Set Point: Can You Control Your Weight? With Chris Sandel - The Weight Loss Series Part 2

In today's episode, we'll talk set point

Think of your set point like a natural mechanism your body uses to maintain a natural weight. Just like your lungs manage the appropriate amount of oxygen for your body without you having to do anything or the way in which your heart manage your blood pressure.

Another fascinating analogy is how your brain automatically gets you back steady on a bike even if it’s been 10 years since your last ride…it just happens without you having to think about it. Set point manages your weight in the same way.

What is set point?

In her book Health Every Size, Dr. Linda Bacon describes it as the Fat thermostat in our bodies. It acts just like a heat thermostat in a room. When set to a certain temperature, the thermostat will send a message to the heating system to activate when below a determined temperature. Your hypothalamus, the region of the brain that controls the system in your body that regulates your set point. It will send a message of hunger and fullness to manage your weight. This will make you think of the cookies in the cupboard and will also make you say no to the pizza when you’re full.

Our set point manages all the various components in the complex human body that create our body weight. Your set point is your ideal body weight, the bodyweight you manage naturally without food restriction, deprivation, over-exercise. Your set point is your weight between diet. The weight at which you can live a non-food or exercise-obsessed life. Set point is the internal system to maintain a healthy weight.

An example...

One 1970s research study showed that the average weight of a sixty-year-old man was only four to five pounds more than the average thirty-year-old man. That kind of weight maintenance is no accident and not the consequence of dieting either.

Dr. Bacon has this very powerful example in her book Health at Every Size:

“Just consider a fifty-year-old woman who weighs about five pounds more than she did when she was twenty. If she eats about 2,000 calories a day, over the course of thirty years she takes in about 22 million calories. Since five pounds of body fat stores about 17,500 calories, that means that her body was just .08 percent off in balancing energy in vs. energy out. This amounts to a difference of about 50 calories per month—less than the calories in one egg!” -Bacon, Linda. Health at Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight (p. 12).

Our set point is our natural weight and it can fluctuate during our lifetime. Currently, research estimates the fluctuation to beta between 10-20lbs. Set point fluctuates so it can maintain homeostasis.

Homeostasis & happiness set point theory

Homeostasis is the ability for the human body to maintain a stable environment is key to our survival. The magical ability that our body has to adapt to its environment given any condition is what is allowing to survive.

This ability to maintain balance is what maintains a stable body temperature, stable blood pressure, stable level of iron, blood glucose, and yes, body weight. All of these biological systems are focus on maintaining homeostasis, aka balance, so we can survive and thrive in our environment.

It goes beyond the human physical body. Homeostasis is also what creates your thoughts and your emotions. Your mind responds to its emotional environment as well.

The happiness set point theory is almost similar as the body weight set point theory. It suggests that our level of subjective well-being is determined primarily by heredity and by personality traits ingrained in us early in life, and as a result, remains relatively constant throughout our lives. Our level of happiness may change temporarily in response to life events, but then almost always returns to its baseline level.

For humans, homeostasis means survival and our body will do anything to bring us back to ho