Pheromonemaxxing: How I Increased My Pheromones Naturally & Smelled Great Doing It

For months at a time I wore zero deodorant, washed my pits with soap maybe once a week, and sweated hard every single day. I smelled better than I ever have in my life. Women noticed. So did the guys.

I’m William. I run Royal Pheromones, so I’ve been deep in the pheromone world for a long time. When pheromonemaxxing blew up on TikTok, I was already doing it.

The problem is most guys are doing it wrong, and most of the articles you’ll find are dunking on the wrong version. So this is the exact protocol I ran. What I did, what I ate, how I got through the first two weeks when I stunk, and what happened once my body dialed in.

What Is Pheromonemaxxing?

Pheromonemaxxing (also written pheromone maxxing) is a routine for maximizing your natural scent so women find you more attractive. You drop deodorant, sweat hard, eat real food, and support your androgen system so your body puts out its own scent instead of hiding it. Done right, you smell like a clean, healthy man.

It came out of the looksmaxxing world. Looksmaxxing is about your face and body. Pheromonemaxxing is about how you smell when someone gets close.

Why Most Guys Pheromonemaxx Wrong

Look up pheromonemaxxing in the news and you’ll see the same story everywhere. Guys skipping showers before dates, wearing the same shirt for days, some of them drinking their own piss. Then a scientist steps in and says you’re not pheromonemaxxing, you’re bacteria maxxing.

They’re half right. If you quit deodorant and quit showering on the same day, you’re going to reek. That smell isn’t your pheromones. It’s bacteria.

Most body odor comes from bacteria on your skin breaking down your sweat. Fresh sweat barely smells. The problem is years of antiperspirant completely rearrange the bacteria living in your pits. So when you quit cold turkey, the bacteria that make you stink get the run of the place for a while.

The guys stinking on TikTok skipped the reset. They stopped washing before their skin had a chance to rebalance. The right way is the opposite. You keep showering, you wash the right spots, and you give your skin about two weeks to sort itself out.

Once that happens, the dirty shirt argument kind of falls apart. When I was dialed in, a shirt I’d worn all day just smelled like me. Not like a locker room. A shirt only smells as bad as the guy who wore it.

Does Pheromonemaxxing Actually Work? What the Science Says

Humans communicate through scent. Scientists call it chemosignaling. Here’s what the research shows.

Women can smell your genes. In the famous 1995 sweaty T-shirt study, guys wore the same shirt two nights in a row. Women sniffed the shirts and rated them. They liked the smell of men whose immune genes were different from their own, and those shirts reminded them of their own boyfriends. Your scent carries real information about you. Deodorant covers it up.

That’s why smelling like you beats smelling like every other guy at the bar. Your natural scent hits hardest with the women it’s meant for.

Male sweat changes women’s hormones. Androstadienone is a compound in male sweat and the most studied pheromone candidate out there. In a 2007 Berkeley study, women who sniffed it kept higher levels of cortisol, a hormone tied to alertness and arousal. Other research has linked it to changes in women’s mood and sexual arousal. Scientists can debate what to call it. Your sweat is doing something.

Your diet changes how you smell. A 2017 study had women rate men’s armpit sweat. Guys who ate more fruit and vegetables smelled better. So did guys who ate more fat, meat and eggs. Guys who ate a lot of carbs had stronger, worse-smelling sweat.

It all starts with pregnenolone. Androstadienone and androstenone, two of the most studied male pheromones, are built from pregnenolone. That’s the same parent hormone behind DHEA, testosterone and the rest of your androgens. The enzyme that does it works in your balls and your adrenals, which is where the broscience line “pheromones are made in the balls” comes from. It’s not far off. Keep your androgen system strong and you give your body more to work with.

So no, there’s no magic molecule. But your natural scent clearly affects how women react to you, and you can make it a lot better.

My Pheromonemaxxing Protocol

I ran this for months at a time. Here’s every piece of it.

1. Sweat Hard Every Day

Sweat is the engine. Your scent comes from glands in your pits and groin, and you want them working every day so what’s on your skin is fresh, not stale.

