(Breather) Here we go! Part two of this four-part series will continue to focus on what you can do to naturally increase testosterone, by utilizing these easily applicable methods to your diet and exercise routine.

Strength training and sprinting are great ways to build up testosterone levels. The best form of strength training is anything that emphasizes lower body compound movements (meaning, something that requires a complete range of motion, rather than isolated movement, like doing leg extensions while sitting on a chair). Squats and deadlifts are great at activating androgen receptivity in the legs, which boosts testosterone optimization. Here’s a simple workout protocol you can try at home:

• 6 reps with a challenging weight, taking two minute rests between sets. A couple sets of deep squats every day doesn’t take a lot of time, but makes a huge difference.
• Finish with a “partial range of motion” that has some good receptor site activation. I randomly discovered that if I hold the deadlift hex bar a little below the top, and bend my elbows and knees and hold that for 20 seconds, that is not just good for muscle stimulation, but for stimulating androgen receptors as well.
• Forced reps are also recommended for when you are fatigued and just need an assist, as this has been shown to recruit muscle fibers and androgen receptors.

Let’s not forget about the importance of cardiovascular exercise! It’s key that you do cardio correctly, which means doing the majority of your cardio at or below your maximum aerobic heart rate.

When it comes to exercise, regular sustained (at least an hour of) brisk aerobic exercise three times a week will help raise your testosterone levels. Daily is better. Cycling, Hiking, Walking, Swimming, and Running are all good aerobic exercises to increase testosterone levels. This aerobic exercise should be at a level to increase your heart rate. Why not try being a part of a sports team?!

Let’s talk about recovery. Recovery is an essential component of weight training and long aerobic exercise. If you overtrain – meaning you don’t allow your body to recuperate adequately between training sessions – your circulating testosterone levels can plunge by as much as 40 percent, according to a study at the University of North Carolina.

Interestingly, completing and facing challenges is definitely something to engage in if you want to boost testosterone. Competition raises the sense of mission, sharpens your focus, increases metabolism, gets juices flowing and with it, testosterone production. John Gray says males need to constantly regenerate and restore testosterone levels, since they are so easily depleted by high-stress, modern life, as well as dysfunctional relationship dynamics.  So how does John suggest you rebuild your testosterone levels? By going out into the world and “taking cave time.” This means tackling challenges and engaging in problem solving, since men are biologically wired to conquer their environment. You have to do something that honors your biology and the fundamental elements of what makes us human. “Do something that scares the shit out of you every day,” says Ancestral Supplements founder, Brian Johnson.

Next up is diet, which is of course, extremely important for your hormones, as the food you eat determines whether or not your body will optimize insulin production. When you’re eating too many processed carbs, sugar, and grains, your body produces excess insulin, and that excess insulin removes testosterone from your bloodstream. So if you notice you’ve gained that all too common spare “tire” in your midsection, that’s a sign that your body is suppressing testosterone production. Visceral fat around the abdominal organs indicates there is not only excess estrogen in your body, but excess inflammatory hormones as well, which is why cutting junk out of your diet and lowering insulin is so important. You want to put the focus on superfoods: organ meats, pastured eggs, SMASH fish, shellfish with zinc, like oysters, monounsaturated fats (seeds & nut butters, avocado, and coconut). Some people don’t know how to prepare organ meats or just aren’t into the taste, but that’s ok, because there are great supplements out there, like my MOFO Supplement. I also have some great tips for preparing organ meats and making them palatable in my cookbooks, Keto Cooking For Cool Dudes and Carnivore Cooking For Cool Dudes. One of my staple recipes is a grass-fed liver burger and an omelet made with egg yolks and sardines – packed with nutrition, delicious, and easy to make. Even though I was already eating a super healthy diet, upping my organ meat game really made a huge difference in my energy levels, and it’s one of the best ways to increase nutrient density in your diet.

And a quick note about protein: obviously, you want to ensure you’re getting enough of it, but here’s the thing: it’s actually quite difficult to become protein deficient (unless you’re following a very restrictive diet, like a plant-food only diet). But if you do become protein deficient, Chris Kresser notes that you’ll start experiencing intense cravings for high-protein foods. You’ll likely become emaciated, and your hair will fall out. This is when it’s time for a Liver Burger.

