Want to know one of the catalysts for hunger and satiety? One of the body’s coaches on how it should pace its energy use? What holds a great deal of the responsibility to inform you, it’s time to turn your plate in? Not only is it your thyroid.
It’s the leptin hormone.
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What Is Leptin
Leptin is known as our “starvation” hormone. It’s created in fat cells with the job of signaling across the blood-brain barrier (BBB) when we are in need of energy. This signal acts on the hypothalamus applying its anorexigenic skills stating your body does or doesn’t have its preferred level of fat stored.
Fat is an energy source, so in this “undersupplied” state your brain will respond to this indication by conserving energy. In this case you burn calories at a lower than usual rate, and in the best instances experience an influx of ghrelin.. Because all your body wants to do is survive & refill those baseline levels of fat stores.
On the other hand leptin cues when we’ve reached a point of sufficient energy, meaning congratulations, you have a desired level of stored fat. At this sweet spot you burn calories at peak rates and your body won’t hold you back.
It’s leptin’s job to ensure we supply ourselves with the right amount of calories, not too few not too many, with the goal of optimally conducting physiological processes.
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What Is Leptin Resistance
Leptin communicates from fat cells to the brain. When operating appropriately our bodies will accept leptin’s signal of “you’ve had enough calories” and conduct internal activities to the greatest extent.
Note: operating appropriately is an appropriate phrase, for although leptin is quite the communicator your body isn’t always the best at comprehension, but more on high leptin resistance later.
Inversely your brain will act in accordance with a “you’re undersupplied” signal by conserving energy, not burning calories at full capacity in order to preserve what fat is stored.
Leptin is produced by fat cells to speak to your brain about how much fat you have stored. The more fat you have stored, the more leptin you’ll produce. Problem lies in you can more easily prevent starvation than you can overeating.
Bear with me, this metaphor worked in my head 😆.. Think about how if you’re in a small focus group you can listen to each person’s point, but in a town hall full of screaming voices you won’t catch all of the messages.
Excess fat cells lead to excess leptin, transmitting excess signals, and eventually leptin resistance.
Too many people talking at once.
Leptin resistance is when your brain no longer responds adequately to leptin’s suggestions.
Certainly this is more common in the obese population, in accordance with their number of fat cells [1]. It’s interesting in that you may produce more leptin and send the necessary signals, but your brain doesn’t respond to the “Yo, you’ve had enough!” so you continue to consume above what you require.
This then turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy. You have leftover fat cells, but your body keeps stating you need more fat stored, for your brain no longer listens to the alerts communicating you’re actually well-supplied.
It gets worse, since leptin suggests when it’s okay to burn calories at normal speeds.. Your brain ignoring the “had enough” will keep your body judicious in its burning of calories. So, you’ll stay hungry and burn off less fat.
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What To Do About Leptin Resistance
I know, bad news, but keep your head held high. There’s still hope. Resistance to leptin isn’t a sentence to your doom. Plenty of moves can be green-lit along the road to reversing leptin resistance.
Maybe not easily, but possibly and that’s what matters.
How? The unbreakable combination of a balanced diet, exercise, and solid daily habits [1].
We still aren’t completely clear on the exact reason all leptin signals fail to reach leptin receptors, but it appears BBB is akin to a bouncer at some night club. Letting a certain amount of leptin signals through at a given time. Forcing others to wait outside.
You may need each signal to make it for an equitable hunger response, but you’re only able to benefit from a concentrated amount of leptin before the system performs inadequately [2].
If you’re overweight, losing body fat will assist in your leptin resistance subsiding and your body returning to its proper form. Remember leptin comes from fat cells, if you reduce your number of fat cells you trim the amount of leptin signals impulsively assaulting your brain receptors, then the “stop eating” messages become more clear.
The brain will respond to signals as it should, plus you’ll revert to normal energy usage. I know cardio is on your mind, but throw in some resistance training while you’re at it, building muscle is the most efficient way to experience long-term fat loss.
Along the quest you’ll have to deal with those hunger issues too, but we’ll put a cap on those. Just follow the steps.
Note: ironically many Jacks and Jills resistant to leptin have been marketed to, to believe their issue is a lack of leptin. So they turn to supplementing with the hormone leptin in hopes of acquiring a reduced appetite. If you’ve read through to this point you can probably imagine the success rate is less than favorable. Don’t waste your dollars on leptin supps.
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Steps For Reversing Leptin Resistance
A diagnosis of leptin resistance isn’t available at this point, but a few signs of leptin resistance are: unexplained chronic inflammation, obesity. and a seemingly never ending pool of hunger that isn’t even satisfied after normal sized meals.
You want to handle high leptin resistance not only to manage weight, but to prevent life threatening issues like insulin resistance, which is attached to the livelihood altering type 2 diabetes.
Here are maneuvers you can make that’ll help get or keep your body weight regulating mechanisms firing at full force:
Maintain or obtain a healthy body fat level: leptin is produced by fat cells and eliminating excess fat cells will reduce your abundance of signals. No fat loss plan works without a calorie deficit so regardless of your strategy you’ll need to consume less calories than you burn. That goes for carb cycling, intermittent fasting, and so on. Aside from a calorie deficit:
Lift weights: adding muscle or at least maintaining muscle as you lose weight is good for burning more fat than if you solely relied on cardio.
Conduct cardio sessions: burn some extra calories. If typical cardio bores you try the entertaining version: HIIT.
Consume filling foods: with it being more difficult for you to reach satiety an extra effort in being full on less calories is the go. Munch on low glycemic carbs, that’ll fill your stomach like broccoli or barley. Eat healthy fat sources like avocado.. it all helps make you full with less effort than if you were to throw back a bag of skittles. And of course get your protein in from quality sources, they help with satiety and to add some muscle in order to burn more fat even outside of working out.
Manage stress levels: an enemy of fat loss is stress. A best good friend of fat gain is stress. Stress releases the hormone cortisol and with more than necessary cortisol things tend to roll downhill.
In positive ways deal with stress, which includes getting your sleep in. If you struggle with nightly sleep fight for your zs even if that means a daytime nap.
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So, It’s About That Time
Your takeaway from all of this is your body can lie about fullness and hunger depending on what end of the spectrum you fall on. So, you shouldn’t exactly rely on your body to tell you it’s eating time, unless you’ve coached it up. Consistent meal frequency and size will make that a reality. Be mindful, be patient, work continuously to cure leptin resistance of any form, put those muscles to use and Be Great.
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