Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - How Testosterone Levels Affect Muscle Growth and Fat Loss

Episode Date: February 22, 2018

If you ask the average gymgoer what single physical factor most affects muscle growth and fat loss, they would probably answer “testosterone levels.”And they’re right.Testosterone is certainly a primary hormonal driver of muscle growth. Research has shown that anabolic steroids, which drastically raise testosterone levels, given to even young, healthy men can induce muscle growth and fat loss without any exercise whatsoever.Thus, it would be fair to assume that the higher our testosterone levels are, the more muscle we build and the leaner we get, right?Well, this is where things get interesting. Let’s dive in. Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

This episode is brought to you by me. Seriously though, I'm not big on promoting stuff that I don't personally use and believe in. So instead I'm going to just quickly tell you about something of mine, specifically my 100% natural vegan protein powder, Thrive. Now, Thrive is a plant-based protein powder that provides you with a highly bioavailable blend of several plant proteins that are easily digested and absorbed. Thrive also contains 10 additional vitamins, minerals, and nutrients that vegetarian and vegan diets tend to be low in, as well as four enzymes to help you obtain the maximal nutritional benefit from every scoop. Lastly, it's also 100% naturally sweetened and flavored and contains no chemical dyes, cheap fillers or other unnecessary junk. So if you want to build muscle and lose fat as quickly as possible and improve the nutritional

quality of your diet without having to eat animal protein, then you want to head on over to www.legionathletics.com and pick up a bottle of Thrive today. And just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps, use the coupon code podcast at checkout and you'll save 10% on your entire order. And lastly, you should also know that I have a very simple 100% money back guarantee that works like this. You either love my stuff or you get your money back, period. You don't have to return the products.

You don't have to fill out forms. You don't have to jump through any other hoops or go through any other shenanigans. So you really can't lose here. Head over to www.lesionathletics.com now, place your order and see for yourself why my supplements have thousands of rave reviews all over the internet. And if for whatever reason, they're just not for you, contact us and we will give you a full refund on the spot. Alrighty, that is enough

shameless plugging for now at least. Let's get to the show. Hey, this is Mike Matthews from Muscle for Life and Legion Athletics. And in this video podcast, I want to talk about testosterone and muscle growth and fat loss. How much of a difference does testosterone make? How big of a difference is there between, let's say, lower testosterone levels and higher testosterone levels in terms of muscle growth and fat loss? So the first thing that needs to be said is that it matters. Of course it does. Testosterone is the primary hormonal driver of muscle growth and it's also generally associated with leanness meaning that generally speaking the higher your testosterone levels are the leaner you are going to be and the

more resistant to fat gain you are going to be and these effects can be pretty dramatic in one study the subjects received testosterone exogenously so like anabolic steroids, and they gained muscle and lost fat without exercising, without doing anything. The testosterone alone was enough to put muscle on their body and strip away some body fat. And then of course you look around on Instagram and you see a lot of guys, you see a lot of girls that are clearly on drugs and are very big, very lean, usually also eating a lot of food. And so most people assume then that the higher your testosterone is, the better you're going to be able to gain muscle, and the better you're going to be able to lose fat, and the leaner you're going to be, period.

And that's not exactly true. You see, it's true if you are dramatically raising your testosterone levels, which requires anabolic steroids. Yes, if you inject enough testosterone into your body, you are going to dramatically increase your potential for muscle building and fat loss. Yes, that's true. And this, of course, is why many people use steroids and why many people who don't want to use steroids take testosterone-boosting supplements instead, which do nothing, by the way, don't waste your money. take testosterone boosting supplements instead, which do nothing by the way, don't waste your money. Hey, quickly, before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the word about it? Because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of

word of mouth. So if you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well, please do tell them about it. It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say thank you. You can find me on Instagram at Muscle for Life Fitness, Twitter at Muscle for Life, and Facebook at Muscle for Life Fitness. Twitter at Muscle for Life and Facebook at Muscle for Life Fitness. Now something the latter group, the people who don't want to use steroids and who are trying to increase their testosterone through not always just supplementation, but also lifestyle. And usually it's like little biohack type things. What those people don't know is that one, you're not going to impact your testosterone levels much with diet, lifestyle, with anything natural, unless you have some sort of nutritional deficiency, unless something is seriously wrong, unless something is really missing from your diet and your life, you're not going to be able to impact your testosterone levels significantly through anything related to diet or supplementation or lifestyle.

