Welcome to the 30-Day Fat Loss Challenge!

By now you should have done your shopping, know what you’ll be making for meals (mostly), stocked up on minimally your PerfectAmino, Omega 3 and Digestive Enzymes, and be ready to go!

In this launch article we cover a few key things to think with when starting: How to address cravings that will come up, some important reminders and information, what metrics to use to measure progress and generally how to run the challenge.

Make sure to read this article fully before getting started!

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.

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

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 excess body fat, or keeping it off afterwards, this guide and challenge are for you.

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

No, this is a very exact protocol that addresses the reasons you gained the excess body fat 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.

It also addresses physical form, building up the muscle that helps to shape our body.

Even more, once you’ve lost the excess body fat 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?

We’ve all heard of candida, also known as a yeast overgrowth or thrush.

It’s a fungus that lives in the mouth, vagina, stomach and skin, and is usually harmless and kept in check with a healthy diet.

But when it becomes unbalanced, it can multiply uncontrollably, affecting many areas of the body and causing:

Stomach bloating, especially right after eating. This can feel like food is swishing around in our stomach instead of moving through.

It can occur in the mouth, causing creamy white patches or sores in the mouth or throat, redness, painful cracks at the corners of the mouth, loss of taste, or pain when eating or swallowing.

It can cause itching, soreness or burning in the vagina, white or yellow discharge, and stinging or burning when urinating.

It can affect our skin, causing a red rash with small, raised bumps (pustules), intense itching, a burning sensation, or a rash in skin folds.

And it can also spread to our heart, brain, eyes, bones, or joints, affecting us in various ways, noticeably in our energy levels or inflammatory response.

In short, it causes us real problems, both now, and even more in the long term. And they can be quite uncomfortable.

And, because of the currently available foods in the US, which are almost tailor-made to feed it, most of us have candida to one degree or another today, often without knowing it and without realizing that certain conditions are caused by it.

So let’s dive in and see what's happening here.

As we're in the Winter months, we wanted to provide a little information on how our immune system works and how you can prepare your body to stay as healthy as possible during this period.

Getting sick is never fun.

Our Immune System helps protect our body from harmful bacteria, viruses and toxins coming in. 

And, as there are certain things that can either bolster or weaken it, we wanted to share some key points to help make your holiday season one you can fully enjoy.

Let's dive in.

Everyone wants soft, healthy, firm skin. Especially as we get older.

This is so much the case that about $17 Billion is spent on skin care products yearly.

But much of these products, while providing results in the short term, actually cause worsening conditions over time, increasing the "need" to use them.

This is due, in many cases, to some very toxic ingredients used in many of them.

These include hormone disruptors, formaldehyde, chemicals also used as plastic softeners, carcinogens, allergens, solvents and even neurotoxins.

So, while these products may contain ingredients that seem to help on an immediate basis, over time many of them are causing the issues they claim to address.

Let’s see what's actually happening here and what we can do about it.

We’ve touched on how toxins affect our digestive tract and microbiome, and also how they lead to Leaky Gut and to our immune system mistaking healthy cells for harmful microbes that must be destroyed.

They cause an inflammatory response, both in our digestive tract and throughout our body over time.

They affect our hormones, energy levels, and mental focus. They make losing body fat and building muscle much harder due to increased cortisol levels.

And they speed the aging process, both internally and in our skin and overall appearance.

But now we’re going to dive deeper. And to give a real idea of how this works we're going to look at how one toxin, Glyphosate, affects us.

Glyphosate is the key ingredient in the herbicide Roundup, which is used on most major crops today.

This is a real problem, because it's one of the most toxic substances there is.

And due to its widespread use, it’s in almost all processed foods and non-organic meats.

And it plays a very large roll in the destruction of our digestive tract, microbiome and overall health, leading to Leaky Gut and some of the worst physical conditions there are.

So let’s dive in and see how this actually affects us and what we can do.

Did you know that the official measurement of what is considered to be normal testosterone levels has been lowered? 

It has. And this was done because the majority of men no longer fall into the earlier acceptable ranges. 

Their testosterone levels are too low. 

Why is this? What's happening? And why would they choose to lower the acceptable levels instead of addressing why they are lowering?

In this article we talk about what testosterone does in the body, largely from the view of its anti-aging effects, how lowering testosterone levels, not just in the elderly, speeds up our biological aging, and what is causing this.