We’ve upgraded PerfectAmino by adding nucleotides and nucleosides — the building blocks of nucleic acids: our DNA and RNA.

But we want to make sure you fully understand why we did this and how this works.

Because it was for a very exact reason. And it is very much an upgrade.

We know that the building blocks of protein and collagen are the essential amino acids.

Having all of the essential amino acids, and having each of them in the correct overall ratio, is necessary for complete protein synthesis, as well as protein synthesis without the caloric impact.

However, there is another aspect to this.

While these essential amino acids are the material used to synthesize new protein, the actual building blocks of protein and collagen, if we want perfect protein synthesis then we need to look at the process of synthesizing protein itself: how they are being made.

Because if the process is at all faulty, then even if we have the correct amino acids and correct amounts, we won't necessarily get correctly made proteins.

In fact, we can even have stopped creation of specific proteins. And that can affect us in any number of ways.

Well done on completing the 30 Day Lean Body/Lean Bulk Challenge!

While you may feel and look different on the outside... on the inside things are even more different.

We’ve balanced hormones and repaired or replaced trillions of cells.

We’ve removed fat not only from our fat cells, but from our organs such as our liver and kidney, where it can make them less efficient or prevent them from doing their job.

We’ve built lean muscle and, depending on where we started, changed our body shape.

We’ve improved digestion and the microbiome, the most important gatekeepers for our overall health.

We’ve improved our body’s energy levels, our endurance, and our body's ability to recover, burn body fat and build lean muscle.

And we've set ourselves up, if we maintain our current lifestyle, to stay lean and continue to add muscle.

And if we have some extra deserts and gain a couple of pounds... we're now much more physically and hormonally set up to lose that very fast, often within a couple of days.

In short… we’ve done a lot!

But what do we do now?

The body is a complex contraption full of very exact systems and a thousand different factors influencing its overall health and performance in one way or another.

We need to be able to separate out the important factors that allow us to measure our overall health, performance and recovery ability, and spot potential health troubles before they become a real situation.

And 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.

When working out, blood flow is very important for both muscle building and fat loss.

It’s how the nutrients, water and oxygen needed for energy creation and muscle creation flow to our cells.

If our blood flow is lower, our cells do not get these nutrients or oxygen fast enough and our energy levels go down during high intensity workouts.

And it slows recovery.

Achieving healthy blood flow then is important for maximum results and maximum overall health.

We've spoken a lot about hormones on the Lean Body/Lean Bulk Program, but not how toxins affect these.

Testosterone levels have been dropping for decades and the largest lab testing company, Lab Corp, actually lowered that standard of what “acceptable” testosterone levels are.

At the same time, estrogen levels have risen sharply and thyroid has become a growing issue.

Hormonal imbalances are no longer just being deficient in one or another hormone.

There are exact chemicals in the environment, in our food, air, and water, which didn’t exist before.

These chemicals can do several things in the body:

They can block certain hormones from being created.

They can block them from being able to communicate their instructions to a cell or disrupt their normal actions.

Or they can impersonate them entirely, giving our cells the message a hormone normally would, but not when the brain says to.

And while this affects muscle-building and fat loss significantly, its effect goes far beyond.

In this article we cover what's happening and what you can do about it.

We're entering Week Four of the Lean Body/Lean Bulk Challenge, and I want to add in something that will improve our recovery ability, our performance, our overall energy levels and our metabolism. And it directly affects 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, or volume, of oxygen that your cells can utilize during intense exercise, before you burn out.

And raising this allows us to raise overall performance, energy, endurance recovery ability and overall health.

And it allows us to push more over time and achieve more.

So let’s dive in.

We know about amino acids, hormones, and how different foods affect our ability to build lean muscle, burn fat and stay healthy.

But if we want to achieve maximum levels of energy, recovery, health and performance, and build the most lean muscle, then we need to go down to the cellular level.

After all, our bodies are just one big mass of some 100 trillion cells all bonded together.

How well we're doing is an exact reflection of how well our cells are doing.

And they require a multitude of nutrients and biochemicals, all held in equilibrium, to ensure they can work properly, produce energy, build muscle, and keep our body going.

