Introduction
In matters of health and fitness, one's appetite counts for a lot. You don't eat, and you won't benefit much from exercise. In fact, both extremes are dangerous – if you stuff yourself with a large tub of popcorn that contains almost 1250 calories at the movies everyday along with your daily meals, even a one hour workout won't help you much if you are serious about watching your weight.
And while we continue to discuss the desire of watching one's weight, most of us already know the relationship between women and hormonal changes, and perhaps use it as an excuse to explain their bouts of moodiness and so on and so forth.
However, these matters of health (and their appetite!) not only extend to women but also men for whom it is just as vital to be aware of the way the body functions especially if they are interested in staying in good health.
And this is where Leptin comes in…
Leptin
Considered to be one of the most important adipose derived hormones, it plays a vital role in regulating energy intake and expenditure. In medical terms, it is described as a 16 kDa protein hormone that is composed of 167 amino acids.
Stop and think for a second: if this hormone controls functions such as metabolism and your appetite by telling the brain how much fat is in storage, you can imagine how any diet that is able to control the levels of Leptin could play an important role in weight loss and fitness
And that is where the Leptin Diet comes in…
The Leptin Diet
Since this diet (much like any other diet) is the result of a lot of medical research and experimentation, it wouldn't be possible to cover all of it in this post, so let's start off with the basic five rules of the Leptin Diet.
Rule #1: Never eat after dinner
The bottom line of this rule in not to go to bed on a full stomach, which means that one should not eat within three hours before bedtime. One should leave a gap of 11 to 12 hours between eating dinner and breakfast. What this does is allows for enough time for optimum fat burning, as calories are burned even when you are sleeping.
Rule #2: Eat three meals a day
This rule clearly insists on leaving a gap of 5 hours between every meal, as for the first three hours, insulin will be storing the energy from the food consumed, and this obviously means that it isn't in fat burning mode.
Rule #3: Do not eat large meals
This diet clearly calls for people to watch HOW much they eat and the pace at which they eat, and of course, with overeating, that doesn't really help… does it? The rule states that one should stop eating at the time they're almost 'full'.
Since this diet is about balancing the levels of leptin, overeating can create an imbalance, thus not allowing for fat burning to occur properly.
Rule #4: Eat a high-protein breakfast
The reason for this is that your metabolism increases by 30% for as long as 12 hours, and which is the calorie-equivalent of a two to three mile jog. Not only does this keep blood sugar levels up but it also avoids food cravings that will happen at noon – leading to overeating.
Rule #5: Reducing the amount and type of carbs
Clearly the body does need carbohydrates but not starchy carbohydrates as then the fat already stored from prior intake of food will not be burned and as mentioned earlier does nothing to increase your metabolic rate.
Other aspects of the Leptin Diet
Right off the bat, one must avoid trans fats. So stay away from partially hydrogenated and hydrogenated oils. Period.
Last but not the least, moderate exercise for at least 10 minutes a day increase your metabolic rate while leading to weight loss as well.
In Closing
The keyword that resonates if one looks a little closer at the Leptin diet over and over again is 'balance'. And perhaps that is something that our lives are direly in need of…
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Awesome, i haven’t seen this before, thanks a lot
I like this diet.