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  Set point is a term scientists use to describe the weight at which our body settles naturally and the one it will likely return to if a rapid weight gain or loss occurs.13 For instance, if your body weight typically fluctuates between 146 and 152 pounds, your set point is likely near 149 pounds (the average). If you go on a strict diet for several weeks and get down to 135 pounds, but then regain the weight over a few months, you will likely return to a weight close to your original 149-pound set point. This works in the opposite direction as well. One weekend of gluttony is unlikely to raise your body weight significantly. So long as your eating binge isn’t prolonged, you will probably return to your normal weight within a week or so.

  Those who have struggled through bouts of yo-yo dieting know firsthand how difficult it can be to move your set point, but we also know it can be altered. In Western societies people’s set points tend to creep upward over time, a recent phenomenon that is likely the result of metabolic disruption caused by our culture’s less than ideal food habits and environment. Eating like a foodist undoes this damage, improving your metabolism and helping you reattain your more natural (and likely much lower) set point. When this is the case, it becomes almost as difficult to gain weight as it does to lose it. Lowering your set point, my friends, is the weight-loss holy grail.

  As I explained earlier, I was relatively “successful” at dieting and was never considered overweight. My scale fluctuated, but it always hovered about ten to twelve pounds higher than it is today, with swings up to ten pounds in either direction. Today I comfortably rest at my new set point (which is notably five pounds under my original goal weight), and it doesn’t take much to keep me within three pounds of this. These may not sound like huge numbers,* but I’m a petite female and I have kept myself in pretty good shape from the get-go. I’ve had both male and female readers report new set points as low as seventy pounds under their previous weight, and I’m sure even bigger changes are possible for those with more weight to lose.

  RESILIENCE

  Everyone I’ve spoken with who has achieved a transformation in their set point describes the feeling with the same word: resilience. “The thing that is most satisfying to me now is knowing that my body has this resilience,” explains the foodist and notoriously fit UCSF neuroscientist Adam Gazzaley, M.D., Ph.D. “In the past if I’d deviate from my diet because of circumstances, which happens, then I’d have to start again from the beginning. A weekend could undo all that progress. And I think for many people at that point they just give up. Now I’m in a more steady state—it feels like homeostasis*—my body does not respond to changes in my diet with such big inflections in weight.”

  Resilience comes naturally when your set point is established through healthy habits and can be very elusive when it isn’t. Shortly after his forty-third birthday, Dr. Gazzaley told me, he decided to approach his diet differently than in the past. After over a decade of struggling with strict low-carb diets and exercise programs, he has now maintained a healthy twenty-five-pound reduction in his set point for over a year. “My thinking was that I’ve reached the age that I can’t keep yo-yoing anymore. As I’ve gotten older, it’s become more and more difficult to lose after bouncing to a high weight every year. The goal was to reach a weight that was sustainable.”

  Instead of spending a few weeks or months during which he completely eliminates all bread and sugar, foods a pizza-loving native New Yorker has trouble resisting, he lets himself have them when it feels appropriate. “I cut down, but didn’t eliminate. I knew that if I entirely eliminated things I knew I really liked that I wouldn’t be able to sustain it,” Dr. Gazzaley stated. He switched to a foodist’s way of eating healthy and working out regularly, but didn’t try to push himself to a point that would have derailed him in the past. “I’ve found a balance of giving myself some leeway when it’s really hard not to, then returning to how I ideally eat, which is how I’ve been able to maintain my weight.”

  Your body resists dramatic change, which makes it very difficult to move your set point drastically in a short period of time. This is one reason traditional dieting fails, and why it is ineffective in the long term to try and skip ahead by losing weight rapidly without establishing the essential habits that keep you there. When you quickly lose a significant percentage of your body weight through deprivation, your metabolism slows—often dramatically. Focusing on healthy habits, however, tends to improve your metabolic markers over time, and weight loss occurs as a result of these changes rather than despite them. When you are a foodist, your body works with you, not against you. “I’m surprised I reached my goal weight as quickly and seamlessly as I did. It didn’t feel that bad once I got into a pattern that worked for me, eating in a way that was fulfilling but also helping me lose weight and workout the way I prefer,” Dr. Gazzaley told me. “It really wasn’t that hard.”

  For Dr. Gazzaley, monitoring his weight was the key to knowing how often and how far he could push his indulgences while continuing to make progress. He relied on a WiFi digital scale to graph his progression and give himself a quantitative way of measuring the impact of his behaviors. Since he travels often for work, he also purchased a travel scale to help keep himself on track in the situations that he knew to be the most difficult. Monitoring his weight is also how Dr. Gazzaley knows that his set point has moved: “I feel way more stable now than I can remember, so it feels very much like my set point is lower. Even a big violation for a couple of days doesn’t change my weight very much.”

  Having a resilient body means more than not gaining weight back that you’ve lost. “I’ve had a couple of weekends that I know in my previous state would have meant a five-pound weight gain that would have been really hard to remove. Now I’ll just gain one or two pounds that are gone in a few days. I haven’t fluctuated more than three pounds in months,” said Dr. Gazzaley. When your body is resilient, it’s harder to do the kind of damage that you used to do, and indulgent deviations are easier to correct.

