Can anyone else relate to any of this!

[Pauly]

There might not be much of a physiological difference how you get your deficit, but there are definite psychological issues.

Appetite is the big one which ends up wrecking so many diets. Although not yet fully understood, from what is known there is clearly more than just leptin involved in regulating appetite. The hormone Ghrelin is a powerful stimulus to eat and essentially, more is produced when the stomach is empty. Therefore, obtaining a calorie deficit through pure starvation will result in higher ghrelin levels (as opposed to exercise) and a stronger hunger signal. Hence the psychological issues.

Add to this the appetite suppressant effect of exercise. Consume your usual maintenance calories but with extra cardio performed 2x/day (500cal each session) to produce a 1000cal deficit and you also get a powerful appetite suppressant effect.

The bottom line is its probably beneficial in the long run to do some cardio to help generate your calorie defecit. The cardio will also make you fitter so (assuming you dont overdo it) you will recover better between weights sessions. Starving yourself will result in less energy for your weights sessions. Cardio is a tried and tested way of cutting up.

My £0.02

 

[stevie]

Quote[/b] ]but in the end most of the negative effects of starvation/dieting will all associate with leptin.

just out of curiosity, what would happen if you could keep your leptin levels high throughout the dieting period (ie you managed to get hold of as much pure recombinant leptin as you wanted etc)? Would this prevent only the 'negative' psychological effects, or would it have influnce on the 'negative' physiological effects? ie in theroy, would you be able to loose weight faster? or prevent reaching a plateau? etc

(this info is undoubtedly out there for me to read...i just dont have the time at the moment)

 

[Pauly]

Quote[/b] ]just out of curiosity, what would happen if you could keep your leptin levels high throughout the dieting period (ie you managed to get hold of as much pure recombinant leptin as you wanted etc)?

You would be very very broke. The leptin dosages used in clinical trials were running at about $1000/day.

Quote[/b] ]Would this prevent only the 'negative' psychological effects, or would it have influnce on the 'negative' physiological effects? ie in theroy, would you be able to loose weight faster? or prevent reaching a plateau? etc

Injecting sufficient leptin to 'normalise' your levels whilst dieting would help reduce most of the physiological effects of the diet (reduced thyroid output and metabolic rate, reduced protein synthesis, reduced T levels, elevated cortisol, reduced GH output etc.). The major psychological issue affecting a diet (hunger) would be suppressed to a point with normalised leptin levels, although as I posted earlier leptin is not the only contributing factor to hunger so could not be used to completely suppress appetite.

Unfortunately leptin is not the only feedback mechanism involved in regulating the things that negatively affect a diet (see above) although it is undoubtedly important. Therefore injecting enough leptin to normalise your levels whilst dieting would alleviate some but not all of the negative effects of dieting. However it would certainly be an improvement and would allow you to lose fat faster (and maintain more muscle) than if your leptin levels were too low.

Hope this clarifies some things for you.

PS - Lyles site is the dogs bollox. Ive learnt so much about how the body responds to nutrition from him (not forgetting all that stuff about how muscles grow from Bryan

)