Do you remember Harley Pasternak ? The personal trainer of stars of the caliber of Lady Gaga and Robert Downey Jr is also famous for having written 3 books on diets that have become bestsellers, the most famous of which was The 5-factor diet , a book that taught how to eat moderately and balance macronutrients to lose weight. On Dcomedieta I told you about him especially for his recipe for the highly satiating protein shake, a shake that can be used as a meal replacement and allows you to stay full for hours.
But in his latest book About him, Five Pounds , Pasternak definitely changes course, and explains how we can reach our ideal weight without a diet, but instead trying to aim for our weight set point , or our ideal weight, the one in which the body tends not to gain weight but not even lose weight.

The weight set point theory, for which Pasternak quotes this article  (it is in Italian), is very fascinating.

According to this theory, our body aims at its ideal weight (basically lean) and tries to bring us towards that set point through the regulation of hunger hormones, therefore through the work of the hypothalamus. When we tend to get fat we should be less hungry, and when we are losing too much weight we should feel hungry. Also according to this theory, each of us hides a thin body , the one we tend to biologically : once we reach the ideal weight that our body finds right for us, we gain weight and lose weight with a lot of effort.

Clearly, one wonders: but why then are there obese and underweight people in the world? That is, if the set point theory made sense, we would all be in a healthy weight, with a maximum margin of error of about 5 kilos. This means that we could complain of up to 5 extra pounds, not 10 or 20. So how is it possible to achieve severe overweight ?  (continued on page two)