Research
Hormonal
Weight loss reduces circulating levels of leptin and insulin disproportionately to fat mass loss, signaling energy depletion to the hypothalamus and increasing appetite.
Your body uses hormones like leptin and insulin to signal energy status. After weight loss, these hormones drop more than expected, telling your brain you are starving, which increases hunger and drives you to eat more.
GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
Fasting levels of both hormones decrease with the decline in adiposity that occurs with weight loss... leptin and insulin are actually reduced to a greater extent than would be expected for the amount of fat mass... The integrated adiposity signal conveyed to the brain is that the total energy reserves are low.
Why this rating
Supported by multiple human and animal studies cited in the review.
Source
The role for adipose tissue in weight regain after weight loss
Paul S. MacLean et al. · Obesity Reviews · 2015
DOI 10.1111/obr.12255
narrative_reviewCited 204×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
- Weight loss induces adipocyte shrinkage and metabolic adaptations that create a persistent biological drive to regain weight by increasing nutrient clearance efficiency and lowering energy expenditure, creating an 'energy gap' that promotes overeating.Good
- Smaller adipocytes resulting from weight loss exhibit higher insulin sensitivity and enhanced nutrient clearance capacity, which signals energy depletion to the brain and promotes the storage of ingested energy.Good
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