Knowing how to manage your hormones can really make or break your bodybuilding progress. Instead of being your worst enemy, your hormonal activity can help you achieve greater gains and increase leanness. In reality, getting ripped is all about keeping your hormones well balanced while limiting your calorie intake. And knowing how to manipulate your hormones will increase the effectiveness of your diet.
Hormones are the regulatory biochemicals produced by our endocrine glands, whose job is to coordinate the behavior of our cells, controlling everything from appetite to the choices we make in dangerous situations. Hormonal disbalance can be a cause for a slow metabolic rate, low levels of energy, inefficient protein synthesis, stalled muscle building progress and inability to recover properly.
In addition, these hard-working biological agents play an important role in both the storage and utilization of excess body fat. Therefore, understanding them is crucial to our gym efforts. We are not helpless victims of their way of working – we can to some degree control the activity of our hormones to optimize their effects on our health and training goals.
This article will provide you with the basic guideline for safely switching your hormonal activity into maximum fat-burning mode and building your physique to the next level. Let’s get started!
1. Testosterone
Testosterone is the most important hormone when it comes to building muscle size and strength, while it’s also essential for maintaining good health. Lower testosterone levels will cause a sluggish metabolic rate and interfere with the production of growth hormone and the burning of fat. In short, if you want greater gains, you have to keep your testosterone levels high as long as possible. It is known that restricted calorie intake causes testosterone levels to drop, so you should avoid fasting and extreme dieting at all costs.
However, there are some things you can do to prevent declines in testosterone while being on a low calorie diet. For example, eliminating fats is a bad option when you’re in the cutting phase since it lowers testosterone levels – instead, increase your intake of healthy fats atleast on two days per week, while keeping the carbs under control.
Another useful trick is to increase your carb intake to 3 grams per pound of bodyweight once a week. This will boost your insulin levels, which in turn will help the testosterone reach the tissues and stimulate growth a lot easier. In addition, emphasizing resistance training and periodically training with heavy weights for lower reps can also help your testosterone levels stay up.
2. Growth hormone
The growth hormone has many important roles in the organism, many of which are directly linked to your bodybuilding efforts. Among other things, it stimulates cell reproduction, boosts protein synthesis, increases fat burning and prevents muscle loss. The last thing you need when you’re dieting is losing lean muscle along with the excess body fat, which would result with a decreased metabolic rate and a decline in fat burning.
Since the growth hormone is crucial for maintaining your muscle mass while cutting on calories, make sure to enhance its production by getting at least 8 hours of sleep each night, training regularly and supplementing with niacin, arginine and Mucuna pruriens. Take 5-6 grams of arginine and 200-400 milligrams of Mucuna pruriens right before training to raise your growth hormone levels and stimulate blood flow to muscles.
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