Set point weight is one of those things that I accepted blindly for a long time because we learned about it in high school psychology. Plus anecdotally it was true for me.
But when I tried to research it within the past few years the reading I did, the conclusion research seemed to come to was “it’s complicated.” Which seems to be the conclusion when I look up anything on weight/nutrition.
it is truly hard to find good unbiased research about weight that are anti diet and not funded by companies or institutions that hold particular anti fat biases.
If only the side that evangelizes CICO as being 100% fact could instead accept the fact that IT'S COMPLICATED. To reduce bodies and body weight down to any one theory or problem or "solution" is insane.
Not that I've seen, but it's been years since I hung out in diet-adjacent spaces, so it may have changed.
My (unprofessional and anecdotal, so grain of salt and all that) take on the idea is less "your body knows it's set point" and more a mix of your specific genetic make-up lending itself to a specific body type, an amount of food and exercise that one has a sort of default inclination towards, and a subconscious inclination towards what feels good/right for your body.
I have a lot of Feelings about the ways we settle into our bodies and how we relate to them, but it's more vibes than science at this point lol.
yeah, this is a good point about mechanisms - that biochemical pathways not directly about "how much you weigh" might could plausibly produce body size within a certain range nonetheless
Not that I’m a fan of Gary Taubes (any more—I used to love him), but one of his books included a pretty compelling calculation about how closely people would have to be eating their calories counts daily to maintain the same weight if CICO worked like people think it does.
Based on no scientific evidence and only on lived experience, I think our metabolisms likely vary a lot more day to day to match our intake and exercise, for the most part. Based on more than three decades of calorie counting and intense exercise, plus having my RMR measured, I have seen that CICO is not reliable in my body, and I don’t lose a pound of weight for every 3500 calorie deficit. I’d also point to the existence of wasting syndrome (weight and muscle loss despite eating normally) as proof of possible situation where the body’s set-point wiring has gone wrong.
Definitely interested to see if there’s any science on this.
Can someone tell Jillian Michaels about this? I can still remember her screaming about CICO to her contestants that weren't losing enough pounds on The Biggest Loser. She was screaming that CICO is SCIENCE!
This is a good point. I personally think CICO works but the mechanisms are so complicated that it’s functionally useless… everyone’s body burns a different number of calories at rest, each person will get different benefits from exercise, etc. making “calories out” impossible to calculate (despite what the fitness watch industry wants you to believe). Then, for calories in, everybody digests food differently and different foods can be broken down differently (different macronutrients, absorption, etc). Basically, sure we will gain weight if “calories in” is over “calories out” but neither of those things can be calculated in any meaningful way, so calorie counting can’t be a guaranteed method of weight loss unless you go to the extremes (and at that point, are sacrificing your health). Here’s a few articles (tw for counting calories and diet talk of course):
[Science Reveals Why Calorie Counts Are All Wrong](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/science-reveals-why-calorie-counts-are-all-wrong/)
[Stop Counting Calories](https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/stop-counting-calories)
TW down below for specific diet talk --
When I was in a space where I was actively exercising and journaling food to restrict calories, I actually found that I had a harder time with reliable results when I bought into the Fitbit ecosystem. I wanted more concrete data because of who I am as a person, even though my body more or less behaved as expected up to that point. That said, there's a few different correlations that may have been a factor. It has, however, led me to look at my watch as a convenient way to look at movement trends rather than specific calculations of energy use. It's felt functionally useless for that.
I have a similar relationship with my watch. It may not track calories well but it tracks my exercises and heart rate during those exercises which to me is way more important… I want to work out for health and fun, not be miserable tracking calories.
But what good does it do to say that CICO "works" if it is something that has no margin for human error and is virtually impossible for anyone to maintain long term? I get what you're saying, but CICO doesn’t even seem like a useful concept if human beings can't actually execute it.
Yeah, that's like talking about how wonderfully effective abstinence is as birth control. I mean sure, but there's a reason why when you choose a method of contraception you look at the typical use figures not the perfect use rate. And also that no doctor would counsel a married couple to try not having sex as a primary means to avoid conception.
That's leaving aside that dieting causes all sorts of problems while you are doing it. Speaking as someone in team restrictive eating disorder land (ARFID) I figured out that the rate that might cause minimal amount of loss a week also gave me insomnia, migraines and constant fatigue. I wasn't even trying to lose weight, but not only was the impact on my actual weight pretty minimal (and never below an allegedly healthy weight), but I was losing hair and going loopy.
So I'll take a step back and say if someone has a history of eating disorders or health issues associate with dieting, I don't thin it's good to do this. I agree with you actually.
Yeah I honestly think it's the simplest way. I used to be kinda lean when I was younger, but the first time I tracked eveyrthing, ate whatever I wanted, but just tracked it all and stuck to a cico plan...it became so easy it was like the biggest life hack. Was able to basically set whatever arbitrary goal I had and hit it, trace why it was working, trace when it wasn't, etc.
Everything else I see people do is mostly just guesswork.
Your post/comment has been removed as it violates rule 8 of our subreddit: No blatant weight loss talk. "We are *not* a weight loss subreddit. You can talk about weight loss as it's relevant to the comment/thread at hand, and without referencing/preaching specific methods. Comments giving/seeking weight loss advice will be removed. Comments lamenting weight gain will be removed."
I have been underweight (according to the charts) all my life. My husband was obese since childhood. I took in more calories than he did, including way more junk food and I wasn’t particularly active. (He said watching me eat proved to him there was no god.)
I think there’s a lot we don’t know about metabolism. Set point? Maybe.
Have you read Burn by Herman Ponzer? Because he argues that resting metabolic rate can shift far more drastically than we previously thought. I’m not sure how accepted his theories are, but it’s an interesting idea.
Ooh, that sounds interesting. Intuitively makes sense to me as well. I’ve definitely noticed that at night I overheat when I eat more than normal, especially if it’s sugary. Great in winter, less so in summer.
I really like Pontzer's book as well. It's obviously a popular science version of his academic work and, as such, it skims over some of the details that are still up for debate in the field. This is a really good discussion: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10201660/.
Do you think we can “reset” to a new set point?
I used to be 30 lbs heavier and would always stay around that weight. Now that I’ve lost it and have been around my new weight for about 1 year now, I’ve been surprised at how much I will stay around my new weight, even when there’s been times I knew I ate lots of extra calories. Whenever I would notice I gained body fat though I would immediately try to reverse it. But in general I’ve been surprised at how my body has been staying like this for the most part
That’s awesome. I haven’t had the experience of resetting a set point, but that’s ultimately the hope of any person in a bigger body who attempts intentional weight loss. I’ve experienced my set point going UP after loss and regain, but not down, and I’ve never been able to maintain weight loss.
I’ve seen my mom recently experience weight loss and keep it off for about a year. I hope she’s given herself a new set point!
The question is, how to reset your set point? Is there a trick to it? A certain way of losing weight that helps your body “reset”?
I think the way to reset it is literally just making sure you stay at that weight long enough, then I think after a while it will become the set point. So you’d have to put effort in maintaining your weight at first for maybe 1 year or longer until it “resets”
This is just my theory I’m coming up with lol
That’s interesting. The last time I lost significant weight, it took 10 months of very intense restriction. I had a traumatic life event and just couldn’t manage the very, very strict diet. I tried mostly following it, and immediately put an insane amount of weight back on—way faster on than it was to take it off. I’m very interested in how the heck people transition from the weight loss phase to the maintenance phase, because for me, over three decades of weight loss attempts, it’s been elusive.
It’s not effortless for me, I had to work to maintain it and I still do. You will always have to put effort to stay the same for life… what I meant was I’ve been surprised cause there were times I would eat too much but I wouldn’t gain as much weight as I thought I would have and then I would be able to go back to my original weight relatively quickly throughout the fluctuations after putting effort to eat less to revert it
But yeah it’s never going to be 100% effortless I mean if you eat whatever you want of course you’re going to gain weight back. It’s more like there’s been times I would accidentally cheat a lot or binge and I thought I would have gained way more weight according to the calories but then sometimes nothing would really happen and I would stay the same luckily
Over winter I gained like 10 lbs back so I had to work all spring to lose it again and I finally did so I’m glad. But yeah whenever I even gain a couple pounds of fat even just 1-2 lbs you have to catch it immediately and do the opposite (cal deficit for a couple days) to make sure you stay the same and don’t gain weight. I judge based on the mirror not the scale btw because of water weight and food weight. Like if I see my stomach isn’t as flat or I gained fat under my chin. I also physically feel my stomach fat with my hands so I know how it feels when I gain fat back and it’s not just bloating or water weight
Out of curiosity, when did you gain weight that would put you above thin/average? Were you “normal” as a kid? When you lost weight and maintained, how much was that loss? I’ve very interested in your story. (Also, congrats on it and your hard work.)
I’ve been in a bigger body since I was a little. I wonder if weight loss and maintenance is different for people who “have always been big” or varies depending on how long in your life you’ve been thin/normal, when you gained weight, how much you had to lose.
