Leptin Resistant

I have a name!!!  I've been wanting to read You on a Diet, by Dr. OZ for ages. Maybe it was even a divine prompting. I'm not sure, but I think it's really going to help. I knew the book tracked exactly what happens in your body when you eat something. I thought that was important--because I have real trouble believing that "just" one cookie or whatever really makes a difference because I don't see the bad results immediately.

But it DOES make a difference---anytime you eat anything, your body has to deal with it. Insulin and a host of other chemicals are produced, and if the food isn't good for you, it really does hurt your body.

One big culprit is High Frutose Corn Syrup. In the 1960's people ate ZERO of this stuff. Now each person averages 60 pounds a year!!! This is a real problem, because your body does not recognize HFCS as food, so it doesn't turn off hunger signals in response. A BIG place HFCS is found is in fat free foods and salad dressings.

Anyway, I knew about Leptin (the chemical that makes you feel full) and Grehlin (the chemical that makes you feel hungry). But I didn't know that the problem with so many foods---white flour, HFCS, junk food, trans fats etc was not just that they were empty calories, but that they made you even hungrier by eating them. THIS makes me want to make some changes. It also reminds me of the one time I was super successful without trying---when I was pregnant. My hormones went wild and I suddenly lost all desire for flour, sugar and salt--I dropped a TON of weight (scared the doctors, but I was fine).

Sometimes people who are super obese have a real genetic Leptin deficiency. But most of us have leptin levels that are just fine, but we're Leptin-resistant. That's me. Being leptin-resistant means that my brain sends the "I'm full" message just fine, but my body/mind doesn't like that message---I want more pizza, so I deliberately override the message and ask for more cookies. I think everybody overrides that message sometimes, but I do it habitually. PLUS, I'm always eating stuff that makes me even hungrier.

In the end--all this amounts to is the same old advice as always---lots of fruits and veggies, easy on the refined stuff. But knowing that certain foods are in a way anti-foods, I think will help. After all, I pretty much gave up fast foods when I realized that I giant meal at Arby's didn't even fill me up. NOT ACCEPTABLE.