WEIGHT LOSS SECRETS – PLANNED LONGEVITY™

Set Point Management

Weight loss is a major theme throughout the health and fitness industries. It is impossible to watch TV for a few hours and not see several weight loss pitches. You can’t walk past a magazine rack without getting bombarded with unrealistic claims about losing weight in a short period of time.

This stuff is ubiquitous, and you’ll see it anywhere promoters can find a place to stick it. I get weight loss pitches on my computer, my radio, and in texts on my cell phone. The yearning to lose weight and the millions in advertising it produces it is nothing short of astounding.

And It’s no wonder:

According to the World Health Organization:

Worldwide:

• Obesity has tripled since 1975
• 39% of adults are overweight, and 13% are Obese.
• 39 million children aged 5 and under were overweight or obese in 2020.
• Over 340 million children and adolescents aged 5-19 were overweight or obese.

The last two stats are astounding.

Now let’s look at US citizens:

• 1 in 3 adults (30.7%) are overweight.
• 1 in 3 men (34.1%) and more than 1 in 4 women (27.5%) are overweight.
• More than 2 in 5 adults (42.4%) suffer from obesity (including severe obesity).
• About 1 in 11 adults (9.2%) have severe obesity.
• The percentage of men who are overweight (34.1%) is higher than that of women who are overweight (27.5%).
• The percentage of women who have severe obesity (11.5%) is higher than the percentage of men who have severe obesity (6.9%).

Overweight and obese Americans are approaching almost two-thirds of US citizens. Amazingly, the stats are similar for young Americans. It should be no surprise, then, that the US weight loss industry is over 300 billion dollars and growing.

So?

If we’re a fat nation, it’s our own business. Right? Well, you could say that, except that the annual cost of America’s weight problem falls on all of us:

• Obesity-related health care cost: $260 billion (I think this is low, but even so, it’s alarming).
• Lost worker productivity and absenteeism from work: $27 billion.
• Shortened life because of obesity: 6 to 14 years (depending on severity).

These numbers don’t consider the tragic emotional and financial costs to the obese and their families – this is difficult to assess, but we all know it’s there.

Weight loss is a Planned Longevity™ priority:

My job as OMY1 is helping OMYs get healthy and stay healthy. This is what Planned Longevity™ is all about. There is no doubt that being overweight is unhealthy. And If the above statistics are true, two-thirds of OMYs likely have weight loss as one of their goals.

As OMYs, we need to talk about weight loss in a realistic way, not how it’s usually sold in TV and magazine ads. These ads are almost always focused on quick and questionable weight-loss promises.

Here’s the truth, large amounts of weight loss done rapidly is unhealthy and – it almost always comes back. This is what’s meant by “YO-YO” dieting.

Why YO-YO dieting is unhealthy, and the lost weight usually comes back:

Let’s talk about homeostasis. This is a technical term for your body being in a state of equilibrium after being acted upon by an outside force. For example, say it’s bitterly cold outside. You leave your warm home, step outside, get into your cold car, and head to work.

This blast of cold is an outside force that shocks your system. Your body naturally reacts to the cold in several ways to get internal functions back into equilibrium. This automatic reaction is quite complex, but your body takes it in stride. If you live where winters are severe, you might go through this experience several times a day.

Cutting your calories and changing your diet mix is also a shock to your system from an outside source. This change also causes homeostasis efforts to kick in and get things back to normal.

Homeostasis is at work 24/7, and without it, we would die:

When discussing dieting and weight loss, we’re talking about disturbing our body’s natural tendency towards balance and equilibrium amongst and between our organs.

Starting on a weight loss diet is very disruptive, and your homeostatic mechanisms will fight hard to bring your body back into equilibrium. (i.e., gain the weight you lost back.)

Let’s look at what happens when you start a typical low-calorie weight loss diet:

Your “set point” weight doesn’t change.

Your body has a comfort zone when it comes to weight. If you weigh 350 pounds, it’s quite alright with your body. You wake up every day with this weight, and everything is fine. In fact, adding to this weight is ok too. You can binge on a rack of ribs and a dozen yeast rolls, wash it down with a six-pack of ice-cold beer, and your body will just add the extra calories to your “fat bank.”

Your fat bank works better at depositing fat than it does when it comes to making withdrawals. You and I are just made that way. It goes back a long time in our ancient history, back to the days of feast and famine.

In fact, accumulating fat was great if you lived in a feast-and-famine world. In those days, the fat bank was the equivalent of a rainy-day savings account.

It works this way: when you put calories in the fat bank, your body’s set point (comfort level) raises a notch. From an evolutionary standpoint, we’re just getting ready for the inevitable famine we will face, one that could last days.

From our body’s point of view, the fat bank, like a rainy day account, is only to be tapped in an emergency, like a famine.

It’s simple. The fat bank loves collecting fat and is miserly about withdrawing it. This one-way street is what you’re up against on a typical weight loss diet.

Your metabolism will go lower the more you lower your caloric intake.

The manager of your fat bank is a stingy miser too, and rather than giving you fat to burn, he’ll make you cut your metabolic rate first, forcing you to get by on less.

This is one of the main reasons you start losing weight fast, and your success tapers off slowly and can sputter to a stop. Blame it on the greedy miser that runs the fat bank.

Long-term weight loss diets almost always hit plateaus where progress stops and can even go backward.

Your metabolic system enforces the rules.

