BODY VS. BRAIN / WHO'S IN CHARGE OF WEIGHT LOSS?

GUEST BLOG / By Kim Pfotenhauer, Assistant Professor of Osteopathic Medicine, Michigan State University via TheConversation.com 

--Why Losing Weight Is So Complicated 

--An Obesity Specialist Explains 

--Why One Size Doesn’t Fit All 

For decades, people struggling with weight have heard the same advice: calories in, calories out. The theory sounds simple enough. Eat less, move more, and the pounds should disappear. 

But if weight loss were really that straightforward, far fewer people would struggle with it. 

Modern obesity research shows the human body is far more complicated than a simple calculator. Genetics, hormones, metabolism, environment, stress, sleep habits, social conditions, and even evolution all appear to influence body weight. Scientists still debate exactly how these factors interact, but most agree on one thing: losing weight is rarely just about willpower. 

As a physician specializing in obesity medicine and diabetes care, I often explain to patients that the body is designed to protect itself from starvation. In many cases, that same survival system can make sustained weight loss surprisingly difficult. 

The “Set Point” 

Theory One of the oldest and most widely discussed theories is known as “set point weight.” First proposed in the 1950s, it suggests the body tries to maintain a preferred range of body fat, almost like a thermostat regulating room temperature. 

According to this theory, the body reacts when weight drops below its preferred level. Hunger increases. Fullness signals weaken. Energy expenditure slows down. In other words, the body quietly begins fighting to regain the lost weight. 

Researchers have found evidence supporting this idea. Studies show that after people lose weight, hormones linked to hunger often rise while hormones associated with feeling full remain suppressed for months, sometimes even after weight has been regained. 

The body may essentially act as if it is trying to “rescue” itself from perceived starvation. 

Why Weight Loss Gets Harder Over Time 

Another concept tied to set point theory is called “metabolic adaptation.” 

This refers to the body burning fewer calories than expected after weight loss. In practical terms, someone who loses weight may end up using less energy than another person of the same size who was never overweight in the first place. 

That reduction affects the body’s resting metabolic rate, the calories burned simply to stay alive. Even when lying in bed, the body uses energy for breathing, heartbeat regulation, digestion, temperature control, and countless other functions. 

Research suggests that after losing roughly 5% of body weight, resting metabolism can slow noticeably. Exercise efficiency also changes. By the time someone loses about 10% of their body weight, physical activity may burn fewer calories than before. 

This creates one of the most frustrating realities of dieting: the more weight a person loses, the harder it often becomes to continue losing more. 

Some of the best-known examples came from studies involving contestants from the television show “The Biggest Loser,” where many participants experienced long-term metabolic slowdown years after dramatic weight loss. Other studies, however, suggest the effect may not be quite as severe as once believed. 

Still, most obesity specialists agree the body often resists rapid or substantial weight loss. 

How Doctors Try to Work Around Biology 

Researchers and physicians continue exploring ways to counter these biological defenses. 

Bariatric surgery, for example, appears to change hunger regulation itself. Many patients report reduced appetite without the dramatic metabolic slowdown expected from traditional dieting. Interestingly, patients rarely become dangerously underweight after surgery, suggesting the body may establish a new “normal.” 

Newer medications such as GLP-1 drugs, including Ozempic and Wegovy, also appear to reduce hunger signals and improve weight loss outcomes, although scientists are still studying their long-term metabolic effects. 

Nutritional approaches may help as well. Higher protein intake, lower glycemic foods, and fiber-rich diets may improve satiety and help some patients manage appetite more effectively. 

Results, however, vary widely from person to person. 

The “Settling Point” Theory 

Not all researchers believe the body rigidly defends a single target weight. 

An alternative idea called the “settling point” theory argues that body weight is shaped more passively by lifestyle and environment than by biological control systems. 

In this model, weight stabilizes wherever calorie intake and calorie expenditure naturally balance out. 

A person with a physically demanding job who eats mostly home-cooked meals may settle into one weight range. Switch that same person to a desk job filled with stress, oversized restaurant portions, processed foods, and less activity, and their weight may gradually stabilize at a higher level. 

This theory resembles the traditional calories-in, calories-out approach, but with more attention paid to social and environmental realities. 

Think of it like a room with an open window. The temperature changes depending on sunlight, airflow, weather, and insulation. It eventually settles into a range determined by outside conditions rather than by a fixed thermostat. 

Critics of the settling point theory argue that it underestimates biology and genetics. Human metabolism clearly does not behave identically in every individual. 

The “Dual Intervention” Theory 

Some scientists believe both theories contain elements of truth. 

