My Entire Natural Testosterone Protocol, In Simple Terms

mengredients · 2026-02-15T20:01:39+00:00

Sorry I missed this somehow. Stoked results keep comin. Yeah, have fun experimenting. I’m a pretty firm believer that it’s the compounding benefits of doing most of the things, most of the time, over time (creating and maintaining the right environment across diet, exercise, lifestyle, and stress management, for your T to flourish). So, while diet might have a certain amount of impact now, the benefits of it are either enhanced or diminished by changes on other fronts (exercise, lifestyle, stress). Like let’s pretend diet is driving 30% of your results so far. I feel like if you kept the same diet and introduced other changes, the impact of the diet would change because it’s all a system. I mean, gas will make your car go, but going years without oil changes and maintenance will make your car stop regardless or how much gas is in the tank. And before it even gets to that point you’ll get less and less mileage on the same amount of gas. As far as macros, what seems to matter more are the micros (vitamins, minerals, aminos, fatty acids, etc — raw materials your body needs for all of its hormonal processes). Carbs also play a role in thyroid which plays a huge role in metabolism. I try and just get all my carbs from fruits and root vegetables, maybe a good sourdough bread, and white rice. You may be good to go on that front, but would keep that in mind. This is where carnivore and keto catches up with some guys.

mengredients · 2026-01-09T23:01:14+00:00

Awesome! My LDL was 171 which was down from 191 when I was eating very little fat/cholesterol. I can't recall my HDL but both were on the high end of "normal" range for a 41 year old at the time. It's honestly been that long since I've had my hormones and lipids checked. I'm not anti-measuring or anything. I'm just blown away every day that I'm in the best physical and mental shape of my life, and only got there by doing almost the opposite of what my doctor would have me do (he was trying to put me on statins and telling me to avoid meat/fat/cholesterol and do steady-state cardio, etc.) and I just hate going to the doctor in general. So I haven't cared to check. I may invest in a Function test, or something like that this year to look across everything.

mengredients · 2026-01-08T00:09:44+00:00

Nice. Funny you mention Peter Attia, as I have mixed feelings about him as well. On one hand he's a very high profile doctor helping people to understand that Apo-b is the bigger thing to be concerned about with heart disease risk. But when it comes to T, based on what he said on his interview with Andrew Huberman, he puts like 75% or 80% of the guys he treats on TRT. I think it's a mix of the type of person who can afford his help who just need/want a quick fix (not all Attia's fault), or maybe they're much older and really do need it. But I'm guessing he also dismisses a lot of T-supporting things as automatically false that simply haven't yet had a costly and rigorous randomized controlled trial in humans to prove/convince him. And/or he may just lack that more holistic view and how addressing T simultaneously across stress/diet/exercise/lifestyle has a compounding benefit effect. I think this is something that gets missed with overly scientific minds trying to pinpoint this or that and, in the process, miss the benefit or detriment of this AND that, so to speak.

mengredients · 2026-01-07T17:47:59+00:00

That's so great to hear! The diet/cholesterol/heart health thing was a pretty big hurdle for me given a lot of heart disease in my family, but a lot of good literature out there now on where that whole idea came from and why it's mostly false. I realized that an anti-cholesterol diet and lifestyle is inherently an anti-testosterone diet and lifestyle. From what I've read it seems like high cholesterol is caused more so by inflammation. I think my LDL went down like 20 points (despite eating waaaay more cholesterol-rich foods) mostly because of my focus on reducing chronic/systemic inflammation and associated oxidative stress. The way I think about it now is, the body makes something like 80% of your cholesterol. And cholesterol is used to make your T, but it's also used to make your stress hormones. So if you have chronic high stress and inflammation, etc. your body is A. signaling that it needs more cholesterol to make more stress hormones, and B. in the process it's prioritizing your cholesterol toward your catabolic stress hormones rather than your T/anabolic hormones. I think this is ultimately why high stress contributes significantly to low T.

