Set point theory
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Calories in, calories out4
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Carlos_421 wrote: »ashleygroizard wrote: »Has anyone heard of set point theory? It Is a set point weight. When you get enough nutrients for your body and you don’t starve and don’t over eat and drink water and your body goes to a normal healthy weight and maintains that weight for the rest of your life. I’m learning about it with my therapist. I also googled set point theory and apparently it’s the fat loss no one talks about
If you don't starve yourself (which would make you underweight) or overeat (which would make you overweight) you will maintain a healthy weight, yes.
However, this isn't the fat loss no one talks about. It's really just another way of phrasing what just about everyone on this forum talks about...CICO (calories in, calories out). If you eat only as many calories as you burn, you will neither gain nor lose weight. Eat less and you lose. Eat more and you gain.
This also isn't quite what people in the fitness industry are referring to when they speak of "set points."
Say you're obese and you reduce calories by 500 a day by cutting out your daily two bottle of Coke. You'll lose a pound per week this way (probably some water weight on top of that). However, as you lose weight, the amount of calories you burn decreases unless you also increase your activity. So eventually, your calorie burn is also lowered by 500. Once you've lowered your calorie burn by the same amount that you reduced your intake, you're no longer losing weight.
Some people will call this a set point. Really, it's just equilibrium. Reduce calories again or increase your exercise and the weight loss will continue.
That said, there's also a whole different side to the idea of set points involving not just habits, but a lot of neurosciency stuff as well. If your body becomes accustomed to a certain lifestyle (for many people, this means overeating) and you begin to deviate from that lifestyle (say a morbidly obese, sedentary person joins a gym and starts cutting way back on calories), the brain will start sending signals in an attempt to return to "normalcy" (because even if "normal" isn't healthy, it's what feels safe because it's familiar). This could mean increased appetite as the brain tries to get you to eat more (even though you're deliberately trying to eat less), cravings for high calorie foods, lethargy...
None of this negates CICO. You will still lose weight if you eat less than you burn and vice versa. Your body won't just gain weight or lose weight on its own to get to your "set point" because that's your "natural weight."
However, your habits, lifestyle, hormonal swings and even neurological processes can make adhering to a calorie deficit easier or harder so it's worth taking into consideration. This is why a more moderate approach to weight loss is often the best approach, tackling one issue at a time, taking baby steps towards better fitness. Reduce calories a little here. Increase exercise a little there. Take a diet break for a couple weeks. Reduce calories again...
So much good information here. About 15 years ago I was a solid 80 pounds overweight. I adopted new eating and exercise habits and lost the weight. I attained a normal BMI. After a few years though things began to slide backwards and I regained all the weight. Some would argue that my body was "fighting" me and had a natural set point that was heavier. That just isn't the case however.
My problem was that I depended on exercise to allow me to eat more instead of focusing on exercise for fitness. I still had poor eating habits - in that I didn't know how to monitor my intake vs. output - CICO. I gained the weight back because I never TRULY adopted a different lifestyle.
To keep this relatively short - I lost the 80 pounds again and I have been in maintenance for over 6 months. This time is different because I paid attention to intake and output. I lost the weight slowly and learned to manage my calorie consumption in a way I feel I can sustain for the rest of my life. I'm exercising again - for fitness - not weight management, although they work together. When I'm not exercising my eating changes accordingly (yeah, I can't eat all the tacos, lol).
I would argue I have reached a new "set point" simply because I balance CI=CO. It's not a point that my body somehow "wants" to reach. It's a result of the daily habits and decisions I choose to make.
I wish you well on your weight loss and fitness journey. I hope you learn to see that most folks here are truly trying to help even though you may not perceive it that way. Tone and intent are hard to discern online.
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My "set point" where I don't gain and lose without counting calories is 225lbs--Obese for my height, gender, age, and everything else. I stayed at my "set point" for about 4 years because I was lazy and I love food. My lab results, blood pressure, knees, back, doctor, psyche, and mirror all say I should weigh less. So here I am practicing good ol' CICO and I'm losing weight.
OP--Stick around. Keep sharing your thoughts and bouncing theories off the community. I do. I've been woo'ed. It stings somethings, but I'm a live and learn type. AND, I want to live and I want to learn. Don't take it so personal when you hear an answer that isn't what you want to hear.9 -
About fifteen or twenty years ago 'set point theory' was all over the Fat Acceptance sphere. It was overwhelmingly used as an excuse for being fat and not losing weight. 'My body just wants to be this weight' - how do you argue with that?10
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Carlos_421 wrote: »ashleygroizard wrote: »Has anyone heard of set point theory? It Is a set point weight. When you get enough nutrients for your body and you don’t starve and don’t over eat and drink water and your body goes to a normal healthy weight and maintains that weight for the rest of your life. I’m learning about it with my therapist. I also googled set point theory and apparently it’s the fat loss no one talks about
If you don't starve yourself (which would make you underweight) or overeat (which would make you overweight) you will maintain a healthy weight, yes.
