Ep. #480: Everything You Need to Know About Leptin and Weight Loss

The first few weeks after starting a diet are usually smooth sailing.

You aren’t that hungry, your energy levels are good, and you’re still adding weight in the gym.

Then, often at about the four to eight-week mark, the gears begin to grind to a halt.

You feel more hungry before meals and less satisfied after.

Your energy levels drop and it becomes increasingly hard to add weight to your compound exercises.

And worst of all, the number on the scale moves slower and slower with every weekly weigh-in.

What changed?

Why did dieting suddenly transform from a sprint into a slog?

Are you eating too much or too little? Not doing enough cardio? Not eating the right foods? Not taking the right supplements?

The answer to all of those questions lies in a hormone called leptin, which is the topic of this podcast.

Leptin lies at the center of the constellation of problems every dieter experiences as they lose fat—lethargy, hunger, metabolic slowdown, and even increased risk of illness.

Like anything related to weight loss, there’s a lot of misinformation, hype, and chicanery surrounding leptin.

In the past decade, a new wave of Internet doctors, fitness gurus, and online influencers have seized on the significance of leptin and come up with specialized diets and supplements designed to “hack” weight loss by controlling leptin.  

They throw around enough big words and studies to make their pitch sound sciency, but like any fad diet, it’s all a bunch of smoke and mirrors.

There’s no such thing as “hacking” your metabolism, hormones, or body fat, though, and controlling leptin levels isn’t the secret to weight loss any more than controlling other hormones like insulin or testosterone is.

Now for the good news:

Understanding how this hormone works can give you a better perspective on what’s going on inside your body as you lose weight and how to make fat loss easier by making a few simple modifications to your diet.

On the plus side, though, understanding the workings of leptin allows you to make a few informed changes to your diet that make losing weight significantly easier.

Let’s start by looking at what leptin is.

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