[Outsmart your] hunger hormones: how to shed pounds, stay full, be healthy & keep your appetite in check with these new eating - New Weight-Loss Research

Shape, Feb, 2003 by Robin Vitetta-Miller

If you're determined to lose weight, but find yourself giving in to an irresistible urge to raid the refrigerator, it's probably not a lack of willpower that's sabotaging your efforts. Scientists recently identified a new hormone called ghrelin (sounds suspiciously like "gremlin") that fires up our appetite when our stomachs are empty and actually drives us to eat-eat-eat!

Researchers stumbled on the hormone's appetite-stimulating properties in late 2000 while evaluating the hormone levels of obese patients who had lost weight. In this study, ghrelin spiked before meals, then plunged after the study subjects ate, suggesting that ghrelin triggers ordinary mealtime hunger, says David E. Cummings, M.D., associate professor of medicine at the University of Washington in Seattle. "Ghrelin levels were higher at all time points throughout the day and night in those who had lost weight on low-calorie diets, an indication that a rise in ghrelin is one of the tools the body uses to fight against weight loss," he explains.

An equal-opportunity gremlin

While ghrelin appears to rise no matter how much you weigh when you begin dieting or what method you use to lose weight, researchers measured some of the highest levels in people with anorexia nervosa, says Cummings. Apparently the spike in ghrelin represents the body's attempt to fight the life-threatening weight loss that results from psychological problems, he adds.

By way of contrast, ghrelin levels "were profoundly suppressed in people who had lost massive amounts of weight after gastric bypass surgery," says Cummings. "This suggests that at least some of the weight loss typically achieved with this procedure may arise because ghrelin production is silenced."

Researchers theorize it's a rise in ghrein levels and the associated drive to eat that makes long-term weight loss so hard to achieve: When we restrict calories, ghrelin jumps in and encourages us to eat. With an appetite-boosting hormone like this coursing through our bodies, it's no wonder we binge when we undereat!

Defending the hormone from hell

Ghrelin may have been helpful in the feast-or-famine days. According to scientists, the hormone was probably Mother Nature's way of prompting us to eat when food was only occasionally abundant so we could survive during the next famine. Today, with fast food around every corner, we hardly need another incentive to eat! (Although we have to admit it is nice to finally be able to partially explain those occasional dietary lapses by something besides our lack of willpower.) You know that time you skipped meals to fit into your party dress or bikini -- then got so hungry you ate the whole (cake, pie, enchilada)? It wasn't your fault -- honest. Chrelin made you do it.

While research on ghrelin is still preliminary, in time, scientists may discover this hormone does something besides make us out-of-control eaters. "Ghrelin is an important hormone, but it's just one of many that regulate appetite," says Xavier Pi-Sunyer, M.D., director of the New York Obesity Research Center at St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital Center and professor of medicine at Columbia University. "It may be a meal initiator since levels rise just before eating and drop immediately after, but more research is needed to understand the role it plays in regulating food intake."

Fortunately, it's easy as pie to outsmart ghrelin and prevent it from triggering a feeding frenzy. From what we know now, it seems that all you have to do to keep ghrelin (and related "hunger hormones") down is to stay moderately full and avoid getting really hungry.

Not surprisingly, then, the best way to regulate your appetite and still lose weight is to eat six healthful, lowfat mini-meals a day (or "graze"), experts say. "Frequent eating is linked to lower body fat, less stress hormones and less insulin response," says Dan Benardot, Ph.D., R.D., associate dean of research for the College of Health and Human Sciences at Georgia State University, Atlanta, who recommends eating every three hours or so to stay satiated and energized.

The many fringe benefits of grazing

In addition, grazing can encourage better eating habits, says sports nutritionist Nancy Clark, M.S., R.D., author of Nancy Clark's Sports Nutrition Guidebook, Second Edition (Human Kinetics, 1997). "Because grazing keeps you full, it makes it easier to avoid the extreme hunger that triggers bingeing on high-fat foods like bacon and high-carb foods like cakes and cookies. With grazing, instead of reaching for the carrot cake, you reach for the carrots. Instead of diving into a slice of apple pie, you choose a fresh, juicy apple," says Clark.

As well as helping you stay full and lose weight, grazing can discourage undereating -- another major (if highly underrated) cause of weight gain, says weight-loss counselor Katherine Tallmadge, M.A., R.D., author of Diet Simple (LifeLine Press, 2002). "If you skip meals -- especially breakfast -- you are more likely to get really hungry and eat the first thing you see," she explains.