{"id":419,"date":"2011-05-26T13:00:13","date_gmt":"2011-05-26T20:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.engrevo.com\/blog\/?p=419"},"modified":"2011-07-26T13:34:10","modified_gmt":"2011-07-26T20:34:10","slug":"set-point-vs-settling-point","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.engrevo.com\/blog\/set-point-vs-settling-point\/","title":{"rendered":"Set Point vs. Settling Point"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>UPDATE &#8211; This post is no longer in line with my thinking in some ways. See <a href=\"http:\/\/www.engrevo.com\/blog\/on-set-point-and-carbohydrate-requirements\/\">newer post<\/a>.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p>I overheard a young (and overweight) young man complaining that he had been having trouble losing weight. His slightly less overweight female friend suggested that <strong>his body might be thwarting is fat loss &#8211; that his body has a natural &#8220;set point&#8221; and that any attempt at straying from said point would be futile.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>This idea seems solid on the surface, but as I hope to show, it&#8217;s a little off.<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->A &#8220;set point&#8221; just seems right for a few reasons:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Losing weight is hard.<\/li>\n<li>Some people are just &#8220;naturally thin.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>Often, those who lose weight gain it back quickly.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In my opinion, <strong>often losing weight is hard because the dieter isn&#8217;t doing it right.<\/strong> Those &#8220;naturally thin&#8221; people? <strong>Try naturally insulin sensitive, active, or raised to eat a healthy diet.<\/strong> Easy.<\/p>\n<p>The weight regain point is a little stickier. Many of these &#8220;yo-yo dieters&#8221; get their weight down with an unsustainable diet, which I think is a result of a flaw in the dietary paradigm<strong>; many simply regain weight because after they lose it, they stop dieting. They get fat again for the same reason they got fat the first time &#8211; poor diet\/lifestyle.<\/strong> However, the second time, they have a little help: they are hungry and deprived from crash dieting, and they now have more fat cells than they used to so they don&#8217;t need to waste time building new ones. With a healthy diet and lifestyle, unused fat cells should die (apoptosis), but that takes time.<\/p>\n<p><strong>A more accurate model is the settling point.<\/strong> If a dieter follows a specific lifestyle for a really long time, their body composition will eventually become constant; the dieter is in equilibrium. <strong>If the lifestyle changes, the body composition will change as well, until a new equilibrium is reached.<\/strong> This new equilibrium is the settling point of the new lifestyle.<\/p>\n<p>The distinction: <strong>It&#8217;s not that the dieter has a &#8220;set point,&#8221; it&#8217;s that the diet has a &#8220;settling point.&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Dieters are not unique (in the large majority of cases), <em>diets are.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>*Some credit here (as with many of my posts) goes to The Paleo Solution Podcast. Andy mentioned something a lot like this a few months back.<\/em><strong><em><br \/>\n<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<div style=\"float:left;margin-right:10px;\"><iframe allowtransparency=\"true\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"http:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets\/tweet_button.html?url=http:\/\/bit.ly\/mg5Sj0&counturl=http:\/\/www.engrevo.com\/blog\/set-point-vs-settling-point\/&text=Set Point vs. Settling Point&count=none&lang=en&via=engrevo&related=\" style=\"width:55px; height:20px;\"><\/iframe><\/div><div id=\"wp_fb_like_button\" style=\"margin:5px 0;float:none;height:25px;\"><script src=\"http:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/all.js#xfbml=1\"><\/script><fb:like href=\"http:\/\/www.engrevo.com\/blog\/set-point-vs-settling-point\/\" send=\"false\" layout=\"standard\" width=\"450\" show_faces=\"false\" font=\"arial\" action=\"like\" colorscheme=\"light\"><\/fb:like><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>UPDATE &#8211; This post is no longer in line with my thinking in some ways. See newer post. I overheard a young (and overweight) young man complaining that he had been having trouble losing weight. His slightly less overweight female friend suggested that his body might be thwarting is fat loss &#8211; that his body [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-basics","category-calories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.engrevo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.engrevo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.engrevo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.engrevo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.engrevo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.engrevo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.engrevo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.engrevo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.engrevo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}