90. 4 Ways to Manage Your Hunger Hormones and Lose Fat (the Changes You Can Make RIGHT NOW to Transform Your Body) | Reset Female Hormones For Weight Loss Series

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Welcome to the Mind and My Wellness Podcast. Your podcast for all things macros, movement, mindset and everything in between. I'm your host, Dani Merenberg, an ex yo yo dieting cardio junkie turned sustainable nutrition coach who's helped over 1000 women feel confident in their skin health by learning how to eat for their goals without sacrificing a life well lived. I created the Mind and My Wellness Podcast to give you simple, effective and manageable tips you can take away from each episode and implement in your daily life to look and feel like the best version of you. Each week, my guests and I teach you the secrets to mastering your health and owning your power. Nutrition, mindset, movement and women's health are all topics you'll find here. Think of our time together as your productive little health break from the day. So grab your headphones, fill up your water, and let's dive into today's episode.

Welcome back to another episode of the Mind and My Wellness Podcast. This is your host, Dani, and today is episode three of our four part hormone series where we're diving into different hormones and how they're affecting your ability to reduce overall body fat. And I'm giving you actionable tips you can take away from every single episode, no matter what category you may fall into. So today's episode we're going to be focusing on two other hormones and if you've ever felt like your hunger is just totally out of your control, or maybe you've lost weight and now you're constantly thinking about food and you're like, why the heck am I just always thinking about food? Sometimes it's not about your willpower, it's actually about your hormones. And those two key hormonal players that I'm talking about are leptin and ghrelin. And these are the hormones that control your hunger and your fullness and how they impact your overall fat loss journey. So in today's episode, we're going to dive into both of those hormones more in depth. We're going to understand exactly what why these hormones matter for fat loss. Because managing hunger is truly the key to long term fat loss success whenever you're entering a calorie deficit working through that reverse diet and maintenance. So without further ado, let's dive into what leptin and ghrelin are, the signs that come with them, and how you can influence leptin and ghrelin levels to help on your fat loss journey. So let's start with leptin. Leptin is the fullness hormone. This Hormone is produced by your fat cells, and what it does is it signals to the brain when you have enough stored energy and then it reduces your overall hunger. However, with higher body fat, you're going to have more leptin, but can be leptin resistant and it can block that signal. So again, leptin so sends the message to the brain that you're full and you're satisfied. Now, ghrelin, ghrelin is the hunger hormone. This is the hormone that is released by the stomach when it's completely empty. And this is what makes you feel hungry. So ghrelin spikes before meals and it drops after meals, after you're done eating. Some things that can influence higher ghrelin levels are sleep deprivation, stress, and extreme dieting. These are things that can increase ghrelin levels and make you feel more hungry more often. So if you feel like maybe you are feeling hungry all the time and you've been in a long term deficit, it can be ghrelin at play and it could be time to reverse diet. So there is a role that both of these hormones play in the fat loss journey. Now, with leptin, when there's leptin resistance, this may be while you feel hungry, even with extra body fat. So in people with higher body fat, leptin levels are going to be high, like I said, but the brain stops responding to it. And this is what we refer to as leptin resistance. Very similar to insulin resistance, which we've talked about two weeks ago, where the body produces enough, but the signal is just ignored. So what is actually causing this leptin resistance? Number one, chronic inflammation, Chronic inflammation in the body. Processed foods and high sugar intake can cause leptin resistance as well as poor sleep. So if you're eating highly processed foods, ultra processed foods, high sugar, that can lead to chronic inflammation in the body, which can lead to this leptin resistance. Now, when you have leptin resistance, it can make weight loss seem even harder. And this is because your brain thinks that you're starving. So it slows down your metabolism and it increases your hunger. This oftentimes is what leads to overeating. It can lead to weight gain or weight regain after a diet, which is why, again, a reverse diet is so important. Because we want to work with our metabolism and with these hormones to bring us back up to our status quo, which is at maintenance. So making sure that we are optimizing not only our metabolism, but these hunger hormones can be super critical in this fat loss phase. Now let's jump over to ghrelin. Ghrelin naturally rises when we're dieting, which makes you feel hungrier the leaner that you get. So the further along in your diet, you may experience more hunger. The that's totally normal. And that's because that ghrelin levels, those ghrelin levels are increasing. Now, crash diets and extreme deficits can make ghrelin skyrocket and lead to constant hunger and cravings, which can then lead to yo yo dieting, which yo yo dieting worsens ghrelin and it worsens the ghrelin response over time, making each fat loss attempt even harder. So with both of these, the key takeaway here is the longer that you're in a deficit or the steeper you're in a deficit, these hormones are going to come into play and be more significantly affected. So how do you know if your ghrelin or your leptin levels are out of whack? Some signs of leptin resistance include the very obvious, is you're always going to be hungry. Even after you've