One of the questions we get asked the most often is how to achieve a new weight set point. Today we dig into this!
On today's podcast you will learn about:
For full show notes please go to TheWLCC.com/86
One of the questions we get asked the most often is how to achieve a new weight set point. Today we dig into this!
On today's podcast you will learn about:
For full show notes please go to TheWLCC.com/86
Welcome back to another episode of the podcast today. It's Coach, Dr. Mattea with you. I am here just to do an introduction because I wanna tell you about a few changes that we're gonna have on the podcast here. So one of the things we've noticed is that we have an amazing time. On Wednesdays at our weekly meetup where we either, and this is on Facebook where we either talk about a topic or we do question and answer and there's lots of engagement and lots of discussion. And what we realized is this really needs a normal place in the podcast. So what you're gonna notice is every so many episodes, we're gonna throw in one of those live conversations so that you can get to partake in that. You might have seen that some of them has have come as bonuses, but we realize this is perfect for Tuesday with our normal podcast for you to hear some of these conversations if you're not able to attend them live. If you ever have ideas for this, a lot of you will email us at, and you can always email at hello@thewlcc.com. You can email us questions that you have. You can also follow our Facebook business page. It's the Weight Loss for Life podcast. You can follow us on there, ask questions on that page, and we'll make sure to incorporate these into the weekly lives, and then some of them will make it up here. That is one of the big changes. I wanted to let you know, just that you can anticipate that going forward. And then today, what you're gonna hear in the episode, we talked about weight set point. This is a super popular topic. People ask me all the time about this as a physician, so. In today's episode, it's going to be number one. We're gonna talk a little bit about weight set point theory, so kind of how our body likes to live at a certain weight and it doesn't like to let go. And then number two, I'm gonna share with you a study that I read and it talks about how long do you need to be at that new weight set point for it to actually be something permanent that sticks around. The number's gonna shock you, And then number three, we talk about something new that me and Kerry are introducing something called weight loss sprints. And this is really when me and Kerry were talking before this episode, we realized, wow, you know, weight loss is not linear. And we know that we've been preaching that for two years on the podcast. But what we noticed is whenever we lose weight, we go through little sprinting periods where we're willing to experiment with a bunch of things. We say, Okay, I'm gonna do it for this period. And it's not coming from diet culture where it's like, Well, I'm gonna do these things. You know, forget all of it. I'm gonna, I'm gonna go back to how I was before. It's really a different way that we approach this mindset wise, and so we're gonna talk about all of that today. I hope all of you enjoy. Again, I really wanna encourage you, if you are loving what you're hearing, leave us a review wherever you are listening. I know it's everywhere. We have people on Apple and Spotify and Audible, and I know I use Pocket Cast. Please leave us a review wherever you're listening cuz that is how we help to reach more women to help with passing along this message that diet culture is not the only way and that you can do this in a different way. All right. Hello. Hello. We are live. If you are joining us for the first time, I'm Dr. Matea and Tia and I have Carrie Williams. We are the co-founders of the School of Sustainable Weight Loss, which is a membership that helps women to. Really feel better in their body, achieve weight loss if that's what they're working on, but really lots of self-love. We are also the co-host of the podcast, Weight Loss for Life. So we are so excited. Today we're gonna talk about a topic that, Carrie, this is something on my social media channels that gets the most views and comments and discussions. So I think this is something that we probably should have talked about a long time ago. Yeah, we're gonna talk today a lot about weight set point. Now this is different than plateaus that you. Experience where you're sort of having a hard time getting down past a certain number. What we wanna talk about today, it's gonna be three things. You can kind of be oriented. Number one, I'm gonna go over a little bit of what we call weight set point theory, which is that your body likes to live at a certain weight. And so even if you lose weight, it's like always trying to get back to that same number. We're gonna talk about that. Number two, I'm gonna give you some interesting numbers. How long do you actually have to be at a new weight for it to be the new weight set point? It's gonna shock you. And then number three, we wanna talk a little bit about in achieving these new weight set points, we don't see that women kind of go down the scale