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Authors: Sam Wang, Sandra Aamodt
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appetite and cause weight loss. As it turns out, though, many
overweight people already have high levels of leptin in their bloodstream but don’t respond normally
to the hormone, showing what scientists call “leptin resistance.” In most people, leptin resistance is a
consequence of obesity. This leptin resistance is similar to insulin resistance, which is triggered by
weight problems and is the cause of adult-onset diabetes. Obesity caused by overeating causes leptin
to become less effective at activating signals that instruct the arcuate nucleus to reduce the body’s
weight.
Although the discovery of leptin has not led to an effective drug for weight loss, there is a drug
based on another pathway that shows some promise. Anyone who’s ever gotten the munchies from
smoking marijuana knows that pot’s active ingredient, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC),
stimulates hunger even in animals that are well fed. A drug called rimonabant blocks the receptor that
responds to THC and reduces food intake even in hungry animals. Perhaps more importantly, it has
the same effect on those that have already been fed. Animals that eat when they are not hungry may be
a fairly good model of human obesity.
Practical tip: Tricking your brain into helping you lose weight
If your brain works against you when you want to lose weight, then how can you
achieve the results you want? Basically, you need to arrange your weight-loss strategy to
take your brain’s reactions into account. Most importantly, that means keeping your
metabolic rate as high as possible. It also means finding a strategy that is sustainable. Your
brain will always be working toward its own automatically set goals, so any changes you
make to your eating and exercise habits will also need to be permanent to remain effective.
Temporary changes give temporary results, period. This approach may not sound as
glamorous as the latest grapefruit diet, but it does have one substantial advantage: it works.
Your metabolic rate determines how many calories your body burns at rest. Severely
low-calorie diets never work in the long run because the very real risk of starvation in our
evolutionary past has produced brains that are expert at protecting the body from severe
weight loss. One of the main ways that your brain achieves that goal is by slowing down
metabolism in times of famine, in some people by up to 45 percent. If your weight was
stable on two thousand calories per day, it may also be stable on twelve hundred calories a
day after this metabolic compensation kicks in—only now your life is a lot more difficult.
Worse yet, when you increase your food intake, you’re likely to gain weight before your
metabolism adjusts back. Like starvation, sleep deprivation strongly depresses metabolism,
so it’s important to get enough sleep if you want to keep your weight down. Stress is
another culprit, as the stress hormone corticotropin releasing factor tips the body’s energy
balance in favor of conservation. Metabolism also tends to slow down as you age, which is
why people tend to gain weight as they get older, at a rate of about one pound per year.
Exercise is the most effective way to improve this situation, both because the exertion
itself triggers your body to increase its use of energy and because muscles burn more
calories at rest than fat does. Exercise can boost metabolism by 20 to 30 percent, and the
effect lasts up to fifteen hours. Yoga may be a particularly good exercise because many
people find that it also reduces stress.
Weight gain and fat storage increase when humans and other animals are fed a few big
meals rather than many small ones. Therefore, you should split your calories into small
meals spread out over the entire day rather than eating only once or twice a day. In one
study, people on a laboratory-controlled diet were able to boost their metabolism by eating
in the morning—enough to add two hundred to three
overweight people already have high levels of leptin in their bloodstream but don’t respond normally
to the hormone, showing what scientists call “leptin resistance.” In most people, leptin resistance is a
consequence of obesity. This leptin resistance is similar to insulin resistance, which is triggered by
weight problems and is the cause of adult-onset diabetes. Obesity caused by overeating causes leptin
to become less effective at activating signals that instruct the arcuate nucleus to reduce the body’s
weight.
Although the discovery of leptin has not led to an effective drug for weight loss, there is a drug
based on another pathway that shows some promise. Anyone who’s ever gotten the munchies from
smoking marijuana knows that pot’s active ingredient, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC),
stimulates hunger even in animals that are well fed. A drug called rimonabant blocks the receptor that
responds to THC and reduces food intake even in hungry animals. Perhaps more importantly, it has
the same effect on those that have already been fed. Animals that eat when they are not hungry may be
a fairly good model of human obesity.
Practical tip: Tricking your brain into helping you lose weight
If your brain works against you when you want to lose weight, then how can you
achieve the results you want? Basically, you need to arrange your weight-loss strategy to
take your brain’s reactions into account. Most importantly, that means keeping your
metabolic rate as high as possible. It also means finding a strategy that is sustainable. Your
brain will always be working toward its own automatically set goals, so any changes you
make to your eating and exercise habits will also need to be permanent to remain effective.
Temporary changes give temporary results, period. This approach may not sound as
glamorous as the latest grapefruit diet, but it does have one substantial advantage: it works.
Your metabolic rate determines how many calories your body burns at rest. Severely
low-calorie diets never work in the long run because the very real risk of starvation in our
evolutionary past has produced brains that are expert at protecting the body from severe
weight loss. One of the main ways that your brain achieves that goal is by slowing down
metabolism in times of famine, in some people by up to 45 percent. If your weight was
stable on two thousand calories per day, it may also be stable on twelve hundred calories a
day after this metabolic compensation kicks in—only now your life is a lot more difficult.
Worse yet, when you increase your food intake, you’re likely to gain weight before your
metabolism adjusts back. Like starvation, sleep deprivation strongly depresses metabolism,
so it’s important to get enough sleep if you want to keep your weight down. Stress is
another culprit, as the stress hormone corticotropin releasing factor tips the body’s energy
balance in favor of conservation. Metabolism also tends to slow down as you age, which is
why people tend to gain weight as they get older, at a rate of about one pound per year.
Exercise is the most effective way to improve this situation, both because the exertion
itself triggers your body to increase its use of energy and because muscles burn more
calories at rest than fat does. Exercise can boost metabolism by 20 to 30 percent, and the
effect lasts up to fifteen hours. Yoga may be a particularly good exercise because many
people find that it also reduces stress.
Weight gain and fat storage increase when humans and other animals are fed a few big
meals rather than many small ones. Therefore, you should split your calories into small
meals spread out over the entire day rather than eating only once or twice a day. In one
study, people on a laboratory-controlled diet were able to boost their metabolism by eating
in the morning—enough to add two hundred to three
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