At the time I was big into bouldering. Climbing had me sweating buckets. After climbing I’d do yoga, then hit the sauna. Most days I was sweating three different ways.

You don’t have to climb. Lift, run, play a sport, sit in a sauna. Just sweat hard every day, and get sauna time if you can.

Then shower. I’d go hot, then finish cold. You’re not trying to scrub yourself sterile. You want a faint whisper of your scent left after the shower. Someone close to you notices it. The room doesn’t.

2. Shower Daily, Soap Smart

You still shower every day. You just stop lathering soap all over your body.

• Groin: soap every day. Non-negotiable.
• Pits: soap once a week, or every other week. Water the rest of the time.
• Everything else: water handles it.

Most body wash is loaded with sulfates and detergents that strip your skin. Water rinses off sweat and dirt without nuking everything living on you.

When you do use soap, use a good one. I use tallow soap. Tallow’s fat profile is close to your skin’s own oils, so it cleans without leaving you tight and stripped. The one we carry is the Volcanic Charcoal Tallow Soap, handmade in Hawaii by Garry Nelson from grass-fed beef tallow. No sulfates, no parabens, and no pheromones in it. The light sandalwood and vanilla scent stays out of the way of your own.

3. Throw Out the Deodorant

No deodorant. No antiperspirant. Not even the “natural” stuff.

Antiperspirant plugs your sweat glands. Deodorant covers your scent and kills off bacteria. Either way you’re blocking the exact thing you’re trying to build. Researchers found these products rearrange the whole bacterial community in your armpits, and that it starts shifting within days of stopping. That shift is where the first two weeks of stink come from. I’ll cover how to get through it below.

4. Eat Real Food

No processed food. That was the rule.

I lived alone at the time, so I kept it simple. I’d make big pots of stew and let them cook for hours. Meat, a pile of vegetables, some healthy carbs. Healthy, easy, and packed with minerals and protein.

I leaned lower carb and higher fat. Two reasons:

• Fat feeds your androgens. A 2021 meta-analysis found men on low-fat diets had lower testosterone and DHT than men eating more fat.
• Carbs make you smell worse. That 2017 sweat study found guys eating more carbs had stronger, less pleasant body odor. Guys eating more meat, fat and vegetables smelled better.

Make it healthy fat. Olive oil, coconut oil and avocado oil were my staples. Your hormone system is built out of fat, and your androgens are made from it, so give your body good raw material. Olive oil especially. It does something for your aura.

5. Lift

Lifting is important. Hard training fires up your androgen system and keeps you sweating. Bouldering was my main thing then, and it hammers your whole body. Pick something hard and stay consistent.

6. Semen Retention

Your balls are the main factory for your androgens and the scent compounds this whole thing runs on. So I kept it in.

One small study found testosterone peaked around day 7 of abstinence, hitting about 145% of baseline. The research is thin. I ran it anyway, the whole time I was on this protocol.

7. TRT + hCG (If You’re on TRT)

I was already on TRT, and there’s a catch most guys don’t know about. When you take outside testosterone, your brain stops telling your balls to make their own. They slow down and shrink. Not ideal when your balls are the factory.

So I added hCG with my doctor. hCG mimics the signal your brain normally sends to your testes, so they keep producing while you’re on TRT. In a 2005 study, testosterone inside the testes dropped 94% in men on testosterone alone. Adding low-dose hCG kept it close to normal.

If you’re not on TRT, skip this one. If you are, ask your doctor about adding hCG.

The First Two Weeks Suck. Do It Anyway.

When you drop deodorant, you’re going to stink for a while. No way around it.

Your pit bacteria have been living with antiperspirant for years. When you stop, the balance has to reset, and the bad-smelling bacteria get loud before your skin settles down. For me it took about two weeks for the good bacteria to take back over and the bad odor to fade. It’s a trial by fire. You just have to suck it up.

Here’s how it went for me:

• Week 1: The rough part. You’ll notice yourself, and so will anyone standing close.
• Week 2: It starts fading. Less often, less sharp.
• After two weeks: The bad odor is mostly gone. What’s left is a clean, warm scent that smells like you. Women find it attractive as hell.

