The Leptin Factor

Anyone who has been on a diet will know how difficult it is to sustain weight loss. In fact the statistics are probably worse than you think with only 2% managing to sustain weight loss over a year and only 2% being the same weight or less after five years! I suspect it’s the same 2%!

What are these successful dieters doing? Well they are working very hard at creating new healthy habits which usually includes making exercise a daily part of their lives. Why is it so difficult to lose weight when it is basically a case of eating less and doing more?

The answer lies in our ancestry. We are basically designed not to starve as a fundamental part of species survival. Over millions of years we have become hardwired physiologically by a series of interacting hormonal system not to starve. This has served us well as our teaming populations across the globe testifies but in a relatively new environment, where food is plentiful not scarce, it has become a bit of a handicap.

In the past decade we have discovered more about how this survival mechanism works and the actions of a rather obscure hormone called leptin is crucial to its function. You will never read about leptin in a diet book, no matter how scientific it claims to be, as its very existence contradicts all the claims of permanent weight loss that sells these books in the first place. Leptin is a surveillance hormone produced by the body’s fat stores and its function is to keep us fat! Well not really but this is what it seems to be doing now in the land of plenty as far as food is concerned. It is no longer required to any great extent but leptin is there to alert us to any loss of a fat mass. It is a cruel twist of fate as our system is designed for survival but is now in danger of reducing our survival! It matters not if you are 10 stone or 35 stone, fat loss reduces leptin levels and triggers metabolic panic. Survival is a powerful thing, one of the most powerful forces in the universe and we are very good at it. Lowered leptin triggers that unstoppable force called hunger. I don’t care how mentally strong you are, hunger is going to win.

This is the reality of all those wonder diets, if they succeed then you will lose fat and trigger the metabolic response which is to eat! Hence the real test of a diet is the long term result, are you thinner at one year or in five years? A recent study demonstrated the leptin factor at work. After losing weight volunteers were injected with leptin to fool their bodies into thinking that they had not lost fat mass. The result was the “hunger alarm” was not triggered and they maintained there weight loss.

So can we never lose weight permanently ? Not if we continue to do the same things as we have done. All the conventional diets are not set up to deal with the hunger rebound as most were designed without understanding human physiology which is a definite drawback. By reading and understanding this newsletter you already know more than most health authors.

Yes we can lose weight permanently as long as we work round  the physiological barriers we must deal with. The key is to control hunger and I will talk more about that next month. Check out the Delta Five Diet on The Glasgow Solution web site for more details.

One very very important fact is that although it is very difficult to be one of the 2% who succeed long term with weight loss, it is easy to reduce the metabolic risks that come with weight gain. Next newsletter will deal with reducing these risks.

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We were in the news again last month when we won the 'Marketing with Impact award' in the Business Link 'BIBAS' award 2006.