Leptin Resistance Diet: The Food Plan For This Metabolic Problem

If you’re experiencing unexpected weight gain or struggling to lose weight (or keep it off), and you’re looking for answers, it can be helpful to explore how things work behind the scenes with your appetite, digestion, metabolism, and other inner workings of the body. 

There are several different factors that can contribute to weight gain and/or weight loss resistance. One of these factors is leptin resistance, which occurs when our cells fail to respond properly to the satiety hormone leptin. (1) Among other functions, leptin plays a leading role in telling the brain when you’re full. 

Leptin resistance can cause you to feel hungry even when your body has sufficient fat stores, and therefore to eat more than you need to. 

But what causes leptin resistance? The body rarely just does things randomly, and leptin resistance is no exception. Leptin resistance is a sign that something is overall amiss with your hormones and your metabolism. And like any other kind of hormonal dysregulation, we have the power to help improve the problem with diet, lifestyle, and other holistic strategies. 

Let’s explore the concept of a leptin resistance diet, whether or not this framework makes sense for you, and a few other tips and tricks for regulating leptin levels. 

What Is The Leptin Resistance Diet?

The leptin resistance diet is a general dietary framework that aims to improve or correct leptin resistance by prioritizing foods and eating patterns that improve the root causes of the hormonal dysregulation, and avoiding those that can worsen or exacerbate it. 

Many components of the leptin resistance diet, like avoiding inflammatory foods, are suitable as overall health strategies whether or not you have leptin resistance and whether or not you are trying to lose weight. 

However, if you don’t have leptin resistance, and if you’re not looking to better manage your body weight, there likely isn’t a need to follow this specific diet closely. 

It’s also important to remember that multiple different factors may be behind weight loss challenges. Focusing exclusively on leptin resistance without investigating other potential imbalances may cause you to miss something that would make a bigger difference. 

There are some testing options, like a blood test for fasting leptin, that can help you and your functional medicine practitioner (conventional doctors don’t generally order this test) determine whether or not leptin resistance is at play for you.  

Leptin Resistance Dietary Guidelines

The leptin resistance diet emphasizes when and how you eat as much as what you eat. There are five key rules of the diet, based on what researchers know about how the leptin signaling system works: 

Eat a high protein breakfast. Aim for 20-30 grams of protein at breakfast. This is meant to help balance your blood sugar levels, reduce cravings, and kickstart your energy levels and metabolism for the day ahead.

Avoid food after dinner. Fasting overnight allows the body to burn fat and work on general healing, repair, and hormonal balance. Aim to stop eating at least three hours before going to sleep for optimal repair and fat burning. 

Stick to three meals per day. Eat a nourishing breakfast, lunch, and dinner, without snacking in between. Eating in between meals can block leptin from reaching the receptors in your brain, and can prevent your body from burning fat. 

Be mindful of portion control. Leptin doesn’t work instantly, and eating too fast can cause you to go overboard before you realize that you’re satisfied. Try to eat slowly and mindfully, and give your body time to realize that it’s full rather than eating until you feel stuffed. 

Cut down on carbohydrates. The leptin resistance diet doesn’t advise cutting out carbs altogether, but rather limiting your intake. This is especially relevant in the context of our modern American diet which is very carb-heavy, and I would certainly recommend avoiding refined and processed carbohydrates specifically. 

Here are a few more keys to following a leptin resistance diet. 

High Protein

The leptin resistance diet emphasizes a high protein intake, largely because protein generally helps to keep you feeling full and satisfied, and it helps your body burn more calories compared to a diet higher in carbohydrates. 

The following ratio is suggested for all meals (but don’t make yourself crazy trying to follow this exactly – it’s just a helpful guideline): 

40% protein

30% fat

30% carbohydrates 

Of course, it’s important to consider the quality of the individual foods and not just the types of macronutrients (protein, fat, carbs) they contain. Not all fats, carbohydrates, and high protein foods are created equally!  

Focus on Fiber

While the leptin resistance diet recommends keeping overall carb intake to a minimum, it does emphasize the importance of one type of carbohydrate: fiber. High fiber foods can help to keep you feeling more full for longer. Keep in mind that, depending on the current state of your gut, some people do experience digestive symptoms when consuming too much fiber. Always listen to your body.  

