I was just accepted into a very exclusive club. There are only about 10,000 members in the club right now. That might seem like a high number, but take into account that there are over 300 million people in the United States. The club? It’s called the National Weight Control Registry. To be a part of the registry, you have to be over 18 years old and have kept off 30 pounds or more for at least a year. You have to fill out some paperwork and provide evidence of your weight loss (I submitted “before and after” photos). Within a few hours of emailing the forms and photos, I was accepted.
Membership is low because large, sustained weight loss is very, very difficult. Most studies suggest that only about 5% of people who lose weight are able to keep it off. (Thankfully, studies also show that a fairly modest – although still difficult – 5-10% reduction in body weight provides great health benefits. Something to seriously think about when you’re looking in the mirror and insisting you need to lose 20, 30, 50, or 100 pounds.)
So, now that I’m a part of the study, what happens? They send me surveys, and I fill them out and send them back. The people behind the registry want to collect as much data as possible to determine what makes certain people successful at losing large amounts of weight over a long period of time. My personal theory? I was over my set point.
A set point is the theory that your body has a weight at which it naturally wants to be. It may vary by 5 or 10 pounds. (If you’re a frequent dieter, your set point is the weight your body settles at when you stop dieting.) For me, I think that when I was at my highest weight, it wasn’t where my body wanted to be – I was eating too much and moving too little. I’ve kept around 60 pounds off for about 10 years now, but I can’t seem to manage to get much below my current weight – even after tweaking my diet and massively increasing the amount I exercise (note that I lost those 60 pounds before I ever took my first half marathon training step). I’d be willing to bet that most everyone else in the registry also was above their set point, and has since settled where their body naturally wants to be.
You can read quite a bit about set points online, including (supposedly) how to “reset” your set point. I believe that set point is determined by a number of factors (primarily genetics), and that to the dismay of many (including me), our set point might be quite a bit higher than we’d like. Of course, I’m not a medical professional, so take what I’m saying here with a grain of salt. But a possible takeaway of this discussion? Embracing healthy habits will improve the quality of your life, even if the scale doesn’t budge.
Once interesting finding of the registry? 75% of members weigh themselves at least once a week. I wasn’t even able to choose “never” as an option for how often I weigh myself. But I feel this just goes to show that there is – no pun intended – no “one size fits all” when it comes to health issues.