  Of course, this doesn’t mean it’s impossible to move your set point upward again once you’ve successfully lowered it. When we spoke, Dr. Gazzaley emphasized repeatedly that he is careful not to take his new set point for granted. Permanent shifts upward or downward, however, require a more prolonged effort than most of us can accomplish in a single weekend.

  There are at least two reasons for this stability. First, lowering your set point creates a physical resilience governed by your body’s homeostatic mechanisms. You may fidget more or feel an overwhelming urge to go for a run after a big party weekend, or your appetite may be particularly small for the next couple of days. These responses are natural and are your body’s way of telling you there’s some extra energy to burn—I can hardly wait to get to the gym after an indulgent weekend.

  Second, there is a psychological component to a foodist’s resilience that stems from the power of habit. Once you’ve grown accustomed to vegetables and healthy food as the basis of your healthstyle, it becomes very uncomfortable to go for many days without them. I’ve noticed that if I eat in restaurants for too many meals in a row (it happens to the best of us), I’ll start to crave vegetables and salads, which is a cue for me to focus again on my home-cooking habit.

  Being hooked on health is a recurring theme for foodists who have successfully altered their set point. Patrick Birke, the man who lost sixty-five pounds after joining a CSA with his family, could only drag himself to the gym to watch episodes of True Blood when he first began to change his healthstyle. But after two years, he told me, he now feels an irresistible urge to work out. He currently runs five to ten miles outdoors (no TVs there) a couple of times a week in addition to his regular gym sessions—a healthy habit that is now as hard to break as any unhealthy habit. Dr. Gazzaley describes a similar feeling of “excitement and comfort” when he returns to his food and exercise routine after one of his travel breaks. He looks forward to “getting back in the flow.” Habits are resilient actions, and resilient actions lead to a res
ilient healthstyle.

  HOME COURT HABITS

  Addicted to salads and workouts? I know it sounds too good to be true, but it isn’t magic. Building resilience doesn’t come without its struggles, and if you’re not vigilant, you can still return to your old habits and undo your success. It is therefore imperative that you identify and maintain the home court habits that are the foundation of your healthstyle.

  If you’ve made it this far, you probably have an excellent idea of which habits are necessary for your continued healthstyle success. Guard these with your life. Your biggest-impact habits are your home court advantage; they are what keep you in the game when life throws you curve balls. My home court habits are eating breakfast, shopping at the farmers market, cooking at home, eating mindfully, walking 10,000 steps a day,* and strength training at the gym. If I’m at home and life is normal, I stick to these without exception, because I know that if they slip, I cannot maintain the rest of my healthstyle without negative consequences. There are always days when the stars don’t align and one or more home court habits get missed. Travel, pressing work deadlines, and other special occasions are part of life and sometimes take priority. But if you miss one of your home court habits for too many days in a row, you’ll need to make some kind of adjustment to stay in your zone.

  Home court habits are the mechanism by which you maintain your weight, just as chores like laundry, dishes, and dusting are the mechanisms by which you maintain your home, flossing and brushing are how you maintain your teeth, and getting up and going to work every day are the way you maintain your financial stability. Your healthstyle habits are arguably more important than all of these other tasks for your long-term happiness, and they deserve to be treated accordingly. This isn’t to say your home court habits should be unpleasant. As we’ve already discussed, most people enjoy their home court habits and look forward to returning to them. But there are always going to be days when you don’t feel like grocery shopping or cooking, and most of the time you should do it anyway. Being lazy is not a special occasion.

  If you’ve built your habits effectively, feeding yourself well shouldn’t be difficult, and it is definitely worth it. Though it’s easy to mentally compare a pile of sautéed kale with eggs to a super carnitas burrito and assume that the burrito will be faster and more satisfying, this is a mistake. I’ve done this experiment (several times, in fact), and I can assure you that I almost always overestimate the enjoyment I get from the burrito (especially considering how I feel afterward) and under-estimate the deliciousness of the healthier alternative. Cooking at home is also easier, faster, and cheaper than going out, though your mind will falsely try to convince you that it’s slower and more work. Kale is always the better choice, and when I’ve made it, I have never regretted my decision. Don’t get me wrong—I love burritos.* I just don’t love them as much as I love my health, and saving them for real special occasions helps me appreciate the periodic splurge that much more. So long as you have an arsenal of simple, tasty recipes (your home court recipes) you can throw together with a handful of basic ingredients, defending home court isn’t difficult and will continue to get easier as your habits strengthen.

  HEALTHSTYLE EVOLUTION

  Every time you change jobs, get promoted, commit your life to another person, have a child, move to a new city, alter your travel schedule, or make any of the other big transitions that make life interesting, your habits will have to adapt. Life is full of change, so your healthstyle must evolve to meet its demands. Sometimes the necessary adjustments will be straightforward; sometimes they won’t. This might mean something as simple as preparing your lunch at the office rather than at home, but it could also mean revamping your entire workout regimen so you can finish it in half the time.* Your continued success will depend on your ability to experiment and refashion your healthstyle to match your changing circumstances.