However, this isn't the fat loss no one talks about. It's really just another way of phrasing what just about everyone on this forum talks about...CICO (calories in, calories out). If you eat only as many calories as you burn, you will neither gain nor lose weight. Eat less and you lose. Eat more and you gain.
This also isn't quite what people in the fitness industry are referring to when they speak of "set points."
Say you're obese and you reduce calories by 500 a day by cutting out your daily two bottle of Coke. You'll lose a pound per week this way (probably some water weight on top of that). However, as you lose weight, the amount of calories you burn decreases unless you also increase your activity. So eventually, your calorie burn is also lowered by 500. Once you've lowered your calorie burn by the same amount that you reduced your intake, you're no longer losing weight.
Some people will call this a set point. Really, it's just equilibrium. Reduce calories again or increase your exercise and the weight loss will continue.
That said, there's also a whole different side to the idea of set points involving not just habits, but a lot of neurosciency stuff as well. If your body becomes accustomed to a certain lifestyle (for many people, this means overeating) and you begin to deviate from that lifestyle (say a morbidly obese, sedentary person joins a gym and starts cutting way back on calories), the brain will start sending signals in an attempt to return to "normalcy" (because even if "normal" isn't healthy, it's what feels safe because it's familiar). This could mean increased appetite as the brain tries to get you to eat more (even though you're deliberately trying to eat less), cravings for high calorie foods, lethargy...
None of this negates CICO. You will still lose weight if you eat less than you burn and vice versa. Your body won't just gain weight or lose weight on its own to get to your "set point" because that's your "natural weight."
However, your habits, lifestyle, hormonal swings and even neurological processes can make adhering to a calorie deficit easier or harder so it's worth taking into consideration. This is why a more moderate approach to weight loss is often the best approach, tackling one issue at a time, taking baby steps towards better fitness. Reduce calories a little here. Increase exercise a little there. Take a diet break for a couple weeks. Reduce calories again...
This! Very meaningful!3 -
ashleygroizard wrote: »
What makes you say that? I’ve been talking to an eating disorder psychotherapist who has 15 years experience who says it doesMalkinMagic71 wrote: »It's not a thing that exists.
Then you need a new one12 -
I think there is confusion in this thread because there is actual valid scientific literature on set point and settling point, and it works as a theoretical model to explain certain things we see about how people tend to maintain a weight in a given environment.
The confusion is that some are trying to say it violates CICO - none of the research I'm aware surrounding it discusses it as a violation of CICO.
I think it is a general approximation of what is going on with certain hormones like leptin, peptide y, ghrelin, and others - perhaps ones not even discovered yet - that try to maintain a long term homeostasis of body weight. This also combines with certain patterns in a person's life: their access to foods, the palatability of those foods, their daily activity.
So, take an outlier sample - people that have a genetic defect of leptin production. These people will have a very high set point, but eventually they'll have some weight that they'll maintain just by virtue of how much activity they have to do just to keep getting food if nothing else.
On the other end can be some people who are chronically underweight without necessarily have the body dysmorphia of an anorexic. Such people might have a bit of a disruption in in their body's response to lack of food in that they actually increase physical activity in response, as unexpected as that is. I think the trait is even seen at times in animals.
In between these extremes there will be a range of responses to various environments. Our present environment in developed Western nations tends to be one with easy access to hyperpalatible foods. For most people that will be set up an overweight to obese phenotype.
The added problem is that even when trying to make conscious efforts to reduce weight, it seems the feedback cycle around leptin will defend the present weight rather than any prior settling point.15 -
ashleygroizard wrote: »
What makes you say that? I’ve been talking to an eating disorder psychotherapist who has 15 years experience who says it doesMalkinMagic71 wrote: »It's not a thing that exists.
For every expert, there’s an equal and opposite expert.
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ashleygroizard wrote: »ashleygroizard wrote: »ashleygroizard wrote: »
Sorry I didn’t realize you have qualifications and your an expert in health like my psychotherapistashleygroizard wrote: »I prefer the theory that you choose the weight you want to be by how much you eat and how much you move.
Not a popular theory as it involves effort as opposed to being a passive victim of circumstance.
Yes some people can maintain a healthy weight with intuitive eating, former fat people are rarer cases than people who have never been fat.
What do you mean former fat people are rarer cases then people who have never been fat?