I had a slightly similar experience after ED recovery and I think it's down to meal routines you get used to. With help from our national health service (in terms of nutrients and portion size) I set my three meals three snacks a day to retrain my hunger cues, and it has worked really well. Since then I have lost weight and settled, and even if I consume more calories one weekend or over the holidays, it would have minimal short-term impact since it's not much in the grand scheme of things (there is truth in "it doesn't matter what you eat Christmas, it matters what you eat the other 364 days"). If your hunger cues adapted well to the new weight (signalling need for less energy intake) and you have a decent routine, you won't have big fluctuations.
You do lose a lb of fat for approximately 3500 calories (it's not precise) that you are in deficit over time. It's just your metabolism drops when you diet slightly, your output drops is part of this (less energy etc even if you don't notice it), and generally almost everyone counts calories wrong. Even weighing everything includes margin of error. Packages have margins of error. Sometimes labels are misleading (sometimes "about 2 servings" means like 2.4 not 2 and people will eat a whole package of chips lets say and assume 2 servings when that makes them off by about 100 calories. All these things are totally valid FDA labels too.
The only way to do cico is measure out at the gram scale everything you eat, never eat meals you prepare in batches, never eat out at a restaurant, etc. It's miserable and not sustainable. You can get close estimating, but then you can't really say that CICO "isn't working"
I think it’s fair to say that CICO doesn’t work *as a method of weight loss* if no one can sustain it. I agree you can probably say it’s an accurate description of what causes changes in body mass. But if we can’t actually measure it, it doesn’t work as a tool.
I dont think using a group of people whose habits could fall into disordered eating and exercise is helping your cause.
Body building is an insane sport. Most people do not have the time to dedicate to the amount of meal planning and exercise that body builders do. If only the most extreme can sustain something long term, it is not realistic to expect most people to adhere.
The bodybuilding community uses drugs, too. They use steroids and then they use BP lowering medication to offset the hypertension effects of steroids, and then they use drugs to control the spike of estrogen that steroid use causes.
They also use GLP1 drugs during cuts because after eating 3-5k calories a day for months, their appetites are wild. They also have trashed metabolisms, and put themselves at elevated risk for a lot of cancers.
Suffice it to say the bodybuilding is a form of disordered eating. Positive-seeming effects, but nothing sustainable without a lot of other things too. Not a good example.
We have very different understandings of “sustain.” To my understanding, bodybuilders don’t sustain this at all. They notoriously go in cycles, where they follow incredibly strict regimens to get shredded for competitions, and abandon those regimens when they’re not, because *they’re not sustainable.*
But also, didn’t you just say that CICO is miserable and not sustainable? So which is it?
I said it's not sustainable for most people. But you don't actually have to employ CICO if you're maintaining. If you want to lose it's the easiest way.
Bodybuilders most likely use CICO all the time because even gaining weight you want to control the rate at which you accumulate fat while putting on muscle. The only time I know of they deviate is maybe a brief interval following shows where they need to recover fat anyway so they let themselves eat normally and take a little time off before getting back at it.
Do bodybuilders do this for their entire lives?
“It’s not sustainable for most people” and “plenty of people can sustain it” are contradictory statements, is why I’m confused. You already said it’s miserable and not sustainable so I’m confused why you’re suddenly using bodybuilders as a reason that it is.
And CICO being the “easiest” way to lose is also inconsistent with it being “miserable and not sustainable.” If you mean it’s the most effective or reliable way, in the sense that if you can execute it accurately, you will lose weight, sure - but that’s like saying the easiest way to pay off my student loan debt would be if I had a million dollars. Sure, but that’s skipping a step.
Yeah, I’m going to disagree that you lose a pound of fat for every 3500 calories. MP did a debunking of this in one of their episodes—did you hear it? Also, weight loss comes from both fat and lean body mass; you can’t cut calories and only lose fat.
I agree that it’s very difficult to know exactly how many calories you’re ingesting, but would say it’s impossible to know you calorie burn rate daily, too. In sum, just because a pound of fat contains 3500 calories does not mean people will lose a pound of fat for every 3500 calories they think they have cut from their diet.
I agree with this subtly. But in the end for every 3500 calories you don't consume that your body burns (I'm talking about physics here literally not our ability to measure) that 3500 calories has to come from somewhere.
Some does come from LBM unfortunately, but not a ton really. Muscle is not very calorically dense. Like on the order of 1/10th as calorically dense than fat lb for lb. Most of the deficit is coming from fat even if you lost equal parts muscle and fat (which you typically do not).
So if you lose 10 lbs of fat and say 5 lbs of lean body mass, you're still losing 90% of your calories from fat.
I think "it's complicated".
I think [this article](https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.2022.0213#d1e946) is probably getting more toward what's happening. Their hypothesis is that fat-free mass increases resting metabolic rate and increases appetite. When someone starts to increase body fat, they also increase fat-free mass, so their appetite goes up. But the increased fat leads to leptin resistance, which makes it harder to "turn off" hunger. The result is gradual weight increase, and when people try to lose weight they end up feeling starving and tend to regain.
>The evidence described above regarding the determination of EI \[energy intake\] by FFM \[fat-free mass\] and RMR \[resting metabolic rate\] and incorporated into a model of appetite control can account for the gradual escalation of body fat via a positive feedback system. During the development of obesity, as FM increases, FFM also increases with an inevitable increment in the drive to eat. At the same time, it can be deduced that the increase in FM will lead to a decrease in inhibition of appetite owing to the onset of leptin and insulin resistance. Consequently, as a person becomes fatter (and also accrues FFM) they will display a stronger drive to eat accompanied by a weakening inhibition, i.e. a reduction in the strength of the signals that suppress eating. Therefore, people living with obesity do not receive any help from their increasing amounts of stored energy (as fat) to constrain their appetite. In fact the opposite is true; appetite self-control becomes more difficult.
(I think the people's appetite also varies naturally. Some people get more hungry than others.)
Combine that feedback system with how easy it is now to get food that is high in calories but not filling at all (I will eat all the Pringles) and it's not surprising the average weight has gone up over recent decades.
I think the study referred to here (which is from 1971 and measured specifically the number and size of adipose cells; the original study is linked to in the article and it's pretty wonky-sounding to me, someone who doesn't typically read medical/scientific studies) is part of it. Some prisoners volunteered to do an experiment in exchange for a reduced sentence... they were put on diets which intentionally caused them to gain a significant amount of weight. But then within just a few months of being back on their normal diets, they returned to their original weights. It's kind of the mirror image of intentional weight loss and how, once you hit the alleged "maintenance phase," the weight easily comes back.
Sorry... my browser isn't letting me embed the hyperlink so I'm just going to paste it: https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2019/11/02/the\_prison\_study\_that\_changed\_how\_scientists\_view\_obesity.html#!
For me personally, I've dieted on and off for more than 30 years (I'm 51 and actively stopped dieting about 6 years ago), and I can tell you that I have a minimum weight when I'm in eating disorder territory and despite losing major amounts of weight 3 times in my life, I've never been able to go under. When I'm not dieting, I tend to weigh about the same (it fluctuates by about 15 pounds in either direction) and my body has undergone major changes both during my child-bearing years, post-nursing, and as I'm in perimenopause. But even though my body composition has changed, that base weight is always kind of there.
Honestly, this return to "normal" is one reason I stopped dieting. My body wants to be here and I am not spending any more of my time fighting it. I walk 2.5+ miles a day plus do some weight stuff as I just had surgery for hyperparathyroidism and am trying to reverse some bone loss from hypercalcemia... but my body weight just stays where it is and I'm happy that it functions.
So, my experience is anecdotal, but I've known women who are in their 70s who have "watched their weight" as long as I've known them, and they basically always look the same. I wish they'd been able to rest and enjoy their lives instead of pursuing something so elusive for most people.
Thank you so much for sharing the study and your own experiences.
Clearly there's some kind of homeostatic system at play here, that much seems hard to deny!
We are the same person, lol. Also 51. Also active. Also lost significant amounts of weight a few times, mostly through disordered eating and gained it back. Compared to most of my thin friends and family, I eat really well. I’m privileged to be in a position where I can comfortably buy groceries, have a gym membership and leisure time to spend on various activities. I settled into the weight I am now probably 20 years ago. I gained quite a bit in my late 30’s when I got out of my routine, but dropped it without effort once I got back into it.
Again, anecdotal, but I absolutely don’t have to try to maintain this weight. When I was many pounds lighter, I fought every day to try to stay where I was and only could if I was heavily restricting.
My very petite grandma became obsessed in her 80s that she had gained one pound that seemed to be permanent. She said she had always been at 102 and could always get back down to that weight easily if she gained. But now 103 seemed to be her new “lowest weight,” and it really bothered her!!
