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.

PART 4: LIFESTYLE

In addition to all the diet and exercise changes I made, there’s a big lifestyle component to optimizing testosterone and balancing hormones, which just involves developing some new, fairly simple habits and making some swaps in terms of various products I use and some mindset adjustments about certain things.

If you’ve read the other articles I wrote in this series, it should be no surprise by this point that we’re surrounded by shit that undermines our testosterone. It can be overwhelming, but it’s important to strike a balance of doing what you can, when you can, without being neurotic about it. I generally follow an 80/20 rule, to everything I’ve written in this article series, as the stress of trying to live a life of avoiding everything that hinders testosterone and doing everything that supports testosterone, at all times, can do more harm than good. Do not obsess on all of this.

Here’s a list of things I do, about 80–90% of the time:

I avoid plastics when it comes to food and beverages — storing, cooking, eating / drinking from. Most plastics have chemicals in them, you may have heard of BPA, but even “BPA free” usually just means the BPA has been swapped out for BPS, which is even worse. There are many others out there that can leach into your food, especially when heated. These chemicals mimic estrogen in your blood and clobber your testosterone. There’s an excellent book called “Estrogeneration” by Dr. Anthony G. Jay with lots of detail on this, as well as Shanna Swan’s book “Countdown.”

• I heat and store food and beverages in only cast iron, ceramic, glass, or stainless-steel. I ditched our Teflon pots / pans and plastic Tupperware and I never microwave food in plastic containers.

• I stopped drinking water in plastic bottles and plastic-lined cans (when possible) and switched to using a stainless-steel water bottle. As mentioned, I have a whole house filter to get most of the toxic crap out of our tap water, but there are various types of pitchers, and filters you can use to remove more toxic shit like flouride.

• I bring my own utensils to work to avoid using the plastic utensils provided in the office kitchen.

• Steer clear of takeout, again, when possible, as most food and beverage containers are made of plastic or have plastic lining loaded with chemicals that leach into hot food.

• I switched to an all-stainless-steel French press for coffee.

• I trashed my Keurig coffee maker as raging hot water goes through all the plastic parts.

• I also try not to drink coffee from standard coffee machines as the hot water goes through a coffee filter made of plastics and chemicals, similar to teabags. (I don’t drink tea, but would avoid it for this reason.)

I switched to natural personal care products. Natural deodorant, soaps, detergents, etc. have become known for being expensive and ineffective, but have come a long way on efficacy and price recently. Non-natural personal care products contain harsh chemicals that have all kinds of negative health impacts. I primarily avoid ingredients called “parabens” and phthalates,” a good rule of thumb is to avoid anything with ingredient names that contain “methyl,” “ethyl,” and “butyl” which tend to be parabens, and phthalates will generally have “phthalate” in the name. I also use fluoride-free toothpaste as fluoride screws with thyroid by binding to iodine (rendering it useless in the body). I use Schmidt’s deodorant, Native shower soap, and Tom’s has a fluoride free toothpaste.

I’ve learned to embrace discomfort. Complacency kills testosterone. Testosterone helps me to be calmer under pressure, but mindset has a lot to do with the whole cycle of health. So many guys fail to realize that the world doesn’t owe them shit and they fall to pieces when life gets tough because they’ve learned to take comforts of life for granted, and have become literally addicted to comfort. We live in an era where comfort of all kinds (shelter, food, beverage, clothing, heat / air conditioning, etc.) is everywhere. So, we indulge constantly to a point where we lose our sense of having to earn comfort and our resilience to discomfort. For our ancestors, comfort was a feeling that happened only when it was earned — building a fire, hiking to the water, hunting and gathering food, strengthening their shelter against the elements, etc. Today, all such things are at our fingertips and we’re on a perpetual dopamine overload.

I prioritize sleep. I covered a lot of my lifestyle habits in the Stress section of this, focused on how to get more and better sleep. But sleep itself is critical for testosterone optimization as it’s when your body goes through all kinds of repair and recovery. So I set a certain time window to get into bed, knowing I sleep about 7–8hrs, and ditched my alarm clock to wake up naturally and let sleep do what it needs to do rather than cutting it short with an alarm.

