The High Testosterone Diet

Want to raise your testosterone through diet?  Is that even possible?  Well, in anther link I cover how playing with Fat and Fiber can do just that.  This link covers the diet of other cultures around the world that have a low rate of cardiovascular disease and eat what I will call a High Testosterone Diet. 

Now, before I go on, I want to say that I don't necessarily advise what's in this link. If you are not extremely careful, you will probably find yourself in the Land of Erectile Dysfunction.  But for those interested in optimizing and increasing testosterone through diet and throwing "caution to the wind" (and after talking to your doctor of course), let's take a look at the some rural, third world ethnic groups that have very low rates of cardiovascular disease and yet have diets that are pro-testosterone. Here's the basic stats for the Tokeluau and Pukapuka, two peoples from Pacific islands (Am J Clin Nutr 34:1552-1561, 1981):

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Notice that both of these cultures have similar testosterone increasing diets and lifestyles:

1. Tot fat > 35%
2. Limited polyunsaturated fats. (Note: The only significant amount of polyunsaturates I eat is one serving of nuts per day: almonds, pecans, peanuts and other nuts have been shown to lower cholesterol by 6-12%.  Polyunsaturated fats in the diet, based on the studies, have been shown not to increase testosterone - in fact, the opposite.)
3. The great majority of fats are saturated.
4. Total carbs are below 250 g but above 150 g.
5. The carb/protein ratio is about 2 or 3.
6. Fiber is in the medium range, i.e. 15g-25g.
7. All of these societies are rural and thus exercise is a part of their everyday lifestyle. 

Here's a summary of how you could implement their general diet to increase and raise testosterone:

1. Add monounsaturated fats (which boost testosterone) to your diet to help get your daily fat requirement up to the 35%-50% level. Monounsaturated fats include olive oil and avocadoes. This is where you have to be careful.  Research in the last few years has shown that Olive Oil decreases blood flow, which is bad for the erectile strength of all you middle aged and beyond guys, and possibly even builds up arterial plaque.  Canola oil has been shown in many categories to be a more erection friendly oil, but unfortunately canola oil will not boost testosterone and may, in fact, lower it.
2. Add fish oil capsules to your regimen. These are strongly correlated with heart health and both the Tokeluans and Pukapukan peoples eat a lot of fish. Try to have enough capsules to get at least 1 g of EPA. (You don’t want to eat fish daily as many varieties have unacceptably high levels of Mercury and PCB's.) Note: The Masai have almost no cardiovascular disease yet eat no fish. However, they eat their beef raw and cooked beef is associated with prostate cancer.  Even so, I still recommend fish oil as it has been shown in the research to decrease so many heart disease risk factors..
3. Avoid processed carbs and sugars. The Tokeluan, Masai and other heart healthy societies eat almost none of them.
4. Keep your total carbs to less than 240 g.

CAUTION #1: If you're a beef or egg eater, then PLEASE read this link to understand the issues for and against these key testosterone increasing dietary foods.  In addition, significant research shows that vegetarians and vegans have equal or even slightly higher testosterone levels than their carnivore counterparts.  See my link on Testosterone and Vegetarianism for more details.

CAUTION #2:  Satured fat can temporarily "stiffen" arteries and blood vessels.  So if you want to increase testosterone through diet, you need to remember that these Polynesian cultures exercise almost constantly because of their rural lifestyle.  This is important because exercise has been shown to help nullify the effects of saturated fat in the diet.  Please read more at these links on the Great Diet Smackdown, Part I and Part II, where I discuss this in greater detail.

I realize that some may not know how to calculate the percentage fat or protein in your diet. So let me give you an easy methodology for controlling your dietary fat intake. Simply eat six meals/day with the approximate proportions:

Again, this diet should increase your testosterone by giving you 2400 calories, a carb/protein ratio of 2.6 and 45% dietary fat.

This is not as hard as it looks.  Let me give you a few examples of meals that will fit int this ratio:

1) 1/2 C uncooked oatmeal + 1C frozen blueberries + 1.5T Olive Oil

2) 3 egg whites + 1 slice whole wheat bread + 1.5T Olive Oil

3) #T Olive Oil, 1/2 C Brown Rice

NOTE:  You can include coconut oil, but keep in mind that saturated fat impedes blood flow unless you are going to exercise right after the meal.  Saturated fat will also put you at risk for heart disease eventually unless you are extremely careful, i.e. exercise like a wild man.

