Ghrelin, Leptin and Weight Loss
I have one beef with what Mike Geary says in his program, The Truth About Abs. And honestly, it's not his fault, I'm sure when he wrote it, the research he had was the best available. Alas, it was incomplete. So what is this inaccuracy all about? Ghrelin, and its counterpart, leptin
While leptin does suppress appetite, as Mike claims, it is only half the picture. Leptin is a hormone whose opposite is ghrelin. Leptin lets your body know when it is full, while ghrelin tells your body to eat because it needs energy. Why would this omission make any difference? Well, most importantly, because ghrelin may prevent a person from losing weight. Ghrelin has been found to be less effective in overweight people, which can lead to chronic bingeing. Furthermore, when overweight and obese people lose weight, or even simply eat less, their ghrelin levels increase.
Wait, am I saying it might not be your fault that you starve all the time when you're on a diet? YES I AM. But let's get a handle on what ghrelin is, before we discover how to defeat it.
Ghrelin is a hormone, known to be produced in the upper gastrointestinal (GI) tract and is associated with upper gastrointestinal (GI) tract motility. Ghrelin, put simply, makes people want to eat. Though it is as yet only partially researched, so we can rest assured that it also has various other functions. Aside from making us hungry when we don't eat, ghrelin also has some other tricky effects. For example, when someone doesn't get enough sleep, their ghrelin levels increase, while Leptin levels decrease. Again, the net result is hunger.
One of the most interesting findings of recent research is the fact the folks who have had portions of their stomach removed (i.e., had a gastric bypass) produce far less ghrelin than their counterparts who have had other surgeries to reduce their food intake, such as Lap-band surgery. Researchers believe that removing a portion of the stomach, since it also removes some of the cells responsible for creating ghrelin, is the cause for this decrease, and also the reason folks who undergo gastric bypass have better long-term results. That is, they not only lose the weight they need to, but have less difficulty keeping the weight off over the long term.
But what to do if you can't afford, gastric bypass, or simply don't have that much weight to lose? Is there any hope? Of course there is! One of the important factors in defeating your ghrelin production is to eat REAL FOOD. For example, high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and all the evil products products such as the soft drinks and low-fat salad dressings that contain it, cause your body to not receive the satiety message of leptin, and thus trigger your body to produce more ghrelin. And HFCS isn't the only culprit. Your body and brain simply doesn't recognize most of the processed food products on grocery store shelves today as real foods. So one of the ways to begin defeating your ghrelin production is to eat real food, which contains natural ingredients your body will recognize.
And here's why the section where Mike talks about leptin is most crucial, even if he doesn't mention ghrelin. It's in that section that he speaks about the need to incorporate one of the most important tricks for controlling both grehlin AND leptin. Since Truth About Abs is copyrighted, I can't copy his recommendations here, but I do highly recommend that you check out the ebook. If you follow this program, it WILL allow you to overcome the obstacles that grehlin normally throws in your way when you attempt to lose weight!