That’s it for now! Stay tuned for part three and four, and if you’ve been trying out these tips for increasing testosterone, please drop an email or comment below to share your experience so far!

Timestamps:

The best form of strength training is anything that will emphasize compound movements that focus on the lower body. [02:41]

What would be a simple workout protocol? [06:17]

A partial motion rep is a good way to stimulate important androgen receptors. [08:47]

Cardiovascular exercise should always be done at or below your maximum aerobic heart rate. [10:28]

It’s very important to make sure you recover fully no matter what your exercise is. [14:02]

The male needs to constantly regenerate and restore testosterone levels by competition. [17:01]

Diet components are important for boosting testosterone. [19:44]

Get rid of the fat around the belly. [21:27]

Add organ meats, like liver to your diet. Also add SMASH fish. [22:18]

Mono-unsaturated fats coming from nuts and seeds are important. [27:11]

When you become protein deficient, it will tank your testosterone. [29:45]

Links:

• Sarcopenia
• Ben Greenfield
• Maximum Aerobic Heart Rate
• Ralph Teller
• Brad’s podcast with Dr. John Gray
• Brad Kearns MOFO
• SMASH fish: sardines, mackerel, anchovy, salmon, and herring
• Brad’s Macadamia Masterpiece
• Chris Kresser podcast with Rogan

LISTEN:

Get Over Yourself Podcast

Brad (00:00):
Welcome to the get over yourself podcast. This is author, an athlete, Brad Kearns, discovering ways to be healthy, fit and happy in hectic, high-stress, modern life. So let’s slow down and take a deep breath. Take a cold plunge, and expertly balanced that competitive intensity with an appreciation of the journey. That’s the theme of the show. Here we go.

Brad 02:41. Welcome to part two of lifestyle tips to naturally boost and preserve healthy optimal testosterone levels. In the first show, we got deep into sleep and we talked about the importance of minimizing artificial light and digital stimulation after dark. Getting into those magic hours of 12 midnight to 3:00 AM for the hormonal burst, the hormone optimization happening at night, and then we talked about the important attribute of sprinting in your exercise program to boost testosterone levels, get that spike of adaptive hormones when you do a properly conducted sprint workout and right up there with sprinting in importance is strength training regular, literally putting your body under some form of resistance load for the rest of your life so that you can skate free of these horrible risk factors like sarcopenia.

Brad (03:39):
That’s the term for muscle loss relating to aging as well as losing our balance, losing our muscle strength. Did you know that the number one cause of injury and death in Americans over age 65 is falling? So when you can get the weights going or the stretch tubes or the machines or the home gym apparatus, whatever it is that you can get your body under resistance load a body weight exercises. We talked about the primal essential movements of pushups, pull ups, squats and planks. There’s all kinds of ways to put your body under resistance load. If you’re listening to this podcast during work, like many of our listeners, just kidding, I’m not sure, but isn’t that funny? Uh, you can do something as simple as dropping for a set of 20 deep squats right there in your office cubicle right now. If you want to put me on pause, how was it?

Brad (04:35):
Pretty tough, huh? 16,17, 18, 19, 20. Even if you’re super fit, you will get a little burned going when you drop for a set of deep squats. And that counts as resistance exercise. So what’s the best form of strength training? Anything that will emphasize compound movements that focus on the lower body. So compound is something that’s, uh, going through a complete range of motion rather than, let’s say an isolated movement would be, uh, sitting on the chair and doing the leg extensions where you wrap your shins under the bar and go forward and backward in a single range of motion. Uh, in contrast, something like a squat or a deadlift, you’re recruiting all kinds of different muscle groups for a more complex movement, moving through actual space where you require balance and you require the stabilizer muscles to play a role to get that bar up safely.

Brad (05:29):
So those are widely regarded as the most effective. Uh, but of course you work within your skill level and your safety level. Uh, so you can do a squat where the bar remains in the rack, right? You don’t have to grab it and step out onto the center stage. Uh, but these compound movements are known to be the best. And when you emphasize the lower body such as the dead lift or the squat, what’s happening is your activating more of those aforementioned androgen receptor sites that I talked about in the first show when I talked about sprinting. So when you activate these androgen receptor activity in the legs, that’s when you get most bang for your buck with testosterone optimization. There’s greater androgen receptor density in the legs. That’s why I’m mentioning this.

