The leptin diet is grounded on the science of the leptin hormone and was devised by board-certified clinical nutritionist Byron J. Richards, CCN, the founder of a supplement company called Wellness Resources and an expert on the leptin hormone. Leptin, a hormone released from fat cells, regulates food intake and energy expenditure in helping maintain weight. Because leptin is produced in fat, the amount synthesized correlates to the amount of body fat in a person: The greater the quantity of body fat, the more leptin is made. Furthermore, a person who gains fat produces more leptin; and a person who loses fat makes less.
What is Leptin?
Leptin, discovered in 1994, is an adipokine, a protein that functions as a hormone. Two major producers and secretors of leptin are the adipose tissue and the gastric mucosa. Leptin promotes satiety and has a central role in energy balance and weight management. A primary leptin signaling pathway is its interaction with the hypothalamus, which modulates the central nervous system to regulate metabolic homeostasis. Leptin also interacts with insulin, impacting glucose and lipid homeostasis. In normal physiological conditions, serum leptin increases in the fed state, decreases in the fasted state, and is directly correlated with total body fat mass: if there is more adipose tissue, there is more leptin, thereby reflecting long-term energy availability.
Leptin is called the satiety hormone, since it suppresses the appetite. In other words, more is produced to stimulate hunger when the body needs energy, and less is produced to reduce hunger when it doesn't need energy. During weight loss, the number of fat cells decrease, which makes leptin levels drop. Consequently, hunger levels rise, an effect that poses a challenge to weight loss.
When a person is healthy and has a normal weight, this appetite-regulating system works well. However, individuals with obesity are less sensitive to this hormone, which causes the body to secrete extra leptin, a condition called leptin resistance.
Leptin travels through your blood, via your circulatory system, to the appetite center of your brain. There, it binds to receptors that are responsible for making you feel hungry. This helps tamp down your appetite, curbing your desire to eat. Leptin also travels through your nervous system, stimulating fatty tissue to burn off fat and calories.
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Leptin Resistance: When Leptin Doesn't Work
Having obesity results in high levels of leptin (hyperleptinemia). This can cause a lack of response to leptin, a condition known as leptin resistance. If you have leptin resistance, your brain doesn’t respond as it normally would to leptin. Since leptin constantly stimulates your brain, you don’t get the sensation of feeling full. This causes you to eat more even though your body has enough fat stores.
The seeming lack of leptin also causes your body to enter starvation mode. To save energy, your brain decreases your energy levels and makes you use fewer calories at rest. In other words, it lowers your basal metabolic rate (BMR). So, leptin resistance makes weight gain worse by making you feel hungry and lowering your BMR.
Diet-induced obesity (DIO) interferes with the hormonal regulation of body weight and hunger, as leptin resistance and hyperleptinemia frequently co-exist. Recent research clarified that individuals with DIO tend to have chronic hyperleptinemia: elevated, rather than reduced, circulating leptin for their adipose mass. Animal models suggest that when circulating leptin levels are chronically elevated, hypothalamic leptin receptors become desensitized, akin to insulin resistance seen in type 2 diabetes. In LR, the hypothalamus becomes increasingly less responsive to leptin, hunger remains elevated, and food intake does not decrease although energy in the form of adipose is abundant.
Symptoms of Leptin Resistance
The main symptoms of leptin resistance are constantly feeling hungry (hyperphagia) and increased food intake. You have these symptoms despite having adequate or excess amounts of body fat. But several other factors and conditions can contribute to these symptoms - not just leptin resistance. Scientists are still learning about leptin and may later discover other symptoms of leptin resistance.
What Causes Leptin Resistance?
Dietary factors such as overeating and critical nutrients, including fat or sugars, can trigger molecular mechanisms giving rise to LR. For example, dietary sugar and saturated fats elevate plasma triglycerides, which in turn may trigger the onset of LR by inducing resistance to leptin transport at the blood-brain barrier.
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Conditions Associated with Hyperleptinemia
Other conditions associated with hyperleptinemia include:
- Obesity
- Leptin resistance
Leptin Deficiency: A Rare Condition
It’s very rare to have leptin deficiency (hypoleptinemia). The main condition associated with it is congenital leptin deficiency. It’s a genetic condition you’re born with that prevents your adipose tissue from making leptin. Without leptin, your body thinks it has no body fat. This signals intense, uncontrolled hunger and food consumption.
