Suppose you have a “fat meter” that will beep “STOP!” message to your brain once you have accumulated enough fat. Suddenly, you won’t need pizza, ice cream, or potato chips. You will look at these favorite foods, even smell their attractive aroma, and will not be tempted. Or maybe you decide to eat something, and your metabolism will automatically return to burn more calories.
Nice fantasy, huh? Well, it’s not so far-fetched. Believe it or not, you have a built-in mechanism. Why, then, you are asking, do you feel the need to eat, even if you think you are overweight or struggling to control your weight? And why are you heavy when you don’t stop yourself?
Well, maybe your meter is broken. Or maybe his alarm wasn’t loud enough to trigger a distraction from your brain. And that’s too bad. Because this system is so powerful that the people who it works have never resisted the temptation to eat when they are not hungry. The rest of the weight comes naturally to them; It’s not something they have to work through poor diet and long hours at the gym.
Unfortunately, for many of us this weight control is gone. Food continues to tempt us long after our caloric needs are satisfied. And the extra calories lead to packing on extra pounds. Our body does not know how to control its “setpoint,” the level that is fun for us.
But don’t worry. I provide information to help you learn how to reset this powerful machine so that your body can achieve its maximum weight. You can always eat without thinking about calories, allowing your hunger/fullness/appetite to control what and when you eat in a very efficient machine. Eating will be easy and fun.
Setpoint: Your Ideal Weight
When it works, this weight management system is as accurate as the most scientific tool. Don’t believe me? Just imagine a fifty-year-old woman who weighs five pounds more than she did when she was twenty. If he eats about 2,000 calories a day, over thirty years he uses about 22 million calories. Since five pounds of body fat stores about 17,500 calories, that means his body is only .08 percent out in the energy balance vs. This amounts to a difference of about 50 calories per month—less than the calories in an egg!
In other words, its energy balance is controlled with more than 99.9 percent accuracy! How many things in life can you say that about? There is absolutely no way that you can be realistic by trying to make yourself happy over what you eat and how much you exercise.
Until the last decade, long-term stable weight in adults was the norm and a difficult process. A 1970 study found that the average weight of a sixty-year-old man was only four to five pounds more than a thirty-year-old man. The weight correction is not accidental.
So why fight? Stop counting calories and try to control your food through diet. Instead, let your body do the managing for you. I promise you will get better results.
The weight that your body needs is called your setpoint weight. Think of it as the desired temperature of a thermometer. Like all thermometers, this can be set at whatever temperature is most comfortable. The system then works tirelessly to do whatever it can to bring your body into balance with that. It acts like a biological force: the further you go from place, the stronger the pull to bring you back to a comfortable place.
This system only works if we let it, however. If you keep “jiggling” with the food thermometer, the machine will break. This jiggling is like a force fighting to take control away from your body’s weight-control system, and in the end, it just makes your body fight for control. The result: Your body forces you to not only regain the weight you’ve lost, but you can pay the penalty with extra weight—and the problem is now set higher to resist block future consumption.
Instead of continuing to engage in a serious battle with your body, you can announce the challenge and join it to help maintain a healthy, weight. You will find that you will not enjoy eating when you are full. And your body itself will make participants temporarily overindulgence without you deliberately denying yourself.
