Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / Hunger Hormones Controlling Your Fat Loss (Ghrelin, Leptin, and GLP-1 Explained) | Ep 425

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Hunger Hormones Controlling Your Fat Loss (Ghrelin, Leptin, and GLP-1 Explained) | Ep 425 · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:01
  Philip Pape: If you've ever hit a wall during a fat loss phase, felt constantly hungry despite eating enough protein and fiber, or wondered why your body seems to fight you harder the longer you diet, the answer might be in your hormones.
• 0:14
  Philip Pape: Today I'm breaking down the hormones that actually control your appetite.
• 0:18
  Philip Pape: Not just Ghrelin and Leptin, but also GLP1, PYY, CCK, NPY, and others you've probably never heard of that are quietly running the show.
• 0:26
  Philip Pape: You'll learn why dieting makes some of these spike and others crash, what that means for your hunger and metabolism, and some strategies that work with these instead of against them.
• 0:46
  Philip Pape: Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering, and efficiency.
• 0:53
  Philip Pape: I'm your host, certified nutrition coach Philip Pape, and here is what is actually happening inside your body when you try to lose fat.
• 1:01
  Philip Pape: Your stomach pumps out more ghrelin, and that screams at your brain, I need to eat.
• 1:05
  Philip Pape: Your fat cells release less leptin, so your brain thinks you're starving even when you're not.
• 1:10
  Philip Pape: Your gut produces less GLP1 and PYY, which means meals don't fill you up the way they used to, and stress hormones trigger NPY in your brain, making you crave high calorie comfort foods.
• 1:23
  Philip Pape: This isn't a willpower problem, as we've said many times on this podcast.
• 1:26
  Philip Pape: It's really your biology.
• 1:28
  Philip Pape: And we have to work with that.
• 1:29
  Philip Pape: We have to understand it.
• 1:30
  Philip Pape: Think like an engineer.
• 1:32
  Philip Pape: Understanding these hormones is that difference for many of you, many of us, between fighting against things and trying to, you know, just cut calories or just do more and actually making this a little bit, if not a lot, easier.
• 1:44
  Philip Pape: So this is episode three of our eight-part appetite series for January.
• 1:49
  Philip Pape: We're going beyond the basics of just protein and fiber.
• 1:52
  Philip Pape: We covered a little bit of that already.
• 1:54
  Philip Pape: And now we're going to get into the deeper mechanisms that control whether you feel satisfied or ravenous.
• 2:00
  Philip Pape: Because let me tell you, uh, the more I've been in this business, the more I realize a lot of this is comes down to brain-related genes, it comes down to hormones, it comes down to signals that are, I'll say, outside our control, but the upstream chain is somewhat in our control.
• 2:14
  Philip Pape: And we're gonna wanna understand how we do that.
• 2:17
  Philip Pape: I'm gonna cover a lot of science today, but I'm going to keep it practical.
• 2:20
  Philip Pape: And then I want you to stick around until the end because I'm going to share a simple protocol for handling hunger to separate your physical hunger from your psychological hunger.
• 2:31
  Philip Pape: And it takes about 10 minutes to use.
• 2:33
  Philip Pape: It's a super powerful tool that I think is gonna help a lot of you.
• 2:37
  Philip Pape: Hey, this is Philip, and today's episode is sponsored by Calocurb.
• 2:41
  Philip Pape: If you've ever been in a fat loss phase and felt like hunger was working against you, Callocurb's GLP1 activator is a game changer.
• 2:50
  Philip Pape: Calllocurb is a natural appetite support made from amerisate, a patented bitter hops extract that activates GLP1 and other gut signals to help you feel fuller, faster.
• 3:03
  Philip Pape: Clinical studies showed a 40% reduction in cravings and a 30% reduction in hunger within one hour.
• 3:10
  Philip Pape: If you want to try it, go to witsandweights.com slash calllocurb for 10% off your first order.
• 3:16
  Philip Pape: The link is in the show notes.
• 3:18
  Philip Pape: That's witsandweights.com slash calllocurb.
• 3:21
  Philip Pape: All right, let's start with ghrelin.
• 3:24
  Philip Pape: This is your body's hunger alarm.
• 3:26
  Philip Pape: It's the hormone that makes you feel hungry.
• 3:29
  Philip Pape: And it is produced primarily in your stomach lining.
• 3:32
  Philip Pape: It does what you'd expect.
• 3:33
  Philip Pape: It tells your brain, hey, it's time to eat.
• 3:35
  Philip Pape: And it rises before meals and it drops after you eat.
• 3:39
  Philip Pape: So that's pretty straightforward.
• 3:41
  Philip Pape: But where it gets more relevant for fat loss is that when you're in a calorie deficit, the ghrelin goes up.
• 3:46
  Philip Pape: And it's not just a little bump, it goes up a lot.
• 3:49
  Philip Pape: A 2025 meta-analysis that pulled data from 127 studies found that weight loss consistently increases your fasting ghrelin levels.
• 4:00
  Philip Pape: And the more weight you lose, the higher your ghrelin climbs.
• 4:03
  Philip Pape: Now think about what that means.
• 4:04
  Philip Pape: It's not just about the deficit itself, it's if you're actually getting leaner, if you're doing what you're trying to do, which is lose weight, the louder your body is going to scream at you to eat.
