The fitness industry sells you 2 options. Natural, or on steroids. One of those makes you clean and the other makes you dirty, and crossing the line makes you a cheat.
That binary is a marketing device, and it kept me trapped for 18 years. I trained strict natural from 12 to 30. The physique I built needed 2 hours in the gym a day and 7 prepared meals to exist, and it came apart during any week that did not allow both. Then at 30 I ran a cycle, and the question that has driven my work ever since was how to hold that new level without running cycles forever.
The answer was not 1 option or the other. It was a ladder with 5 rungs on it, and the middle 3 are the ones nobody had mapped. Better Than Natural calls that ladder the Natty Spectrum, and the space in the middle Natural Plus.
Level 1: Strict natty
Creatine, protein powder, amino acids. Minimal hormonal influence. This is what most people mean by natural, and it works, slowly, incompletely, with a ceiling that effort does not break.
Level 1 is where everybody starts, and the training and nutrition habits built here carry all the way up the ladder. It stops being a virtue at the point where you keep paying for it and stop getting anything back.
Level 2: Classic Natural Plus
Tongkat ali, fadogia, ashwagandha, zinc, herbal testosterone support. Mild but measurable results, and the entry point for a man who wants his own hormones optimised before touching a research chemical.
Level 2 is where I send anybody who has never used anything and is curious but cautious. Run 1 testosterone support product for 30 days. Get bloodwork before and after. You want to see what your own body does with the smallest intervention available, on paper, before you form an opinion about anything stronger. A man who cannot be bothered to draw 2 panels 30 days apart should not be running Level 3.
Level 3: Advanced Natural Plus
This is the core protocol, and it is where the dramatic results start. AC-262, MK-677, GW-501516, SLIN, enclomiphene, BPC-157. Non-suppressive SARMs, growth hormone secretagogues, metabolic enhancers and peptides, with zero hormonal suppression.
The Level 3 stack as the book runs it: AC-262 at 20 mg daily, continuous. A testosterone support product daily, continuous. MK-677 at 10 mg for 5 consecutive days a week, which manages the appetite increase. GW-501516 at 10 mg, 3 weeks on and 1 week off. SLIN at 4 pills a day with carb meals.
Each one has a job. AC-262 supplies the anabolic signal without shutting down your own production. The testosterone support raises your natural output to feed that signal. MK-677 raises growth hormone and IGF-1, which is a second growth pathway and most of the recovery benefit. GW-501516 handles fat oxidation and lipids. SLIN partitions the extra calories the MK-677 appetite brings in, so the surplus builds muscle instead of fat.
The results the book reports come from roughly 25 clients run on exactly that protocol, tracked over time. Average across the group: about 2 pounds of muscle gained and 2 pounds of fat lost per month, testosterone raised about 20 percent on bloodwork, HDL up, triglycerides down, insulin sensitivity improved. The only side effect reported was the increased hunger from MK-677.
That is an observational case series, run by me, on my own clients, with no control group, no blinding and no randomisation. Real people, real panels, direct experience, and a design that cannot rule out expectation. Gap, stated rather than papered over: no randomised controlled trial of this compound combination exists, and I could not retrieve one. What would settle it is a controlled trial with a matched group running training and nutrition alone. I report it because 25 tracked men with before and after bloodwork is worth more than an opinion, and less than a trial.
For most people, Level 3 is the whole answer. A plateaued natural lifter lives here. So does an older man with age-related decline, where enclomiphene does the hormonal work by stimulating your own LH and FSH instead of replacing testosterone from outside, which is why it raises testosterone while keeping sperm production intact [1]. I wrote a fuller protocol on enclomiphene as the alternative that leaves you fertile, because that single compound is what makes Level 3 viable for men who would otherwise be pushed straight to Level 4.
Level 4: Enhanced Natural Plus
Everything in Level 3, plus low-dose testosterone replacement at 100 to 200 mg a week.
This rung crosses into hormonal territory, and the book is direct that it does. You are now suppressing your own production and accepting the monitoring that comes with it. My own protocol lives here, at a higher testosterone dose than the 100 to 200 mg the book gives as the Level 4 range, because I have been on testosterone for most of the last 13 years and my natural production and fertility are already suppressed.
That is also the part of my own history I would change. The compounds that make Level 3 work did not exist when I planned my entry at 30. There were no effective natural testosterone support products and no non-suppressive SARMs. If I were 30 today with what is available today, I would have stayed at Level 3 for years longer before crossing this line. You get to make that choice with information I did not have.
The ladder carries a contradiction at this rung, and it is worth naming. Rule 2 of Natural Plus is zero hormonal suppression. Level 4 suppresses. The book squares it by treating Natural Plus as the permanent base and testosterone as an addition sitting on top of it rather than a replacement for it. That framing happens to describe exactly where I live, so weigh it with that in mind.
Level 5: Full enhancement
Traditional steroid cycles, high-dose androgens, insulin. Maximum results, and side effect management as a permanent job.
Level 5 produces physiques that Level 3 cannot. What it also produces is the cycle, and the crash, and the months spent rebuilding what left when the cycle ended. If you want that conversation held honestly by someone who has coached it for a decade, with the risks left in rather than edited out, Coach Trevor has been answering it on camera since 2016.
What Natural Plus does for a Level 5 athlete is act as the floor. Instead of losing a chunk of your progress between blasts, the Natural Plus base keeps you anti-catabolic and keeps nutrient partitioning in your favour, so your physique never drops below that elevated baseline.
The 5 rules that decide what gets on the ladder
A compound does not join Natural Plus because it works. It joins because it passes 5 tests.
1. Healthier than natural. Every compound must improve a health marker. It has to be healthier to take the protocol than to skip it. 2. Zero hormonal suppression. If it suppresses the hypothalamic-pituitary-testicular axis, it belongs on Level 4 or 5, not in the Natural Plus base. 3. Sustainable forever. If you cannot run it for the rest of your life, it is not Natural Plus. No on and off. No cycles. 4. Measurable health improvement. Lipids improve, insulin sensitivity improves, inflammatory markers come down, testosterone rises. If the panel does not confirm it, the protocol gets adjusted. 5. Accessible and legal. Research chemicals, dietary supplements and non-scheduled substances, available without a prescription in most places.
Rule 3 is the one that reorganises how you think about all of this. A cycle is a loan. You take the muscle now and hand back a portion when you come off. The Natural Plus base has no end date, so what it builds accumulates instead of returning.
Where you belong
Never used anything and cautious: Level 2, 30 days, bloodwork on both ends. Plateaued and unwilling to suppress yourself: Level 3. Over 40 with declining hormones: Level 3 with enclomiphene. Already on testosterone and tired of the roller coaster: Level 4, with the Natural Plus stack as the permanent floor underneath it. Running full cycles: Level 5, with Level 3 as the bridge between them.
The mistake is assuming the only jump available is Level 1 to Level 5. 3 rungs sit in between, and for most men the third one is as far up as they will ever need to go.
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From the book: This article is drawn from Part III, Chapter 6, The Natural Plus Protocol and the Natty Spectrum. The chapter carries the full Level 3 compound table, the 25-client case series in detail, and the age-reversal protocol for men and women over 40.
Sources
- Earl JA, 2019, Expert Review of Endocrinology and Metabolism, PMID 31063005
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