Diet, nutrition & weight loss
“Globesity,” the set point, and in utero programming
by Marcelle Pick, OB/GYN NP
The job of a healthy metabolism is to keep a woman’s body at a “set point,” which is a predetermined body-to-fat ratio within a 10–15-pound weight range that optimizes her chances of survival. Set points are individualized and stubborn — your body likes stability — and your metabolism defends your set point by slowing down or speeding up when your weight approaches the outer limits of your set point’s range.
When the idea of a set point was first introduced, scientists believed it was relatively hard to alter except during times of extreme stress (like starvation). But there is no denying that our average set point is on the way up. So how did we manage in just a few decades to confuse a dial that has been around for millennia?
Perhaps the original idea was right on target: extreme stress. Our bodies just can’t handle the toxic burden of modern life. An article on obesity in the American Journal of Nephrology states unequivocally, “There is growing agreement that environment is driving the epidemic.” So let’s take a look at the determinants of your set point, including in utero programming, and then we’ll talk about how you can lower your set point for better long-term health.
The “globesity” epidemic
We all hear it and see it on a daily basis. Obesity is an epidemic. It may seem hard to believe, but it wasn’t so long ago that getting enough food was the problem, not cutting back. Before World War II, much of our ingenuity and research was engaged in making the food supply safer, more resilient to diseases, and easier to transport, which we did with alacrity.
The irony is that today we face a glut of processed food that combines excess calories and minimal nutrition with a sedentary lifestyle. And not just in this country — over 300 million people worldwide were deemed grossly overweight in the year 2000, leading the World Heath Organization to coin a new term: globesity. This statistic has huge implications for our long-term health.
Admittedly, this is depressing news. But it doesn’t have to be this way. In fact, up until about 100 years ago — for the majority of us — it wasn’t. If we take a longer look, we can see that during this relatively short period in history there has been an explosion in artificial foods and preservatives. The average American diet is extremely high in sugar, simple carbohydrates, and bad fats. Pollutants, pesticides, and dangerous chemicals are all around us. We drive instead of walk, sit at desks instead of working outdoors, and the average food serving size has doubled. In other words, we have lost a good quotient of our nutrition while dramatically increasing our toxic load, and at the same time the calories we consume far outpace our activity.
I know this sounds like the old “calories-in/calories-out” argument, but let me underscore that, although there is science behind this theory, it is far from being the whole picture. The bottom line is that this narrow thinking just doesn’t produce lasting results, even though most popular diets center around it. (For more information read our article on the dangers of fad diets.)
New research into the body-wide phenomenon of metabolic syndrome, or syndrome X, is proving that weight is a vastly more complex issue than measuring calories. Just as conventional medicine is starting to embrace the idea of a more holistic (and ancient) model of care, conventional ideas about weight loss are being supplanted by another school of thought — one that understands weight loss as a “universal” process and treats the body’s major functions, including neurochemistry, immune function, digestion, detoxification, musculoskeletal function, and hormonal balance, all at once.
At Women to Women, we believe that genetic predisposition to a health condition — including obesity — is not your destiny. It may be that a certain genetic snippet primes your physiological pump to respond in a certain way, but it is your environment — as well as your actions — that operates upon your genetic blueprint to activate a response. And this environmental influence begins in utero.
Metabolic programming — and malprogramming — begin in utero
Breaking research shows that the effects of environment on your core physiology start before you are born. The Barker hypothesis posits that disturbed intrauterine growth (due to stress, high-carbohydrate diet, nutrient deprivation, and drugs, among other things) has a negative influence on a fetus’s cardiovascular system and raises the potential for serious adult conditions like insulin resistance, diabetes, obesity, coronary heart disease, hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, and gout.
In other words, obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular conditions do run in families, but they have as much or more to do with the mother’s health and weight during pregnancy than her gene pool. In an article published in 2003 by the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, the authors write:
In summary, the worldwide epidemic of adolescent and adult obesity may not only be a result of our lifestyle of inadequate activity and poor diet; it may also be propagated and enhanced at a much earlier stage in life because of an abnormal metabolic milieu in utero….
Studies done in 2005 by scientists at the University of Buffalo showed that rat fetuses born to mothers fed a high-carbohydrate diet had permanent changes in their pancreatic cells that predisposed them to diabetes and obesity in adulthood. It is also highly possible that this “malprogramming” results in higher metabolic set points at birth.
What this means is that a mother’s level of insulin resistance and obesity have a direct effect on her baby’s metabolism. The good news is that bringing body weight and plasma insulin levels back to normal before pregnancy can disrupt the cycle. Yet better news is that even if you have struggled with a high set point since the day you were born, there are steps you can take to lose weight, improve your metabolism, and protect your health long-term.
And Women to Women is leading the way
The first step to fine–tuning your set point is to understand the physiology behind appetite, satiety, and weight. Please read our article on natural weight loss, where we discuss in detail the factors behind losing weight. There you will also find our three-tiered, holistic weight loss plan.
For some simple but powerful tips on supporting your metabolism, read the Personal Program’s nutritional and lifestyle guidelines. Remember, you have more control than you realize!
If you’re ready to get started on a healthy and lasting approach to weight loss, consider joining the Personal Program. It provides a foundation of health through nutritional supplements, dietary guidance, endocrine support, and optional phone consultations that will support your weight loss effort. If you have questions about whether the Program will work for you, call 1-800-798-7902 to speak with an Advisor.
Our Personal Program is a great place to start
The Personal Program promotes natural hormonal balance with nutritional supplements, our exclusive endocrine support formula, dietary and lifestyle guidance, and optional phone consultations with our Nurse–Educators. It is a convenient, at-home version of what we recommend to all our patients at the clinic.
If you have questions, don't hesitate to call us toll-free at 1-800-798-7902. We're here to listen and help.
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Related to this article:
References & further reading on the setpoint
Original Publication Date: 03/17/2006
Last Modified: 01/15/2008
Principal Author: Marcelle Pick, OB/GYN NP