• 4:14
  Philip Pape: And this is why the last 10 pounds, quote unquote, often feels harder than the first, let's say, 20.
• 4:20
  Philip Pape: And so it's not a mental thing, okay?
• 4:22
  Philip Pape: It's not just psychological.
• 4:23
  Philip Pape: There is literally a hormonal change that is ramping up.
• 4:28
  Philip Pape: And it's not just that it makes you hungry.
• 4:30
  Philip Pape: Ghrelin also activates the reward centers in your brain, which makes high-calorie foods seem more appealing.
• 4:37
  Philip Pape: So not only do you want to eat more, you actually crave the stuff that is going to more easily get you out of your deficit.
• 4:45
  Philip Pape: So it's this vicious cycle.
• 4:47
  Philip Pape: Now, what can you do about it?
• 4:48
  Philip Pape: All right, we've talked about protein before, always worth mentioning in case you're not doing it.
• 4:52
  Philip Pape: High protein meals will suppress ghrelin more effectively than a high carb or high-fat meal.
• 4:58
  Philip Pape: And that's one of the reasons we emphasize protein at every feeding, right?
• 5:01
  Philip Pape: It's not just for the muscle piece, but also for appetite control.
• 5:05
  Philip Pape: You should still have balanced meals, right?
• 5:07
  Philip Pape: It's not about just eating protein, but making sure you have the protein is important.
• 5:11
  Philip Pape: The second thing is your meal timing consistency.
• 5:14
  Philip Pape: Okay, not just the meal timing in general, but the fact that it's consistent because ghrelin operates on a rhythm.
• 5:20
  Philip Pape: And we've seen this before.
• 5:21
  Philip Pape: Your circadian rhythm is more important than a lot of us realize.
• 5:25
  Philip Pape: Where if your body feels safe, let's use just a colloquial expression, it will it will tend to be more comfortable burning calories and not trying to make you eat more.
• 5:36
  Philip Pape: And ghrelin will spike at times when you normally eat.
• 5:40
  Philip Pape: So your normal schedule, your normal habits, the ghrelin's gonna go up.
• 5:44
  Philip Pape: So if you're constantly changing your eating schedule, you're creating unpredictable spikes in your ghreline throughout the day.
• 5:50
  Philip Pape: And you kind of know this intuitively, don't you?
• 5:52
  Philip Pape: If you eat in a normal pattern and then one day things are off, and all of a sudden you get hungry at the same time you would normally eat, even if you're not really hungry, it's your body saying, Hey, you normally eat now.
• 6:01
  Philip Pape: What is going on?
• 6:02
  Philip Pape: Let's go find that food.
• 6:03
  Philip Pape: So sticking to a pattern kind of gets ahead of that.
• 6:06
  Philip Pape: And I'm a big fan of consistency, which leads me to the third one, sleep.
• 6:11
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 6:11
  Philip Pape: Not only sleep consistency, but just having sufficient, good quality sleep because having low amounts of sleep, so sleep deprivation, will cause your ghrelin to spike as well.
• 6:22
  Philip Pape: One study showed that restricting sleep to four hours just for a few nights increased ghrelin by 28%.
• 6:30
  Philip Pape: So if you're sleeping like five or six hours and then wondering why you can't stop snacking and where what the root causes of your emotional eating, that could just be it, which is a lot simpler answer than having to go through the hard work of processing your triggers and your emotional baggage, let's say, even though there could be issues there to work on.
• 6:48
  Philip Pape: And we're gonna cover this more in the next episode.
• 6:51
  Philip Pape: And then fourth, don't crash diet.
• 6:53
  Philip Pape: Don't use an overly aggressive, prolonged deficit because that is gonna cause ghrelin to stay elevated even after your diet ends.
• 7:02
  Philip Pape: And this is part of why rapid weight loss often leads to rapid regain, right?
• 7:08
  Philip Pape: Moderate deficits are your friend, a moderate deficit, which is anywhere from 0.25 to up to 1% of your body weight a week, which is still pretty aggressive, but it's controlled.
• 7:19
  Philip Pape: That combined with strategic refeeds, usually ends up giving you a longer-term sustainable fat loss phase that blunts some of that ghrelin response to the extent that you can.
• 7:30
  Philip Pape: So that's ghrelin, that's your hunger alarm.
• 7:32
  Philip Pape: When you diet, it gets louder.
• 7:34
  Philip Pape: When you lose weight, it gets louder.
• 7:35
  Philip Pape: And that's it.
• 7:36
  Philip Pape: So now we're gonna talk about the other side of the equation.
• 7:40
  Philip Pape: The second hormone today is gonna be leptin.
• 7:42
  Philip Pape: And by the way, we did cover this tangentially or at a surface level in one of our in our first appetite episode, but we're going in deeper here.
• 7:50
  Philip Pape: So leptin is like the thermostat for your body fat, where ghrelin was like, hey, let's hit the gas for your hunger.
• 7:58
  Philip Pape: Leptin is like putting on the brakes because it's produced by your fat cells, and the more fat you carry, the more leptin you produce.
• 8:07
  Philip Pape: And in theory, this should signal to your brain you have all this energy on your body stored and you don't have to eat as much, right?
• 8:13
  Philip Pape: It's it's supposed to help you feel full.
