You may or may not have lifted weights before, but on this protocol you will be lifting 5 days per week.

This is key as it helps you build muscle that both tones your body, but also speeds fat-burning, cellular restructuring, and hormone rebalancing. And the more muscle you have by the end of this challenge, the easier it will be to keep excess body fat off.

As this protocol is very specific, there will only be weight lifting — no running or other forms of cardio. If you would like to take a walk, that’s fine. But adding in other forms of cardio will hamper your progress and may cause you trouble. And it’s only 30 days.

Your workouts will be very simple. So even if you know more that you could do, for this challenge just stick to the below. The protocol and amount of food you will be consuming was determined thinking with this level of activity, not more.

Now we’re going to dive into the exact foods, supplements and protocols you’ll be following during the challenge. 

On this protocol we’ll only be consuming whole foods — no packaged, processed foods or processed sugars, not because of how many calories they have, but because of what they do to our hormones, making it harder to lose fat and keep it off.

There will be no protein bars, protein powders, or collagen powders. These will only get in our way on this protocol.

We need real foods and they need to be organic. We need real fruits, real vegetables and real meats — organic and grass-fed.

You will also be consuming more protein than you are used to and most likely will not be up to that at the very beginning. This is because the amounts of processed sugar and foods, and lack of enough protein that most people have had for decades, have lowered most people’s ability to fully digest proteins.

You've probably heard of calorie counting. It's something you're told you must do on any diet to lose body fat. 

And this is true.

But there's much more to it than that.

Because if you only did calorie restriction, and addressed nothing else, you'd most likely fail at the diet, or, if you made it through, you'd almost certainly gain it all right back again. 

So, while we'll start this article with calorie counting, make sure you read all the way through, because it's just the tip of the iceberg. 

Let's begin.

Welcome to the Guide to Sustainable Fat Loss & 30-Day Challenge!

If you’ve ever had trouble losing weight, or keeping it off afterwards, this guide and challenge are for you.

This isn’t some quick fix to help you lose weight fast only to gain it all back again, or some miracle product that helps you lose weight but also harms you in some other way.

No, this is a very exact protocol that addresses the reasons you gained the weight in the first place, why it’s so hard to lose it, and why it’s so easy to gain it back again once you have lost it.

Even more, once you’ve lost the weight on this challenge, you will be in a position to easily keep it off, because you will know exactly what caused it in the first place.

If you’ve ever had trouble with diets, losing fat, or simply keeping the weight off, let’s start by saying…

It’s not you.

Let me say that one more time in case you didn't get it.

It’s. Not. You.

Period.

Every year, over a hundred million Americans make New Year’s Resolutions.

And, there’s one resolution made more often than any of the others: the goal to lose weight.

It’s also the one that’s given up on the fastest.

Why is that the case?

It’s summer time, and if you plan on getting out into the woods or into the mountains, then it’s important you know how to spot ticks and remove them, or prevent them from getting onto you in the first place.

Because their bite can potentially carry harmful bacteria that causes Lyme Disease, Spotted Fever, and a series of other illnesses.

This doesn’t mean you need to be scared at all. Far from it. 

It just means that you need to be informed.

You need to know what they look like, where to look for them, and what to do if you find one.

Or, better yet, how to prevent them from getting onto you in the first place so you can have a safe adventure and enjoy the outdoors without worry.

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.

As 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.

Yet a third of Americans get poor sleep.

What causes this and what can we do about it to not only get better, deeper sleep, but reverse the effects of poor sleep?

If you’re reading this page, it’s likely that you’ve seen our claims for PerfectAmino Essential Amino Acids; and that you may have a few questions about them.

The first claim is that not all proteins are equal. That different proteins, once digested and absorbed, provide our bodies with different amounts of usable protein, gram for gram. 

The second claim is that the idea that we receive 4 calories for every gram of protein we consume is a misconception. And that it indicates a broader lack of understanding of what calories are outside of the scientific community, and what they have to do with muscle gain, energy, and body fat. 

We’ll do our best to answer those claims here.

As we enter Week Three of the Lean Bulk Challenge, our hormones are balancing to allow for maximum muscle building and swifter fat loss. 

So this week 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.

So make sure you’re pushing hard in your workouts and lifting heavy, because we want to build as much lean muscle as we can now.

In both women and men, estrogen exists and is necessary.

But when estrogen levels rise too high, it can unbalance other hormones.

This not only causes excess body fat to be built, which can be hard to remove, it lowers key muscle building hormones as well — testosterone and growth hormone.

And it lowers levels of the hormone thyroid, which regulates our metabolism.

Your digestive tract’s ability to fully digest and absorb protein determines, in large part, your body's ability to build muscle and lose body fat.

When protein isn’t properly digested, this triggers a sequence of actions, involving our immune system, which leads to inflammation in the body and higher levels of cortisol, the hormone that prevents fat loss and breaks down muscle.

But also, without full digestion, our body receives less of the protein we consume in a form it can actually use.

As we enter Week Two of the Lean Bulk, 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.