Insulin is secreted when you eat food, especially foods high in sugar, and it stores energy from food as fat in your body.  Leptin is the hormone that allows your body to use the energy from fat.  Interestingly, what influences leptin is the amount of fat you have on your body.  The more fat you have the more leptin will be available, so you can burn off the fat.  But here’s the catch 22, as you burn off unwanted body fat and your stored fat decreases, it lowers your leptin levels.

Essentially as you lose more weight and get leaner, your leptin level gets lower, which makes burning fat and losing weight more difficult.  Lower leptin levels also decrease your energy level making you feel sluggish and unmotivated to do much of anything.  It’s a dilemma especially in modern times, but it makes sense when you look at it from an ancestral survival point of view. Lack of fat storage is seen as potential energy loss and hence a threat to your body’s survival, so your body knows to down regulate everything and conserve energy; which also means keeping your fat intact.

Fortunately (for most of us), we don’t have to worry about food scarcity which is absolutely wonderful. However, having modern conveniences and access to food 24/7 has caused an over indulgence of unhealthy foods leading to hormonal problems - namely insulin and leptin - and resulting in excessive weight and fat gain.
The good news is that cleaning up your diet by eating whole foods, eliminating refined foods, consuming proper ratios of macronutrients (protein, carbs and fat as recommended in my Lean Body Diet), and including exercise on a regular basis will fix the majority of your hormonal problems and enable you to effectively lose weight and burn off unwanted fat.

However, if you’ve been working out and following the proper diet plan and have stopped seeing results, it may be because your leptin levels are too low.
Leptin for the most part only becomes an issue when your weight loss and fat reduction stalls after fixing your diet and you’ve been exercising on a regular basis for a while.  If you’ve been following a lower carbohydrate diet and restricting your carbohydrate intake to 100 - 150 g. or less per day, you may have lowered your leptin to a point that your body is not able to effectively burn fat.

Although ineffective leptin function has more to do with low overall calorie intake than just low carbohydrate intake, for the most part, following a carb restricted diet will lower your total caloric intake as a result and potentially make your leptin ineffective.

If this is the case, one of the best ways to boost your leptin back into action, so it can start burning off fat again, is by increasing your carbohydrate intake for one to two days out of the week.  Some people call this a cheat day, but I like to think of it as more of a carb reload day.  You’re still eating high quality foods (not junk food) with good sources of nutrients, just foods that are higher in carbohydrate content.  I would strongly recommend staying away from refined carbohydrate foods and still stick to whole foods like (peeled) potatoes, sweet potatoes and rice that have a dense carbohydrate content without the potential negative effects like gluten (wheat) and anti-nutrients (phytates).

The amount of carbohydrate you should eat will vary according to each individual.  It depends on many variables such as your carbohydrate tolerance, your activity level and your body fat composition.  In general, the leaner and more active you are, the more carbohydrates you can consume on your reload day.  Also the more you restrict carbohydrates on a regular basis, the more you can consume carbs on your reload day as well.  There’s always a delicate balance of science and art behind every diet and this is no different.  It’ll more than likely take a few trial and errors to find out what works best for you.  In general, I find that the majority of people do fine with one carb reload day per week or two consecutive carb reload days every 10 - 12 days.  And the carbohydrate intake can range from 250g up to 500g a day.  

So if you’ve stopped progressing, even though your diet is really good and your fitness regimen is solid, you may be suffering from low leptin levels.  If so, give carb reloading a try.  A little boost in your calories by increasing your carbohydrate intake may just be what you need to kick start your fat burning and weight loss again.

But What if a Cheat Day (carb reload) Doesn’t Work?

If you’ve been on many different diets and your weight has gone up and down like a roller coaster you may have what I call metabolic derangement. The name sounds serious, but basically it just means that your hormones are not functioning optimally, in which case doing a cheat day once a week won’t do you any good. In fact, it can make the situation worse. But don’t worry if you’ve cleaned up your diet by eating whole foods and eliminated refined foods along with doing exercise on a regular basis, you’re well on your way to fixing your hormonal problems. But the process of fixing your hormones takes time, and during that time your fat loss progress will be slow.

But there is another way.

Although I’m usually not a fan of supplements, I think in certain situations it’s appropriate. And this is one of them. See, you’re already doing all that needs to be done to help you get leaner, healthier and more fit, but not seeing any results while your body is fixing itself can be really discouraging. And the last thing I want you to do is quit because you haven’t seen any results.  Which is why I think this supplement will be very helpful of you. The supplement I’m talking about combines six natural herbal extracts to help your body re-sensitize your leptin hormones so you can start burning fat immediately.  Now let me be clear, this isn’t some magic pill. Remember, there’s no such thing. You need to do be eating a clean diet and exercising if you want to see results. BUT this supplement will help you optimize your leptin hormone so that you can re-ignite your fat burning process.  If you’ve stagnated in your weight loss journey, and you’ve been doing everything right, this supplement may be just what you need to break through the plateau.