Hi everyone (warning: long post lol)

Blancita said:
Welcome to the WLF :). I recently read a book which has helped me a lot, and the advice seems to work perfectly into your lifestyle so I thought I would mention their advice.

The book explains why not eating all day causes you to eat a lot of food and snacks at night (this is due to the leptin hormone, which controls your hunger and metabolism and is produced by your fat cells, dropping too low). Supposedly eating at night is the worst time as it will turn off our night fat-burning which is when our body goes into its fat stores the most. Based on this, you would be better off eating your snack right after your dinner.

You can also do 2 rather than 3 meals with no ill effects. Its good to go 5-6 hours between meals to optimize fat burning, which supposedly kicks in only after food has been digested (3 hours following eating). That timing works out great for you, but have protein with your first meal and make sure it has enough calories to sustain you for the whole day to dinner without you becoming starving or tired by late afternoon/evening. That is how you'll control your night time snacking. I guarantee this part because it worked great for me and really controlled my evening and night time hunger and cravings.

So both meals should have at least 800 calories, lots of protein and less carbs but still have your carbs too, and you shouldn't eat a big meal past 6pm or a light meal past 7pm. The most important part is no snacking after dinner, get all your snacks in at dinner and preferably not anything with too much sugar except fruit. If you eat earlier, at lunch and dinner, you will be amazed how you wont get bad cravings after a few days.

Also, make sure you're doing as much walking as possible, several hours per week. This is a MUST if you want to get your health and metabolism in shape.

Good luck and keep us posted on your progress :).
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Walking does not improve one's metabolism. Very few things affect people's metabolism in a significant way. What we do know is that endurance activity lowers one's metabolism and progressive resistance training increases it. If anything, long periods of walking would slow down your metabolism (obviously made up for by burning calories, but calories burned while active and metabolism changes are completely different subjects.)

It does not matter when you eat your meals. If this was true, no fitness model or competitive bodybuilder would eat past 6 pm before a competition...but it is well-known that those who do the fitness thing for a living measures their calorie intake vs their calorie expenditures. True your body proportionally loses more fat at night time...that's because the lack of activity requires less glycogen (carbs) stores at night when you aren't busy. You still burn as a whole more total fat calories during the day than at night.

I've always at night and often my largest meal is 3-4 hours before I go to bed (9-10 pm). It has never affected my waist line, but it doesnt really matter how it affects me personally. Calorie restricted diets that have restricted food 4-6 hours before sleep, when calories have been equal, have shown in scientific research to have no effect on weight loss. That's the real key.

Our bodies are creatures of habit. When you think of food or your body becomes accustomed to food at certain periods of the day, you enter the cephalic phase of digestion...which is a fancy way of saying your body is getting ready to eat by releasing a bunch of hormones. If you start eating breakfast everyday, your body will naturally learn to crave that meal. People aren't hungry in the mornings because they aren't used to eating then.

Leptin research was thought of around 1998-1999ish to be a potentially wonderful hormone for appetite suppression and weight reduction because of a study where leptin deficient mice become big fat monsters. However, further research found that most people have an adequate supply of leptin produced from their fat cells and other areas and that leptin supplementation did not work.

So if Leptin is supposed to be this signal that provides information about your fat stores and thus positively affects appetite suppression, obese individuals should be less hungry...because obese people have significantly more leptin in their bodies than someone who is lean. That is obviously not the case...it is clear Leptin has a threshold value that once reached is adequate for maintaining normal levels of satiation and appetite.

Michael
 
I'll try and make it less confusing:

Don't worry about when you eat, the size of your portions, the balance of nutrients, or anything else.

Count calories, don't starve yourself, find foods that fill you up that aren't super high calorie, and try and do as much exercise as possible. The rest is pretty much straight gimmick.

Michael
 
ExercisePhysio said:
Walking does not improve one's metabolism. Very few things affect people's metabolism in a significant way. What we do know is that endurance activity lowers one's metabolism and progressive resistance training increases it. If anything, long periods of walking would slow down your metabolism (obviously made up for by burning calories, but calories burned while active and metabolism changes are completely different subjects.)

You are quite wrong about this. There are MANY things which effect our metabolism that have nothing to do with calorie expenditure. Insulin, adrenaline and leptin play major roles in how fast our fat is metabolized or not, among other complex systems that you obviously have never heard of so you therefore do not "believe" in. Look up the science before you comment.

Why would long walks slow down the metabolism?