I work breathwork into my day. I covered breathwork in the Stress section, but throughout the day and evening, particularly when focused on something like work, I take momentary breaks to make sure I’m breathing well enough. I inadvertently breathe shallowly while concentrating. So, I periodically step back and do some breathing protocols.

I keep my cell phone away from my body as much as possible and rarely, if ever, have my laptop on my lap. There’s emerging science on the health dangers of the “EMF’s” (Electromagnetic Fields) electronic devices emit. So, I aim to only have my cell phone in my pocket when walking from one place to another. Otherwise, it’s on my desk, a table, countertop, or in the center console of my truck. I also don’t use Bluetooth ear pods for the same reason — I don’t want EMF’s that close to my brain, potentially interfering with the electrochemical processes.

I learned to cook. I highly recommend taking an entry level course on cooking basics, or Youtube it. I happened to attend culinary school during college, and it’s served me well. But I think not knowing how to cook is a main reason people go out to eat so often and end up eating a lot of toxic crap.

I usually do “intermittent fasting.” As mentioned in the Eating and Stress sections, I skip breakfast most days. I know, whhaat!? “The most important meal of the day!” I don’t do this, though, when dealing with above-normal stress levels. So much new research is coming out on fasting as a health practice, particularly around longevity, but for me I just feel more focused and clear headed, more energetic, keeps fat at bay, and good muscle and strength gains. It takes a couple of weeks to get used to the hunger, but it also makes the eating time feel more satisfying. This is also like a daily dose of “embracing discomfort,” building resilience, and keeping control of my emotions as they relate to eating. I also enjoy the time I get back in my day of not preparing food, eating, and cleaning up.

I sauna 4 nights per week. I know most people don’t have access to a sauna, but I recently bought a no frills, low-EMF, 1-person infrared sauna as an upgrade to my home gym for a little over $2k and it’s been an amazing investment. If you can’t swing it, find ways to sweat more frequently to offload toxins, plus so many other health benefits around growth hormone, muscle and ligament healing, etc. There also seem to be these sauna bars popping up in various places, that are set up like a tanning salon but with personal saunas instead of tanning beds.

I live within my means. I could’ve bought a 4-person sauna, I can afford a way nicer truck, bigger house, etc. But so many dudes go for what they can “afford” and become a slave to this image that costs a lot to maintain with ongoing debt and financial stress. As “Fight Club” author Chuck Palahniuk put it —

“We buy things we don’t need with money we don’t have to impress people we don’t like.”

I move more — Staying active is highly important for testosterone for a number of reasons, not the least of which is to keep lymph fluid circulating. We work hard and are under unprecedented levels of stress, so we all want to relax all the time, but not using our muscles leads to toxin buildup, low energy, muscle weakness, bone frailty. Being sedentary is one of the worst things for anyone’s health and fitness.

I stopped wearing sunglasses — Some people have sensitive eyes and need sunglasses, but they basically trick your brain into thinking it’s evening in broad daylight. Sunlight entering the eyes has important biological functions for setting your cells’ “circadian rhythm” (a 24 hour cycle of cellular processes). It also means that, if you’re out in the sun, but your brain thinks it’s nighttime, you won’t produce melanin which helps protect your skin against sunburn and damage. I think this, coupled with reducing my PUFA intake, is what’s helped me to stop getting sunburn so easily.

I try to keep good posture — There’s actually a boost in testosterone when we stand up straight. It’s something to do with body language, perhaps tied to ancestral situations where we may have had to deter a potential enemy or predator by making ourselves appear to be larger and more of a threat. A social psychologist named Amy Cuddy explains this in a TED Talk on body language. Good posture is also important for general health because you have nerves that come out of your spine connecting all parts of your body to your brain. And if those nerves are pinched between the bones of a crooked spine, it can affect bodily functions, like when you kink a hose, and the water flow slows or stops.