• 8:15
  Philip Pape: The problem is that when you diet, when you lose fat, your leptin also goes down.
• 8:20
  Philip Pape: And again, quite a bit.
• 8:22
  Philip Pape: So it's like the opposite direction of ghrelin, but it also has the opposite effect.
• 8:26
  Philip Pape: So it's the same, it just exacerbates it, right?
• 8:29
  Philip Pape: And it drops faster than you would predict, that then fat loss would predict.
• 8:33
  Philip Pape: Again, just like ghrelin seems to be on an exponential accelerating curve, not a linear curve.
• 8:39
  Philip Pape: So even a little bit of a weight loss of, say, 10% of your body weight can cause your leptin to drop by, say, 50%, right?
• 8:45
  Philip Pape: So it's even more extreme than the ghrelin change.
• 8:48
  Philip Pape: And then when your brain senses this, it interprets it as a signal of starvation, of, hey, I don't have food coming in.
• 8:56
  Philip Pape: And then it responds in two ways that are gonna make fat loss harder.
• 9:00
  Philip Pape: It's gonna make you hungrier and it's gonna decrease your metabolic rate.
• 9:05
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 9:06
  Philip Pape: This is one of the important causes or levers of metabolic adaptation or thermal adaptogenesis, just a fancy way of saying your body burns fewer calories, right?
• 9:17
  Philip Pape: Because your body is trying to conserve.
• 9:20
  Philip Pape: So it makes things more efficient.
• 9:21
  Philip Pape: And that's not a good thing when we're trying to lose fat or lose weight.
• 9:26
  Philip Pape: It's why many people hit a plateau and it doesn't take that long, you know, three, four, five weeks into a fat loss phase and they're already hitting the plateau.
• 9:34
  Philip Pape: Once we get it past the initial water weight loss, which for many also looks like a plateau, that's a different issue.
• 9:40
  Philip Pape: But even like six, seven, eight weeks in, many of us hit a second real plateau, and that real plateau is because of this adaptation, and they're not, they don't realize their calories are dropping like a rock.
• 9:51
  Philip Pape: I mean, for me, and I'm I feel like I'm doing everything right all the time, I might have a drop of six, seven, eight hundred calories over the course of a fat loss phase.
• 10:00
  Philip Pape: But because I'm tracking and I know that I can adjust for it or I can plan for it, both physically and psychologically.
• 10:07
  Philip Pape: And then there's another layer to this.
• 10:10
  Philip Pape: If you've been overweight for a while, you may have developed a little bit of resistance to leptin.
• 10:15
  Philip Pape: That means your brain doesn't respond to the signal even when the levels are high, meaning you have all this stored energy on your body, but your brain acts like you still need more energy.
• 10:26
  Philip Pape: Kind of sounds like the it kind of sounds like insulin resistance, doesn't it?
• 10:30
  Philip Pape: Right?
• 10:30
  Philip Pape: It's effectively a form of lowered tolerance, lowered sensitivity because of the way you've treated your body to that point.
• 10:38
  Philip Pape: You know, it's it's not your fault, but it's just how your body responds because of what it's conditioned to.
• 10:44
  Philip Pape: Now, what can you do about this?
• 10:45
  Philip Pape: Okay, diet breaks and refeeds, you probably may have heard they can temporarily increase your leptin.
• 10:52
  Philip Pape: All right, it used to be believed that this was more of a not permanent thing, but like you could you could really restore your leptin and then continue the fat loss phase from a much higher position.
• 11:02
  Philip Pape: It's not quite like that, it's only temporary.
• 11:05
  Philip Pape: But like a higher carb day, which I like refeeds where the carbs come all the way back up to your maintenance, it can bump leptin up for that period, for that day or the next day or so.
• 11:17
  Philip Pape: And it gives you, if nothing else, a psychological break.
• 11:20
  Philip Pape: But there is a little bit of a physiological break that we see that may ramp up your performance for like a day.
• 11:27
  Philip Pape: And it takes the edge off, right?
• 11:28
  Philip Pape: It's not a magic fix, but it definitely helps.
• 11:30
  Philip Pape: And that's why, like a two-day refeed could be a really nice way to fit it in to a seven-day week, where every five days you're doing your diet and then two-day refeed.
• 11:41
  Philip Pape: I'm a big fan of that, but of course, you could do any different interval.
• 11:44
  Philip Pape: You could do, you know, two weeks and then two days, or three weeks and one week, you know what I mean?
• 11:49
  Philip Pape: That's the nonlinear fat loss approach.
• 11:52
  Philip Pape: So resistance training, okay, first time I mentioned it all episode, which is crazy, I know, helps preserve, which helps preserve lean mass, you know, when you're in fat loss, helps preserve your muscle so you're not losing it.
• 12:02
  Philip Pape: It can reduce the severity of leptin decline.
• 12:05
  Philip Pape: So another reason to be training, besides the obvious, of holding on to your muscle mass.
• 12:08
  Philip Pape: And then, of course, having more muscle keeps your metabolic rate a little bit higher as well, which partially offsets some of this adaptation.
• 12:16
  Philip Pape: The other thing is energy flux.
• 12:18
  Philip Pape: Energy flux matters.
• 12:19
  Philip Pape: This is the concept of eating more while moving more instead of eating less while trying to exercise more or even move less.