Walking is commonly known as a good exercise to start with and long walks are a good way of cleaning the blood of triglycerides (sp?) and the liver of fuel so it can move on to fat stores. That part I'm not so well versed in not being a scientist, but its certainly not as simple as Michael suggests.

It does not matter when you eat your meals. If this was true, no fitness model or competitive bodybuilder would eat past 6 pm before a competition...but it is well-known that those who do the fitness thing for a living measures their calorie intake vs their calorie expenditures. True your body proportionally loses more fat at night time...that's because the lack of activity requires less glycogen (carbs) stores at night when you aren't busy. You still burn as a whole more total fat calories during the day than at night.

I've always at night and often my largest meal is 3-4 hours before I go to bed (9-10 pm). It has never affected my waist line, but it doesnt really matter how it affects me personally. Calorie restricted diets that have restricted food 4-6 hours before sleep, when calories have been equal, have shown in scientific research to have no effect on weight loss. That's the real key.

You are young, so that is a factor in your metabolism working like this. Perhaps far more important is that you are very slim so you don't have an excess of fat and, since our fat cells produce leptin, an excess of leptin, the hormone which controls our thyroid and all of our other hormonal systems.

Our bodies are creatures of habit. When you think of food or your body becomes accustomed to food at certain periods of the day, you enter the cephalic phase of digestion...which is a fancy way of saying your body is getting ready to eat by releasing a bunch of hormones. If you start eating breakfast everyday, your body will naturally learn to crave that meal. People aren't hungry in the mornings because they aren't used to eating then.

Have you read studies about this theory? Please refer me if so, sounds interesting but nothing I've read about (and I readily admit I dont know all the science, but I'm trying to learn about it rather than guess about it). Leptin is released in pulses and follows a rythm, that I believe is not scientifically debated, though how you interact with these rythms to best lose weight I believe is still under debate so yes, my suggestion based on my book is nothing but a theory. Just following the 3 meal a day rythm, I have MIRACULOUSLY managed to go from constant hunger and serious night cravings to very little cravings. When I went off this plan my cravings and overeating came back. This is by no means scientific but the book's message worked great for me hence I recommended the poster try it since its free and it works within how she's already eating (she likes one meal and tons of night snacks), with some major tweaking.

Leptin research was thought of around 1998-1999ish to be a potentially wonderful hormone for appetite suppression and weight reduction because of a study where leptin deficient mice become big fat monsters. However, further research found that most people have an adequate supply of leptin produced from their fat cells and other areas and that leptin supplementation did not work.

So if Leptin is supposed to be this signal that provides information about your fat stores and thus positively affects appetite suppression, obese individuals should be less hungry...because obese people have significantly more leptin in their bodies than someone who is lean. That is obviously not the case...it is clear Leptin has a threshold value that once reached is adequate for maintaining normal levels of satiation and appetite.

Science has never debated what leptin does, that it controls our appetite and the SPEED of our metabolism, completely contrary to what you say. I have never heard of this threshold value theory, where did you read about this?

Michael
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You have clearly missed the mark if you stop with this obese mice study. After that study thousands more studies were done and it has become un-debated common knowledge that many if not most overweight people are "leptin resistant", meaning that they have an excess of leptin in the body which causes havoc, yet they are in a state of leptin resistance where their/our brain does not get the message that there's plenty of leptin/fat to sustain us and our brain, from the lack of leptin getting through, believes we're starving and needs to eat more and more, hence the UNCONTROLLABLE cravings and hunger (most of us know that feeling but slim people without an excess of leptin or leptin resistance probably have little idea about this and believe will power should be more than sufficient in controlling our brain's deep powerful subconscious urges).

I believe there is plenty of debate about how to overcome leptin resistance, but no one really debates the condition known as leptin resistance or how it makes the person's brain think there is too little leptin and consequently turns DOWN a person's metabolism and turns UP the person's appetite.
 
I'll tell you why I'm skeptical about Leptin.

#1: Leptin deficiency results in mass weight gain due to reduced thermogenesis, hyperphagia, and insulin resistance.

#2: Leptin crosses the blood brain barrier in a smaller amount when fasting (that it functions with satiation is not an issue) and increases when you eat, almost in tandem with insulin levels from cephalic and digestive phase responses.

#3: Artificially introducting leptin does not increase it's ability to pass the blood brain barrier...indeed in that respect i have no issue that people can be resistant to it's satiation effects (with good reason...if you were severely obese and had excess leptin with no method for resistance, it would lead some people to fast their organs away).