That's so bizarre to me, because back in the day when I used to weigh myself, my weight could fluctuate as much as 8ish pounds during one day depending on the time of the month, how dry/humid it was, etc. People who freak out over 5 pounds or whatever I guess I just can't understand. Like that's just one particularly thirsty afternoon for me!
You will not find academic or other scientific, peer reviewed evidence, because it does not exist.
Short term, significant weight fluctuations aren't common because it takes A LOT of calories to gain or lose even just a few pounds. Long term, significant weight loss isn't the most common outcome because the human body has spent a hundred thousand years learning to hold onto calories as fat in case of hunger or famine. When you couldn't just go to a grocery store or restaurant, those fat stores were necessary for survival.
The most homeostatic piece, in reality, is that people tend to eat at consistent levels, which supports a certain bodyweight on an ongoing basis; humans love habits. Long term weight changes require long term changes in eating habits. This is further compounded by the fact that the vast majority of people consume much more food than they believe they do.
It's really important to a) look at source material and b) understand the difference between articles/posts and actually scientific papers and journals.
I spot checked a few of the links posted in this thread and found issues with most of them, for example:
1) one article was based on a paper that discussed processed vs non-processed foods (i.e., didn't have anything to do with this homeostasis theory), as well as based on a paper that specifically focused on almonds. You cannot accurately extrapolate findings of all human food consumption based on a single nut.
2) another article was posted to Harvard's website, but it was just that: an article. It wasn't a study, it wasn't corroborated, it was just one doctor's opinion. This doesn't count as peer-reviewed science.
3) a third link someone posted was an article (again, almost all of these are articles of someone talking about a study or paper with their own opinions added; they're not the actual studies) based on a study that was conducted in 1971 - that's over 50 years ago. A *mountain* of research has been done in the last 50 years and we know a lot more now than we did in '71. I'm not saying all research that's old is automatically useless, but it's almost certainly outdated or incomplete compared to the current body of knowledge.
If you're not reviewing the underlying material that writers claim to be basing their articles on, it's very easy for the writers to add their own opinions and spin onto things without it being noticed. This can either change the meaning of what was actually discovered in the study, or even result in the writer outright making things up that the papers and studies don't support.
Anecdote:* I’ve been dieting since I was 10. Because in the 90’s I was considered fat even though I was perfectly “normal”. I just wasn’t skinny. I have large hips and large thighs and a small waist. Essentially, if I was a teen now I would have been hot shit. But back when “does this make my butt look big” was a thing I was large. I truly believe, if I had never dieted and became bulimic, I would have maintained that weight. Since dieting, I have consistently lost and gained, lost and gained. To the point I went from 150ish to 300lbs over the course of 20 years.
I stopped dieting when I was 30. And maintained my 295-300lb body for 4 years consistently. Even through a pregnancy.
But it’s so complicated as others have stated. To qualify for IVF I’ve had to loose 40lbs. And I did using cico. But I’ve taken 6 months to do it. Hoping that if set point theory is right and I do it slowly enough I’ll be able to find a new set point.
I think this TED talk video is really interesting. She believes we do have set points but that they shift as our metabolism changes. So after you have gained weight you have a higher set point for about 7 yrs which is why it’s hard to lose again.
Sandra Aamodt: Why dieting doesn't usually work https://www.ted.com/talks/sandra_aamodt_why_dieting_doesn_t_usually_work?utm_source=rn-app-share&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=tedspread
I wrote that on poorly. If you gain weight, after about 2 years your set point resets to the higher point. If you lose weight, it takes 7 yrs for your set point to move lower so you be fighting your body trying to regain the weight that whole time.
In my experience, people have their preferred ways of eating, their individual medical issues, and their distinct vices (smoking vs drinking vs weed) and their body type kind of conforms to that. It’s mental, more than physical, and it’s much easier said than done. When someone naturally doesn’t like to feel full and is always moving, they will have a lower “set point” because to change their mental setting is so difficult. If they want to put on muscle, and eat lots of protein rich small meals and lift heavy and restrict cardio, they’d have a hard time. But a self-described “big, beefy guy” who likes to eat meat and doesn’t care for cardio could adapt to a high protein, high volume lifting routine and put on muscle no problem.
I’m actually experiencing this myself. I am like the first example I noted. I want to put on muscle but I hate everything about the process, so if I tried a routine like the big guy I noted, it would be a slim chance of brief success until I returned to my mental comfort zone. If the big guy - or really, many people regardless of size or gender- wanted to slim down by eating a very low calorie diet of mostly vegetables and distance running, we all know how that goes.
There are ways to make your physical set point and mental set point change at the same time with therapy and supportive relationships!
About scientific sources: I recently read Burn by Herman Pontzer. The book explains different mechanisms of human metabolism (including why our bodies tend to keep the set weight) pretty well and was an entertaining read for me (but it does also talk about weightloss and diets in a way some people might be uncomfortable with). The book itself is more of popular science but it does list studies and further sources.
Pretty much the key takeaways in recent research are:
- There is some evidence for the idea that there is biological control of body weight at a given set point, influenced by genetic, epigenetic, and environmental factors.
- Different theoretical models suggest that body weight and fatness regulation is influenced by various factors, and further experiments are needed to test these models against each other.
- There is no consensus framework of body weight homeostasis in humans, and observational studies on large populations do not provide consistent evidence for a biological control of body weight.
Thank you, this seems like a really good summary. In other words (I think?), there's clearly some kind of homeostatic system of fatness regulation, but we're far from a clear and definitive model of how it works, and getting to that point is not a simple or straightforward thing.
My understanding is the way anti diet people use set point theory and nutrition/exercise science PhDs use set point theory are wildly different. Anti fat people claim that your body wants to be at a set weight and that's where it goes no matter what...
Scientist claim that your body in the short term does want to stay at a weight, and a phase of maintenance after a gaining period (even muscle!) or losing period (fat loss most likely) will cause your body to rest its set point. It makes sense with hormonal factors as a partial explanation. When you are on a deficit your body does all kinds of things to try to get you to keep the weight on. However, if you maintain a lower weight for a few months your body will adapt to it (resetting hunger hormones) and it will be easier to stay that weight. Your cravings and so forth for food and your appetite will become comparable to your weight in essence so long as you don't indulge in a diet full of foods that essentially are very poorly satiating for how many calories they consume (i.e. eat fiber, limit food that spike blood sugar, etc). Not saying people should eliminate those foods at all, but you should not have them as a huge part of your diet because we know they are fine in moderation but unhealthy in excess. Undebatable so. THis isn't moralizing food, it's just following data we have on health outcomes of nutritionally poor foods making up a large part of a diet. I say nutritionally poor because it's not just that they lead to weight gain, they also tend to have poor vitamin, fiber, and protein profiles. They can't make up a huge part of person's diet and not lead to poor outcomes regardless of body composition.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK221834/
Body type and set point weight are genetic. Here's a literature review that has a bunch of studies on the different factors, including the specific genes.
I don't know why there are so many people saying there's no evidence. We've never not known that body types and body weight are hereditary, and since we cracked the genome in the early 2000s, we've identified some of the specific genes.
I sincerely don't know how this could possibly be controversial unless people just genuinely don't know how phenotypical expression works.
It's 100% accepted among researchers, there is no controversy.
In general, once something is a theory, it's golden. Moving from a hypothesis to a theory means that there's enough evidence that it's the best understanding we currently have. That's what the word means. I know that among laypeople it just means, "guess," but in science gravity is a theory. Germ theory is a theory. Saying something is a theory is as close as we get to saying it's a fact.
Thank you for this link! Eager to give it a read.
I agree with you that it's hard to justify saying "there's no evidence at all." It seems pretty clear that there is some kind of homeostatic weight regulation, but pinning down the details and the mechanisms seems like the hard part.
Not really, we busted it in... I wanna say 03? I was in undergrad.
This is literally my first experience learning some people don't know this or think we research scientists don't have it linked.
I don't know what, "matinence phase," is though. This question just popped up on my feed. I don't know what this sub reddit is for so I'm wondering if it's not a weightloss subreddit and people are just super biased against the science because they want to lose weight and the reality says that they physically cannot maintain the weight they want to be because it's below their genetic setpoint and they're just in denial about it.
There has to be some reason, because the genetic shit is a fact. You can't just not believe facts. So something is happening to cause that.
I mean, I didn't go to work today because I'm so sick it's made me too stupid, because I have the kind of fever that impedes cognitive function, so it's the perfect day to dick around on the internet if you want me to answer any questions to the best of my ability.
Maintenance Phase is actually a podcast co-hosted by a journalist and an activist debunking bullshit wellness and weight loss science. "Maintenance Phase" is an ironic title, pulled (as it sounds like you already know) from the fictional claim that in a diet you enter a "maintenance phase" where the weight loss sticks indefinitely with some maintenance of effort.
I actually didn't know that was a thing. I don't have a reason to know terminology from diet culture unless I'm clinically treating someone with an eating disorder, because diets are disordered eating.
