In this article I'm going to talk about how cheat meals truly work and how leptin is really responsible for what's going on with our body's metabolism.
I'm going to break down the science around it and I'm going to break down the formula that you can use to get the most out of your cheat meals to break through the plateaus that are absolutely driving you crazy right now.
So what leptin is?
Leptin is actually a hormone meaning that once it is released it will travel to another area of your body to make things happen.
Once leptin is released from your fat it enters your blood and travels up to your brain, delivering a message as to how much fat (fuel) you have on hand.
It is secreted by your fat cells that essentially sends a message to the brain telling the brain that you're either hungry or you're not hungry.
The hypothalamus in the brain is what controls leptin. The hypothalamus is comprised of an elaborate system of leptin receptors.
Now how exactly does it work?
In the body well you see it comes down to being like a gas gauge, leptin operates as a gas gauge for the brain to see how much fat is on hand.
Here's how it really works step by step:
The fat cell releases leptin then this gets into the blood stream and travels to the brain and tells the brain hey this guy has enough fat on hand don't worry about it you can go ahead and turn up the metabolism and burn some fat,
No need to eat more food okay but then if you have low levels of leptin, this signals the brain and says hey this guy is low on fat (he's low on leptin) you need the signal to eat more food hold all of the fat burning process and halt the metabolism so that this guy doesn't die of famine.
That's the overall simple breakdown of how it works.
You see what it comes down to when you go into more detail is that there are different things that signal leptin.
For example obviously having more fat on the body is going to signal more leptin, it's going to mean that the body can eat more food and the body can burn fat and have good metabolism.
But the same thing also happens when you eat a lot of food, so if you eat a lot of food in one sitting it's going to signal that leptin and in response the brain is going to go ahead and say okay we've got enough food we can burn some fat and crank the metabolism.
All having to do with how much food you consume at one particular point in time but there are some caveats that you need to understand.
You see if we have a lot of body fat, we're secreting a lot of leptin in theory that would make sense, then our metabolisms is going to be really fast and we're never going to be hungry.
But it ends up becoming quite the opposite you see when you have so much leptin being released by so much fat the brain starts to kind of tune it out.
I want you to think of it like this if the leptin is the phone call to the brain then you have to think of it like a hardwired now. What happens is if you have so much leptin it's almost hard to understand the conversation so the brain just tunes it out.
This noise to the brain you have a lot of leptin floating around because there's a lot of fat; the brain doesn't register it so it sees you as starving and it tells your body to slow down metabolism and tells you to eat more.
That's what triggers that death spiral where people gain weight and then they get so overweight and they are continually hungry and they continually put on weight.
This is because their whole signalling system is messed up.
What can we do to fix?
Now that we have an understanding of how leptin really works in the body, it comes down to understanding what the biggest factors are causing leptin resistance.
Overweight:
This is obvious one it's being overweight, but how do we lose weight if we can't control the leptin first.
Inflammation:
You need to eat an anti-inflammatory diet and I will write article about this topic in the future but for the time being look up on the anti-inflammatory foods and incorporate it in your diet.
Inflammation clouds the brain's ability to see leptin, the brain pick up the signal and it just can't understand what's going on because it's so clouded with inflammation around the hypothalamus.
This is very critical if we can start taking action to reduce inflammation. Then we can receive leptin better and have a clearer response from the fat to the brain.
Fasted Cardio:
This is really important, now it can be very tough but getting up and doing fasted cardio can help inflammation a lot and help this whole process.
Sleep
The other one is sleep, studies are now starting to show that sleep plays a huge role in our levels of leptin, and less sleep equals low leptin, more sleep equals more leptin.
Now let's get to the nitty-gritty what can you do what about cheat meals?
What about having the right kind of foods at the right time to help your body see leptin.
First we need to reduce our intake overall of carbohydrates and we need to reduce our triglycerides, now triglycerides are stored fat essentially being converted from carbohydrates it goes through a process called de novo lipid genesis.
Which I will talk about in another article, excess carbs turn into fat and that has turned into fat from carbs is really a triglyceride.
Triglycerides disrupt the communication of leptin to the brain as well meaning it's slowing down the signalling. So if we can start lowering triglycerides we can burn more fat it's not just about what's on the blood work.
If your triglycerides are high you are potentially going to gain more fat but the other thing is the strategic implementation of cheat meals. Because so many of us are eating way less food and consuming way less calories than we should be, it's not just a myth there's legitimate science behind it.
So how many times has this been you?
You're eating less food, you're eating healthy food, you're trying to restrict calories and you feel like you're just stagnant.
And sometimes even gaining weight well it's because your body is seeing you as being at a time of famine. So it's holding on to and storing on to whatever it possibly can.
This is when right implementation of a cheat meal once every week or two weeks comes in handy.
If structured properly signals leptin and tells your brain hey guys this guy's cool he's totally fine he's got enough food you can turn up the metabolism. You have the green light to go ahead. So that the brain isn't constantly on standby saying okay all systems are on stop right now we're not burning fat.
So it's very critical now what should your cheat meal look like?
Well generally speaking looking at the science your cheat meal should be very low fat, high carbohydrate but not high sugar.
Why?
Because starches and glucose signal leptin extremely well even more than fats and you guys know I'm a big believer of a low carb high fat diet generally speaking.
But when it comes to your cheat meals aka your refeed day, you want to get your calories up to at least at maintenance level or higher.
And I suggest that your carbs must come from healthy carbohydrates, just have a high amount of them.
This will signal leptin more than fat would in fact if you have a lot of fat with your cheat meal it will slow down the leptin signalling.
Right then and there we want to get the most that we can out of one cheat meal so if you want to burn fat you need to spike leptin you need to know your body and now that you have an understanding of the communication system it will make a lot more sense.
CONCLUSION
• Leptin is a hormone that tells you how fast you can run your metabolism based on how much gas is in your gas tank.
• It regulates the rate of fat breakdown. As leptin levels rise, your metabolic rate increases. As leptin levels fall, your metabolism slows.
• When your are leptin resistant, the brain doesn’t receive the leptin signal, it thinks that the body is starving, even though it has more than enough energy stored.
• Physical activity and enough sleep may help to reverse leptin resistance.
• The purpose of a re-feed day is to help boost your metabolism and help restore your leptin levels, its a way of telling your body that you aren’t starving.
So I want write more of such articles and I need some feedback from you guys, I really want you to comment and let me know what kind articles you would like to see. I enjoy talking about fat burning, hormones because I think it's a big component in everyday life.
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