To make matters worse, you discover that your metabolic system works for the old miser at the fat bank. Not only will your metabolism slow down, but you’ll also be forced to burn everything else you can before digging into your fat reserves.

In fact, if you decide to stop eating tonight after your 6:00 dinner and not eat again until tomorrow’s dinner (a 24-hour fast), you’ll only be burning fat for a few hours tomorrow afternoon.

Burning fat is the last choice in your chain of energy options. You and I are designed to collect and hoard fat – that’s how it is.

By now, you’re probably beginning to see why most efforts at weight loss fail. But there’s more. In many cases, the little progress gained on your diet is lost when all your weight returns, and sometimes, a little extra gets piled on.

So the fat bank miser gets his fat back along with a little interest.

Are You Hungry Yet?

Hunger is a real and complex survival mechanism that is relentless and omnipresent in a calorie-restricted state. You crave food, and you have a gnawing feeling in your stomach. All you can think about is food, and you even dream about it.

Yeah, that’s right.

In non-technical terms, hunger hates weight loss, so with all it can muster, it’s pulling you back to your set point, where you were comfortable and your internal systems were in harmony.

Even after you have quit your weight loss efforts, your set point remains, and you are harassed with hunger until the set point is restored.

This is frustrating and discouraging.

Weight Loss and Set Points – The Truth:

First of all, I’m not selling weight loss programs and diet gimmicks, so here’s the truth. Weight loss comes when you take in less energy than you burn, and it’s that simple.

Yeah, you can talk about different diets, timed eating, and special foods, but it’s still about calorie reduction, and it always will be.

Most diet plans promise rapid weight loss without hunger and say they’ll help you keep the fat off once you lose it. In reality, their delivery of these promises is dismal.

Really, though, with a good diet plan, it’s pretty easy to lose ten pounds or less and keep it off. Especially if you have a follow-up plan. Longer-term weight loss, however, is a different story, and this is what faces the obese, who are looking at losing 100 pounds or more.

Set points are the reason for this difference. Losing ten pounds or less is not likely to kick the set-point mechanisms into action. Shed more than ten pounds, however, and you’re likely to run into a set-point wall and incessant hunger.

OK, so what about set points?

Success in weight control and weight loss most likely lies in the concept of set point management.

First, rapid weight loss over ten pounds will likely trigger set-point issues. So let’s put a number on it. If you weigh 200 pounds, then ten pounds is 5% of your weight. Now let’s take a leap here and say that it takes losing 5% or more of your weight to trigger the set point mechanism.

You get up to 5% easily, and if you quit there, you can probably keep it off. But say you want to lose more, what then?

Well, the next question is how to move a set point out of the way, and how long does this take?

We know that set points are sticky things, so let’s say that it takes 120 days to re-position a set point. This seems doable because it probably took ten years to get where you are, so 120 days is a relatively short period of time.

Set point re-setting might differ amongst individual dieters, but we’ll just assume that 20 days on either side of 120 days would be average.

If this is true, losing 5% of your weight over 120 days would steer you clear of set-point issues and prevent the all too common re-gaining of weight after losing it. Simply put, this means that weight loss of 2 to 3 pounds per month is ideal and sustainable.

Why do I think this?

I’ve searched but can’t find any serious studies on re-setting weight set points to facilitate weight loss. Knowing this, even if what I said isn’t accurate, it makes logical sense. So, I’ll keep thinking this way until someone provides data that say otherwise.

But don’t hold your breath. No weight loss program will sell slow but steady weight loss via set point management as a strategy. They’ll still be throwing the “lose twenty pounds in the first month” sales pitch out there. This will continue even though the fine print disclaimer you can’t read says this is not “typical.”

For what it’s worth: Many people I know who’ve lost lots of weight and successfully kept it off have simply changed their eating habits and not much else. Changing what you eat instead of how much you eat is another avenue to weight loss – one I will write about in future posts.

For now, however, let’s do the set point thing as the recommended technique for the Planned Longevity™ Diet Toolbox. Pick a diet that is reasonable and can remove two or three pounds a month from your body.

To keep things simple, use my Tortoise diet (coming soon). I suggest starting by completely eliminating sweets, especially sodas. This alone will probably do the trick. Nothing complicated, just one thing to do, one thing to think about; kick sweets to the curb.

OMY1

Note: this article will appear in my “DietToolbox” inside my Planned Longevity™ Master Toolbox.

If you liked this article, please recommend it to a friend. Assure your friend most of my articles are free, and visitors don’t need to give me any information unless they want notifications when I post new newsletters. 

To return to the HOME page now, click “PLANNED LONGEVITY™” on your top left and look for my Avitar – this marker signals you’re on the home page.

But before you go:

Many of my Newsletters are Free, and You Don’t Want to Miss One…

Subscribing ensures you’ll get an email notification when I post new or upgraded newsletters.

Just leave your email, and I’ll take care of the rest:

(You can also use the signup option in the footer – just below the comments section.)

____________________

Disclaimer: From time to time, I will make a suggestion directing you to a specific product or service. I will make a small amount of money if you purchase any of these. This will not cost you anything extra, and it helps keep theOMYs.com’s free content accessible to anyone seeking this information.

____________________

NOTE: This post has a comments section at the bottom. This is also a sign-up form; You are asked for your username and email to discourage spamming. You can also click the button to get an email when I post my newsletters. Once you have made your first comment, you will be remembered, and will not be asked for this information again on any of my newsletters.