We often walk into the consulting room armed with biological truths, hoping they’ll act as anchors for clients tossed about by the storms of diet culture. Among these, Set Point Theory is perhaps our most frequently reached-for tool. We explain it as the body’s internal thermostat, a predetermined physiological range where the metabolism hums and hormones balance. It’s a beautiful, stabilizing concept on paper, but if we’re honest with ourselves, it’s a tool we sometimes use to placate distress rather than build true resilience. We offer it as a “safe” endpoint—a promise that once they reach this mystical destination, the changing will stop. But in doing so, we risk turning a biological theory into a conditional contract: “I’ll accept my body, but only as long as it stays within this specific, scientific-sounding range.”
The reality we must sit with is that bodies are not static, and the cultural obsession with weight stability is fundamentally out of step with how human beings actually age. A body in its teens is not a body in its thirties, and certainly not a body navigating the profound shifts of menopause. When we use set point as a fixed target, we inadvertently pathologize the very transitions—puberty, aging, life—that the body is designed to undergo. By framing the set point as a permanent ceiling, we might soothe a client’s immediate panic (and perhaps our own discomfort with not having “the answer”), but we set the stage for a feeling of betrayal later when life inevitably happens and their body shifts again.
This creates a complex tension, particularly in high-acuity settings where simple messages are protective. Early in renourishment, “your body will find its level” can be the thin thread keeping a client engaged in treatment. Yet, we have to ask ourselves if we are under-setting targets just to gain “buy-in,” leaving people medically safe but still deeply entrenched in a “good enough” range that reinforces the eating disorder’s ceiling. It is a precarious balance: providing enough structure to keep someone safe while refusing to cement false promises about weight stability. We aren’t just fighting an illness; we are deconstructing a systemic weight-control fantasy that prioritizes thinness over actual vitality.
This work becomes even more nuanced when we consider the cognitive styles of our clients. Whether through the lens of eating disorder cognition or neurodivergence, many of our clients crave the certainty of a number. They want the rule, the “pass/fail” mark, the exact coordinate on the map. We face a live dilemma: is it therapeutic to push for nuance and uncertainty, or does that become non-affirming for a brain wired for structure? There is no neat resolution here, only the practice of sitting in the grey. We must hold the truth of biological complexity while accommodating the very real distress that ambiguity triggers, moving slowly from “finding the number” to exploring why that number carries the weight of their entire identity.
Ultimately, we are shifting the focus away from weight as the “answer” and toward weight as parallel data. The “healthiest weight” isn’t a magic digit; it’s wherever the body lands when a person is finally thriving, connected, and living in alignment with their values. Our role isn’t to “fix” the client’s body or even their belief system with a better theory, but to provide a relational safety net where they can witness an alternative way of being. We are inviting them to a life where their worth isn’t tied to a thermostat setting, but to their ability to inhabit a body that is allowed to change, to grow, and to simply exist without apology.
We’re Jo and Christie—Accredited Practising Dietitians and Credentialed Eating Disorder Clinicians with a shared passion for disordered eating, eating disorders and body image work.
Our resources are developed alongside people with lived experience and designed for health professionals who want to deliver high-quality, client-centred care.