Video | The National Weight Control Registry | How Members Lost Weight | How Members Maintained Weight Loss | Maintaining is Viewed as Easier than Weight Loss | Summary

Obesity protects obesity. This observation by researcher Timothy Garvey gets to the heart of something known as the set point theory (1).

According to this theory, your body has a genetically determined weight range, or “set point,” that it strives to maintain. When you stray outside of that range, your body triggers hormones that adjust your appetite and metabolism to reign you back in. Those adjustments work in both directions. However, because starvation is more of a threat than obesity, the mechanisms that prevent weight loss are stronger than those that prevent weight gain. In other words, it is harder to lose weight than it is to gain it.

Are we doomed to live the life our genetics predetermined, or is this set point theory just that…a theory?

While there is no denying that hormonal and metabolic factors play a role in weight control, most researchers consider the set point theory to be oversimplified, failing to take into consideration social, nutritional, and environmental factors. 

After all, we all know someone who has lost weight and maintained that weight loss for years. In fact, starting in the 1990s, the National Weight Control Registry made it its mission to identify and investigate the characteristics of individuals who have succeeded at long-term weight loss. 

In this blog post, I’ll review the common characteristics shared by the 10,000 successful maintainers in that registry that ensure the weight they lost stays off.

Read More “You CAN MAINTAIN Weight Loss: 10,000 People Did It This Way”