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[quote=Anonymous]You can't "reset" it in some simple way. People don't understand the science of "set point" well -- it isn't that your body just "likes" 180lbs and wants to be that weight or something. The "set point" isn't that simple.

It's more that there are multiple hormones and aspects of metabolism that cue many relevant things -- like hunger and cravings and whether or not your body wants to hang onto fat -- and all of that factors into whether or not your body is happy with the weight you are. Whether or not your body thinks you are starving or overweight or just right. And your body can get this very, very wrong. Which is what we see with many instances of obesity.

For example, some medications such as certain psych meds (abilify comes to mind) and steroids (prednisone comes to mind) can cause your body to think it is far too thin ... and your metabolism will slow way down and your hormones will constantly tell you to eat to try to fix this imaginary starvation problem. Even if you weigh 350lbs, your body thinks you are far too small. I think of it almost as akin to autoimmune; your body shouldn't be telling your immune system to attack your own cells, but something has gone awry and it does. Your body is confused with obesity as well. Even though your body shouldn't be sending you every possible signal to eat, eat, eat, it does. Because your body thinks that your "set point" ... the size it should be to be healthy ... is much bigger. Your body is confused, and basically thinks it is starving, and you need to eat, so it bombards you with messages to do so and holds on to the fat you have for dear life. And these hormonal cues to eat -- and to eat anything with a lot of calories -- are virtually impossible to ignore long term. This is why GLP1 drugs are so effective; they counteract this. As humans we like to think of ourselves as making choices, but we operate on instinct more than people realize, and it is very very hard to counteract. Someone with a healthy set point has no idea what someone with obesity goes through, given the messages their body is sending them 24/7.

At any rate, you CAN change your metabolism. A bit anyway. Which can help. And you do that by strength training and building as much muscle as you can. It's settled science that muscle tissue burns more calories at rest than fat does. The rate at which muscle burns calories is not as dramatic as some say it is, and scientists disagree about this, but it is pretty settled that it is at least 3x the rate of fat. So if you work out and build a lot of muscle and lose a lot of fat, your metabolism will speed up. [/quote]

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