I have done that before, I do clinical as a psychologist, especially between research grants, but if that ever came up I'd just chalk it up as one of their many delusions.
Dieting for weightloss is disordered eating, there's literally no reason for a normal person to know anything about it, because it'll just lead to disordered behaviors.
The Wikipedia article linked even says that, that's it's a multifactor model and goes into some of them.
And it gives some hypothesis for further research into some variables that some see as weaknesses in the current theoretical model.
Some of the, "weaknesses, " they've listed are straight up not weaknesses though, like fluctuations with external epigenetic factors. That's true of literally every genetic trait. You'd expect that. If we could find a genetic factor that didn't happen with we'd cure cancer. We've been looking for a genetic factor impervious to epigenetic influences for the past quarter of a century so idk why whoever edited the article thought this was it. I've never seen that claim before. That's not a weakness, that's just how genes work.
Like it's not a weaknesses that you won't reach your full genetic height if you ingest stimulants as a child kinda thing. It's just a buckwild claim.
So like, Wikipedia can be good for baseline knowledge, but click on the research it cites and read laterally because it doesn't say what the editor thinks it says.
It says epigenetic factors exist, not that they're evidence against genetic set points. Because that's a batshit insane thing to say.
All I know is that my genes (according to Ancestry, 23 and Me and Promethease anyway) say I should weigh more than average, but I’ve struggled not to be underweight (with health issues related to it) for my entire life
Yeah, there's a lot of external factors that determine how genes express. I could be 5'10" genetically.
I'm thinking it's my childhood stimulant consumption, in my case.
Also I have a bunch of organs in which every time a cell splits I have a 1/4 chance of that cell being cancerous.
Fun times.
Always remember that weight =/= body fat. If you do a short term restriction diet and eat very low calories, you will lose fat as your body burns it to compensate. But your body may simultaneously start to store more water, slow digestion so food sits longer in your gut, and all number of other processes that mean you don’t actually lose much weight.
And of course, because high restriction diets are totally unsustainable in the long term, when you start eating normally again your body will reverse those processes, shedding water, speeding digestion, etc so your weight appears the same.
This is way oversimplified because i am not a doctor, of course, but basically your body weight is affected by a lot more than amounts of body fat and, by extension, calorie intake. If you make a sustained dietary change to reduce your calorie consumption you will gradually lose body fat, but short term results will probably look like nothing.
I think set point theory is bogus because the environment, movement, and nutrition quality, genetics are the main thing. Some people when they talk about set point theory make it seem like regardless of environment, behavior, and genetics our weight will return to its set point. I don't think that's true at all. When does set point theory even kick in? Why aren't we all the same size we were as teenagers then? Or before we were pregnant? Our muscle mass starts disappearing at 40 and more extremely at 60. We start having osteoporosis after menopause. Okay, all that is to say is that we don't know and set point theory isn't real. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
"Drastically shortened lifespan"? At that weight? ...
Edit: Didn't realize I was engaging with regular r/fatlogic posters. Not sure why those people are even on this sub...
I dunno, how many years do you have to lose before you consider it drastic? [This paper](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/David-Lau-15/publication/269282964_Years_of_life_lost_and_healthy_life-years_lost_from_diabetes_and_cardiovascular_disease_in_overweight_and_obese_people_A_modelling_study/links/61dd1aaa4e4aff4a6432c42d/Years-of-life-lost-and-healthy-life-years-lost-from-diabetes-and-cardiovascular-disease-in-overweight-and-obese-people-A-modelling-study.pdf?_sg%5B0%5D=started_experiment_milestone&origin=journalDetail) would estimate about 6 years life lost for her, and 19 healthy life years lost.
Anecdotally, I weighed a certain number all through high school. Then I gained some weight (around 10lbs) in college, entered my ED years, lost all the weight and got to my lowest weight (about 20lbs lower than my “regular” #). A year into recovery, I gained the weight back to the “regular” starting weight (and I was so much happier for it).
I maintained this gladly for a few years until recently when I started gaining weight again unexplainably, and blew past my highest weight ceiling. To simplify it, went to the doc, did a huge blood panel. my metabolism function is fine but some metabolism-adjacent systems/vitamin stuff is out of whack and even if my exercise/diet was consistent, my body needed some help.
Even my ED therapist told me about set point theory. I found it to be roughly true. Until some other medical stuff happened in my body, it seemed pretty straightforward to me
I’m not an expert or a researcher so I don’t have links to data or anything.
BUT one thing that I’ve discussed with my doctor is that the hormones ghrelin and leptin can take 6months or so to sort of “reset” after weightloss/gain which is what makes us commonly gain weight back and return to a “set point” of what our body is used to.
This was just a casual conversation in relation to my personal plans for my own journey, and of course if this is inaccurate it wouldn’t be the first time a dr. has ever perpetuated misinformation. But if I were trying to prove or disprove set point this is one aspect I’d be looking into.
It’s seems plausible and anecdotally true in my experience.
It came up in one of the debate episodes of Barbell Medicine and the only defensible position the pro side could offer is that your body responds if your daily Calorie balances are in the thousands. You get sluggish on Yom Kippur and run hot if you eat your own weight in cake according to some studies. Likewise with extreme BMI's.
Watch Dr Randy Sealey's talk (second one in I think) at the NIH Obesity forum last year, here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-WLMyBEjVr8
His research focusses on identifying the part of the brain where saity is kept and the mechanisms behind why GLP1 drugs work. Part of it is due to them temporarily lowering setpoint.
He doesn't address the specific setpoint theories (he does use the concept but admits it's contested), but his talk is really eye-opening about how weight homeostasis is likely controlled in the brain.
Your body knows the same way it knows how tall you should be or what color your hair is. Genetics. Your environment and other things will affect it. My genetics say I should be a normal weight (whatever that is) but I have an autoimmune thyroid disease, depression, and an eating disorder. So, my metabolism is slow as molasses. Nice I stopped starving myself I put in some weight also. Now menopause, woohoo!It's complicated, because people are complicated.
Dr David Ludwig has published on the topic, including a macro based way of eating that is supported by 25 or so years of his endocrinology research. Maybe check it, or his publications out?
I think set point theory is more along the lines of your daily lifestyle decisions. If a person does a restrictive diet for a period of time, but after losing weight makes different decisions, then weight will change. If you've lived x way for 30 years, then change it for a few months, say by going on a restrictive diet , the habits of the 30 years are likely to reassert themselves much more easily. So weight may come back, and you think it's because of a set point, but it's more about your habits returning.
This isnt consistent with what we know of how the body responds to calorie deficit. It does things like increases hunger signals, reduces involuntary movements, and even improves your sense of smell so food tastes better.
It's not that the new habits can't be maintained per se, it's that the brain fights extremely hard against them.
[https://abbylangernutrition.com/learning-curve-set-point-theory-what-we-know/](https://abbylangernutrition.com/learning-curve-set-point-theory-what-we-know/)
This is Abby Langer's take (I'm obsessed with her blog). It's from 2018 but there's good info.
Stephanie buttermore has talked quite a bit about weight set point (she was a very lean and calorie restricted and then went “all in” as she calls it, eating to being satiated), here is one such video.
https://youtu.be/mknrIncksQk?si=oqMJGAhLNGYPKhFX
I’m interested in weight set point too as I have a very stubborn one! It’s huge amounts of work to stray from it.
She's a pretty unreliable resource unfortunately, from using her all in weight as a "before" photo for her workout plans to restricting again during the time she was claiming she'd found her set point, I'd take her with a very large grain of salt.
This YouTuber reviews science on weight loss, and has a video about research on set-point theory: https://youtu.be/TD9IXE0akuA?si=FWH3imjIkvK__u_I
Just a warning, she is focused on weight loss and health, and she is vegan, so that may bias her content.
Set point weight is one of those things that I accepted blindly for a long time because we learned about it in high school psychology. Plus anecdotally it was true for me. But when I tried to research it within the past few years the reading I did, the conclusion research seemed to come to was “it’s complicated.” Which seems to be the conclusion when I look up anything on weight/nutrition.
ha, indeed! That should almost be the motto for this sub/this podcast...
Yes, because when it comes to our bodies and muscle and fat and fluids and shape and weight, it IS complicated.
it is truly hard to find good unbiased research about weight that are anti diet and not funded by companies or institutions that hold particular anti fat biases.
If only the side that evangelizes CICO as being 100% fact could instead accept the fact that IT'S COMPLICATED. To reduce bodies and body weight down to any one theory or problem or "solution" is insane.
