What Is Leptin Hormone and How Is Diet Involved?
As the health and fitness world becomes more familiar with the importance of hormonal health and the effects hormones have on the body, leptin hormone has become notorious for the related bodybuilding strategies that affect it. The discussion on leptin hormone should be seen as just that, a discussion.
Well, in the human body, when you excessively limit calories (Read: diet) your body responds by lowering the hormone leptin, which lowers metabolism, energy production and a couple other things that may or may not make you feel crappy.
Thyroid hormone, growth hormone, testosterone… it all drops. It all drops because of this one master hormone related to your diet: leptin.
As you probably know, this is definitely not what we want. Because what I’m saying above means that you’re practically restricting yourself from your high calorie favorite foods, all in the hopes to burn some fat off, but instead, you’re lowering your metabolism and your desire to workout.
The good thing? There’s a way that you can incorporate your favorite high calorie foods into your diet and raise leptin. And as I already mentioned, if we get leptin levels high, we can keep the fat burning in high gear.
A Quick Review on the discussion, what is leptin hormone:
When we lower leptin hormone through excessive dieting:
- Growth hormone dips
- Thyroid Hormone dips
- Testosterone dips
- Sex drive shatters
- Consequently, muscle building ability dips.
- Chances of burning fat slim down.
- Immunity suffers
- Energy levels drop
- And a couple other things you probably don’t care about more than not burning fat
- Cravings go up
When leptin is kept high with high calorie foods:
- Growth hormone concentrations normalize (unless otherwise unnatural)
- Thyroid hormone concentrations normalize (unless otherwise unnatural)
- Testosterone concentrations normalize (unless otherwise unnatural)
- Sex Drive goes wild
- Fat burning ability is greatly increased
- Muscle building ability greatly increased
- Energy levels normalize
Ways that Leptin hormone can stay low:
Like I mentioned above, when we excessively diet, or more specifically, excessively limit calories, leptin falls and we hit a wall. This can happen a couple ways. First, you have the person who just diets excessively. 500 calorie diets daily for weeks on end.
This is bad for many other reasons besides leptin, but that’s not what this post is about. When this happens, your body purposely lowers metabolism to save calories so you don’t actually starve. As you can tell, that is counterproductive.
Another method of lowering leptin? Excessive exercise. You have those who excessively diet through diet, and those who excessively diet through fitness. These are the people who workout everyday for a couple hours a day to burn calories.
They may eat more than the group I mentioned above, but they end up burning it off through exercise. Leptin does the exact same thing here, low amount of calories coming in results in lowered metabolism.
Excessive dieting from the above two approaches can lower leptin up to 50 percent within 7 days. That means your fat burning potential dips by 50 percent too.
Losing sleep can also lower leptin levels quickly. Ever notice when you’re running on less sleep you have less energy, more cravings and just don’t feel good?
This is partly due to leptin (and partly due to how important sleep is to our body). Keep you’re sleeping habits consistent and make sure you’re getting an amount that is sufficient for you. 7-9 hours a day is the general recommendation.
So, we’ve established that when leptin is high, good things tend to happen. Leptin is produced by fat cells, so when your fat cells are full (Read: high calorie foods) leptin reduces cravings and sends a signal to the brain to send a signal to the cells to start breaking down fat for energy because times are good and food is abundant.
A little side note, this entire process is much more complicated, but detailing the chemistry of this all wouldn’t impress anyone.
From detailing that process, we can grab that when we eat food, leptin stays high. So, the way to raise leptin is to eat high calorie foods.
But we don’t want to eat high calorie foods everyday or too much, because that can also cause you to gain weight.
Throughout the week, you stick to your diet (whatever that may be). Then on the weekend (when most people choose to at-least), you pick one day to construct a leptin-raising diet filled with high calorie foods. The key here is to make sure you get plenty of carbohydrate and lots of calories.
You repeat this high calorie food day every week.
This shouldn’t be hard because I’m telling you to eat foods you’ve been wanting to eat all week. You have to make sure that you’re focusing on getting carbohydrates and calories in. Of course protein and fat are important, as any other day, but it’s carbohydrates that cause the raise in leptin.
This has two benefits: raising leptin and reducing cravings. Allowing yourself one day to “cheat” effectively eliminates cravings because you’re giving yourself more freedom and spice.
Two of the most common reasons people “fall of the wagon” is because of boredom with food and excessive restriction. Psychologically, eating high calorie foods and raising leptin has an enormous benefit.
Ways to get the most of your high calorie food day based on the discussion, what is leptin hormone:
This strategy is more commonly being used, so as you might guess, there are methods which allow for more fat loss and more benefits. Some people can really screw a high calorie food day up and let it turn into a high calorie month. So here are your coping strategies:
- A strategic and healthy diet during the week that achieves a wide variety of nutrients while also resulting in fat loss (or whatever other goal you want)
- Research intermittent fasting. I like to do an Eat Stop Eat style fast after their cheat day to really push the fat burning.
- High calorie food day should be filled with carbohydrate, protein and fat. But don’t go overboard. Eat until you’re full, but not uncomfortable.
- If you want to get a little more out of your high calorie food day, avoid too many sweets and stick to the more starchy foods such as breads, potatoes, rice, ect…
- Make sure to eat the high calorie foods throughout the day, and not just in one meal. Placing it over 3 meals throughout the day will effectively raise leptin, while one meal will not.
- Do NOT excessively exercise.
- But, do try to place a weight lifting workout on your cheat day. This can increase sensitivity in muscle sells
- Get sufficient sleep