Given that as a background, let's talk about this:

Leptin plays a factor with the thalamus and the thyroid glands. But it is one protein of hundreds in that complex.

The pulses you speak of are based on your natural daily fluctuations in cephalic phase responses...or triggered by your desire to eat. Which of most importance is insulin, so that shows that leptin follows insulin, and not vice versa. Diabetics with insulin resistance show decreased secretion of leptin from adipose tissue. Consistent eating can result in consistent leptin levels (my gastrointestinal book talked a bit about limits of transport proteins at the BBB level which might suggest consistent eating can bring about the most satiation, but that's hypo for now...)

The threshold value I talked about was just that...meaning large meals aren't going to improve the situation and result in more leptin crossing the BBB. Of course one might consider someone leptin resistant because of their free-floating leptin levels due to obesity and their lack of ability to make the appropriate alteration. Alternatively, you can label leptin resistance as the reduced levels of fasting or a diet...but that seems pretty intuitive that at some point either the protein transport system deteriorating due to reduced calories to another one of the hundreds of other secreted proteins (adiponetcin, adipsin, visfatin, vaspin, etc...) regulating transfer as well or being symbiotic to the situation (in other words being needed along with the leptin to pass the BBB.

The point being, leptin resistance could be the cause or the consequence of obesity. We don't know, but just common sense seems to bring a person to think it is more a consequence of other factors at hand. The fact that you can't endogenously introduce more and bring about satiety in people makes me think that attempts to regulate it through meal frequency algorithms or hormone cycles of the body is a fruitless endeavour.

Another common sense point is that if such a flood of leptin reduced lipolysis then a person who is obese who undergoes a massive calorie restriction should shed weight slower than what we see. It would also fluctuate BMR's and RMR's in science studies for obese people...when the opposite is seen.

Also from the research I read the only real reductions in satiation signals come from very restrictive diets. Not from general eating habits. And studies in rodents show that this resistance at the BBB level disappears mainly after the re-introduction of calorie equilibrium.

Adipose tissue as an endocrine organ. Obesity. 2006;14(Suppl 5):242S–249S.

Stefan N, Fritsche A, Haring H, Stumvoll M. Acute stimulationof leptin concentrations in humans during hyperglycemic hyperinsulinemia. Influence of free fatty acids and fasting. Int J Obes Relat Metab Disord. 2001;25:138–42.

Munzberg H, Myers MG Jr. Molecular and anatomicaldeterminants of central leptin resistance. Nat Neurosci. 2005;8:566 –70.

Edit: Also Blancita, last time I checked you were 140 lbs. I know you wish to drop a few more pounds but in the grand scheme of normal women and their weight you are quite slim. Why would it be affecting you so strongly?
Edit #2: This is also meant completely civilly and dispassionately. Just so we avoid a second armed conflict. :) As for complex systems I've never heard of, I was always aware of them. My undergrad was in Kinesiology and I took optional courses in endocrinology.

Michael
 
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ExercisePhysio said:
I'll tell you why I'm skeptical about Leptin.

#1: Leptin deficiency results in mass weight gain due to reduced thermogenesis, hyperphagia, and insulin resistance.

My understanding is that leptin deficiency is a very rare condition. Leptin resistance has similar symptoms but unlike leptin deficiency, there is an abundance of leptin floating around but very little of it gets through the blood brain barrier so its as if there is no leptin, causing a person to feel hungry (even when they've eaten more than sufficiently), to have severe cravings (which most thin people who tell obese people to just suck it up and just avoid the cravings have no idea about), and slows down the metabolism (thereby making one gain weight off far less food than someone without this problem).

#2: Leptin crosses the blood brain barrier in a smaller amount when fasting (that it functions with satiation is not an issue) and increases when you eat, almost in tandem with insulin levels from cephalic and digestive phase responses.

If you read up on the thousands (one of my books sites 11,000 since 2006) you will find that "leptin resistance" is a condition that is well-settled in the research community, so therefore "satiation" is indeed an issue in that you could have eaten enough calories but because leptin is not getting through to the brain adequately, its as if the brain thinks you're still hungry and consequently the person ends up consuming more food than is needed and puts on weight. This lack of leptin crossing the blood brain barrier also contributes to a slowed down metabolism as the body tries to conserve fuel because it thinks its not getting enough food when in fact its quite full.