When these aren't properly balanced we can get headaches, brain fog, low levels of energy, muscle cramps, slower recoveries from workouts, and imbalances in hormones.

But when everything is in place, we have the most powerful you that you can be.

So let’s see how this works.

Getting good sleep is one of the most important things we can do, not just for muscle building and fat loss but for our mood, energy levels, and overall health.

Sleep is when our body is able to recover and repair cells, a lack of it even affects our aging process, speeding it up internally, as well as visibly causing wrinkles and sagging skin.

During the first few hours of deep sleep is when many hormones, including growth hormone and IGF (major fat-burning hormone) are released.

Getting enough sleep also helps to keep cortisol levels lower and balance estrogen, testosterone, progesterone and thyroid.

So if we want a lean, toned or muscled body, then we need deep sleep every night for full recovery, muscle building, natural fat loss and hormonal balance.

Yet a third of Americans get poor sleep, and those with the worst sleep generally have poor health.

So what causes this and what can we do to not only get better, deeper, more refreshing sleep, but also to reverse the effects of poor sleep?

Let’s dive in and see.

We’re entering Week Three of the Lean Body/Lean Bulk Challenge!

If we are doing the Lean Body program, we should be slimming down and added muscle should be toning and shaping our body.

If we’re doing the Lean Bulk portion, we should also be reducing body fat while increasing overall lean muscle.

But this is largely due to our hormonal balance improving, allowing our body to utilize the nutrients we’re consuming for what we want and not for what we don’t want.

We’ve already covered how high Cortisol hinders fat loss and slows muscle growth. As well as how Growth Hormone, Testosterone and IGF help to speed fat loss and muscle growth.

But there is another aspect to this balancing act: Estrogen, Progesterone and Thyroid.

These hormones exist in both women and men, and are each necessary in proper amounts.

But when they go out of balance, they can create a vicious spiral that raises cortisol and cravings for junk food, lowers growth hormone, testosterone and IGF, and make gains much harder all around.

This is a longer article, but one of the most important. It hasn’t been cut up into individual articles only because each part needs to be examined with each other part.

And

So let’s take a look at what’s happening here.

In the last article we covered cortisol, a hormone which, among other things, acts to break down our muscle, breaking down the proteins in it into amino acids, and then converting them energy sources such as sugar and body fat.

At the same time, it holds onto body fat and acts to raise body fat levels, while also preventing protein synthesis for new muscle growth.

But it also lowers key muscle building and fat loss hormones such as testosterone, growth hormone and IGF (our major fat burning hormone)

So let’s cover what those are and how to maximize their production and use within the body for best results.

As we go through this challenge, our hormones are balancing to allow for maximum muscle building and swifter fat loss.

So I want to cover the points that can either prevent muscle gain, or slow it, and the things that allow us to maximize muscle gain and fat loss, and speed recovery from workouts.

And the first thing we’re going to cover is what slows muscle gain, or out-right prevents it, by slowing the protein synthesis necessary for the recovery, repair and building of lean muscle.

As we enter Week Two, cravings for junk food or processed sugars should be lowering or gone.

And you may not have added much in the way of muscle yet.

That’s fine, you’ve just started and it will come. Right now we’re dialing things in and balancing hormones for muscle building and body fat regulation.

You also may have found it hard to eat all of the natural proteins on the protocol. But this protein is necessary.

Building muscle is about injuring our muscles by putting more pressure on them than they’re used to so they’ll be forced to not only heal, but grow to accommodate the new levels of stress we’ve put on them.

It takes about 90g of pure protein to build a pound of muscle. Most of the rest is fat and water. A pound of muscle is about the size of a tangerine, so even one pound is noticeable if in the right places.

So we need to make sure we’re getting enough protein to not only heal and maintain the muscle we do have, but add to it.

If you’re having trouble getting in all the protein, first, make sure you’re taking your digestive enzymes. Most people’s digestive tracts are not set up to fully digest natural proteins anymore due to our diets. But this prevents us from getting the nutrition we need from this food.