If someone is a genuine intuitive eater who regulates their intake naturally they are less likely to get fat.
Like my son, he eats more when he does more, he eats less when he does less - never been fat.
Former fat people (generally) can (but often fail to...) learn to control or mitigate the behaviours that led to getting overweight but that's not the same as intuitive eating or a naturally occurring healthy weight. We are hard-wired for survival and unfortunately that means eating more when food is available to store energy away to get us through times when food is in short supply. But in the first world food is always in abundant supply.
Your therapist is selling a dream in my opinion.
If it works for you then great, but suggest you keep monitoring your weight in case the dream turns sour.
I apologise for having an education, experience and an opinion.
Any more personal attacks or are we done?
I thought you were attacking me
The only personal attack came from you.
I was simply stating my opinion that set point theory is unsound and potentially unhelpful, it's not a new theory BTW.
Here's my personal experience.....
During my fat 20 years I got sick and tired of having to diet and restrict just to maintain at what was about 30lbs overweight at the time so I decided to eat intuitively and see where my weight settled out. Within a very short space of time I hit my lifetime highest weight with zero indication that the rate of gain was slowing down. If I had a set point then it definitely wasn't going to be a healthy weight.
Hence my advice that if you decide to try it don't neglect to monitor your weight.
Look I apologize I really thought you were having a go at me. I’ve decided that I’m going to keep trying to lose weight. I think I don’t have an eating disorder anyway and it’s just a passion to get healthy and lose weight. I’m going to continue doing what I’m doing to lose weight because that’s my goal. I really do apologize to you and everyone.
The sentence I've bolded is definitely something you need to talk to your treatment team about and not a bunch of random strangers on the internet. There's a reason that many health practitioners suggest that patients who have disordered eating patterns should stay off of message boards like this one. The amount of information you're going to find here, some of it accurate and some of it not, can overwhelm your sense of what's going on in your own body. What we here think about set points doesn't matter. What you and your treatment team think about set points in your specific situation is what matters. There are times when having more and more information is actually too much and right now you need to have confidence in your treatment team and ask them for more information when you have questions instead of asking the internet where you'll get a variety of, quite frankly, nonsense answers that may or may not ever apply to you.
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suzannesimmons1 wrote: »ashleygroizard wrote: »
What makes you say that? I’ve been talking to an eating disorder psychotherapist who has 15 years experience who says it doesMalkinMagic71 wrote: »It's not a thing that exists.
Then you need a new one
We should probably leave the treatment of eating disorders to the experts who know the patient, rather than making uneducated suggestions to dump a therapist based on the patient's retelling of the therapist's explanation of one particular theory.21 -
ashleygroizard wrote: »
What makes you say that? I’ve been talking to an eating disorder psychotherapist who has 15 years experience who says it doesMalkinMagic71 wrote: »It's not a thing that exists.
For every 10 years the BMR reduces by 3 to 5 %.5 -
If set point theory exists, then starvation and obesity wouldn't be a thing, yet they are.
It's an excuse with no objective data to support it.
Weight, like almost everything, is an output of behavior.6 -
If set point theory exists, then starvation and obesity wouldn't be a thing, yet they are.
It's an excuse with no objective data to support it.
Weight, like almost everything, is an output of behavior.
For what many laypersons misunderstand set point theory to mean, this is true.
For actual set point theory, not so much. The video by Eric Helms linked earlier in the thread explains it well.5 -
Carlos_421 wrote: »suzannesimmons1 wrote: »ashleygroizard wrote: »
What makes you say that? I’ve been talking to an eating disorder psychotherapist who has 15 years experience who says it doesMalkinMagic71 wrote: »It's not a thing that exists.
Then you need a new one
We should probably leave the treatment of eating disorders to the experts who know the patient, rather than making uneducated suggestions to dump a therapist based on the patient's retelling of the therapist's explanation of one particular theory.
I agree and disagree. My main thought, is that therapists can be wrong. They aren't somehow absolved of believing in and communicating inaccurate information or saying or doing things that aren't appropriate. I think it's really important for people to know that as it can shape the way they go about finding a therapist and whether or not they make the decision to dump a therapist that needs dumping. The same is true for psychiatrists (and anyone really). In my experience, it can be empowering, though I can see why some people would want to keep with the [inaccurate] belief that therapists know all.
That said, we also don't know what the OP's therapist actually said, because we will only ever have one side of the story. Frankly we shouldn't have the OP's therapist's side of the story.7 -
Carlos_421 wrote: »suzannesimmons1 wrote: »ashleygroizard wrote: »
What makes you say that? I’ve been talking to an eating disorder psychotherapist who has 15 years experience who says it doesMalkinMagic71 wrote: »It's not a thing that exists.
