Well, since getting off the fat fast, I spent about a week getting into whole foods, but, then realized how below maintenance I was eating even with those.
As some of you know, I do physical work(cleaning and maintenance), and besides which, find myself walking home a couple times a week(approximately a 6 mile trip home). So, when I realized, eating whole foods, I was only getting about 2300 calories a day, I knew something was up. Never before had I done exact calorie need calculations but I had a general idea in mind what it would be. Upon doing said calculations, it seems I need 4500-5000 calories just for maintenance.
Now, since I’m working on bulking, I’ve been forcing the food down, aiming for 5000-6000 calories a day. My macronutrients have been being split roughly 50% fat, 15% carbs, and 35% protein. Almost half the carbs are focused during/postworkout. The rest are evenly dispersed, and besides the milk at those times, and the cottage cheese at bedtime, they come from veggies, nuts, and fruit. I eat 8-9 times a day with 98% of it coming from whole food.
All sounds good right? Well, now, the twist. Since coming off the fat fast, my testosterone seems to have gone down? I havn’t noticed it affecting workouts, or musclebuilding(I think I’ve put on a little in the past couple weeks), but sexual function is kind of iffy. I can wake up with good strong wood, but, otherwise its kind of hit and miss(takes alot of relaxation and focus).
So… possible causes…
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Excess SHBG? Perhaps I need to up carbs a bit to minimize this?(I saw this mentioned on another thread) Though, it seems like, with all of the glucose my liver should be making from excess fat/protein, I should be good?
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Excess glucose? Perhaps I’m getting too much protein and its converting to glucose, causing insulin rises, and/or resistance?
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Body not making enough cortisol and testosterone? Charles Poliquin’s anecdote about persons waking up in the middle of the night rang a bit true to me. While I have not had my levels checked (and cannot), I have had times lately that I wake up in the middle of the night for no reason, and have a bit of trouble getting back to sleep. Also, have been waking up earlier, feeling totally refreshed despite getting 5-7 hours of sleep some nights.
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Body making too much cortisol? Perhaps I need to get some St Johns wort again to deal with stress? Though, my feeling on this is that I have not been terribly stressed as a rule lately. I also believe that the high tryptophan levels in my food now, along with the increase in carbs(its only 15%, but thats 200-250 grams) should be doing fine by that.
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Overtraining? I jumped into a program that I designed after the fat fast which has proven very taxing, and, I had begun it during that first week with only 2300 calories a day. For awhile there, I also feel I was not getting sufficient zinc, and possibly other vitamins/minerals though this has been fixed now. Yet, could the initial deficit still be in play a couple weeks later, since I have not taken time off to refresh my body after the misstart? I would note that I’ve noticed a couple other signs that I may be overtrained(joint/tendon tenderness, slightly persistant DOMS).
After writing this, I am sort of leaning towards the overtraining reasoning, and am strongly considering taking a week off next week before starting the Russian Bear program, but I’d appreciate opinions from others too.