The idea behind this mini series of articles entitled “Engineering a Better Body” is all about identifying problems, approaching the problem from all angles, and providing the most effective solution possible.
That, my friends, is what engineering is all about.
The results of all the hard work and time required to pack on lean muscle mass or trim some unwanted body fat are clearly visible on the outside, but how well we accomplish these goals are determined on the inside.
In order to optimally build a healthy, strong, and lean body it’s imperative to understand the most important hormones in your body, what they do, and how we can effectively utilize them to help us build a better and healthier life.
To most people, hormones are these confusing little chemicals that reside in us and are responsible for puberty and why we do stupid things when we’re attracted to someone.
While that’s partially true, it’s just the tip of the hormone iceberg.
The human body is a symphony of hundreds of hormones working in harmony to ensure our well being and survival.
For the sake of time, we’ll only discuss the most important hormones that are relevant to building a stronger and healthier body.
So let’s make like ranch dressing and dip into this.
That, my friends, is what engineering is all about.
The results of all the hard work and time required to pack on lean muscle mass or trim some unwanted body fat are clearly visible on the outside, but how well we accomplish these goals are determined on the inside.
In order to optimally build a healthy, strong, and lean body it’s imperative to understand the most important hormones in your body, what they do, and how we can effectively utilize them to help us build a better and healthier life.
To most people, hormones are these confusing little chemicals that reside in us and are responsible for puberty and why we do stupid things when we’re attracted to someone.
While that’s partially true, it’s just the tip of the hormone iceberg.
The human body is a symphony of hundreds of hormones working in harmony to ensure our well being and survival.
For the sake of time, we’ll only discuss the most important hormones that are relevant to building a stronger and healthier body.
So let’s make like ranch dressing and dip into this.
Testosterone
Straight up, testosterone is what makes you a man. And if you’re a woman reading this, we’ll address why testosterone is still important and vital to your health.
Testosterone is the hormone that allows you to build muscle and burn fat. It’s what makes men attractive to women, powers sex drive, and helps you recover from your workouts.
And for women, it’s also important to have a healthy testosterone (in much smaller amounts of course) for those reasons mentioned.
Over the last 20 years men have seen the average testosterone level drop about 20-30%, mostly due to our more sedentary lifestyles and crappy diets.
So you can probably all ready infer how important it is to make the most of our natural testosterone production.
The point here is not to become big and bulky by optimizing our testosterone, but to rather enhance the characteristics that are associated with healthy testosterone to help you build a healthy, functional body.
There’s also the added benefit of men with average to higher levels of natural testosterone live longer, have lower incidences of heart disease, spend less money on health care.
One sure fire way to help produce natural testosterone production is to eliminate some body fat because that beer belly you’ve been hauling around has been hindering your body of making some health gains.
Higher levels of body fat in men cause testosterone that’s been produced to convert aromatize (convert) into estrogen (not what we want here.)
Higher levels of estrogen will make you look soft, in every sense of the word possible.
By cutting down your body fat you’ll have he greatest impact on ensuring that you continue to produce more testosterone and stay more youthful as long as possible.
Here’s a short cheat sheet on how to increase your body’s natural testosterone levels.
Straight up, testosterone is what makes you a man. And if you’re a woman reading this, we’ll address why testosterone is still important and vital to your health.
Testosterone is the hormone that allows you to build muscle and burn fat. It’s what makes men attractive to women, powers sex drive, and helps you recover from your workouts.
And for women, it’s also important to have a healthy testosterone (in much smaller amounts of course) for those reasons mentioned.
Over the last 20 years men have seen the average testosterone level drop about 20-30%, mostly due to our more sedentary lifestyles and crappy diets.
So you can probably all ready infer how important it is to make the most of our natural testosterone production.
The point here is not to become big and bulky by optimizing our testosterone, but to rather enhance the characteristics that are associated with healthy testosterone to help you build a healthy, functional body.
There’s also the added benefit of men with average to higher levels of natural testosterone live longer, have lower incidences of heart disease, spend less money on health care.
One sure fire way to help produce natural testosterone production is to eliminate some body fat because that beer belly you’ve been hauling around has been hindering your body of making some health gains.
Higher levels of body fat in men cause testosterone that’s been produced to convert aromatize (convert) into estrogen (not what we want here.)
Higher levels of estrogen will make you look soft, in every sense of the word possible.
By cutting down your body fat you’ll have he greatest impact on ensuring that you continue to produce more testosterone and stay more youthful as long as possible.