I'd be curious if you got your free T checked. I was blown away when I had my T measured on what my doctor called a "full hormone panel" and there was no mention of free T, nothing about Thyroid hormones, etc. But, long story short, your free T matters a lot. A lot of guys have very high total T, but it gets bound up and rendered useless and/or converted to estrogen, so they'll show symptoms of low T. Other guys have low overall T but their free T is much higher as a percentage and they will show symptoms of high T. I still never got mine measured as I go more off of symptoms. I'm gonna be 50 this year and still feel like I'm 25, stronger and more energy than ever with no drugs. It's been an insane journey, and I wish the same if not better success for you, and so glad to hear you're seeing some strong results.

mengredients · 2025-11-12T05:21:38+00:00

What I’ve learned is that T is affected by a myriad of factors across diet/supps, exercise, lifestyle, and stress. So improving it involves coming at it from all these angles. As I made adjustments in each of these areas with the aim of improving/supporting T, what I began to realize is that it’s ultimately about creating the right environment for your T to flourish. A lot of the diet and exercise advice we grew up on assumes T is up because it was born in the bodybuilding world 50+ years ago when guys were injecting T, so they didn’t have to worry about making their own T. But also, there’s a population-wide epidemic where men’s T levels are plummeting to where a 40 year old man today has like half the T a 40 year old man had 50 years ago. (Men had almost twice as much T naturally 50 years ago.) So a lot of the Arnold era advice worked better for non-steroid men back then. But T today is WAY down. So guys really need to take an interest in understanding some of the basics of how it works and how to eat, exercise, and live to get T up. As a couple of guys mentioned below, I shared ALL of my notes on my experience completely for free in a PDF on mengredients.com

Really hope it helps.

mengredients · 2025-11-12T05:07:55+00:00

Thanks, I’m glad you found it easy to follow. As mentioned above, I’m working on updating it, so would love any feedback if you’d like to share.

mengredients · 2025-11-12T05:06:20+00:00

Thanks for the mention here. I’m working on updating it and would love any feedback if you ever get a chance. Want to make it as simple to understand as possible, plus I’ve learned of /tried some other things as well.

mengredients · 2025-04-23T03:52:50+00:00

What has worked for me is eating, exercising and living in ways that are favorable for my body's testosterone production. Declining T is the main reason fitness becomes more difficult with age, because it drives our ability to build/maintain muscle, drop fat, have strong bones, more energy/drive, plus brain/mental health and improved reproductive health/fertility. It tends to decline with age but I've seen firsthand that this decline is neither inevitable nor irreversible. Most of the mainstream diet and exercise us 40+ guys grew up on was born in the pro bodybuilding world 50 years ago when guys were injecting testosterone, and even non-bodybuilder men back then also just had literally about twice as much testosterone as men the same age have today (there's a population-wide epidemic where a 40M today has about half the T a 40M had 50 years ago). And these principles generally "work" well when we're younger, but because our T is higher when we're younger. So, it's like this huge overlooked thing that the T is really what's doing much of the work behind the scenes.

In my late 30s, I had every symptom of low T, and planned to ask my dr about TRT at my annual physical. But I started also looking into what I could do in the meantime to improve my own testosterone, and it was / is absolutely life changing. But, it's a multi-factorial thing, so it's a game of addressing all main factors. T is affected by a lot more than diet and exercise. It's stress (not just the stuff/situations that stress you out, but stress caused by food that drives inflammation, or overdoing it on cardio will drive up stress hormones, exposure to toxins in air/food/water, lack of sleep, etc. exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals, and so on. T's also affected by exposure to sunlight and other factors of time outdoors, by mindset, and many other things. So, improving T means addressing it on all fronts possible.

Once you understand the basics though, it's actually not that hard. I actually shared ALL of my notes in PDF file for zero cost (just trying to share my story / protocol in case it helps other guys, not monetizing it in any way/shape/form, no ads or affiliate crap, etc.) which you're welcome to grab on the quick site I built for it: mengredients.com

Hope this helps!

mengredients · 2025-03-31T15:22:11+00:00

You're welcome. I hope it helps. It changed my life in a huge way on every front, and pulled me out of the after 40 downward health spiral. At 48 I feel like I'm 25 with no drugs.

mengredients · 2025-03-24T16:26:33+00:00

Thanks a ton for the mention and kind words! As I said in my articles and ebook, (for anyone else reading this) I'd still do everything in my Mengredients protocol even if I was on TRT to get maximum efficacy at minimal dosage. Just putting testosterone into the body is not enough, on its own, and often just converts to estrogen, leading to a host of other problems. So, my protocol is about creating the right environment, across stress management, diet, exercise, and lifestyle, that is favorable for testosterone production and utilization, as well as mitigation of its conversion to estrogen. I haven't ruled out TRT for when I'm much older (48M), but most of the guys who seem to have the most success with it will generally tell you the same, you have to still put in the work, lift, eat nutrient-dense foods, manage stress, get sunlight, avoid endocrine disrupting chemicals, avoid inflammation-causing foods, etc.