So you can see how easy this High Testerone Diet really is.  And that's important because I can safely predict that you are just like me trying desperately to figure out ways to take time out of your already overburdened and saturated schedule. Again, you can follow this program and boost your testosterone without adding any significant time to your day.

Most of you need your testosterone ramped up through diet without any additional burden to your day. Family, career, commuting, house and yard work - you name it – it’s as if modern life was designed to fill up every minute of your schedule. And that’s why most fitness programs fail – they are impossibly demanding for the typical person in this century.

The examples that I gave above show that the High Testosterone Diet is incredibly easy and fast and requires only simple food preparation. And then you need to exercise for 30-45 minutes per day. It’s that easy.

So then how can I say there is no net time out of your day if you have a new diet and you have to exercise? Easy actually! First of all, I exercise religiously over lunch by going to the gym. I never miss except sometimes on Fridays to go out to lunch with colleagues. There may be another time of the day that works better for you. But make sure it’s a time that can happen easily.

Again, the diet is VERY simple. Forget cooking. Forget recipes. Your time in the kitchen will be the equivalent of making a sandwich. You are going to do simple food preparation NOT cooking.

Of course, if you want to do some cooking, then the door is wide open. But I would guess only one in twenty of you will take the time to do it, since the great majority of you have demanding families and careers and you need velocity more than anything else. In my case, for example, I have many goals that I want to accomplish and one of them is not being a good cook. Yes, I will sometimes do something in the kitchen, but I mostly want the increased testosterone, vitality and youth.

I also urge you to think of food as medicine. Remember: food is not for comfort. It is not to make you feel good when you’re lonely and sad. It is not to cheer you up when your boss is mean and nasty and the wife and kids are mad at you. Using food for comfort is as deadly as drinking for comfort. It will kill you and I don’t need to tell some of you about that.

I say that because food has a clinical effect. Broccoli, for example, will lower the bad estrogen enough to where it has confounded research effects. Many foods, such as pomegranates, walnuts and cacao, will actually cause your arteries to dilate and pump out precious nitric oxide and come to the aid of your penis. The High Testosterone Diet is yet another example: it can actually raise total testosterone levels. The list could go on and on.

So, again, you are going to spend just a few minutes in the kitchen every day and you are going to exercise some over your lunch and that’s it! You can do more if you want, but you don’t need to. My goal in this packet is to give you a “cheat sheet” with everything summarized and some quick and dirty ways to accomplish what you most need to know. So here at Peak Testosterone we endeavor to get real, to give you a program to increase your testosterone that you can actually do and still have a life.

I know some of you may ask, "How Much Will the High Testosterone Diet Boost My Testosterone?"  It depends. Some of you may get no testosterone boost at all because you are eating so unhealthily. If you are eating a high meat, high saturated fat diet with little fiber, then your testosterone will probably remain unchanged through this diet. However, remember that a Western Diet eventually catches up to you through oxidative and mitochondrial damage, which indirectly and sometimes directly lowers testosterone in the long term.

So for those of you in that situation, the High Testosterone Diet will be a way to optimize your testosterone levels with a relatively healthy diet. In other words, you don’t want high testosterone at any cost such as dementia, heart disease and impotence. You want high testosterone and high health at the same time and the High Testosterone Diet will offer you that. (Again, I emphasize that Olive Oil is turning out to be rather ugly.)

The High Testosterone Diet may increase your testosterone levels fairly quickly. If so, remember that any change in diet or lifestyle that you do will raise your testosterone almost immediately, but, unfortunately, it will probably weeks or months before you begin to feel the change. This is important to note: you do not usually feel a high or a surge of energy or anything when your testosterone is initially boosted. We’re not talking about caffeine or yohimbe here.

That’s because you are literally rebuilding tissues, receptors and neurotransmitters and that usually does not happen overnight. Testosterone will make you feel better, but it takes awhile for your body’s hormonal infrastructure to get built up to support it. A realistic expectation is from one to three months.

I have to make a quick comment about weight: I receive quite a few emails from desperate guys with low testosterone. After a correspondence or two, I very often find that they are overweight. Remember that being overweight is a primary risk factor for low testosterone and high estrogen and diet is going to do you little good if you are significantly overweight.

So how do you lose weight? The key is that you must drop those pounds gradually, because studies have shown that lowering your calories too rapidly will greatly decrease your testosterone. One study in particular showed testosterone going bye bye at 15% below baseline. Fast weight loss will also compromise immunity in most guys. Having low testosterone is bad enough. Who wants to be sick along with it? (See my links on The Extreme Dangers of Fat and How to Lose Weight Safely for more details.)