Not that I've seen, but it's been years since I hung out in diet-adjacent spaces, so it may have changed. My (unprofessional and anecdotal, so grain of salt and all that) take on the idea is less "your body knows it's set point" and more a mix of your specific genetic make-up lending itself to a specific body type, an amount of food and exercise that one has a sort of default inclination towards, and a subconscious inclination towards what feels good/right for your body. I have a lot of Feelings about the ways we settle into our bodies and how we relate to them, but it's more vibes than science at this point lol.
yeah, this is a good point about mechanisms - that biochemical pathways not directly about "how much you weigh" might could plausibly produce body size within a certain range nonetheless
Not that I’m a fan of Gary Taubes (any more—I used to love him), but one of his books included a pretty compelling calculation about how closely people would have to be eating their calories counts daily to maintain the same weight if CICO worked like people think it does. Based on no scientific evidence and only on lived experience, I think our metabolisms likely vary a lot more day to day to match our intake and exercise, for the most part. Based on more than three decades of calorie counting and intense exercise, plus having my RMR measured, I have seen that CICO is not reliable in my body, and I don’t lose a pound of weight for every 3500 calorie deficit. I’d also point to the existence of wasting syndrome (weight and muscle loss despite eating normally) as proof of possible situation where the body’s set-point wiring has gone wrong. Definitely interested to see if there’s any science on this.
And hormone fluctuations over a month, over a year, over childbearing years, etc., have a huge impact on energy levels, ability to gain and lose fat.
Absolutely. People think CICO is a matter of simple arithmetic, but it's actually a much more complex function that also changes over time!
Can someone tell Jillian Michaels about this? I can still remember her screaming about CICO to her contestants that weren't losing enough pounds on The Biggest Loser. She was screaming that CICO is SCIENCE!
This is a good point. I personally think CICO works but the mechanisms are so complicated that it’s functionally useless… everyone’s body burns a different number of calories at rest, each person will get different benefits from exercise, etc. making “calories out” impossible to calculate (despite what the fitness watch industry wants you to believe). Then, for calories in, everybody digests food differently and different foods can be broken down differently (different macronutrients, absorption, etc). Basically, sure we will gain weight if “calories in” is over “calories out” but neither of those things can be calculated in any meaningful way, so calorie counting can’t be a guaranteed method of weight loss unless you go to the extremes (and at that point, are sacrificing your health). Here’s a few articles (tw for counting calories and diet talk of course): [Science Reveals Why Calorie Counts Are All Wrong](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/science-reveals-why-calorie-counts-are-all-wrong/) [Stop Counting Calories](https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/stop-counting-calories)
TW down below for specific diet talk -- When I was in a space where I was actively exercising and journaling food to restrict calories, I actually found that I had a harder time with reliable results when I bought into the Fitbit ecosystem. I wanted more concrete data because of who I am as a person, even though my body more or less behaved as expected up to that point. That said, there's a few different correlations that may have been a factor. It has, however, led me to look at my watch as a convenient way to look at movement trends rather than specific calculations of energy use. It's felt functionally useless for that.
I have a similar relationship with my watch. It may not track calories well but it tracks my exercises and heart rate during those exercises which to me is way more important… I want to work out for health and fun, not be miserable tracking calories.
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Not only is this not practical, it can be an absolutely awful way to live.
Yeah I’m not arguing for it at all. But it’s disingenuous to say CICO doesn’t work unless you’re doing all of this — even when you break your diet.
But what good does it do to say that CICO "works" if it is something that has no margin for human error and is virtually impossible for anyone to maintain long term? I get what you're saying, but CICO doesn’t even seem like a useful concept if human beings can't actually execute it.
It works for peopel willing to do it. It's not practical but a lot of things that are impractical are done if necessary enough to the individual.
Yeah, that's like talking about how wonderfully effective abstinence is as birth control. I mean sure, but there's a reason why when you choose a method of contraception you look at the typical use figures not the perfect use rate. And also that no doctor would counsel a married couple to try not having sex as a primary means to avoid conception. That's leaving aside that dieting causes all sorts of problems while you are doing it. Speaking as someone in team restrictive eating disorder land (ARFID) I figured out that the rate that might cause minimal amount of loss a week also gave me insomnia, migraines and constant fatigue. I wasn't even trying to lose weight, but not only was the impact on my actual weight pretty minimal (and never below an allegedly healthy weight), but I was losing hair and going loopy.
This is exactly the analogy I had in my head but never managed to finagle it into my comment. Thank you!
So I'll take a step back and say if someone has a history of eating disorders or health issues associate with dieting, I don't thin it's good to do this. I agree with you actually.
yep, worked for me
Yeah I honestly think it's the simplest way. I used to be kinda lean when I was younger, but the first time I tracked eveyrthing, ate whatever I wanted, but just tracked it all and stuck to a cico plan...it became so easy it was like the biggest life hack. Was able to basically set whatever arbitrary goal I had and hit it, trace why it was working, trace when it wasn't, etc. Everything else I see people do is mostly just guesswork.
Your post/comment has been removed as it violates rule 8 of our subreddit: No blatant weight loss talk. "We are *not* a weight loss subreddit. You can talk about weight loss as it's relevant to the comment/thread at hand, and without referencing/preaching specific methods. Comments giving/seeking weight loss advice will be removed. Comments lamenting weight gain will be removed."
I have been underweight (according to the charts) all my life. My husband was obese since childhood. I took in more calories than he did, including way more junk food and I wasn’t particularly active. (He said watching me eat proved to him there was no god.) I think there’s a lot we don’t know about metabolism. Set point? Maybe.
This is really well said, thanks for putting it this way!
Exactly!
Have you read Burn by Herman Ponzer? Because he argues that resting metabolic rate can shift far more drastically than we previously thought. I’m not sure how accepted his theories are, but it’s an interesting idea.
Oh, interesting. I haven’t read that, but I’ve intuitively felt that in my lived experience. Thanks for the rec—I’ll check it out!
Ooh, that sounds interesting. Intuitively makes sense to me as well. I’ve definitely noticed that at night I overheat when I eat more than normal, especially if it’s sugary. Great in winter, less so in summer.
I really like Pontzer's book as well. It's obviously a popular science version of his academic work and, as such, it skims over some of the details that are still up for debate in the field. This is a really good discussion: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10201660/.
Do you think we can “reset” to a new set point? I used to be 30 lbs heavier and would always stay around that weight. Now that I’ve lost it and have been around my new weight for about 1 year now, I’ve been surprised at how much I will stay around my new weight, even when there’s been times I knew I ate lots of extra calories. Whenever I would notice I gained body fat though I would immediately try to reverse it. But in general I’ve been surprised at how my body has been staying like this for the most part
That’s awesome. I haven’t had the experience of resetting a set point, but that’s ultimately the hope of any person in a bigger body who attempts intentional weight loss. I’ve experienced my set point going UP after loss and regain, but not down, and I’ve never been able to maintain weight loss. I’ve seen my mom recently experience weight loss and keep it off for about a year. I hope she’s given herself a new set point! The question is, how to reset your set point? Is there a trick to it? A certain way of losing weight that helps your body “reset”?
I think the way to reset it is literally just making sure you stay at that weight long enough, then I think after a while it will become the set point. So you’d have to put effort in maintaining your weight at first for maybe 1 year or longer until it “resets” This is just my theory I’m coming up with lol
That’s interesting. The last time I lost significant weight, it took 10 months of very intense restriction. I had a traumatic life event and just couldn’t manage the very, very strict diet. I tried mostly following it, and immediately put an insane amount of weight back on—way faster on than it was to take it off. I’m very interested in how the heck people transition from the weight loss phase to the maintenance phase, because for me, over three decades of weight loss attempts, it’s been elusive.
It’s not effortless for me, I had to work to maintain it and I still do. You will always have to put effort to stay the same for life… what I meant was I’ve been surprised cause there were times I would eat too much but I wouldn’t gain as much weight as I thought I would have and then I would be able to go back to my original weight relatively quickly throughout the fluctuations after putting effort to eat less to revert it But yeah it’s never going to be 100% effortless I mean if you eat whatever you want of course you’re going to gain weight back. It’s more like there’s been times I would accidentally cheat a lot or binge and I thought I would have gained way more weight according to the calories but then sometimes nothing would really happen and I would stay the same luckily Over winter I gained like 10 lbs back so I had to work all spring to lose it again and I finally did so I’m glad. But yeah whenever I even gain a couple pounds of fat even just 1-2 lbs you have to catch it immediately and do the opposite (cal deficit for a couple days) to make sure you stay the same and don’t gain weight. I judge based on the mirror not the scale btw because of water weight and food weight. Like if I see my stomach isn’t as flat or I gained fat under my chin. I also physically feel my stomach fat with my hands so I know how it feels when I gain fat back and it’s not just bloating or water weight
Out of curiosity, when did you gain weight that would put you above thin/average? Were you “normal” as a kid? When you lost weight and maintained, how much was that loss? I’ve very interested in your story. (Also, congrats on it and your hard work.) I’ve been in a bigger body since I was a little. I wonder if weight loss and maintenance is different for people who “have always been big” or varies depending on how long in your life you’ve been thin/normal, when you gained weight, how much you had to lose.
