🧭 I'm starting from scratch
4 mechanistic pathways · 40 options
If you're new here, start on this page and not on a peptide. Nearly every disappointing result in the research space traces back to something on this list being missing — you cannot out-signal a magnesium deficiency, and a GH secretagogue does very little for someone sleeping five hours. The honest ranking: sleep, protein, training and sunlight beat everything below. What's here is the supplement layer that supports them, roughly in order of how likely it is to matter for a given person.
The pathways
The short list — highest probability of mattering
These are the ones where deficiency is common, the consequences are real, and correction reliably changes something. If you only take four things, take these.
Micronutrient insurance
A multivitamin is not a health intervention — it is a hedge against the gaps in an imperfect diet. The evidence for multivitamins improving outcomes in well-fed people is weak; the evidence that specific deficiencies cause real problems is overwhelming. Those are compatible positions.
Ready-made stacks by goal
Bundles trade precision for simplicity. They are a reasonable starting point when you don't yet know what you respond to, and something to grow out of once you do.
Test before you guess
The single highest-return move in this entire Vault is a blood panel. Half the things people take speculatively are correcting a deficiency they don't have, and a third of what would actually help them is invisible without a test.
Test before you choose a pathway
Every route below can be argued for on mechanism. Only bloodwork tells you which one is actually your problem — and picking the wrong pathway is the most common reason someone concludes "none of this works". Across all 4 pathways, these are the 15 markers worth having in front of you first.
Ordered together:
✅ The Basics — Start Here🥬 Full Micronutrient ScreenWhat actually decides this outcome, in order of size
Starting from scratch means the ranking matters more here than anywhere else on the site, and the top of it is not for sale. The order below is by effect size on all-cause outcomes, which is the only ranking that survives not knowing what is wrong with you yet.
- Not smoking, and alcohol under a few units a week. No supplement on this site moves an outcome by the amount either of these does, and both are free.
- Activity, and the first hour is worth the most. A pooled analysis of 661,137 adults found 20% lower mortality even below the recommended minimum, and 37% lower at 2 to 3 times the minimum, a hazard ratio of 0.63 (95% CI 0.62 to 0.65) Arem 2015. The curve is steepest between zero and something, which is exactly where somebody starting from scratch is standing.
- Sleep, treated as a condition rather than a habit. Across 37 studies, cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia put 36.0% of patients into remission against 16.9% of controls, a pooled odds ratio of 3.28 (95% CI 2.30 to 4.68, P<0.001) Wu 2015. Nothing sold on this page has an odds ratio like that for sleep.
- Protein and resistance training, together. Muscle is the largest glucose sink in the body and the tissue that sets basal metabolic rate; the mTOR-driven synthesis response needs both the mechanical stimulus and roughly 1.6 g/kg/day of protein to express itself. Whey Protein (RecoveryPro) is a convenience, not a lever.
- Correcting an actual deficiency. Measurable, cheap, and the one place a supplement carries a real effect size.
- Everything else, including most of this site. In 25,871 adults, 2000 IU/day of vitamin D3 produced a cancer hazard ratio of 0.96 (95% CI 0.88 to 1.06, P=0.47) Manson 2019, and across 51,145 adults calcium or vitamin D was not associated with lower fracture incidence Zhao 2017. Those are honest ceilings, and they belong on the first page a beginner reads.
The order to run these in, and what has to be true first
Four pathways sit under this goal and they are not parallel. Run them in this order and the fourth one usually gets shorter.
- Measure before you buy anything. Test before you guess is the pathway that pays for itself. A Complete Blood Count (CBC) with Differential, a Comprehensive Metabolic Panel (CMP), a Lipid Panel (Cholesterol, HDL, LDL, Triglycerides) with ApoB (Apolipoprotein B), hs-CRP (High-Sensitivity C-Reactive Protein), Vitamin D (25-Hydroxy), Ferritin and TSH (Thyroid-Stimulating Hormone) answers most of the questions the rest of the site asks.
- Then the short list, which is four things. Creatine at 3 to 5 g/day is the most evidence-dense supplement in the Vault and its commonest objection is a laboratory artefact rather than a kidney problem, because creatine loading raises serum creatinine without changing glomerular filtration Longobardi 2023. Vitamin D where 25(OH)D says so, Omega-3 (Fish Oil) against a diet with no oily fish, Magnesium where intake tracks a processed diet.
- Then the hedge, for what is left. Micronutrient insurance covers what a blend can and cannot do. It is third, not first, because a blend cannot correct a deficiency it only maintains.
- Bundles and stacks last. Foundation Bundle and the ready-made stacks are a packaging decision, not a mechanistic one. They are the right purchase once you know which pathway is yours and the wrong one before, because a stack you cannot decompose is a stack you cannot titrate against a marker.
What gets bought for this that cannot move it
No stack substitutes for the top three lines of the ranking above. A reader sleeping 5 hours and training zero times a week who buys a bundle has bought the sixth-largest lever and left the first three untouched. The pooled activity data spans 661,137 people Arem 2015 and the insomnia data 37 randomized trials Wu 2015; nothing in the Vault has a denominator like that.
