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 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.

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.

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.

Aging is a natural process.

Over time, as the stem cells we're born with become used up, our body is less and less able to regenerate itself.

But then there is premature aging, where this process happens years or decades before it should. And while this is definitely not natural, unfortunately, it’s becoming more and more common.

In this article 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.

There is something that accelerates aging by destroying our cells so that our stem cells are needed to produce new cells more often than they should, thus accelerating our biological aging process and making us “old” before our time.

And Leaky Gut is one of the largest causes behind it.

There is an idea that if we have GERD, Heartburn or Acid Reflux, this means we have too much stomach acid.

Due to this, many people take stomach acid neutralizers or acid blockers, known as PPIs, to make their stomach less acidic and calm it down.

However, these only give a temporary solution, and in the long term actually make the problem worse.

This is because it’s not high levels of stomach acid that cause acid reflux and GERD, but the exact opposite — too little stomach acid.

This is an example of only addressing the symptom instead of the cause, allowing the cause to continue on, slowly worsening over time.

This lessened stomach acid leads to foods, especially proteins, not being fully broken down into a form our bodies can use. So we don’t get the nutrients we need, no matter how much we eat.

And, harmful bacteria are allowed to take root in our stomach and intestines, raising cortisol levels, lowering energy levels, stealing nutrients needed by the cells, preventing muscle gain, causing sugar cravings and more.

And, of course, we get GERD, Acid Reflux, Gas and Bloating.

So lets see what’s happening here.

In another article we covered what SIBO is, how it comes about, what feeds it, and how it creates cravings for sugar and other junk foods, preventing fat loss and causing low energy levels.

But there is another aspect to SIBO which has more destructive and far-reaching effects.

There is something called Leaky Gut, where there are actual microscopic perforations in the intestinal lining that is meant to protect our internal organs from the harmful bacteria, parasites and toxins coming in through our digestive tract.

And it's behind a significant number of physical conditions common today, from hormonal imbalances, stress and poor sleep, to liver and kidney trouble, heart trouble, skin issues and even premature aging.

So let's see what it is and what SIBO has to do with it.