#3: Artificially introducting leptin does not increase it's ability to pass the blood brain barrier...indeed in that respect i have no issue that people can be resistant to it's satiation effects (with good reason...if you were severely obese and had excess leptin with no method for resistance, it would lead some people to fast their organs away).

It was determined early on that artificially introducing leptin does not help, as you note, because the problem is usually that there is too much leptin but it is not getting through to the brain.

Given that as a background, let's talk about this:

Leptin plays a factor with the thalamus and the thyroid glands. But it is one protein of hundreds in that complex.

"Leptin is a hormone, not a protein. "Leptin, originating in fat cells, travels to the brain, where it regulates energetic function for the entire body. In the hypothalamus gland, leptin establishes a set point for weight. It also allows metabolism to run and enforces how fast it will run. Thyroid hormone malfunctions in response to leptin problems." (from The Leptin Diet)

The pulses you speak of are based on your natural daily fluctuations in cephalic phase responses...or triggered by your desire to eat. Which of most importance is insulin, so that shows that leptin follows insulin, and not vice versa. Diabetics with insulin resistance show decreased secretion of leptin from adipose tissue. Consistent eating can result in consistent leptin levels (my gastrointestinal book talked a bit about limits of transport proteins at the BBB level which might suggest consistent eating can bring about the most satiation, but that's hypo for now...)

Eating triggers the release of insulin by the pancreas. Insulin promotes the storage of calories. Whatever sugar which is created from that which is not wanted by the muscles and liver are turned into triglycerides and then sent for fat storage. Insulin directly promotes teh formation of triglycerides. It is not possible to break down stored fat during an insulin-dominant time, which is any time a person eats (depending on the amount of food, this time lasts 3-4 hours). As this occurs leptin rises and the person feels full. In overweight people, there is insulin and leptin resistance so that these hormones dont communicate efficiently in response to food and a person overeats just to get a full signal. But continuing, consistently eating causes consistent insulin, which promotes storage of calories and prevents burning of fat for fuel. (also from The Leptin Diet, which sites several studies for each claim it makes)

The threshold value I talked about was just that...meaning large meals aren't going to improve the situation and result in more leptin crossing the BBB. Of course one might consider someone leptin resistant because of their free-floating leptin levels due to obesity and their lack of ability to make the appropriate alteration. Alternatively, you can label leptin resistance as the reduced levels of fasting or a diet...but that seems pretty intuitive that at some point either the protein transport system deteriorating due to reduced calories to another one of the hundreds of other secreted proteins (adiponetcin, adipsin, visfatin, vaspin, etc...) regulating transfer as well or being symbiotic to the situation (in other words being needed along with the leptin to pass the BBB.

The point being, leptin resistance could be the cause or the consequence of obesity. We don't know, but just common sense seems to bring a person to think it is more a consequence of other factors at hand. The fact that you can't endogenously introduce more and bring about satiety in people makes me think that attempts to regulate it through meal frequency algorithms or hormone cycles of the body is a fruitless endeavour.

Some theorize that it helps to address leptin resistance.

Another common sense point is that if such a flood of leptin reduced lipolysis then a person who is obese who undergoes a massive calorie restriction should shed weight slower than what we see. It would also fluctuate BMR's and RMR's in science studies for obese people...when the opposite is seen.

Also from the research I read the only real reductions in satiation signals come from very restrictive diets. Not from general eating habits. And studies in rodents show that this resistance at the BBB level disappears mainly after the re-introduction of calorie equilibrium.

Adipose tissue as an endocrine organ. Obesity. 2006;14(Suppl 5):242S–249S.

Stefan N, Fritsche A, Haring H, Stumvoll M. Acute stimulationof leptin concentrations in humans during hyperglycemic hyperinsulinemia. Influence of free fatty acids and fasting. Int J Obes Relat Metab Disord. 2001;25:138–42.

Munzberg H, Myers MG Jr. Molecular and anatomicaldeterminants of central leptin resistance. Nat Neurosci. 2005;8:566 –70.

I do not have time to site.

Edit: Also Blancita, last time I checked you were 140 lbs. I know you wish to drop a few more pounds but in the grand scheme of normal women and their weight you are quite slim. Why would it be affecting you so strongly?

People with 10 to 20 pounds to lose are also known for being leptin resistant. One need not be obese for this to occur. Keep in mind that I'm only 5'1.5" and wear a size 10 jean, which is not exactly on the thin side though I wouldnt say its huge either.

