What is Set Point Weight?

Jul 22

Have you ever heard the term set-point weight but have no idea what it meant? Well, let us explain.

Your set point weight range is a weight range of about 10-15 pounds that your body naturally gravitates toward and strives to maintain. Just as the body regulates temperature and blood pressure, it also regulates body weight by constantly adjusting your hunger cues, energy levels and metabolic speed in an attempt to stay within that specific range. This range is as genetic as our heights: about 70 percent of individual differences in body weight are dictated by genes.

What this means is that all of those “failed attempts at weight loss” are actually not failures at all. In fact, regaining weight after dieting is actually evidence that your body is working as it should. It is trying to protect you from what it has perceived as a famine. You did nothing wrong. If you think you did, it is because the diet industry has convinced you that the weight gain is YOUR fault, which works out well for them because that will motivate you to go back on the diet. Cha-ching cha-ching!

Now here is where things get complicated. 60% of people who lose weight dieting gain back more than they had weighed in the first plan. Why? It’s because the power of the set point range is so strong that when we try to repeatedly force our body below its set range, our brain senses danger. As a result, it initiates biological changes to help regain weight and increase the set point range to protect you against future famines (our bodies do not understand the difference between intentional famine, aka dieting, and unintentional famine). Your body will then defend that new, higher set range just as strongly as it did your original set range.

Understanding the set-point weight theory is so important because not only does it explain why diets often fail and why our bodies resist weight changes, but it also shows us how distinct health is from body size. If you are interested in improving your health (which we do not believe is an obligation, by the way), you can do this by focusing on sustainable, health-promoting behaviors instead of restrictive dieting. You can free yourself of the trapping cycle of restriction, blame and shame and finally be at peace with your body.