like this. We kind of have defined this as weight loss sprints. So women typically have a period where they do some work and then they maintain and then a period of some work and they maintain. And so we're gonna go over all that today. I think it's gonna be great. Carrie, did you wanna add anything before we, before we. No. No. All good. Yeah, it sounds like a great, great chat. Perfect. All right, so let's get started. Number one, I want to just, and by the way, if you're joining us here live, I always love, I see a few of you here always let us know where you're tuning in from. I just love hearing, It's so nice as we sit here to just see where everybody's at. Um, so number one, let's talk about what is weight set point theory. This is a theory that our body likes to live at a certain number, and usually your body has gotten used to this over time. So I'll give you an example. Let's say that you, over the past few decades, you've gotten up to 200 pounds and you've been there for a while, and what you notice is when you do weight loss attempts or whatever you do, Beautiful. We have someone from Texas here. Amazing. Um, so what you notice is you lose weight, but then within a few months or a year or two, you're right back there and you might even actually be higher this time. And so you say to yourself, Why is this that? It's almost like this magnet that's pulling me back to it. And it's because of the hormones in our body. Get used to that weight that you're living at. Your body gets used to that. It's sort of like a thermostat, like our body also has a temperature that it likes to live at, and it will really work hard to keep you there. So if you get sick and you're having fevers, your body's trying to get things to come back to normal, right? You'll be sitting there sweating. You're, you're literally, your brain would not do well if the temperature was up that high and we weren't getting, getting it off in some way. So you're all sticky. It's, it's not a great situation. So the same thing happens with our weight. Now, the challenge that we have here is if we want sustainable weight loss, we're gonna have to get down to a new weight and maintain that weight. And so, A lot of people then wonder, well, how do we do that? Or how long does it take? That's a question and I'm wondering, I'm gonna ask this to people that are here live. I'm gonna tell you a study how long it took for people to get to a new weight and maintain it. So it's their new set point, but how long would you guess that you have to maintain a weight for it to become your new weight set point? I'm really curious. Carrie, what did you think before I told you the. Yeah, I thought it would probably be somewhere around maybe a year or two just from personal experience and what I've noticed from people. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. Interesting thing. Very similar things. Like one year a year. Interesting. Yeah, definitely. And that's kind of what I thought, like let's just hang out there a little bit. One to, So one and a half years. Love it. So everyone here thought the same thing. The study showed it was anywhere from one to six years of maintaining that weight. So I know everybody give your reaction cuz okay, you're hearing six years And when I read that, so I was like six years But here's what I realized. It's that you have got to, Yes, someone is like six exclamation point. Ah. So here's the thing though. Your body needs to fully accept that you are staying there. You are giving it a chance to know we're staying here. We're not going back to the old ways because after a year, then the hunger hormone grelin starts to go down. So it stops telling you you're so hungry all the time. Because as you lose weight, your body wants you to keep putting it back on. So hormonally it keeps trying to do that. So after a year, that goes away and then you get to keep working through these different changes. It's fascinating. So someone saying, you're a holy cow, I'm, I'm three years in. Yes. So here's the thing. What. I think the biggest thing we see here is part of, Carrie, what we go over is this forever plan, right? Which is like, we're not doing things anymore that you're not willing to do, at least for the next few years, right? Like long term, you never know, but, but really the reason why we're so big on this, and Carrie kind of talks about it like. It gets declared over time. Right. It's sort of like reveals itself because if you thought about it, if you had to do something for the next six years for it to be like, I'm there and don't think about it anymore, you kind of have to love it. What do you think, Carrie? Uh, I completely agree. I mean, the forever plan is, you know, is the answer really at the end of the day, But you know what I am, there's part of me that's shocked about, Wow, it could take up to six years. I mean, let's remember. It's also up to not always. Yes. Right, Right. One and six. Then I'm like, You know what though? Why is that a problem? Because if you're doing your forever plan, you're adopting it forever. Right? And most of us, we, we want to lose weight, but really what we truly want is to maintain that weight loss. And that's something that most of us, that we've never quite cracked. That little, That's the outlier, right? Like that's the outlier. 