I want to close with some thoughts on science, which has been a big lifestyle shift for me via mindset. Science is absolutely critical to help advance and deepen our understanding of how our bodies work. I LOVE science and fully support the scientific process, but like anything humans do, it can be flawed, manipulated, and slow. Science has only very recently begun validating health benefits of ancient practices like fasting, breathwork, meditation, sauna, cold exposure, acupuncture, chiropractic, various herbs, and so on. While people, through the power of anecdote, have been successfully using these tools for ages, science has generally rejected them all along — simply for not having gotten around to validating the claims of efficacy through costly and rigorous experimentation. But in the absence of peer-reviewed, double-blind placebo studies (the gold standard among scientists) or extensive meta analyses (that lump multiple related studies together), or epidemiological studies, etc. there is often a wealth of anecdotal information passed down from generations that can be understood in a more directional sense or taken at face value. But healthy curiosity seems to be increasingly replaced with dismissive skepticism.

A “lack of science” cuts both ways. When health experts ridicule something for “not having seen enough science” to prove it works, I’m not sure they realize this usually also means there isn’t enough science to prove it doesn’t work, but their bias is clear. Just because there isn’t enough scientific rigor to prove the benefit of health practices, foods, supplements, etc. it doesn’t mean they don’t work and there’s often plenty of early stage research and “emerging science” to suggest they might. But so many have taken this weird stance where a lack of full-blown scientific rigor on something somehow makes it false, and the burden of proof is on the many users seeing benefit and not on the handful of scoffing experts. Science is the tool, not the rule — it’s our servant, not our master. Personally, I’ll take centuries of recorded anecdote over “not enough science” any day of the week.

Science also has an inherently narrow focus. To prove one thing, scientists generally need to control for as many variables as possible to narrow in on that one thing. So, a lot can be learned about that one thing, in isolation, which is great, but in real life we have variables galore. So there’s not much of an appetite in the scientific community for looking at the bigger picture and thinking more broadly with combinations of factors. But real life is simply not a controlled and sterile lab or petri dish, and it never will be. And any scientist will tell you that studies are just snapshots in time as long term studies are virtually impossible.

Plus, we’re quite blatantly failing miserably to thrive as a species, despite more and better science than ever. We’re the first generation that won’t outlive our parents as life expectancy in the US has been declining since 2016. More than ever before we’re dying of relatively new and preventable diseases. Something like 60% of Americans have at least one chronic disease with around 40% of us having more than one. Autoimmune disorders have exploded. Depression and mental illness are through the roof. And we’re having far more trouble than ever reproducing. All this disease and infertility have only begun skyrocketing in the last several decades. Scientists are doing a great job of digging deep to understand what’s going on, making amazing discoveries and progress, but our collective health is deteriorating faster than science can keep up with.

Science also comes off as pompous to the average person, which is divisive and causes a communication barrier between the expert and the novice. We can’t afford communication barriers when it comes to health. I have worked with very highly educated people — literally PhD-level data scientists — but the most successful ones have always been those capable of putting complex things into simple terms so more people can understand. I was listening to a podcast recently where a cardiologist used the word “bifurcate,” which just means to “split into 2 groups.” In another podcast I heard a doctor say “postprandial” which just means “after a meal.” These are two examples of thousands I’ve encountered in trying to understand all of this. This information is way too important, and already complex enough, to fly over our heads with excessively complex language.

Science does have one concept that I think is particularly applicable here, known as “Occam’s razor,” which basically says that in situations of so many complex problems and theories, the simplest solution is often the best one. To me, the simplest solution, here, is to go back to a time before all this madness started ramping up and, consider that our “Control group” and reverse engineer this explosion of poor health from there. Let’s take notes from our ancestors — eat more like they did, move more like they did, lift heavy things and break a sweat more frequently like they did, spend more time outdoors in the elements like they did, and so on. It would likely become more clear to more people that everything men have been encouraged to do over the last several decades runs in direct opposition to our bodies’ production of testosterone — our key hormone of thriving and vitality.

Personally, I think this is where we have a lot of hope as a species, because however we’ve F’d up our health in our lifetime, we’re built on a sound code base that has been honed since the beginning of human existence. We just need to tap into it and quit working against it.

Men are encouraged:

• To avoid saturated fat and cholesterol, but we literally can’t even make testosterone without cholesterol.

• To eat chicken and fish, when well-raised red meat and organs have far more nutrients per pound.

• To avoid carbs but miss out on the nutrient-dense world of fruits and root vegetables.

• To avoid salt, but our brain and entire nervous system need electrolytes to function properly.

