Leptin: The Hormone Holding You Back From Fat Loss

Doing Everything “Right” and “Nothing” is Working?

I wanted to keep you up-to-date on what we worked on this week at Life Coaching for Women Physicians. In our Workshop Series, we talked about some key hormones that have a direct impact on our ability to lose adipose tissue. My favorite hormone to teach about is Leptin.

Leptin is a hormone that is produced by adipose tissue, and it helps our body to maintain a normal level of body fat.

It also has a direct relationship with body fat. As body fat decreases, so does leptin. As body fat increases, so does leptin.  

When our leptin levels decrease, our body may begin to think that it is starving. So, our body will try to preserve itself by shutting down fat loss and turning on our hormone ghrelin (the hunger hormone) that tells us to eat up.

As you can see, this could pose quite a challenge when we are trying to lose body fat. To complicate things more… many of us have leptin resistance which can develop from something as simple as going on a previous low calorie diet. The problem is that with leptin resistance, our body can have plenty of leptin, but our body cannot recognize it, so it continues to hold onto adipose tissue.

This is why there is no one-size-fits-all approach to fat loss.

The good news is that there are some things that we can do. Things like reducing stress, eating enough protein, decreasing added sugar, high intensity interval training, adding muscle mass with strength training, and calorie cycling are all strategies that can help us to become more leptin sensitive.

I base my programs off of these exact strategies to help my students work with their biology and work smarter, not harder. Just this week, one student shared her 8 week results where she lost 10 lbs of body fat while sparing almost all of her muscle mass. This is not an easy thing to do, but she was able to do it with strategic strength training and nutrition. Her body fat decreased by 5% in just 8 weeks. She feels amazing… has more energy… and is excited to keep showing up.

These are the kinds of results we get inside my 6-month program, Transform®. Not to mention, we offer 72-CME credits in our program. It is a 5-in-1 coaching program loaded with coaching calls, live group personal training, weight loss and body composition change support with obesity medicine docs, 7-months of G.O.A.L.S. Society included, plus a curriculum delivered in bite-sized pieces.

We are now accepting applications for our April 25th class. You can apply HERE. Our team will be in touch with you shortly.