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The Magic of LeucineIf losing weight and keeping it off is your New Year's Resolution then Leucine just might be the answer you've been looking for.Stop riding the diet yo-yo and start living a leaner healthier life.A New Years has come and gone and many of us put “losing weight” as one of our New Year’s Resolutions. Every year weight is at the top of the list especially as we try to get rid of those unwanted pounds gained over the holidays. So how’s it going? Did you do good for the first couple of weeks and lost a few pounds but it just got too hard. Or are you still at it. Either way, it seems by next January we will all have bounced our weight right back up and be making weight loss our resolution once again. This up and down weight loss and gain has become known as the “yo-yo”. It is not good for you physically or emotionally. This year make part of your resolution to not just lose the weight, but to keep it off. Get off the rollercoaster and get things back on a level even keel. It just takes a little knowledge and some effort on your part but anything worthwhile always does.
Leucine is critically important in the fight to lose weight and more
importantly keep the weight off.
It is the Magic of Leucine. I mean the word almost sounds like losing. Leucine – losing they were just meant to go together. Now of course just because I said the magic of leucine, doesn’t mean it is the wonderful “magic” pill we all so desperately seek. There are no "magic" foods or "magic" supplements that are simply going to make the fat melt away. Just like there are no “magic” pills to make us taller or smarter or richer. That is one problem with modern society; we are always looking for ways to get something for nothing. We don’t want to work for it, we just want it handed to us. Liposuction and Bariatric bands are two examples of this in the weight loss field.
Leucine is no magic pill that will fix all your problems instantly, but
it is important for long term weight control and its role in weight
control is based on solid science.
To understand the benefits of leucine, you first need to understand the problem of weight loss and weight gain. The problem is that whenever we lose weight we generally lose muscle mass as well as fat. To be precise, you lose about 5 pounds of muscle for every 12 pounds of weight loss. The reason this is a problem is that muscle helps you by increasing your metabolism. Muscle needs more energy than fat so it burns more calories. Each pound of muscle burns about 50 calories a day, those 5 pounds of muscle you lost costs you 250 calories a day. So if you have ever counted calories (and for us yearly dieters, who hasn’t?) this means that you now have to eat 250 calories less every day in order to keep losing weight at the same rate we lost the first 12 pounds. So for every 12 pounds we lose we need to keep reducing our calorie intake by another 250 calories. EEK! It was hard enough to cut back to our original amount to lose weight. Now we have to cut back more!?! I will use myself as an example. I went up to 250 pounds last year. That was a gain of 20 pounds for me. My New Year’s Resolution is to take off those 20 pounds plus 5 more. I wanted to do this (hopefully) by summer time. So according to my little Iphone app I have to have my calorie intake be about 1900 calories per day. But next month that will have to be around 1700 and still going down to keep losing at the rate I want. Well, I am a pretty big guy and cutting back to even 2000 calories seemed like I was starving to death so how was I supposed to keep cutting? Now I (and hopefully you) understand why it’s not so hard to lose the first few pounds but it really gets tough to keep losing the weight. We hit the dreaded PLATEAU!
BUT THAT’S NOT THE WORST PART!!
Stay with me here and see if this describes some or your problems over the past years. Last year I lost some weight (New Year’s Resolution) but then I got last towards the end to the year. It was cold and I didn’t feel like working out and those holiday meals and desserts are just too good to pass up. So I gained it all back. The problem is that it came back as mostly FAT. I lost 5 – 10 pounds of muscle last year. That means I already have to be eating 250 – 500 calories less per day compared to 8 months ago just to MAINTAIN my weight. This means I am already starting in a hole. And this is not my first year of losing and gaining it back. And gaining it back as FAT! No wonder our metabolism slows down as we age. The results for me and most people is that we gain back more weight than we lost and we gain it back as fat so our metabolism slows and we gain weight even easier and of course it harder to get it back off.
So now you can understand the dreaded weight loss yo-yo!