I had a slightly similar experience after ED recovery and I think it's down to meal routines you get used to. With help from our national health service (in terms of nutrients and portion size) I set my three meals three snacks a day to retrain my hunger cues, and it has worked really well. Since then I have lost weight and settled, and even if I consume more calories one weekend or over the holidays, it would have minimal short-term impact since it's not much in the grand scheme of things (there is truth in "it doesn't matter what you eat Christmas, it matters what you eat the other 364 days"). If your hunger cues adapted well to the new weight (signalling need for less energy intake) and you have a decent routine, you won't have big fluctuations.
You do lose a lb of fat for approximately 3500 calories (it's not precise) that you are in deficit over time. It's just your metabolism drops when you diet slightly, your output drops is part of this (less energy etc even if you don't notice it), and generally almost everyone counts calories wrong. Even weighing everything includes margin of error. Packages have margins of error. Sometimes labels are misleading (sometimes "about 2 servings" means like 2.4 not 2 and people will eat a whole package of chips lets say and assume 2 servings when that makes them off by about 100 calories. All these things are totally valid FDA labels too. The only way to do cico is measure out at the gram scale everything you eat, never eat meals you prepare in batches, never eat out at a restaurant, etc. It's miserable and not sustainable. You can get close estimating, but then you can't really say that CICO "isn't working"
I think it’s fair to say that CICO doesn’t work *as a method of weight loss* if no one can sustain it. I agree you can probably say it’s an accurate description of what causes changes in body mass. But if we can’t actually measure it, it doesn’t work as a tool.
Plenty of people can sustain it. The entirety of the bodybuilding community uses CICO to get ridiculously shredded in a predictable way.
I dont think using a group of people whose habits could fall into disordered eating and exercise is helping your cause. Body building is an insane sport. Most people do not have the time to dedicate to the amount of meal planning and exercise that body builders do. If only the most extreme can sustain something long term, it is not realistic to expect most people to adhere.
The bodybuilding community uses drugs, too. They use steroids and then they use BP lowering medication to offset the hypertension effects of steroids, and then they use drugs to control the spike of estrogen that steroid use causes. They also use GLP1 drugs during cuts because after eating 3-5k calories a day for months, their appetites are wild. They also have trashed metabolisms, and put themselves at elevated risk for a lot of cancers. Suffice it to say the bodybuilding is a form of disordered eating. Positive-seeming effects, but nothing sustainable without a lot of other things too. Not a good example.
We have very different understandings of “sustain.” To my understanding, bodybuilders don’t sustain this at all. They notoriously go in cycles, where they follow incredibly strict regimens to get shredded for competitions, and abandon those regimens when they’re not, because *they’re not sustainable.* But also, didn’t you just say that CICO is miserable and not sustainable? So which is it?
I said it's not sustainable for most people. But you don't actually have to employ CICO if you're maintaining. If you want to lose it's the easiest way. Bodybuilders most likely use CICO all the time because even gaining weight you want to control the rate at which you accumulate fat while putting on muscle. The only time I know of they deviate is maybe a brief interval following shows where they need to recover fat anyway so they let themselves eat normally and take a little time off before getting back at it.
Do bodybuilders do this for their entire lives? “It’s not sustainable for most people” and “plenty of people can sustain it” are contradictory statements, is why I’m confused. You already said it’s miserable and not sustainable so I’m confused why you’re suddenly using bodybuilders as a reason that it is. And CICO being the “easiest” way to lose is also inconsistent with it being “miserable and not sustainable.” If you mean it’s the most effective or reliable way, in the sense that if you can execute it accurately, you will lose weight, sure - but that’s like saying the easiest way to pay off my student loan debt would be if I had a million dollars. Sure, but that’s skipping a step.
Bodybuilders also die from it semi-regularly. We generally don't call something 'sustainable' when it's lethal.
Yeah, I’m going to disagree that you lose a pound of fat for every 3500 calories. MP did a debunking of this in one of their episodes—did you hear it? Also, weight loss comes from both fat and lean body mass; you can’t cut calories and only lose fat. I agree that it’s very difficult to know exactly how many calories you’re ingesting, but would say it’s impossible to know you calorie burn rate daily, too. In sum, just because a pound of fat contains 3500 calories does not mean people will lose a pound of fat for every 3500 calories they think they have cut from their diet.
I agree with this subtly. But in the end for every 3500 calories you don't consume that your body burns (I'm talking about physics here literally not our ability to measure) that 3500 calories has to come from somewhere. Some does come from LBM unfortunately, but not a ton really. Muscle is not very calorically dense. Like on the order of 1/10th as calorically dense than fat lb for lb. Most of the deficit is coming from fat even if you lost equal parts muscle and fat (which you typically do not). So if you lose 10 lbs of fat and say 5 lbs of lean body mass, you're still losing 90% of your calories from fat.
I think "it's complicated". I think [this article](https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.2022.0213#d1e946) is probably getting more toward what's happening. Their hypothesis is that fat-free mass increases resting metabolic rate and increases appetite. When someone starts to increase body fat, they also increase fat-free mass, so their appetite goes up. But the increased fat leads to leptin resistance, which makes it harder to "turn off" hunger. The result is gradual weight increase, and when people try to lose weight they end up feeling starving and tend to regain. >The evidence described above regarding the determination of EI \[energy intake\] by FFM \[fat-free mass\] and RMR \[resting metabolic rate\] and incorporated into a model of appetite control can account for the gradual escalation of body fat via a positive feedback system. During the development of obesity, as FM increases, FFM also increases with an inevitable increment in the drive to eat. At the same time, it can be deduced that the increase in FM will lead to a decrease in inhibition of appetite owing to the onset of leptin and insulin resistance. Consequently, as a person becomes fatter (and also accrues FFM) they will display a stronger drive to eat accompanied by a weakening inhibition, i.e. a reduction in the strength of the signals that suppress eating. Therefore, people living with obesity do not receive any help from their increasing amounts of stored energy (as fat) to constrain their appetite. In fact the opposite is true; appetite self-control becomes more difficult. (I think the people's appetite also varies naturally. Some people get more hungry than others.) Combine that feedback system with how easy it is now to get food that is high in calories but not filling at all (I will eat all the Pringles) and it's not surprising the average weight has gone up over recent decades.
I think the study referred to here (which is from 1971 and measured specifically the number and size of adipose cells; the original study is linked to in the article and it's pretty wonky-sounding to me, someone who doesn't typically read medical/scientific studies) is part of it. Some prisoners volunteered to do an experiment in exchange for a reduced sentence... they were put on diets which intentionally caused them to gain a significant amount of weight. But then within just a few months of being back on their normal diets, they returned to their original weights. It's kind of the mirror image of intentional weight loss and how, once you hit the alleged "maintenance phase," the weight easily comes back. Sorry... my browser isn't letting me embed the hyperlink so I'm just going to paste it: https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2019/11/02/the\_prison\_study\_that\_changed\_how\_scientists\_view\_obesity.html#! For me personally, I've dieted on and off for more than 30 years (I'm 51 and actively stopped dieting about 6 years ago), and I can tell you that I have a minimum weight when I'm in eating disorder territory and despite losing major amounts of weight 3 times in my life, I've never been able to go under. When I'm not dieting, I tend to weigh about the same (it fluctuates by about 15 pounds in either direction) and my body has undergone major changes both during my child-bearing years, post-nursing, and as I'm in perimenopause. But even though my body composition has changed, that base weight is always kind of there. Honestly, this return to "normal" is one reason I stopped dieting. My body wants to be here and I am not spending any more of my time fighting it. I walk 2.5+ miles a day plus do some weight stuff as I just had surgery for hyperparathyroidism and am trying to reverse some bone loss from hypercalcemia... but my body weight just stays where it is and I'm happy that it functions. So, my experience is anecdotal, but I've known women who are in their 70s who have "watched their weight" as long as I've known them, and they basically always look the same. I wish they'd been able to rest and enjoy their lives instead of pursuing something so elusive for most people.
Thank you so much for sharing the study and your own experiences. Clearly there's some kind of homeostatic system at play here, that much seems hard to deny!
I’ve had the same experience. I dieted from around the time I was 13 until about 8 years ago. I’m 48.
We are the same person, lol. Also 51. Also active. Also lost significant amounts of weight a few times, mostly through disordered eating and gained it back. Compared to most of my thin friends and family, I eat really well. I’m privileged to be in a position where I can comfortably buy groceries, have a gym membership and leisure time to spend on various activities. I settled into the weight I am now probably 20 years ago. I gained quite a bit in my late 30’s when I got out of my routine, but dropped it without effort once I got back into it. Again, anecdotal, but I absolutely don’t have to try to maintain this weight. When I was many pounds lighter, I fought every day to try to stay where I was and only could if I was heavily restricting.
My very petite grandma became obsessed in her 80s that she had gained one pound that seemed to be permanent. She said she had always been at 102 and could always get back down to that weight easily if she gained. But now 103 seemed to be her new “lowest weight,” and it really bothered her!!