  The first big shift you’ll face is moving from sustained weight loss to weight maintenance. When you’ve reached your goal weight, you’ll be able to splurge a bit more regularly, a phase that requires some trial and error as you find the right balance of fitness and fun that keeps you in your sweet spot. Some people discover that, despite eating treats more often, they continue to lose weight (albeit more slowly) as they attempt to switch from weight loss to maintenance. This is a good sign that your body is settling into its more natural set point, and for most people it is unlikely to be a problem.

  There’s no reason to let a chart tell you how much you should weigh. Arbitrary scales like the body mass index (BMI) can give you a ballpark number for your ideal weight, but if you’re giving your body everything it needs to be healthy, you can determine for yourself where you’re the most comfortable, even if it’s a little lower or higher than you anticipated. If you feel as though you really are losing too much weight and would prefer not to make up the slack with bread and sugar, eating more high-calorie healthy foods is your best bet. Dense protein sources such as meat, dairy, eggs, and nuts are a fantastic way to boost your caloric intake without negatively impacting your health. Continue to tweak your healthstyle habits until your weight is stable and your life is awesome.

  When you hit a healthstyle snag, your journal and other monitoring tools are your friends. Go back to the basics of measuring and writing down your food, tracking your weight, counting your chews, and using your pedometer, so you can identify the issue. Who knows how long it would have taken me to realize that walking less was what caused me to gain weight after graduation if I hadn’t had my pedometer? Problems can’t be solved until you know what they are.

  As a foodist, you should make it your goal to always focus on real food and build sustainable habits that make smart food choices automatic. Monitoring your actions helps you understand exactly how indulgences affect you, and you can decide from there when they are and aren’t worth it. If you accomplish this, you should have plenty of untapped willpower for when your stomach tries to overrule your brain—but of course it shouldn’t bother you if your stomach occasionally wins. Your weight is stable, and you know how to stay on course.

  PART III

  THE DAILY FOODIST

  “And remember, no matter where you go, there you are.”

  —CONFUCIUS

  TEN

  HOME SAVORY HOME

  YOUR SINGLE BIGGEST ASSET IN WEIGHT CONTROL

  “Never work before breakfast; if you have to work before breakfast, eat your breakfast first.”

  —JOSH BILLINGS, AMERICAN HUMORIST

  “He is the happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home.”

  —JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

  My health-conscious friends and I unanimously agree that eating out is the biggest barrier to weight loss. Though it’s obvious why eating at cheap restaurants for every meal isn’t going to help you get healthy and lose weight, excellent restaurants serving real food don’t make it that much easier.

  We are fortunate that local, seasonal, high-quality ingredients are now the standard in almost every big city. We have gastropubs serving grass-fed beef burgers, street carts offering sustainable fish tacos, and small neighborhood spots dishing up heirloom vegetables and artisan ingredients. Basically we’re spoiled rotten. There is a downside, though, to all these wonderful options. Everything tastes amazing and is relatively healthy, so the normal quality over quantity argument doesn’t really apply. We have both, so why choose? Even worse, the menus tend to change regularly (often daily) depending on what ingredients are in season, so there’s no guarantee that you’ll ever be able to enjoy a particular dish more than once. That makes using the “I can eat it later” trick significantly less effective. In other words, the curse of having great restaurants is that it is way too easy to justify overeating.

  Home cooking is by far the easiest way I’ve found to avoid the restaurant trap, and if you tackle it right, it isn’t very difficult. We touched on a few of the reasons to take cooking seriously in chapter 6, but I’m sure there
are still some of you with reservations.* Chapter 10 will walk you through the basics. Take your time and build your skills at a pace you’re comfortable with, and don’t let the occasional kitchen mishap keep you from trying again. Start with the easy meals like breakfast and lunch and work your way up from there. It will become fun and easy for you eventually, but the only way to get there is to keep at it.

  BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS

  Breakfast is your slam dunk meal. It’s fast, it’s simple, and healthy choices are usually delicious. Affordable breakfast supplies are available almost anywhere, and special equipment isn’t necessary. Most important, if you make a healthy breakfast one of your home court habits, you virtually guarantee that 30 percent of your daily meals are healthy and contributing positively to your healthstyle. Since automatic health is what we’re after, breakfast is a foodist’s best friend.

  An ideal breakfast has a low glycemic load and contains a good amount of protein. Not only does this encourage your body to use your breakfast calories as fuel rather than storing them as fat; it also improves your metabolic response to subsequent meals throughout the day.1 This means that one consequence of eating a healthy breakfast is that, no matter what you choose for lunch (and possibly dinner), your body will handle it a little better than it would have if you ate something made of processed grains and sugars or skipped breakfast altogether. That’s pretty powerful. Of course, this doesn’t mean that you should use breakfast as an excuse to eat an unhealthy lunch. You should generally use your home court advantage to try to eat as healthy as possible when in your regular routine. But small, positive impacts do add up and over the long run work to sensitize your body to insulin and improve metabolism.