Then you need a new one
We should probably leave the treatment of eating disorders to the experts who know the patient, rather than making uneducated suggestions to dump a therapist based on the patient's retelling of the therapist's explanation of one particular theory.
I agree and disagree. My main thought, is that therapists can be wrong. They aren't somehow absolved of believing in and communicating inaccurate information or saying or doing things that aren't appropriate. I think it's really important for people to know that as it can shape the way they go about finding a therapist and whether or not they make the decision to dump a therapist that needs dumping. The same is true for psychiatrists (and anyone really). In my experience, it can be empowering, though I can see why some people would want to keep with the [inaccurate] belief that therapists know all.
That said, we also don't know what the OP's therapist actually said, because we will only ever have one side of the story. Frankly we shouldn't have the OP's therapist's side of the story.
The bolded was my point, not that therapists are perfect or all-knowing.5 -
If set point theory exists, then starvation and obesity wouldn't be a thing, yet they are.
It's an excuse with no objective data to support it.
Weight, like almost everything, is an output of behavior.
If people have a set point, why does it preclude starvation and obesity? I think that's just ignoring set point as discussed in research. Applied in a different context, do you believe temperature homeostasis doesn't exist because people die of cold and heat exposure?
The fact that people so frequently maintain a weight within a given environment, despite the narrow range of calories in to out matching that has to happen for it is pretty good evidence for there being some kind of homeostasis of body weight.
And sure, behavior plays in weight, but weight does play in behavior. Give me the ability to change someone's leptin, and I can guarantee you that will change their behavior.8 -
Carlos_421 wrote: »If set point theory exists, then starvation and obesity wouldn't be a thing, yet they are.
It's an excuse with no objective data to support it.
Weight, like almost everything, is an output of behavior.
For what many laypersons misunderstand set point theory to mean, this is true.
For actual set point theory, not so much. The video by Eric Helms linked earlier in the thread explains it well.
And to be honest, this OP's thread is probably not the best place to be getting into the semantics of this anyway
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Carlos_421 wrote: »If set point theory exists, then starvation and obesity wouldn't be a thing, yet they are.
It's an excuse with no objective data to support it.
Weight, like almost everything, is an output of behavior.
For what many laypersons misunderstand set point theory to mean, this is true.
For actual set point theory, not so much. The video by Eric Helms linked earlier in the thread explains it well.
I thought your explanation was outstanding as it encompasses the psychological element.
There is no such event physiologically speaking. There is a hormonal influence to a minor degree (~5% influence at best), but nothing that overrides behavior.
I balk at such poorly defined theories as this serves no purpose other than to provide an excuse for failure without addressing the root cause - behavior.6 -
ashleygroizard wrote: »ashleygroizard wrote: »I prefer the theory that you choose the weight you want to be by how much you eat and how much you move.
Not a popular theory as it involves effort as opposed to being a passive victim of circumstance.
Yes some people can maintain a healthy weight with intuitive eating, former fat people are rarer cases than people who have never been fat.
What do you mean former fat people are rarer cases then people who have never been fat?
If someone is a genuine intuitive eater who regulates their intake naturally they are less likely to get fat.
Like my son, he eats more when he does more, he eats less when he does less - never been fat.
Former fat people (generally) can (but often fail to...) learn to control or mitigate the behaviours that led to getting overweight but that's not the same as intuitive eating or a naturally occurring healthy weight. We are hard-wired for survival and unfortunately that means eating more when food is available to store energy away to get us through times when food is in short supply. But in the first world food is always in abundant supply.
Your therapist is selling a dream in my opinion.
If it works for you then great, but suggest you keep monitoring your weight in case the dream turns sour.
Some medications like I was on four at once caused weight gain. It’s called a side effect for a reason. Not having someone teach you healthy eating and exercise is also another reason people get fat. Some people can’t help but get fat. Obviously your someone who has never been fat and doesn’t like fat people. How do people know about health and fitness if they are never taught and then get fat and have to learn to get fit and skinny. I think your comment was very rude. Just because you’ve got a good body don’t mean your a good person
I’m sorry but to anyone who is a regular on the forums and knows @sijomial ‘s history this is hilarious.
No part of the comment to you was rude. It’s good advice from someone who has been around the block and knows the neighborhood. If you want that good body, you can get it - you just have to put in the work for it. It’s okay if you have other priorities. But it is entirely up to you and entirely within your own control.
By the way, since you seem to care deeply about the qualifications of those who give you advice, I’ve lost 125 lbs and maintained at a normal weight for more than two years now. My “set point” didn’t change - my lifestyle and eating habits changed. Or rather, I changed them.16
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