The “dual intervention point” model proposes that the body has upper and lower boundaries for acceptable body weight rather than one exact set point. 

Within those boundaries, lifestyle and environment largely determine weight. But if body weight falls too low, biological defenses activate strongly to prevent starvation. Hunger rises and metabolism slows. 

The model also proposes there may be an upper threshold where the body resists further weight gain, although evidence for this process in humans is weaker than in animals. 

Researchers note that in nature, excessive body fat can increase vulnerability to predators. Animals carrying too much weight may move more slowly or become easier targets. Humans, however, no longer face many of those same evolutionary pressures. 

That idea connects to another theory called the “drifty gene” hypothesis. It suggests that as human civilization became safer and food supplies more stable, evolutionary pressure to remain lean gradually weakened. 

In simpler terms, our ancestors may have needed to stay thin enough to outrun predators. Modern humans usually do not. 

So Which Theory Is Right? 

At this point, scientists do not believe any single theory fully explains body weight regulation. 

Human metabolism appears to involve elements of all three. 

Biology matters. Environment matters. Genetics matter. Behavior matters. 

That complexity also helps explain why two people following the exact same diet may see dramatically different results. 

Researchers do agree on several broad themes. Reducing calorie intake appears especially important for losing weight initially. Physical activity, meanwhile, seems critical for maintaining weight loss over time. 

Most importantly, obesity is increasingly viewed as a chronic medical condition rather than a simple failure of discipline. 

Successful long-term weight management often involves a combination of nutrition, exercise, sleep quality, stress reduction, medical care, medications, and, in some cases, surgery. 

Weight loss is also rarely linear. Plateaus are normal. Regain is common. Progress often comes in cycles rather than a steady downward line. 

The bottom line is simple: human bodies are complicated. There is no universal formula that works for everyone, and no single theory fully explains why some people lose weight easily while others struggle for years. 

One size, it turns out, truly does not fit all. 

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Tomorrow Night!

THE BRAIN GARAGE / HERE'S ONE SCENARIO ON HOW TO BEAT ANXIETY AT THE OFFICE

The two-step psychology hack that can help control anxiety. But it ain't easy. 

GUEST BLOG / By Christian Waugh, Professor of Psychology, Wake Forest University via TheConversation.com daily blog--When you're upset, finding a new way to think about a negative situation can help you feel better. But researchers find the process takes some effort to really work. 

 Picture Gigi, having a chat with her boss, when the meeting takes a sharp turn. 

 Gigi’s boss tells her that her work has been lacking recently and that maybe she needs to stay late a couple of evenings to make it up. Surprised by her boss’s remarks, she feels the rumblings of anxiety rising in her mind and body. Psychology research suggests that Gigi feels anxious because she interpreted her boss’s remarks as something threatening that perhaps she can’t handle. 

Just as Gigi starts frantically looking online for new jobs, she spies the “employee of the month” plaque on her desk from last year. She thinks to herself that maybe she can get back to her old form. She has changed her initial view of the situation (need to run away from a threat) to a new one (let’s rise to the challenge), causing her anxiety to subside. Psychologists call this process reappraisal. 

Studies show that reappraising emotional situations is a powerful way to change how you feel. When you find the silver linings in bad situations or give others and yourself the benefit of the doubt, it can help you feel better. 

I’m a psychology researcher who’s interested in how people change their emotions. 

Gigi may feel a little less anxious in the moment, but does she truly believe that she can make up the work on time and regain her former glory? My colleagues and I set out to investigate whether it’s possible to start the process of reappraisal without going all the way through with it. Are people getting the full benefit from trying to think differently about their emotions? 

Reappraisal has multiple steps 

When my colleague Kateri McRae and I first started thinking about what it means to fully reappraise emotional experiences, we were struck by something we saw in the emotion regulation research. Almost all of the studies treated reappraisal as a one-step process. Researchers would ask participants to “reappraise this to make yourself feel better” and then measure the effects. 

 Intentionally finding a new way to think about how you’re feeling can help you start changing your emotions. 

However, theories about how people regulate their emotions suggest that, like any effortful psychological process, reappraisal involves multiple steps. 

When you want to change how you’re feeling, you first generate a reappraisal. You bend and stretch your mind to come up with some alternative way to look at the situation. For Gigi, seeing the employee of the month plaque helped. She could have also thought of her boss’s previous compliments or how it felt to get projects done early. 

After you generate a reappraisal, it might seem like you’re done, but you’re not. That alternative interpretation is fragile and must compete with your original take that’s driving your emotion. Somehow you need to strengthen that reappraisal so it can stick. 

