The 4 Main Hormones That Regulate Your Weight and How to Fix Them

Numerous studies have shown that hormones have a direct effect on your appetite and the rate at which fat is deposited around your waist. In this article, we present you with 4 ways you can use to tweak these hormones and achieve faster weight loss.

Most of the time, it’s not that people fail their diets, the truth is that the diet wasn’t that good in the first place. In fact, your hormones bear a larger responsibility for why your weight loss pursuit failed.

The majority of people become very enthusiastic about starting a new diet without realizing that their hormonal balance is not really optimal for achieving the fastest fat loss. The fact is that your weight is mostly regulated by your hormonal levels. Research has shown that hormones play a key role in regulating your appetite and how much fat you’ll store. Let’s go over the 4 main hormones that regulate your weight:

Leptin

Leptin is the most important hormone in your body in charge of fat-burning and it is so crucial that it virtually helps control or has an influence on almost every other hormone that regulates your weight, and can have a direct impact on your body’s ability burn fat overall.

The Leptin levels produced in our bodies are controlled by two factors:

– Leptin is secreted by the fat cells in the body, so obviously the level of body fat plays a vital role in secreting the hormone. People that carry more body fat have higher leptin levels.

– The second factor that determines blood leptin levels is your calorie intake. Lower your calorie intake and leptin levels will drop, independent of body fat.

One study has actually found that those people who are over-weight have 4 times the leptin levels of people with normal weight. You may think that an overweight individual who has high leptin levels would eat a lot less. However, the culprit is that in obese people the leptin regulating system isn’t functioning the way it should. This is a condition known as leptin resistance. What actually happens is that leptin function becomes impaired in people with excess weight and the signal to their brain doesn’t get through which means that the brain doesn’t realize that there are already enough deposits of energy. Simply put, the brain believes that it’s starving when it’s actually not.

On the other hand, individuals who have been dieting for a prolonged period of time can experience leptin suppression which causes them to eat more. Additionally, with every pound the dieter tries to lose, leptin levels decrease even further, which makes it even harder to continue losing fat. That’s because, when fed with a caloric restriction, the body considers the fat deposits as an essential asset needed for survival. The more fat one loses, the greater the “danger” the body thinks it’s in, making it extremely hard to get rid of each additional pound.

 

There are 5 ways you can fix leptin levels:

1. Consume anti-inflammatory foods.

2. Exercise regularly, whatever the duration or intensity.

3. Eliminate sugary drinks and trans fats.

4. Get a quality sleep of at least 8 hours.

5. When on a low calorie diet, give yourself a big cheat meal once every 10-12 days to recover leptin levels.

 

Cortisol

Cortisol is more popularly known as the “stress hormone” because your body releases it when it’s under stress. Like many other hormones, it’s vital to survival. There’s a catch, however. Having chronically elevated cortisol levels can lead to overeating and increased weight gain.

 

Here’s how to control your cortisol levels

Avoid eating foods that are high in carbs. Have a protein/fat meal instead, like eggs and bacon. That’s because, when you wake up, cortisol levels are elevated. Consuming foods with high carb content cause insulin spikes. The combo of these two, insulin and cortisol release causes increased fat storage. Have a nice quality sleep to counter this.

Eat a well-balanced diet and don’t cut your calories too low. Also, learn some healthy recipes which will save you a lot of money, instead of eating out all the time.

Listen to soothing music. Numerous studies have shown that listening to a relaxing music during medical procedures, cortisol levels don’t increase that much.

You might also like : Top 6 Strategies For Lowering Your Cortisol Levels

 

Insulin

Whenever you eat, the body releases insulin in order to keep the sugar in your blood within safety levels. Insulin takes any extra glucose that the body creates, out of your bloodstream to the liver, muscles or fat deposits. Its functioning, however, is a double-edged sword since it not only takes the sugar out of your blood, it also tends to increase your fat deposits.

While on a low-carb diet, knowing how to properly time your carb intake during the day, or trying intermittent fasting will greatly aid you in your fat loss goals. When you start implementing all of the aforementioned methods you will be able to control when insulin is released and when it is not.

Here’s how you can do it:

– Know the precise time of day to eat carbs. (Carbs : It’s All in the Timing)

– Consume fewer carbs.

– Exercise regularly.

– Eat more healthy fats, especially in the morning.

– Avoid sugary drinks and foods. (A Simple Way To lose Fat)

 

Ghrelin

Ghrelin is the hormone in charge of regulating hunger. When your stomach is empty it signals the hypothalamus in your brain that it’s time to eat something. Ghrelin levels reach their peak before a meal and then they decrease within an hour after you’ve had your meal. Studies show that people with extra weight experience only minimally decreased ghrelin levels. That’s because the hypothalamus does not get a signal that is strong enough which will cause them to stop eating, which usually results in overeating.

If you want to fix ghrelin release, here’s what you need to do:

Eliminate sugary drinks like energy drinks and especially high-fructose corn syrup. These can impair the ghrelin response after eating a meal. Add more protein to your breakfast and drink lots of water.


For the latest news and updates join our 1 Million fans on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.


Leave a Reply