Research
Hormonal
Adiposity signals, specifically leptin and insulin, act as afferent information to the brain to regulate long-term body fat levels by modulating the sensitivity of meal-terminating signals.
Your body uses leptin and insulin to tell your brain how much fat you have. When you lose weight, these signals drop, making you less sensitive to fullness cues and driving you to eat more. This is a biological defense mechanism, not a character flaw. Recognizing this helps reduce guilt and allows for more sustainable, long-term strategies that respect these biological signals.
StrongSupportsHIGH confidence
At least two circulating compounds meet the criteria for being 'adiposity' signals to the brain, the pancreatic hormone insulin and the adipose tissue hormone leptin... The secretion of each is highly correlated with adiposity... and manipulation of the levels of either locally within the brain causes predictable changes in food intake and body weight.
Why this rating
Review of extensive literature on hormone physiology.
Source
Food Intake and the Regulation of Body Weight
Stephen C. Woods et al. · Annual Review of Psychology · 2000
DOI 10.1146/annurev.psych.51.1.255
narrative_reviewCited 329×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
- Long-term body weight regulation is achieved through the control of meal size rather than meal frequency or timing, mediated by adiposity signals (leptin and insulin) that modulate sensitivity to meal-ending signals like CCK.Strong
- Meal timing and frequency are largely determined by environmental cues, learning, and opportunity rather than immediate physiological energy deficits.Good
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