Executive Summary: Your body has its own internal thermostat, but scientific research has confirmed that your body also has a lipostat – a gauge that works to keep body fat percentage from changing quickly. The holiday season presents a challenge for maintaining healthy habits and can alter a person’s lipostatic set points to favor a higher body fat percentage, which in turn, due to the effects of compounding, makes it harder each year to lose weight.

You may already know this, but your body has it’s own thermostat which maintains internal temperature based on a complex series of inputs and outputs. This system aims to hold the body at 37C (98.6F in freedom units), except when there’s a fever whereupon one of our defense mechanisms is to raise body temperature in the hope that that makes the environment – that is, our bodies – unsuitable for the invading pathogen.

This system is centered around an organ in your neck called the thyroid. Said bodily thermostat also involves the nervous system (including the hypothalamus as the master hormone-releasing command center), brown fat (a thermogenic, heat-generating tissue that’s different from white adipose/fat tissue), the liver, the kidneys and practically all mitochondria (energy creation centers) in every cell in your body.

When your body gets too hot, you sweat and you pant, while your unconscious brain sends signals to slow down (i.e. reduce energy expenditure that creates heat). Psychologically, your heat-alarmed unconscious might send signals to your mind for you to search for water (or a cold beer) or other cooling things (like air conditioned buildings).

When your body gets cold, your body ramps up its inner furnace (i.e. thermogenesis or burning sugar or fat). Meanwhile, the brain sends signals to the mind to search for energy-rich, comforting foods (i.e. more fuel for the fire) and to put on warmer clothing. As a fun aside, you also pee more often in order for your body to reduce the total amount of fluid it has to heat. And if you get too cold, you shiver, wherein your skeletal muscles are recruited to generate heat through movement.

I mention all these effects so that you are cognizant of both the physical (burn fat to heat the body or shiver) and psychological (eat more, slow down your walking pace) aspects involved with this internal thermostat.

Introducing the Lipostat as a Body Fat Control System
Still being studied to tease out exactly how it works, researchers over the decades have discovered that the body has an analogous regulatory system for bodily fat percentage (in medical terms: adiposity). This is being called the LIPO-STAT (lipo = fat; stat = statos / stationary) and involves primarily the hypothalamus, but also the thyroid, cortisol, adrenaline and a pesky hormone called leptin.

Derogatorily labeled as the ‘obese protein’, leptin is manufactured and released by fat cells. It then travels up to the hypothalamus, giving a signal to the brain to feel fullness.

Like a thermostat, this lipostatic control system – which heavily relies on leptin concentrations in the blood – gives your body temporary resistance against new adiposity set points. When there’s lots of leptin in the blood – thus indicating that fat cells’ energy warehouses are full – your mind gets the message to not feel hungry (i.e. satiated). You also may feel like you’re in a good mood and have more energy to spend (i.e. exercise).

But when there’s low leptin, that’s when things get annoying. Because leptin indicates satiety, low levels detected by the brain tell your conscious mind to feel hungry and to reduce energy expenditure – the latter effect felt as physical lethargy and a resistance to hard exercise as well as a low mood state (weariness, reduced cognitive power, sadness, irritability or as a contributing factor for depression). Plus, low leptin can unconsciously compel you to engage in binge eating behavior, especially for calorie-dense foods.

The Lipostat Heavily Influences Body Weight
Now for a ‘why care’. This one is simple: adiposity has a direct relationship on health and wellbeing. Staying lean (muscle, not ‘skinny fat’) is very highly correlated with longevity.

Knowing that disruptions to the lipostat’s sensing mechanisms can make it harder to lose weight or keep it off for a long period of time (read: the yo-yo effect) means that you are better armed, cognitively speaking, to more effectively confront the challenges that you will face in trying to stay lean or loss weight.

The lipostat is designed to keep your BMI (body mass index) in statis, neither gaining nor losing within a ‘short’ period of time. THIS last bit is CRITICAL because with chronic or repeated environmental inputs in one direction, the lipostat can change.

Those environmental inputs can include an extended succession of high-caloric meals, especially those that make insulin levels spike (i.e. have a high sugar content). And shocker for those who aren’t on the clean dieting bandwagon: a lot of artificial chemicals that are now labeled as ‘hormone disruptors’ can also affect leptin signaling and the lipostat.

