Microblog: Fasting Series – Reducing Ghrelin

How do we heal our hormones and reduce hunger?

👨🏻‍⚕️As Dr. Jason Fung wrote, “Obesity, is a hormonal imbalance of hyperinsulinemia. The main reason we eat more calories is not lack of willpower, it’s hunger. And hunger and satiety are functions of our hormones. You can decide what to eat, but you can’t decide to be less hungry. In the long term, it is the amount of hunger that determines how much you eat.”

❓So how do we reduce hunger?

🍕Eliminating processed junk foods and using intermittent fasting regulates the hormones that control your appetite.

🍽Eating nothing shrinks your appetite. It does not slow your metabolism.

🧗🏻‍♀️The hormone ghrelin also known as the hunger hormone, turns on our appetites. We’ve all heard to regulate hunger and blood sugar, we should eat often. But we know this by now, that eating all the time does not turn off hunger or lower ghrelin. In fact, it makes us hungrier. For so many years, we’ve all tried dieting and cutting calories to reduce hunger. We’ve tried to fight through the hunger but it’s hormonal and until we heal our hormones and digestion, we’re fighting an uphill battle.⠀

❓So how do we lower ghrelin? One way is with fasting.⠀

🥩This is likely why Carnivore, with the natural feast and fast period, has so many healing powers. Yes, purist Carnivores are anti-fasting but if we break it down, carnivores when not feasting, are fasting. Most carnivores eat OMAD or 2 meals a day. The rest of the time they are naturally intermittent fasting. They are essentially lowering ghrelin and giving their digestive systems a rest.⠀

🤤Eating increases appetite. This is why when we have no appetite but start to eat, we can finish a 16oz ribeye.⠀

🤔This may be why for the life-long calorie restrictors, they initially may gain weight on carnivore. Some of the cells might have been starving for nutrients but some of it might be disrupted hormones. Eventually the (satiety) hormones should balance and an all meat diet should slowly heal the digestive process. Overtime our weight will reach a homeostatic point and we will shed excess weight.⠀

❓But what if you need support in the interim? A catalyst to help the process?