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?

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.

Well done on completing the 30 Day Fat Loss Challenge!

This is no small achievement!

And 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 blood vessels, where it can thicken our blood, causing more work for our heart.

We’ve removed fatty deposits from our organs such as our liver and kidney, where it can make them less efficient or prevent them from doing their job. (Not good.)

We’ve built lean muscle and, at least to a degree, changed our body form.

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

And we've set ourselves up, if we maintain our current lifestyle, for not only sustainable fat loss, but a long and healthy life.

In short… we’ve done a lot!

But what do we do now?

Are we done? Are we not done? Is there something else to help lose those last stubborn bits for the lean toned body we want?

Let's see.

Welcome to the final week of the 30-Day Fat Loss Challenge!

During this challenge we’ve had our ups and downs as cravings came and went and hormones began to balance.

But by Week Four things have evened out or soon will.

Energy levels rise, mood may become more even, sleep becomes more restful, digestion improves, and overall health rises.

And, of course, we’ve lost a significant amount of body fat.

Make sure to take new measurements to compare to your original measurements!

As always, if you need any help, be sure to reach out in the VIP Group so we can answer any questions and assist however we can.

But I want to quickly cover what’s happening in this final week.

There are two main things driving obesity rates in America today, the exact things which make it easy to gain body fat and hard to lose it: processed sugars… and soy- and corn-based processed foods and meats.

Each of these increase cortisol levels more than almost anything else in our diet, and each for their own reasons.

We’ve already covered processed sugars.

Now let’s cover processed foods.

The use of corn and soy in our diet, and the diets of our cows and chickens, has grown steadily over the last hundred years.

But in the last several decades its use skyrocketed. And this is one of the key factors behind obesity rates in America today.

Today about 80% of what our livestock is fed is soy and corn. And corn and soy are also used as a base for almost all processed foods.

But while they are high in carbohydrates, and that increases body fat creation, they’re also high in something else: Omega 6 fatty acids.

And high omega 6 levels lead to high cortisol levels. And that leads to high body fat creation, high stress levels, poor sleep and recovery, and a host of other physical conditions now prevalent in society today.

Let’s dig in and see how this works.

As we near the end of the Fat Loss stage of this or any protocol, fat loss will slow.

We’re at or near our personal goal.

We might still have some extra fat, but it’s not coming off or it’s coming off very slowly — and frustratingly.

Also, we’re getting hungry. Not for sugar or junk food or more food when we’re already stuffed, but hunger as in our body needs more food.

At this point it’s counter-productive to carry on with Fat Loss, even if we have a bit more to lose.

Our hormones have re-balanced to the point that they’re functioning correctly.

Our cells have majorly restructured, cutting out their addiction to sugar, and becoming able to use fat and amino acids for energy more easily.

If this hadn’t happened, you wouldn’t have lost body fat.

But we’ve also built muscle, something that helped us with our fat loss and which is what will carry us over the finish line.

Now we’re into Week Four of the 30-Day Fat Loss Challenge and we need to pull back for a moment and see where we're at.

For some, if there was significant insulin resistance to overcome, we may still be getting over the last of our cravings.

For others, we’re past that, but our hormones are still re-balancing.

In either of these cases we’re losing body fat the whole way, but we have more to go and we should continue.

But depending on how much body fat we had to lose at the start of this, some of us may have already achieved our goals... or at least, fat loss has slowed and hunger has returned.

And we need to know what to do when we hit this point, whether now, or a few weeks from now.

Because carrying on with the same macros after this point will cause us trouble.

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.