Brad (06:17):
So a simple workout protocol would be to do six reps with a challenging weight like so you’re near failure after six reps taking two minutes rest between sets, boom, bang out. A couple of sets. Simple as that. If you have a lot of experience in the weight room, you’ve been devoted to some good workouts over time, of course you can go up and do a five sets or whatever works for you. But if you can simply integrate that into everyday life and haul off a couple sets of deep squats every day. Maybe if you have a dead lift like I do, I love my hexagon deadlift bar that sits ready and waiting in my side yard, uh, loaded up with 200 pounds. Nothing too serious. I don’t have to do a warmup before I step over to the bar. But what I do is when I walk by it over the course of my busy day, such as when I’m throwing out the garbage from the kitchen, going out to the side yard, I will stop at the dead lift bar and haul off maybe even just a single set of dead lifts if I’m still recovering or not wishing to, uh, strain myself in any way.

Brad (07:27):
But everyone can haul off a single set. And when you do this as sort of a, uh, everyday element of your routine without thinking about it, without worrying about it, without stressing about it, you will have a massive cumulative fitness benefit and hormonal benefit over time. So something as simple as deep squats in the office cubicle or while you’re watching TV at home, or if you have access to a bar, hoist that bar up on a regular basis and of course do the formal workouts that are focusing on these compound lower body movements on a regular basis once or twice a week is plenty. As we talk about so much in the primal community, you don’t have to go in there day after day after day and drift over into these chronic patterns. A good quality strength training session can last as short as 10 minutes up to a maximum, probably have 30 minutes. There’s no reason to linger longer than that. You don’t want a prolonged production of the fight or flight hormones that characterize what’s going on during a strength training session. You want to get there, get the work done and go home, go hard and go home. So that’s the ideal simple protocol for a strength training session couple times a week and then throwing in some micro efforts in between. They’re beautiful.

Brad (08:47):
There’s also some other tips and tricks that some of the experts have mentioned here. One is to finish with a Ben Greenfield. This a, a partial range of motion rep. So what you do here is you, uh, lift up the deadlift bar, let’s say, uh, two thirds of the way and hold it there. And this will activate a whole bunch of, uh, muscle groups and particularly the androgen receptor site. So you hold for a count of 10 and then put the bar down. Finally, I love to do this. At the end of my, uh, hex bar set of six or eight or 10 dead lifts. I will lower the bar, uh, maybe six inches from the top so that my joints aren’t locked out. So I’m like slightly bent knees and slightly bent elbows. Uh, just a little tip there because we, when we lock the joints out, such as doing a bench press or for talking about the other way, uh, you’re just putting the load onto your joints rather than the muscles, which is where you want them. So when I lower that deadlift bar, a few inches from the top, uh, bend the elbows, bend the knees, and just hold that puppy there for a count of 20. That is a good muscle stimulation as well as believed to stimulate the important androgen receptors. Similarly, the idea of doing a forced rep, this is when you finish, right? You’ve done your six and you’re reaching failure and then you have a helper there to assist you with doing one more rep than you could possibly do on your own. And this has also been shown to help recruit muscle fibers, androgen receptors. Okay, so there’s your strength training paired with your sprinting from the previous show.

Brad (10:28):
And now we talk about the other piece of the puzzle, which is cardiovascular exercise. And of course this is hugely important for living a healthy, happy long lifestyle. But boy, Oh boy did we screw this up. Don’t we walk into any gym or look around on any road or trail? And you see people, generally speaking, overdoing it, exceeding that it critical cutoff point of your maximum aerobic heart rate. So the most important thing is to do the vast majority of your cardiovascular exercise at or below your maximum aerobic heart rate. That is defined as the point where the maximum aerobic stimulation occurs with a minimal amount of anaerobic stimulation, you’re burning maximum fat calories per minute, and if you were to go any faster, you would burn less fat and more glucose. So a proper fat burning session is minimally stressful. It’s energizing and refreshing, and it’s not kicking you into glucose burning, which is where you get the stress hormone production and you get the sugar cravings in the hours afterward. That’s the essence of a chronic exercise pattern is making you a carb dependent, hormonally suppressed human who’s doing things in a a well intentioned way, but it’s not having the desired effect. So very, this is from the great work of Dr Phil Maffetone. Your maximum aerobic heart rate is one 80 minus your age in beats per minute, one 80 minus age. Oh gee, I’m 55 now.

