If we want to slim down while gaining lean muscle or toning our muscles, we need to address our hormones. 

This is because achieving hormonal balance allows our body to fully and correctly utilize the nutrients we’re consuming for what we do 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 makes fat loss and muscle gains much harder all around.

Bulking and Cutting has been around for decades now.

We workout hard, we count our macros and eat and eat and eat, and 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, of course, we 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, this isn’t necessary.

At all.

Those are some big claims in that title.

And how could they be true when we have statements like:

“BCAAs stimulate the building of protein in muscle and possibly reduce muscle breakdown.”

“Valine is needed for your muscle fibers to fire, for tissue repair, and for the maintenance of proper nitrogen balance in the body.”

“Leucine stimulates muscle protein synthesis and may be the dominant fuel involved in anabolic (tissue building) reactions.”

Well, unfortunately, the claims in the title of this article are true.

They come from research studies done on BCAAs, while the above quoted statements come from marketers.

BCAAs, or Branched Chain Amino Acids, taken on their own regularly and over time, can have a significant effect on body fat creation, muscle gain reduction, kidney trouble, type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and obesity.

And it's becoming quite a problem. Just google "BCAAs side effects" or "BCAAs and Type 2 Diabetes" and you'll find much more than you wanted to.

But how can they say these things and how does this all work?

Let's dig in and see.

As of today, about 42% of Americans are considered clinically obese. This is a large rise from the 1970’s when only about 10% were.

To combat this, recently, many have turned to the medication, Ozempic. This is a medication originally approved for the treatment of diabetes, but which has shown results in lowering appetite and blood sugar levels, and so allowing for loss of body fat.

However, it works by bypassing the body’s natural systems and in some cases lowering the body’s ability to naturally perform these actions as the body gets used to receiving it.

And, for some, it can come with severe side effects to one degree or another: increased risk of heart attack, bowel obstruction, gallstones, thyroid cancer, vision loss, muscle loss and weak or brittle bones especially for those in their 40’s, 50’s and 60’s, and severe stomach paralysis.

Not to mention the possible permanent lowering of digestive ability once off of Ozempic, along the return of the body fat lost, if the situation that originally brought about the obesity has not been addressed.

So understanding this medication, how it works inside our body, what it can and can’t do, its long term side-effects, and what to do if you intend to take it or already are is quite important.

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.

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.