• 12:28
  Philip Pape: So higher, higher energy flux, eating more to move more, it tends to improve leptin sensitivity as well because your brain kind of hears the leptin signal better when you have more of these resources flooding in.
• 12:40
  Philip Pape: I almost think of it like you're trying to release energy, but you need to bring the energy in, and your body likes that turnover rather than this restriction mindset.
• 12:50
  Philip Pape: If that makes sense.
• 12:51
  Philip Pape: So I think one of the insights for leptin is this your body has kind of a set point that it wants to defend.
• 12:58
  Philip Pape: Yes, there is validity to that concept.
• 13:00
  Philip Pape: Set point theory might have heard it called, you know, not quite to the extreme that some might claim.
• 13:06
  Philip Pape: But when you lose fat, leptin does drop.
• 13:09
  Philip Pape: Your body pushes back to try to regain that fat.
• 13:12
  Philip Pape: And that is why going recovering to maintenance after a diet is super critical.
• 13:17
  Philip Pape: It's also why we shouldn't be dieting for too long.
• 13:20
  Philip Pape: And, you know, we're gonna talk about rebound hunger in a later episode of this series because I think that's an important concept.
• 13:27
  Philip Pape: But leptin is important to understand.
• 13:30
  Philip Pape: All right, so let me remind you where we are.
• 13:32
  Philip Pape: We covered ghrelin, which rises during fat loss, it drives hunger.
• 13:35
  Philip Pape: We covered leptin, which falls during fat loss, makes your brain think you're starving.
• 13:40
  Philip Pape: Now I want to talk about the hormone that is all the rage right now, and that is GLP1.
• 13:46
  Philip Pape: But before we do that, I want to tell you about today's sponsor because it's very relevant to this GLP1 conversation before we get into it.
• 13:54
  Philip Pape: GLP1, as we're gonna talk about, is a key hormone that signals fullness to your brain, or when it's higher, you feel satisfied when it's low, like it often is during fat loss, meals just don't fill you up the same way.
• 14:06
  Philip Pape: And I'm a big fan of tools, especially natural tools that can help in addition to the other things we're doing.
• 14:12
  Philip Pape: Callow Curb, who is sponsoring this episode, C-A-L-O-C-U-R-B, like curb your calories, is a natural appetite support.
• 14:21
  Philip Pape: It's a tool that works by activating GLP1 and other gut brain signals.
• 14:26
  Philip Pape: It's a made for it's made from a marisate, and that's a patented bitter hops extract developed in New Zealand over 15 years with 30 million in research behind it.
• 14:35
  Philip Pape: Has very solid clinical data, it is science-based, it reduced cravings by 40%, hunger by 30%, and calorie intake by 18% within one hour.
• 14:47
  Philip Pape: So it can help you feel fuller, faster.
• 14:49
  Philip Pape: It's just one of those nice tools that take the edge off.
• 14:53
  Philip Pape: Doesn't replace the fundamentals, it supports the other things you're doing.
• 14:57
  Philip Pape: But if hunger has been the hardest part of your fat loss phase, even when things like protein and fiber are dialed in, it's definitely worth checking out.
• 15:04
  Philip Pape: Go to wits and weights.com slash calllocurb for 10% off your order.
• 15:08
  Philip Pape: The link is also in the show notes.
• 15:10
  Philip Pape: In case you have trouble you know spelling it, it's C-A-L-O-C-U-R-B.
• 15:13
  Philip Pape: That's wits and weights.com slash calllocurb.
• 15:17
  Philip Pape: All right, now let's talk about GLP1, which I would call the satiety powerhouse, something that wasn't talked about nearly as much before the new weight loss medications came out, like Ozempic and the others.
• 15:31
  Philip Pape: GLP1 stands for glucagon glucagon like peptide one.
• 15:36
  Philip Pape: It is produced by cells in your intestines after you eat, and it does three important things.
• 15:42
  Philip Pape: One, it increases satiety, it helps you feel full.
• 15:46
  Philip Pape: Two, it slows gastric emptying.
• 15:50
  Philip Pape: That is, food stays in your stomach longer, so you feel satisfied longer.
• 15:56
  Philip Pape: And three, it enhances your insulin secretion, and that of course helps with blood sugar control.
• 16:03
  Philip Pape: And of course, you've you've heard of GLP1 because of Ozempic, Wagovi, Manjaro, all of these drugs, which are GLP1 receptor agonists, right?
• 16:11
  Philip Pape: The the semaglitides or zepatide, those are the more chemical names.
• 16:15
  Philip Pape: They mimic the hormone and then they amplify the effects of the hormone and they work really, really well, right?
• 16:21
  Philip Pape: They're super powerful.
• 16:22
  Philip Pape: We've got a lot of clients and members of Physique University who are taking these as a tool to help them.
• 16:27
  Philip Pape: We had guests on the show and we've had experts on the show talking about how powerful these are.
• 16:32
  Philip Pape: And I know there's a lot of controversy around them, but it is a legitimate mechanism that's being targeted by these.
• 16:38
  Philip Pape: Now, for those of us, whether you're on the medication or not, understanding GLP1 is helpful, I think, because GLP1 rises naturally after you eat a meal, especially a meal that's rich in protein and fiber and certain compounds, including the bitter compounds.
• 16:53
  Philip Pape: We mentioned calllocurb, which is a bitter compound.