95% of people gave it back. That's the thing. Yeah. So it's like we're actually doing something very extraordinary here. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, exactly. And you know, most of us will probably agree that weight loss in and of itself is relatively simple, Relatively easy. Yeah. There's a bit of discomfort, there's a bit of pain, you know, But it's not necessarily a hard thing if we know what to eat to lose weight. It's the maintaining in and it's the, I don't really wanna eat like that forever. So the. Thing that's a little bit more nuanced and it's a little bit more of a practice to get to over time is that this is how I eat for maintenance and this is how I really like to eat. And let's also distinguish weight loss. Eating from maintenance, eating, right? So you might eat for weight loss, get to a certain point, and then maintain that, and that's your forever plan. You know that that is what works for your. Body's new set point. So in a way it's like, yeah, that is a bit shocking that six years. But then also it's like, well, but you wanna eat like that forever anyway. Right? Because if you, if we just throw it all in the bin again, we can expect that we will go back to that and more, you know, so. Right. Yeah, it's fascinating. Suffer, isn't it Really, really interesting. You just said a comment that triggered me here with, So we have a comment here. I'm on week seven and not lost any weight. I think the fat is hanging on for dear life, so it can feel like that, right? Like especially if you're, if you really feel like you're doing all the things. But Carrie, you said this comment. I love that. It's like you're either eating for maintenance or you're eating for weight loss. And so eating for maintenance. When, when, when people say, Okay, I, you know, I'm however many weeks in and things aren't budging, you're just eating for maintenance. So it means that you're eating to a place where your body's very comfortable to hold on. And number one, I wanna say this, most people are actually gaining weight year to year. That's, again, I'm like pulling on studies just from studying 24 7 right now. But most people statistically keep gaining weight if this is a problem for you. So the fact that you're not gaining weight, number one, we need to celebrate that. But number two, all that this means is that we just need to figure out a different way. um, for there to be maybe a little bit less food or whatever it looks like, but your body is just in maintenance. It's just not in the mode yet of letting go. Carrie, any thoughts on that? Yeah, yeah, I completely agree. Yeah. Week seven and not having lost anyway, I really can understand how uncomfortable and how painful that experience can be, and I think, right, It's like once you start evaluating and looking at, well, this is what I've been doing, and if this is creating. Essentially maintenance, what you're maintaining at the moment. Then I guess the question is, well what can I do that might just take me to that next pound of weight loss, that next two pounds of weight loss? And I love framing it in that, that kind of mentality because when I look back at what the weight that I lost before, which was around about 40 pounds, um, or. 42 pounds, something like that. I really lost it one pound at a time. And because I used to have these big goals, I wanna lose the 20 pounds, I wanna lose this, I wanna lose that. And when I thought about that big chunk of weight, it just got me thinking, Oh my God, I can't do that. I can't, you know, get to that level. It's really like cortisols up Yeah. And the changes that I needed to make to get to that level as well. Whereas if I just think about the next number on the scale that I wanna see. What do I need to do to create that? And then that felt like, oh, okay, well maybe I could just, you know, cut out this snack. Maybe I could just reduce this type of thing. You know, maybe I could drink less coffee or whatever it is. And you know, just experiment with that. And then you know that you're on the right path, you're getting there, which is a really nice way to do it. So that, that might be something to think about. You know, if you are in week seven you're thinking, Why haven't I lost any weight? What's the one change that might actually get you to that next place? Cause it sounds like you may be eating for mainten. Yeah, and Carrie, actually, LA uh, last time she had a group call and we'll put the dates in our members only Facebook group, if you wanna watch that replay. Carrie went through a whole think about all of these things. If you're stuck at a weight plateau, all the different things to go through. So if you're within the school of sustainable weight loss and you missed that, and this is something you're struggling with, Carrie went through all of that on her call, so we'll make sure. To do the, um, the timestamp for that. Yeah. Microsteps, that's always what ends up sticking around, right? Like these big things don't, don't stick around long term. Sorry. So, So one of the things with maintaining this for a while, Uh, yeah, I, I