of weight loss, but I did my full picture, my inb exam and I saw that I gained 0.8 pounds of muscle and I lost like one pound body fat. And so net, yeah, it wasn't a big loss, but I felt different. I looked different because I had gained muscle and I had lost fat. This is very, very important because oftentimes when we go to a fitness regime and we're also changing our diets, we don't really factor in that if our fitness regime is working, we are going to be gaining muscle and that gain of muscle is going to show up in our scale weight. But at the same time, we're going to be losing fat. This is super important because it is very easy to get discouraged and think, oh, my gosh, it's not working I'm putting in all this effort and my results aren't really showing off, but they are and this is the classic case of a person who is on a Jolie weight loss program or who is doing a weight loss program themselves, and their scale isn't moving much, but their clothes fit differently. And when you do the in body, when you get the full picture, you actually see the numbers that correlate with that. You do see that you are losing body fat and you are gaining muscle, which is huge because if you can lose 10 pounds of body fat and gained 10 pounds of muscle, you would end up with the same scale weight, but your clothes would no longer fit you. You would be at least one to two sizes, like smaller than you currently are. This is the impact of muscle. I also love for you to see your muscles grow, particularly during weight loss because as your muscles grow, they are building your insurance policy. They are building the capacity for you to maintain or as I'd love to say, own your weight loss because your muscles are hungry, hungry organs, hungry, hungry, and muscle I do consider it an organ. And I'm not the only one, by the way. Hungry hungry. So when you gain muscle by the end of your weight loss, you will have an increased capacity to eat, an increase caloric demand that you would not have had you not gained the muscle, not to mention all the other benefits that muscle can give you. So that's the other reason why we want to have the full picture. We want to see what are what is the trade-off between muscle and fat? On the flip side, the other third reason we want to see the full picture is sometimes we are over exercising and under nourishing. Exercise is a stress on the body. Positive stress most of the time when too much negative stress. When we have a choric deficit, which even though in the Jolie program, we deal a lot with macros and foods that have a thermogenic effect and really put you in a fat burning state With that, however, we still do have a caloric deficit. A caloric deficit is a kind of stress on your body. You have ancient programming in you when you are working hard, your ancient program says there's a lot of stuff that has to get done. When you are not eating the same amount of calories, your primal programming is saying, oh my gosh, there's not enough food out there. It doesn't know that you have an extra 30 pounds sitting there, but it thinks, oh my gosh, she's not eating because there's not enough food out there. When this happens, cortisol kicks in to save the day. Cortisol clamps down on muscle formation, and it clamps down on fat loss. It comes in to save the day. This is the conundrum that many clients find themselves in when they come to us and we do the intake and we're like, okay, what are you eating? What are you working out? They're doing high intensity workouts five days a week, relentlessly, never missing. They are trying to calorie restrict as much as possible and end result is the scale keeps going up. Because your body is in famine. And when we do the in body, get the full picture for that client, we see a muscle mass that is remarkably low compared to the amount of work that they do and we see a fat mass that is remarkably high considering the food that they're consuming. And this is because the hormones are off. The hormones are off because we're overworking and under nourishing. So our full body picture gives us that clue that the numbers behind it that help us then to change your workout. So, okay now, instead of five days, you're going to do two. You're going to do three. And the other days, you're going to take a walk with your dog for 40 minutes. And we're going to bump up your protein, and we're going to give you a little bit more, more calorically and guess what your body starts to build the muscle and lose the fat. That's the benefit because then the client, who's very, very worried, very, very uncomfortable, very, very anxious that, oh, my gosh, I'm working out less. I'm eating a bit more. Oh my gosh, this is going to go in the wrong direction. They get to see. They get to come in, step on the in body, and see, oh my gosh, this is working, that I am exercising less. I'm eating a little bit more different macas, of course and it's coming off. My body is transforming and that is a huge value to the full picture. So let's say you've reached your goal, or let's say you have no weight law goal. What is the value of getting the full picture? The value of getting the full picture for you is to help you see how you're maintaining because you can maintain your scale weight and your body composition can be changing. You can be getting a little bit more visceral fat are a little bit more body fat, subcutaneous, and a little less muscle and you may not even realize it. You might actually be cannibalizing or eating your muscle, losing your muscle and your clothes size is shrinking and you don't even realize that it's not that you're getting skinnier or leaner. It's that you're becoming skinny fat. And we know based on research that skinny fat puts us in the same risk group as if we were carrying 30 pounds of extra fat because in reality we are we just don't look at so in reality we have the same diabetes risk, the same heart disease risk, the same cancer risk, the same autoimmune hormone imbalance risk because we're skinny fat so at any weight range, the in body is helpful to help you understand where is my body composition right now. What is what I'm doing working? So do I keep doing it? Is what I'm doing? Does it need a little bit of a tweak? Is the workout that I'm choosing actually doing what I want it to do is the way that I'm eating supporting my workout to produce the results that I want and is the way that I'm eating supporting my visceral fat, like maintaining it low and my body fat maintaining it within the range that I want it. These are all very, very important things to know and it gives you a lot of power over your journey. And one of the things that I wish for everyone, everyone, everyone, everyone to know, is that you have a lot of power about how you look and how your body is and how it feels. You get to decide how you're shaping yourself. You get to decide what level of health you're enjoying, but it's so much easier when you allow yourself to access this arsenal of information that we have, that you then can take and begin to change what you're doing, so that what you're doing aligns with the results that you want. The worst thing for me is when a client has been working so, so hard and they are not knowing exactly what needs to be done because they don't have that like interview and they come and they're utterly frustrated and they've been working so hard and they they feel like a sense of betrayal from their body and want to give up. But that's not necessary. Having the full picture, knowing, consulting with someone, knowing what to do with workout and food based on that full picture, you can make choices that put you in the right direction. And so this is why I invite you to come to Julie, have a full picture, have an INbody exam. If your gym offers one, I'm a member of lifetime. They offer that. It's a great way to see how what you're doing and see how it's working. And so I encourage you to do that. Get ready for summer. We have a lot of fun things coming up. We are going to host the Jolene grown up summer camp and the summer camp, more information is coming out in the next week will be hands-on cooking classes and movement classes, breath classes, nutrition classes, a little bit of gardening thrown in there, some field trips to go with it, some special speakers, but time for you to use the summer where life is a little bit slower for yourself to help you build the body, build the health, build the wellness, build the sense of empowerment that you need to really guide your ship And I love feeding people. I absolutely adore it. Try jolie food. It's amazing, but the thing that I love more is educating people so that you know, okay, when I go visit my Aunt Sally, this is what I eat. When I go on a road trip, this is what I eat. When I'm thinking about doing this workout, this is what I eat to support the workout. So I hope you have enjoyed this podcast. If it has helped you, please subscribe, please share, please give questions, all of that. You can contact us at thejolielife.com and that the Jolie JOLIE life.com. You can also email us at Jolie at the Jolie life and we love helping serving and really teaching people how to eat and imparting as much vitality as we possibly can.