The primary male sex hormone testosterone is the elixir of masculinity and is of vital importance for every man who wishes to live his life to its full potential.
In my article ‘TESTOSTERONE 101 – WHY EVERY MAN SHOULD HAVE HIGH TESTOSTERONE LEVELS’, I explain why testosterone is so important and why every man should care to maintain a healthy amount of testosterone flowing through his veins.
Loose from the fact that men with higher testosterone levels are perceived as more attractive to the opposite sex due to a combination of both physical and behavioral traits that are perceived as masculine and attractive, men with high testosterone levels are more driven and more eager to pursue and achieve their goals and dreams. Men with higher testosterone levels are hungrier for success and that manifests itself in their physique, their careers and finances and in their relationships with the opposite sex. That last one refers that men with high testosterone are more likely to have higher sex drives, are better in bed and are more likely to have more sexual partners compared to their lower testosterone counterparts.
Another crucial word of conviction as why to you should aim to raise your low testosterone levels and to maintain healthy testosterone levels throughout the rest of your life is because a healthy hormonal profile is your health insurance. I like to call your hormonal panel the barometer of your health. A healthy body will have good to optimal hormonal homeostasis. This homeostasis of being in an optimal hormonal environment can be created by living by making some easy lifestyle changes that will effortlessly balance things out and can be easily maintained for the rest of your life.
Don’t be mistaken, this doesn’t only apply to older men. A lot of young men these days also suffer from low testosterone due to big factors such as obesity, shitty nutritional habits, lack of exercise and the right type of exercise, excessive stress combined with sleep deprivation and of environmental factors that unfortunately for the most part cannot be controlled. Aging is inevitable for everyone, however, experiencing signs of low testosterone at any age is not an excuse. Men are able to maintain high testosterone levels well into their 70’s or even 80’s. This can be witnessed when the blood work of several older and younger tribesmen were checked. Research concluded that in primitive tribes, where older men were still active, lean and ate a natural diet with lots of micronutrients, had as much testosterone running through their veins as the younger men of the tribe.
Raising and maintaining high testosterone levels comes down to certain lifestyle factors that we unfortunately in the western world, follow the other way around. We’ve created a lifestyle for ourselves which is a hell for our hormones and therefore our health. Unless you were born with a medical issue in your brain or testis, you have no excuse to not take measure into your own hands and to naturally raise your testosterone levels and therefore improve your life’s quality and become a better version of yourself.
Here are 10 easy ways to follow to naturally raise your T levels and to maintain them throughout your whole life.
10 EASY WAYS TO RAISE TESTOSTERONE LEVELS
1 – LOSE EXCESSIVE BODY FAT
One of the very best things you can do for your hormones and overall health is to lose excessive body fat. Not only will you massively improve your hormone profile by losing body fat, you’ll also for reduce the risk of developing diabetes and improving cardiovascular health. Obesity is a modern disease that plagues countless of people around the world due to unlimited access to calorie dense food sources. While it’s a luxury in human history to have access to an abundance of food, it’s a double edged sword.
The reason being is that many people overeat massively on a daily basis. As a result of all those excessive calories, they gain a ton of fat and blow up. Compare that with a sedentary lifestyle and you’ve got yourself a recipe for disaster. Not only does obesity increase the risk of an early departure from this earth due to cardiovascular issues, it also destroys your testosterone levels.
Through a process called aromatase, testosterone gets converted into estrogen. The more body fat one has, the more aromatase takes place in the body and the more out of whack your hormones will be. Estrogen is the primary female sex hormone and when estrogen dominates your body as a man, instead of testosterone being in abundance, than you have quite a serious problem as it literally makes you less of a man from a physical point of view.
Weight loss is all about creating a calorie deficit. By creating a moderate calorie deficit you can lose weight efficiently without starving yourself. The goal is to lose weight without crash dieting, as starving yourself is also detrimental to your hormonal health by raising cortisol levels, which works as a counterpart of testosterone. By reducing your calories with a moderate deficit, you will lose weight in a way that feels effortless and you will raise your testosterone levels and without unnecessary suffering.
