NickI can speak for myself and say 20 mg is alot for men it made me a zombie with 0 sex interest and no morning wood..
I'm down to 1 - 3mg a day so basically a small dap of transdermal cream of progesterone and feel relaxed, not exhausted but still weird my body is waking me up earlier than usual and I wake up every other hour after that.
I feel it lowers my cortisol throughout the day and raises it in the morning to the point that it asked me up.
I ate a big meal of coco oil juice toast and cottage cheese and still woke up so it's not diet related
Raising your cortisol levels in the morning is good as long as its not raising it too high. But if you think its raising your cortisol too early and waking you up then you might want to wait and take that dose in the morning. And if you think that your cortisol level is dropping too low during the day, you can take another small dose of 1-3mg during that time and see if that improves your symptoms. Ideally you want to take very small doses throughout the day to help prop up your cortisol levels but not too much that would push it too high.