Empowered Health Course · Lesson 15 · 3:14
I'm going to get nerdy here — no need to follow all of it — but best weight makes sense even at the level of physics. With every kilogram of weight loss, the energy your body burns drops by about 25 calories a day, and your appetite increases by about 100 calories a day.
So what many people experience is that, at first, cutting calories leads to weight loss; then, after about six months on average, weight plateaus. The question was always "why?" It turns out it's not mainly about how much energy the body burns. Instead, we're eating more — and once our intake rises to match what we burn, weight stays stable.
Through a series of experiments, Dr. Kevin Hall and others found that the main driver is increased appetite. Appetite is like the need to breathe — we can't simply suppress it or think our way out of hunger or into fullness. We also learned that the effort needed for weight loss is the same as the effort needed for maintenance.
Too often, people experience that plateau — best weight — as failure. I think of it like climbing a mountain to the peak but being in the clouds, unable to see we've reached the top, so it feels like there's much further to go when we've actually arrived. Working with your clinician, it helps to know when you've arrived. At that point, maintenance is the goal — sustaining your efforts, reflecting on how far you've come, and remembering your deeper value: why you started in the first place. The plateau makes sense from a physics standpoint, though there's a lot of variability in when it happens from person to person, and we haven't figured out exactly why.
This transcript has been lightly edited from the video for readability. For the complete experience, please watch the video above.