Aim to get between 8 – 14% body fat over time, since this is the zone that is most favorable for your hormones and you will look at your best.
2 – KEEP A COOL MINDSET / AVOID TOO MUCH STRESS AND ANXIETY
Our modern society and lifestyle often brings a lot of mental stress into our lives. Unfortunately, stress raises cortisol levels. Everyone experiences moments of stress in their lives due to certain events that come on our paths and as a result, we experience an acute stress response. The cortisol released from this acute stress response dissipates as the stressor disappears. The real problem arises when stress becomes a chronic issue. Chronic stress, meaning you’re stressed out all the time for a long period of time, means chronically high cortisol levels.
Many people say that men should control their emotions and hey, there might be something to it. Not only will you make better and more rational decisions in stressy situations, you’ll also keep cortisol levels at bay. Developing a positive or stoic mindset may help with this. The most important thing is to not stress over silly every day things and to try to manage your emotions when things go sideways in life. Maintain a positive outlook and be a glass half full kind of person. This will make a massive difference in how you handle situations and will positively impact your hormones.
3 – CONSUME SUFFICIENT CALORIES
Remember that when losing weight I told you to adopt a moderate calorie deficit? This is because eating a sufficient amount of calories in crucial for optimal hormonal health. When you don’t get in enough calories to support your body’s vital functions, one of the first things to go down is testosterone production and therefore also the reproductive function.
By now you know that being overweight is detrimental to your testosterone levels. The opposite is true as well, being too lean is also going to be a kick in the nuts to your testosterone levels. Therefore you should eat enough calories to maintain a healthy body fat percentage of between 8 and 14%. Research on professional bodybuilders has shown that when athletes get down to very low levels of body fat, they’re testosterone levels plummeted to castrate levels. As soon as they started eating more calories again and got back to a healthy body fat percentage, they’re T levels increased back to normal.
If you’re overweight, eat in a moderate calorie deficit in order to lose body fat, yet don’t starve yourself. If you are not overweight and are already at a healthy body fat percentage, eat at calorie maintenance or in a small calorie surplus, preferably in combination with resistance training. Doing so will increase both your testosterone levels and your muscle mass.
4 – EAT FATS
Don’t fall victim to the myth that eating fat makes you fat. This is completely false information given by people who don’t know anything about nutrition. Weight management all comes down to calories in vs calories out and is not dependent on a single macronutrient group.
Not only will eating fat make your food taste way better, it’s also crucially important to your testosterone production. Men who eat very little fat in their diet have lower testosterone levels compared to men who eat a moderate amount of fat.
The types of fat you eat are very important as well as it’s been shown that both saturated and mono unsaturated fats both do a fantastic job at raising testosterone levels, while poly unsaturated fatty acids should be avoided as much as possible, since they have a tendency to lower T levels.
Therefore, try to get about 30% -40% of your daily calories from primarily saturated and mono unsaturated fat sources. This means that you’re good if you stick to grass fed butter, olive oil, coconut oil, avocados, eggs and quality dairy products.
5 – EAT CARBS
Just like fats have gotten a bad rep in the past, don’t walk in line to follow the low carb craze. Again, no single macronutrient is responsible for weight gain, but it’s all about eating too many calories in general.
Starchy arbs are a fantastic energy source for your body, fill up your glycogen stores, makes you perform better in the gym and improves cognitive function. Many people report feeling so much better when introducing carbs back into their diet compared to following a low to no carb approach. This is due to the fact that carbs keep cortisol levels under control. Since cortisol is the antagonist of testosterone, testosterone levels rise as cortisol goes down.
Micronutrient rich carb sources such as fruits which are more rich in sugars taste good and are a power food for human due to their vitamin content. Micronutrients are extremely important for optimal hormone levels and therefore should be eating regularly to provide your body with a steady flow of nutrients.
