Nobody likes feeling fat, slow, and weak. Sure, you can hide behind the fact that the dad bod got popular a year ago all you want, but the truth is that almost all of us more or less want to look like a fucking superhero at some point or another in our lives.
This is exactly why so many of us spend so much time busting our ass lifting weights, eating vegetables that don’t taste as good as beer does, and trying to get plenty of sleep.
But what if all of that isn’t enough? What if you’re doing all of these things, and you’re still not making the progress that you’re so desperate for? It might be your estrogen, bro.
Estrogen, otherwise known as one of the primary female sex hormones is a naturally occurring hormone in all men. Yes, if you weren’t aware you actually have a certain amount of the female hormone as well.
You see, testosterone and estrogen actually have an inverse relationship. They’re essentially competing for the same androgen receptors, so if one gets extremely high then the other has to drop.
And therein lies the problem.
It’s no secret that testosterone levels are on a steady decline in modern men. Knowing that, it would make sense then that estrogen is consistently rising, which it is. And that’s where some serious fucking problems can arise.
When your hormone levels are all out of whack you’re now put in a position where it’s far easier to hold on to excess body fat, building precious muscle becomes exceedingly more difficult than it used to be, you’re tired, sluggish, and don’t have the drive to be assertive in any aspect of life anymore. Including sex.
So how do you fix this?
Luckily, getting estrogen levels down naturally isn’t the most complicated thing in the world. For all the intricacies to hormones, getting testosterone and estrogen in check is typically pretty easy.
Here are 4 ways to get your estrogen levels in check:
- Eat more cruciferous vegetables.
Cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, kale, brussel sprouts, and cauliflower are filled with the mineral zinc. Zinc just so happens to be a mineral which not only boosts testosterone, but it essentially blunts the aromatase enzyme from doing it’s job in converting testosterone to estrogen.
- Quit eating so much processed meat.
I fucking love bacon, don’t get me wrong, but getting most of your meat via processed forms isn’t exactly the best option when it comes to optimizing testosterone levels.
Meat by itself can be great for testosterone, but when you’re buying heavily processed meats you’re essentially buying meat that has typically been pumped full of estrogen and antibiotics its entire life to help fatten it up and prevent it from getting sick.
This process leads to trace amounts of estrogen getting passed along to you, and wrecking your testosterone levels.
- Chill out with the soy products.
At times soy gets a bit of a bad wrap from much of the fitness community. By itself soy is virtually harmless. Where the problems arise is that much of the products we eat and drink today are pumped full of soybean oil and other soy derivatives.
This, in turn, leads to higher estrogen production, which harms our ability to create testosterone.
- Go lift some fucking weight.
This should be the most basic and obvious choice of all, but there’s nothing that compares to the primal rush that you get when you’re ripping a metric fuckton of weight off the floor, right?
That primal rush is essentially testosterone surging through your body because in response to lifting weights your body has secreted more testosterone. Doing this often can do wonderful things for your testosterone/estrogen relationship, so be sure and do plenty of it.