Metabolic Setpoint

Metabolic Setpoint

Metabolic setpoint what is that i hear you say? OK Metabolism is the rate at which your body burns calories. The setpoint is a marker. Your brain, digestive system and fat stores all work together to help you maintain a stable weight. These three parts of your body communicate with each other to coordinate various activities that maintain your weight at a certain level. That metabolic level is known as the metabolic setpoint.

Think of it like an air-conditioner for your home with the thermostat as the setpoint. Your air conditioner will go up or down to regulate the temperature. Well your body will raises or lower you appetite and metabolism  to maintain your weight. 

For example I have weighted between 70 and 80kgs all my adult life so you could say my metabolic setpoint is 75kgs. So if i go on an eating frenzy and put weight on above 80kgs my hormones well send messages to my brain telling me im full and cant eat anymore it will also lower my appetite and speed up my metabolism to burn more calories until i return to the 70 to 80 range. Similarly if i lose weight my brain will tell me im hungry when im not and my metabolic rate will slow down and my appetite will spike up until i return to my safe 75kgs. The unfortunate thing is that as the body is a survival machine and it will work  extremely hard to put weight back on til i return to my normal weight or metabolic setpoint if i lose weight. But it wont work as hard if i gain weight to get me back down. How unfair is that i hear you say? Blame Darwin and the evolutionary system. We haven't evolved from cavemen. The setpoint is there to keep us safe in times of famine. Nobody told our bodies that we don't live like cavemen anymore we can go to the supermarket and get food any time of the day we don't need to hunt it anymore. 

So now we understand the metabolic setpoint you understand why so many people lose weight then pit it back on this is the yo yo diet. The person metabolic setpoint is 60 they drop to 50 kgs by having shakes but this diet is short lived you can't live on shakes forever so as soon as they eat real food again the weight comes back on. We have all seen it before or maybe done it before. How do we then break the cycle and set a new setpoint? It can be down because look at the evolution of man - the picture above- We started as Apes progressed through the ages to Neanderthal man then to man as we know it then to obese man. The second last stage we are lean muscular beings then came the industrial revolution and supermarkets and fast food then we become obese. Well we are not all overweight or Obese but in Australia and the western world over 60% so that the majority. So you can generalise and say as a whole we are overweight. So we have done this in 100 years changing our collective metabolic setpoints up to a dangerous level. Now we want to got the other way. How do we do it? We will find out next week. To be continued. Dont be mad all comes to he who waits. 

See you next week