G & K Fitness Medics 

1.   Lose Weight

If you're overweight, shedding the excess pounds may increase your testosterone levels, according to research presented at the Endocrine Society's 2012 meeting. Overweight men are more likely to have low testosterone levels to begin with, so this is an important trick to increase your body's testosterone production when you need it most.

If you are serious about losing weight, you have got to strictly limit the amount of processed sugar in your diet, as evidence is mounting that excess sugar, and fructose in particular, is the primary driving factor in the obesity epidemic. So cutting soda from your diet is essential, as is limiting fructose found in processed foods, fruit juice, excessive fruit and so-called "healthy" sweeteners like agave.

Ideally you should keep your total fructose consumption below 25 grams per day and this includes fruits. This is especially true if you have insulin resistance and are overweight, have high blood pressure, diabetes or high cholesterol.

In addition to eliminating or severely limiting fructose, it will be vital to eliminate all grains and milk (even raw) in your diet. Milk has a sugar called lactose, which has been shown to increase insulin resistance so it will be wise to avoid it if you are seeking to lose weight.

Refined carbohydrates like breakfast cereals, bagels, waffles, pretzels, and most other processed foods also quickly break down to sugar, increase your insulin levels, and cause insulin resistance, which is the number one underlying factor of nearly every chronic disease and condition known to man, including weight gain.

As you cut these dietary troublemakers from your meals, you need to replace them with healthy substitutes like vegetables and healthy fats (including natural saturated fats!). Your body prefers the carbohydrates in micronutrient-dense vegetables rather than grains and sugars because it slows the conversion to simple sugars like glucose, and decreases your insulin level. When you cut grains and sugar from your meals, you typically will need to radically increase the amount of vegetables you eat, as well as make sure you are also consuming protein and healthy fats regularly.

 

 

2.   High-Intensity Exercise like Peak Fitness (Especially Combined with Intermittent Fasting)

Both intermittent fasting and short intense exercise have been shown to boost testosterone.

Short intense exercise has a proven positive effect on increasing testosterone levels and preventing its decline.

That's unlike aerobics or prolonged moderate exercise, which have shown to have negative or no effect on testosterone levels.

 

Intermittent fasting boosts testosterone by increasing the expression of satiety hormones including insulin, leptin, adiponectin, glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1), colecystokinin (CKK) and melanocortins, all of which are known to potentiate healthy testosterone actions, increase libido and prevent age-related testosterone decline.

Having a whey protein meal after exercise can further enhance the satiety/testosterone-boosting impact (hunger hormones cause the opposite effect on your testosterone and libido). Here's a summary of what a typical high-intensity Peak Fitness routine might look like:

• Warm up for three minutes

• Exercise as hard and fast as you can for 30 seconds. You should feel like you couldn't possibly go on another few seconds

• Recover at a slow to moderate pace for 90 seconds

• Repeat the high intensity exercise and recovery 7 more times

As you can see, the entire workout is only 20 minutes. Twenty minutes! That really is a beautiful thing. And within those 20 minutes, 75 percent of that time is warming up, recovering or cooling down. You're really only working out intensely for four minutes. It's hard to believe if you have never done this that you can actually get that much benefit from four minutes of exercise. That's all it is.

Keep in mind that you can use virtually any type of equipment you want for this – an elliptical machine, a treadmill, swimming, even sprinting outdoors (although you will need to do this very carefully to avoid injury) -- as long as you're pushing yourself as hard as you can for 30 seconds. But do be sure to stretch properly and start slowly to avoid injury. Start with two or three repetitions and work your way up, don't expect to do all eight repetitions the first time you try this, especially if you are out of shape.

You can find more information about this in an article previously written on intermittent fasting.

 

3.   Consume Plenty of Zinc

The mineral zinc is important for testosterone production, and supplementing your diet for as little as six weeks has been shown to cause a marked improvement in testosterone among men with low levels.1 Likewise, research has shown that restricting dietary sources of zinc leads to a significant decrease in testosterone, while zinc supplementation increases it2 -- and even protects men from exercised-induced reductions in testosterone levels.3

It's estimated that up to 45 percent of adults over the age of 60 may have lower than recommended zinc intakes; even when dietary supplements were added in, an estimated 20-25 percent of older adults still had inadequate zinc intakes, according to a National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.4

Your diet is the best source of zinc; along with protein-rich foods like meats and fish, other good dietary sources of zinc include raw milk, raw cheese, beans, and yogurt or kefir made from raw milk. It can be difficult to obtain enough dietary zinc if you're a vegetarian, and also for meat-eaters as well, largely because of conventional farming methods that rely heavily on chemical fertilizers and pesticides. These chemicals deplete the soil of nutrients ... nutrients like zinc that must be absorbed by plants in order to be passed on to you.

