On this protocol you will be lifting 5 days per week.

As this protocol is very specific to building lean muscle and toning, there will mainly be weight lifting.

There will also be something called Zone 2 Cardio, which will not cause muscle loss, but other than that there is no cardio during this challenge.

If you would like to take a walk, that’s fine. But adding in other forms of cardio could hamper your progress.

And it’s only 30 days.

Okay, let’s run through a few key points and then jump into the workouts.

On this protocol you will be lifting 5-6 days per week.

As this protocol is very specific to building lean muscle and toning, there will mainly be weight lifting.

There will also be something called Zone 2 Cardio, which will not cause muscle loss, but other than that there is no cardio during this challenge unless you have extra energy for Day 6.

But if you really want to build muscle, extra cardio is not recommended.

If you would like to take a walk, that’s fine. But adding in other forms of cardio could hamper your progress.

And it’s only 30 days.

Okay, let’s run through a few key points and then jump into the workouts.

Welcome to the fully updated Lean Body/Lean Bulk Guide & 30-Day Challenge!

This guide and the accompanying protocol aim to achieve one of a few things, depending on what your goals are.

You may just want to attain a lean, toned and shaped body. An hourglass shape for women or a V-shape for men. This is the Lean Body portion of the protocol.

You may want to build significant lean muscle without adding excess body fat that has to be worked off afterwards through cutting or fasting.

Or you may what to achieve something somewhere in between.

That’s fine. This protocol was designed to be tailored to you — where you are at now and where you want to be — so you can achieve your goals.

But this isn’t just a program where you count calories and workout.

No.

If we want to build lean muscle without the excess body fat of bulking, or attain a lean, toned and shaped body and keep it, we need to do more that.

We need to look at digestion, cravings, recovery, sleep, energy levels, blood flow and hormones.

Bulking and Cutting has been around for decades now.

We work out hard, we count our macros, and eat and eat and eat.

And we build lots of muscle.

But at the same time that we’re building muscle, we also build body fat. And we build each at about the same rate, a pound of muscle for a pound of fat.

Then we do a cut, cutting back on our calories, and in some cases starving ourselves (which is never necessary), and do a lot of extra cardio — running, biking, sprints, etc. — all to lose that extra body fat we gained.

And hopefully we don’t lose too much of our muscle gains in the process.

Now, I have no problem if someone enjoys that. Many people do. But many others don’t.

And the thing is, it isn’t necessary.

At all.

If you’d like to build lean muscle without the excess body fat, either to build significant muscle or just to tone your body, and all while raising your overall health, energy levels and mood, then the Lean Body/Lean Bulk Protocol is for you.

Happy New Year to everyone!

2025 was quite a year. It had its ups and downs, things we meant to accomplish and things we did.

But now we're in 2026.

And it's time to start something new.

Time to take control of our lives, control of our health and control of our goals.

Every year we make New Year's Resolutions for our careers, our personal lives and our health.

And sometimes we keep them and sometimes we don't.

The desire for improvement is there, but something always seems to get in the way. We start strong and then fizzle out.

But why don’t we keep them? What stops us? And how can we change that this year?

As with anything effective, it's simpler that you think. And when doing it this way, the results are much more lasting.

Let's dive in.

Did you know that the type of food we eat, and how it affects our hormones, is more important than how many calories we eat?

Ask anyone about bulking and cutting, or losing weight, and they'll bring up calories and macronutrients.

“You have to count your calories and eat more than you need to build muscle, or eat less than you need to burn fat.”

And that's true… to a degree.

But there's more to it. Much more. And if you just follow the above, you'll more than likely miss your goals.

Yes, we need to measure the amount of calories to make sure we get enough energy, but not too much. And we need to make sure we get enough protein, fats, and carbohydrates so we can build muscle and have energy to power us through the day.

But which proteins, fats, and carbs? And how do they affect the hormones that will determine how they're used?

Because it's our hormones that decide how these foods will be used in our body.

Will these foods trigger fat loss hormones, or fat gain hormones? Will they trigger muscle growth hormones, or muscle loss hormones?

This is key to attaining and keeping a lean, muscled body.

So let's dive in and see how this all works.

Did you know low levels of thyroid can bring on not only low energy and weight gain, but even affect mood and mental sharpness?

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.

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

Before we cover what actually causes Heart disease, I want to cover something that doesn’t, or at least not in the way most people think: cholesterol.

You’ve probably heard of the Cholesterol Hypothesis.

This hypothesis states that higher levels of cholesterol, particularly LDL Cholesterol, are associated with higher rates of Heart Disease.

To prevent heart disease then, we take drugs known as statins that lower our liver’s ability to produce cholesterol.

This hypothesis has been so deeply ingrained in our understanding of how the body works, that the idea of challenging it is almost laughable. (Even though it’s still just a hypothesis after all this time.)

However, over the last decade, more and more scientists and doctors have been doing just that, and for one very glaring reason: there is no evidence to support the hypothesis.

Let's see what's happening here.

What speeds up the aging process and what can we do about it?

There is something called accelerated aging, where aging happens years or decades before it should. And it’s becoming more and more common.

In this article we’re going to dive into exactly what causes accelerated aging, especially aging in our 30’s, 40’s, 50’s… and even our 20’s.

We’re going to cover exactly what is happening to our cells, what is doing this, how this affects aging, and what we can do to prevent it.

Someone born in 1950 started out life receiving 50 times less toxins going into their bodies than a child today. Their mother had grown up receiving even less than that and so had less to pass onto them before birth as well.

And they grew up on this much smaller toxic load.

So the amount of toxins injuring or destroying cells was much less.

But now look at where we are today — 50 times as many chemicals as we had then, and many of them are much more toxic.

These very definitely have an affect on our health. In some cases it’s quite obvious, but in most cases it’s something we don’t notice, because it happens over time.

In the last article we covered what the microbiome is, a colony of trillions of bacteria in our colon, and how it affects every aspect of our health, our hormones, our longevity and the ability to build muscle and stay fit.

These bacteria also produce or help to produce neurotransmitters in our body, such as Serotonin and GABA, which calm and relax us, de-stress us and allow us to fall asleep.

In this article we’re going to cover how the number of toxins coming into our body, which increases every year, affects these bacteria.

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.