These include, but are not limited to:

1. Lack of sleep, disrupted sleep and poor sleep hygiene
2. Herbicides and pesticides that leach into foods (organic as often as possible!)
3. Artificial ingredients, additives and stabilizers found in ultra-processed foods
4. Microplastics from water bottles, Teflon, microwaved Tupperware or others
5. Heavy metals that build up in the blood from a lack of chelation or sweating
6. Phthalates and parabens found in many cleaners or bathroom amenity products
7. Alcohol, cannabis and other recreational drugs
8. Some prescription medicines (strong advisory: I am not recommending you go off your meds, but please just be conscious of this possible interaction)

Lastly before getting into the eggnog and gingerbread part of my ramble, one note on genetics: yes, they play a BIG role in lipostatic set point alterations. Some people aren’t as lucky as others and are more susceptible to ‘leptin resistance’ whereupon circulating leptin levels may be high, and yet the body-mind doesn’t respond as it should by making one feel fullness. This can lead to a physiological predilection for putting on weight, having a hard time losing adiposity, overeating or feeling almost irresistible urges to find sugary, calorically dense foods.

If you think this condition pertains to you, first and foremost: I hope this article helps; it’s the main reason why I’ m writing this one. Start by analyzing the above eight factors to see if there are ways you can remove your environment of things that may be exacerbating leptin resistance, and then from there I offer some more tips below.

The Holiday Season Messes Up the Lipostat’s Set Points
Over this most wonderful time of year, we are bombarded by holiday parties and gatherings which typically involve lengthy meals (calories), alcohol (calories) and sugary desserts (calories). Because all these events are happening in quick succession and without a reasonable stretch of time for your body to recover, the lipostat’s set point gets reconfigured come January 1st. It’s this quick succession which is crucial to remember.

You are in essence signaling to your body through repeated, rapid-fire exposure, “This is the new normal for what we expect our environment will be for the foreseeable future. You had better start storing more fat and maintaining those fat warehouses in order to not miss out on all the new energy our surroundings are providing for us.”

The body doesn’t like to change quickly. So, this lipostat adjustment is actually an effect that occurs over a multi-year or multi-decade period. And it can also COMPOUND over time, which is scary. To show this, let’s use the simplicity of BMI numbers as an indicator for changing adiposity (although in reality it is far more complicated).

Let’s start with a 25-year-old adult male in the year 2010 (roughly the time when the visible effects of aging start to set in) who has a ‘reasonably healthy’ round-figure BMI of 20, but who, without a litany of nerdy, physiology knowledge at his disposal, goes about his holiday seasons with unbridled abandon – treats, dinners, booze, sleep rhythm disturbances and so forth. Right now, for our purposes, at age 25, we can equivocate his BMI of 20 as his lipostat’s current set point, wherein we then assume a 2% annual inflationary rate of upward adjustment come each January 1st.

Here’s how that lipostat set point might compound (when in isolation of other habits):
2010: 20.0 | 2011: 21.0 | 2012: 21.4 | 2013: 21.8 | 2014: 22.3 | 2015: 22.7 | 2016: 23.2 | 2017: 23.6 | 2018: 24.1 | 2019: 24.6 | 2020: 25.1 | 2021: 25.6 | 2022: 26.1 | 2023: 26.6 | 2024: 27.2 | 2025: 27.7

First off, there are tons of caveats in here pertaining to lifestyle factors throughout the rest of the calendar year. For instance, you personally may buck the aggregate trend and really take those New Year’s resolutions seriously by enacting (and sticking to!) a strong exercise and dietary regimen that can gradually bring your lipostat set point back down over the winter months.

However, because the lipostat resists change, this is difficult to reverse, especially in today’s world filled with so much abundance. I would argue here that the lipostat is a strong unconscious driver for why most New Year’s resolutions are abandoned by February. Your body is designed for a world of scarcity and has specific programming in place to tell you to conserve energy or accrue as many calories as possible.

The Lipostat Carries Forward Holiday Season Weight Gains
Later in the calendar year, other prolonged periods of ‘relaxation’ can also drag up the set point over the months and years. An example of this would be a weeklong vacation at an all-inclusive resort where the drinks are delicious and the buffets are bountiful. Another example would be a summer long weekend filled with beer, unhealthy eating and generally lazing about.

All those quick successive bouts of heavy increases above your regular caloric consumption – in combination with other environmental disruptors – can drastically jumble the lipostat’s ability to stay at its current set point.

So, the holiday season’s reset to the lipostatic biochemical homeostasis then gets jumbled again with each vacation or period of unhealthy eating. It all accumulates. While I noted above the compounding BMI from 20 to 27.7, this is as noted in the brackets in isolation of other events. That’s a critical detail because other events throughout the calendar year may cause, for instance, a BMI of 20 in the year 2010 to end up at 21.5 instead of 21.0 come 2011. And then with the devil of compounding, before you know it by 2025 the BMI ends up at 35 or 40, which approximates the clinical threshold for having overweight or obesity. It all accumulates…and you have to be very careful!

One side note here: notice I said ‘have’ overweight and not ‘being’ overweight. This is an important distinction in order to stop closely self-identifying a condition with the person. Overweight or obesity must not define who we are (being); we are all so much more than just our weight or physiques. Overweight is a condition that with the right biopsychosocial changes can be attenuated and reversed, and the lipostat plays a big role in that change. I believe in you!