Brad (12:07):
So 180 minus 55 is 125. So that would be my cutoff point to represent a purely aerobic cardiovascular training session, delivering the many benefits of improving my fat burning capabilities and improving my cardiovascular health, but not causing a stress response as it would if I were to speed up and try to perform in the heart rate ranges of 135, 145 and the problem is it’s pretty easy to exceed that maximum aerobic heart rate and drift up 10, 15, 20 beats above. You’re not really feeling the extreme stress that you might when you’re doing an anaerobic threshold workout, which is probably a 40 beats above maximum aerobic heart rate for me. So that no man’s land, that black hole that we talk about, uh, with such intensity in the book, Primal Endurance, that’s what you want to stay away from. So getting out there and doing sufficient cardio, of course we need a couple, few or more hours per week, especially to balance the long sedentary periods that we have in life.

Brad (13:18):
But you can achieve this from walking, hiking, casually peddling your bicycle down to the corner market. If you’re Dave Kolbrine in his new home, in Newport Beach, whatever you’re doing just to get on your feet and get your heart rate going. Even a walk down the street, if you’re a fit person, is going to double your heart rate from resting and it’s going to count towards your cardiovascular exercise objectives. So I’m going to venture to say that most people are probably doing fine here. They’re getting plenty of cardio in and the main risk is from overtraining, from overdoing it. So get out there and exercise gently or hit it hard with the weights or with sprinting and stay away from those in between black hole workouts.

Brad (14:02):
In a related point when we’re talking about optimizing testosterone production is to make absolutely sure that you recover fully, especially from these high stress challenging workouts of sprinting and strength training. So sprinting as we’ve long conveyed in the primal blueprint message once a week is plenty, once every seven to 10 days for a nice sprint session where you’re only doing remember six second sprints or ten second sprints or maybe up to 20 second sprints, and then having plenty of time between that for just the casual exercise, uh, maybe hitting the weights or the resistance work a couple times a week and all of a sudden it becomes pretty simple to get almost all of your exercise benefits in terms of health, longevity and testosterone optimization. It does not require and hours in the gym. It does not require this notion of consistency, which so many people use that term. It bugs the crap out of me because maybe the consistency is important for your ego or for your analytical mind, but the body can do just fine with a haphazard, sporadic approach to fitness and yes, that means taking weeks off where you don’t do a lot of strength training or sprinting because you’re just not quite right.

Brad (15:17):
For example, I had a crazy binge of exercise. I did my first track meet in decades. Couple of days later I did a nice long mountain bike ride with my son and nephew and ate a lot of sugar and had a great weekend vacation scene down in Southern California. And uh, Oh guess what? Got a little rundown when I arrived back home. So if I have less than optimal symptoms of normal health, energy and immune function at rest, I’m going to curtail all my high intensity, high stress workouts, uh, for, for the time being until I feel great again. And that’s been a lesson that took me many years and decades to learn that you just back off and wait it out and you’re not gonna lose any fitness unless you have an illness or something that makes you bedridden for a few weeks. Then of course you’re going to lose some fitness. But if you can just kind of maintain with some gentle exercise, some aerobic movement, you’re going to do just fine to allow your energy to restore naturally. So making sure that recovery is really the centerpiece of your training program and your fitness experience rather than an afterthought. That is huge.

Brad (16:23):
Here is some commentary from a Ralph Teller’s article regarding recovery. Uh, if you overtrain, meaning you don’t allow your body to recuperate, your circulating testosterone levels can plunge by as much as 40%, according to a study at the university of North Carolina. And I can absolutely attest to that from my test results over years and decades. And boy, a 40% reduction in the prominent, probably most important male hormone and, uh, vitality measurement there is, that’s no joke, right? So don’t overdo it. Make sure you recover.

