Mini E-Book on Leptin and Weight Loss

Weight Loss And Leptin
What You Need To Know

Barely a day goes by that there isn’t some new product… news on groundbreaking research or more dire warnings about the risks of being overweight and obese. Beyond the hurtfulsocial stigma of being out of shape, there are health dangers like high cholesterol, diabetes, high blood pressure and sleep apnea; not to mention the pain of osteoarthritis or gallstones; unsightly varicose veins and the utter humiliation of stress incontinence (releasing a small amount of urine when you cough, laugh or make an abrupt move). Is it any wonder that the estimated 61% of us who are considered overweight or obese are looking for ways to drop a few of those extra pounds.

This need has propelled billions in spending each year on diet related items, books and exercise programs. If you are close to an ideal weight, you might not need a super-drastic diet to lose those extra 10 pounds — cutting back on sweets and extra helpings and upping the exercise might be enough. But, if you’re more than 20% above your healthy weight, or if you’ve battled weight issues all your life, your best bet is to talk with a health care professional (your doctor or a nutritionist) before you make any big time changes in your diet or exercise routine.

The idea that your weight problem is simply a lack of willpower on your part isn’t supported by research. Instead, countless studies of twins, adoptive families and more suggest that obesity is the result of both genetics and environment. For some as yet unknown number of us, our own bodies may be as much to blame for that shocking reading of the bathroom scale as anything else. Researchers are gaining insights into the genetics of obesity, and the amazingly complex process of appetite control.


7 Surprising Reasons Most Diets Fail
When it comes to weight loss… it’s a lot easier said than done. How many of us have suffered and struggled to loose the weight, only to have it slowly (almost inevitably) creep back — our “fat” clothes fit again. It’s estimated that 90-95% of people who lose weight with a diet gain most of it back in just 3 to 5 years.

Though we understand in our head that successful weight control requires fewer calories and regular exercise along with eating habits that can be maintained over a lifetime, it’s hard to make our bodies accept this fact. Real, lasting weight loss takes real, lasing change and a commitment to living healthier.

This means, no dieting. And, if you think about it, there are some pretty good reasons why dieting really doesn’t work. Remember your last diet… and why you couldn’t stick with it. You probably felt awful afterward… but chances are it wasn’t your failure, but the diet plan you used that set you up for trouble.

1. When you suddenly cut back on food you threaten the body — while gradual changes to healthier eating are beneficial, sudden calorie depravation acts to slow the basal metabolism of your body in an attempt to conserve calories — making weight loss that much harder.

2. Eliminating a group of foods from your life, forever, is not healthy or realistic — any diet plan that removes whole food groups (no fat, no carbs, for example) from your food choices isn’t sustainable (or many would argue even healthy) over the long term.

3. You never learn healthy eating habits — since diets are only temporary and “think” for you, you don’t have to learn how to feed your body to keep it healthy and disease free. You follow the diet plan… and when you reach your goal (or you can’t stick it out a moment longer), you go back to your old, unhealthy habits before starting the cycle all over again.

4. You can’t live on bread alone — or watermelon, or sea bass or… whatever the mainstay of that trendy new diet you saw on the news. No matter what the results the diet promises, you’ll never be able to maintain such a “special” diet over the long haul. It’s impractical, it’s boring and it’s not even healthy to restrict you food intake in this way.

5. You can’t deprive yourself forever — diets that force you to live under very strict calories per day are pre-wired for trouble. They may cause you to loose lean body weight instead of fat. Depriving yourself in this way can bring on gnawing hunger and significantly up the temptation to gorge yourself to satisfy a ravenous appetite.

6. You haven’t learned how to control your appetite — eating small, regularly spaced meals and healthy snacks is a better way to keep your energy level up, and your hunger under control. Diet plans that don’t account for frequent, regularly spaced meals are more difficult to manage.

7. Your diet doesn’t fit into your normal life — sure you can buy special foods or create the meals you need at home, but what about when out at a restaurant or a family event? Plans that require “special” foods or drinks aren’t likely to fit into your lifestyle, and thus won’t be maintained over the long haul.

Most experts agree that if you keep looking to trendy diets or prepackaged foods for solutions, you’re bound to repeat the frustrating and discouraging gain-loose-gain cycle of dangerous yo-yo dieting. You can’t change your eating habits for a week or two, and expect results that last. You must recognize, once and for all, that to achieve permanent weight loss, you need to make permanent changes in the foods you choose, the way you eat (and drink) and the level of activity you engage in every single day.


Anther Reason Diets Fail — Leptin Resistance
Over time, a chronic imbalance between the energy you take in, and the energy you expend can lead to being overweight or obese. That’s common sense. But there are other important substances in the body that also may play a role in how much you weigh and how well you burn fat. Key among these is leptin, a powerful hormone produced in the fat cells that tells the brain when you need to eat to get energy.

Discovered in 1994, leptin appears to control a variety of other hormones and is essential to life. In fact, if not for leptin, the human race would have died during the days of famine and hardship. Leptin made it possible to survive by allowing the body to build fat stores to withstand times of famine, and then to rebuild them after the period of depravation was over. Today, the same mechanisms exist — except now we have McDonalds on every corner — and this age-old hormone is still there doing what it always has. But when the brain fails to sense the correct leptin level, it thinks more fat is needed, even if the body has enough already. Fat then begins to accumulate and the metabolism slows down.

Leptin imbalances can be caused by any number of factors. Eating too much… eating too late at night… snacking between meals… not enough exercise… and stress all play a part is disrupting the natural balance of leptin in the body.

