The ability to fully digest and absorb protein determines our body's ability to not only burn fat, but to keep it off afterwards.

It also affects our energy levels, hormones, inflammatory response, ability to build lean muscle, and overall health.

Even more, when protein digestion goes, along with it goes the ability to protect ourselves from harmful microorganisms.

Everything hinges on protein digestion.

So, understanding exactly how digestion works, and how to keep or get it working, is very important.

The hardest part of any diet, whether for fat loss, muscle gain or health, is getting over our cravings for sugar and junk food.

There's no question there.

The only real question is how? It can be so hard!

I understand. And in case you feel alone in this struggle — you're not.

It's the hardest part of any diet or lifestyle change, and where most people fall off.

But to know how to fix this we need to know exactly what's causing it.

And one thing I can tell you is not causing it... is you having a "weak will."

That's not it at all.

There are very exact things causing these cravings, and they can turn them on hard.

In today's article I cover exactly what is causing them (all the reasons), why they can be so hard to get over, and exactly how to address them to make the transition as smooth as possible (which is exactly what the Fat Loss Protocol is designed to do).

I think you'll like it.

In this article we want to take you through a day in the life of someone using PerfectAmino and other BodyHealth Products to achieve sustainable fat loss, showing when and how they're taken for best results.

We have the PerfectAmino Usage Guide, which provides a high level description of how to take PerfectAmino depending on your goals, and which covers all the main questions.

But in this article we’re going to dive into the details, along with the proper diet and key actions during the day for the fat loss goal as covered in the Guide To Sustainable Fat Loss.

If we want a fit, lean, healthy body that lasts into our later years, then we need to not only put in the work and eat right, but we need to be able to spot any pitfalls in our path and handle them before they become a problem.

I'm talking about illness, physical issues, organ troubles, cardiovascular issues, etc.

Many things can exist and are quite visible or easy to spot. But only because they've become big enough to spot. However, there was a point before they became big enough to be visible when they were harder to spot... but much easier to address.

Health troubles can exist without us knowing, leading to troubles we can see later on, if only because they've gotten worse.

They can even impact our ability to build muscle, recover, or lose body fat, without us ever knowing they were there, existing.

But if these things are still too small to see right now, then how do we know? And how can we catch them before they become a problem?

That’s where Heart Rate Variability comes in.

Heart Rate Variability, or HRV, is a literal measuring stick of our current health and how well our body is able to adapt and recover. And it’s something we can use to monitor ourselves.

Whether we're into extreme sports and maximum physical performance, or trying to achieve optimal health for a long life, learning what HRV is, and how to use it, puts our health and performance in our hands.

This helps us spot trouble when it’s still a ways away, so we can handle it before it gets out of hand.

We’ve all seen energy drinks advertised on social media, by influencers, and even by athletes.

And the number of people drinking these on an almost daily basis has been growing for years.

But the effect these energy drinks, as well as high levels of coffee have on our bodies, our health, our sleep, our stress levels, our mood, our hormones, and our ability to lose body fat and gain lean muscle is much more than most people think.

These energy drinks have high amounts of caffeine, sugars, and processed sugars, often under the guise of several different ingredients so you don’t see quite how much is in there.

While they may list 160 mg of caffeine as an ingredient, other ingredients listed supply even more caffeine and other types of stimulants.

How much stimulant is actually in them? I don’t know. But much more than anyone needs, especially when they’ve usually already had a couple cups of coffee in the morning.

And, while having one once, or very infrequently, may not be too bad, when continued over time, these can have a very significant impact on our long-term health, our aging, and our body’s ability to function at optimal levels.

Beyond this, many people who drink these are in their teens or twenties, when their bodies are still developing and growing, and the damage they do here can be far worse, leading to acute or even chronic health issues in the future.

This may seem small, but due to their prevalence and availability now, it’s very important.

In this article we cover how this works, and even go into the sleep/wake cycle, what occurs there, and how this affects it.

Cortisol is one of the most important hormones in our body. It’s been called the “stress” hormone because it’s released during moments of stress.

But it’s also the hormone that wakes us up in the morning, that starts the healing process in our body after any injury or workout, and that provides us with energy and mental focus when we’re “running low.”

But unfortunately, when cortisol levels go too high, it becomes something else.

It can cause muscle loss and prevent muscle gain, cause fat storage and prevent fat loss even when we’re exercising, cause low energy levels, cause us to feel stressed, cause poor sleep, and even slow or prevent healing and recovery.

If you have trouble with any of the above, it’s likely that higher than normal cortisol levels play a part.

But that’s when it’s too high. And, unfortunately, for many people in society today, it already is too high.

So let’s dive in and see what cortisol is, how it works and how we can balance our levels.