We call this implementation – when you focus and elaborate on that reappraisal to really change your mind about the situation. For Gigi, she may continue to think about all the ways that she can be a great employee so that it lodges firmly in her mind and makes her anxiety truly disappear. 

We tested this idea in a study. We showed 89 undergraduate participants images of negative situations and asked them to first just generate a reappraisal of the image that could help them feel better about it. For example, they might see a picture of a frail man in a hospital bed and tell themselves that the man is getting good treatment and will be better soon. Then, we showed them the image again and asked them to focus and elaborate in their mind on their reappraisal. 

Participants felt a little better after generating a reappraisal, but they felt much better after implementing it by focusing and fleshing out the details. In a follow-up study, we showed that these emotional boosts persisted when viewing the images later. 

Choosing to commit to feeling better 

So we experimentally showed that people reappraise their feelings in two steps. So what? That’s probably what everyone does naturally, anyway, right? 

This was the next question we sought to answer. We conducted a study with 52 undergraduate participants like the earlier one, but with a twist. This time, after participants generated a reappraisal, we gave them a choice to continue the reappraisal process by implementing it or to stop the process by distracting themselves. 

Participants chose to continue reappraising their emotions only about half the time. Even though reappraisal made participants feel better about the emotional images, there were still many times when they stopped the process prematurely and did not enjoy its full benefits. 

 Successfully reappraising your emotions calls for not giving up on the process too soon. 

 In real life 

These studies showing the benefits of fully following through on emotional reappraisals are lab experiments, but they have implications for how people try to help themselves feel better in real life. 

First, it’s hard to intentionally change how you think about something, and people tend to dislike continuing to do hard things. Indeed, in our choice study, people opted to give up on reappraising when they weren’t feeling its benefits early on. Knowing this human tendency might give you the best chance of continuing reappraisal even when it doesn’t feel like it’s working or is hard. 

Second, people often get reappraisals from others, and it’s tempting to think that hearing a new perspective is all you need. Indeed, we have unpublished data that shows that participants feel pretty good when receiving a reappraisal from someone else about their own situation. But other people cannot change your mind for you. You must do that yourself if you want to truly feel better. 

Next time you’re in an unpleasant situation like Gigi’s, don’t just cursorily think that you can rise to the challenge. Really think through the situation and let your new perspective become your only one.  ###

SECOND OPINION:

PillartoPost.org daily online magazine blog felt the article lacked an "aha" moment. What exactly do we need to do to achieve less anxiety?  We asked another psychologist at a San Diego university to give us some clarity.  The person agreed to look into it but only as an anonymous observer.  Here is a second opinion.

Your staffer at PillartoPost.org is not missing the point. The article itself is a little soft and circular, which is why there’s no real “aha” punch. The core idea is actually very simple, but the writer takes several pages to arrive at it. Here’s one opinion on how the article could be boiled down for clarity. 

The essay argues that anxiety is not only caused by bad situations, but by the meaning we assign to those situations. Psychologists call the act of changing that meaning “reappraisal.” 

In the example used throughout the piece, a worker named Gigi initially interprets criticism from her boss as a threat and begins spiraling into anxiety. But when she reminds herself that she was once “employee of the month,” she reframes the situation as a challenge she might overcome rather than proof of failure. That shift slightly reduces her anxiety. 

 The article’s actual contribution is the claim that reappraisal happens in two separate stages, not one. 

The first stage is simply generating a better interpretation: “Maybe this situation isn’t hopeless.” But the researchers argue that this alone doesn’t work very well. 

The second stage is what they call “implementation,” meaning you mentally commit to the new interpretation and actively reinforce it. In other words, you don’t just think, “Maybe I can handle this.” You continue dwelling on evidence that supports the healthier interpretation until it starts to feel emotionally real. 

 The researchers tested this idea on college students shown upsetting images. 

Participants who merely came up with alternative interpretations felt only slightly better. Those who continued focusing on and elaborating upon the reinterpretation felt significantly better, and the emotional improvement lasted longer. 

The surprising part of the research was that many people voluntarily quit halfway through the process, even though continuing would likely help them more. So the hidden “aha” point of the article is this: most people fail at calming themselves because they stop too early. 

They briefly flirt with a healthier interpretation, but they do not stay with it long enough for the brain to emotionally adopt it. The article is essentially saying that emotional recovery requires mental follow-through. A better thought alone is not enough; you have to rehearse and reinforce it until the old fearful interpretation loses its grip.

Note: Brain Garage is a copyrighted headline of PillartoPost.org daily online magazine