Body Chemistry Changes with Obesity

• Insulin is a hormone that helps move glucose (sugar) from your blood into your cells, where it’s used for energy.
• When someone is obese, the body often becomes insulin resistant. This means that the cells stop responding well to insulin, so glucose stays in the bloodstream instead of being used for energy.
• As a result, the body needs to release more insulin to try and lower blood sugar levels.

Why is this a problem?

• High insulin levels tell your body to store more fat.
• Extra insulin also makes you feel hungrier, leading to more eating, which makes weight loss harder.

• Leptin and ghrelin are two key hormones that control hunger and fullness.
Leptin is known as the “fullness hormone.” It tells your brain when you’ve eaten enough.
Ghrelin is the “hunger hormone.” It makes you feel hungry when your body needs food.
 
• In obesity, there’s a problem called leptin resistance. Even though there is more leptin in the body because of extra fat, the brain stops responding to it correctly. So, even though the body has enough fat stored, the brain doesn’t get the signal to stop eating.
• At the same time, ghrelin levels can be higher, so you feel hungry more often, even if you’ve eaten enough.

Why is this a problem?
 
• Your brain is constantly telling you to eat because it’s not getting the proper signals from leptin.
• With higher ghrelin levels, your body pushes you to eat more, even if you don’t really need more calories.

• As you gain weight, your body produces more fat cells. Fat cells don’t just store fat—they also release chemicals and hormones that affect how your body works.
• In obesity, fat cells release inflammatory chemicals called cytokines. This creates chronic inflammation in the body, which disrupts normal processes and makes it harder to burn fat.

Why is this a problem?

• Inflammation can slow down metabolism, the process by which your body burns calories.
• It also contributes to insulin resistance, making it harder to control blood sugar and store less fat.

• Metabolism is the rate at which your body burns calories. In people with obesity, the metabolism often slows down for a few reasons:
• Losing weight means you need fewer calories to maintain a smaller body, so the body adjusts by burning calories more slowly.
• When your body feels like it’s not getting enough energy (because of dieting or weight loss), it goes into “starvation mode” and tries to hold onto fat as a survival mechanism.

Why is this a problem?

• Even if you eat less or exercise more, your body burns fewer calories than before, making weight loss slower and harder.
• Your body becomes very efficient at storing fat, so even if you make healthy changes, weight loss can stall.

• The body has something called a “set point”, which is like a weight range that your body is used to. When you gain weight and stay at a higher weight for a long time, your body starts to think that this higher weight is normal.
• If you try to lose weight, your body may resist the change by increasing hunger, slowing metabolism, and holding onto fat to try to stay at that higher set point.

Why is this a problem?

• Your body actively fights against weight loss because it thinks it’s protecting you from starving, even though you have more than enough stored energy (fat).
• It becomes a cycle of gaining and losing weight without lasting success.

• Obesity can lead to emotional challenges, such as stress, depression, and anxiety, which can make it harder to stick to healthy habits.
• When you’re stressed or emotional, your body produces more of the hormone cortisol, which can lead to increased cravings for high-calorie, sugary foods.

Why is this a problem?

• Emotional eating can make you consume more calories than you need, further driving weight gain.
• High cortisol levels from stress also promote fat storage, especially around the belly area.

1. Insulin resistance causes the body to store fat more easily and makes you hungrier.
2. Leptin resistance means your brain doesn’t get the signal that you’re full, while higher ghrelin levels increase your appetite.
3. Inflammation from fat cells slows metabolism and increases insulin resistance.
4. Your body slows down metabolism to try to hold onto fat, especially when you lose weight.
5. The body’s set point makes it harder to keep the weight off once you lose it.

All of these changes create a vicious cycle where the body’s chemistry makes it difficult to lose weight, even with dieting and exercise. This is why many people who are obese benefit from additional treatments, like GLP-1 medications, to help rebalance the body’s hormones and
processes.

GLP-1 medications are particularly effective in people with obesity because they help address specific hormonal imbalances and metabolic issues that are common in obesity, like insulin resistance and dysregulated hunger signals.

Here’s a simple explanation of what happens in tour body when you eat, focusing on glucose, insulin, glucagon and GLP-1. I’ll break down step by step into easy-to- understand terms.

1. When You Eat, Your Body Gets Glucose (Sugar)
When you eat food, especially carbs like bread or rice, your body breaks them down into glucose (sugar). Glucose is the main source of energy for your body.
• Glucose enters your bloodstream, and this causes your blood sugar levels to rise.

2. Insulin: The Key to Using Glucose
Once glucose is in the blood stream, your pancreas senses that blood sugar levels are going up. In response, the pancreas releases a hormone called insulin.
• Insulin acts like the “key” that helps move glucose out of the blood and into your body’s cells (like muscles and liver), where it’s used for energy or stored for later.
• Without insulin, glucose would stay in the blood, causing blood sugar levels to remain high, which is harmful over time.

3. GLP-1: Helping Insulin and Controlling Hunger
When you eat, cells in your gut release a hormone called GLP-1 (Glucagon-Like Peptide-1). GLP-1 does a few important things:
• It tells the pancreas to release more insulin, helping lower your blood sugar
• It slows down digestion, so you feel fuller for longer.
• It signals your brain that you’ve eaten enough, which helps control hunger.

GLP-1 makes sure that your body doesn’t absorb sugar too quickly and helps regulate how much you eat.

4. Glucagon: Keeping Blood Sugar Stable When You’re Not Eating
When you haven’t eaten in a while, like between meals or while sleeping, your blood sugar levels start to drop. To keep your energy stable, the pancreas releases glucagon, another important hormone.
• Glucagon tells the liver to release stored glucose back into the blood to keep your energy levels normal.

This prevents your blood sugar from dropping too low when you’re not eating.

• After eating, insulin and GLP-1 lower blood sugar by moving glucose into cells and slowing digestion.
• When you’re not eating, glucagon helps keep your blood sugar stable by telling the liver to release stored glucose.

I’ll give you a basic idea for visualizing this:

Visual Steps:

• Eating food: Food enters the stomach and is broken down into glucose.
• Blood sugar rises: Glucose enters the blood stream, raising blood sugar.
• Insulin release: The pancreas releases insulin which helps cells absorb glucose.
• GLP-1 in action: The gut releases GLP-1, which boosts insulin, slows digestion and reduces hunger.
• Glucagon during fasting: When you haven’t eaten for a while, glucagon from the pancreas signals the liver to release stored glucose.