  Novel techniques are presented, which identify the power-counting regime
(PCR) of chiral effective field theory, and allow the use of lattice quantum
chromodynamics results that extend outside the PCR. By analyzing the
renormalization of low-energy coefficients of the chiral expansion of the
nucleon mass, the existence of an optimal regularization scale is realized. The
techniques developed for the nucleon mass renormalization are then applied to a
test case: performing a chiral extrapolation without prior phenomenological
bias. The robustness of the procedure for obtaining an optimal regularization
scale and performing a reliable chiral extrapolation is confirmed. The
procedure developed is then applied to the magnetic moment and the electric
charge radius of the nucleon. The consistency of the results for the value of
the optimal regularization scale provides strong evidence for the existence of
an intrinsic energy scale in the nucleon-pion interaction.