Eating more carbs in general will be beneficial to your overall wellbeing. However, if you really want to maximize your testosterone levels it’s best to stick to micronutrient rich carb sources and starchy carbs from sources such as potatoes, yams and rice. Basically, carb sources that don’t contain gluten. Certain carb sources, especially those found in grains, raise SHBG levels, which block free testosterone from reaching androgen receptors.
No matter how much T you have in your blood, if your free testosterone can’t do its thing, you’re not going to maximize testosterone’s effects.
6 – GET IN YOUR MICRONUTRIENTS
Micronutrients refer to vitamins and minerals. They are essential building blocks for hormone optimization. Correcting micronutrient deficiencies in men have been shown to double or even triple testosterone levels!
Taking care of your micronutrient requirements is best done by eating a whole food diet consisting of quality animal protein sources such as quality meats, poultry, eggs, quality dairy, all kinds of fruits and berries, honey, potatoes, olives and avocados. The natural human diet of unprocessed food sources provided us with all the essential building blocks we needed to reach optimal health levels with a strong immune system. Even though we live in a world where food is abundant in western countries, lots of those food sources are processed and void of micronutrients. Even though we get in our macronutrients, we lack the micronutrients.
Simply eat a diet which consists of 80% testosterone friendly foods and if you’re not sure about whether you get in all your micros, invest in a good multi vitamin supplement to correct any further deficiencies.
7 – EXERCISE LIKE A MAN / WALK, LIFT, SPRINT
Everyone knows that they should engage in some kind of physical exercise, yet don’t do it. Unfortunately, many men who do have the discipline to exercise perform the wrong type of exercise. Yes, there is exercise that has a positive effect on testosterone production and a type of exercise which stimulates excessive cortisol production. Obviously for our goals, we want to focus on the testosterone friendly type of exercise. Sadly enough, many people unknowingly choose the latter.
If you’re an avid endurance athlete I’ve got some bad news for you. Due to the nature of endurance training, you’re creating an environment in your body where cortisol levels rise and testosterone levels go down. Many people don’t like to hear this because they are hardcore bound to their sport, but running for long distances, or doing any cardiovascular activity for long periods of time, simply has a negative impact on your hormones.
To positively impact your testosterone levels there are a couple of specific types of exercises you should do. These are resistance training, walking and sprinting. Time and time again it’s been shown that resistance training (weights or body weight training) has a positive effect on your androgenic hormones. This is because neuromuscular training which challenges muscles to grow stimulates the androgen receptors in your body and more androgenic activity takes place to support the stimulus from the activity. For T production, it’s best that you use heavy to moderately heavy weights (5 – 10 rep range). Another great way to implement T friendly training is to introduce explosive exercises such as sprints, muscle ups, high knee jumps and any other explosive movement that works a lot of muscle mass at once. This is very specific training to positively impact your hormones through neuromuscular pathways.
For optimal blood circulation and overall health, we should do more of what we were originally evolved for, walking! Walking should form the base of everyone’s fitness journey and therefore it’s recommended to walk for 30-60 minutes every day! Walking balances your hormones out in a positive way and actually lowers your cortisol levels. By performing a good amount of walking couple of times per week you’ll lower your blood pressure, improve blood circulation, raise testosterone levels, lower the risk of develop diabetes and cardiovascular disease and you’ll have better quality sleep.
That’s why the magical exercise triangle for testosterone production is: walk, lift, sprint
8 – PRIORITIZE SLEEP
As teenagers our parents yelled at us for staying in bed too long and sleeping our lives away. In our adult lives, we have ask ourselves when the time will come where we will be able to sleep more than 5 hours per night. Many people’s hectic lifestyles cause them to create a major sleep deficit which causes them to operate like the living dead. Others who don’t have stressful lives are kept awake due to our high tech gadgets disrupting our sleep hormones due to excessive blue light exposure which messes with our circadian rhythm.
Whatever your reason may be, you probably realize that you need more sleep. Sleep is not only extremely important for optimal bodily repair. It’s also extremely important for testosterone production as most of your testosterone is created when you’re asleep. Studies have shown that men who sleep 7-9 hours have almost double the amount of testosterone than men who sleep 4-5 hours.
