Man 2.0 Engineering the Alpha (15 page)

• 
Ensure enough sleep.

• 
Avoid eating too much sugar.

• 
Don't eat too often.

• 
Eat more protein.

• 
Practice intermittent fasting.

 

ESTROGEN

You might know estrogen as the female sex hormone that is at least partially responsible for the development of breasts. You know, because men love breasts. Estrogen also regulates the menstrual cycle and the female biological love of chocolate. (Seriously.) All of those things are awesome—in women. But estrogen is also present in all men (yes, we need it), and it's an essential part of hormonal balance—in the right amounts. However, when men's estrogen levels are too high, they can wreak havoc on the male body, in ways that include the growth of man boobs, decreased libido, and depression.

Estrogen is one of the most interesting hormones because of its necessity combined with its potential downside. Estrogen is essential to your ability to produce sperm. Without it, those little guys just won't exist. But when you become too fat, the enzyme aromatase will convert your testosterone into estrogen, and that's when things start going bad.

In the next chapter, you'll learn the immediate strategies you can use to supercharge your testosterone, keep estrogen levels at bay, and keep your body as manly as possible. After you learn those easy-to-apply strategies, we'll jump immediately into all the eating details that will reshape your body and mind. These will include carbohydrate cycling, strategies to improve your digestive health, the supplements you need to keep testosterone up, the best protein sources, the right types of exercises, and even the types of alcoholic drinks you should be consuming—all of which will keep your estrogen at optimal levels.

For now, keep your estrogen low with these easy tips:

• 
Avoid soy.

• 
Limit stress.

• 
Stay happy (depression increases estrogen production).

• 
Don't eat too much bran or too many legumes.

• 
Watch out for toxins from plastics (translation: avoid eating out of plastic containers).

• 
Eat pesticide-free or organic produce.

• 
Eat lots of broccoli and cauliflower.

• 
Limit alcohol.

• 
Eat red meat.

 

INSULIN

“Insulin—that's the carb hormone, right?” Well, sort of. Insulin is about more than just carbs—it controls everything from how quickly you can lose fat and gain muscle to whether the food you eat gives you energy or makes you crash.

Produced in the pancreas, insulin is responsible for the uptake of nutrients into cells in your liver, muscles, and stored fat. For this reason, insulin is sometimes known as the gatekeeper hormone. When insulin is working efficiently, your cells are primed for nutrient storage. So if you utilize insulin at the right time, like immediately after a workout, you'll direct nutrients into your muscle cells. Even if you don't like exercise, controlling insulin is the key to looking good. That's because if you raise insulin levels at the wrong time, it'll be your lipid (fat) cells that uptake the nutrients, regardless of whether you're training like a champion or perfecting your couch-surfing skills.

Unfortunately, the timing of insulin mastery isn't as simple as some people would make it seem. That's because insulin doesn't occur in a vacuum. The goal is to make your body more insulin sensitive. When insulin sensitivity is high, you need less insulin to get the same effect. High insulin sensitivity is the easiest way to ensure that you'll gain muscle, not fat. You can increase your insulin sensitivity by avoiding foods that cause a high spike, such as sugar, and lifting weights to build more muscle. Your muscles are your best friends when it comes to burning the fuel you put into your body—especially carbs.

But most people have diets that are constantly spiking insulin levels in a way that confuses their bodies. And while many people exercise, they do so in a way that doesn't improve their insulin sensitivity, which, as you'll see, is the real secret to better fat loss and muscle gain. If your insulin levels are screwed up—which is a problem that plagues most people without their awareness—then even your post-workout carbs can be detrimental and dangerous.

The goal then becomes learning how to manage your insulin so you can take advantage of it at the right times. Chronically high insulin levels will result in something called insulin resistance. This means that your body uses insulin less efficiently, so you need to produce more in order to digest and utilize carbohydrates effectively. This is not good. You don't want more insulin pumping through your body. You only want insulin effectively shuttling the foods you eat in an advantageous way. So because you're producing more, it just means the foods you eat are more likely to be stored as fat.

When you are insulin resistant, your blood sugar levels stay higher for longer periods of time because the carbohydrates you eat (which turn into glucose in your body) are slowed down and don't make it to your muscle cells. This is literally how you become resistant. Your muscles are the engines, and the carbs are the fuel. If carbs become backed up in your transport system, then you become less efficient at storing your food the way your body wants (as muscle). When that happens, your fuel system becomes backed up with carbs, your arteries become clogged, and the carbs you eat are stored as fat because your body literally has no other choice.

It's a vicious cycle because insulin resistance shuts down your body's ability to burn fat. So if your muscles aren't receiving the carbs—because your body is resistant—then you produce more insulin and those carbs and sugars are stored as fat.

Even worse, it's not just that your body is getting fatter. It's also having trouble building muscle. Those same carbohydrates that are getting trapped in your bloodstream are also blocking your ability to transport proteins and amino acids to your muscles so that they can grow, recover, and help your entire body work the way it should. And because your muscle cells need sugar to grow (remember, carbs are fuel), your body feels that it needs to create sugar. How does it do that? (Wait for it . . . wait for it . . .) By breaking down muscle in order to provide your body the sugar it thinks it needs to function. Only problem? You have the sugar, but it's trapped. So you hold on to the sugar as your body eats away at your muscle.

Oh. Fuck. Not so hard to see why we become fat, right?

Inevitably, your body craves more and more carbohydrates as you become more insulin resistant. And it's not your fault. You're trying to feed the machine (your body), but the equipment isn't working right, so your body is literally plotting against you. And if you think having screwy insulin management only affects your physique, you'd be underestimating the power of the dark side . . . we mean insulin. It can cause problems with everything from your boners to your brain. Oh yeah, and you can die . . . of the beetus.
^*

Our entire goal in the diet and exercise portion of this book will be showing you how to manage and control insulin so it's your bitch. And by that we mean you won't have to worry about everything you eat turning into a ticking time bomb. Instead you'll be able to eat carbs, proteins, and fats, and your body will use them in a beneficial way.

 

 
CORTISOL

If you've ever watched infomercials at two
A.M.
, you've heard of cortisol. The so-called stress hormone is a bit of a double-edged sword, particularly with regard to its relationship with fat.

Produced in your adrenal glands, cortisol is primarily a catabolic agent. Although the word
catabolism
is normally associated with muscle loss, it simply refers to the breakdown of substance for energy. This can certainly relate to muscle, as prolonged elevation of cortisol has been definitively shown to lead to proteolysis, or muscle breakdown; however, short periods of elevation have been shown to lead to lipolysis, or breakdown of fatty tissue. And if there's any type of breakdown we love, it's of fatty tissue.

There's also evidence that links cortisol to the storage of abdominal fat. In other words, if you have high cortisol, you're likely to store most of your fat on your belly. All of this makes cortisol an interesting hormone when you consider that producing it can break down fat and help you get lean . . .
or
it can cause you to store fat in the worst area.

What makes cortisol even more complicated is that you want it to rise during activity. It is directly linked to your fight-or-flight mode, which means that when cortisol rises, you can use that stress to improve your performance. This is a great thing for your training, as you want more intensity. But if cortisol remains elevated for too long, it causes a rise in blood sugar, which makes you crave all sorts of unhealthy foods, according to researchers at the University of Southern California. What's more, it can make you insulin resistant. And as you already learned, insulin resistance is a badass motherfucker that you want
no
part of.

The question, then, is how do we ensure that it's used for increasing performance and not for ruining our bodies? Simple: you manipulate cortisol through diet and training. And we'll teach exactly how to do that starting in chapter 8.