The weight that a person’s body naturally tends to maintain.
Understanding how the metabolic set point works can help people
both understand why weight loss is so difficult and achieve
long-term weight loss. The part of the brain called the
hypothalamus helps keep the body in balance in several ways,
including maintaining a stable weight: It controls hunger, body
temperature, and the amount of sugar, salt, water, and other
substances that are retained in the bloodstream. The
hypothalamus uses a number of hormones to control and maintain
the body’s weight set point. The set point theory was developed
in 1982 to explain why repeated dieting rarely results in long-
term weight loss. Instead, people tend to lose weight and then
regain it and possibly more. However, some researchers believe
that it is possible for a person to change his set point and
keep off lost weight. One possibility is that increased exercise
can lower the set point. Among the thousands of people enrolled
in the National Weight Control Registr