How Excess Fat is Crippling Your Testosterone Production

One of the easiest and most effective ways to rapidly increase your production of testosterone is simply to trim a little excess fat. Even if you’re not obese but are instead one of those ‘skinny fat’ types or a bodybuilder who’s carrying a little extra around the waist while bulking; that fat isn’t just damaging you aesthetically but is also throwing your hormone balance into disarray and severely reducing your testosterone production.

To find out how this happens and why it’s so crucial to cut back on excess fat so that you can start producing more anabolic hormones, keep reading.

Belly Fat and DHT

Firstly, having belly fat can decrease your production of DHT. DHT is dihydrotestosterone and is the single most powerful androgen in your body. It’s DHT in fact that is largely responsible for our secondary sex traits (such as facial hair). It’s about 3-10 times stronger than testosterone and in fact testosterone relies on it for many of its actions.

Fatter individuals have been shown time and again in studies to have less DHT and the main reason seems to be that enzymes stored in adipose tissue actually breaks DHT down into a less useful substance called 5alpha-androstane 3alpha,17beta-diol (catchy).

Fat Increases the Activity of Aromatase Enzyme

Speaking of enzymes, aromatase enzymes are what convert male hormones into estrogens and the more fat you’re carrying the more of that you have. In other words, fat tissue literally makes you more feminine which aint’ great for the gym!

Fatter People Have Higher Baseline Leptin

Leptin is one of the hormones that makes us feel full when we’ve had enough to eat. It also has some other functions though, which include the ability to decline testosterone levels when it enters the hypothalamus.

If you’re overweight, then you need more leptin to feel full and you have more leptin to begin with – as it’s secreted from adipose tissue. In other words? Less testosterone.

Visceral Fat is a Serious Risk for Obese People

Visceral fat is the more serious and dangerous type of fat that surrounds internal organs. We all have a little of this but those who are very obese or very stressed have it in greater quantities and this increases your risk of all sorts of serious conditions such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, fatty liver…

…aaaand metabolic syndrome. And even if you don’t get this metabolic slowdown, you’ll still be lowering your testosterone levels directly and impairing the function of your organs. Not good.

Cortisol Levels Are Correlated With Body Fat

Cortisol is both a cause and result of being overweight. This is the stress hormone and among other things it is responsible for increasing lipogenesis (fat storage) and making us hungry. At the same time, it also depletes your levels of testosterone.

For all these reasons, even a little body fat can be devastating to your gains in the gym. Carry just a little extra around the waist and you’ll feel less energetic, you’ll produce much less testosterone, you’ll be hungrier and you’ll be more stressed. This is why weight gain is a slippery slope – make sure to nip it in the butt right away!

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