What is a set weight?

I2k4 wrote: »

No mention of either diet or exercise, and changes to those, since the surgery or currently. Something must account for the gradual weight loss, but if that post-op regimen has been stable, it's likely the body eventually adapted and stabilized its metabolic processes. If so the doctor has it right. But we're not all living like lab rats in a static and controlled environment.

Generally calorie reduction by way of simple dieting at a given activity level will initially lose "weight" (euphemism for combined body fat and muscle tissue), full stop. Cardio / endurance exercise initially "burns" hundreds of calories, but over time adaptively lowers the metabolic rate and economizes on muscle use, requiring fewer calories. (Distance runners famously have those slow heart rates.) Meanwhile resistance / strength training doesn't "burn" so much during workouts, but increasing muscle mass over time is metabolically taxing and the body's adaptation is to require more food just to maintain it.

Endurance athletes have lower heart rates because they have better trained hearts that pump more blood with each stroke - it no indication they are burning less. HRMs count heartbeats - they cannot measure energy. The reverse is more likely true - as someone gets fitter they can exercise for longer and at higher intensity.
e.g. At the same HR my actual power output and calories burns increased by 25% as I got fitter.

People who stick with resistance / strength training get stronger and can move more weight during their workouts - more mass moved equals higher calorie burns not lower.

ToffeeApple71 wrote: »

@I2k4
"No mention of either diet or exercise, and changes to those, since the surgery or currently. Something must account for the gradual weight loss, "

It was intentional. I log religiously. I run. I walk. I strength train. I bike. I stopped eating so much meat and dairy (my body didn't tolerate it well after the surgery). My deficit should have me losing half a kilo a week. I'm not worried about the stall, just a bit disappointed.

I was just interested in this set point theory. I'd never heard it mentioned. Given the number of articles I found when I googled it, I don't know how I didn't hear about it ages ago!

When you say "your deficit", what do you mean? Did you estimate your calorie needs from a so-called calorie calculator (MFP, Sailrabbit, some other TDEE calculator), or from your own experiential data from a period of weight monitoring while calorie counting?

If your estimate came from a "calculator", all they're doing is basically spitting out an average for the population of people demographically similar to you in some research study. You're not an average, you're an individual. Most people are close to average (by definition, right?). However, a few can be meaningfully off from average (high or low), and a very rare few will be quite far off (still potentially in either direction).

That's how statistics works, pretty much. It won't necessarily be obvious why you're non-average either, if you do happen to be non-average. (MFP estimates 25-30% low, for me, when I give it accurate inputs. That's hundreds of calories daily. I have some clues why it might be so, but it's not fully obvious.)

Estimating from your own experience is the better way to go, IMO, once you have a month or two of data from relatively conscientious calorie counting.

Even estimating from your own experience has pitfalls. What might have changed since the period when the data was collected? Nature of exercise, or source of exercise estimates? Body weight? Daily life activity level, like new job or living situation? Types of foods eaten? ** Demographic or physical characteristics (weight gain/loss matters, certainly; muscularity, maybe; etc.)

** Types of foods don't directly affect results, it's their calories that matter. However, one of the things that happens when we base calorie needs estimates off experiential data is that we've baked in some typical average estimating error - no one logs perfectly, unfortunately. If food (or exercise) change significantly, the level of estimating accuracy can change in arithmetically meaningful ways, potentially.

We see people occasionally who "mysteriously" are gaining weight after maintaining for a while, and find out that they've changed jobs, so they've gone from lots of walking around and climbing stairs in a big building to mostly sitting in a small office all day; or moved from a sprawling house/yard to a condo so fewer chores; or kids have grown and left so they're not running all over to their events . . . . ). Daily life changes matter.

Even fidgeting vs. not fidgeting can make a difference in the low hundreds of calories a day (per research), so a subtle change in attitude or lifestyle like that can be material.

Medications or health conditions can make a difference, potentially, too - not through magically causing weight gain/retention, but by changing average water retention levels, or calming fidgetiness, or causing subtle fatigue, etc.

Bodies are dynamic systems: Calorie intake affects calorie output, so restricting calories over the long haul can have consequences for daily life activity level (like fidgeting, among other things) or for exercise intensity. This is not "starvation mode", where if you eat too little you stop losing weight: That's mythical. It's just an adaptation that can happen physically, where we might eventually lose a little more slowly at X calorie level than we'd predict. ("Adaptive thermogenesis" is one name for this; some questionable stuff has been written about it, too, though I think there's good reason to believe such an effect may exist.)

If you're eating less meat/dairy, has your carb intake increased? That's not some kind of evil thing, but if your average carb intake goes up, your average water retention will go up, because carbs tie up some water while being digested/metabolized. I'm vegetarian myself, so aware that plant-based protein sources tend to bring along more carbs with them. (I'm not suggesting you go low carb. I'm asking questions, rhetorically, to - I hope - help you think through possible reasons for a seeming stall.) On the flip side, has your protein intake gone down? Protein has a (slightly) higher TEF (thermic effect of food) than fats or carbs, i.e., requires more calories to metabolize.