Brad (17:01):
Uh, now onto the next attribute or way of boosting testosterone. Great insight here. This is again from a Ralph Teller’s article. He says, compete and face challenges. Competition raises the sense of mission sharpens the focus, increases metabolism, gets the juices flowing, and with it, testosterone production, uh, what does this remind you of? That’s right. My fantastic shows with Dr. John Gray. Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. He talks about the hormonal underpinnings of healthy relationship dynamics. In his fantastic 2017 book Beyond Mars and Venus and with particular attention to the male, the male needs to constantly regenerate and restore testosterone levels that are so easily depleted by hectic, high stress, modern life, particularly dysfunctional relationship dynamics where the man gets pulled into a feeling cranky, bitchy, emotional, and all these things that represent an imbalance in testosterone and an excess of estrogen. So how do you rebuild depleted testosterone? According to John Gray, you go out there into the world and do your thing.

Brad (18:20):
He calls it taking cave time or tackling challenges, engaging in problem solving, which are the essential male biological drives. We are wired to conquer our environment, to face danger, overcome our fears and achieve great magnificent feats such as bringing down the animal and bringing it back to camp for the hunter- gatherer clan to feast upon. And today it means perhaps going out to the golf course and trying to improve your time and your strokes and speed golf or go into the gym and hoisting a bunch of weights or going into the garage and tinkering with your, uh, motorcycle project. Even playing video games counts because it boosts testosterone because you’re engaged in problem solving and conquering your environment. So these fundamental elements of what makes us human, Brian Johnson, the Liver King, the founder of ancestral supplements, my MOFO man says simply quote, do something that scares the shit out of you every day. So we have to constantly push the envelope, take on new challenges. And yes, they don’t always have to be physical. It can be cognitive, intellectual, trying to learn a new language, play the violin. Anything goes here, but testosterone boosting activities are those that get you in that problem solving competitive state of mind.

Brad (19:44):
Okay, so that’s a nice attribute to add to the list. And then we get into the diet components of optimizing testosterone. We’ve already had so much discussion with the great experts of the planet on diets. I’m just going to going to breeze through a summary here and also talk about some of the supplements that you may have heard about. So first and foremost is we’ve got to get those super foods into the diet. Yes. That means eliminating junk food and creating space for the superfoods. And it goes without saying that, ah, removing the crap from your diet is going to help with hormone function and general health, particularly when you optimize your insulin production. So if you are over producing insulin right now because you’re consuming too many processed carbohydrate foods, both sugars, grains, and sweetened beverages, that excess insulin is going to remove testosterone from your bloodstream, minimize its potential to act on the target organs as it’s designed, and it’s going to basically suppress your testosterone. What are signs of this? That’s right. Gaining that spare tire over the years and decades so common. It’s so commonplace that we almost expect it to happen, but when you start to accumulate a spare tire that is visceral fat fat around the abdominal organs, this is an indication of excess estrogen, excess inflammatory hormones that called inflammatory cytokines that are secreted by the visceral fat itself. So it’s a vicious cycle. When you get a little bit of spare tire going, you have a propensity to get a greater spare tire going over the years and decades ahead. It’s a slippery slope downhill.

Brad (21:27):
So we want to fight this battle to keep the belly fat off of the body, especially males, but also for females too. It’s a very, uh, adverse health sign that your fat is concentrated around the abdominal organs. It’s a special kind of fat. Some experts are calling it an organ in and of itself because it has the ability to, to secrete these inflammatory chemicals into the bloodstream. So keeping that belly fat off, optimizing, minimizing insulin, in most cases, right? Most people are producing too much insulin, so get that insulin production down. Uh, of course, add the exercise factors in so you can burn off extra calories, get better at burning body fat and get that visceral fat off your body. So you will avoid the slippery slope downhill and allow that testosterone that your balls is putting into your bloodstream to take effect and work as intended.