• 16:56
  Philip Pape: That is why it tends to spike and trigger your GLP1, not to the level of these pharmaceuticals, of course, but that's why there's a spectrum from, you know, totally food-based to medication to everything in between and every combination of those.
• 17:10
  Philip Pape: So during your fat loss phase, your body's GLP1 response tends to decrease.
• 17:16
  Philip Pape: Sound familiar?
• 17:17
  Philip Pape: Sounds like, again, leptin and ghrelin, kind of how they operate.
• 17:20
  Philip Pape: They go in the opposite direction where you'd where you'd want them to be.
• 17:24
  Philip Pape: So meals that used to fill you up don't trigger as much of that satiety signal anymore.
• 17:31
  Philip Pape: And that's another piece of the puzzle for why fat loss just gets harder over time the more you push it.
• 17:36
  Philip Pape: Ghrelin goes up, leptin goes down, GLP goes down as well, or GLP1, you know, your body fighting you on all these hormone fronts, which is why I'm doing this episode.
• 17:46
  Philip Pape: So, can you support GLP1 naturally?
• 17:49
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 17:50
  Philip Pape: If you do the fundamentals the way we talk about here, protein, fiber, meal timing, the things we've already talked about that we keep coming back to, you're still you're it's going to stimulate more GLP1 release than not having enough protein, then having too little fiber, than you know, not spreading out your meals.
• 18:08
  Philip Pape: In fact, like front loading calories, we think might actually enhance GLP1 response.
• 18:12
  Philip Pape: I mentioned on the last episode a study of a big breakfast versus a smaller breakfast where the calories were the same and how the big breakfast seemed to better regulate some of these hormones, right?
• 18:23
  Philip Pape: To what extreme will it do that for you?
• 18:25
  Philip Pape: I couldn't say.
• 18:26
  Philip Pape: I think it's worth experimenting, though, and seeing how your hunger signals change.
• 18:31
  Philip Pape: Of course, consistency is super important, as we mentioned before as well, right?
• 18:35
  Philip Pape: A lot of people's bodies, though, seem to respond better to a substantial breakfast versus a massive dinner.
• 18:41
  Philip Pape: And again, there's some circadian rhythm and cortisol and like day-night cycle stuff going on there because of our human biology in the context of you know Earth rotating relative to the sun.
• 18:53
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 18:53
  Philip Pape: That's how we evolved on this planet.
• 18:56
  Philip Pape: But then there's other compounds, and I mentioned Callocurb, who sponsored this episode.
• 19:00
  Philip Pape: It's very fascinating the how something like a bitter food, or we talked about capsaicin, right?
• 19:06
  Philip Pape: Spicy foods, how they, these different compounds activate receptors in your gut that then stimulate the release of GLP1, even if you're not eating the corresponding food.
• 19:18
  Philip Pape: So this is kind of one of those ways we can trick our body a little bit.
• 19:20
  Philip Pape: And it's the mechanism behind some of these supplements, like callow curb that I mentioned earlier.
• 19:26
  Philip Pape: And then when we think of whole foods versus processed foods, you know, solid whole foods that take time to digest also tend to stimulate more GLP1 than liquid calories or rapidly absorb processed foods.
• 19:38
  Philip Pape: I just had a call with a client who is in a fat loss phase now and he loved to have his protein shakes and but is experiencing a little bit of hunger.
• 19:46
  Philip Pape: And he eats mostly whole foods.
• 19:47
  Philip Pape: And I said, look, you know, that protein shake is probably an opportunity to swap it out with some really solid whole food, like a lean meat, for example.
• 19:56
  Philip Pape: But even something like eggs with egg whites, you know, something that will take a little Longer to digest because it's just going to make you feel a little folder.
• 20:02
  Philip Pape: Yeah, you're getting your protein, but you might be missing out on these other opportunities.
• 20:06
  Philip Pape: So the GLP1 can be your friend during fat loss as long as you support it through your food choices, your meal timing, you know, targeted supplementation if that's what you need.
• 20:18
  Philip Pape: And again, this is for people not on medication.
• 20:20
  Philip Pape: Even if you're on those medications, you still want to do these things, if nothing else, than to amplify the process.
• 20:26
  Philip Pape: And also, if you're planning to come off the drugs eventually and supplant those with natural alternatives.
• 20:32
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 20:32
  Philip Pape: So we've covered the big three: ghrelin, leptin, and GLP1.
• 20:36
  Philip Pape: But there are some other hormones and some peptides.
• 20:40
  Philip Pape: I'm talking about natural in your body, right?
• 20:42
  Philip Pape: No supplements here, no nothing external, that support appetite regulation that we never talk about and are hardly ever talked about.
• 20:51
  Philip Pape: So these are pretty cool.
• 20:52
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 20:52
  Philip Pape: Nerd out with me for a second.
• 20:53
  Philip Pape: The first one is called peptide YY or PYY for short.
• 20:58
  Philip Pape: And this is a peptide released from your gut after you eat.
• 21:01
  Philip Pape: Sound familiar?
• 21:02
  Philip Pape: This happens, seems like there's a lot of things that happen based on how we eat, which makes sense because that's our energy source.
• 21:08
  Philip Pape: Especially when you have a meal that is high in protein and fiber.