Congenital leptin deficiency leads to uncontrollable hunger. This condition is often detected early in life when children show signs of severe obesity and delayed puberty. Injections of a leptin analogue are effective in controlling this condition. Generalised lipodystrophy presents as a serious condition in which individuals have virtually no body fat. They often accumulate fat in their organs and can develop metabolic health risks such as diabetes. Because they have few fat cells, people with this condition do not produce enough leptin. Therefore, they are treated with injections of synthetic leptin.
The Leptin Diet: Principles and Guidelines
Instead of a starvation diet, the leptin eating plan is grounded on the science of the leptin hormone, states Wellness Resources. The leptin diet centers around five rules:
- Eat three meals a day, and allow five to six hours between meals: Eat three meals a day only, with no snacking in between. Allow for five to six hours to pass between each meal. Sticking to three meals per day: A person should allow 5-6 hours between meals, without snacking in between. Snacking causes triglycerides (a type of blood fat) to build up, making it harder for leptin to reach the brain’s receptors.
- Eat a high-protein breakfast: Eat foods that supply 20 to 30 grams of protein for breakfast. Eating a high-protein breakfast will help you avoid energy slumps, food cravings, and blood sugar spikes. If you eat more protein than carbs, your body will burn considerably more calories. Leptin-reset breakfast options include an extensive array of smoothies, which are supplemented with protein powder. An alternative would be a high-protein breakfast featuring eggs.
- Do not eat after dinner: Don’t eat after dinner. Make sure not to eat anything for at least three hours prior to bedtime. Never eat after dinner: Not eating food at least three hours before bed enables leptin to function more efficiently at night. This includes burning fat and keeping hormones on track during sleep.
- Reduce your carbohydrate intake, but don’t eliminate carbs completely: Carbohydrates are an essential ingredient in a well-balanced diet. However, most diets are high in carbs, and when you do not use up this quick fuel, the body store it as fat. It is not advisable to eliminate carbs because it releases insulin, which puts you in glucose-burning mode. You must always check whether you are consuming carbohydrates more than required.
- Practice portion control at each meal: Practice portion control at each meal. Don’t eat until you are stuffed. Stop before you feel completely full. Never eat large meals: To help prevent the body from producing too much leptin and becoming leptin-resistant, people should eat slowly. This may also curb overeating.
The Leptin Diet advocates eating an array of fresh, organic foods to provide energy. It also encourages reducing the intake of foods containing chemicals or additives. Another tenet of the eating plan involves not obsessing about calories but being familiar enough with them to ingest 400 to 600 calories at each meal. It advises that the daily diet consist of 40 percent fat, 30 percent protein and 30 percent carbohydrate, along with 30 to 50 grams of fiber.
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The diet recommends drinking 8 to 16 ounces of water between meals. It also permits the consumption of other beverages that contain no calories or artificial sweeteners, such as plain coffee, tea or lemon water. Soda, diet soda and flavored water with artificial sweeteners, in addition to energy drinks and soy drinks, are excluded.
Moderate exercise is a part of the Leptin Diet. It suggests starting slowly and increasing the length of workouts gradually.
Sample Meal Ideas
Salads are a good bet for lunch. Followers of the diet can try choices such as kale salad, lentil salad, Greek salad, beet with goat cheese salad and heirloom tomato with mozzarella salad. Heartier salad recipes include cranberry walnut chicken salad, quinoa salad and crab salad. If desired, soup recipes, such as one that features butternut squash, can be part of the plan.
Richards also offers a variety of dinner menu recipes.
Foods to Include
The leptin diet allows most foods.
- Egg: Eating eggs in the morning before engaging in physical activity can help decrease appetite. A study revealed that having eggs for breakfast will lower levels of the hormone ghrelin and can keep you full for up to three hours.
- Halibut fish: Halibut fish is the finest source of omega-3 fatty acids and leptin.
- Red apple: Fiber in the apple makes you feel fuller and longer. Studies reveal that red apples possess the greatest quantities of flavonoids and antioxidants.
- Broccoli: Broccoli is rich in fiber. The fiber in broccoli contains sulforaphane, which boosts metabolism. Gaining weight indicates that the body's metabolism is deteriorating.
