How to Lose Weight and Keep it Off in a Healthy Way
By Dr. C.M. Curtis
01/03/2024
How to Lose Weight and Keep it Off in a Healthy Way
It’s probably not your fault
As I see it there are two huge obstacles that most people need to overcome when trying to lose weight. The first one is that the things most people think they know about obesity and weight loss are mostly incorrect. The second is that very few people, including health professionals, truly understand the physiological basis of the problem and the real reasons why it is so hard to lose weight. Most overweight people are victims of societal ignorance.
If you want to understand why so many people in modern society are obese and why so many find it nearly impossible to take the weight off and keep it off, you need to have at least a rudimentary understanding of the roles of leptin and insulin (and leptin and insulin resistance) in this all-too-common problem.
Leptin is a hormone secreted by fat cells in white adipose (fat) tissue. It is probably the most important hormone regarding the function of the human body. It tells pancreatic hormones, sex hormones, thyroid hormones, and adrenal hormones what to do. No wonder it is so important in weight control. When leptin is out of balance it can cause cravings and bizarre behavior related to eating. It can also cause an inability to achieve or maintain a normal, healthy body weight.
Leptin communicates with the brain—it’s about survival
How leptin functions in the body is extremely complex, and I don’t believe we are close to fully understanding it. We do know that leptin communicates with the brain. It tells the brain when the body has adequate fuel. The brain then tells the body to stop eating and it stimulates the metabolism so the body will burn more calories. But, when there is leptin resistance, the brain does not receive the message and thinks the body is starving. It thinks you need more food, so it stimulates the appetite so you will eat more and lowers the metabolic rate, so you store more fat instead of burning it. Sound familiar?
Often the inability to stay on a diet is erroneously viewed as a lack of willpower when in reality it is the body’s misguided sense of survival, caused by leptin resistance. The survival instinct is powerful; if your brain thinks you are starving, it will create powerful food cravings. This can motivate you to sneak food and do nearly anything you can in order to get calories into your body. Often this is construed as a simple lack of self-control, and it can seriously damage a person’s self-esteem as well as their health. And when this situation is compounded by food addictions, the problem is magnified. What is needed in these cases is not a low-fat or low-calorie diet, but management of leptin and the breaking of addiction.
Leptin resistance causes insulin resistance, and both of these conditions can