• 21:10
  Philip Pape: Again, same thing as GLP1.
• 21:12
  Philip Pape: It works alongside GLP1.
• 21:14
  Philip Pape: When PYY is high, you feel satisfied.
• 21:16
  Philip Pape: When you lose weight, it tends to increase.
• 21:18
  Philip Pape: Again, familiar pattern, isn't it?
• 21:20
  Philip Pape: So this is another reason that hunger after a diet is often so intense.
• 21:25
  Philip Pape: Why we like to recover very quickly after a diet.
• 21:28
  Philip Pape: The next one is called CCK, colosysteokinin.
• 21:33
  Philip Pape: And I talked about this in the first episode, I think two episodes ago, two solo episodes ago.
• 21:38
  Philip Pape: This is released when fat and protein get into your small intestine.
• 21:43
  Philip Pape: And this is pretty cool, right?
• 21:44
  Philip Pape: Your whole uh digestive tract gets triggered at different points.
• 21:49
  Philip Pape: And and, you know, you don't have to understand all this necessarily, but it all works together to explain this.
• 21:55
  Philip Pape: So when CCK or when fat and protein go to your small intestine, it releases CCK, it slows down the gastric emptying.
• 22:04
  Philip Pape: In other words, it prevents stuff in your gut from emptying out of your gut, which then makes you feel a little bit fuller, right?
• 22:11
  Philip Pape: Because there's more stuff there, just to simplify it.
• 22:13
  Philip Pape: And these are all signals to your brain.
• 22:15
  Philip Pape: It's one of the reasons that meals with a little bit of fats in there tend to be more satisfying than those without.
• 22:21
  Philip Pape: And a lot of you on keto are like, yeah, I know that.
• 22:23
  Philip Pape: Like high fat meals tend to fill me up.
• 22:25
  Philip Pape: Just so you know, protein is the most satisfying, followed by fat and then followed by carbs.
• 22:31
  Philip Pape: So having the protein and the fat is a fantastic combination for that very reason.
• 22:35
  Philip Pape: The next one is NPY, neuropeptide Y.
• 22:39
  Philip Pape: This is a hunger stimulating signal.
• 22:41
  Philip Pape: Notice we have a little bit on the hunger side, and we have a few of these on the satiety side.
• 22:46
  Philip Pape: They kind of go hand in hand.
• 22:47
  Philip Pape: So when leptin drops, right?
• 22:49
  Philip Pape: Leptin, which is triggered by your fat cells, or when you're stressed, NPY goes up and it drives you to seek high calorie foods.
• 22:58
  Philip Pape: And this is the biological basis of stress eating.
• 23:03
  Philip Pape: Cortisol increases NPY, and then suddenly that ice cream in the freezer, for me, the peanut butter cup ice cream, what the fudge, is calling your name.
• 23:12
  Philip Pape: So that's NPY.
• 23:14
  Philip Pape: And then we have amylen, A M Y-L-I-N, amylen.
• 23:17
  Philip Pape: This is released with insulin and it promotes meal ending satiation, a very specific mechanism.
• 23:24
  Philip Pape: It slows gastric emptying at the end of a meal and it helps you stop eating when you've had enough.
• 23:29
  Philip Pape: So it may not be the end of your meal in your head, but it's the concept of if you eat mindfully and take your time, you give your body enough time to trigger this and feel full when you actually are full rather than overconsume because you're just scarfing down the food.
• 23:45
  Philip Pape: So what's interesting is amylen doesn't cause adaptation, metabolic slowdown, like other appetite suppressing mechanisms too.
• 23:54
  Philip Pape: Whether that's relevant or not, I don't know, but I'm just mentioning that something I learned.
• 23:58
  Philip Pape: So, how does all this connect?
• 24:00
  Philip Pape: Well, when you're in a fat loss phase, almost every one of these signals shifts in the direction that makes you hungrier.
• 24:06
  Philip Pape: Ghrelin up, leptin down, GLP1 down, PYY down, NPY up.
• 24:11
  Philip Pape: Your body is mounting this massive war, this coordinated defense to prevent you from losing more weight.
• 24:18
  Philip Pape: That's what it's trying to do.
• 24:19
  Philip Pape: Okay, that's it.
• 24:19
  Philip Pape: It's not your age, it's not your, you know, perimenopause hormones, it's not any of these other things.
• 24:25
  Philip Pape: Those things may have other factors involved, but this is a massive piece of weight loss resistance, of hunger, of all of these things going on.
• 24:34
  Philip Pape: So if you understand this, it's not meant to discourage you, right?
• 24:37
  Philip Pape: But to empower you because when you know what's happening, you can take actions to counteract it.
• 24:43
  Philip Pape: What are those actions?
• 24:44
  Philip Pape: We've pretty much alluded to them already, but I'm gonna list them real quick.
• 24:46
  Philip Pape: High protein and fiber at every meal to stimulate GLP1, PYY, and CCK, and to suppress Ghrelin.
• 24:53
  Philip Pape: So you gotta keep that protein and fiber high during fat loss.
• 24:56
  Philip Pape: Adequate sleep keeps ghrelin in check.
• 24:59
  Philip Pape: Stress management prevents your NPY from spiking.
• 25:02
  Philip Pape: Resistance training, pretty much for everything, but specifically, it also really helps with leptin sensitivity.