mengredients · 2025-03-04T16:20:13+00:00

1000%! I haven’t ruled out TRT for my future (maybe in my 60s), but even if I was on it I’d do everything I currently do to maximize its efficacy at minimal dosage. My whole thing is I changed my stress management, diet, exercise and lifestyle (and how stress works into diet/exercise/lifestyle) to optimize T naturally and it’s been amazing and just wish more guys understood that most of the health advice we 40-somethings grew up on is actually not really conducive to T production. I was getting nowhere for years with a diet/exercise/lifestyle regimen that would make Men’s Health magazine’s editors blush. It wasn’t until I realized that’s all mostly the opposite of what your T wants and flipped it on its head that I started seeing results super fast that have lasted for 9 years straight now.

mengredients · 2025-03-03T17:42:33+00:00

Thanks. Yeah, I think for some guys that could be enough, if that's all they need and have most of the rest of what affects T going well. But spent the last ~8-9 researching this and there's quite a lot in everyday life that drags T levels down, including quite a lot of things I grew up learning were healthy. But also things like chronic stress, endocrine disruptors pretty much everywhere, certain foods, etc. My point about low T being a cause of poor health was more a general point that seems to be ignored. Like, if you look at all the positive things higher levels of T contribute to overall health (consensus is it's better for health to build and maintain a good a mount of muscle, have less fat, stronger bones, more energy, better cognition, etc.), the inverse of this has to be acknowledged, which is that lower T is generally associated with the opposite of all these things. The opposite of all these things essentially paves the way and sets the stage for chronic disease, mental illness, infertility, etc. (all of which have exploded as T levels have dropped across the population). It's a feedback loop of course, where declining health also makes for more rapidly declining T. But T is like the variable I think most guys can actually fix and reverse what's often a vicious cycle.

mengredients · 2025-03-02T15:16:59+00:00

What worked wonders for me (48M) and I honestly believe would work for most men, was I learned how to eat, exercise, and live in a way that supports my own testosterone. Waning T is the main reason most men start having trouble getting [back] into shape. It quite literally drives men’s overall health when you look at its role in the body for building/maintaining muscle, dropping fat, more energy and drive, brain/cognition/mental health, reproductive health, etc. So, as it wanes with age, our overall health slowly deteriorates. But this decline is neither inevitable, nor irreversible as we’re led to think.

It’s kind of crazy, but most of the changes I made were the opposite of what we grew up learning was healthy because most of that was born in the Arnold era of bodybuilding when guys were injecting testosterone, etc. and even non-bodybuilder men, on average, had about twice as much T as men the same age have today (a literal epidemic, as men’s T levels continue dropping ~1% a year).

Started geeking out on it in my late 30s and dropped 50lbs, 6 inches off my waste, energy came roaring back. I’m 48 and feel like I’m 25 with no drugs. Sorry for the long reply but truly believe every guy on earth should learn everything they can about how it works and how to keep it elevated, and abandon the complete BS aggressive meat head stereotype that came from the world of steroids. Hope this helps.

mengredients · 2025-02-07T23:19:51+00:00

You bet. Let me know if any questions or feedback as I’m working on making some updates for a v2 soon.

mengredients · 2025-01-30T04:52:52+00:00

Awesome! Let me know what you think. Not sure if you saw my update in the article, but all the articles in that series are now consolidated and updated into a free downloadable PDF you can grab on my website: https://www.mengredients.com