just got to the place where I didn't see it as a problem anymore, that the weight would stay the same for many months in between me. Like you said this number three here that we're gonna talk about with doing the weight sprints, because cuz I could never maintain it before and it's interesting care you say, Oh, you know, the weight loss is easy for me. I, I have challenges with both weight loss and the maintenance, so I'm like, okay, it's not necessarily easy to lose it, but to. I started to just like celebrate the heck out of being able to keep weight off. Yeah, I was like, this is amazing. We've never been able to do this, so I'm not gonna beat myself up anymore for the periods in between. But Carrie, did you wanna talk a little bit about kind of weight loss sprints? Cuz we were talking about it like that's what we do. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, it's really interesting, isn't it? Reflecting back that, you know, we talk a lot about, well, let's understand what actually worked for us before. You know, let's not throw everything away from all the diets that we've done before. And one of the things that I remember learning from one of the programs I did was that you would do this program for 21 days. You have three weeks. And then you lose that weight. But then the next part is about maintaining, and that was to regulate your body so that you kind of lose weight, maintain, and then give yourself maybe a little bit of a break if you want to, or you do it again. You lose weight, you maintain, you lose weight, you maintain. So if you were looking at it on a chart, it might look something like steps. You know, you go down. Stay the same, go down, stay the same. Not exactly linear like that, of course, cuz life happens. But that's the whole idea. And I did a bunch of those cycles over time before I came to this mindset work. Now what that that program was really effective with was weight loss. What it wasn't effective with was maintenance. Um, longer term with emotional eating. And that's where the. Piece came in. But now that I'm thinking that weight loss is at the forefront for me again with, you know, after pregnancy, I'm like, Oh yeah, actually maybe that's what I wanna do again, cuz I do have a chunk of weight to lose now. And it feels like a really big thing to think, Oh, I'm gonna eat like that for the next however long, Maybe it's another year, whatever, however long my body takes to release it. But I can probably get myself behind. These sprints is like the kind of terminology that we described it as, wasn't it? You know, And they're not extreme. It's like whatever you want to do, but this is where I'm eating for weight loss and I'm gonna take three weeks, however long works for you, three weeks for me, and see how, how much weight I lose. But then I wanna maintain and I wanna make sure that I don't go above a kilo. either side of that number, like two pounds, either side of that number. So I just wanna kind of stay roughly around the same weight so my body gets comfortable sitting here and then I don't put it all back on. And so then we're kind of breaking it up a little bit more. And it was interesting cuz you were saying, well yeah I've kind of done the same actually. Cuz then you end up doing that naturally. So we kind of both naturally come to this over time, haven't we? Yeah. Cause what I realized is this. You know, there's times in life where it's like, it's just a great period to work on things. Um, I don't know. Somehow things with the kids are calm at school and work is not overwhelming, and I'm like, Let's do this. Right? And then I find when winter's coming and it's getting dark and other things are going on, I'm not wanting a. Push the weight loss. So it's just, it's like, what am I willing and able to do? It's like sometimes in life it's perfect timing and then the other times I don't need to make it a problem that I'm not waiting as much for hunger or I'm not an experimenter mode as much. I think really, um, these weight loss bursts are really about. What are you willing to change? And let's just be real here for a second. As humans, we don't all wanna change stuff 24 7. So can that be okay? That there are periods where we're just like making it really solidifying it, letting it set, seeing how we feel about it, versus constantly expecting a change. It's just abnormal to always be thinking we're gonna be in that growth mindset. It's, it's, it's like kind of toxic, I think to like always be expecting more and more from our. Yeah, I think we're really prone to burnout on a mindset and an emotional level, you know, cuz it's always like the next bit and the next bit and the next bit. And there's no, there's no rest period. There's no integration mentally and physically in a way. And then also it's like the idea that, oh my God, I've gotta eat like this for the next year. You know? And like of course, you know, as we say, like you know, you have some of the things that you actually. But you know, as you are starting to change with weight loss, you know you are gonna need to make some changes with your food over time. And so by doing that gradually, and in these like little births, it just gives