In many cases, you may further deplete the nutrients in your food by the way you prepare it. For most food, cooking it will drastically reduce its levels of nutrients like zinc … particularly over-cooking, which many people do.

If you decide to use a zinc supplement, stick to a dosage of less than 40 mg a day, as this is the recommended adult upper limit. Taking too much zinc can interfere with your body's ability to absorb other minerals, especially copper, and may cause nausea as a side effect.

 

4.   Strength Training

In addition to Peak Fitness, strength training is also known to boost testosterone levels, provided you are doing so intensely enough. When strength training to boost testosterone, you'll want to increase the weight and lower your number of reps, and then focus on exercises that work a large number of muscles, such as dead lifts or squats.

You can "turbo-charge" your weight training by going slower. By slowing down your movement, you're actually turning it into a high-intensity exercise. Super Slow movement allows your muscle, at the microscopic level, to access the maximum number of cross-bridges between the protein filaments that produce movement in the muscle.

 

5.   Optimize Your Vitamin D Levels

Vitamin D, a steroid hormone, is essential for the healthy development of the nucleus of the sperm cell, and helps maintain semen quality and sperm count. Vitamin D also increases levels of testosterone, which may boost libido. In one study, overweight men who were given vitamin D supplements had a significant increase in testosterone levels after one year.5

Vitamin D deficiency is currently at epidemic proportions in the United States and many other regions around the world, largely because people do not spend enough time in the sun to facilitate this important process of vitamin D production.

So the first step to ensuring you are receiving all the benefits of vitamin D is to find out what your levels are using a 25(OH)D test, also called 25-hydroxyvitamin D.

A few years back, the recommended level was between 40 to 60 nanograms per milliliter (ng/ml), but more recently the optimal vitamin D level has been raised to 50-70 ng/ml.

To get your levels into the healthy range, sun exposure is the BEST way to optimize your vitamin D levels; exposing a large amount of your skin until it turns the lightest shade of pink, as near to solar noon as possible, is typically necessary to achieve adequate vitamin D production. If sun exposure is not an option, a safe tanning bed (with electronic ballasts rather than magnetic ballasts, to avoid unnecessary exposure to EMF fields) can be used.

As a last resort, a vitamin D3 supplement can be taken orally, but research suggests the average adult needs to take 8,000 IU's of vitamin D per day in order to elevate their levels above 40 ng/ml, which is the absolute minimum for disease prevention.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6.   Reduce Stress

When you're under a lot of stress, your body releases high levels of the stress hormone cortisol. This hormone actuallyblocks the effects of testosterone,6 presumably because, from a biological standpoint, testosterone-associated behaviors (mating, competing, aggression) may have lowered your chances of survival in an emergency (hence, the "fight or flight" response is dominant, courtesy of cortisol).

In the modern world, chronic stress, and subsequently elevated levels of cortisol, could mean that testosterone's effects are blocked in the long term, which is what you want to avoid.

My favorite overall tool to manage stress is EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique), which is like acupuncture without the needles. It's a handy, free tool for unloading emotional baggage quickly and painlessly, and so easy that even children can learn it. Other common stress-reduction tools with a high success rate include prayer, meditation, laughter and yoga, for example. Learning relaxation skills, such as deep breathing and positive visualization, which is the "language" of the subconscious.

When you create a visual image of how you'd like to feel, your subconscious will understand and begin to help you by making the needed biochemical and neurological changes.

 

7.   Limit or Eliminate Sugar from Your Diet

Testosterone levels decrease after you eat sugar, which is likely because the sugar leads to a high insulin level, another factor leading to low testosterone.7

Based on USDA estimates, the average American consumes 12 teaspoons of sugar a day, which equates to about TWO TONS of sugar during a lifetime.

Why we eat this much sugar is not difficult to understand -- it tastes good, and it gives us pleasure by triggering an innate process in your brain via dopamine and opioid signals.

What it is doing to us on both a physical and emotional level is another story entirely, and most people stand to reap major improvements in their health by cutting back on, or eliminating, sugar altogether from their diets. Remember foods that contain added sugar and fructose, as well as grains like bread and pasta, should all be limited.

If you're struggling with sugar addiction and having trouble dealing with cravings, I highly recommend trying an energy psychology technique called Turbo Tapping, which has helped many "soda addicts" kick their sweet habit, and it should work for any type of sweet craving you may have.

