Disclaimer: I’m not a doctor, and this is not medical advice. I’m not a health expert, fitness coach, or dietician. I am a regular guy who has overhauled his own health and fitness, in his 40’s, by applying everything I could find on natural ways to improve testosterone. These articles are ALL of my notes, translated to plain English, at zero cost. If you like this article series, you can follow me on Instagram for more related content — @mengredients.

INTRODUCTION

Most content on testosterone is complex and full of biochemistry rabbit holes that I spent way too much time trying to understand. I’ll stay out of the weeds and direct you to detail if you care to dig in. Much of it also focuses on diet OR exercise OR lifestyle OR stress. Hormones are directly affected by all of these, at all times, so this is comprehensive but I’ll keep the right depth where I think most guys can understand and apply.

Health and fitness experts may think I’m oversimplifying, but this is forregular guys and is simply what I do, as I understand it, from devouring a ton of books, articles, studies, papers, and other media on the topic. We need health experts to keep discussing and debating with one another at a certain level of granularity. But this is written for the novice, as the only reason I became able to understand the health experts is because I was on a mission to do so.

WHY TESTOSTERONE?

Gradually declining testosterone tends to be the main reason fitness gets more difficult for men with age, because testosterone drives our ability to build and maintain muscle, drop fat, have strong bones, more energy, and so much more. But its power is rarely acknowledged, and its decline is neither inevitable nor irreversible, as I’ve seen firsthand.

At 46, I’m much stronger, leaner, and more energetic than I was in my 20’s, without any steroids. I always hear “oh good, that worked for you.” Sure, everyone’s different, but my case is far from unique as on average men today literally have half the testosterone of men the same age just 50 years ago! It’s a population-wide issue. So, most men are affected in some capacity, not just me. This may look slightly different for some guys who maybe have certain food allergies or medical conditions, etc. but by and large, most guys should be able to do most of this and see similar results.

Also, I have no financial motivation here. I’m not trying to rope you into a paid program or sell you anything. I have tipping disabled on here and no affiliate links of any kind. While I recently started working in the fitness industry, everything I’ll share here happened long before. I’m just posting this to help other guys understand this stuff because it’s so critical and most guys simply have no clue, or are overwhelmed by the idea of learning about it and putting all the pieces together across eating, exercise, lifestyle and stress mitigation.

So this article series covers everything I do, like a template for you, in terms of: Nutrition — what I eat, when, what I avoid, which supplements I take, and what a complete day of eating looks like; Exercise — what exercises I do, which ones I avoid, and what my complete workout program looks like; Lifestyle — various behavioral and mindset changes and habits I’ve developed. But I have to start with a huge topic that threads through all these areas, which is Stress, and how I manage it in each of these areas.

For female health and fitness, I know there’s a version of this that is more about managing the progesterone and estrogen ratio. And it seems there’s a lot of overlap in diet, exercise, lifestyle, and stress mitigation principles that work to balance hormones both in males and females. But, so you know, my focus here is on testosterone as it relates to men’s health and fitness.

QUICK BACKGROUND / IMPORTANT CONTEXT

Like many guys, I went from my 20’s, in decent shape, often feeling good, to my 30’s and married with kids, a mortgage, and very stressful career — I put on 50 pounds, had chronic pains, low energy, waning muscle and strength, relentless hunger, shitty sleep, constant irritability, brain fog most days, seasonal allergies, and I’d get sick every few months for up to a week at a time.

I had dropped everything and flung myself at providing for my family. My brain started conflating work success with positive outcomes for my family — a vicious cycle that ripped me apart.

At age 39 I decided to get back in shape, doing what I did in my 20’s — weights 4 days a week, jogging ~9 miles a week, drinking tons of water, eating leafy greens, lean chicken, turkey, tuna, egg whites, nuts, seeds, tofu, brown rice, avoiding saturated fat, watching calories and carbs, low salt, etc. I went several months, hard, with little to show for it. So I tried various, more intense diet and exercise protocols, keto, paleo, CrossFit, etc. with strict adherence, over the next couple of years with little to no results.

I thought, “shit… this is my 40’s, when it all starts going downhill!” All that talk started resonating and I felt defeated but I’ve never been able to blindly join the majority rule. I’ve always looked at exceptions, outliers, people whose mere existence renders the rule itself baseless and false, making it physically impossible for me to accept. Dammit guys, there are energetic, lean, and muscular 40+ men, juggling family and work, so it is possible!

At my lowest point I saw a guy on TV who looked to be in his mid 60’s, but he was muscular and lean — an outlier. One thing he said just clicked, something like: “us older guys need to watch our testosterone.” I started digging, learning, and applying all I could find on how to increase testosterone, naturally, and most of which, to my surprise, is in stark contrast to most popular men’s health and fitness advice from all the major outlets and trusted sources.

