Testosterone is key to building muscle.
Without it all your hard work in the gym will be in vain.
Giving your testosterone a boost will help your overall health as well as your muscle building efforts.
Having low testosterone will wreak havoc on your ability to put on muscle mass and will affect the motivation to work out.
Muscle and testosterone go hand in hand.
There are a number of supplements out there that claim to know how to boost testosterone, but follow below remedies before investing in them.
Having a low fat diet can be detrimental to your testosterone levels.
There have been numerous studies showing the connection between someone who is not enough getting calories from fat and having low testosterone.
The connection is obvious.
You will want to get roughly 30% of your calories from Fats.
These should be predominately from healthy fats contained in tuna, avocado, almonds etc.
Having higher than 30% of calories from fats will not give you additional benefit to your testosterone levels.
Remember to include saturated fats in the 30% of calorie uptake.
Foods that include saturated fats include red meat; butter and whole milk.
Other areas in your diet that might be affecting your testosterone levels are the amount of alcohol that is being consumed.
Alcohol is detrimental to the body's ability to produce testosterone.
It also increases breakdown of testosterone in the blood.
Consumption of alcohol also produces estrogen in the body.
Zinc and Magnesium are important in many muscle building hormones and testosterone is one of them.
If you are deficient in either one of these minerals it can lead to low testosterone.
A way to remedy this would be to invest in a high quality multi-vitamin.
This would be beneficial to you not only to help with your zinc and magnesium deficiency, but could help in other areas where you could be lacking vitamins or minerals.
Losing the fat on your body will have an effect on your testosterone, especially if you are obese or largely over weight.
This is because of the existing relationship between estrogen and body fat.
As discussed too much estrogen leads to obesity, loss of sexual performance, drive and muscle loss.
Normally associated with older males, but has been seen in men in their mid to late 20s.
Basically too much excess body weight leads to more estrogen in the body thus causing the imbalance of testosterone to estrogen.
Losing that fat will help you get your testosterone back.
The way you are training could be affecting your testosterone levels.
Having a quick, intense workout is great for testosterone levels, but longer than 60 minutes will increase cortisol levels and testosterone levels will fall.
The cortisol to testosterone imbalance happens it can sometimes take up to six days for the your natural testosterone levels to get back to normal.
This is one the reasons that many endurance athletes have considerably lower testosterone levels than the general public and other athletes.
Not getting enough sleep or quality sleep can lead up to a huge 40% decrease in your testosterone levels.
There are different stages of sleep and in deep sleep your body will release testosterone in the bloodstream.
If you are unable to get to that stage in the sleep cycle you will not get that full release of testosterone.
You should aim for 7 hours of uninterrupted sleep.
Try not to drink any liquids three hours prior to sleep.
Having low testosterone is linked to a number of problems such as obesity, lack of sex drive and performance, high cholesterol, cardiovascular disease and even depression.
It is important not only for muscle building, but also your general well-being to know how to boost testosterone.