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the stronger the pull to get you back to the comfortable range.
     
    This system only works if we let it, however. If you keep “jiggling” with the thermostat via diets, the mechanism breaks down. This jiggling is like a power struggle to wrest control away from your body’s innate weight-regulation mechanism, and in the end, it only makes your body fight harder to retain control. The result: Your body forces you to not only regain any weight you’ve lost, but you may even pay a penalty with extra weight gain—and a setpoint now set higher to protect against future diets.
     
    Rather than continuing to engage in this weighty battle with your body, you could declare a truce and join forces with it to help achieve a healthy, natural weight. You’ll find that you will become less interested in eating when you are full. And your body itself will make up for those occasional party overindulgences without you having to deliberately deny yourself.
     

Your Body: A Weight Control Freak
     
    Let’s look more closely at just what a control freak your body is when it comes to maintaining the “right” level of body fat.
     
    To better understand this concept, we need to take a closer look at your body’s weight-regulating bag of tricks.
     
    Picture this: You’re out for an afternoon stroll, enjoying the warmth of the sun on your back. It’s actually a bit too warm, so your body’s automatic cooling system kicks in and you start to sweat, which reduces your core temperature and you feel cooler. Suddenly, dark clouds cover the sun and you feel too cool. Again, your body’s automatic thermostat kicks in. The hairs rise on exposed body parts to trap air, goose pimples appear, and you begin shivering, all of which increases your temperature.
     
    Do you control any of this? Of course not. Like breathing and digestion, these regulatory actions are governed by your autonomic nervous system, which works in the background without any conscious thought. All these systems are designed to maintain homeostasis , or balance, throughout your body.
     
    Your body’s attempt to maintain homeostasis is one of the most fundamental concepts in biology. Many physiological variables—such as oxygen levels, carbon dioxide levels, blood volume, and blood sugar—are tightly regulated under this system. For each, your body accepts a certain range with various physiological mechanisms preventing disastrous dips or curves.
     
    The amount of body fat you have is similarly tightly regulated. More than fifty years of research proves that your body tries to maintain your fat at the level at which you are designed to function best (not necessarily a size 4 or even 24, however). 7 Your body is strongly invested in helping you maintain this healthy and relatively consistent weight, and it has amazingly efficient mechanisms in place to pull off this feat.
     
    Unfortunately, recent lifestyle and environmental changes mess with this programming. We further throw the system off when we try to take control through dieting. The result: escalating weight.
     

Understanding Homeostasis
     
    The chief ruler of your weight setpoint is your hypothalamus, a small region of the brain that acts as an intermediary between your brain and body.
     
    The hypothalamus is a kind of all-knowing sensor. It picks up on sensations like the delicious smell from a just-baked cheese pizza, the burn you got on the roof of your mouth from biting into that pizza too quickly, and that overstuffed feeling from scarfing down too many pieces of said pizza. It’s also tuned in to body states you’re not aware of, like how much body fat you have at any given moment.
     
    The hypothalamus reacts to the messages it receives by signaling other body tissues to release hormones, enzymes, and other chemicals to push you back into homeostasis.
     
    For instance, if you’re losing weight and you are below your setpoint, your hypothalamus might direct other body systems to regulate your