Brad (22:18):
Okay? Yeah. Get that insulin lowered, get that junk out of your diet. And then we turn our attention to the superfoods. I talk about these in the MOFO mission. Uh, you can look at a quick glance at the website, BradKearns.com/ MOFO and ah, the fabulous eBooks that we’re putting out, uh, with more details. But basically the superfoods start with organ meats. These are known to be the most nutrient dense foods on the planet. That’s why MOFO is so beneficial because it contains, uh, the target organs that are especially effective for testosterone production. But any effort to increase your organ meat consumption is super duper awesome. Starting with liver, perhaps the most nutrient dense food on the planet. Oh, you don’t like it? Hey, that’s okay. Guess what? You will acquire a taste for it when you know it’s so good for you. Go find some grass fed liver. Integrate it into your diet.

Brad (23:15):
At first I was recoiling at the taste cause I never ate it my entire life. Guess what I did? I put it in the Cuisinart with delicious ground Wagyu hamburger and made liver burgers where I could barely even taste the liver and it was fantastic. Now I’m easily cooking up a giant slabs of liver and eating them straight up. Or what I like to do is coat it in almond flour and I also squirt a little bit of lemon juice and olive oil on the liver and then fry it up in a cast skillet, uh, minimally. So it’s pretty rare on the inside. That’s when you get the most nutritional benefit. And liver is part of my game now to my great benefit, I really feel like, uh, my energy, uh, has become more regulated. I don’t have those down periods that I was famous for the absolute necessity to crash for a nap in the afternoon.

Brad (24:06):
And I attribute one of those reasons is upping my, uh, organ meat game and in improving the overall nutrient density of my diet. Not that I wasn’t eating super healthy already, but when you check off these boxes, go and get some liver, try to experiment with some other organ meats like kidney or heart, a pastured eggs for sure. It’s so wonderful to see that they’re increasingly prevalent almost every where you go. Vital Farms with the black box or the dark Brown box. They seem to have widespread distribution across the country of past truly pasture raised eggs. There’s a huge difference between organic eggs that are still given organic feed and a true pasture raised chicken who’s been out on the open fields eating grass and bugs and worms and insects and generating an egg that’s up to 20 times more Omega-3 value than a commercial egg, e.specially a conventionally raised date where the chicken lived in the feed lot, didn’t even have access to outdoors and just ate a bunch of nasty feed to crank out a by comparison, a nutrient deficient egg. Again, can’t criticize a consuming eggs too much, but if when you have the opportunity to go find pastured eggs and for the budget impact and the nutrient benefit, you’re getting. Same with liver. Oh my gosh, I’m almost laughing at the prices they charge for organ meats because nobody wants them. You can get a, you know, a large load of liver for three 99 for 99 five 99 a pound grass fed liver the most nutrient dense food on the planet and you know, in comparison to the steaks. Yeah, they taste good, but really 20 bucks a pound for some part of the cow that has less nutritional benefit than the liver .

Brad (25:49):
People! Go into the organ meat scene. Go deep, man. Same with eggs. The point I was making that here a dozen eggs is going to cost you three, four bucks, whatever, and then you can get pastured eggs for seven or eight bucks. Oh my gosh. Fantastic. And if you’re at the farmer’s market, they’re going to sell you a dozen pastured eggs for the same price as these feed lot eggs. Oh my gosh. Bargain central. And then continuing the bargain theme. The best fish are the SMASH fish, right? The smash hits that stands for sardines, mackrel, anchovy, salmon, and herring. These are the oily, cold water fish that have by far the highest Omega3 values of any other food group you can find. So when you emphasize these kinds of fish, you’re getting the best nutritional benefit of any fish. Also for the cheapest price. And yes, the canned sardines, the canned mackerel, all that stuff is just fine. It’s teaming with nutritional benefit. Go to town on those things. Uh, look on my Instagram. I have this new, uh, fun recipe of a sardine egg yolk omelet. You can’t get any more super nutrition than that. It comes out really great. It’s really easy to make omelettes with egg yolks easier than when you have the whites in there. Just folds up beautifully picture perfect for Instagram cultivation and inside the little sardines that tastes so delicioso.

