Hormones and weight loss - eat more to lose more?

I've been reading about hormones and how they effect weight loss. Two hormones in particular are critical to eating, or over-eating: Ghrelin, and Leptin.

Ghrelin is a hormone produced by your stomach lining that triggers hunger, tells you to eat.
Leptin is a hormone produced by fat cells that signals satiety, or tells you to stop eating.

Here is an excellent article that covers these hormones and their role in weight loss in plain language.

Ghrelin is a very critical hormone, with receptors throughout your body, and is related not only to eating impulse, but also to learning and cognitive adaptation and helps to regulate neurons in your hippocampus. It is also an important factor in the production and regulation of the human growth hormone.

Leptin, from the Greek, Leptos, which means "thin," is an important horomone which not only tells us we are full after a meal, but helps to support your circulatory system, lungs, and bone health. Obese people often have developed a resistance to Leptin, which is believed to be induced by high-fructose interaction (a.k.a.: eating a lot of sugar,) meaning that people who are already overweight really, hormonally have a dampened / suppressed "fullness signal."

So how do these hormones effect weight loss? Other than by the obvious, turning on and off our eating urge?

Well, put simply, "dieting" really doesn't work, not in the traditional sense. Over-restricting your caloric intake unbalances Ghrelin and Leptin in your body and causes your body to go into fat storage mode. The goal is to keep your Ghrelin (eat) low and your Leptin (stop eating) high, but to do that you have to eat. This seems counter-intuitive, again. All weight loss plans involve calorie restriction.

In order to keep your hormonal balance, you need to reduce caloric intake but increase the volume and the frequency of meals. Again, sounds counter-intuitive, right? Eat more? Well, yes. Eat whole foods that are low-fat and high fiber. Fiber is a critical nutrient in feeling satisfied after a meal. Dietary fiber has so many health benefits it is worth a whole blog entry of it's own. Dietary fiber naturally reduces cholesterol, and delays the absorption of glucose  (sugar) which keeps your blood sugar more stable, thus allowing Leptin to work better and tell your body to stop eating. The real, metabolic reason fiber makes you feel fuller is because you are fuller -- dietary fiber has no calories, but it increases food volume. There you have it: reduce caloric intake but increase the volume and the frequency of meals.

Here is a list of high-fiber foods from the Mayo Clinic.

So, that's the big secret. Eat more and you can lose weight better, you just need to follow a couple simple rules. Higher food volume, lower caloric value.

Night Eating Syndrome?

So, I've always had a problem with late night eating. I've always considered it a bad habit. Turns out it might be more than just a habit, it could actually be related to hormone levels, and it is also a syndrome that has scholarly research backing it.

Turns out NES (Night Eating Syndrome) was actually defined as a legitimate psychological syndrome in 1955, but little research was ever done until the 1990's. As of this time, it is being proposed for inclusion in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

Reading the description of the syndrome is like reading about myself. Basically, every bullet point is right on track with my own behaviors:

People who suffer from Night Eating Syndrome generally:

• Skip breakfast, and go several hours after waking before their first meal.

• Consume at least 25% of their calories after dinner.

• Late-night binges almost always consist of consuming carbohydrates. (Carbohydrates tend to shoot messages to the brain to produce serotonin, which induces sleep.) However, this eating is typically spread over several hours, which is not consistent with a typical eating binge as evidenced by other eating disorders. Episodes of late-night binge-eating can be repeated throughout the night, with many separate visits to the fridge or cupboard.

• Suffer from depression or anxiety, often in connection with their eating habits.

• Affect and arousal decrease throughout the day with the lowest levels being in the middle of night-eating episodes.

• These night eating episodes typically bring guilt rather than hedonistic enjoyment.

• Have trouble sleeping in general.

• Are more likely than the general public to sleepwalk.

I don't sleep walk, as far as I know, but otherwise, that is exactly me. The one that really snapped my attention was the skipping breakfast thing. I know that is a very common dieting no-no and a lot of people do it, but I always have. I've always known that I was skipping breakfast because I wasn't really hungry -- I am still satisfied in the morning from my late night eating. But I've always rationalized it away by saying, "Well, you know caffeine is a major appetite suppressant." Um, yeah. People drink coffee and still manage to eat breakfast.

Also, I have often said that I "binge eat." I don't binge eat in the typical way, but I find very often that my evening "snack" really (at least calorie-wise) becomes the equivalent of another whole meal, or even two whole meals. I can easily consume 1000 calories before bedtime, and almost always it is through, "many separate visits to the fridge." Even though that is not typical binge eating behavior, I have always felt that is what it is, and I have struggled with it because I truly feel sometimes that I can't control it. 

The real problem for me is that the situation is counter-intuitive. For example, when I was doing Weight Watchers, I would save a lot of my "points" for night time, so I could still get my late night satisfaction and not go over my points allotment for the day. This always let me to being hungry during the day though, or eating food that wasn't what I really wanted like an all-veggie salad with no dressing as my main meal of the day. Sure, it's low-points (on WW) but it also wasn't satisfying me, nor was it delivering the protein and carbs that I needed to get through my day, which in turn caused me to load up on bread, cheese, crackers, dips, etc -- all those high carb comfort foods that we all love -- at night. Sure, I technically stayed on my "diet" but not really. What I was (am) really doing is justifying and accommodating my binge eating. When I eat more during the day, I really am able to better control the late night eating. It's just a matter of doing it. Those old, conditioned behaviors are hard to get on top of. 

Above, I have linked to Wikipedia.

Here is the actual scholarly research: International Journal of Obesity

And here is a related study about NES being related to Depression, Weight Gain, Low Self Esteem, and Sleep Disorders: From the Wiley Online Library