And even if you could, if we put a number to it, so let's say you could increase your testosterone levels by 20% through various natural interventions. And that would be, that would be impressive. Let's say even 30%, right? That would be very impressive. Even if you could do that, it's really not going to make that much of a difference, if any difference at all, in terms of muscle growth. So for example, if your testosterone right now is, let's say it's right down the middle and you have normal testosterone levels, you're a guy my age, I'm 33, and let's say my testosterone is 600 NGDL and I would be able to increase that by 30%, right? So I'll be able to bump that up to about 800. I might feel a little bit better. I might feel a little bit more peppy. I might have a little bit

more sex drive, but I am not going to see any difference in terms of muscle building. And that's not just my opinion. Of course, this has been shown in multiple scientific studies. For example, one was conducted by the Charles R. Drew University of Science and Medicine. And what they did in that study is they gave young healthy men varying amounts of a form of testosterone, exogenous testosterone, anabolic steroid, and also a drug that inhibits testosterone production. So of course, what these drugs allow the researchers to do is to stratify these people according to testosterone levels. So they're able to take some people and stick them at like the low of the physiological normal range, and then put some in the middle, put some at the high point,

and then put some way beyond that, way beyond the point that you would ever see naturally. And after 20 weeks of the injections and then also doing various muscle related tests of like one rep max strength and muscle activation and leg power using exercises like the leg press, for example, what the scientists found is that so long as testosterone is in the physiological normal range of about 300 ngdl or nanograms per deciliter to about 1000 ngdl there's really not that much of a difference uh in terms of muscle growth now where they did see a significant increase in muscle growth was in the group with supraphysiological so beyond the the physiological normal, the people whose testosterone levels were up around 2400 NGDL, which is about double anything you'd ever see naturally. Yes, that does increase muscle

growth significantly. Now, this study does have a limitation that the subjects were not exercising. And if you were to add exercise into it, the effects of course would have been larger, but the relationships would have been about the same. And that has been shown in other steroid literature. For example, researchers at Maastricht University published an extensive review of steroid literature back in 2004. And what they found is that most steroid users gain about four and a half to 11 pounds of muscle in their first 10 weeks of using the drugs. And the absolute most muscle gain that they found was about 15 and a half pounds over six weeks. And so what you're looking at is at the high, at the high end of muscle gain, that's pretty impressive. 15 and a half pounds in six weeks. You can't do that

naturally ever, but you have other people who were maybe just lower responders to drugs. And for one reason or another, they didn't gain that much muscle while on steroids. It didn't make that big of a difference. Again, if you're gaining four and a half pounds of muscle over 10 weeks, that's not that impressive. Like somebody new to weightlifting can probably do that. So my point with that is if you take steroids and if that won't necessarily skyrocket your muscle growth, what can you really hope to achieve by increasing your testosterone by small amounts? If doubling or tripling your testosterone levels doesn't necessarily make that big of

a difference, or at least not as much of a difference as many people think. Many people think that within your first steroid cycle, you're going to look like the Instagram fitness model. Not the case. Yes, you will gain muscle faster, but if it's not going to be like that, then what could you possibly hope to get out of going from 400 NGDL to 500 NGDL? Now that said, if you were to get your hormones tested and you were very low let's say you're really at the bottom of the physiological normal and you could do things to get that significantly up if you could if you could go from let's say two or three hundred ngdl to like six seven eight hundred ngdl that is going to make a difference you're going to feel a lot

