Metabolic Health

Here’s How I Made My Body Leptin Sensitive and Stopped Food Cravings in 3 Steps.

Defeating leptin resistance with healthy lifestyle choices is possible, as I explain in this story.

Here’s why I wrote this story.

Some subscribers reading my metabolic health and sustainable fat loss articles mention that whatever they do, even if they buy expensive appetite suppressants, they cannot stop eating.

This undesirable situation causes them additional stress, unnecessary fat accumulation, and metabolic disorders.

I understand their concerns and have compassion for them, as happened to me in my younger years when I was following a low-fat and high-carb diet. Unfortunately, I also observed this undesirable situation that happened to friends, family members, and colleagues.

The reason was malfunctioning or unbalanced hormonal issues. More explicitly, the fundamental explanation was leptin resistance which is a well-known and common health condition.

Therefore, in this story, I explain why leptin resistance matters for fat loss and metabolic health and how I made my body leptin sensitive and stopped food cravings and emotional eating with healthy lifestyle modifications.

However, some people with underlying health conditions might need medical intervention and support. Therefore, just adjusting our lifestyle might not work for some of us.

Before introducing my solutions, I’d like to briefly introduce the function of this hormone for those who might not be familiar with it and explain its impact and implications on our metabolic health.

What is leptin, and why does leptin resistance matter?

Like other hormones, leptin is also highly complex. However, we don’t need to know the details unless we work as medical specialists in the field. Scientists made it easy for us to manage and optimize this hormone with healthy lifestyle changes.

Nevertheless, a fundamental understanding of this hormone, its impact, and its implications can be invaluable for appetite management and preventing undesirable fat gain leading to metabolic disorders.

Leptin is a hormone that signals the brain we consume enough food. In addition to being a signaling hormone, leptin also regulates energy balance and counteracts the hunger hormone called ghrelin.

Unfortunately, if leptin does not function correctly, we will continue eating and consuming excess calories, which turns into visceral fat. Consequently, this condition can imbalance other hormones and lead to metabolic disorders.

Excess calories might be from carbs, fats, or proteins. However, the ones from carbs can much more quickly turn into fat molecules, and they accumulate, leading to obesity.

When leptin signals work properly, we stop eating naturally as the brain creates necessary signals that turn into feelings. Having a leptin-sensitive body prevents us from overeating as it opposes the hunger hormone ghrelin.

However, leptin resistance is an agonizing health condition if it persists. It prevents the brain from receiving satiety signals causing emotional food consumption of more than what we need.

A leptin-resistant body might lead to binge eating due to the constantly activated hunger hormone ghrelin.

When the body is leptin resistant, the ghrelin hormone creates hunger feelings, and these signals can get so strong that we might feel like starving even though the body has adequate stored energy.

This awful and paradoxical feeling encourages us to eat emotionally even if we physically have more energy than needed to survive.

Overeating, unfortunately, causes weight gain, might lead to obesity, and cause metabolic disorders such as type II diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, neurodegenerative disorders, and even some cancers.

Based on my experience and reviews, I’d explain behavioral shifts to improve leptin sensitivity and prevent leptin resistance under the following three closely related headings.

My points are not prescriptive, as they might not apply to everyone. However, I emphasize the critical principles so readers can customize these protocols based on their needs.

1 — Optimized blood sugar and prevented frequent insulin spikes.

My first step was to optimize blood sugar and prevent frequent and prolonged insulin spikes.

When my blood sugar suddenly dropped, I faced an extreme sense of hunger and craved unhealthy foods like processed foods that were not even in my diet. Thus, I’d like to briefly explain this process, so my dietary changes can make sense.

Our bloodstream needs glucose to cater to the energy requirements of cells, tissues, and organs. Nevertheless, the bloodstream can handle only a specific amount of glucose at a given time.

So, if the amount passes the threshold, the body perceives the glucose as toxic and quickly acts to eliminate it. The pancreas releases insulin hormone and causes the glucose to be quickly removed from the bloodstream.

The first preference is muscles, as they are critical for survival. If muscles don’t need glucose, the body sends the excess glucose to fat cells by converting glucose to fat molecules.

Consequently, our fat cells grow by accumulating visceral fat, especially in the abdominal area.

When muscles and other organ cells stop responding to insulin signals to utilize glucose, a condition called “insulin resistance” occurs.

When we experience this undesirable condition, the pancreas creates more insulin to manage elevated glucose. One of the causes of insulin resistance is hyperinsulinemia.

The culprit to raise blood glucose and cause sudden insulin spikes is the overconsumption of refined carbs. Too much protein can also cause more insulin spikes but not as much as refined carbs.

So my dietary solution to optimize my blood glucose and reverse insulin resistance was to cut all refined carbs, particularly bread, rice, pasta, potatoes, candies, and sugary beverages. Later I lowered all other carbs.

