Man 2.0 Engineering the Alpha (4 page)

You age faster. You suffer from chronic disease. You lose your hair. And you get fat.

That brings us back to hormones. Your lack of growth hormone (GH) is limiting the natural process of autophagy. And as your GH levels continue to sputter along, your tissue continues to degenerate. It's why you have more aches and pains. Why food seems to make you fatter than it used to. And why muscle just won't appear on your body, no matter how many reps and sets you perform.

What's the best way to pump up your GH and turn the autophagic process into a group of grind-it-out interns that will work when needed? Strategic eating.

This isn't about specific foods or how many grams of protein, carbs, and fats you eat. It's simpler than that. This is about when you eat. Or more specifically, when you don't eat. The more time you spend eating—as in actual hours during the day eating—the less time you spend in the autophagic process.

That's why we'll teach you when you should and shouldn't be eating. It offers you the freedom to still eat the foods you love and follow the diet of your choice—whether it's low-carb, vegan, or meat-eater's delight (our personal favorite).

By turning on autophagy at the right time, you'll be stripping off fat in ways you didn't think possible and speeding the muscle-gain process. Just as importantly, your brain will work more efficiently, and research shows that you can even fight off diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. Autophagy will change your life, your mind, and your body in ways that will have your internal organs working like a machine and your reflection looking like a man.

4. Lack of Sleep

We don't want to bore you, but you need more sleep. Why? It's simple: lack of sleep is associated with:

 

 
More fat

 
More hunger

 
Smaller muscles

 
More irritability

 
Higher stress

 
Earlier death

 

Not sure about you, but none of that sounds good to us, especially the death part.

We've made some calls and tried to get more hours added to the day—but that hasn't worked. So we realize that you might not always be able to achieve seven or eight hours of sleep per night. You're busy. We get it. But that's not a good enough excuse.

Take a hard look at the end-of-evening activities you can cut out to get to bed an hour earlier. Do you really need to check Facebook again? Is it imperative to catch up on ESPN
right now
? Cut things off a bit early and head to bed.

If you're still not convinced, here's what's more important to understand about your nightly ritual: it's not necessarily how long you sleep, but the quality of your sleep that is directly correlated to improving your life and health on a daily basis, say researchers at the Institute of Medicine. While there are numerous studies that show a link between poor sleep and diseases such as hypertension and diabetes—as well as shorter life span—this study focused on the problems that sleep causes in your day-to-day life. And after reviewing the behaviors and self-reported tendencies of more than ten thousand people, a connection is very clear: lack of sleep ruins your ability to function. You have trouble concentrating, remembering information, driving, taking care of your finances, and performing your job at a high level. And those were just the top five problems associated with a lack of sleep.

While none of this may sound shocking, what's most interesting is how easily you can change how you feel. The survey found that more than 30 percent of adults sleep less than six hours per night. And these people were the ones with the highest percentage of related problems. Those who slept more than eight hours per night? Well, their problems didn't even rate as statistically significant.

Naturally, we suggest that you get more sleep. But we know that won't always be possible. So you need to find ways to improve your
quality
of sleep, even if you can't fit in the recommended hours.

That's where GH and the incredible power of insulin come into play.

Increasing GH can make your sleep more restful even when you're not spending as much time in your slumber, according to researchers at Oregon Health and Science University. But more importantly, more GH and better sleep quality will lower cortisol, which offsets the damage caused by fewer hours of rest.

 

WHAT IS CORTISOL?

Cortisol is one of the power players in the hormone game. Quite simply: fuck with cortisol, and it will fuck you up. That said, cortisol isn't all bad. It's tied to your fight-or-flight response. So the occasional surge in cortisol can be helpful for everything from lifting more weight to improving your immunity and even helping brain function and memory.

But like most things in life, the poison is in the dose. Cortisol levels are oftentimes increased due to stress. And we're not just talking about watching your team blow another lead with ten seconds left in the game or dealing with a pain-in-the-ass boss. This is every type of stress, such as not sleeping enough, having too much fat on your body, or worrying about how to resolve conflict with your significant other. Even eating the wrong foods can stress your body and increase cortisol.

And when cortisol levels remained elevated or are constantly spiked, your body eventually breaks down in every way possible. You age faster. You gain weight more easily. And you suffer from disease.

So in order for you to remain happy and good-looking, it's important that you keep your cortisol in check.

 

 

You see, high cortisol creates interruptions in sleep patterns. In other words, it makes you sleep like crap and wake up feeling even worse. But it's a vicious cycle because poor rest means your cortisol becomes elevated even more, which will ensure that your sleep will continue to get worse. What's more, less sleep also robs you of your testosterone, according to a study published in the
Journal of the American Medical Association
. And we're not talking a tiny drop; the researchers indicated that poor-quality sleep could cause up to a 15 percent decrease in testosterone—giving you one more reason to focus on your rest.

What's most amazing—and scary—is that the changes were almost instant. After just one week, the researchers noted the drop in testosterone and the men reported feeling more moody, having less vigor, and struggling with concentration. Even worse, the highest drops occurred during the afternoon hours and into the late evening (around ten
P.M
.)—meaning your testosterone will be lowest when you need it most to perform in bed.

So while we'd love for you to get your eight hours of sleep, we'll settle for improving the quality of your rest and leaving you with plenty of time for the more important things in life like watching football, reading books, and having sex.

5. Insulin Spikes

Have you ever had a bagel and then felt like you needed a nap? Of course. We've all been there. Doesn't matter if it's bagels or pizza. Some delicious carb meals knock you down quicker than a Tyson uppercut.

A lot of nutrition “experts” will tell you that you should simply avoid bagels. But we're not going to do that because we love bagels. And there's no amount of science that will make bagels less delicious than they are. Our advice is the opposite—if you like carbs, we want you to be able to eat them. It's when you don't take the right approach that your intermittent treats can create an internal environment that is dangerous for your long-term health.

Anyone who's ever been on a low-carb diet can tell you that eating carbs crashes your insulin and makes you tired. Once in a while is not much of an issue, but the frequency with which you do this can be dangerous. If your insulin is spiking and crashing all over the place every single day, you've got a problem. You're going to cause something called insulin resistance, which is the opposite of what we want—insulin sensitivity.

With insulin resistance your insulin is chronically high, which means your body is primed for fat storage. You might not think this is your issue, but the standard American diet includes about 300 grams of carbs per day. And if you enjoy a bagel for breakfast, a sandwich for lunch, pasta for dinner, and some crackers and fruit as snacks throughout the day, then you're already near the danger zone. And that doesn't even account for sweetened drinks (that includes juice), desserts, and the “healthy” muffins they offer at work.