A very interesting discovery has highlighted one of the reasons why the metabolism slows down with the weight loss diet. According to a team of scientists from the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa in São Paulo , Brazil, there is a hormone that makes you fat if we go on a diet, thus causing the extra pounds to easily return.

This is because the hormone in question would act on two fronts: on the one hand, it would increase hunger, and in this it would act exactly in the opposite direction to leptin , which is lowered if we are on a diet making it difficult for us to satiate; on the other hand, it is capable of communicating to the brain the need to save energy, thus acting on the metabolism.
And guess what hormone is it?
Perhaps this is the most interesting fact of the discovery.

GROWTH HORMONE: IF HIGH, IT SLOWS DOWN METABOLISM

The hormone that makes you fat by sabotaging our attempts to lose weight is in fact growth hormone.
Growth hormone or GH increases in the blood of people undergoing weight loss.

This is in line with the action of growth hormone, which empties the fat cells of fatty acids entering them into the blood, or stimulates lipolysis: and that is why it is often used as a supplement by some athletes, to maximize the loss of skin fat and stimulating protein synthesis on the other hand. But, as I have already reiterated, lipolysis and body fat loss are different things . The release of fatty acids from the fat cells does not coincide with an effective loss of fat and therefore of weight. And this study seems to confirm this.

Brazilian researchers have indeed found that this hormone is actually very sneaky.
When you go on a diet and lose weight, the hormone increases in the blood, triggering a domino effect thanks to some receptors present in the hypothalamus, namely the AgRP neurons. These receptors in turn produce AgRPs, which on the one hand stimulate appetite, and on the other hand lower the metabolism, reducing the body’s energy requirements. The researchers called the latter “one of the most potent activators of hunger”.