Muscle is more metabolically active than fat, meaning it burns more calories. Our metabolic rate-how much energy we burn at rest-is determined by how much muscle and fat we have. Our metabolism slows and our thyroid gland misfires Our bodies achieve this result in several ways.ġ. Our body's survival mechanisms want us to regain lost weight to ensure we survive the next period of famine (dieting), which is why many people who regain weight after dieting end up weighing more than when they started. It then counteracts weight loss, triggering several physiological responses to defend our body weight and "survive" starvation. When we change our diet to lose weight, we take our body out of its comfort zone and trigger its survival response. How our bodies work to protect our set point when we diet Unfortunately, this means our body is very good at protecting against weight loss but not weight gain. This stems from our hunter-gatherer ancestors, whose bodies developed this survival response to adapt to periods of deprivation when food was scarce to protect against starvation. Our bodies work hard to keep our weight around our set point by adjusting our biological systems, regulating how much we eat, how we store fat and expend energy. For example, an unhealthy diet, sedentary lifestyle and poor sleep will result in an increase in your weight set point over time and at a rate of 0.5 kilograms per year. Lastly, our body weight is influenced by the environment itself. Research shows unhealthy weight gain during the early years of life is likely to persist throughout adolescence and adulthood. It explains why some children who are fed a poor diet are more susceptible to unhealthy weight gain (due to their genetic make-up) while others are not. Weight set point is also influenced by the environmental factors genes may be exposed to during pregnancy and the first years of life. But our genetic make-up is just a predisposition, not an inevitable fate. Just as DNA prescribes whether we're shorter or taller than others, we're born with a tendency to be slim or overweight. Our genes play a role in programming our weight set point. It's programmed in the early years of life-particularly during the first 2,000 days of life-from conception to five years of age. It's the weight you'll remember being at for a long period of time in your adult years (over 20 years of age) and it's the weight you'll remember bouncing back to after any bout of dieting. We each have a predetermined weight-a set point-which our body protects. When we regain weight, we tend to blame it on a lack of willpower.īut there's a scientific reason many people return to their previous weight after dieting, and understanding the science-known as the weight set point theory-is key to achieving long-term weight loss. In fact, the challenge of maintaining weight loss is confirmed by research, including an analysis of 29 long-term weight loss studies that found more than half of the weight lost by participants was regained within two years, and more than 80% of lost weight was regained within five years.
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