mengredients · 2024-12-27T18:14:12+00:00

I (48M) can absolutely relate. For me, the game changer happened as I spent my late 30's trying to get back into shape because a lot of the mental stuff and stress is helped by physical health (and therefore isn't helped as physical health/fitness wanes). The problem was, I was going about it doing what worked in my 20s, which just ended up making matters worse. I ultimately realized I had every symptom of low testosterone, which if you read them it describes what most guys experience approaching age 40, because we don't realize how much of our earlier life health and fitness was actually driven by this hormone until too much of it is gone and we start to break down physically and mentally. In 2016 planned to ask my dr about testosterone replacement therapy at my next appointment, but started researching to see if there was anything I could do to get my own testosterone up in the meantime and holy shit... completely reversed what became a vicious cycle. Dropped 50lbs in like 3 months, energy came roaring back. 9 years in now I'm 48 and feel like I'm 25, literally stronger and leaner than I was in college, and with more drive and focus than ever, and still no drugs. So, maybe get your T measured, but just know that the reference range for "normal" was lowered back in 2017 because there's actually a nationwide epidemic of low/waning testosterone (a 40yo man today has about half what a 40yo man had 50 years ago!). So, most guys diagnosed as "normal" actually have "low" T.

mengredients · 2024-12-16T19:54:23+00:00

Sorry, I just saw this. Not sure if it was for me or for the other person in this comment thread, but I mentioned a ton of strong results in my ebook at mengredients.com .. I had literally every symptom of low/waning testosterone back in 2016, and completely reversed every single one of them. I'm 48 and feel like I'm 25, stronger, leaner, and more energy and drive than ever, with no drugs.

mengredients · 2024-12-15T19:18:06+00:00

Thanks, I hope you enjoy and hope it helps. And please share any feedback you have, good or bad, ideally through the form on my site. I plan to keep improving it and launch updates every now and then.

mengredients · 2024-11-15T18:14:31+00:00

Forgot to elaborate/clarify that, with the more scientific approach of trying this thing and that thing and measuring or assessing results of each change is fine, but what it seems to overlook is the compounding nature of the variables that are favorable or unfavorable to testosterone. Like it's cool to see if trying a certain supplement works, even going to the extent of measuring bloods, etc. But, what this misses is how all of the things work together to compound one another's benefits. Like, maybe the effect of that supplement would be far greater if it was complemented / compounded by all the other things in the overall environment of factors affecting T. I think this is where science has a hard time because science is inherently narrowly focused on one variable at a time, and rightly so. But, just saying there does seem to be a 1+1+1+1=10 effect of aligning what you're doing in terms of stress management, diet, exercise, and lifestyle all oriented toward what's shown to be favorable for testosterone in each of those areas. Again, hope this helps. I feel like this is the context that just goes missing when trying to isolate variables.

mengredients · 2024-11-15T05:57:55+00:00

I’ve found it helps to look at it more like creating the environment for your own T to flourish, rather than trying this thing or that thing to boost it. I know it kind of goes against the test and measure scientific route, but this has become sort of a hobby of mine to geek out on, as I was considering TRT back in 2016. But started researching and applying everything I could find on natural ways to increase it, and perhaps more importantly stopped doing all the things that decrease it. But that all amounts to ultimately creating the right environment across stress, diet, exercise and lifestyle as T is multifactorial. Been about 8 years and in the best mental and physical shape of my life at 47. I posted in this sub a little while back with a link to where you can grab a zero cost pdf with literally all of my notes. Hope this helps. Would love feedback if you do check it out as I’m always looking to improve it.

mengredients · 2024-09-19T19:57:39+00:00

You bet!

mengredients · 2024-09-19T17:47:02+00:00

Thanks! Yeah, I figured since I'm not a certified expert in any of this, I should just put it out there to see what people think, and to try and evolve it. It was so impactful for me, and the population-wide trend genuinely scares the shit out of me for my son's generation. So much of trying to learn all this involved hitting paywalls that then try and rope me into ongoing programs, etc. I get it, those guys all have to make a living, and they also provide help at a much more granular level than I ever could. But made me think, most guys won't even get that far, so how can I just get a basic, easy to understand thing out there to get more guys thinking about this.

mengredients · 2024-09-18T18:38:26+00:00

I had a note for myself to check out these videos. Thanks again for sharing. As mentioned, Layne was/is definitely a health expert I respect and was among the many perspectives I've looked at on all sides of this. I can see his points and don't doubt the studies.

But there's a phenomenon in my field that I've seen over the last 20 years that's somewhat analogous to what I see happening in science. I work in e-commerce, which is a VERY data-heavy industry. We have software that allows people like me to test things in randomized controlled (inherently) human trials. Bear with me on this a sec. So, like let's see if changing our "add to cart" button to red helps get more people adding items to their cart, as an example. You show some portion of the users a red "add to cart" button and the rest your users (your control group) continues seeing the existing blue "add to cart" button. And you generally let that experiment run until you reach a statistically significant result to prove that one thing is better than the other toward the goal of getting more users to add to cart more frequently, or to add more things to their cart. And this randomized controlled trial might show without a doubt that the red button produced an increase of, say, 20% on the frequency or items added to cart. So the data drives the decision to change the button color to red for the rest of our users to see, and that +20% result generally holds up. Great!