How to get through it:

• Keep baby wipes on you. Wipe your pits midday and before you’re around people. It knocks the odor down without undoing the reset.
• Keep showering every day and keep soaping your groin.
• Don’t cave and grab deodorant. One “just for today” swipe throws your pit bacteria right back off.
• Wear a fresh shirt every day until you’re through it. After that, it doesn’t matter much.

What Happened Once I Was Dialed In

This is the part everyone asks about.

Women would step into my space and their eyes would glaze over. Same look every time. That “I want him” look. They didn’t know why they were pulled in. They just were.

Guys changed too, which I didn’t expect. Dudes were respectful and nobody got combative.

One night at a party sticks with me. A girl I’d never met walked into the room. I didn’t say a word. She walked right into my aura and I watched it hit her. Eyes glazed, completely locked in. I leaned in, wrapped an arm around her waist, and gave a low growl in her ear. She damn near melted on the spot.

Then I turned her down. I’m a man of high status now. I can’t go home with every woman who walks into the aura.

Was it all scent? Doesn’t matter. Everything in this protocol stacks. You’re fit, you’re eating right, your hormones are high, and you carry yourself different because of it. Your scent is just the part that hits before you open your mouth.

Frequently asked

Is pheromonemaxxing real?

Yes. The trend is real, and so is the link between scent and attraction. Scientists have confirmed we use chemosignaling to communicate subconsciously, and studies like the sweaty T-shirt study show women respond to men's natural body odor.

Does pheromonemaxxing work?

Done right, it did for me. The version where you stop showering and wear the same shirt all week just makes you smell bad. Keep showering, soap your groin daily, and give your skin two weeks to reset.

Do you have to stop showering to pheromonemaxx?

No. Shower every day. Soap your groin daily, your pits once every week or two, and rinse everything else with water.

How long does the BO last when you quit deodorant?

About two weeks for me. Baby wipes get you through it.

Can I wear a shirt more than once?

Once your skin has reset, a worn shirt just smells like you. During the first two weeks, wear a fresh one.

How can a man increase his pheromones naturally?

Support your androgen system and let your scent through. Eat real food with plenty of fat, lift, sweat every day, try semen retention, and drop the deodorant.

Should I still wear cologne?

Yes. Cologne is part of the idea. A regular cologne is the lure that gets her close, your natural scent does the work underneath, and a pheromone cologne on top completes the stack. More on that below.

Stack It: Pheromonemaxxing + Pheromone Cologne

Pheromonemaxxing gets your natural scent working. A regular cologne pulls her in, and a pheromone cologne stacks on top of it. That combo is how you get Chad-level results.

Here’s how I’d run it:

1. Get dialed in first. Run the protocol for at least two weeks so your natural scent is clean and strong.
2. Wear a regular cologne. A light spray of one you like is the lure. It gives her a reason to lean in, and once she’s close she hits your natural scent underneath.
3. Add Bad Wolf. It’s one of our best sellers, and it comes unscented if you want your own scent out front. Put it on after your shower, right on top of that whisper of natural scent.
4. Wash with tallow soap. It cleans without stripping your skin, and its light scent won’t fight your cologne.

Want to shop around? Browse all our pheromone colognes for men, or go straight to the unscented pheromones if you want your natural scent to lead.

Sources

• Wedekind et al., MHC-dependent mate preferences in humans, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 1995
• Wyart et al., Smelling a single component of male sweat alters levels of cortisol in women, Journal of Neuroscience, 2007
• Zuniga et al., Diet quality and the attractiveness of male body odor, Evolution and Human Behavior, 2017
• Urban et al., The effect of habitual and experimental antiperspirant and deodorant product use on the armpit microbiome, PeerJ, 2016
• Whittaker and Wu, Low-fat diets and testosterone in men, Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 2021
• Jiang et al., Periodic changes in serum testosterone levels after ejaculation in men, Sheng Li Xue Bao, 2002
• Coviello et al., Low-dose human chorionic gonadotropin maintains intratesticular testosterone, Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, 2005