06/13/2026
One of my most unpopular posts… truth gets buried.
Obesity is NOT caused solely be poor choices or lack of will power or lack of self discipline. It’s quite the opposite! Let that in!
When leptin goes rogue...
Leptin is a hormone secreted by your fat tissue, in proportion to how much fat you have stored and plays a key role in regulating body fat storage.
When leptin is behaving ideally, it influences your food intake relative to activity levels, causing your body to maintain weight within a relatively narrow range – gaining and losing weight within a 10- 15 pound range.
When you gain fat, your leptin levels also go up, signaling your brain to not want to eat so much and telling you to go move around – exercise, clean the house, play tennis – whatever. In turn, your body fat storage goes down.
The opposite is also true. When you lose fat mass and you get to the lower end of the 10-15 pound range, your leptin levels increase. Your brain says, let’s eat and your body wants to get just a little more rest.
When leptin behavior is defective, obesity is the result. It's technically called LEPTIN RESISTANCE, a condition that develops where your cells will not let leptin communicate with your brain.
Approximately 5% of the obese population was born with genetically low levels of leptin and they do not have the brain chemistry which regulates how much they eat or how active they are.
However, FOR THE MAJORITY of obese people, they have Leptin Resistance. Remember, high leptin levels signal you to eat less and get more active – this is not the case in obesity.
>>>>Obese people HAVE high leptin levels, usually very high leptin levels, but the cells are not letting the leptin in and the communication to eat less and get more active is not received clearly – if at all...so the body just pours more leptin into the blood stream trying to get the message through.
But the brain is still behaving as if the leptin levels are low – “let’s eat and get some rest.”
>>>> No amount of choosing to eat less, eat right, and get some exercise is going to be able to sustain overriding the brain being signaled to eat and get some rest.
**Think of it this way, you have some event that is going to keep you up past your bedtime of 10 o’clock. Bedtime, comes, you feel the urge to go to sleep, but you override that urge and stay up. One o’clock, five o’clock, you’re getting pretty tired, right? Your brain is ordering you to go to sleep, but you can’t.... You really have to get the kids to school or get to work or whatever. You continue to override the brain signal to sleep.
How long can you sustain this willpower to not sleep?
>>That is what it’s like for someone who has Leptin Resistance. Their bodies perceive low levels of leptin and, thus, have the urge to eat and rest. They can override this urge for a while, but eventually...they will eat and rest.
The only solution is to increase leptin sensitivity.
So, how do overweight people deal with this then? Can leptin sensitivity be increased? How?
I am going to discuss all of this and more over the next week.
HOWEVER, I am choosing to stop at this point, because I really want YOU to let this sink in. Whether you are obese or thin or somewhere in between -let this sink in.
Obesity is NOT caused solely be poor choices or lack of will power or lack of self discipline. It’s quite the opposite! Let that in.
Does that mean food habits, exercise, lifestyle, environment, blah blah blah doesn’t matter? NO. But biology and physiology are greatly the deciding factors.