• To drink tons of water but piss away our electrolytes and water-soluble vitamins and minerals.

• To eat breakfast, “the most important meal,” but miss the slew of health benefits of intermittent fasting.

• To “eat leafy greens,” which contain inflammatory plant defense compounds, anti-nutrients and poisonous pesticides.

• To eat “heart healthy,” yet highly processed, oils of vegetables, nuts, and seeds, composed of rancid, inflammatory PUFA.

• To count calories and macros when micronutrients are the actual raw materials our bodies use.

• To eat “plant-based” fake meat made from highly processed soy and a huge list of toxic chemicals.

• To go sugar-free and ingest artificial sweeteners that mess with our gut microorganisms and our sense of hunger.

• To drink beer, which is wrought with estrogen-mimicking compounds and inflammation-causing mycotoxins.

• To do a ton of steady-state cardio, which can exacerbate chronic stress and cause muscle and organ degeneration.

• To avoid compound lifts, which build lean muscle mass, strength, bone density, and improve metabolic rate.

• That rest is for the weak, exacerbating chronic stress and cortisol levels, worsening inflammation and undermining recovery.

• To “eat less and move more,” further worsening stress, it should be “eat well and move more.”

• To avoid the sun, but the sun helps us create Vitamin D, nitric oxide, and so much else for good health.

• To wear sunscreen, smashing estrogen-mimicking chemicals directly into our largest organ — our skin.

• To wear sunglasses and blue blocker lenses but screw up our body’s sense of day and night and all associated bodily processes.

• To use strong soaps and deodorants loaded with harsh chemicals that mimic estrogen in our blood.

• To struggle for success, rather than strive to build, or become an indispensable part of, a rewarding business.

• To sit and work or watch sports, becoming sedentary, developing chronic pain, toxicity, inflammation, weakness, and frailty.

• To “fake it til’ we make it,” building mountains of debt and the associated chronic stress.

• That the “dad bod” is attractive, but our bodies store testosterone-clobbering estrogen particularly in belly fat cells.

• To distract ourselves from problems at the expense of our capacity to build mental resilience.

• That masculinity is “toxic,” when so much of it is linked to our biology and health.

• That testosterone makes men violent, but it actually makes us more of what we are, the spotlight just loves the assholes.

It’s all clearly not working. I barely even mentioned the testosterone epidemic that’s been happening for decades where men’s testosterone levels have been dropping by 1% each year (men today have ~50% less testosterone than men just 50 years ago). And I didn’t mention how in 2017 the CDC lowered the bar of what’s considered “normal testosterone,” setting our benchmark well below where it should be and making what is actually low testosterone to be “normal range.” And I didn’t even get into the completely false stereotypes about testosterone and the role these stereotypes have played as a barrier to entry on this.

My only hope here is to lay out everything I do to optimize testosterone, naturally, across diet, exercise, lifestyle and stress mitigation, and to do so in very simple terms for anyone to understand, without all the scientific jargon and rabbit holes within which all of this information is usually wrapped. Whether my understanding or explanation of any or all of this is correct or not, it’s clear to me that hormones are so much more powerful than we know and, if we learn to take care of our hormones, our hormones will take care of us.

RESOURCES I’VE LEARNED A LOT ABOUT TESTOSTERONE FROM

Key Books:

• Master Your T, by Christopher Walker

• The THOR Program, by Christopher Walker

• The Termo Diet, by Christopher Walker

• The Big Fat Surprise, by Nina Ticholz

• The Salt Fix, by James DiNicolantonio

• Boundless, by Ben Greenfield

• Unbeatable Mind, by Mark Divine

• Estrogeneration, by Dr. Anthony Gray

• Countdown, by Dr. Shanna Swan

• Jaws: The Story of a Hidden Epidemic, by Sandra Kahn & Paul R. Ehrlich

Key Podcasts/Youtubers:

• The Thermo Diet Podcast

• Ben Greenfield Life Podcast

• Huberman Lab Podcast

• Fundamental Health Podcast (Paul Saladino aka Carnivore MD)

• The Energy Balance Podcast

• Mark Bell’s Power Project Podcast

• Thomas DeLauer (Youtube)