Just did my usual check-up with my doctor hasn’t been feeling weak or even with the usual low-t symptoms.
Got surprised seeing my results today
Free testosterone is at 106,7 pmol/L and should be 131 to 640 pmol/L
Testosterone is at 94 ng/dL and should be 240 to 816 ng/dL
it kind of freaked me out, i’m on a very restricted calorie-wise low-carb diet for one month and a half. Weight is dropping steadily and losing several inches on waist.
I’m going to check back with my doc on monday, but i’m bummed.
Don’t diet too hard, it will only fuck up your hormones and metabolism.
If you have any doubts about your calorie intake vs your activity level and weight, increase your calories a few hundred to 500 per day and stay there a week to see what happens.
Don’t diet too hard, it will only fuck up your hormones and metabolism.
If you have any doubts about your calorie intake vs your activity level and weight, increase your calories a few hundred to 500 per day and stay there a week to see what happens.[/quote]
My thoughts as well.
Carb intake shouldn’t be affecting your testosterone levels at all, or at least not significantly. Heavily restricted caloric intake though could certainly be lowering them! I’d try to get in some natural test boosters - whole eggs (cholesterol), brazil nuts (selenium), supplement with ZMA, etc.
I have been checking my testosterone levels every two to four months for 9 years now.
I have no scientific explanation for it, but yes, my T levels get dramatically lower after ome month on low carb diets. For me that would be diets with less than 100g carbs a day. This effect does not seem to be correlated with caloric intake, since it also happened in times when I ate more calories than I usually would, but close to no carbs. Also thyroid numbers got pretty messed up every time.
I have very high natural testosterone levels. I seem to optimally ‘operate’ at roughly 250g of carbs a day at 210-215lbs bodyweight.
I don’t have any tests results to compare or anything, but my libido went to absolute shit when I was on the V-Diet, which is both low(ish) carb and very low calorie. Obviously, libido =/= T levels, but they are related.
You could bump up cals with fats and see if the situation improves. If it doesnt, drop the fats back down to where they were but add equal calories worth of carbs and see what happens then.
Lyle Mcdonald mentioned in his books Ultimate Diet 2.0 that while low insulin levels contribute to better fat mobilizations they also make testosterone bind more to SHBG sex-hormone binding globulin, which decreased free testosterone levels in addition to a general drop to testosterone.
[quote]Mr.Jeannay wrote:
Lyle Mcdonald mentioned in his books Ultimate Diet 2.0 that while low insulin levels contribute to better fat mobilizations they also make testosterone bind more to SHBG sex-hormone binding globulin, which decreased free testosterone levels in addition to a general drop to testosterone.[/quote]
Yeah, true. (Sigh.) I’ve been generally eating very paleo-ish for YEARS, i.e. low- to no-carb 6 days per week with one weekly cheat day, and on multiple occasions my T levels have tested quite high but my Free T has been low-ish because my SHBG levels have tested off-the-charts-high. It’s annoying. But I definitely, without a doubt, get my leanest by eating this way.
(I’m trying John Kiefer’s carb backloading diet presently. Curious to see how that affects things.)
