Do you ever feel like you lack energy, motivation, or vitality? As men, we must keep our testosterone levels in a healthy range. When testosterone drops too low, it can seriously impact our quality of life.
Don't worry; there are natural ways to maintain healthy testosterone levels. Let's walk through 4 lifestyle changes you can make to keep your T levels up.
Why Should You Care About Healthy T Levels?
You may be wondering why healthy testosterone levels matter so much. Here are just a few of the benefits:
● More energy and stamina
● Improved mood and sense of wellbeing
● Increased muscle mass and more effortless fat loss
● Better sleep quality
● Improved libido and performance
When your T drops too low, all those areas of life start to suffer. By keeping your levels optimized, you’ll feel healthier, happier, and much more energetic.
Now let's get into the tips:
1. Strength Train With Compound Lifts
Lifting weights that engage multiple large muscle groups is one of the most effective natural ways to increase testosterone. Exercises like squats, deadlifts, bench presses, overhead presses, and rows temporarily boost T levels in the body.
For best results, focus your training on these compound movements at least 2-3 days per week. Train with challenging weights and allow your muscles to recover between sessions fully.
Make sure you learn proper lifting form, too. A personal trainer or experienced gym partner checking your technique on the big lifts is invaluable.
With good form and incremental progressions in weight, your fitness and hormone levels will skyrocket. Those muscle gains and performance increases are directly tied to bumps in testosterone.
2. Get Plenty of Vitamin D
Research reveals that men with sufficient vitamin D levels have significantly higher testosterone values than men lacking this essential vitamin. Most vitamin D is produced in the body when sunlight hits your skin.
Aim for 15-20 minutes of midday sun exposure several times per week, with chest and arms uncovered without sunscreen.
Your body synthesizes vitamin D much quicker with direct skin exposure. During the darker winter, supplementing with a vitamin D3 capsule can boost blood levels.
Recent clinical research suggests men need at least 3000 IU of vitamin D daily to support healthy testosterone production. Without question, getting this sunshine vitamin/hormone should be on your radar.
3. Eat More Healthy Fats
Certain fats provide the raw materials needed for your body to manufacture testosterone. Food sources like fatty fish, avocado, olive oil, nuts, seeds, and even cholesterol-rich egg yolks contain fatty acids that stoke T production.
Pasture-raised meats also provide conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) and long-chain fatty acids that optimize hormones.
On the flip side, boxed/packaged foods contain cheap processed vegetable and seed oils that throw your hormones out of whack. Ditch those inflammatory oils in favour of natural fats. Your endocrine system will thank you!
4. Manage Stress Levels
Chronic stress raises cortisol and inflammation, which inhibits testosterone production. Make time to intentionally activate your relaxation response each day through deep breathing, meditation, prayer, yoga, or other activities that calm your nervous system.
This tip gives your health and hormones a reprieve from fight-or-flight mode. It will reduce your stress level and maintain healthy testosterone levels naturally.
Final Thoughts
There, you have six science-backed ways to keep your testosterone production humming along naturally. But none of them will do much good on their own.
It would help if you manage your diet, fitness, lifestyle, and stress together to move the needle.
By training hard, eating right, managing stress, and living healthy, your T levels will stay peaked for years of fit, energetic, masculine living.
Now, get to work implementing a few of these tips! Your energy, strength, and vitality levels will thank you.