better and you will gain muscle and strength faster. Now, how much faster? It's hard to say. It's not going to be simply like, oh, you went from 200 to 800. You're going to gain muscle four times faster. No, it's not going to be four times faster, but you are going to gain muscle and gain strength faster if you can make a big change in your testosterone levels. Okay, so that's testosterone and muscle building. Let's now talk about testosterone and fat loss. Now, in this case, fluctuations in the physiological normal range do seem to matter. There does seem to be a clear association between lower testosterone levels. Again, we're talking about that physiologically normal range

of about 300 ngdL to about 1000 ngdL. So if you're on the lower end, you will tend to be fatter than people who are in the middle. And those people will tend to be fatter than people who are at the high end of normal. And we can see evidence of this in the study that I cited from the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science, because over that 20-week period, the participants' body composition was changing. And what researchers found is that the guys who had the lowest testosterone levels ended up quite a bit fatter than the guys who had the highest testosterone levels. So for example, when researchers took guys whose natural testosterone levels were around 600 NGDL and

they cut them in half, they dropped them to about 300 NGDL over the course of that 20 week period, they saw a 36% increase in total body fat mass. That's a lot. Now the exact mechanisms behind this weren't understood, weren't fully explained, but we do know that testosterone can directly inhibit the creation of fat cells. And we also know that low testosterone is a contributing factor to obesity. And we also have a lot of anecdotal evidence to back this up. If you speak with any long-term steroid users who also know what they're doing with their diet, they'll tell you that it is much easier to stay lean when they are on cycle, when their testosterone levels are very high, and they also see a lot less fat gain regardless of what they do with their diet

when they're on cycle versus off cycle. They have to be more careful with their diet when they're off cycle because they notice that they gain fat easier and tend to just store more fat on the whole. So for those of us who don't want to do steroids though, what can we take away from this? Well, doing everything that we can naturally to optimize our hormones is not only just a good idea for general health, but it also can help us stay as lean as possible, as easily as possible. Hey there, it is Mike again. I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did, and don't mind doing me a favor and want to help me make this the most popular health and fitness podcast on the internet,

then please leave a quick review of it on iTunes or wherever you're listening from. This not only convinces people that they should check the show out, it also increases its search visibility and thus helps more people find their way to me and learn how to build their best bodies ever too. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then just subscribe to the podcast and you won't miss out on any of the new goodies. Lastly, if you didn't like something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email at mike at muscle for life.com and share your thoughts on how you think it could be better. I read everything myself and I'm always looking for constructive feedback. So please do reach out.

All right, that's it. Thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon. And lastly, this episode is brought to you by me. Seriously though, I'm not big on promoting stuff that I don't personally use and believe in. So instead I'm going to just quickly tell you about something of mine, specifically my 100% natural vegan protein powder, Thrive. Now, Thrive is a plant-based protein powder that provides you with a highly bioavailable blend of several plant proteins that are easily digested and absorbed. Thrive also contains 10 additional vitamins, minerals, and nutrients that vegetarian and vegan diets tend to be low in, as well as 4 enzymes to help you obtain the maximal nutritional benefit from every scoop. Lastly, it's also 100% naturally sweetened and flavored, and contains

no chemical dyes, cheap fillers, or other unnecessary junk. So if you want to build muscle and lose fat as quickly as possible and improve the nutritional quality of your diet without having to eat animal protein, then you want to head on over to www.legionathletics.com and pick up a bottle of Thrive today. And just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps, use the coupon code podcast at checkout and you'll save 10% on your entire order. And lastly, you should also know that I have a very simple 100% money back guarantee that works like this. You either love my stuff or you get your money back, period. You don't have to return the products. You don't have to fill out forms. You don't have to jump through any other hoops or go through any other shenanigans. So you really can't lose here. Head over to www.legionathletics.com

now, place your order and see for yourself why my supplements have thousands of rave reviews all over the internet. And if for whatever reason, they're just not for you, contact us and we will give you a full refund on the spot.