Let’s be honest folks, we all have that friend who is always annoyingly skinny!
They eat like a bottomless pit but never seem to put on any weight while all we need to do is look at a candy bar and the pounds start piling on!
What’s going on??
Well, it’s to do with something often referred to as an individual’s genetic set point!
Genetic Set What??
Now while food is our fuel, what happens when food isn’t available?
I don’t mean when the burger joint is closed, I mean back in ancient cave-person times when there’s an ice age and you’re literally stuck in a starvation scenario?
Well thankfully we have backup energy reserves, like an extra battery pack and that’s our fat cells!
Our bodies have evolved over the years to help the human species survive and back in those ancient times, when food might have been scarce and you’re faced with hunger and famine, it’s the person that naturally has more fat that would survive while your always skinny friend would likely die!
Fast forward to the modern day developed world, food is much more readily available and this survival mechanism is kinda redundant!
We don’t need these emergency energy stores and not only that, in our very visual / aesthetic world, the very mechanism that would have stopped you from dying is making you look how you don’t want to!
We’re all born with a different number of fat cells, some have more and some have less, meaning we all have a slightly different sized back up battery pack that our body wants to keep full - just in case aliens attack and we’re stuck in a famine again!
Your always skinny friend has fewer fat cells, a lower body fat percentage that they’re programmed to keep full while those of us that struggle to lose fat, have more fat cells and a higher body fat percentage that our body is trying to keep us at.
This level of body fat percentage that your body is trying to keep you at is your genetic set point.
If you lose fat and your body fat levels start to drop below this set point, your hunger hormones are going to start attacking you, making you hungry and want to eat, to get back to the body fat level your genetics want you to be at.
The opposite is also true, if you eat and put on fat above and beyond your genetic set point, your hunger hormones will shut off while your body tries to get your body fat levels back down.
If you’re significantly overweight or obese, it’s not your fault, you may simply have a high body fat percentage set point, making you always hungry, leading you to eat more in an attempt to fill those fat cell energy reserves!
Does this mean you should just admit defeat, give up and not try and lose fat?
Or course not!
If your genetic set point is to keep you at 20% body fat but you want to get to 10% body fat to show off your six pack abs, it’s not going to be easy, especially compared to your always skinny friend whose genetic set point might be 15% body fat or less, but you can still do it!
In the same way it might be harder for you to ace that exam or get that promotion at work compared to the next person, if you really want to, you can!
It does mean you’re going against your genetic programming, it’s going to be an uphill battle but you can do it and it will make your success that much sweeter!
With savvy food choices, large volume, high protein, delicious low-calorie foods like those in our Hyperthermic Cookbook, keeping your stomach stretched and full, paired with a sound exercise plan, yes, you can lose significant weight and keep it off, for good!
So there you have it folks, your friend doesn’t defy the law of physics, they’re not a calorie consuming black hole and true, it might be harder for you to lose weight but you can do it and through our Power Plans, we’ll show you how!
We believe in you!
See you in the next post,
Dr. Bobby Stryker
Team Flow