- Whole grains: Instead of white rice and bread, try brown rice and wholegrain bread.
- Legumes: Beans and lentils are high in protein and fiber, which can help your body's leptin function.
- Nuts: Nuts are a combination of fiber, protein, and fat.
- Berries: Fruit in its natural state should be used in place of sweet snacks. Berries like blueberries, raspberries, and strawberries are lower in sugar than some other fruits and may help lower your triglyceride levels.
- Healthy oils: For most cooking purposes, use modest quantities of canola, olive, or high-oleic sunflower oil.
Foods to Avoid
When you’re on the leptin diet, you’re supposed to avoid artificial sweeteners, regular and diet soda, and energy drinks. You’re also encouraged to eliminate soy products of any kind.
The Science Behind the Leptin Diet
Leptin circulates in proportion to body energy stores and food availability. When energy reserves are high, leptin is secreted by adipocytes into the bloodstream (constitutive secretion). Gastric leptin secretion (regulated) rapidly responds to the stimuli caused by food intake. Once in the bloodstream, leptin crosses the blood-brain barrier to bind its receptor in the hypothalamus to signal satiety and decrease hunger and food intake.
Aside from the central action of leptin described above, this hormone has peripheral actions occurring in different tissues. For example, interacting with cholecystokinin in the stomach, leptin increases vagal afferent activity controlling the gastric emptying which in turn contributes to satiety. At intestinal level in postprandial conditions, leptin boosts carbohydrate and protein absorption through an increased expression of glucose transporters (GLUT-2, GLUT-5, and sodium-glucose cotransporter-1) and the activation of the proton-dependent di- and tri-peptide transporter PepT1. Conversely, leptin diminishes lipid release into the bloodstream after downregulating apolipoproteins.
When adipose reserves or food availability are low, leptin levels decrease, thereby increasing food intake to ensure a steady supply of metabolic fuel. It is reasonable to think that leptin decrements to increase food intake produce a stronger signal than the one produced by a rise of this hormone to reduce food intake as a survival function resulting from the long-term evolutionary challenges dominated by food shortage. Along with the rationale above, the correlation between leptin and body weight suggests that leptin signaling evolved as an indicator of high energy reserves and a lessened need for food intake.
Dietary Strategies to Improve Leptin Sensitivity
Albeit some limitations (e.g., limited rigor, small samples sizes), studies in animals and humans show that diets high in fat, carbohydrates, fructose, and sucrose, and low in protein are drivers of leptin resistance. Despite methodological heterogeneity pertaining to this body of literature, experimental studies show that energy-restricted diets can reduce leptinemia both in the short and long term and potentially reverse leptin resistance in humans.
- Limit Fructose and Sucrose: Results from a study of isoenergetic sugar-free high-fat diet (30% fat, 0% sugar, 50% carbohydrates other than sugar) and high-fructose high-fat diet (30% fat, 40% fructose, 10% carbohydrates other than fructose) in rats indicate that fructose is the bioactive component inducing LR. Removal of fructose from high-fat diets can even reverse LR and hyperleptinemia, suggesting a causal relationship.
- Increase Protein Intake: Studies examining the relationship between dietary protein and circulating leptin levels have shown an inverse correlation among animal models. One study found that among rats fed a low-protein diet (6% of caloric intake vs. 17%), serum leptin levels increased by 100% after 15 days of feeding. Total food intake, triglycerides, and weight gain were also higher among the low-protein diet.
- Choose Healthy Fats: In animals and humans, several studies have found only certain types of dietary fat to be associated with leptin levels. Kratz et al. measured serum leptin levels among 30 men and 25 women with a healthy body mass index (BMI, 18.5-24.9 kg.m2) after a high-fat diet intervention and found that leptin levels were only associated with the diet rich in alpha-linolenic acid (omega-3 in rapeseed oil); leptin significantly decreased in women and slightly increased in men. The intervention diets rich in monounsaturated fatty acids and omega-6-polyunsaturated fatty acids did not affect leptin concentrations. A review on the effect of fatty acid intake on obesity concluded that increased omega-6 fatty acid intake increased LR, insulin resistance, and obesity. In contrast, increased omega-3 fatty acid intake led to homeostasis and weight loss in both humans and rodents.