• 25:09
  Philip Pape: Using strategic refeeds can be helpful to temporarily boost your leptin.
• 25:13
  Philip Pape: And then, of course, having consistent meal timing, likely with a decent sized breakfast, to help again with your rhythm of your ghrelin so you don't feel hungry just because you're habitually eating at a certain time and now one day you don't eat at that time.
• 25:28
  Philip Pape: So, okay, it's a lot, but I think it's also super consistent with the fundamentals that we talk about.
• 25:34
  Philip Pape: Quick reminder: I do want you to stay around for a few more minutes because I want to share a protocol you can use the next time you feel hungry between meals.
• 25:44
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 25:44
  Philip Pape: Really helpful tool that I've developed over time with clients, and I think it's gonna be helpful for you.
• 25:48
  Philip Pape: I do want to leave you with something to reframe all of this.
• 25:52
  Philip Pape: I'm a big fan of the the psycho, the behavioral psychology of this stuff, okay?
• 25:57
  Philip Pape: Because a lot of you, be honest with yourself, you think of these hormones as another thing in the way, another obstacle, another, maybe it's an excuse, another thing to blame.
• 26:07
  Philip Pape: And I know a lot of marketers on social media love to blame hormones for everything, okay?
• 26:12
  Philip Pape: And you can, you know, personify these things, like say, oh, ghrelin is this the I think uh Dr.
• 26:19
  Philip Pape: Oz back in the day called it the gremlin or something, right?
• 26:22
  Philip Pape: The enemy that's making you hungry.
• 26:23
  Philip Pape: Leptin is the enemy that prevents you losing weight, you know, GLP1, whatever.
• 26:29
  Philip Pape: So here's how I want you to think about it.
• 26:32
  Philip Pape: Okay, these hormones are super valuable and super important in keeping you alive and helping you thrive as a human being.
• 26:40
  Philip Pape: And and therefore, we can use them as signals, as data, in when we think like an engineer and have curiosity about them.
• 26:48
  Philip Pape: Ghrelin makes sure that you eat enough to survive.
• 26:51
  Philip Pape: Leptin is kind of like your energy status to help your body allocate your resources the right way.
• 26:57
  Philip Pape: GOP1 helps you stop eating before you overdo it, hence why the drugs work so well at preventing you from eating as much.
• 27:06
  Philip Pape: So the problem is in the hormones.
• 27:08
  Philip Pape: Hormones are not the problem.
• 27:09
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 27:10
  Philip Pape: The problem, in my opinion, is that the modern food environment, your stress, your lack of sleep, the aggressive dieting strategies, and how this is all pushed and marketed, and all of this bad information online telling people to do these things are pushing the hormones into a state that is on the edge or into an extreme that they weren't, I'll say designed for.
• 27:35
  Philip Pape: I mean, they would design is a bad word.
• 27:37
  Philip Pape: We've evolved to have these hormones, they're doing what they do, but you're living in a state where they are stressed to the max and pushed to these extremes.
• 27:46
  Philip Pape: So the solution, of course, isn't to, you know, try to fight against that, but create the conditions, create the environment where these things are at least working, if not optimally, not to that level of an extreme.
• 28:00
  Philip Pape: Does that make sense?
• 28:01
  Philip Pape: So we already mentioned those things.
• 28:02
  Philip Pape: I'm not going to repeat them with the protein, fiber, sleep, stress, all of that stuff, resistance training, all of that is fantastic.
• 28:09
  Philip Pape: But the reframe is that your hormones aren't the problem, that they're a source of feedback to you.
• 28:17
  Philip Pape: That when we talk about listening to your body, that is a big piece of it.
• 28:20
  Philip Pape: And it's not like you have to measure the hormones, right?
• 28:23
  Philip Pape: It's the symptoms that come from the hormones that are telling you what's going on.
• 28:27
  Philip Pape: And then you understand, okay, when I'm in this phase and I feel this way, this is why.
• 28:30
  Philip Pape: And this is what I can do to either dial it back a little bit or, you know, psychologically deal with it in the way I need to.
• 28:37
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 28:38
  Philip Pape: Remember what I promised at the beginning: a simple protocol for handling hunger that helps you distinguish physical hunger from psychological hunger.
• 28:44
  Philip Pape: I'm going to walk you through exactly how to do that in just a moment.
• 28:49
  Philip Pape: So stick around.
• 28:50
  Philip Pape: Hey, this is Philip.
• 28:50
  Philip Pape: And a quick reminder about today's sponsor, Calocurb.
• 28:53
  Philip Pape: If hunger has been the hardest part of your fat loss phase, even when everything else is dialed in, check out CaloCurb.
• 28:59
  Philip Pape: It's a natural GLP1 activating supplement with clinical data showing 40% fewer cravings and 30% less hunger within one hour, leading to 18% fewer calories, so you can stick to your fat loss plan.
• 29:13
  Philip Pape: Go to witsandweights.com slash calocurb for 10% off your first order.
• 29:18
  Philip Pape: Link is in the show notes.
• 29:19
  Philip Pape: That's witsandweights.com slash calocurb.
• 29:22
  Philip Pape: All right, here is that hunger protocol that I promised.
• 29:25
  Philip Pape: I call it the hunger wave check.
• 29:28
  Philip Pape: Okay, hunger wave check.
