How to Get in Shape by Improving Your Hormones

I hate workout, nutrition, and diet advice.

The advice always seems so particular; based on memorizing some new fact that will make you lose that last five pounds or get the six-pack you’ve always wanted.

Well, the advice always seems to change every week without seeing those promised changes.

Even worse, there’s yet another piece of advice to remember.

What’s missing from all this advice is gaining any leverage over your situation.

Let’s look at getting in shape from a different angle. Instead of looking at getting in shape as Kale vs Kettlebells, let’s look at it from a birds eye-view.

Our fundamental goal of getting in shape is changing our body composition. We want to make long-lasting changes and not short-lived improvements that cause us to crash right back to where we started or worse off than before.

So it makes sense that if we’re designing our exercise and nutrition plan that we should think about what creates the body composition we’re looking for.

Luckily the research is clear on this subject.

Body composition is effected by hormones more than anything else.

Without healthy levels of insulin, cortisol, estrogen, testosterone, and growth hormone, any workout and nutrition plan we follow will fail to give us the results we’re looking for.

The good news about hormones:

Optimizing hormones creates better results than maximizing how much you workout or how many salads you eat without the annoying tradeoffs.

You can skip 2-a-day workouts, funneling chia seeds into your kale smoothie, and still get great results.

I used these methods to cut down from 18% to 12% body-fat in 6 weeks without working out harder, longer, or cutting calories.

Improve these five hormones with high-level changes and guarantee to be in better shape.

Insulin, Cortisol, Estrogen, Testosterone, and Growth Hormone

Decrease Insulin

Insulin is the primary hormone responsible for fat storage in the body. More insulin, more obesity. That’s why it’s first on our list.

How to decrease insulin:

Decrease Cortisol

Cortisol regulates and reacts to stress. High cortisol tells your body to hold on to excess pounds, and not the good kind.

How to lower cortisol:

  • Get high-quality sleep — avoid blue light near bed time (enable night shift on your iPhone, get F.Lux, use light bulbs without blue light in bedroom and bathroom), stay hydrated (keep water by your bed — morning and night), take weekly baths with epsom salt (magnesium in epsom salt improves sleep quality)
  • Avoid over training — workout to the point where muscle soreness is completely gone after 48 hours. DOMS increases cortisol.
  • Meditate any way you can — perform unthinking and monotonous activities (walking, biking, fishing, meditation, reading, napping, etc)

Decrease Estrogen

Overweight men are found to have higher estrogen levels. Estrogen increases our body’s fat storage and impairs muscle growth.

How to lower estrogen:

  • Eat foods that effectively metabolize estrogen — foods high in DIM (broccoli & spinach), choline (found in egg yolks), and fiber (found in many foods)
  • Avoid eating foods that raise estrogen — avoid eating sugar, dairy, and soy
  • Avoid using personal care products using flower extracts high in estrogen — avoid tea tree and lavender oils
  • Avoid using food and drink containers made with estrogen-like plastics — avoid using containers made from BPA (plastics #3, 6, & 7)

Increase Testosterone

Testosterone increases muscle growth and fat loss from exercise and during rest. It’s 3rd on our list because cortisol and estrogen kill free testosterone.

How to increase testosterone:

  • Ensure adequate intake of the nutrition your body needs to create testosterone — take full recommended daily doses of Vitamin D3, Zinc, Magnesium, and Vitamin B6.
  • Increase dietary fat — many vitamins are fat-soluble and require fat to be properly absorbed by the body. Go for wild fish, pastured meats, grass-fed butter, sprouted nuts, and other healthy fats like extra virgin olive oil.

Increase Growth Hormone

Growth hormone increases muscle mass by triggering muscle growth in response to damage during exercise.

How to increase growth hormone:

When you positively impact your hormones, you maximize your body’s ability to lose fat and hold onto muscle without suffering or needing to make drastic changes.



Originally published at www.cvonu.com on August 23, 2017.

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