Anti-Inflammatory Foods

I always recommend eating to reduce inflammation, leptin resistance or not, for overall health. Inflammation is at the root of all kinds of chronic illness and hormonal dysregulation, including leptin resistance. (2) Some of my favorite anti-inflammatory foods that you can enjoy on a leptin resistance diet include: 

Avocados

Extra virgin olive oil

Berries

Turmeric

Fatty, omega-3-rich fish like salmon and sardines  

Foods To Avoid

Basically, you want to avoid inflammatory foods. Again, this is good advice no matter what kind of dietary framework you’re following or what your health profile looks like! Some of the most inflammatory foods you’ll want to avoid are: 

Processed meats and other processed foods

Fried foods

Refined carbohydrates (breads, cereals, crackers, etc.) 

Sugar

Alcohol

Excess red meat

LISTEN: Leptin Resistance Deep Dive, Why Losing Weight Can Seem Impossible, How To Cultivate Healthy Boundaries, Stress Management Tips + Our Current Healthy Obsessions (Ask Me Anything Episode! Special Guests: Functional Medicine Team) | Dr. Will Cole 

Intermittent Fasting May Also Help

The leptin resistance diet already incorporates some degree of intermittent fasting by restricting eating after dinner (not eating for at least 3 hours before bed). Some people may benefit from a more advanced intermittent fasting routine, as intermittent fasting has been shown to help improve leptin sensitivity, promote fat loss, and reduce inflammation. (3, 4)

A simple way to get started is to gradually start to stretch the amount of time between your last meal of the day and your first meal of the following day. I like to recommend that beginners eat roughly between the hours of 8 AM and 6 PM, which gives you a 14 hour fast. 

A popular protocol once you’re comfortable with this is the 16/8 schedule, where you fast for 16 hours and eat within an 8 hour window. Some people may choose to do this every day, every other day, or once or twice per week. 

Be cautious with intermittent fasting if you have any issues with blood sugar control. You may want to speak with your practitioner to see if fasting is appropriate for you. You can also learn more in my intermittent fasting guide.  

Additional Lifestyle Habits

There are also a few lifestyle habits that may help to improve leptin sensitivity. Again, these are strategies that also help with overall hormonal balance, metabolism, and wellbeing. They include: 

Prioritizing sleep (your body requires adequate sleep in order to properly burn fat, regulate hormones, and work on healing and repair). 

Practicing stress management techniques like mindfulness, meditation, breathwork, and/or yoga, which help to reduce inflammation and keep hormones balanced 

Implement an exercise routine that you’ll stick to. Regular exercise also helps to keep inflammation at bay and supports a healthy metabolism and hormonal function. 

Consider a detox strategy, to help rid your body of toxins that may be interfering with your hormonal system.  

What About Leptin Supplements?

“Leptin supplements” don’t actually contain leptin – and remember that leptin resistance is not a lack of the leptin hormone but an issue with the body’s response to the leptin we’re already producing, so taking a supplemental form of the hormone probably wouldn’t be helpful. 

Instead, supplements that are marketed using the word “leptin” generally contain herbs or other ingredients that can help reduce inflammation, encourage fat burning, and/or improve leptin sensitivity. 

I can’t speak to the quality or utility of all of these supplements as they’re all a bit different, but this category of supplements is probably not the first place I would turn. Herbs and other supplements can definitely be helpful as part of a comprehensive strategy for regulating hormones and metabolism (berberine is one of my favorites), but the term “leptin” on the bottle doesn’t really tell me what I need to know about a product. 

A functional medicine practitioner can also help you put together a supplement plan that’s best for you as an individual.  

READ NEXT: How Inflammation Impacts Weight Gain And Your Health 

Getting To The Root Cause

At our telehealth clinic, we work with patients every day who are struggling with weight management, and we recognize that challenges with weight are always a symptom of an underlying issue. If you’re wondering about leptin resistance and other possible root causes of your weight loss resistance, our functional medicine team can help you get to the bottom of it.

As one of the first functional medicine telehealth clinics in the world, we provide webcam health consultations for people around the globe.