If you think that your body is refusing to shed extra weight even after sticking to a strict diet program and intensive exercise routine, it’s most possible that the “set point theory” has swung into action, and your body is fighting to maintain a certain weight, defusing your weight loss efforts to get to a lighter version of yourself. Come to think of it, the human body runs multiple complicated metabolic and chemical processes, to keep you alive, to keep the heart beating and to maintain the core temperature, and for all these processes, an optimum amount of calories are needed. It is believed that like different bodily functions, weight is also physiologically regulated. Studies say, every person has a set point weight, and the body will settle at a specific weight, and will resist any effort to change that number. This set point weight is predetermined by genetics they say, but can get affected by environmental factors, dietary habits, and lifestyle. Your body would also try to push you back to the previous weight by making hormonal changes that increase your appetite and lower the metabolism. In fact, unhealthy eating habits and sedentary lifestyle can push your reset point to a higher number. For example, if your predetermined set point weight is 58 kg, wrong dietary choices and unhealthy lifestyle habits can push it to 75 and higher! Simplifying this concept, if your set point is 75 kg, but you manage to lose a lot of weight through crash dieting, and have reached 58 kg, then the body will bring about changes within the body to take it back to 75 kg. How ridiculous, right?! Then, what’s the whole point in struggling to lose weight, do you ask? Though losing weight is considered tough, not gaining back all that lost weight can be an uphill task if you have a higher set point. Certain studies have pointed out that only 10% dieters manage to maintain their lost weight while 90% of the people tend to gain back all that and more, and we can now blame it on set point weight. Okay, so now that we are clear on set point weight, let’s find out how to change set point to achieve greater weight loss.
What is Set Point Theory?
The set point theory is the way the body will hover around a specific weight and will fight and defend to stay this particular weight. The set point theory indicates that your weight may go up or down temporarily but will ultimately return to its normal set range. If there’s severe calorie deprivation (by following crash diets), the body will become fuel efficient and adapt itself to run on fewer calories. It does so by making metabolism slow, raising the appetite, increasing the levels of hunger hormone “ghrelin,” and bringing about changes in fat-burning hormones (15 Ways to Switch on Fat-Burning Hormones). As a result, you tend to burn less calories, and eventually, when you come off the diet, the metabolism will remain sluggish and weight gain would be rapid.
1. Follow the Right Kind of Diet to Lose Weight: The best thing about weight loss diet programs on Rati Beauty diet is that they help you shed extra pounds by encouraging to eat the right kind of food and not by putting you into extreme food deprivation. It’s important to not lower down the calorie intake by an extreme degree, otherwise, the body will swiftly switch to a fat-conserving mode. However, if you cut down calories at an optimum level, it will continue to burn fat in calorie deficit and with exercise. That’s why it’s important not to deprive the body of nutrients it needs to function. Do check the diets on the Rati Beauty app for more details on how you can lose weight successfully.
2. The 10% Principle: The key to reset set point weight is to lose weight at a gradual pace, just 10% at one time. When such small amounts are lost, the body does not fight back forcefully, and lets you maintain that particular weight. When you continue losing small percentage of weight, the set point will continue to slide down to a lower value, and the body will not fight back forcefully to bring it back to the earlier higher weight. As mentioned previously, do not rely on fad diets that promise to melt fat away within a few days, check out diet programs on Rati Beauty app instead to lose weight successfully and keep it off forever.
3. Eat Fermented and Probiotics: The secret to successful weight loss can lie in your gut. The gut is considered as the “second brain” of the body because there are 100 million neurons in our gut and they are linked directly to the brain. A healthy gut is of importance because an unhealthy gut can lower immunity, increase weight, cause hormonal imbalances, affect mental health, cause endocrine and metabolic disorders. Probiotics support the friendly bacteria that reside in the small intestine and colon in the human body. These colonies of friendly bacteria extract nutrients from the digested food and release it into the blood when it reaches the intestine. When the good bacterial flora is disrupted with the invasion of bad bacteria, it creates an imbalance and nutrients and vitamins are not efficiently extracted from the food. This disruption in the digestive system is called as “dysbiosis,” which is an imbalance microbial ecosystem in the intestine. This dysbiosis is linked to weight gain and obesity. Taking prebiotics and probiotics will help maintain the healthy bacteria in your gut. Yogurt, curd, and fermented foods have probiotics that help to maintain the perfect balance of gut and help you lose weight successfully and keep the weight from piling up.
4. Get a Good Night’s Sleep: Sleep deprivation is directly linked to weight gain and obesity. You can do intense exercise and literally have no food during the day, but don’t expect to lose any weight if you aren’t getting at least 7 hours of sleep in the night. Poor quality of sleep is one of the major reasons for weight gain and obesity. In fact, if you desperately want to get rid of belly fat, just sleep tight in the night. Not having a sound sleep has a spiralling effect when it comes to weight and health – it reduces leptin (satiety hormone) level, increases cortisol production, makes metabolism sluggish, lowers fat-burning enzymes, increases level of the hunger hormone “ghrelin.”Added to this, bad sleep can hamper the gut flora by hampering the physiological stress response, and an imbalanced gut can totally stall the whole weight loss process. In fact, in all seriousness, do nothing but sleep like a baby all through the night to shed extra flab and reset set point weight.
5. Make Lifestyle Changes: To lose weight successfully and to sustain that weight loss, one needs to make healthy lifestyle changes. Exercise and healthy eating should be part of one’s lifestyle, not means to get to a certain size, shape or number on the weighing scale. Steer away from unhealthy food, come out of sedentary lifestyle, and practice these NEAT activities to train the body to get to a healthy weight.
Hope these tips help you to shed any extra weight and get to a healthier and lighter version of yourself.
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