Man 2.0 Engineering the Alpha

(maximum of one day per week).
    • Perform resistance training.
    • Perform long-distance cardiovascular training.
    • Avoid anabolic steroids (yes, they are illegal; and yes, they decrease leptin).
    • Eat a high-protein diet.
    • Don’t eat too much fructose.
    • Don’t drop your calories too low on a diet (at most, drop 500–600 calories per week).

    GHRELIN
    Of all the hormones, ghrelin is the most fun to say because it sounds like gremlin. And, like gremlins, it’s an annoying little bugger. Known as the hunger hormone, ghrelin is produced in your hypothalamus (located in your brain), kidneys, and pituitary gland, but most of it is synthesized in and released by the stomach, and it is released in a pulsatile manner throughout the night, peaking when you wake. No matter where it’s produced, it always has the same effect: snack attack.
    You see, ghrelin both induces hunger and is also secreted by it. Your stomach produces ghrelin when it’s feeling empty. Whenever you start producing ghrelin, you’ll feel hungry—and anytime you get hungry, ghrelin is secreted. Now, here’s the important thing: your ghrelin secretion schedule largely follows your eating schedule, because ghrelin is what we might call a trainable hormone—the more often you eat, the more often you’ll produce ghrelin.
    This is one of the many reasons why the multiple-meal hypothesis—the one that states you need to eat five to six mini-meals per day—is flawed. This style of eating—from a hormonal standpoint and in light of the way our bodies are built—is designed to make you hungrier. This might be great if your goal is to gain weight. In that case, you want to be hungrier. But if losing weight and becoming leaner are your goals, training your body to eat less frequently, while still feeling full, is a more sustainable and enjoyable approach to eating without feeling frustrated or constantly hungry.
    A better meal schedule will help you balance your ghrelin levels, and so will sleep. Research published in the American Journal of Human Biology found a direct link between a lack of sleep, overeating, and obesity. Many people think the reason less sleep leads to more eating is because when you sleep less, you’re awake longer; the more hours you’re up, the more time you have to eat. The real reason is that a lack of sleep impacts hormone levels and brain functioning in a way that pushes you toward more foods—and in particular the crap you should avoid.
    It’s a three-pronged attack designed to make you fat. When you don’t sleep enough:

    1. Cortisol levels rise, which activates reward centers in your brain that make you crave food.
    2. You produce more ghrelin and it’s harder to decrease the levels, meaning you feel hungry all the freaking time.
    3. The lack of sleep and higher levels of ghrelin appear to make you more likely to grab for dessert foods and fattening, sugary snacks.

    While cheat foods will have their place in our program, the goal is for you to eat them when you want—not because your brain creates a desire that you can’t resist. But that’s exactly what happens when you don’t get enough sleep. When researchers from Columbia University used MRI testing on sleep-deprived participants, they found that the areas of the brain that desire junk food were more activated with less than six hours of sleep. So unless you want to be a mind-control experiment that is at the beck and call of every fast food commercial on television, your best protection is ensuring more rest.
    Here’s how to prevent high ghrelin:
    • Ensure enough sleep.
    • Avoid eating too much sugar.
    • Don’t eat too often.
    • Eat more protein.
    • Practice intermittent fasting.

    ESTROGEN
    You might know estrogen as the female sex hormone that is at least partially responsible for the development of breasts. You know, because men love breasts. Estrogen also regulates the menstrual cycle and the female biological love of chocolate. (Seriously.) All of those things are awesome—in women. But estrogen is also present in all men (yes, we need it), and it’s an essential part of hormonal balance—in the right amounts. However, when men’s estrogen levels are too high, they can wreak havoc on the male body, in ways that include the growth of man boobs, decreased libido, and depression.
    Estrogen is one of the most interesting hormones because of its necessity combined with its potential downside. Estrogen is essential to your