To discover if an imbalance of leptin might be to blame for your diet setbacks, ask yourself:
1. Do you have trouble loosing weight; no matter how hard you try?
2. If you do manage to loose weight, do you gain it back (plus some) when you stop dieting?
3. Do you crave sugar, alcohol or other foods?
4. Do you eat when stressed?
5. Do you store your weight in your abdomen?
6. Do you have low energy levels?


5 Foods That Can Resolve Leptin Resistance
If you’re so many of us, you’ve answered a hearty “yes” to one or more of these questions which may mean your own leptin levels are out of sync. When this happens what we eat is stored as fat rather than burned. The amount of leptin produced in the fat cells themselves increases with our growing bodies, and while the higher leptin levels should signal our bodies to stop eating, over time resistance to leptin builds up — we store fat instead of burning it.

The trouble for overweight people is that they tend to have too much leptin in their blood stream, and not enough getting to the brain. In cases like this, fat cells are producing leptin just fine, but the brain is having trouble recognizing it and thinks the leptin levels are still low. This creates a desire to eat… to restore the fat stores the body thinks it needs to survive.

There are ways to combat leptin resistance and restore balance to the body by taking in high-level nutrients that improve your body chemistry and lower insulin levels. This will help your body to regain its sensitivity to leptin and begin loosing weight.

Try adding as many of the following foods as you can to your diet:

• Salmon • Baked Scallops
• Spinach • Cooked Soybeans
• Broccoli • Baked or Broiled Halibut
• Carrots • Shrimp
• Apples • Baked Snapper
• Unsalted Almonds • Winter Squash
• Flax Seeds • Tofu
• Walnuts


Other Roadblocks To Permanent Weight Loss
Funny how right when you are ready to start getting fit and watching what you eat… something seems to get in the way. A sudden cold… a serious life event… late nights at work… whatever the reason; all your best intentions go out the window. Before you know it another month has gone by, and then two… and your now closer to loosing that extra weight than you were at the beginning of the year.

Here are some of the most common roadblocks to weight loss, and how to knock them out…
• Illness — if you’re truly sick, you’re sick, and this is no time to start making big changes in what you eat or how active you are. Instead, take care of yourself, and resolve to start your program when you’re feeling better… then follow through. That will make you feel better than anything else.

• Boredom — if you’re getting tired of the treadmill, mix things up a bit and go for a jog outside or a bike ride instead. The more variety you introduce to your exercise routine, the more likely you are to stick with it.

• No Time — everyone’s busy these days, and it’s hard to find time for things we need to do — like take care of ourselves. If this is you, start by checking your schedule at the start of each week and making time for exercise… an early morning workout… a lunchtime walk… a trip to the grocery store can all be chances to exercise. In fact, you’ll be amazed at how just ten minutes here and there can add up and help you reach your fitness goals.

• Lack of energy — if you find you’re too wiped out to exercise, try changing the time of day to the morning instead of the evening. Have a healthy snack before your workout, and never, ever push beyond what you can do at any one time. Not only does this lead to injury, but will make exercise a chore rather than something good for you and fun to do.

• Prescription medications — anti-depressants, anti-psychotics, anti-epileptic drugs — all these essential medications can also cause weight gain, and make it hard to shed those extra pounds. If you’re making real changes in your eating and exercise, but not seeing any changes on the scale, you should talk to your doctor about switching to a medication that might have less effect on your weight.

• Bad Habits — if you’ve just gotten into a rut of watching TV at night or sleeping in, change will be hard — especially since these habits are so much fun and you’ve been doing them for a long time. Just remember, these are the same things that got you to the place you are now — overweight, sluggish and unhappy with yourself. Instead make the changes happen by identifying the habits you want to break (one at a time) and then listing different ways to overcome them. Then do it. Replacing bad habits with healthy ones takes effort, and time, but it is the only sure way to achieve your weight loss goals once and for all.


Leptin weight loss options, tips and tricks
As troubling as leptin resistance can be to your diet goals, there are some coping strategies, taken from the book Mastering Leptin by Byron Richards and Mary Guignon Richards that you can use to keep your weight loss on track. They are:

1. Never eat after dinner — instead allow 11 to 12 hours between your evening meal and breakfast the next morning. Our best fat burning time comes 8 to 12 hours after a meal.

2. Never snack before bed — as this causes leptin to tell the brain that no energy is needed, and this results in no fat being burned later on that night

3. Never finish a large meal — you don’t want to give the body more fuel than it can use. Instead, stop before you’re completely full and allow the “I’m full” signal to kick in, usually 10 to 20 minutes after you stop eating.

4. Eat a high protein breakfast — this gets your day off to a good start, and puts your body in “calorie burning” mode. It will also set you up for the day with the energy your body needs to fend off those mid morning (or late afternoon) cravings.

5. Limit carbs — don’t cut them out completely, you need them to be healthy. But limit how many you eat, and when, so that you don’t become ravenously hungry and reach for something to fill the void.


Some final thoughts…
So many of us find it next to impossible to loose weight. We diet… we struggle and starve… maybe even manage to drop the extra pounds — only to have them creep back. The constant failure is depressing and saps our resolve to loose weight.

While your primary care physician may not have heard much about leptin… yet, there is ongoing research into the connection between this all important hormone and weight. Scientists know that leptin has an important role in burning fat in people, but just how this happens is still unclear. Of course there has also been all kinds of media attention — Time Magazine, CNN, even Harvard University — have all done stories on leptin and its role in weight loss. Studies that have been done show subjects who receive leptin ate less and had more energy.

It seems likely that leptin resistance may play a role in dangerous, counterproductive yo-yo dieting, but the good news is problems with leptin can be corrected so that you can loose the weight and keep it off, for good. Through a combination of adding highly nutritious foods to return your body to balance, and then following up with a sensible eating plan that includes all food groups — in moderation — is the best way to the fit and fabulous you buried under all that weight.