There is something that will directly improve our ability to recover, our performance, our overall energy levels and metabolism, and which is key to overall health more than almost anything else (though we'd never think it was).

This is something that very specifically controls or improves or decreases our body's overall ability to repair itself, recover, and function correctly.

It directly affects our longevity, our ability to gain lean muscle, our cardiovascular health, our ability to keep weight off more easily, our energy levels and mood, and which allows us to keep improving over time.

And it's also something that directly affects and increases or decreases our overall health.

It's called VO2 Max. V is for Volume, O2 is for Oxygen, and Max is for Maximum.

VO2 Max is literally the maximum amount of oxygen our cells can use to produce energy at any given time. It's how much horsepower our body has.

A person who is unwell in one way or another has a low ability to produce energy. A well person has good energy ability. And an athlete has high energy production capability.

Conversely, a person who has a low ability to produce energy will become unwell over time, and a person with high energy production will remain well, barring emergency situations.

From a performance view, VO2 max is literally the maximum amount (volume) of oxygen that your cells can utilize to produce energy during intense exercise before you burn out.

Our cells only have so many energy-making "engines" (mitochondria). So even if we increase oxygen to the cells, if there are not enough mitochondria to use that oxygen, we don't increase energy.

If we can increase the number of these engines, our body's horsepower, then we increase our VO2 Max, and how much energy we can produce.

Raising this allows us to raise overall performance, energy, endurance, recovery ability, and overall health. And leads to greater longevity.

Let's dive in.

This is the first issue in a series on Extreme Athletes, those who push themselves to the max to achieve their goals and, possibly, greatness.

But, while the information in this series applies very strictly to extreme athletes, it applies just as much to anyone else trying to achieve peak performance for themselves in fitness and athletics, while staying healthy overall.

Also, while we will cover points individual to specific sports, most of the information is applicable to all sports and performance, energy, and recovery as a whole.

In this first article we’ll start with one of the key, over-riding aspects to maximize not only the ability and performance of an elite athlete, but of anyone.

Because, when you put your body through as much stress and pressure as an athlete does, every one of your organs, muscles, nerves, bones, hormones, etc., all play a part.

And, while any weak links will bring down the rest, improving any weak spots in health will help increase the energy production and performance of the overall.

Perimenopause and Menopause are two parts of a transition a woman goes through when their body comes to the end of its reproductive ability.

It usually occurs sometime in a woman’s 40’s or 50s, but can occur earlier.

Perimenopause is the start of this transition, when her menstrual cycle starts to fluctuate as the amount of eggs she has in her ovaries starts coming to an end.

Then, when she has not had a menstrual cycle in 12 months, we say menopause has begun.

This whole transition is a period of somewhat intense hormonal fluctuations, somewhat different for everyone, that ends with very low production of key hormones, and generally lasts around 7 years. Though it can be as long as 14 years.

During this transition a woman can experience extreme hot flashes and sweats as hormone levels fluctuate erratically, poor sleep, poor mood, brain fog or inability to make decisions, weight gain to one degree or another, headaches, bone loss and muscle loss, reduced libido, low energy and much more.

So understanding exactly what is occurring here, what causes it, what can make it worse and what we can do about it is quite important.

Let’s dive in.

Before we cover exactly how menopause and perimenopause work in the Menopause Series, I want to cover something that affects this area significantly due to the amount of false information currently existing on the subject.

This is information that leads to choices which can make menopause worse, or harder to deal with, as well as lower our overall longevity.

I'm talking about the subject of cholesterol.

As perimenopause and menopause have everything to do with a lowering of key  hormones that occurs, this becomes quite important. Because cholesterol is what these key hormones are made from.

While insulin is in the bloodstream, almost no fat burning can take place.

But something can happen here when our diet is quite high in sugar over a long period of time, keeping our Insulin levels high for longer each day.

The cells build up a resistance to the Insulin. Meaning, when Insulin comes knocking, trying to give the sugar to the cell so it can make energy, the cell says “no” and closes its doors.

Did you know low levels of thyroid can bring on not only low energy and weight gain, but also contribute to depression and brain fog?

This can make thinking, problem-solving, and just coping with the everyday stresses of life much harder.

With the rise in hormone-blocking toxins in our environment, processed foods and processed sugars, and the low amount of protein most of us consume, low thyroid is affecting more and more people, especially among women and the elderly.

But there’s one more thing affecting this — low magnesium. Magnesium is necessary for thyroid to be produced inside the body. Yet it’s being processed out of our foods more and more every year, until more than half the people in the US are now magnesium deficient.

In this article we dive into what thyroid is, how low thyroid occurs, how it affects our mood, energy levels, mental alertness, and our ability to think and cope with the problems of everyday life and what we can do to raise it.