you time to integrate and have a little break and have a rest at that point. Because I think when we don't do this, this is what I used to do and I know that you have a different history, Matea, but my history is very much yoyo, big yoyos, you know, lose the weight, regain it all or more, and, and when we don't like integrate, we don't have that time for integration. I think that's where we risk putting it back on and more because. Maybe you don't wanna maintain that level of weight loss. Maybe you don't want to maintain that level of focus on this one thing for that long. You know, you're generally heading in the right direction, but you just take kind of like, you know, faster sprints, you know, faster movements towards it, and then have a little bit of a. Slower pace for a little while and just enjoy life, you know, a little bit more. Yeah. I don't know. That works for me and I know that that works for you as well. So I wonder, I wonder what people listening in are thinking actually. What do you think of that? Have you ever tried it yourself? Have you, do you, do you find on reflection like we did when we were talking about this, like, Oh, actually I've kind of done that naturally myself. I wonder, I wonder what people think about that. Yeah. Yeah, because it was funny when we talked about it because I think maybe you went into it intentionally. For me it happened unintentionally and I would realize, oh yeah, there was this two month, There was always like these two month periods where I was like, And here's the new thing. We're gonna try this week and here's the new thing we're gonna do next week. And then I'm still, by the way, we don't, here's an important thing. We don't get amnesia in the maintenance periods. Okay? We don't suddenly like not do anything, but it's just scaled back and it's at its most efficient and. Level with which you're like, it's happening and you don't even know it. So you find what those baselines are, but you're not always cranking it to that high degree. Um, what's funny is I, again, am going into one of these periods where I feel like, you know what? I can do this. And I've just been, it, it's so, it sounds so silly, but you start to find the joy in the things you're doing. Like we've got these apples from the apple orchard. I've been like, I can't wait to have that apple. And I'm like, Where did that come from? Yeah. Great. Exactly. But it's funny, like you look forward to it. It's not, I mean, how can we tell you that there can be joy involved in this, right? Like I'm so. Excited with what I'm trying and doing. Exactly, exactly. I'm seeing here. Yeah. People are saying three week sprints, like short challenges. Yeah, me too. Do you know what I think it's like my brain and my body can muster up enough energy to go, You know what, yeah, let's really go for it for the next three weeks. And you know, maybe there's a couple of times that, you know, I'm not gonna stick to this a hundred percent, but you know, I'm gonna give it my best shot 21 days, not that long. And then, you know, I'm finding myself saying things like, um, you know, I was saying to you, Mateo, I've got a trip to Glasgow possibly coming up soon. And then I'm like, Oh, actually technically that's gonna be in my maintenance period, so that's alright. I can figure that out. It's outside of that 21 day sprint. So, you know, like you can work things out, um, to your advantage. But what I really also love about this, and I think, you know, this isn't spoken about enough in normal weight loss programs, is the maintenance muscle that you're building. Because every time you practice staying within that weight, it's um, a meta skill that I think is the most important skill because. When we don't do that, that's where we fluctuate back up and we put all the weight back on, and then we're mucking up our set point again, like the actual set point that Matta's been talking about with the studies. You know, you bounce right back up to that again. Whereas if you can start to teach your body to stay at this next level, At least even for, you know, 3, 4, 6 weeks, whatever, and then do another sprint. You're going down and down again. Imagine if you held that for two years, three years. That's what ultimately I did before getting pregnant. And so it's like it taught my body again what its new set point was, and my personal experience of that was. I was surprised I could go on holiday and even if I fluctuated up, my body came back down again. You know, this was before I was pregnant. I know things have changed since then, but I was so surprised. I never believed that was possible for my body. Carrie, It's real. Like I had that this last summer on vacation, and it's like you've actually achieved a new weight set point because you either maintain or you come right back to it instead of in the opposite direction where it just keeps going up. Right. So what's interesting is, okay, hearing this today, you've heard a lot of information cuz we went a little scientific. So we shared, okay, here's what weight set point theory. Most people tend to experience this a little bit of, hey, one to six years to achieve a new, a potential new, um, threshold. How. Me and Carrie are