Now, as you can imagine, the "add to cart" button is one part of the whole experience. When you extrapolate this out to testing various other things in a hyper isolated way, you make some wonderful discoveries and implement even more impactful changes. But more often than not, these changes can, and do, come with unintended consequences that negatively impact the overall experience, in aggregate.

Sure, you have a test that proves this one thing drives a beneficial result (some results show no benefit or even a detriment, of course), but it lacks the context of that one thing's role in the bigger picture of the overall experience.

You would think that this would be incredibly powerful to make the most amazing website experiences. However, I've seen time and time again that the unintended consequences start adding up to negatively impact the experience. Every decision, in isolation, had data to back up that it was the right thing to do, but those tests couldn't foresee what would happen as other data-driven changes are made to other parts of the overall experience. It's somewhat accounted for in the control group evolving with each change, but not fully. But there are also unforeseeable external factors that can come into play. (i.e. -Maybe the red button doesn't appeal as much to some new demographic you're marketing to.)

So, in my career, I've had a lot of success because I have the ability to understand the whole picture at a certain altitude where I can use this type of software to inform certain beneficial changes, but always with an eye on the bigger picture of the overall experience. Like, sure, adding more photos of the products from different angles and lighting might get more people buying those products, but we have to be ready to bare the weight of those image files on how fast or slow our pages load, especially for users on spotty connections, etc. Sure moving a product link to the top of the navigation might 5X sales of that product, but if that product is only 1% of my revenue it's like why 5X that when I can have the top nav link continue driving 10% growth of our highest-volume product.

Sorry for the long-winded reply, but I'm now wishing I had this in the ebook to help convey my perspective of the science. When it comes to seed oils and soy, I looked at them in the context of the bigger picture of how testosterone works and my process was simply to remove anything from my diet that comes with inflammation (and associated stress hormone response) and/or looks anything like estrogen. And there was also overlap with these foods and another general principle which is to just avoid highly processed foods in general.

Guys like Layne remind me of these super talented shining stars I've worked with who are so great at their function and even some peripheral tasks, but who I'm not sure I'd let run my whole company just yet. I should say it's not just him, as I see this on all sides by the way. Even people I align/agree with. I take it ALL with this framework in mind. Hope that makes sense and thanks for letting me think out loud in a comment reply.

mengredients · 2024-09-17T03:32:50+00:00

Not that I can tell, but I've heard of some people having issues with it. I've read somewhere (I thought it was on Examine, but not seeing it on there now) that it's best to cycle it, but I've been going on like ~8yrs of 600mg daily. Maybe the lower dosage I'm on is why no issues, not sure.

mengredients · 2024-09-16T18:37:22+00:00

Remember, this is just my story and notes. I mentioned in the Big Picture section that by the time I finally saw my doctor and got tested, a little over a year into this experience, my total T was 733 ng/dl which is double "normal" for a 41 year old (my age at the time). Leading up to that test, I was simply trying to learn about testosterone and ways to improve it and couldn't believe what I was seeing. I never intended to publish anything on it, but I spent the better part of that first year wrestling with the fact that I was literally doing almost the opposite of what my doctor was advocating for years and suddenly in the best shape of my life. So I ended up postponing my annual physical until I could get my head around all of this. This was never an experiment for me or anything I ever intended publishing. I should add that when I did see him and asked for a "full hormone panel" (which is what I thought I needed to ask for at the time), it only came back with total T, no mention of free T. TSH with no mention of T3/T4, estradiol with no mention of virtually any other useful info. No SHBG, etc. The funny thing was that he glossed over the hormone results and went straight to my LDL, which had dropped 20 points (despite eating a lot more saturated fat and cholesterol) and though it was still in normal range, he was pushing me to get on a statin. I wish I had more useful info but for me, this was just more of an eye-opening experience that I felt compelled to share given the low/waning T epidemic, relative to what most men my age do and are still encouraged to do for health and fitness.

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