Instead of spending too much money on expensive supplements that most of the time don’t even work, focus on the basics and keep it simple. Sleep is a cheap and the most easy way to boost your testosterone levels. Lack thereof will lower T levels and increase cortisol production. Simply put, optimizing your sleep is a big part of living a quality life, optimizing your hormones and feeling your best.
Everyone has a bad night once in a while, but try to keep a good sleep routine with proper sleep hygiene. Your hormones will thank you and you’ll live life at a different level when you’re well rested.
9 – INTERMITTENT FAST
You’ve probably heard the old school fitness myth that you should eat every 2-3 hours to keep your metabolic fire burning at its highest, which will allow you to stat lean. Not only is this not true is regards to fat loss and body composition, quite the opposite is true when you want to maximize your testosterone levels naturally.
Intermittent fasting is a form of short term fasting where the most protocol demands that you fast for 16-18 hours and eat all of your daily calorie requirements in a 6-8 hour time frame. Intermittent fasting has been shown to increase the testosterone precursor luteinizing hormone. One study on intermittent fasting in non-obese men hoping to improve testosterone showed that fasting luteinizing hormone nearly 67%, boosting overall testosterone by a whopping 180%. This is just over the course of one short-term fast, longer-term periods of intermittent fasting could result in even higher rates of testosterone boosting.
Fasting has also shown to boost T levels dramatically by influencing key pituitary and satiety hormones such as insulin, leptin, gonadotropin releasing hormone and luteinizing hormone.
Intermittent fasting is a fantastic tool to keep your daily calories in check, to improve your body composition and to improve your hormonal profile.
10 – ENJOY A HEALTHY SEX LIFE
To put it bluntly: more sex is better for testosterone production. This is due to the influence of dopamine, pheromones, feelings of domination and power and the feeling of winning. The caveat of sex raising testosterone level, is that it has to be with another person and not just Miss Five Fingers. This is due to the important of interpersonal touch and its connection to influence of steroid hormones. The brain clearly distinguishes orgasms induced by having sex with another person or orgasms induced by one’s own hand and elicits hormonal responses accordingly. Skin on skin contact while having intercourse influences oxytocin stronger than any other factor, which is extremely important in sexual arousal and achieving an erection.
Skin on skin contact with another person has shown to have a favorable effect on dopamine levels and lowers your cortisol levels, which means higher testosterone levels.
Luckily there’s another benefit by having sex, which is the positive feedback loop between sex and testosterone levels. Sex raises testosterone levels and testosterone is responsible for having a healthy libido (sexual hunger, sex drive). Which means that having more sex will lead to having a higher libido and means that one stimulates the other in a positive fashion.
FINAL WORD ON NATURALLY RAISING TESTOSTERONE LEVELS
Unfortunately a lot of men have literally lost their manliness due to low testosterone levels. Testosterone does not only determine how you look, but also how you feel and has a great impact on the way you handle your emotions and how you think and act. High testosterone men are more likely to be successful due to their hunger to achieve success.
Modern day factors such as environmental toxins, lifestyle choices and nutritional habits negatively influence our testosterone levels. However, luckily we can take matters in our own hands and actively make sure to implement testosterone friendly habits that will enhance your health, physique and overall life.
One last thing that I want to point out on these points is that you don’t have to become neurotic about it. Just take this information to heart, focus on the big points and in terms of nutrition, which will be the most challenging part of all in your lifestyle, adopt an 80/20 approach where 80% of the foods you consume come from T boosting sources and 20% can come from a daily treat or a drink if you want to. Stressing out causes higher cortisol levels and reduces T… remember! Follow the big red lines and don’t obsess over details.
These are 10 easy ways to raise your testosterone levels. Be consistent with these and you will definitely see and feel the difference in the way you look and the way you feel. Testosterone is a mirror of male health, so if you want to become the best version of you and live your best life, boost your testosterone.
Kevin Mahjoubi