Here’s a short cheat sheet on how to increase your body’s natural testosterone levels.
Growth Hormone
Growth hormone is the Robin to Testosterone’s Batman.
Growth hormone has a direct impact on physical factos such as increasing your bodie’s natural ability to burn fat and increase your longevity.
Healthy levels of growth hormone also increase your body’s ability to get quality sleep and recover outside of the gym.
Just like it’s name implies, growth hormone improves the growth of your cells- this means help to grow lean muscle mass, strengthen your bones, reduce the stress on your liver, and also protect your immune system.
Here’s a few ways you can naturally increase your body’s growth hormone.
Growth hormone is the Robin to Testosterone’s Batman.
Growth hormone has a direct impact on physical factos such as increasing your bodie’s natural ability to burn fat and increase your longevity.
Healthy levels of growth hormone also increase your body’s ability to get quality sleep and recover outside of the gym.
Just like it’s name implies, growth hormone improves the growth of your cells- this means help to grow lean muscle mass, strengthen your bones, reduce the stress on your liver, and also protect your immune system.
Here’s a few ways you can naturally increase your body’s growth hormone.
Leptin
Now we’re getting into some lesser known hormones that play a major role.
Leptin is a hormone that is produced in your fat cells; which means the more fat you have the more leptin you can produce.
Here’s why leptin is so important: leptin is one the master hormones that regulate the metabolism and thyroid hormones.
When leptin production is high, these other thyroid hormones will be high as well, which is a good thing for fat burning and higher energy levels.
But when leptin levels drop, these other functions like metabolism and thyroid function drop as well.
Leptin is something of a double edged sword.
When calorie consumption is higher, we’re producing more leptin which is good for fat loss.
Conversely, when we’re eating less in order to drop body fat, leptin levels diminish.
Seems like some kind of whacky paradox, right?
Leptin is a type of “anti-starvation” hormone which means your body will start to slow its metabolism when energy intake is being reduced and you won’t feel that hunger sensation.
This is a great mechanism for survival, but a catch-22 for fat loss; you need to eat less to burn fat, but eating less compromises your body’s ability to produce leptin.
And the less leptin you produce, the hungrier you become and the more likely you are to eat more than you need.
So how do we keep leptin levels up so that we continue to make progress?
Now we’re getting into some lesser known hormones that play a major role.
Leptin is a hormone that is produced in your fat cells; which means the more fat you have the more leptin you can produce.
Here’s why leptin is so important: leptin is one the master hormones that regulate the metabolism and thyroid hormones.
When leptin production is high, these other thyroid hormones will be high as well, which is a good thing for fat burning and higher energy levels.
But when leptin levels drop, these other functions like metabolism and thyroid function drop as well.
Leptin is something of a double edged sword.
When calorie consumption is higher, we’re producing more leptin which is good for fat loss.
Conversely, when we’re eating less in order to drop body fat, leptin levels diminish.
Seems like some kind of whacky paradox, right?
Leptin is a type of “anti-starvation” hormone which means your body will start to slow its metabolism when energy intake is being reduced and you won’t feel that hunger sensation.
This is a great mechanism for survival, but a catch-22 for fat loss; you need to eat less to burn fat, but eating less compromises your body’s ability to produce leptin.
And the less leptin you produce, the hungrier you become and the more likely you are to eat more than you need.
So how do we keep leptin levels up so that we continue to make progress?
Ghrelin
This weird little hormone is known as the “hunger” hormone and is produced in your brain, specifically the hypothalamus, as well as your kidneys, and pituitary gland.
But that’s not the only place it’s produced. Most ghrelin is synthesized in the stomach and released in the stomach as well.
It’s released in a pulsing manner during the night and reaches its peak when you wake up.
No matter where in the body ghrelin is produced or what time it is, the end result is the same: SNACK ATTACK.
Ghrelin not only induces hunger but is also secreted by it.
Your stomach will produce ghrelin when its feeling empty.
Here’s the trick to understand ghrelin and controlling it: it’s largely based on your eating schedule and eating habbits.
In other words, you’ve condited yourself to feeling hungry at certain times and feeling hungry at specific times throughout the day.
Ghrelin is definitely a hormone that we can consider a “trainable” hormone.
This is one of the reasons why the multiple meal hypothesis (eating 6 small meals a day) is flawed.
Eating small meals often is designed to make and keep you hungry.
