What did @milesgraylifts actually say?
Miles posted his bloodwork after losing 20 kilograms over nine months of natural dieting and revealed a total testosterone of 127 ng/dL, which he says should be "around 800 to 1000" for a 20-year-old. He also flagged a second hormone value of 8 against a reference of around 30. He describes low mood, low energy, persistent hunger, and a noticeable drop in libido. His conclusion: "natural bodybuilding is no joke. Your testosterone is going to get absolutely tanked if you're going to get this lean."
He is not claiming a specific diagnosis, and he is not recommending any treatment. He is sharing a personal experience with real lab results and asking out loud what he should do next. That transparency is worth acknowledging, even if some of his framing needs tightening.
Does the science back this up?
Yes, substantially. Severe caloric restriction and aggressive fat loss are well-documented drivers of suppressed testosterone, and the effect is stronger than most people realize.
A 2021 review by Whittaker and Harris in Nutrition and Health found that low-energy-availability states, common in competitive physique athletes, reliably suppress luteinizing hormone (LH) pulsatility, which in turn tanks testosterone production. This is the likely mechanism behind Miles's numbers. The second value he references, presumably LH or free testosterone at 8, fits this picture of central suppression rather than primary testicular failure.
Research by Rossow et al. (2013, International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance) tracked a natural bodybuilder through contest prep and documented testosterone dropping from roughly 9.2 nmol/L to 2.3 nmol/L, a collapse of nearly 75 percent, returning toward baseline only after months of refeeding. A 127 ng/dL reading in a 20-year-old is clinically consistent with these documented patterns.
The normal reference range he cites, 800 to 1000 ng/dL for a young man, is on the higher end but not unreasonable. The American Urological Association defines hypogonadism as total testosterone below 300 ng/dL, placing Miles well into clinical territory.
What did they get wrong (or right)?
He got the core story right. Extreme leanness, achieved through prolonged caloric deficit, can genuinely suppress testosterone to clinically low levels in otherwise healthy young men. That is not bro-science. It is documented endocrinology.
Where his framing gets loose is the phrase "natural bodybuilding" as the cause. The suppression is driven by energy deficit and low body fat, not by resistance training or bodybuilding per se. A marathon runner in the same energy availability hole would see the same hormonal picture. The sport is not the villain. The sustained caloric restriction and body composition extreme are.
He also says, almost casually, "I kind of feel like an old man sitting on the porch. I don't really mind it." This part deserves pushback. Prolonged hypogonadism in a 20-year-old is not a quirky personality trait to shrug off. Bone density loss, mood dysregulation, and cardiovascular markers all begin shifting with sustained low testosterone. Normalizing severe suppression as a tolerable side effect of looking lean is where this video quietly misleads its audience.
What should you actually know?
If your testosterone is 127 ng/dL at age 20, that is a clinical finding that warrants a conversation with a doctor, not a social media caption. Full stop.
Functional hypothalamic hypogonadism, the technical term for what Miles appears to be describing, is reversible in most cases. The fix is almost always addressing energy availability, meaning eating more, reducing training load, or both. Martos-Moreno et al. (2018, Hormone Research in Paediatrics) and broader endocrinology literature consistently show that when energy availability is restored, the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis recovers in the majority of cases without medical intervention.
The question Miles ends on, "Am I going to have to eat more?," already contains its own answer. Yes. Staying at extreme leanness while hoping hormones normalize is not a realistic plan. The body reads severe energy deficit as a survival threat and downregulates reproduction accordingly. That is not a bug. It is the system working correctly.
Anyone watching this video and recognizing similar symptoms should get a full hormone panel, including total testosterone, free testosterone, LH, FSH, and prolactin, before drawing conclusions. Not all low testosterone in young men is diet-related, and a doctor needs to rule out other causes.