Edit #2: This is also meant completely civilly and dispassionately. Just so we avoid a second armed conflict. :) As for complex systems I've never heard of, I was always aware of them. My undergrad was in Kinesiology and I took optional courses in endocrinology.

Michael
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You dont seem to know about or "believe" in leptin resistance, though it is a commonly known and believed theory in the scientific community. How to resolve this may be under debate. I just ordered another book about leptin as I'm finding it very interesting.
 
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To your points:

#1: It is rare, very rare in fact. So we agree on that.
#2: You misread completely. When i say "that it functions with satiation is not an issue" im agreeing it plays a role. You know...issues...we both went to law school. Issues are questions, and im saying that it is NOT a question. Sorry for the confusion?
#3: We agree on this too.

3 for 3 so far.

#4: Leptin is a protein. It is I believe a 15kda protein hormone, but you can google that if you wish. Eitherway the point was that it is one of many proteins released by fat tissue (some protein hormones, others not) That it factors in different glands I did not dispute...but it is disputed that it is the driving force. That it sets a 'set point' for weight is highly conjectural.

#5: No disagreement here, your post supports what i say.
#6 & #7 no disputes.

***You dont seem to know about or "believe" in leptin resistance, though it is a commonly known and believed theory in the scientific community. How to resolve this may be under debate. I just ordered another book about leptin as I'm finding it very interesting.***

I don't see how you get out of this that I dont understand it. That I dont believe it exists is not true...the rest of my post clearly says otherwise. What I dispute is the cause or the ability to control it and the strength of its effects.

Michael
 
If this is moved or if it isn't.... it doesn't matter.

I'm with Michael so far. His information fits pretty much everything I've seen in research.
 
Because it is awfully inconvenient to regurge/rehash material that is so easily available in the thread in which it was started.

You can't hijack an abandoned thread anymore than you can steal a bicycle out in the middle of the desert.
 
ExercisePhysio said:
Because it is awfully inconvenient to regurge/rehash material that is so easily available in the thread in which it was started.

You can't hijack an abandoned thread anymore than you can steal a bicycle out in the middle of the desert.
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I love it! LOL Unless someone's being rude in a thread, for those who are uninterested, just skip on ahead is my view.
 
ExercisePhysio said:
So if Leptin is supposed to be this signal that provides information about your fat stores and thus positively affects appetite suppression, obese individuals should be less hungry...because obese people have significantly more leptin in their bodies than someone who is lean. That is obviously not the case...it is clear Leptin has a threshold value that once reached is adequate for maintaining normal levels of satiation and appetite.

Michael
Click to expand...

This was the focus of my original disagreement with you. As to how to fix leptin resistance, though I have read about different theories, I do not know the answers.
 
[oops! I didn't see page 2 & 3 of the replies]

A couple of things came to mind as I read the post and the replies...

It sounds like you are making a lot of changes at once. I think it is key that you are aware of what you want to do/change and not beat yourself up if you aren't able to incorporate all the changes at the first go. There is no need to blame or judge yourself during the journey. The question I like to ask myself is, "Is something I'm doing getting in the way or contrary to my goal? If so, I need to curtail that, do something else, and focus on something else." At no point in time do you need to say, "Gosh, I'm so stupid/weak for doing Xxxxx." or, "Why did I let myself get this way?" or, "I can't even do this for my future kids." Don't let that be a conversation.

It sounds like you like to be sleeping the same time that your husband sleeps, or to be on a similar schedule. It's perfectly fine to do this, but it is not ideal. Your body knows the difference. Ideally (in a technical sense), you want to make the midpoint of your sleep be at the midpoint of the night. So let's say that it is dark from 4pm to 8am there in Canada, you would want to go to sleep so that the halfway point is at midnight. Or, if it was 9pm to 5am (in the summer?), you'd want your halfway point to be at 1am. It's not a must to do this, just be aware that this is an ideal. [I don't practice this exactly myself. The awareness helps keep me from staying up with nothing to do and going to bed at 10pm instead of midnight or 1am.]

You also may want to enlist your husband's support. It'd help to get rid of the junk food in the house and for him to support you in the new way that you will be eating.
 
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Blancita said:
I was curious specifically what you find I got wrong and Michael got right.
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You know despite driving me up the wall on occasion...you're starting to grow on me.

Edit: You owe me rep.
Edit 2: Not the evil kind either...that hurt my heart. :( Lol.

Michael :) (exhausted from exams)
 
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