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Old Mon, Feb-22-21, 15:17
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wbahn wbahn is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 8,651
 
Plan: Atkins-ish, post-WLS
Stats: 408.0/288.0/168.0 Male 72 inches
BF:
Progress: 50%
Location: Southern Colorado, USA
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I believe that, with rare exceptions, at any given time our body has a set point of a weight it is trying to maintain. That set point is not fixed -- it can move and things that we do, intentionally or unintentionally cause it to move. But if we are above that setpoint and consume more calories that we need, the body will not just pack every last one of them into fat cells, it will dump a lot of them straight through our digestive track. Some people have set points so rigidly fixed that they can eat pretty much what they want and not gain weight. It's not because they have a high metabolism -- those same people can cut their intake back substantially and not lose weight. Other people, like me, have bodies that allow our set points to move up too easily. Both bodies have advantages and disadvantages from an evolutionary standpoint.

For a very long time my setpoint was at 377 lb. If I gained more than just a couple pounds above that I could count on it returning to that weight within few days without me doing anything. By the same token, if I lost a few pounds either because of lowered consumption or being really active, I could count on it popping right back to that weight. The problem was that every time I would force my weight down through traditional diet and exercise attempts, when they failed my set point would get notched up another ten to fifteen points in the process.

That happened from the time I was about 240 lb until I got up to 377 lb, which seemed to be where my body decided enough was enough. At one point I got up to 408 lb (I don't recall the circumstances), but when I decided to do something about it and trimmed back my eating and started going out for walks my weight dropped almost immediately (in well under a month) to, you guessed it, 377 lb and then the weight loss stopped. I gave up before I could get it to move lower.
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