Finding Your Set Point Weight
Cultivating positive body image is a lifelong process, and it doesn’t mean that you have to feel positively about your body 24 hours of the day, 7 days a week. One of my favorite quotes on the topic is, “body image is a journey, not a destination.”
For most of us, the negative body-bashing isn’t ever met with a positive counter-argument. So it makes sense that when you experience a demoralizing thought about your bodies, it feels like the end of the line because you’ve never strengthened the part of your mind necessary for counteracting that thought.
Most of the time weight gain (the instigator of poor body image) is the biggest hurdle in intuitive eating. As soon as the number on the scale goes up, or your jeans fit a little more snug, the journey is over and back to diet-land we go. Most of my clients and athletes when exploring intuitive eating get really intimidated by this process. It’s scary to watch your body change! Especially when we live in a society that labels this change as “bad”, “out of control” or “glutinous.” The magic of intuitive eating happens when you sit in that space of discomfort, and give your body back its agency to do what it needs to find its set point.
Did you know that 70% of your weight is determined by genetic factors. That’s a pretty big number. Your genetically determined weight is called your set point, and it’s essentially the weight that your body will naturally settle at on its own (no diets required). It’s a bit confusing though because “set point” insinuates that your weight should be a specific number - but it's in fact a “set range.”
In Sandra Aamodt’s Ted Talk on the subject, she describes it as a thermostat in your house. Click the button below to watch it.
The caveat with your set point range is that you can’t do anything to make it “smaller” but chronic dieting will increase your set point range so that the number at which your body feels most comfortable will go up the longer you try and manipulate it. Why does it do this? Because your body can’t distinguish between a diet and a famine, and whenever food is scarce (chronic dieting) your body safeguards precious resources (fat) to ensure its survival. It’s pretty brilliant if you ask me.
Knowing that your body has a set range at which it will thrive can be immensely comforting throughout the process of repairing your relationship with food. You’re not out of control, your body is just taking time to figure out the range at which it was born to be at.
I absolutely understand that this notion of a set point range isn’t comforting for all, especially those who might live in a larger body and have to suffer under the weight (pun intended) of fat-phobia on a daily basis. For this I am truly sorry. It’s okay to grieve for a smaller body. No one is asking you to get rid of the idea that once you “let go” of the idea of being skinny it will all be over. Life is easier for those with this privilege, and that’s wrong and oppressive. These internalized beliefs take a long time to dismantle, and however you need to dismantle them is always ok.
So how do you know if you’re at your set point weight? There’s no exact way to calculate your set point weight, but check out the following prompts below to gage if you might be close.
You’re most likely at your set point weight if;
you’re not restricting any kind of food group
you’re not bingeing (or purging)
you enjoy regularly moving your body
you’re getting enough sleep (8 hours folks)
you’re able to manage stress
you have a community of people you enjoy spending time with
you eat according to hunger and fullness (most of the time)
you eat food you actually enjoy
you don’t exercise to shrink your body
For more resources on set point - check out the three podcasts linked below.
the one about set point - podcast
what is a set point weight, and how to find yours - podcast
let’s talk about weight set point - podcast
Ready to work 1-1 to fix your broken relationship with food and body image? Fill out an inquiry below, or feel free to email me directly; gabi@encompassathletics.com