like, there's small periods where we're willing to experiment a lot, but then the rest of the time we're kind of coasting cuz that's the forever plan. It's what you're, what you love, what fits in your life, all of that. Mm-hmm. what are your takeaways from today? Is there anything that you heard? We were like, Oh yeah, I'm gonna, that, that sounds good. I can think about that. I can change that. For me, the biggest thing with the maintenance was not making it a problem anymore and, and actually, Thoroughly celebrating. This is incredible that we can do this now, because before it was like, Well, why isn't the scale going down more? And now I'm just like, Wow, I can't believe all these habits. I can't believe you can maintain this like that. That has been the change for me in all of this discussion and learning all this over the past few years here. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think that's a really good point is celebrating that maintenance because um, you know, it's like someone said, um, further back, you know, week seven in maintenance essentially is like, kind of what you're saying at the moment, without losing that weight, that is something to be celebrated. You know, you are learning like how to maintain that weight. So once you end up, you know, getting to that next level, it's gonna be that little bit easier because you've already practiced those skills, which is amazing. Totally. Really, really good. Yeah. Love it. So I think we've had a fantastic discussion today. I've, uh, loved hearing all of your comments and Yeah, never thought of celebrating maintenance without getting to a goal. Absolutely. Really is something to celebrate, you know, And then we can examine it if it's a plateau. There's all these tools that we have for those things. But if you are intentionally maintaining as well, you know, that's a really, really great thing to celebrate even. So a lot of what, and this is, I learned a lot of this from Sasha High. She's also an obesity medicine physician and she, her whole program is called Best Weight. She's in Canada and her whole thing is we can't actually pick the number we're gonna get to, right? Like everyone thinks I'm gonna pick the number and then I'm gonna like force myself into it. But what we can control are the, the behaviors, what we're doing, how we're showing up, and then when we're doing all of. What does the number show us? Then we get to decide am I willing to change other things? Otherwise, could that be where we actually need to be? You know, it's like we, it get declares itself a little bit more. Oh, completely. We used to have a joke in my old group coaching program because, you know, we were always, you know, sharing the goals and you know, where, where everyone was getting to and sometimes our brains would get a little bit too honored about, well, I really wanna get down. This specific number like, um, you know, 60.5 kilos or, you know what I mean? It's like, but we always used to joke, Well, unless you're gonna chop a body part off, you're not probably gonna see that number on the scale. We can't force these things. So, you know, unless you wanna get the knife out, I mean, let's, let's like, you know, have a look at why there is such an attachment to that number. So I think it's really interesting, isn't it? Yeah. Absolutely. So Lynn saying, motivated to try a sprint and see what happens. That's really great to hear actually, cuz we were kind of talking when we, we discussed this topic, I'm like, wouldn't it be cool actually maybe to do some weight loss sprints within the school of sustainable weight loss? I wonder if people would be into that. So that is, um, that is really interesting to hear. Yeah. Focusing on the process is what I was gonna ask and I am inspired. Wonderful. Yeah. Wonderful. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Great. I mean, I'll leave it with this Carrie, like I. The thing if, you know, I always think back like, what's the, I'm always shocked that I was, that I've ever been able to lose weight and keep it off because unlike you, I stopped the yo-yo dieting thing because I just straight up, I couldn't even do it past three days. Like I just couldn't, I'm, I'm gonna be honest, like for probably like 12 years before I came to this work, I just got to the place where I was like, I can't even get myself on board for two, three days. And so to me what has been the most helpful thing is like today, what am I willing to do? So for example, this morning, I was like, I'm gonna take the 30 minute walk, right, first thing in the morning. And then it's like, I feel like my whole day has changed, right? And then I got a lot of water in and it's like, then it's like one thing after another, but it just starts with like, what's the small thing I'm willing to commit to? For me, it's been increased activity and then I love seeing that over the past, more than 30 days it's happening like, but it's always the little nugget I'm willing to commit to that moves all the rest of. Absolutely. Absolutely. Wonderful. Well, thank you all for being here today. It's been so lovely chatting to you all, and we shall see you again next week for another topic. Okay, bye for now.