finished a meal, you're still, still hungry. Maybe weight loss feels impossible. You have very, very low energy, sluggish metabolism. These could be signs that your leptin levels are a bit off. Now, signs of your ghrelin levels being imbalanced are you're experiencing hunger spikes every few hours. You're craving foods that are high in carbs, high in sugar, and you are constantly wanting to stay snack all the time. Very similar responses to if your blood sugar is imbalanced as well. So this is where eating balanced meals more often can be really helpful, not only for your blood sugar regulation, but for ghrelin too. So this leads me to how can we balance leptin and ghrelin for fat loss success? The number one fix is one that you probably heard time and time again, but is prioritizing quality sleep. This lack of sleep will lower leptin levels and it naturally increases ghrelin levels, which leads to increased cravings and overeating. And one study actually found that one bad night's sleep can increase ghrelin levels by 15%, just one night's sleep. So this is why it's so important to try to prioritize seven to nine hours of quality sleep for hunger regulation. Number two is eating enough protein and fiber. Protein is going to reduce ghrelin levels after meals and keep you fuller longer. And then fiber is going to support leptin sensitivity and it slows down digestion, which is going to also help keep your hunger in check with those ghrelin levels. So an example could be that you swap cereal for eggs and avocado because that cereal is going to be more of a sugar carbohydrate. You're swapping it for something that's more protein and fiber focused. And this combo in and of itself is going to help stabilize your hunger levels, AKA manage your ghrelin levels and your leptin levels. Number three is avoid those ultra processed foods and excess sugar. Processed foods can increase inflammation in the body, which worsens leptin resistance. And unprocessed foods, whole foods, help restore leptin function. So, for example, think about how you feel after you eat a homemade meal versus a fast food meal. Oftentimes you can feel very heavy and greasy after that fast food meal. But a homemade meal, you're going to feel more satisfied and balanced from. There's a big difference in satiety too, where if you go out to eat and you come home and you realize, oh my gosh, why am I still hungry? Oftentimes a lot of those can be empty calories and more sugar and starch focused. Number four is going to be stop your extreme chronic dieting. Dieting too aggressively will increase your ghrelin levels rapidly and it will decrease and see a large leptin level drop, which will increase your overall hunger and slow down your metabolism. Smaller, more sustainable deficits can really help to regulate your hunger hormones. So this is why I always always in a calorie deficit with any woman that I'm working with. We start small to assess how your body's responding to a fat loss phase first before reducing fat any further. Because as soon as you cut too deep into a fat loss phase, you could be doing more harm than good. And last but not least, strength training. Strength training over cardio for fat loss is going to help regulate your leptin and insulin levels and preserve muscle during that fat loss phase, which are going to help these hormones. Chronic excess cardio can actually raise your cortisol levels and those ghrelin levels, making hunger worse. So think of it this way. Lifting builds the metabolism while cardio's burning fuel temporarily. So we want to make sure we're always optimizing our metabolism whenever we are entering a dieting phase especially, but really all year long, right? So complimenting your diet with strength training is really going to help not only the aesthetic outcome, but really managing your hormones as well. So the main takeaway I want you to take away from this episode today is that sometimes hunger doesn't just come down to self control. It can be driven by these two hormones, leptin and ghrelin, which are influenced by your diet, your sleep and your lifestyle. And when we make some small changes they can make a huge impact. Improved sleep, balanced meals, strength training, all of these things can help to regulate your hunger hormones naturally and making sure that we are following an appropriate dieting period for you. So this could look like a deficit period of 8 to 16 weeks followed by a reverse diet, then spending time at maintenance before then re entering a deficit if you choose to in the future, rather than staying in a deficit all year round, maybe hopping in and out of that deficit, that yo yo dieting cycle that can influence these hormone levels and you can see suboptimal results and actually experience weight loss resistance because of it. So I hope this episode where we dove into leptin and ghrelin provide a little bit more education and knowledge around what is actually happening when we are eating, when we're in a deficit, when we are chronically stressed, when we're not getting enough sleep, when we're over exercising, it can impact our hormones and hormones that you may not be as familiar with, like leptin and ghrelin, the hunger hormones. So when we can really work with our hunger hormones, work with our metabolism using a proper plan for us, with the right lifestyle techniques, we can see fat loss much more seamlessly, efficiently and effectively. And if you need help with any of this, I have so many resources, from free resources to one on one coaching that are available and just DM me on Instagram at mind and my macros and I would love to chat with you about this. If you found this episode interesting and you want to learn more, go ahead and binge the episodes from this month, the month of March 2025. All of the episodes are focused around hormone health and how it pertains to women's fat loss. And this is the third episode. Next week wraps up episode four of four and I can't wait to share it with you. So until then, keep minding your wellness.

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