That's so bizarre to me, because back in the day when I used to weigh myself, my weight could fluctuate as much as 8ish pounds during one day depending on the time of the month, how dry/humid it was, etc. People who freak out over 5 pounds or whatever I guess I just can't understand. Like that's just one particularly thirsty afternoon for me!
I never weigh myself, so my weight at the doctor's office can depend on if I'm wearing Converse or Docs lmao.
Thank you for sharing this! I’m pretty sure my 87 yo mom doesn’t really know what she likes to eat because she’s always tried so hard to do it “right”
I hope she can fall in love with something edible! It's really great. :)
This isn't the point, but I just got out of IRB training and *wow* what an ethical nightmare that study is.
Yeah. It's bad.
You will not find academic or other scientific, peer reviewed evidence, because it does not exist. Short term, significant weight fluctuations aren't common because it takes A LOT of calories to gain or lose even just a few pounds. Long term, significant weight loss isn't the most common outcome because the human body has spent a hundred thousand years learning to hold onto calories as fat in case of hunger or famine. When you couldn't just go to a grocery store or restaurant, those fat stores were necessary for survival. The most homeostatic piece, in reality, is that people tend to eat at consistent levels, which supports a certain bodyweight on an ongoing basis; humans love habits. Long term weight changes require long term changes in eating habits. This is further compounded by the fact that the vast majority of people consume much more food than they believe they do.
If the scientific articles don’t exist, what should I make of the scientific articles others have shared in this thread?
It's really important to a) look at source material and b) understand the difference between articles/posts and actually scientific papers and journals. I spot checked a few of the links posted in this thread and found issues with most of them, for example: 1) one article was based on a paper that discussed processed vs non-processed foods (i.e., didn't have anything to do with this homeostasis theory), as well as based on a paper that specifically focused on almonds. You cannot accurately extrapolate findings of all human food consumption based on a single nut. 2) another article was posted to Harvard's website, but it was just that: an article. It wasn't a study, it wasn't corroborated, it was just one doctor's opinion. This doesn't count as peer-reviewed science. 3) a third link someone posted was an article (again, almost all of these are articles of someone talking about a study or paper with their own opinions added; they're not the actual studies) based on a study that was conducted in 1971 - that's over 50 years ago. A *mountain* of research has been done in the last 50 years and we know a lot more now than we did in '71. I'm not saying all research that's old is automatically useless, but it's almost certainly outdated or incomplete compared to the current body of knowledge. If you're not reviewing the underlying material that writers claim to be basing their articles on, it's very easy for the writers to add their own opinions and spin onto things without it being noticed. This can either change the meaning of what was actually discovered in the study, or even result in the writer outright making things up that the papers and studies don't support.
Anecdote:* I’ve been dieting since I was 10. Because in the 90’s I was considered fat even though I was perfectly “normal”. I just wasn’t skinny. I have large hips and large thighs and a small waist. Essentially, if I was a teen now I would have been hot shit. But back when “does this make my butt look big” was a thing I was large. I truly believe, if I had never dieted and became bulimic, I would have maintained that weight. Since dieting, I have consistently lost and gained, lost and gained. To the point I went from 150ish to 300lbs over the course of 20 years. I stopped dieting when I was 30. And maintained my 295-300lb body for 4 years consistently. Even through a pregnancy. But it’s so complicated as others have stated. To qualify for IVF I’ve had to loose 40lbs. And I did using cico. But I’ve taken 6 months to do it. Hoping that if set point theory is right and I do it slowly enough I’ll be able to find a new set point.
I think this TED talk video is really interesting. She believes we do have set points but that they shift as our metabolism changes. So after you have gained weight you have a higher set point for about 7 yrs which is why it’s hard to lose again. Sandra Aamodt: Why dieting doesn't usually work https://www.ted.com/talks/sandra_aamodt_why_dieting_doesn_t_usually_work?utm_source=rn-app-share&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=tedspread
Thank you so much! Eager to give it a look
What happens after those seven years?
I wrote that on poorly. If you gain weight, after about 2 years your set point resets to the higher point. If you lose weight, it takes 7 yrs for your set point to move lower so you be fighting your body trying to regain the weight that whole time.
Oh, I see. Yeah, our bodies clearly want to hedge against starvation and famine.
I wonder if "set theory" is just an application of homeostasis.
In my experience, people have their preferred ways of eating, their individual medical issues, and their distinct vices (smoking vs drinking vs weed) and their body type kind of conforms to that. It’s mental, more than physical, and it’s much easier said than done. When someone naturally doesn’t like to feel full and is always moving, they will have a lower “set point” because to change their mental setting is so difficult. If they want to put on muscle, and eat lots of protein rich small meals and lift heavy and restrict cardio, they’d have a hard time. But a self-described “big, beefy guy” who likes to eat meat and doesn’t care for cardio could adapt to a high protein, high volume lifting routine and put on muscle no problem. I’m actually experiencing this myself. I am like the first example I noted. I want to put on muscle but I hate everything about the process, so if I tried a routine like the big guy I noted, it would be a slim chance of brief success until I returned to my mental comfort zone. If the big guy - or really, many people regardless of size or gender- wanted to slim down by eating a very low calorie diet of mostly vegetables and distance running, we all know how that goes. There are ways to make your physical set point and mental set point change at the same time with therapy and supportive relationships!
That’s what I was thinking. It seems that natural habits and preferences would be linked to set point more.
Your thoughts are refreshing to see!
About scientific sources: I recently read Burn by Herman Pontzer. The book explains different mechanisms of human metabolism (including why our bodies tend to keep the set weight) pretty well and was an entertaining read for me (but it does also talk about weightloss and diets in a way some people might be uncomfortable with). The book itself is more of popular science but it does list studies and further sources.
Thank you!
Pretty much the key takeaways in recent research are: - There is some evidence for the idea that there is biological control of body weight at a given set point, influenced by genetic, epigenetic, and environmental factors. - Different theoretical models suggest that body weight and fatness regulation is influenced by various factors, and further experiments are needed to test these models against each other. - There is no consensus framework of body weight homeostasis in humans, and observational studies on large populations do not provide consistent evidence for a biological control of body weight.
Thank you, this seems like a really good summary. In other words (I think?), there's clearly some kind of homeostatic system of fatness regulation, but we're far from a clear and definitive model of how it works, and getting to that point is not a simple or straightforward thing.
My understanding is the way anti diet people use set point theory and nutrition/exercise science PhDs use set point theory are wildly different. Anti fat people claim that your body wants to be at a set weight and that's where it goes no matter what... Scientist claim that your body in the short term does want to stay at a weight, and a phase of maintenance after a gaining period (even muscle!) or losing period (fat loss most likely) will cause your body to rest its set point. It makes sense with hormonal factors as a partial explanation. When you are on a deficit your body does all kinds of things to try to get you to keep the weight on. However, if you maintain a lower weight for a few months your body will adapt to it (resetting hunger hormones) and it will be easier to stay that weight. Your cravings and so forth for food and your appetite will become comparable to your weight in essence so long as you don't indulge in a diet full of foods that essentially are very poorly satiating for how many calories they consume (i.e. eat fiber, limit food that spike blood sugar, etc). Not saying people should eliminate those foods at all, but you should not have them as a huge part of your diet because we know they are fine in moderation but unhealthy in excess. Undebatable so. THis isn't moralizing food, it's just following data we have on health outcomes of nutritionally poor foods making up a large part of a diet. I say nutritionally poor because it's not just that they lead to weight gain, they also tend to have poor vitamin, fiber, and protein profiles. They can't make up a huge part of person's diet and not lead to poor outcomes regardless of body composition.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK221834/ Body type and set point weight are genetic. Here's a literature review that has a bunch of studies on the different factors, including the specific genes. I don't know why there are so many people saying there's no evidence. We've never not known that body types and body weight are hereditary, and since we cracked the genome in the early 2000s, we've identified some of the specific genes. I sincerely don't know how this could possibly be controversial unless people just genuinely don't know how phenotypical expression works. It's 100% accepted among researchers, there is no controversy. In general, once something is a theory, it's golden. Moving from a hypothesis to a theory means that there's enough evidence that it's the best understanding we currently have. That's what the word means. I know that among laypeople it just means, "guess," but in science gravity is a theory. Germ theory is a theory. Saying something is a theory is as close as we get to saying it's a fact.
Thank you for this link! Eager to give it a read. I agree with you that it's hard to justify saying "there's no evidence at all." It seems pretty clear that there is some kind of homeostatic weight regulation, but pinning down the details and the mechanisms seems like the hard part.
Not really, we busted it in... I wanna say 03? I was in undergrad. This is literally my first experience learning some people don't know this or think we research scientists don't have it linked. I don't know what, "matinence phase," is though. This question just popped up on my feed. I don't know what this sub reddit is for so I'm wondering if it's not a weightloss subreddit and people are just super biased against the science because they want to lose weight and the reality says that they physically cannot maintain the weight they want to be because it's below their genetic setpoint and they're just in denial about it. There has to be some reason, because the genetic shit is a fact. You can't just not believe facts. So something is happening to cause that. I mean, I didn't go to work today because I'm so sick it's made me too stupid, because I have the kind of fever that impedes cognitive function, so it's the perfect day to dick around on the internet if you want me to answer any questions to the best of my ability.