In addition, you're getting quite close to goal weight. That's a stage where precision in logging becomes more important to achieving the expected results, and loss rates tend to slow for many people. I don't mean that in an accusatory way, but it does reflect fairly common experience as I've read it here. (I didn't stall during loss in any unexplained way, personally.)

Have you taken any diet breaks along the way, or just been losing steadily and constantly? Long-duration loss with no breaks can have some consequences (via subtle fatigue, or stress-related creeping water retention for example). If you haven't read the diet breaks thread here, it might offer some background on that idea:

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10604863/of-refeeds-and-diet-breaks/p1

If those effects are in play, they're potentially reversible.

It's probably obvious by now, but to answer your OP question explicitly: No, I don't believe in "set point" weights. One obvious flaw in the theory, to my mind, is that people frequently pull them out to explain weight loss stopping, but never seem to suggest that they prevent weight gain happening: Seems a little weird, y'know?

I believe that we have set-point habits, sets of behaviors that are comfortable and sustainable. The body being a dynamic system, regulating activity based on intake, is a semi-hidden part of that. I was weight-stable around the overweight/class 1 obese BMI boundary for decades. I've been weight-stable in the low/mid normal BMI range for 6+ years. I could lose further (have lost a bit further, not super intentionally, a couple of times in my life) - I don't care to. I don't think these are set points: I think that my bodyweight during those periods was an outcome of my lifestyle and habits, both eating and activity.

I think your doctor's wrong, and that you can continue to lose if you're committed to doing so . . . but it may take some thought and/or experimentation on your part to figure out why weight has stabilized for 3 months. With a 3-month period, it's most probable IMO that you're somehow eating at maintenance calories for your current weight, but even that doesn't necessarily imply that a significant calorie cut is the very best intervention to get loss moving again.

and what about all those people in famines, POW camps etc? - they can't all have a set weight of BMI 16 or whatever.

I dont think there is a biological set weight - but I do think there is a point where we reach maitenance calories and don't drop our calories further and we continue with about same activity level and so we stay same weight - ie maintain by continuing same CICO from that point on.

If any of those things change by circumstances beyond our control - ie we live through food shortages or are a POW OR we make a concious decision to change something in the CICO - then we lose more weight.

But for many of us we reach a point where life stays much the same and we don't do that - therefore we stay same weight.

Walkywalkerson wrote: »

cmriverside wrote: »

Walkywalkerson wrote: »

I believe that our body chemistry wants us to be at a certain weight and it is a fight to go below that but not impossible.
I think that keeping weight off means fighting your body’s energy-regulation system and battling hunger all day, every day, for the rest of your life.
😳
It sounds dramatic but if I am not vigilant every day then I will over eat.
I haven't mastered feeling satiated on a deficit.
But then I have always battled with my weight and probably find it harder than people who do not have issues with food.
I have lost 50+ lbs over the last year I'm still 20+ lbs overweight and my body just isn't having it - I feel stuck.
Or rather I feel that I can no longer be in a deficit!
It's difficult.

This belief will keep you stuck.
FWIW, those last 20 pounds were pretty hard for me, too. The whole first year post-80 lbs-weight-loss was tough.
BUT! ...and it's a huge but...after that my body and hormones settled and now I'm 13 years post weight loss and it's not hard. At all.
Stick with it.
There is some endocrine disruption during and after weight loss.

Yes I am stuck.
I totally lost the plot with food / alcohol over Christmas and got back to my routine only yesterday 🙄
I had a solid 2 weeks of over eating.
The binges / hormones are keeping me 20 lbs overweight.
It's a constant battle.
I hope what you say is true that hormones settle - because mine seem to want me to be overweight.

IMO:

The story we tell ourselves is really important.
The story we tell ourselves tends to become true.

To some extent, I think I have choices about what story I tell myself.
(Personally, I like low drama in my life, so I try to tell myself low-drama stories. I also like feeling in control, so I prefer stories that suggest I have some control. Those things aren't true for everyone, though.)

Does the "set point" narrative help people succeed?
Does the "hormones" narrative help people succeed?
Does the "battle" narrative help people succeed?

Maybe, dunno, those things are individual, IMO. They don't help me, though.

I like to think that I have choices about my actions, even if my feelings are a little more wild'n'woolly. I like to think I can find combinations of foods, and an eating schedule, that can become reasonably sustainable, practical habits for me, over time, and get me to and keep me at a reasonable body weight . . . via methods that are reasonably simple, but for sure not always psychologically easy. Ditto for activity level.

Like you, I ate all the foods and drank all the drinks on the holidays (kind of what I'd planned, honestly). Today, I nominally weigh about 5 pounds more than I did before US Thanksgiving. From experience, a decent chunk of that is water retention, and will be gone in a week or so, if I return to my normal habits as I plan to do. A couple of pounds may linger on, maybe even until Spring, but if I want them gone, I think I can get there. If it's not working, I need to experiment, find a path, work on the obstacles (sometimes it might even require professional help: trainer, doctor, registered dietitian, therapist, whatever).

IOW, I think riverside has a point, as usual.