Leptins and Body Weight Management - fascinating!!

[avendesora]

This post was absolutely fascinating: http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.co...yperphagy.html

My favorite part:

Humans, like all animals, have a sophisticated system of hormones and brain regions whose function is to maintain a proper energy balance. Part of the system's job is to keep fat mass at an appropriate level. With a properly functioning system, feedback loops inhibit hunger once fat mass has reached a certain level, and also increase resting metabolic rate to burn excess calories. If the system is working properly, it's very difficult to gain weight. There have been a number of overfeeding studies in which subjects have consumed huge amounts of excess calories. Some people gain weight, many don't.

Followed by this post: http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.co...and-sugar.html

Summary: Our bodies, if healthy, really do want to maintain a healthy weight. We have mechanisms built in for that which ought to control our hunger. We weren't built to "store in case of famine" indefinitely. Obviously, something is going on in our culture because we're eating way more calories than we need, on average. It's been assumed that we, as a nation, have become overweight because we're eating more than we need. But - why are we eating more than we need? What happened to the control mechanism? (read the posts to find out.)

The author also has some posts about vitamin K2 (aka Activator X) which is critical for calcium metabolism. Again, fascinating.

Enjoy!
Aven

[Zevy]

If you look at the actual research, a large reason why many people don't gain weight when increasing their calories is something called NEAT: non-exercise activity. Some people naturally start moving more as a defense against weight gain...you can see it in the clinical research studies. You may know these people...always fidgiting, moving around, can't stay still. The hormonal response to overfeeding creates an increase in activity to keep weight down.

It is actually rather interesting and a big reason why you can overfeed people the same number of calories, and while some will gain weight, others won't.