Byron Richards (who has since sadly passed away) gives a brief explanation of why this vital hormone in the body basically regulates your appetite.

The hormone Leptin (from the Greek word Leptos meaning thin ) was discovered in 1994. It is basically the satiety hormone that simply tells your brain that you have had enough food and to stop eating!
I love this simple analogy. Let's say you car was running low on fuel. You pull into a service station and fill your car's petrol tank up to full and keep filling until petrol spills out onto the driveway. What is the point. We do exactly the same thing when we eat beyond the "full signal".
Now I am not an expert on the subject so don't just take my word for it. What I have done with this post is to "point you in the direction" of making your own enquiries. All I am doing is giving you visual "teaser" on what this hormone (together with insulin as it almost runs "side saddle" with leptin in regulating the satiety or fullness signal in the brain) does.
My view is the reason diets don't work is that when you put your body into a starvation mode which is what happens when you just cut down on any kind of calorie your metabolism drops to stop you from starving to death.

More next week.
Cheers
Martin O'Toole
"First move well, then move often"