So if losing weight and becoming leaner are your goals, training your body to eat less frequently, while still feeling full, is a more sustainable and enjoyable approach to eating without feeling frustrated or constantly hungry.
A better meal schedule can help you balance your ghrelin levels, as will a better sleep schedule.
Here’s what happens when you don’t get enough sleep:
- Your cortisol levels (stress hormone) rise which will make you crave food.
- Your body will produce more ghrelin and it will become harder to decrease these levels, making you hungrier more often.
- The lack of sleep and higher levels of ghrelin will more than likely lead you to grab calorie dense snacks out of impulse.
Estrogen
You may all ready be familiar with estrogen as an important female hormone, but what you may not know is it’s an important hormone for men as well (in the right amounts.)
If a man’s estrogen level is too high in can reak havoc on the male body that include an increase in body fat, decreased libido, depression, and the growth of man boobs.
If a man’s body fat level becomes too high, a conversion process happens to testorone: it will become estrogen due to aromatizing. This is something we definitely do not want.
Here are some easy ways to avoid the conversion of testosterone to estrogren and keep estrogen levels under control:
You may all ready be familiar with estrogen as an important female hormone, but what you may not know is it’s an important hormone for men as well (in the right amounts.)
If a man’s estrogen level is too high in can reak havoc on the male body that include an increase in body fat, decreased libido, depression, and the growth of man boobs.
If a man’s body fat level becomes too high, a conversion process happens to testorone: it will become estrogen due to aromatizing. This is something we definitely do not want.
Here are some easy ways to avoid the conversion of testosterone to estrogren and keep estrogen levels under control:
Insulin
The carb hormone, right? Well, kind of.
Insulin controls everything from how quickly your body can drop body fat and gain muscle, and whether the food you eat will make you crash or give you ample energy.
Insulin is produced in the pancreas and responsible for the uptake of nutrients into cells in your liver, muscles, and stored fat.
When insulin is working properly in your body then your cells are primed for the storage of nutrients.
Mastering insulin timing isn’t as simple as a lot of people and programs make it out to be, so rather than try to master the timing of when insulin spikes, it will be more beneficial to become more sensitive to insulin.
When insulin sensitivity is high your body needs less insulin to get the same effect. Having a higher insulin sensitivity is a good way to ensure you’ll gain more muscle than fat when eating surplus amounts of carbohydrates.
The modern American diet is made up of carb-laden foods that are constantly spiking insulin levels in a way that confuses the body and de-sensitizes it to insulin.
Chronically high levels of insulin will result in something known as insulin resistance, or more commonly known as diabetes.
This means your body uses insulin less effectively so you’ll need to produce more in order to digest and utilize carbohydrates effectively. This is NOT something we desire.
You do NOT want more insulin pumping through your body, but rather just enough to shuttle the nutrients from food you consume in an advantageous way.
When you become insulin resistant your blood sugar levels stay elevated for longer periods of time which is definitely not a good thing.
Additionally, when insulin levels are elevated, fat burning and energy utilization is non-existent and muscle building is not a top priority.
The top priority for your body has become reducing the elevated sugar levels in the bloodstream by increasing the production of insulin to do so.
If not addressed in a healthy manner, Insulin can create a vicious cycle where more carbohydrates (blood sugar) are needed to increase the production of insulin to shuttle and clear the sugar in the blood stream.
Ultimately this will lead to a point where your body will not produce enough insulin to decrease blood sugar levels and medication will be required to help lower blood sugar (i.e. diabetes.)
The takeaway point here with insulin is to be smart about your carbohydrate consumption and train with weights.
Weight training increases your body’s sensitivity to carbohydrates and you’ll be able to handle more carbs in your diet and require less insulin to clear your elevated blood sugar levels.
Cortisol
Cortisol often gets a bad rap as a “fattening” hormone brought on by excess stress, when in reality it’s an extremely crucial and vital hormone required for survival.
In excess is when cortisol becomes a problem.
Cortisol is a hormone produced by stress, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s cortisol that is responsible for waking us up in the morning and providing bouts of adrenaline when necessary, and is responsible for burning fat when released in short bouts.
Prolonged elevation of cortisol becomes a problem as its highly catabolic, which means it’s used to breakdown organic tissue, including muscle mass. Additionally higher levels of cortisol are correlated with increased storage of body fat in the mid-section.
So how do we make cortisol work best for us?
Adequate sleep and rest. Stressing less about things we can’t control. Getting proper amounts of exercise and activity throughout the week.