Showing posts with label manage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label manage. Show all posts
Leptin - Fat Hormone Regulation
Leptin is a hormone in our body that controls fat regulation. This post is going to be a work in progress but I wanted to point out a hormone that we all have to deal with when it comes to hunger and fat loss and fat storage (getting fat).
One of the problems that I have found, and my wife as well, when Leptin is explained is that science is not very nice to us common folk. I suspect that you want to know how to lose weight and are not really too interested in becoming a biochemist to do it.
How Leptin controls fat stores
Leptin is that starvation hormone that decides that our body has to store fat if we are in a starvation situation (like animals getting ready for winter hibernation) or to burn our calories quickly (like when animals are in a hunting or hunter situation).
Basically when we eat too much food and do not exercise enough we store fat. Leptin controls that storing of fat in our body just like it would in animals but we as people with supermarkets, fast food, and easy access to the smells and tastes that we like. We kind of mess things up as far as eating when hungry comes in and do have to do something to regulate it on our own.
Okay, have you got that straight? Hope so. So when we are on any kind of a regular diet what will happen is that we lose weight for the first few days or couple weeks and then we plateau. The other crappy side effect is that our energy drops and we have trouble working out. The plateau is caused by our our Leptin levels dropping which causes our metabolism (energy burning) to slow down and at the same time our body stores as much fat as possible.
This means that we have to do something to take us out of this fat storage problem
On any diet that uses this strategy you don't just go and gorge, you eat normal size meals until satisfied but not worrying about fat content of the foods or carbohydrate types.
The important thing about this method is to make sure that you are reminding your body that you are safe, you are not starving, and to bring your Leptin levels back so that you are again able to lose fat and not have your body store fat.
How to succeed in your fitness goals
This subject is something that I have thought about writing about for a while now as it gets to our core beliefs of whether we can really do it, with it being our goals or not. I always wonder how I can stop people from failing, heck even stop myself from failing.
What do we need to succeed and what can cause us to fail?
I was watching a show that I really like last night, Survivorman. Survivorman is a show where the host Les Stroud goes out somewhere on the middle of nowhere and lives for a week with no food, shelter or equipment, just him and a few video cameras.
What does this have to do with fitness, besides maybe how starvation affects people? Well Les Stroud talks about how he feels in these places, last night for instance Les was in the desert. People are afraid in the desert about animal attacks, water, food, spiders, loneliness, and other stuff and he made a point of saying what helps and why.
Really, I am getting to a point here.
So Les starts a fire. The fire to him is a way to keep himself safe from animals and warm at night. He finds a river. The river water keeps him hydrated and being full of water makes him less concerned about the lack of food.
So when dieting or going through a big change in your health or your fitness what do you rely on to make yourself feel "safe"?
http://www.fitnesstipsforlife.com/how-to-succeed-in-your-fitness-goals.html
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