Eat Less and Grow Fatter? Why Some People Can't Lose Weight

www.medimanage.com

It's true--eat less and you might find yourself getting fatter. This is because a great deal of weight loss done naturally by the body has to do with protein hormones called leptin. It regulates fat storage in the body and inhibits hunger when your body does not really need to eat.

And to have normal amounts of leptin, you need carbohydrates. This means, you need to eat enough, not starve yourself, to lose weight. And studies show that the more carbs you take the higher levels of leptin you get.

If you starve yourself, your body produces more ghrelin, which is a "hunger" hormone. It makes you feel hungry even if you're really not. Even if there are still a lot of fats to burn in your body, ghrelins make you feel starving and needing food. So you eat food even though you still have a reserve of fats in your body.

And you produce more ghrelins as you feed yourself less with food.

So strict and crash diets that makes you eat less are a definite no-no. Thus, eat less and grow fatter. Eat more and you grow slimmer. Ironic but true.

But this doesn't mean you should eat like a monster every day to produce more leptins and produce less ghrelins. You should apply this knowledge with wisdom or common sense. In other words, eat balanced. Just eat. Eat everything in healthy proportions.

The main thing is, you don't have to radically limit your food intake. You don't have to starve yourself or forfeit yourself of certain foods or meals. Just eat balanced.