Found in 1 comment on Hacker News
pvnick · 2014-02-27 · Original thread
This is a great article. I'm always in favor of flexible and scientific approaches to dieting. Lyle McDonald wrote a great series of articles on why diets fail (hint: it's a hormone called leptin) [1]. Caloric deficits lead to decreasing leptin, which explains why you feel like crap when dieting because this leads to metabolic slowdown by downregulating things like your immune system (why you get sick more when you diet) and reproductive system (why you lose your sex drive). Leptin's effects on the hunger-controlling hypothalamus explain why you may obsess over calorie-dense junk foods when you diet. It's your body's protection against starvation, but it goes all haywire in our obesogenic (obesity-causing) environment.

So what's the best way to acutely raise leptin levels when they're depressed from caloric restriction? Flexible diet solutions like the ones talked about in the article. High-carb "refeeds" - some people call them cheat days - are particularly helpful [2]. The trick is to binge on carbs (not fat!!!) while remaining at a caloric deficit, which is where a calorie journal definitely comes in handy. Things like sweet potatoes and pasta will fill you up and replete your leptin levels.

As an aside, while we're talking about leptin and flexible dieting, intermittent fasting is wonderful for flexible dieting. I'm working on a website right now that's based on the leangains method [3], which is great for folks in the moderately overweight category. For severely overweight or obese folks, Dr. Krista Varady (who I had the pleasure of speaking with on the phone recently), has published a ton of research on intermittent fasting over the past decade and just wrote a book called the Every Other Day Diet [4], which I highly recommend for anyone trying to lose a lot of weight quickly and safely and keep it off.

[1] http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/the-hormones-of-bo...

[2] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11126336

[3] http://www.leangains.com/2010/03/intermittent-fasting-set-po...

[4] http://www.amazon.com/The-Every-Other-Day-Diet-That-Weight/d...

Fresh book recommendations delivered straight to your inbox every Thursday.