Research

Hormonal

Completion of a 24-week milk-based low-energy liquid diet (LELD) in adults with severe obesity significantly reduces the leptin-to-adiponectin ratio (LAR), indicating decreased insulin resistance, with the magnitude of LAR reduction being proportional to the percentage of weight lost.

If you have severe obesity, a structured, low-calorie milk-based diet for 24 weeks can significantly improve your metabolic health markers, specifically by lowering the ratio of leptin to adiponectin, which indicates better insulin sensitivity. This improvement is directly tied to how much weight you lose. However, be aware that adherence is difficult, with high dropout rates, and long-term weight maintenance is not guaranteed, so this intervention should be viewed as a powerful metabolic reset rather than a permanent lifestyle solution.

ModerateSupportsMEDIUM confidence
Patients with severe obesity who completed a milk-based LELD had a substantial reduction in LAR, consistent with decreased insulin resistance and cardiovascular risk, proportional to weight loss.
Mohammed Rafey et al. · Frontiers in Nutrition · 2022

Why this rating

Single-center, prospective observational cohort study with no control group and high attrition (56.7% dropout), limiting causal inference and generalizability.

Source

Changes in the Leptin to Adiponectin Ratio Are Proportional to Weight Loss After Meal Replacement in Adults With Severe Obesity

Mohammed Rafey et al. · Frontiers in Nutrition · 2022

DOI 10.3389/fnut.2022.845574

cohort · n=52Cited 8×
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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