• 29:30
  Philip Pape: The next time that hunger hits you between your meals, okay, which is very common during fat loss, instead of just reaching for food, I want you to do this.
• 29:39
  Philip Pape: So this is this is intention, this is mindfulness.
• 29:42
  Philip Pape: First, I want you to rate your hunger in the moment on a scale of one to ten.
• 29:46
  Philip Pape: That's it.
• 29:46
  Philip Pape: Just whatever that means to you.
• 29:48
  Philip Pape: One is the least hungry, ten is just ravenous crazy hunger, right?
• 29:52
  Philip Pape: Because most people don't even stop to think about it.
• 29:54
  Philip Pape: Most people don't quantify it.
• 29:56
  Philip Pape: They just feel hungry and they react.
• 29:57
  Philip Pape: We're not going to do that.
• 29:58
  Philip Pape: We're going to put a number on it.
• 30:00
  Philip Pape: One to ten.
• 30:01
  Philip Pape: Second, I want you to set a timer.
• 30:03
  Philip Pape: Go on your iPhone or Android, open the timer app, and set a timer for 15 minutes.
• 30:10
  Philip Pape: And after you set that timer, I want you to go drink some water or drink some tea or do something mildly engaging, a distraction.
• 30:17
  Philip Pape: Answer some emails, play your ukulele, take a short walk, whatever.
• 30:22
  Philip Pape: It's only 15 minutes.
• 30:23
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 30:24
  Philip Pape: Third, when your timer goes off, I want you to reach your hunger again.
• 30:28
  Philip Pape: Did it go up?
• 30:29
  Philip Pape: Did it stay the same or did it drop?
• 30:31
  Philip Pape: That's it.
• 30:31
  Philip Pape: Now, here's why this works.
• 30:33
  Philip Pape: That's all I'm telling you to do.
• 30:34
  Philip Pape: This is a this is why it works.
• 30:36
  Philip Pape: Ghrelin, your hunger hormone, operates in waves.
• 30:40
  Philip Pape: We talked about meal time and consistency.
• 30:42
  Philip Pape: So you can take advantage of that.
• 30:44
  Philip Pape: Graylin peaks about for for like 20 to 30 minutes when it's trying to tell you to eat.
• 30:51
  Philip Pape: And then it subsides even if you don't eat.
• 30:55
  Philip Pape: So if your hunger dropped significantly because you did this exercise, okay, and you may need to do 20 minutes instead of 15, whatever.
• 31:03
  Philip Pape: If your hunger dropped based on your rating before and after, that was a ghrelin wave.
• 31:09
  Philip Pape: That's what I mean by wave.
• 31:10
  Philip Pape: And therefore, it it was physical, but it was also temporary and just hormone-driven.
• 31:16
  Philip Pape: But if your hunger stayed the same or went up, then your body's like, no, I actually really need to eat right now.
• 31:22
  Philip Pape: And it could be because you normally eat at that time and you seriously do.
• 31:26
  Philip Pape: You should be eating, which goes back to, hey, let's keep our meals consistent.
• 31:30
  Philip Pape: This also interrupts the autopilot that drives many of you with emotional eating, with boredom-based eating.
• 31:37
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 31:37
  Philip Pape: There's many causes of emotional eating, but these are big ones.
• 31:40
  Philip Pape: Because the pause itself creates awareness.
• 31:43
  Philip Pape: And I'm all for awareness across the board.
• 31:46
  Philip Pape: Now I'm going to give you a bonus tip.
• 31:47
  Philip Pape: A bonus tip is to log these moments on a piece of paper, in your phone, whatever, in a diary.
• 31:54
  Philip Pape: Just a quick note.
• 31:55
  Philip Pape: You say 3 p.m., I started at seven, hunger, and it dropped to three after 20 minutes.
• 32:01
  Philip Pape: That's it, like before and after.
• 32:02
  Philip Pape: Now you could add other things like how you felt, what emotions are going through your head, because maybe there are other triggers going on.
• 32:08
  Philip Pape: But over time, you're going to see patterns.
• 32:09
  Philip Pape: It's like logging your food.
• 32:10
  Philip Pape: It's like logging your training.
• 32:12
  Philip Pape: It's that's that's what we do, guys.
• 32:14
  Philip Pape: That's what engineering is all about.
• 32:16
  Philip Pape: So maybe 3 p.m.
• 32:17
  Philip Pape: every day is always a Grayland spike, but maybe it correlates with stressful meetings.
• 32:22
  Philip Pape: And that date is just a gold mine to understand your own hunger signals.
• 32:26
  Philip Pape: So I want you to try it this week, see what you learn about yourself.
• 32:29
  Philip Pape: And that's it for today's episode.
• 32:31
  Philip Pape: On the next one, we're gonna take everything we covered today and look at the two biggest external factors that disrupt these hormones, which then cause things like extra belly fat and sugar cravings and lots of other things that none of us like.
• 32:44
  Philip Pape: And if you've ever noticed that you eat more when, for example, you're tired or you're stressed, we're gonna talk about why and what to do about it.
• 32:50
  Philip Pape: Until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights.
• 32:54
  Philip Pape: And the next time hunger hits hard in the middle of a dieting phase, you'll know exactly what's happening and what to do.
• 33:01
  Philip Pape: This is Philip Ape, and I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.