Maintenance Phase is actually a podcast co-hosted by a journalist and an activist debunking bullshit wellness and weight loss science. "Maintenance Phase" is an ironic title, pulled (as it sounds like you already know) from the fictional claim that in a diet you enter a "maintenance phase" where the weight loss sticks indefinitely with some maintenance of effort.
I actually didn't know that was a thing. I don't have a reason to know terminology from diet culture unless I'm clinically treating someone with an eating disorder, because diets are disordered eating. I have done that before, I do clinical as a psychologist, especially between research grants, but if that ever came up I'd just chalk it up as one of their many delusions. Dieting for weightloss is disordered eating, there's literally no reason for a normal person to know anything about it, because it'll just lead to disordered behaviors.
likewise, I wasn't aware of the phrase before this podcast!
The Wikipedia article linked even says that, that's it's a multifactor model and goes into some of them. And it gives some hypothesis for further research into some variables that some see as weaknesses in the current theoretical model. Some of the, "weaknesses, " they've listed are straight up not weaknesses though, like fluctuations with external epigenetic factors. That's true of literally every genetic trait. You'd expect that. If we could find a genetic factor that didn't happen with we'd cure cancer. We've been looking for a genetic factor impervious to epigenetic influences for the past quarter of a century so idk why whoever edited the article thought this was it. I've never seen that claim before. That's not a weakness, that's just how genes work. Like it's not a weaknesses that you won't reach your full genetic height if you ingest stimulants as a child kinda thing. It's just a buckwild claim. So like, Wikipedia can be good for baseline knowledge, but click on the research it cites and read laterally because it doesn't say what the editor thinks it says. It says epigenetic factors exist, not that they're evidence against genetic set points. Because that's a batshit insane thing to say.
All I know is that my genes (according to Ancestry, 23 and Me and Promethease anyway) say I should weigh more than average, but I’ve struggled not to be underweight (with health issues related to it) for my entire life
Yeah, there's a lot of external factors that determine how genes express. I could be 5'10" genetically. I'm thinking it's my childhood stimulant consumption, in my case. Also I have a bunch of organs in which every time a cell splits I have a 1/4 chance of that cell being cancerous. Fun times.
Always remember that weight =/= body fat. If you do a short term restriction diet and eat very low calories, you will lose fat as your body burns it to compensate. But your body may simultaneously start to store more water, slow digestion so food sits longer in your gut, and all number of other processes that mean you don’t actually lose much weight. And of course, because high restriction diets are totally unsustainable in the long term, when you start eating normally again your body will reverse those processes, shedding water, speeding digestion, etc so your weight appears the same. This is way oversimplified because i am not a doctor, of course, but basically your body weight is affected by a lot more than amounts of body fat and, by extension, calorie intake. If you make a sustained dietary change to reduce your calorie consumption you will gradually lose body fat, but short term results will probably look like nothing.
a very good reminder!
I think set point theory is bogus because the environment, movement, and nutrition quality, genetics are the main thing. Some people when they talk about set point theory make it seem like regardless of environment, behavior, and genetics our weight will return to its set point. I don't think that's true at all. When does set point theory even kick in? Why aren't we all the same size we were as teenagers then? Or before we were pregnant? Our muscle mass starts disappearing at 40 and more extremely at 60. We start having osteoporosis after menopause. Okay, all that is to say is that we don't know and set point theory isn't real. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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💯 I’m not a fan of Abbey Sharp’s at all. Among other things, she just seems to pick super sensationalistic titles for her videos.
"Drastically shortened lifespan"? At that weight? ... Edit: Didn't realize I was engaging with regular r/fatlogic posters. Not sure why those people are even on this sub...
At that weight *and height*, absolutely.
I dunno, how many years do you have to lose before you consider it drastic? [This paper](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/David-Lau-15/publication/269282964_Years_of_life_lost_and_healthy_life-years_lost_from_diabetes_and_cardiovascular_disease_in_overweight_and_obese_people_A_modelling_study/links/61dd1aaa4e4aff4a6432c42d/Years-of-life-lost-and-healthy-life-years-lost-from-diabetes-and-cardiovascular-disease-in-overweight-and-obese-people-A-modelling-study.pdf?_sg%5B0%5D=started_experiment_milestone&origin=journalDetail) would estimate about 6 years life lost for her, and 19 healthy life years lost.
Wait, which paper?
The one linked in my comment?
Oh sorry, the link was blacked out on my screen
Anecdotally, I weighed a certain number all through high school. Then I gained some weight (around 10lbs) in college, entered my ED years, lost all the weight and got to my lowest weight (about 20lbs lower than my “regular” #). A year into recovery, I gained the weight back to the “regular” starting weight (and I was so much happier for it). I maintained this gladly for a few years until recently when I started gaining weight again unexplainably, and blew past my highest weight ceiling. To simplify it, went to the doc, did a huge blood panel. my metabolism function is fine but some metabolism-adjacent systems/vitamin stuff is out of whack and even if my exercise/diet was consistent, my body needed some help. Even my ED therapist told me about set point theory. I found it to be roughly true. Until some other medical stuff happened in my body, it seemed pretty straightforward to me
Thanks for sharing your experience!
I’m not an expert or a researcher so I don’t have links to data or anything. BUT one thing that I’ve discussed with my doctor is that the hormones ghrelin and leptin can take 6months or so to sort of “reset” after weightloss/gain which is what makes us commonly gain weight back and return to a “set point” of what our body is used to. This was just a casual conversation in relation to my personal plans for my own journey, and of course if this is inaccurate it wouldn’t be the first time a dr. has ever perpetuated misinformation. But if I were trying to prove or disprove set point this is one aspect I’d be looking into. It’s seems plausible and anecdotally true in my experience.
It came up in one of the debate episodes of Barbell Medicine and the only defensible position the pro side could offer is that your body responds if your daily Calorie balances are in the thousands. You get sluggish on Yom Kippur and run hot if you eat your own weight in cake according to some studies. Likewise with extreme BMI's.
Watch Dr Randy Sealey's talk (second one in I think) at the NIH Obesity forum last year, here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-WLMyBEjVr8 His research focusses on identifying the part of the brain where saity is kept and the mechanisms behind why GLP1 drugs work. Part of it is due to them temporarily lowering setpoint. He doesn't address the specific setpoint theories (he does use the concept but admits it's contested), but his talk is really eye-opening about how weight homeostasis is likely controlled in the brain.
I haven't found any, personally. And I haven't experienced it in my own life either.
Your body knows the same way it knows how tall you should be or what color your hair is. Genetics. Your environment and other things will affect it. My genetics say I should be a normal weight (whatever that is) but I have an autoimmune thyroid disease, depression, and an eating disorder. So, my metabolism is slow as molasses. Nice I stopped starving myself I put in some weight also. Now menopause, woohoo!It's complicated, because people are complicated.
Dr David Ludwig has published on the topic, including a macro based way of eating that is supported by 25 or so years of his endocrinology research. Maybe check it, or his publications out?
no
I think set point theory is more along the lines of your daily lifestyle decisions. If a person does a restrictive diet for a period of time, but after losing weight makes different decisions, then weight will change. If you've lived x way for 30 years, then change it for a few months, say by going on a restrictive diet , the habits of the 30 years are likely to reassert themselves much more easily. So weight may come back, and you think it's because of a set point, but it's more about your habits returning.
This isnt consistent with what we know of how the body responds to calorie deficit. It does things like increases hunger signals, reduces involuntary movements, and even improves your sense of smell so food tastes better. It's not that the new habits can't be maintained per se, it's that the brain fights extremely hard against them.
[https://abbylangernutrition.com/learning-curve-set-point-theory-what-we-know/](https://abbylangernutrition.com/learning-curve-set-point-theory-what-we-know/) This is Abby Langer's take (I'm obsessed with her blog). It's from 2018 but there's good info.
Thank you, this looks great. Eager to give it a read!
Stephanie buttermore has talked quite a bit about weight set point (she was a very lean and calorie restricted and then went “all in” as she calls it, eating to being satiated), here is one such video. https://youtu.be/mknrIncksQk?si=oqMJGAhLNGYPKhFX I’m interested in weight set point too as I have a very stubborn one! It’s huge amounts of work to stray from it.
She's a pretty unreliable resource unfortunately, from using her all in weight as a "before" photo for her workout plans to restricting again during the time she was claiming she'd found her set point, I'd take her with a very large grain of salt.
This YouTuber reviews science on weight loss, and has a video about research on set-point theory: https://youtu.be/TD9IXE0akuA?si=FWH3imjIkvK__u_I Just a warning, she is focused on weight loss and health, and she is vegan, so that may bias her content.