How to Lower Your Weight Set Point Unlike TV’s Biggest Loser

Permanent healthy fat loss unlike that seen on TV’s Biggest Loser show, absolutely won’t happen no matter how many fad diets or desperate measures are taken until you lower your weight set point . 

NBCs hit show provides drama, entertainment and for some the necessary motivation to lose weight.  However, take a look at the very few successful long-term losers. How many of them have kept off the weight?  Anyone know the stats?  I’ve scoured the internet and so far haven’t come up with an exact number and those that I have uncovered info on are nut jobs who are completely obsessed with their weight, exercise too much and starve their bodies of the necessary nutrients for optimal health. 

Why Diets Don't Work

Less extreme cases also prove this same point. Take a look at how many overweight people there are worldwide  1 billion and growing by the minute Mini Me and then look at how much money is being spent on diet products just in the US.  If all those folks were successful, do you think they’d continue to spend the crazy amount of money  on diet products every day?   

There’s a reason why most of us, myself included never realize permanent weight loss with any crazy diet.  The amazing human body always strives for balance and will do pretty much everything in its power to maintain its comfort zone no matter what curve balls you throw at it.  Eat too much or too little, either way your body will always find its way back to within a few pounds of its set point.

It’s very much like anytime you ask or force a kid to do something.  Even if you’re not a betting person, you can almost bank on that kid NOT doing what you ask them to do. 

Growing up I hated dusting.  I kept my room neat, but for some reason I didn’t do my weekly dusting when asked.  Thinking back, I believe it was because I hated moving the tchotchkes on my bookshelves and dresser.  Hmmm could that be why I’m not a big tchotchke fan today?  Minimalism is the way to go for sure…  Especially when it comes to keeping things clean.

Anyways…so what’s the dust in my room got to do with fat loss?  Well, much like my room, fat loss has got to be the bodies idea.  It's not going to get rid of an ounce of fat until it feels necessary to do so.  If the body feels threatened, forced or under stress, it’s going to hang on to every bit if protection in the form of body fat that it possibly can.  Starvation (diets), external stress (crappy job, money issues, bad relationship etc.), lack of sleep and not getting the proper nutrients will keep your body hangin on to its muffin top and junk in the trunk for as long as it feels like it’s under attack.

Where the Biggest Loser Goes Wrong

What’s wrong with the Biggest Loser and other crazy diet approaches then is that they don’t really address the cause of the overweight condition and they force the body to do something that it's not ready and willing to do.

Find The Cause First

Before we can start to figure out how to lower our weight set point, we should first look at the things that can raise our set point or make us fatter.  According to Seth Roberts the three key factors in foods that raise your set point are:

1) Highly intense flavors, especially sweet stuff.

2) Easily digested and absorbed foods.

3) Foods high in calories.

Then take a look at what most who are overweight eat.  Processed junk food, which fulfills all 3 of criteria.  High calorie, quickly absorbed foods that have a incredible  flavor intensity that sucks you right in.

The Million Dollar Question

Much research still needs to be done on this million dollar question.  How exactly do you lower your weight set point by creating the conditions that the body thinks it can operate better with less fat?

Well, from what I've uncovered so far through research, including Matt Stones 180 Degree Metabolism, doing the following 3 things  will help you to become well on your way to a lasting smaller waistline.  The simplest way to think about this approach would be to eat exactly the opposite of the extra value meal.

Look at the make-up of the extra value meal, it's the perfect recipe to raise your weight set point.  The food contains flavor enhancers, refined carbohydrates, tons of polyunsaturated oils, and is served with a sugary caffeinated drink which is packed full of calories.

Instead of going through the drive through, incorporate these three items in your meal choices.

3 Steps to Lowering your Weight Set Point

1.)  Bag sugary and artificially sweetened drinks and foods.  Even chewing extreme amounts of gum can throw a monkey wrench in your progress.

2.)  Stay away from refined and processed foods.  They're absorbed way too quickly and usually very high in calories.

3.)  Eat more saturated fats and less polyunsaturated fats.  You’re probably thinking I’m a broken record at this point, but changing the ratio of saturated to polyunsaturated fats in your diet is totally reflected in not only the makeup of fat stores, but also in how much fat our body wants to keep around.  If you don’t believe me, take a look at what they feed most commercially raised pigs.  Corn and Soy.  You ever see a skinny pig?  I rest my case.

Think about the facts next time you find the urge to swing through the drive-through for lunch or order a pizza for dinner.  Once in a while's not gonna kill ya, but a steady diet of it will surely raise your set point just like Porkys.