A bundle bought before a blood draw is a bet on which deficiency you have. Fifty dollars of testing rules in or out four of the commonest ones. Fifty dollars of supplements rules out nothing and leaves you unable to attribute any change to any component.
Peptides are the wrong first purchase, however interesting. Most of the injectable half of this site is graded theoretical for the goal it is filed under, needs reconstitution, subcutaneous administration and a fridge, and answers a question you cannot yet ask because you have no baseline. The compounds are not the problem; the sequence is.
And if you cannot name the goal at all, this is not the page. Twenty-one goals and 100 pathways do not help somebody who cannot pick one. The goals index exists for that, and it offers a paid fifteen minutes precisely because a question you can name but not answer is not a supplement problem.
How you would know it was working, on a real read-out and a real timescale
A beginner needs read-outs that move on a timescale short enough to keep them going, and a couple that do not, so that the slow ones are not mistaken for failure.
- Vitamin D (25-Hydroxy) at 8 to 12 weeks. 25(OH)D has a half-life around 2 to 3 weeks, so steady state on a new dose needs four to five of them. Roughly 1 ng/mL per 100 IU/day.
- hs-CRP (High-Sensitivity C-Reactive Protein) at 12 weeks, and only as a trend. Interleukin-6 drives hepatic CRP synthesis, so any infection inside the preceding fortnight makes the value uninterpretable. Two readings 3 months apart with no illness between them is the minimum honest comparison.
- ApoB (Apolipoprotein B) at 12 weeks, not Lipid Panel (Cholesterol, HDL, LDL, Triglycerides) alone. ApoB counts one particle per molecule, so it does not care about the triglyceride content that makes calculated LDL-C unreliable above 400 mg/dL. Diet and activity move it inside a single hepatic turnover of about 3 to 5 days, but the measurement noise needs 12 weeks to beat.
- HbA1c (Hemoglobin A1c) at 12 weeks, because of the red cell. Glycated hemoglobin integrates glucose over the 120-day erythrocyte lifespan and weights the most recent 30 days most heavily. Retesting at 6 weeks measures the old red cells.
- Ferritin at 12 weeks where it was low. Stores refill ahead of the Complete Blood Count (CBC) with Differential, so ferritin is the early signal and hemoglobin the late one.
What will fool you. The first 4 weeks of any change produce a response that is mostly attention, and the first 2 kg of any weight change is mostly glycogen and its bound water at roughly 3 g of water per gram of glycogen. Judge the numbers, not the fortnight.
Sources read for these sections
- Arem H. Leisure time physical activity and mortality: a detailed pooled analysis of the dose-response relationship. JAMA Internal Medicine 2015;175(6):959-67 · PMID 25844730
- Wu JQ, et al. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia Comorbid With Psychiatric and Medical Conditions: A Meta-analysis. JAMA Internal Medicine 2015;175(9):1461-72 · PMID 26147487
- Manson JE, et al. Vitamin D Supplements and Prevention of Cancer and Cardiovascular Disease. The New England Journal of Medicine, 2019 · PMID 30415629
- Zhao JG, et al. Association Between Calcium or Vitamin D Supplementation and Fracture Incidence in Community-Dwelling Older Adults: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. JAMA, 2017 · PMID 29279934
- Longobardi I, et al. Is It Time for a Requiem for Creatine Supplementation-Induced Kidney Failure? A Narrative Review. Nutrients 2023 · PMID 36986197
You have the pathways. Here is the stack.
The Foundations Blueprint names the one compound I would start with in each of these 4 pathways, what it was chosen over, and why — plus 20 options to swap in or stack on top, every one of them priced and linked.
Open The Foundations Blueprint →You know the goal. Skool has the plan.
Every pathway above is one arm of The I'm starting from scratch Blueprint. The members' version has the sequence they run in, what stacks with what, and the markers that tell you to keep going or stop — alongside the Bloodwork Protocols.
Open The I'm starting from scratch Blueprint in Skool →$10/mo, cancel anytime.
← Open I'm starting from scratch in the interactive Vault · All 21 goals
Frequently asked questions
This goal is broken into 4 distinct mechanistic pathways — The short list — highest probability of mattering; Micronutrient insurance; Ready-made stacks by goal; Test before you guess — across 40 compounds and supplements. Each pathway is a different argument about how the body gets there, so the useful question is which one matches where you are actually stuck.
The one that matches your actual limitation, which bloodwork usually settles faster than guessing. An appetite drug does nothing for someone who already undereats, and a thyroid intervention does nothing if your thyroid is fine. Each pathway page lists the markers that tell you whether it is your problem.
No. The 4 pathways are listed in mechanistic order, not by strength of evidence, and neither are the 40 options inside them. A lot of what works in this space has never had the trial run, and sorting by trial count would bury exactly the compounds you came looking for.
Where this goes next
Everything above is the free case for I'm starting from scratch. The protocol — the dosing, the order to correct things in, the week-by-week schedule and what to retest — is a lesson inside Skool.