Height can be a touchy subject for a lot of people, especially teens as they watch their bodies, as well as all their friends, adapt at a rapid rate. During this period, height differences can become relatively pronounced. This can lead to a desire to be taller and uncertainty about how their current height may affect them. Whether that may be for sports, or their attractiveness to the opposite sex.
While it’s true that growing taller is largely determined by genetics, it can still be impacted by lifestyle choices and environmental factors. Considering how many guys are becoming obsessed with squeezing out as much height as possible, I have compiled a list of pretty much everything that might have an effect on your final height and what you can implement to reach your maximum height potential.
You can use this guide as a checklist to make sure you are doing everything right. Make sure to check back in with this article every few months to make sure your lifestyle still encompasses these habits.
Get Plenty Of Sleep
Your body releases the most HGH and therefore grows the most when you sleep. Sleeping also benefits pretty much every process in the human body so always aim to get around 9 hours.
School and work can make getting this amount difficult. That’s why it’s also important to the quality of your sleep as much as possible regardless of the duration.
Eat Enough Calories
Growing taller is a very costly endeavour for your body in terms of energy expenditure. That energy has to come from somewhere.
Not eating enough can stunt your growth and therefore you should ensure that you have enough calories in your diet. Don’t overdo it though and risk becoming overweight.
Try Intermittent Fasting
‘Fasting’ may seem counterintuitive given the above tip of eating enough but I’m not telling you to starve yourself. Intermittent fasting (sometimes called time-restricted eating) is the process of only eating within a specific window. This is usually an 8-hour feeding window followed by a 16-hour fast (0 calories). The goal should still be to get sufficient calories, just during a reduced period. However, getting these calories in can become difficult as you begin to reduce the size of the feeding window.
Intermittent fasting is useful for growth because it has been repeatedly shown to boost HGH levels by very significant amounts. Since HGH is the main hormone responsible for growing, intermittent fasting may well result in a taller stature.
Eat A Healthy Diet
We have talked about how much to eat and when to eat, but what’s equally important is what to eat.
Growing taller is not a simple procedure and therefore lots of nutrients are needed. You should aim to have a varied diet, where you include a range of different food groups such as meat, vegetables, fruits and nuts.
Get Enough Sunlight
Getting enough sunlight every day is something that is becoming increasingly less valued in the modern day and age. This is a huge mistake because sunlight has so many benefits for you. These include boosting your mood, reinforcing your circadian rhythm and yes, promoting growth through getting enough vitamin D.
So going outside and touching some grass might not be the worst decision after all.
Incorporate Sprints
Similar to intermittent fasting, intense sprinting has been shown to dramatically boost HGH levels. Over time this may promote increased height. Sprinting doesn’t just have to be in the traditional sense either. Doing it on an exercise bike at max resistance is a good way that I find to be more accessible.
Anything that allows you to go at max effort for 30 seconds or so should suffice.
Stretch To Get Taller (Dead Hangs)
While there is debate about how much stretching can really do for your height, it’s probably a good thing to do for the numerous other health benefits if not for the small possibility of improved growth.
Stretching can also help improve your posture which will make you appear taller. Dead hangs can help relax and therefore elongate your spine about an inch, the same way your spine gets elongated when you sleep. Who knows, maybe after long enough of doing it, the extra height will stick.
Resistance Training
Contrary to the age-old myth that weight-lifting will stunt your growth, more recent studies show that the opposite might be true. The process of building muscle mass contributes to higher HGH levels and the physical pressure from resistance training will increase your bone density – making it easier to put on height.
Pro Tip: Don’t skip leg day as training legs will give you the biggest HGH and testosterone boost.
Reduce Stress
Having chronically high cortisol levels can have negative effects on your other hormone profiles. It can lower your testosterone as well as HGH levels and therefore hinder the body’s ability to gain inches. For this reason, unnecessary stress will also hinder your ability to gain muscle mass.
Be A Healthy Body Fat Percentage
Similar to elevated cortisol levels, having excess fat on your frame is bad for your hormonal profile – it converts testosterone into estrogen. Testosterone is important for triggering growth spurts in teens, as well as all the other important effects of testosterone during puberty.
Having too little fat is also bad for your hormonal health so aim to stay in an optimal range of 12-15% body fat.
Don’t Smoke Or Do Drugs
Both of these will indeed limit your ability to get taller as they can impair skeletal growth and muscle formation due to the chemicals present within them. If you are trying to maximise growth, it’s best to avoid them.
Limit / avoid alcohol
Because young people are still growing, alcohol does not affect them the same way as fully grown adults. Drinking too much can affect brain development and physical development of teenagers so it’s wise to avoid alcohol till you are an adult.
Conclusion
Don’t waste time not implementing these habits because after your growth plates have fused, there is not much you can do to increase your height except improve your posture. There is debate on when the growth plates actually close but it’s somewhere around 18-21 for guys, so make sure you enforce as many of these habits before that age.
If you are already past that age, there isn’t much that can be done for your actual height but you can try wearing insoles or shoes with thicker heels.