Potential Benefits of the Leptin Diet
The leptin diet includes limiting snacking and shortening your daily eating window. If a person reduces how much they snack, this could create a calorie deficit necessary for weight loss. A leptin diet is a sensible approach to weight loss for some people, as the diet promotes eating healthily without harsh restrictions but encourages a routine.
Risks and Considerations
Like many diets, the leptin diet imposes restrictions on what you can eat. You may find it hard to stick with the diet or you may feel unsatisfied with your food choices. Also, any diet plan that requires or heavily promotes supplementation is a red flag.
Concerns have been raised by the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) regarding the long-term safety and efficacy of low-carbohydrate diets, such as the leptin diet. Such eating plans can be lacking in important nutrients. Their higher fat and protein content and lower fiber content raise questions about health consequences. Lower fiber consumption increases the likelihood of constipation, and it may elevate the risk of cancer and diverticulitis. The reduced intake of potassium, magnesium and vitamin C may heighten the incidence of osteoporosis. Some people on low-carbohydrate diets have reported diarrhea, bad breath, insomnia, headaches, dizziness, nausea and kidney stones.
It is important to remember that all bodies are different, and a diet that meets the nutritional demands of one person will not always work for someone else. For example, limiting the number of meals to three per day and cutting out snacking may be effective for a person with a low activity level. However, it is unlikely to meet the energy demands of a person who leads an active lifestyle, exercises intensely, or has a physically demanding job. Many factors can impact energy needs, including age, pregnancy, breastfeeding, and certain medical conditions.
Consulting a Healthcare Professional
Before beginning on the leptin diet, consult your doctor. If you are active, it may not supply enough calories to meet your needs. As with any diet plan, it’s best to check with your doctor before starting the leptin diet. It may not provide enough calories if you’re extremely active. It may not be suitable for children or young teens who have different caloric requirements than adults.
A person should consider consulting a healthcare professional like a registered dietitian if they are interested in improving health through dietary changes.
Leptin and Other Body Functions
Yet, leptin does much more than regulate weight and energy. Although fat cells are the primary source of the hormone, it's also synthesized in other parts of the body, including the stomach, heart, kidney, brain, skeletal muscle and mammary glands, according to a research article published in Neuroreport in March 2016. Because of the multiple sources, it has a broad scope of possible benefits.
Leptin influences many body functions, particularly during times of low food intake, notes a May 2017 article in the journal Temperature. The hormone might be used to treat abnormal distribution of fat and the temporary cessation of menstruation due to a hypothalamic dysfunction.
Studies show leptin reduces the abnormal changes in the brain linked to Alzheimer's disease and depression, which might make it a novel treatment for the illnesses, adds the Neuroreport article. Preliminary investigations suggest the hormone could be of value for stroke.
Leptin may also play a role in bone metabolism and reproductive functions.
Leptin Supplements: Do They Work?
There’s no credible research to suggest that taking leptin in supplement form helps to alter leptin levels. Leptin isn’t a vitamin or mineral. You can’t absorb it from a pill. In fact, “leptin supplements” don’t contain any actual leptin. If they did, your stomach would simply digest it before it could have any effect on your body.
So what’s in them? All kinds of stuff. Some contain caffeine, which may suppress your appetite. Others are just a mix of herbs and vitamins. They might not be harmful, but there’s no evidence they’ll have any effect on your leptin levels.
Ask your doctor before you take any supplements, especially if you also take prescription or over-the-counter medications.
The Importance of Sleep
For leptin to work properly in your body, you need to get enough sleep. One study found that sleep-deprived people had higher levels of ghrelin, which makes you hungry, and lower levels of leptin, which makes you feel satisfied.
Most humans have a “diurnal” rhythm to their day. That means they are active during the day and sleep at night. Leptin levels tend to peak between midnight and dawn, making you less hungry. That makes sense because there’s not much you can do about being hungry when you’re asleep in the middle of the night.
But sleep still plays a big part in leptin levels. A lack of shut-eye will disrupt all your hormones, including leptin. It could make you feel hungrier because your brain sees a lack of sleep as a loss of energy that needs to be replaced. And the reverse may be true as well. Being very hungry at bedtime can cause lower leptin levels, and that could interfere with your sleep. In fact, a lack of sleep can be a sign of starvation in people with a serious lack of body fat or daily calories.
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