This step primed my body to optimize glucose and make it more insulin sensitive. However, the second step sustainably contributed to making it more leptin sensitive after having an insulin-sensitive body.

2 — Increase healthy fats and bioavailable proteins.

When reviewing the literature, I learned that there were two critical factors determining the relationships between dietary fats and the leptin hormone.

The first factor is the nature of this hormone. Leptin is made up of fat molecules.

The second factor is that leptin informs satiety in the brain when we consume food containing fat in each meal. So it serves as the signaling the brain does not need more food.

Leptin sends satiety messages to the hypothalamus as opposed to ghrelin which sends hunger signals.

This brain region is the controller of hormones in the body. Leptin also relates to the overall body fat percentage.

For example, this credible paper informs that “Serum leptin concentrations correlate well with total body fat mass in healthy subjects. Differences in abdominal fat distribution do not appear to be related to a difference in the in vivo leptin production from adipose tissue.”

This conclusion indicates that those with higher fat might have more leptin. It sounds great, in theory. However, it is not until we understand the issue of leptin resistance in obese people.

As I mentioned in the introduction section, leptin resistance means that the body and brain become unable to respond to this critical hormone.

Understanding the role of this crucial signal is vital because we keep eating more than we need when we experience leptin resistance.

One of the root causes of leptin resistance is not consuming enough healthy fats therefore when I started eating more healthy fats and more bioavailable proteins.

So my solution was to replace refined carbs with healthy fats and adequate bioavailable proteins.

This solution stopped my hunger pangs, so I felt great satiety after each meal. Nowadays, even if I don’t eat for several days, I don’t feel any cravings and don’t consume food emotionally. I only eat when I physically feel hungry.

The next step catalyzed the sustainable solution. Therefore, it is critical for people suffering from oxidative stress and chronic inflammation.

3 — Improved sleep quality and lowered stress.

During the literature review of metabolic hormones causing weight gain and muscle loss, I discovered that sleep deprivation was the third cause of leptin resistance.

This was an eye-opener for me as I had an unfortunate condition diagnosed by my healthcare consultants.

It became clear when my endocrinologist identified elevated cortisol leading to insulin and leptin resistance. I learned that hormones were interrelated. So imbalance of one hormone could affect the others.

This realization helped me understand that leptin was closely related to insulin and cortisol.

The solution to balance insulin and cortisol was restorative sleep and slowed down to lower oxidative stress and chronic inflammation.

As documented in this paper, “short sleep duration was associated with decreased leptin and increased ghrelin, changes that have also been observed in reaction to food restriction and weight loss and are typically associated with increased appetite.”

My chronic stress and inflammation disappeared when I improved my sleep hygiene and got restorative sleep.

As a result, my hunger pangs and food cravings diminished and gradually ended.

Conclusions and Takeaways

In summary, I owe a leptin-sensitive body to three simple lifestyle habits. The first one was to refrain from refined carbs.

The second one was to increase healthy fats and consume adequate bioavailable proteins.

And the third one was to get restorative sleep.

However, the fourth solution, which was time-restricted eating, indirectly contributed to making my body more leptin sensitive because it made it insulin sensitive and fat-adapted.

I create the awareness of time-restricted eating as optional as it might not be feasible for everyone and might not be needed if the three mentioned steps are in place.

Eating in a specific window was a bonus to keep a sustainable body composure with a flexible metabolic profile.

Some people love carbs and can tolerate them better than others. However, my body was carb-intolerant. Therefore, I had to make a radical choice.

So, if you have such a condition, it might be crucial to lower carbs with support from qualified healthcare professionals.

The key lesson I learned from credible sources was that carbs were not essential for survival, as the body could synthesize them through the gluconeogenesis and lipolysis processes.

Nonetheless, some fats and amino acids forming protein were imperative as the body cannot produce them.

In addition, sleep is non-negotiable. We all sleep to some extent, but some of us might not get restorative sleep. I thought my sleep was sufficient as I aimed to sleep seven to eight hours daily.

However, after objectively measuring the sleep quality, the amount of restorative sleep was under five hours.

Therefore, my cortisol levels went above the threshold, and I couldn’t lose any belly fat despite cutting calories and exercising more.

To recap, I highlighted the effects of macronutrients on the leptin and insulin profile. While carbs mainly affect insulin release, fats affect leptin formation.

In addition, elevated cortisol due to excessive stress worsens the complex situation. So, these three hormones are interrelated.

The key takeaway point of this article is to make the body leptin sensitive by making necessary lifestyle changes. Adjusting our diet and improving our sleep quality seems the right way.

As a great piece of news, when we make the body insulin and leptin sensitive, keeping a healthy weight can be a breeze. Therefore, we might not need expensive supplements, fad diets, or excessive exercise.

Thank you for reading my perspectives. I wish you a healthy and happy life.

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