But it’s entirely possible to change eating behaviors and get rid of excess weight naturally.
So I’m just going to cut to the chase on the advanced strategies that I would recommend to my own grandmother if she needed to attack these problems head-on.
1.) Work with a professional trained in functional nutrition to identify and address the imbalance of hypothalamus-pituitary pathways affecting the regulation of stress, thyroid function, growth & sex hormones.
- Take practical steps to improve sleep such as reducing caffeine intake.
- High levels of cortisol are related to obesity and reducing stress may help modulate leptin activity (1; 2; 3).
- I’ve previously written on herbal approaches to blood sugar management and stress relief.
- Take practical steps to improve sleep quality and duration. Sleep loss is associated with low levels of leptin and a possible increased risk of obesity (4).
2.) Similarly, identify and address neurotransmitter imbalances such as serotonin and dopamine, which can be affected by insulin resistance.
- Work with a health professional to assess gastrointestinal function and balance of healthy bacteria & identify possible hidden infections and food sensitivities & intolerances.
- Pay attention to tolerance of dietary lectins found in cereal grains (wheat, rice, corn, etc), potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, and legumes (see list). Dietary lectins may offer a missing link in the case of “diseases of affluence” such as obesity and type 2 diabetes. (5).
- Identify high-sensitivity foods such as dairy, soy, eggs, tree nuts, shellfish, wheat, corn, & other cross-reactive grains.
3.) Take practical steps to implement Meditation and a Low-Palatability Diet as championed by Stephen Guyenet, PhD of Whole Health Source. If you are interested in an in-depth (and nerd-friendly) analysis of this topic, I highly recommend reading Guyenet’s “What Causes Insulin Resistance” series.
- Diets high in both fat and fructose are associated with leptin resistance and can create a vicious cycle of poor weight management (6; 7). This vicious cycle may reflect the “addictive” nature of certain foods.
- High sugar, salt, and fat diet may contribute to overeating due to addictive qualities and effect on dopamine neurons (8; 9; 10; 11)
- Stay away from pizza, ice cream, chips, fried foods, and other fatty, sugary, & salty snacks that fit a high-palatability profile
- Do not confuse this with fad “low-fat”, “low-carb” and “low-salt” diets.
4.) Mindful eating may be important lifestyle skill to break the cycle of overfeeding.
- Mindful eating can be considered a form of meditation and is associated with improved sugar control, feeding behavior, and weight management.
- Telling someone to eat mindfully can be impractical due to its demand for conscious brain resources & it’s disregard for stress in our lives.
- We love reading advice about eating more mindfully, but we still fail to do actually practice it.
5.) Balance different forms of exercise. A mix of aerobic and anaerobic exercise appears to work better for decreasing leptin and increasing anti-inflammatory hormones than either type by itself (12).
- Some evidence indicates that women may benefit more from a focus on resistance training (13).
6.) Nutraceutical “Food as Medicine” approaches:
- Curcumin from turmeric shown to downregulate leptin (14)
- Omega 3 fatty acids found in fish, nuts, seeds, and some plants may help modulate release of leptin (15)
- Probiotics may help to improve gastrointestinal integrity and immune balance, while also improving production of short chain fatty acids which may have direct influence on leptin as mentioned earlier.
- A host of other compounds including, but not limited to L-glutamine, aloe leaf, licorice extract, vitamin D, rosemary, hops, ginger, garlic, monolaurin, green tea extract, & more may offer positive benefits on gut bacteria, gut-brain interactions, and general immune health.
