What Is Metabolic Set Point | Elevate Now

ByTeam Elevate Now
March 2, 2023

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Introduction

A recurring challenge for people who lose weight successfully is to maintain their weight loss. This has been found in our experiences, it’s been found in friends’ stories, and it’s also supported by areas of research. This plateau state, called set point theory, states that as one loses weight, one’s body may work to put it back on. The human body and its weight remain a nascent researched, and therefore, nascent understood subject. One’s weight level is the output of various factors. These include genetics, psychology, exercise, or physical activity levels, as well as the cues we receive from our environment, among other factors.

Understanding Metabolic Set Point

Set point theory takes into account how people sustainably reach a modest weight range over the time of their adulthood. The theory explains, when you try to lose weight, your body fights back to maintain the preferred weight. It also explains that even if you consume fewer calories and work out more, the pace at which your body burns calories slows down. The idea of metabolic set point comes from this observation and a meaningful number of studies where the subjects follow a self-reporting way of submitting data to researchers.

When Set Point theory is taken into consideration, your body should also help in keeping the weight away too, which you may have gained over a period of time. However, that does not happen because if your diet is too intense and does not provide the required amount of nutrients, it affects hormones which then influence hunger. This can make one hungrier and with the weight loss intention. Such fluctuating hunger levels, combined with the rate at which we burn energy can keep you within your set point range.

From an evolutionary point of view, biologists claim that the body is primed for fat storage as humanity experienced famines commonly for centuries before modern farming techniques and storage infrastructure. This gap of more energy consumed than spent is often the result of a small but recurring energy imbalance of consuming more energy than spending. While the amount of such energy may be 50-150 kcal/day or about 5% of daily energy intake, it can accumulate as increased body fat over a sustained amount of time.

Do you follow a Western lifestyle?

Under a Western lifestyle, the northern end of a weight range is considered passively stretched from evidence found in studies on people with obesity. Metabolic changes seen in subjects, which include fat oxidation and a greater increase in burning energy, can help in limiting further weight gain. This, however, sets a new steady state for the body’s weight range instead of reducing or reversing weight levels to a previously held range or standard.

So, how can one reduce weight below the range of one’s set point? The answers are fairly typical and include options like re-evaluating your eating habits and portion sizes, reducing calorie consumption as long as you consume 1200 calories/day, and intensifying aerobic exercise with a component of strength training. In addition to this, a more active or less sedentary lifestyle of daily movement is encouraged.

Factors that can influence your metabolic set point:

Doctor-led program: By understanding the set point theory, and understanding that body weight is more than the diet, following a doctor-led approach can help one lose the excess amount of weight and keep the weight from coming back. A medical weight-loss program that uses the latest scientific knowledge in the area of obesity medicine. Taking a holistic and comprehensive approach to weight loss that focuses on an all-around health transformation through sustainable and long-term health improvements, which includes diet, exercise, stress, sleep, and the latest medical innovation.
Stress: High-stress levels can cause anxiety or burnout, among other mental health conditions. It can also impact how much and how we consume food and our relationship with food. It may even nudge us to what we eat in terms of what we think of as comfort foods. Regulating stress through mechanisms other than food allows us a healthier lifestyle. In turn, this allows us to occupy either the lower range of our set weight range or even sometimes achieve a lower range than we are accustomed to.
Mental health: People coping with mental health issues carry an increased risk of early mortality, often due to cardiovascular diseases. There is even compelling evidence showing that such conditions are linked to a higher risk of metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome is a range of conditions including abdominal obesity, dyslipidemia, hyperglycemia, and hypertension. This risk is one shared by people with a few psychiatric conditions such as anxiety disorder, bipolar disorder, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), major depressive disorder, as well as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Mental health conditions and difficulties contribute to a fluctuating metabolism as well as land people on the northern end of their set point.
Movement: In addition to the psychological layers of eating, one’s exercises or physical movement is an integral part of losing and maintaining weight, or being in a lower set point. Such activities include maintaining an active lifestyle – whether through sports, resistance training, or aerobics. The most effective form of exercise would be a combination of aerobic and resistance training. Even moving around during the day at regular intervals is an improvement to spending it seated. However, if the mentioned above sounds tiresome, you may start with simple brisk walking

Conclusion:

Set point theory suggests that humans revert to or stay in a weight range that is natural and predetermined for them. Our body weight is an outcome of a variety of factors such as DNA, genetic factors outside DNA, environmental cues, our psychology, our diet, and our exercise.

It may seem difficult to move past weight loss plateaus, ie, a barrier of weight loss resistance by eating more moderately and exercising more intensely. Accompanied by healthy habits like a suitable diet and an active lifestyle can be helpful to move to a lower weight range or a reduced weight for sustained periods as well. In addition, finding our way to mental well-being and rest, typically in the form of sleep, are crucial pillars for weight loss or maintenance.

During this journey, it is important to find a health coach, who can guide you in the right direction and help you make necessary lifestyle changes that can help you lose weight sustainably. In the spirit of mental health, we must also be empathetic to ourselves and our distinct features, such as body type, shape, and the hereditary aspects of our metabolic set point.

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