Brad (27:11):
Okay. You also have on this list, shellfish, especially oysters because they’re high in zinc and that’s how they got their a reputation as an aphrodisiac. So we want to get those high zinc foods into the picture and then, uh, emphasizing also mono unsaturated fats. Those are coming from nuts and seeds and they’re derivative butters and Oh my gosh, people sneak preview. I am making a for commercial distribution, a fabulous, incredible mindblowing nut butter blend containing get this macadamia, walnut, cashew, coconut, cacao nibs and MCT oil. Yeah, it’s going to be a Keto. machine called Brad’s macadamia masterpiece. You’re not going to believe how good it tastes. Stay tuned for that, but those are good sources of mono and saturated fats. The nuts, especially macadamia nuts, the MONO superstar with 84% mono and saturated. And we also know that all of oil, avocado, avocado oil, coconut and all the coconut products are also high in mono unsaturated. So that’s covering your super food checkpoints.

Brad (28:21):
And then as far as your macro nutrients and all that discussion, Oh my gosh, we have hours and hours of uh, commentary and stacks of books talking about this. Of course, the ancestral eating pattern seems to be the way to go. I know it’s a controversial topic. I don’t want to get too, uh, in too deep into your head, sort of I do. But, uh, when you’re using the evolutionary example to sort through all the hype and the propaganda and the disputes that are happening today, boy, it seems to make sense to me, right? We’ve been eating this stuff for two and a half million years. Uh, we know that the nutrient dense animal foods were the attribute that fueled the explosion in human brain growth and brain function that allowed us to branch off from our ape cousins that eats, uh, roots and shoots and leaves all day. And, uh, proceed to the top of the food chain where we stand today. So if you can find sustainably raised, we don’t want to have any objections here, sustainably raised animal products and emphasize those in the diet. Uh, look no further than the great shows that were conducted with Dr. Paul Saladino and Dr Shawn Baker arguing for this nose to tail carnivore diet emphasis. Boy, that’s some pretty important stuff to think about. And then we can figure out the role of carbohydrates and where those fit in and going by personal preference, personal experimentation, whether you’re or not, you have excess body fat on your body.

Brad (29:45):
These are all decisions that are going to influence your choice of foods and macronutrient ratios and things like that. Uh, on the subject of protein. Oh my goodness. Of course you have to get, uh, your protein levels optimized and if you come insufficient on protein, your body’s gonna fall apart. Quite simple, pretty routine observation. They’re undisputed and you’re also going to tank your hormone levels and your testosterone is going to be the least of your worries if you’re protein deficient. Now, here’s an important point. It’s very, very difficult to become protein deficient unless you have some crazy restrictive diet where you’re cutting out. Uh, most of the high protein foods, one that might come to mind is a whole food plant based diet where you refuse to eat animal products for whatever reason. That’s going to put you in the high risk category of becoming protein deficient.

Brad (30:38):
But the symptoms of protein deficiency are so profound because it’s so important that you’re probably going to be able to right the ship in some way, shape or form, perhaps trending a little bit away from your early strictness into a more allowances for a pescatarian type consumption or thrown in the eggs and the sardines and all of a sudden you’re golden instead of in high risk. But when you’re protein deficient, you’re going to feel tired, weak, you’re going to become emaciated. You might have hair falling out. And you will also, according to Chris Kresser, one of the brightest minds in the space. Listen to him on Joe Rogan podcast take apart point by point, minute by minute, the very popular documentary advocating for plant based eating these days. That was a great show, but Chris Kresser says, when you become protein deficient, you will experience intense cravings for high protein foods to help get you back into regulation. So that’s a cool insight there. Not to worry too much about getting enough protein, uh, but possibly the most concern should be placed into uh, minimizing your intake of those nutrient deficient toxic modern foods, namely processed carbohydrates, grains, sugar sweetened beverages, and of course the industrial seed oils as well.

Brad (31:58):
So that kind of concludes a quick trip into the diet aspect of how to optimize testosterone production. And we will pick up the dialogue with a few more topics on part three of this wonderful sequence of keeping the dream alive, keeping that testosterone optimized. Thank you for listening to part two.

Brad (32:18):
Ooh, Ooh, Ooh. Thank you for listening to the show. We would love your feedbac at getoveryourselfpodcast@.

Brad (32:24):
gmail.com and we would also love if you could leave a rating and a review on iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts. I know it’s a hassle. You have to go to desktop, iTunes, click on the tab that says ratings and reviews, and then click to rate the show anywhere from five to five stars. And it really helps spread the word so more people can find the show and get over themselves cause they need to. Thanks for doing it.