Body fat loss stuck on hold? Can't seem to lose that last little bit of fat?
This may be the problem.......
Artificial Sweeteners will over stimulate the hormones that make you hungry and create a resistance too the hormones that suppress hunger...... IT'S A DOUBLE EDGED SWORD!!!
Contrary to popular belief, studies have found that artificial sweeteners such as aspartame can stimulate your appetite, increase carbohydrate cravings, and stimulate fat storage and weight gain. In one of the most recent of such studies, saccharin and aspartame were found to cause greater weight gain than sugar.
Aspartame is perhaps one of the most problematic. It is primarily made up of aspartic acid and phenylalanine. The phenylalanine has been synthetically modified to carry a methyl group, which provides the majority of the sweetness. That phenylalanine methyl bond, called a methyl ester, is very weak, which allows the methyl group on the phenylalanine to easily break off and form methanol.
You may have heard the claim that aspartame is harmless because methanol is also found in fruits and vegetables. However, in fruits and vegetables, the methanol is firmly bonded to pectin, allowing it to be safely passed through your digestive tract. Not so with the methanol created by aspartame; there it’s not bonded to anything that can help eliminate it from your body.
Methanol acts as a Trojan horse; it's carried into susceptible tissues in your body, like your brain and bone marrow, where the alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) enzyme converts it into formaldehyde, which wreaks havoc with sensitive proteins and DNA. All animals EXCEPT HUMANS have a protective mechanism that allows methanol to be broken down into harmless formic acid. This is why toxicology testing on animals is a flawed model. It doesn't fully apply to people.
Now a little education on the two hormones that artificial sweeteners effect.
A lot is known about what causes obesity. The simplest explanation is that the genes that have protected us from famines for millions of years are at the core of the cause of obesity. These powerful biochemical systems are centered on a small area in the middle of the brain called the hypothalamus. A specialized area in the hypothalamus, called the arcuate nucleus, is where the signals that control metabolic rate, hunger and satiety are located.
In the arcuate nucleus are two cells types. One cell is the NPY/AGRP (Neuropeptide Y/Agouti Related Protein) cell. This is the hunger cell. If it is stimulated you feel hungry and your metabolic rate drops. The other cell is the POMC (Proopiomelanocortin) cell. This is the satiety cell. If it is stimulated you feel full and your metabolic rate increases.
The two major hormones that control the hunger and satiety cells are ghrelin and leptin. Ghrelin is produced by the stomach and travels to the brain where it turns on the hunger cell and turns off the satiety cell. Leptin is produced by the fat cells of the body and travels to the brain where it turns on the satiety cell and turns off the hunger cell. When you are obese you have lots of fat cells and thus your leptin levels are high. The high leptin levels in combination with high insulin levels turn off the stomach cells that make ghrelin so your ghrelin levels are low. Now if that seems backward, your right. The problem is that high leptin levels over time make the satiety cell insensitive to leptin and low ghrelin levels make the hunger cell hypersensitive to ghrelin. The result is that even though the leptin levels are high and the ghrelin levels are low, the hunger cells are turned on and the satiety cells are turned off.
This is exactly the situation that occurs in a famine, hunger cells on and satiety cells off. So if you are obese, even though you have plenty of fat stores, the brain behaves like you were starving. This has many consequences. First and foremost is a loss of the conscious signals that tell you when you are full and when you are hungry. A common sign of this is that most obese people don't feel hungry when they get up in the morning. As a result they often skip breakfast. The brain interprets this as more starvation signals and further shuts down the metabolism. In fact the number one risk factor for obesity was skipping breakfast.
Ghrelin is also important in many other functions of the body. One of the most important is sleep. In order to efficiently progress though the normal cycles of sleep you need adequate ghrelin levels. If you don't have them you will not sleep as efficiently, you will dream less and get less restorative sleep. This will make you more tired the next day and since dreaming promotes leptin production, you will be hungrier and have a lower metabolic rate.
The imbalance of leptin and ghrelin are at the heart of the cause and consequences of obesity.
Now I know your thinking to yourself this only effects obese people not someone like me that only needs to drop a few more pounds, right?
WRONG, I am especially talking you you folks that just need to drop a few pounds and in particular those of you getting ready for a competition.
You see the leaner your body becomes the more sensitive it becomes too. Drop the artificial sweeteners and see the difference for yourself. You will be amazed at how quickly your body will respond and those last few fat pockets will vanish.
