The secret of Vitze: how hard your body tries to stop you from losing weight

Weight, it’s a magical thing.
Some people, despite dieting and exercising, always hover between trying to lose weight and rebounding, finding it difficult to reach their ideal weight; while others, despite overeating, maintain a consistent weight, finding it difficult to increase or decrease.
Despite following the principle of “caloric balance,” why is there such a large difference between individuals?
This may be because your body is “resisting” changes in your weight.
Your weight may have a “natural set point.”
Over 40 years ago, scientists observed that in a natural state, people tend to maintain their weight at a stable level, commonly referred to as the “weight set point.”
If weight deviates from this range, the body takes various compensatory measures until the weight returns to this set point.
When weight is below the set point, the body prompts you to increase food intake and reduce expenditure to regain weight;
When weight exceeds the set point, the body strives to increase expenditure and control appetite to reduce weight.
In short, whether it’s losing weight or gaining weight, it’s not easy.
What measures does the body take to maintain weight stability?
Controlling diet?
Appetite is not entirely within your control.
Have you noticed that some thin friends often have no appetite and eating is almost torture for them?
While others always have a strong appetite, seemingly unstoppable by any food restrictions.
“How much to eat” may seem like a simple personal choice, but it is actually a result of appetite control.
The appetite control center is located in the hypothalamus, which regulates your appetite through two types of hormones: one related to “hunger” and the other related to “satiety.”
When you are losing weight, gradually falling below the set point, the body perceives a significant decrease in caloric intake and considers it a serious issue. If no action is taken, it may become too weak. Therefore, it rapidly secretes a large amount of hunger hormones to induce eating.
Thus, during dieting for weight loss, appetite may become very intense.
When gaining weight, as weight gradually exceeds the set point, the body notices that caloric intake has reached a certain level and issues a warning: eating more may cause discomfort!
Resisting this primal, strong appetite regulation is challenging.
Increasing exercise?
Understand the “energy compensation” mechanism.
While controlling diet may be difficult, how about increasing physical activity?
It can help, but some people, despite exercising at the gym every day, see little change in weight.
The body has a mechanism called “energy compensation”: when you start exercising and burning calories, gradually deviating from the weight set point, the body actively lowers the basal metabolic rate to conserve energy expenditure, compensating for the energy gap.
When you’re sweating profusely on the treadmill or doing aerobics to the point of thirst, eagerly hoping to create a larger calorie deficit, your body is working hard to plug this energy leak.
An article published last year in the journal “Cell” found that lean individuals have less energy compensation, while obese individuals have more.
If caloric expenditure is likened to shopping, then the “energy compensation” mechanism is like:
Wealthy individuals (obese) have more money and want to spend more, but the store provides them with VIP discounts; while poorer individuals (thin) have less money and want to spend less, but the store only offers them regular discounts.
After a hard workout, the actual calorie expenditure may be far lower than expected… difficult!
Weight changes too quickly?
Adjust basal metabolism.
Indeed, some people achieve rapid weight loss or gain through extreme dieting or overeating.
But the body will not give up. To return to the weight set point, it takes more drastic measures – changing the basal metabolism: when weight decreases, it initiates an energy-saving mode; when weight increases, it increases energy expenditure.
When you diet for weight loss, long-term insufficient caloric intake leads to rapid weight loss, triggering the body’s alertness. It promptly switches to an energy-saving mode, reducing the metabolic rate, decreasing energy expenditure to maintain balance, preventing further weight loss.
The “plateau period” during weight loss, along with feelings of tiredness, slowed reactions, irritability, moodiness, feeling cold, blurry vision, cessation of menstruation, and other symptoms, are likely the body’s expression of conserving energy.
For thin individuals striving to gain weight, after they increase weight through excessive eating, the body initiates reverse regulation: increasing energy expenditure.
The final counterattack of the weight set point.
Whether it’s rapid weight loss or gain, when we reach the target weight and return to our previous lifestyle, the body’s efforts do not end:
The body desperately wants to return to the weight set point, possibly overcompensating before stopping at the previous weight. For example, the commonly mentioned rebound effect after weight loss. Even after finishing the diet and returning to normal eating habits, the body may remain in a low-energy state for a long time, while increasing appetite hormones significantly.
Over the past decades, scientists have repeatedly had volunteers lose or gain weight according to a schedule, but the results have repeatedly shown:
Fundamentally changing a person’s weight long-term is very challenging!
Whether it’s weight loss or gain, not succeeding is essentially the body preventing you from doing so.
So, does the weight set point imply that losing or gaining muscle is impossible, should we just give up?
Don’t be discouraged! Many people have overcome significant challenges in life and successfully made long-term changes to their weight. Because the weight set point is not static, it changes very slowly and has its own logic. What we can do is not to pursue rapid changes in weight through extreme methods in a short period, nor give up in repeated failures. It is to gradually change lifestyle over the long term and reach a new consensus with the body on the weight set point.