High mileage = low testosterone?

[bruncle]

Has anyone else experienced this? High mileage for me always leads to a dramatic decline in libido and general energy levels. Stopping training leads to a big resurgence in both of those metrics, so I doubt it has a pathological cause beyond slight overtraining. I have never had my testosterone levels checked, but I suspect that they would be very low whenever I am in heavy training mode (most of the time). Has anyone got any experience with this? I eat basically no dietary fat, so from what I've read that could be a factor. Any tips on what kind of foods I should be eating to increase T levels?

(Male 21 yo)

[james79]

I've never noticed a difference between when I am training hard or not. I think I have a decent amount of fat in my diet though.

Maybe try and eat foods with higher fat contents for a couple of week s(e.g. nuts, avocado, soy milk / yoghurts etc) and see if you notice a difference?

[fredrikw]

Training hard will wear you down, that's the nature of training physiology. Eat more fat and live with getting tired form training

[ha]

What happens when we cut back on training? Our body has more calories to produce hormones etc.

What about ensuring your eating enough calories (at least 3000 a day +) so your body aint freak'n and getting super stressed and shutting down hormone productions.

I wouldnt focus on upping the fat, Id focus on upping the calories overall and then you will get a few more fat grams that way. We dont need that much fat but we do need a stack of carb calories to ensure our glycogen tanks are ready to rock, day in, day out.

When our glycogen stays low for too long, our immune system gets smashed apart.

We all know athletes that fail to eat enough carbs, drink enough water and or get enough sleep and they hit a wall. Im yet to meet the athlete that doesnt consume enough fat!

Good thing about vegan diet is we eat a lot of fruits, vegie, whole grains etc and get plenty of EFA'S from that. Throw in a few tablespoons a week of flax or chia and your getting more omega 3 than you probably need. Flax being 23g of omega 3 per 100g. Fish being 0.3g of omega 3 per 100g!

How much carbs is enough? A ball park figure if you want high energy levels, is 10g per kg of bodyweight PER DAY. So if your 70kg thats 700g of carbs which is about 1kg of dates OR 1kg dry weight of rice/pasta/oats.

Drink enough water so your urine is clear and at least 10 times a day and a few times a night.
Get as much sleep/rest as you can.

That way youll be fit and healthy enough to function both in and out of the bedroom!