Understanding Your Weight Set Point -

smazmarriott
Nov 25
6 min read

Why We Don’t All End Up the Same Size — Even With “Perfect” Eating.

This conversation isn’t about calories anymore. It’s not even about dieting.

It’s about expectations.

Aspiring to lose weight is a valid, even life-enhancing goal if we’re overweight or living with obesity, because carrying extra body fat isn’t just about how we look – it has a big impact on our health too.

But how much should we aim to lose? And can we simply choose a number and apply healthy-eating strategies until we get there?

The answer is: not quite. We need realism and compassion for the bodies we live in.

How much we want to lose doesn’t always equal how much we can lose, because we all come with our own, unique weight set point.

This biologically influenced weight window is where your body naturally functions best, feels safest, and can be maintained without strain, obsession, or self-punishment.

Understanding our weight set points helps us stop chasing someone else’s body… and start supporting our own.

What is a weight set point?

Your weight set point is the range of weight your body is most comfortable at.

It’s not a single number on the scales. It’s a window — usually a few kilos wide — where things feel relatively steady:

appetite is more or less predictable
energy isn’t crashing and spiking all day
hormones are less chaotic

This window is very strongly influenced by genetics, but it’s also shaped by:

your early-life environment
the way you’ve eaten over the years
sleep quality
stress levels
your microbiome health
how much you’ve dieted or weight-cycled
movement and lifestyle patterns

How Do You Know What Your Set Point Is?

Your set point isn’t acutely measured – you don’t come with it tattooed on your foot at birth - and it shifts across your lifespan. It’s really rather confusing… but you can sense it if you listen to your body…

Your weight set point is:

· the weight you drift back to when you stop dieting

· the weight that feels easiest to maintain

· the weight where your appetite, mood and sleep feel more stable

Your set point exists in the place where your body feels safest – and where you feel most like yourself.

The ball in the lake analogy

Imagine you’re standing by a lake, watching a beachball bob on the surface.

The ball is your weight set point.

Now imagine you swim out, grab the ball, and shove it under the water.

That’s what a hard, restrictive diet feels like to your body.

You can hold it under for a while with enough effort, focus and grit. You might even get a rush of “it’s working!”

But the deeper you push that ball, and the longer you hold it there, the stronger the force pushing back against your hands becomes.

The upwards push is:

- hunger ramping up

- fat storage being defended

- cravings get louder.

You can’t hold on forever, so eventually, BOING – the ball surfaces again. Back to your weight set point you go.

With each cycle, your set point can shift even higher, and this shows it well:

- the bigger the weight loss (how far down the ball goes),

- the bigger the re-bound (how high it pops back up)

This is the new, slightly elevated rebound level represents a higher weight set point, which is why repeated crash dieting makes weight loss harder over time – not easier.

An Unfair Truth…

Going above your weight set point is much, much easier, and modern life has made it even easier still.

Ultra-processed foods are a big culprit– even the ones promising weight loss with slogans such as ‘low calorie’ and ‘fat free’. They can:

Override fullness signals
Spike and crash blood glucose
Overstimulate reward pathways
Increase cravings and snacking

These foods silence your body’s call for its weight set point to be honoured, and they push it in one direction only: upwards.

This is why so many people feel like they gain weight easily but can never keep it off.

Reconnection: Giving Your Body Foods It Can Understand.

If UPFs and refined carbs mute your internal cues, whole foods help them return.

Protein, fibre and healthy fats are serious allies in this mission:

Protein supports satiety and preserves lean muscle
Healthy fats slow digestion and regulate appetite hormones
Fibre feeds the microbiome and brings steady, gentle energy

If we make changes to build meals comprised of these basics, we reconnect our bodies back to a food environment where its signals make sense again.

As this happens, those artificially inflated weight set points can begin to soften and drift back down towards the lower, healthier end of their natural window.

Can Your Weight Set Point Come Down?

Yes — but slowly and not dramatically.

It can settle downwards, into the lower, healthier part of its natural window, when:

appetite hormones stabilise
sleep improves
stress softens
nutrient density rises
metabolism feels safe
the microbiome is fed
you stop pushing the buoy underwater

This is not about shrinking indefinitely.It’s about settling naturally.

What About Menopause?

It’s the million-dollar question so many women want answers to. And the truth is: yes, for women, the weight set point doesn’t stay fixed across the lifespan — especially as we move into perimenopause and menopause.

Falling oestrogen changes the way the body uses and stores energy. It naturally:

· slightly reduces metabolic rate

· increases fat storage around the middle

· alters appetite and satiety signals

· affects sleep, which in turn affects hunger

· changes how sensitive we are to insulin

None of this means your body is “broken”. It means it’s adapting to a new hormonal environment.

In menopause, when ovarian oestrogen production drops, the body quietly redistributes more fat towards the belly. That abdominal fat isn’t just “spare weight” – the fat cells there can actually make small amounts of oestrogen. In this way, your midlife belly can act like a tiny back-up hormone factory, sometimes described as a “third ovary”.

That frustrating shift in shape is, in part, your body trying to protect your hormone balance — not proof that you’ve lost control.

During this stage of life, your weight set point can drift upwards — not dramatically, but consistently enough to feel confusing and unfair if you don’t know why.

Understanding this helps soften the pressure. Your biology is moving into a new chapter, which makes whole-food approaches even more important.

The goal isn’t to force your body back into its 30-year-old settings. It’s to support this stage with the same tools that help at any age: when you work with your biology rather than against it, even a shifting set point can feel more stable, predictable and liveable.

The Real Goal: The Best Version of Your Body

— Not Someone Else’s

The point of this blog is managing expectations. Understanding that we each have a biological set weight can actually be a relief. We won’t all be size “perfect” because we’re simply not meant to be.

The real aim isn’t to become a different person in a different body, it’s to become your best self, for you.

And that version of you is much more likely to appear when you:

· eat in a way that leaves you full, fuelled and satisfied

· choose foods your biology recognises

· support your sleep and stress through nourishment

· stop fighting your body and start listening to it

When you live this way, you end up with a steadier, more energised version of yourself – within your own, biologically realistic weight window.

I asked at the start: Who decides your goal weight?

And the truth is: Your body does — not your willpower.

Your body is responding to millions of years of programming designed to keep you alive. So don’t fight it. Support it.

And become the very best version of the body you already have.