What if weight loss had less to do with willpower and more to do with hormones?
For many years, I wrestled against my body's biology, believing that if I just tried hard enough, I'd be able to shed the unwanted weight I had acquired. This belief was reinforced by parents, siblings, and friends who all told me, "Hope, you just have to want it bad enough. You have to commit. Use your willpower."
Fortunately I finally decided to stop looking at the symptoms, and dig into the root cause of my weight gain and inability to lose weight. I was relieved to say the least when I realized that my struggle wasn't caused because of a lack of self-discipline.
I discovered that there are a few key hormones involved in body fat obesity. When these hormones are out of whack, they make it near impossible to overcome cravings because those cravings are constant and never subside. I knew that from my own firsthand experience.
Low willpower is not the root cause of weight gain.
Just like a super happy, grateful person can be overcome by deep depression if the chemicals in their body are out of balance, heavy and obese people can lose the weight-loss battle if the chemicals in their body are out of balance.
You can't tell a depressed person to just be happy. Neither can you tell an overweight person to just not eat, and all will be well. It doesn't work that way.
So let's talk about the most important hormone I discovered in my research journey.
It's called Leptin.
Leptin is known as the "satiety" hormone. It's responsible for sending the message, "Stop eating, I'm satisfied."
Leptin's name actually originates from the Greek base leptos, meaning small or thin, because when it functions properly, it should keep you thin.
Leptin is a protein produced by fat cells, that circulates through the blood stream and goes to the brain. Since fat cells are the origin, Leptin amounts are directly related to a person's amount of body fat. If someone lowers their body fat percentage, the leptin automatically decreases. If someone increases their body fat percentage, the leptin automatically increases.
When I learned this I thought to myself, "well I've got a lot of those, shouldn't I have a lot of Leptin in my body? And therefore, shouldn't I feel full all of the time? What gives?!"
That's when I learned about Leptin Resistance (which I'll write a separate post on). Stay with me here...suffice it to say in this post, while Leptin is good in certain levels, you really can have too much of a good thing.
Outside of telling your brain whether or not you're full, the primary purpose of Leptin is to help the body achieve homeostasis (maintain its weight).
Leptin is the medium by which your fat cells communicate "your energy thermostat is set right" to your brain. Too little and the message being sent will be "hunger." Too much and ironically, the message being sent is "hunger" too. If you're frustrated by this point in the post, believe me, I was pretty dang frustrated at this point in my research too.
But that's when I found a natural supplement called Leptitox that helped me regulate my hunger, lifting the amount of Leptin in my body to a proper level.
This was the pivot point in my weight-loss journey. The cravings that used to be impossible to fight, began decreasing in frequency until eventually, I felt like the word craving was too extreme of a term to describe the hunger I felt.
I had done nothing to increase my willpower. And with no major changes to what I ate or how often I exercised, the scale finally began tipping in the right direction for me. I could hardly believe it was this easy. I was winning in the battle that previously felt impossible.
I'm now down 43 pounds with just 7 more to go. It's hard to not feel angry that I hadn't found this information years ago. But the past is the past. I am just so grateful for my discoveries, that I couldn't keep them to myself. I decided to create this site to bring more awareness to Leptin and it impact on weight.
I also became an ambassador of Leptitox.
If any part of my personal story rang true for you, you should definitely give it a try. I'm confident it can help you just like it did me, my brother, my next-door neighbor, and anyone else who's made the investment.
What do you have to lose besides the weight?!!
Hopefully, I can save you the painful journey of failing diets and grueling exercise programs that are never the answer to losing weight when hormone imbalances are at play.
To lighter, brighter days,
❤️ Hope Williams