The next several months were mind-blowing: I lost 50 lbs and 6 inches off my waist, my energy came roaring back, significant muscle and strength gains, brain fog cleared up. I was much calmer under pressure with more drive and focus at work. Skin issues resolved. General aches and pains stopped. Digestive issues improved. Cuts and bruises healed faster. I even stopped burning easily in the sun. I rarely get sick and recover fast. No more seasonal congestion. Most importantly, all of this helped me to be a much better husband and dad while becoming more effective at work. The vicious cycle was reversed!

The only thing I could think was why the f*ck doesn’t every dude on earth know about this?! I was so frustrated by the fact that most of the changes I made were the opposite of what men are encouraged to do for health and fitness. So, in all parts of this, I’ll ask you to suspend disbelief as it challenges many common thoughts and opinions about men’s health and fitness.

To get some sense of how powerful testosterone is, let’s look at guys who take it exogenously (from outside the body as in steroids) for its muscle building and fat loss properties — pro bodybuilders. Diet and training do play a huge role, but the cocktails of hormones are what make pro bodybuilders so extraordinarily large and lean compared to “natural” bodybuilders who diet and train similarly without taking steroids. A lot of today’s diet and exercise principles originated from the pro bodybuilding world where the hormone piece was largely helped by the use of steroids, and tends to work well for younger guys when testosterone is usually fairly high already. So, most health and fitness advice assumes testosterone is up.

We owe bodybuilders a great debt of gratitude for teaching us so much about leveraging existing testosterone. But as men age, a lot of the standard diet and fitness principles become less relevant and can even be counterproductive as testosterone wanes. Testosterone is a powerful catalyst to get and stay more muscular and lean and you, barring certain medical conditions, can likely make plenty of it endogenously (from inside your body) to get strong and fit.

ZERO judgment here about synthetic hormones. Some guys need or want them. I don’t know a lot about them, but I know once you start with most synthetic hormones, your body tends to shut down its own production and it can become a lifelong dependency on them. I also know it’s expensive and can have various side effects. I may consider low dose synthetics when I’m older, but what I began to realize is that there’s a much bigger picture here as to how our testosterone is clobbered across most aspects of life, and how men should eat, exercise, and live to maintain our testosterone with age, naturally.

Look, cynics may say maybe all I did was correct a vitamin deficiency and all the results I saw were downstream of that. Of course some things have a higher impact than others — there’s likely some rule of 80% of the improvements I saw being largely driven by 20% of the things I do. But even if that’s the case, it’s irrelevant because the fact is we are surrounded by shit, inside and out, that is constantly undermining our testosterone. So this is a comprehensive protocol for guys to eat, exercise and live in ways that counter the daily onslaught and support testosterone — you want to throw the kitchen sink at it and hit it from all angles to thrive.

It’s also worth thinking about how big of a hole you’ve dug yourself into and how long you’ve been in it. This is about reversing processes that may have built some momentum and forged hardened pathways in the wrong direction. Again, hormones work through “feedback loops,” which can spiral you down a path of poor health (low energy, fat storage, muscle loss) to help you survive through things like famine. However, these “feedback loops,” can also push you toward better health (more energy, more muscle, less fat, etc.) to thrive.

And these feedback loops run in response to whatever your “normal” state is, based on the various cues you’ve given your body in at least your recent past, but can go back a long way. I’ve heard Dr. Jason Fung author of the books “The Diabetes Code,” “The Obesity Code,” and “The Cancer Code” say that your body has a “set weight” it will strive to maintain through metabolic processes, much like the thermostat in your house will kick on the heat or air conditioning to maintain a certain temperature.

So, if your current “normal” is high stress, poor sleep, junk food, a sedentary lifestyle, and so on, these cues are much like that of living in a state of despair and your body will set in motion hormonal responses toward survival— storing fat for emergency energy, breaking down the muscle you’re not using and organ tissue for the critical nutrients you’re not eating, etc. Hormones don’t have eyes or ears, so you must send your body different cues to set in motion the hormonal signaling and responses for thrivingrather than surviving. If your body has been in survival mode for a long time, it can be like turning a ship around, so to speak. But once it’s turned around and moving in a new direction, it can build momentum toward better health. Some people have had their ship moving in the right direction for a long time and see better results from various diet and fitness protocols, and tend to be the people who “eat what they want and never get fat.” The inverse of this is why childhood obesity is so scary and particularly dangerous, as these kids are starting life with their ship building momentum in the wrong direction.

If creating a “new normal” for yourself sounds daunting, I have some great news: Many of the changes in diet, exercise, and lifestyle are ones that most men would welcome with open arms and are incredibly enjoyable. There are reasons guys yearn to eat certain foods and prefer to exercise in certain ways and so on. Our bodies have generations of genetic code passed along since the beginning of human existence — these are primal instincts and tendencies that link directly to our biology and directly influence our health. Addressing diet, exercise, lifestyle, and stress simultaneously — helps to turn the ship around a lot faster. This is why I’m sharing my entire protocol in this article series, as the hardest part of understanding natural testosterone optimization is piecing together a summary (yes, this is all a summary) of what it all looks like, across all these buckets, for fastest results.