“Set Point” is the normal weight and composition your body wants to naturally stay at on a ‘normal’ diet.
This is to say, your muscle and fat levels have a natural, normal, ‘regular’ baseline level, where you’ll normally be unless you make efforts to change it.
So allowed to eat to full (but only eating whole, unprocessed foods; not calorie-dense, man-made junk foods) your body will tend to try and maintain a certain level of fat and muscle. This level is your “Set Point.” It is your normal, natural physical state. (Note: your Set Point tends to go up as you age)
Any efforts to drop below your Set Point and lose fat is met with resistance. You may experience hormonal changes that slow metabolism and increase hunger. Or you may lose muscle tissue (so as to save fat tissue). You may experience “adaptive thermogenesis,” where your resting metabolism (RMR) slows down, to conserve energy. You may feel an overall lack of energy, which causes you to move around much less throughout the day, burning fewer calories (NEAT).
As you approach and then go below your Set Point, your body tries to resist change by holding onto it’s fat stores and effecting hormones in such a way to encourage you to over-eat and regain the fat lost.
If you’re above your Set Point, especially if overweight, then losing fat and getting down to your Set Point tends to be relatively easy, at least at first.
You can sometimes manipulate only 1 or 2 of the variable in CICO and drop fat all the way down to your Set Point. We have had many Cool Fat Burner users who have lost significant amounts of weight, solely with cold thermogenesis! No dieting or exercise. However, most probably started above their Set Points.
As you approach, and then go below your Set Point, weight loss gets harder. It is a survival mechanism. Your body is trying to resist change.
As you go below your Set Point and try to lose more and more fat, you will probably have to further manipulate more variables on the CICO scale to some degree or another. The smartest and most sustainable plan, is to do some combination of many variables, so as to not rely on just 1 or 2.
In the “Body Recomp” experiment, CFB creator Eric G. starts at 22% bodyfat, well above his Set Point. As the experiment continues, he drops down well below his set soint, which is around 16% BF, down to around 12% BF! What’s more, he did this while actually gaining muscle, and achieving super impressive health markers.