Now this wouldn’t be a very good article if I didn’t have a solution to this muscle loss dilemma, so (drum roll please) here you go, the answer to your weight loss problems. Actually there are a couple of things you can do. The first is to exercise. Exercise, especially resistance exercise (things like weight lifting), help reduce the amount of muscle you are losing when losing weight. But exercise alone can’t do it all. What you eat is important as well. This is where leucine comes in. (You remember Leucine – it was the topic of the article so I had to throw it in here somewhere) "But what is leucine?” you might ask. Leucine is an essential amino acid. (That cleared it right up didn’t it) Amino acids are what your body uses to make proteins and perform essential life functions. There are some that your body can produce but there are others that you must get from the stuff you eat. Leucine is one of those amino acids you must get from your food. Leucine has been used by bodybuilders for years to increase muscle mass when they are working out. And there is some very good evidence that it is effective for that purpose. You can do a quick search and find lots of clinical studies showing a direct link between leucine intake and muscle generation. But what most of us care about is just keeping the muscle we have so we can keep eating and not have to cut back so much. Well lucky for us, some pretty smart scientists have also done studies on leucine and its ability to preserve the muscle mass you already have EVEN when you are on a diet and losing weight. One of the main studies being done was spearheaded by Dr. D.K. Layman and some of his colleagues at the University of Illinois. Their early studies showed that leucine stimulates the synthesis of new protein in the muscle, suppresses appetite and results in better blood sugar control. They then showed that leucine supplementation during weight loss in animals resulted in greater overall weight loss and better retention of lean muscle mass. But who cares if a lab rat losing muscle or weight? Does this stuff (leucine) work on me and you? Well, lucky for us, the group went on to do a study on two groups of women. These women were ages 40 to 56 and had a high Body Mass Index (BMI) of around 31. This just means they definitely needed to lose some weight. What Dr. Layman and his group figured out is that if you change your ratio of carbohydrates to proteins ratio to around 1.5:1 instead of the 3.5:1 ratio most diet plans follow and increase your leucine intake you will not lose your muscle mass when you diet. His study actually proved this. Both groups were eating the same thing but one group also supplemented the diet with leucine. He also did the study twice. In one study he had both groups exercising and in the other study they did not exercise. The interesting thing was that both groups (the regular and high leucine) lost weight and actually lost about the same amount. There was no significant difference in overall weight loss between the high leucine - high protein group and the control group in either study - but there was a huge difference in where that weight loss came from. In the study with the exercise component only 4% of the weight loss came from muscle in the high leucine - high protein group compared to 16% from muscle in the control group. As you might expect, the group that didn't exercise didn't do as well. In that study 11% of the weight loss came from muscle in the high leucine - high protein group compared to 18% from muscle in the control group. I see two interesting facts from this information. First, there wasn’t much difference in muscle mass loss for the exercise group compared to the non exercisers in the standard weight loss program. What this says to me is that if you don’t supplement your diet with leucine you better really do some intense, resistance exercise in order to maintain your muscle mass. With the 10g of leucine per day the other group preserved much more of their muscle mass with just a moderate exercise program.
So exercise is definitely important but so is Leucine.
Like so many other things in life it is the combination of things and maintaining moderation that works out best. To put it all in a nutshell, Dr. Layman’s study showed that the best way to lose the weight and to lose it as fat is to eat a diet that is higher in protein and is supplemented with leucine. The bottom line is that weight loss diets providing around 10 g of leucine/day coupled with a 1.5:1 ratio of carbohydrate to protein are more effective at preserving muscle mass than the kind of weight loss diet that most people follow.
The next obvious question is how do I get more leucine into my diet?
Natural sources of leucine include beans, meat, nuts, and soy. Leucine is an essential amino acid, which means that it cannot be manufactured in the body and must be obtained through dietary sources. People that exercise a lot, have a low-protein diet, or are seriously trying to build muscle mass should consider leucine supplementation. Shaklee has researched Leucine and used the research of others such as Dr. Layman to produce a diet system based on the power of leucine. The product is called Cinch. The plan provides several ways in which to get the proper amount of leucine and ingest it in a balance that gives your body the best chance to lose the weight without losing the muscle. The Weight Loss Plan provides 12 g of leucine/day and the carbohydrate to protein ratio is 1.4:1 for the Cinch Shake Mix and 1.6:1 for the Cinch Meal Bar. These ratios fit right in with what the study said worked best, so it shouldn't come as any surprise that when Shaklee did their own 12 week clinical study of people the ones that were on this weight loss plan had an average weight loss of 15.4 pounds - and none of that came from muscle!
Now that truly is the Magic of Leucine.
If you are ready to get off the diet rollercoaster and do things the right way then give this weight loss plan a try. Discover for yourself how great it can be to lose the weight and actually keep it off. |
 Nothing tastes as good as being thin feels.
I have gained and lost the same ten pounds so many times over and over again my cellulite must have déjà vu. ~Jane Wagner
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