 

8.   Eat Healthy Fats

By healthy, this means not only mon- and polyunsaturated fats, like that found in avocadoes and nuts, but also saturated, as these are essential for building testosterone. Research shows that a diet with less than 40 percent of energy as fat (and that mainly from animal sources, i.e. saturated) lead to a decrease in testosterone levels.

FAT is NOT a BAD thing!

Fats are the densest energy sources available to your body. Each gram of fat contains over twice the calories of a gram of carbohydrate or protein.

Healthy fats, such as those found in meat, dairy, olive oil, avocados, flax seed oil, many nuts, and other foods, are actually an important component to overall health. Fats help your body absorb the other nutrients that you give it, nourish the nervous system, help maintain cell structures, regulate hormone levels, and more. Research has shown that men whose diets are rich in healthy fats have significant higher testosterone levels  than those whose diets are lacking in this regard.

It’s commonly believed that eating saturated fat, like the fats mainly in animal products such as meat, dairy products, and egg yolks., harms your health.  THIS IS WRONG!! There have been many study’s proving this. Further more, it has been proven that there is NO correlation  between fat consumption and heart disease. “SEE:The Great Cholesterol Myth”   I n fact, recent research indicates the opposite may be true–that saturated fat may actually reduce your risk of heart disease

It's important to understand that your body requires saturated fats from animal and vegetable sources (such as meat, dairy, certain oils, and tropical plants like coconut) for optimal functioning, and if you neglect this important food group in favor of sugar, grains and other starchy carbs, your health and weight are almost guaranteed to suffer.

 

9.   Boost Your Intake of Branch Chain Amino Acids (BCAA) from Foods Like Whey Protein

Research suggests that BCAAs result in higher testosterone levels, particularly when taken along with resistance training.9While BCAAs are available in supplement form, you'll find the highest concentrations of BCAAs like leucine in dairy products – especially quality cheeses and whey protein.

Even when getting leucine from your natural food supply, it's often wasted or used as a building block instead of an anabolic agent. So to create the correct anabolic environment, you need to boost leucine consumption way beyond mere maintenance levels.

That said, keep in mind that using leucine as a free form amino acid can be highly counterproductive as when free form amino acids are artificially administrated, they rapidly enter your circulation while disrupting insulin function, and impairing your body's glycemic control. Food-based leucine is really the ideal form that can benefit your muscles without side effects.

 

Eat the Right Vegetables

Research has shown that vegetables rich in a substance known as indole-3-carbinol, or “I3C,” can Positively reduce estrogen levels (in this study, 500 mg of I3C per day reduced “bad” estrogens by 50%). This, in turn, helps maintain optimal levels of testosterone.

I3C occurs naturally in Crusefaris Vegetables such as bok choy, broccoli, brussel sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, kale, kohlrabi, mustard, rutabaga, and turnip.

If you can work 1–2 servings of these types of veggies into your daily meals, it can help your hormones.  There are all natural I3C supplements that can be taken also.

 

EAT RED MEAT

Protein from meat is particularly helpful when you’re weightlifting. Studies clearly show that Meat increases testosterone levels and lead to increased levels of muscle mass.

 “Meat” doesn’t only mean red meat, by the way. Fish, chicken, turkey, pork, buffalo, and so on all qualify as “meat” in this sense.

A study had two groups of men, all comparable in health and build, follow a weightlifting program for twelve weeks. By the end of the program, all had progressed about equally in strength, but only the meat eaters enjoyed significant muscle growth and fat loss.

 

When bulking, eat at least four servings of red meat each week (95% lean, or lean cuts of meat like filet or NY strip). When cutting, do one to two servings of red meat per week.

 

HAVE MORE SEX!

As one would expect, having sex increases testosterone levels!  When testosterone levels increase you want more sex!!  Its a win win!

 

RUN FROM SOY!!!

Stay away from anything with soy in it.  Soy and any product containing soy is extremly bad for your hormones.  It has been proven that soy in any form increases estrogen levels in both men and women, which have a lot of bad adverse effects on both sex's.  Often times soy is marketed as a health or dieatary product, be advised it is a lie.  It was pushed through the FDA for human consumption even though the FDA's own scientists were against it.  It has since been added to everything from baby formula, vegitarian meals, dietary suppliments and even put into mucle building products like "Muscle Milk".  Thats the problem with living in a profit driven society in which big business buys governmental policies.  Do your research and read the ingredients!