6 Ways to Manipulate Hormone Levels to Get Big And Stay Ripped
Everyone wants to know if their pre-contest diet is good, so you’ve
probably heard all the questions and the uniform answer that all
bodybuilders provide to each other – no carbohydrates. Of course, this can
work – eating low carbs or throwing them out of your diet completely will
provide your body with fewer calories, which is good, but it also has
other positive effects
One of these is the control of insulin, which has the potential to store
fat in your body. Even though it regulates your calories and your
hormones, that doesn’t mean that this approach is correct! If you want to
get ripped, you need those two things, but you need to tune your entire
metabolism to burn as much body fat as possible in order to get to your
goals before that contest. Here are the six main hormones you should learn
how to manipulate
Insulin
Insulin helps your body store fat, but it also helps it make an anabolic
environment inside it, that then provides muscle growth. With insulin, you
want to keep it as low as possible when resting and high after working
out. This is because low insulin assists your body in burning fat as long
as the calories are controlled, but raised levels of insulin when you work
out, create anabolism and prevent muscle loss by growing more muscle. To
achieve this, make sure your carbohydrate intake is low most of the time –
eat more low-carb veggies and lean protein such as fowl, fish, lean beef,
egg whites and protein powder. You need carbohydrates to enter your body
at the same time as protein, but there is a rule to consuming them – 0.2
grams of carbs per pound of bodyweight and right before working out
Also, consume 0.3 grams of carbs per pound of bodyweight right
afterwards. If you weigh in at 250 pounds, that would be 50 grams of carbs
before and 75 grams after working out. This will create an anabolic
process in your body at the most crucial and most effective times – while
working out and while resting
Testosterone
This hormone helps you be bigger and stronger, so you want your
testosterone levels high at all times. When you diet, your testosterone
levels drop and you want to avoid that due to the downgrade of your
metabolic rate brought by lower testosterone. This is because of the human
growth hormone which also declines whenever testosterone does, and the
human growth hormone is what burns fat in your body
I recommend one of the following ways to boost your testosterone while on
a diet – boost your dietary fat intake two days of the week and make beef
your primary protein source, together with egg yolks and some nuts. Your
carbs need to be kept on a tight leash, but also your fats need to be
controlled. Don’t overdo it though – if you don’t eat fat for a long
period of time, your testosterone levels drop. Eat some more fat every few
days to keep your body guessing and your testosterone high
Also, you can boost your carbohydrates consumption once a week to 3 grams
for every pound of bodyweight and you will see changes to your
testosterone levels. Carbohydrates boost insulin and the more insulin you
have, the less globulin there is. Globulin is a sex hormone-binding
hormone which clings to your testosterone and makes it difficult for it to
transport due to the globulin’s interference. When you boost your insulin
levels, the globulin is removed from testosterone, which enables the
latter to get to where it needs to go, including your muscles. When you
stimulate growth, your metabolism becomes faster and your physique
leaner
Growth Hormone
The growth hormone helps you burn fat and keep your muscles – and you
want a lot of it because you need to save your muscles while on a diet
because it’s the most important part of maintaining your metabolic rate.
Also, more growth hormone will quicken your fat loss
Increase growth hormone quantities in your body with supplements, sleep
and training, all of which have special effects. You may try 5-6 grams of
arginine pre-training to raise your growth hormone levels as well as boost
the blood flow to your muscles. If you take 200-400 milligrams of mucuna
pruriens before working out, that will also help. Mucuna pruriens comes
from velvet beans and it has a lot of L-dopa, which is an amino acid
derivative with a high growth hormone production potential. This is a
process, so the 5-6 grams of arginine and 200-400 milligrams of mucuna
pruriens will also come in handy about an hour before going to bed
Cortisol
Cortisol helps you knock loose and eviscerate fat, but you need to
control its quantity because of its muscle burning qualities which can
result in a slowed metabolism. Your cortisol levels need to be controlled
most of the time, without getting out of hand. This is because cortisol
which stays in one place for a longer period of time (excess cortisol)
will burn your muscles instead of your fat. Make sure it’s never high for
a longer period of time to save muscle
The insulin you get from after a workout will usually control your
cortisol levels, but in order for it to be controlled, pick two dieting
days every week whenever you have a low amount of carbs and eat a load of
fast-digesting carbs instead. These are your typical russet potatoes and
white rice, but also it should be noted that Gatorade, cookies,
sugarcoated rice cakes, cold cereal and fat-free Pop Tarts give insulin a
bigger spike than it gets from other carbohydrates. This will make your
insulin higher than with a lot of other carbohydrates, but it will also
keep your cortisol down which will keep your muscle safe and your
metabolism rising. If supplements are your thing, add 800 milligrams of
phosphatidylserine which will keep cortisol down
Estrogen
Estrogen may be the female hormone, but it’s in men too and it makes fat
loss a nightmare. Your estrogen needs to be as low as possible, in
contrast to your testosterone which should be as high as possible. The way
you look is defined by the relationship between these two hormones. If you
reduce the levels of estrogen or increase the level of testosterone in
your body, or even better, if you do both of these things, you’ll be
striding quickly towards a leaner, more muscular body with low water
retention
Crunchy veggies, especially the cruciferous once such as cabbage,
cauliflower and broccoli, have indoles, which are compounds that lower
your estrogen levels through lowering production or interfering with the
absorption of estrogen as well as tissue uptake. Keep your diet low on
carbs, but throw in some cruciferous veggies in there. If you’re a
supplement person, use some 6-OXO to make sure your testosterone will stay
high and your estrogen will stay low
Thyroid Hormone
This hormone helps you burn calories and create protein in your body, so
you don’t want it to crash even though most diets will make it go down.
Thyroid levels should always be high because when they’re low, the
creation of protein is more difficult and calorie burning is reduced. The
speed at which your body takes amino acids from protein and puts them in
your body is absolutely crucial and it’s called protein synthesis. To make
sure this works, drop your diet for 10-12 days. When you diet longer, your
thyroid hormone levels drop, so eat 3 grams of carbohydrates per pound per
day every 10 days, and you can make your body believe you are no longer
restricting calories which will make it work again and prevent all the
drops necessary
Knowing how to work with your hormones is incredibly effective if you
want to diet. You will need to know the good or bad possibilities and what
to do when confronted by any of them, and you’ll see better results than
without it. Long term continuous dieting will drop your calorie,
carbohydrates and fat levels, which will make your body think it’s in
starvation mode which will make it conserve everything instead of burning
through it. Make sure to switch it up and to take breaks from this, but
either way, knowledge of hormones can help you so much, especially if
you’re a bodybuilder going pro