To close out here, given the underlying programming for energy retention and our chemical world we currently live in, it’s like gravity. The more likely outcome over a long period of time is that your body upholds this higher and higher set point when entering each subsequent holiday season, and over the decades you both put on weight and find it harder to shed once you’re back in the gym come January.

What Can You Actually Do About It?
For starters, be very, very conscious of compounding. It’s the eighth wonder of the world for a reason. That is, the lipostat needs time to reacclimatize back to its current set point. If it has too many repeated stimuli telling it to move in one direction – like three consequent office and social Christmas parties – then it will establish a new set point.

So, if you can, space things out over the holiday season. Going out Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday for one holiday season weekend bender is not in your best long-term interests. This requires willpower to resist the FOMO as well as the nagging from various friend groups for you to throw on the tacky sweater you wore the previous night and head back out to the next shindig. A better regimen, if one exists, would be Thursday, Saturday, then the following Wednesday, Friday and so on.

Space things out so that the wonders of rest can let your lipostat recalibrate downwards. It’s those consecutive nights out that will unconsciously drive you to reach for that second piece of cake or make those homemade shortbread lemon squares all the more tantalizing (trust me, they are). When your hormones are in disarray, this leads your brain to crave quick energy – that is, foods that can immediately release sugar in the bloodstream.

And the best mechanism to help reset the lipostat back to a lower set point is quality sleep. This is subject for a whole other diatribe on how to get the best sleep possible, but for our purposes here, a night off in-between holiday parties with good sleep and healthy habits during the day will help the lipostat to avoid establishing a new, higher set point.

The second tip is to avoid refined sugar. Difficult to do, but likely a bit easier than abstaining from alcohol during this time for anyone who isn’t already a teetotaler. When tempted, just think, “Lipostat, lipostat, lipostat…” The issue with refined sugar is that, metabolically speaking, it is most prone of all food types to trigger the body to go into fat storage mode. Refined sugar would include almost all desserts (save for fruit and extra dark chocolate), but also watch out for ultra-processed foods, smoothies and most sugar beverages which come packed with hidden sources of sugar (the most dangerous indicator being the presence of high fructose corn syrup).

The third recommendation is to ramp up the exercise and other recovery activities like saunas and cold plunges. Things that use up calories will help to boost your metabolism so that your body tips the scales towards fat burning instead of fat storing. One other aspect to consider here is the new research indicating that ‘exercise snacks’ or doing light-to-moderate periods of exercise throughout the day are equal to or potentially better than the one big workout at the gym (with no other activity) for maintaining a healthy metabolism.

As denoted by the two fun, new acronyms of NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis) and VILPA (variable intermittent lifestyle physical activity), such exercising snacking can include but is not limited to:

• Going for a brisk walk
• Riding a bicycle
• Ten minutes of stretching
• Playing with your kids
• Tug of war with the puppy
• Cleaning the house
• Doing some home repairs
• Cooking a big meal while standing
• Gardening
• Shoveling the driveway if it snows
• Making a snowman or snow fort
• Running away from an abominable snowman

Basically all the Blue Zone stuff… The key is to stay active throughout the entire day. Sitting really is the new smoking.

Fourth is intermittent fasting. Unlike the dangerous lie that ‘snacking boosts your metabolism’, intermittent fasting helps the body to go into a repair state (read: autophagy). And part of that maintenance is resetting the biochemical pathways underpinning the lipostat to help induce it back into its prior, lower set point. This may be easier to do if you have some experience doing an 8:16 (eight-hour eating window), 5:2 (two days each week of low calorie input) or OMAD (one meal a day). It’s also easier to skip breakfast if you had a big turkey dinner the previous evening or to skip lunch in anticipation of a gourmet holiday event.

Fifth and finally, eat as clean as possible. As previously noted, and besides sugar, artificial ingredients, hormones pumped into low-grade animal products and ultra-processed foods can seriously confusion the input sensors for the lipostat.

In a perfect world, the holiday season would be overflowing with salads and zero-calorie beverages (note: the molecule that is ethanol alcohol is very high in calories by itself), the reality is that this is a time for merriment. If food makes you happy, then be happy. Thus, I’m not suggesting you avoid these enticements outright, but have some moderation on the mind. And if you are going to eat a pizza, be sure to opt for a pie that is made using the best ingredients possible.

What Can Hotels Do?
At last, something you can apply to your work! Hoteliers, you can indeed use your newfound understanding of the lipostat to grow the business in two main ways:

1. New or modified programming during the holiday season
2. New or upgraded detox or fat loss programs throughout the calendar year

During the holiday season – which is often a peak occupancy period for hotels – it’s a matter of offering alternatives. People want to eat healthier. People want to maintain their figures over the holiday season. People are increasingly looking for non-alcoholic beverages or are cutting back on total liquor consumption. People are yearning for fun outdoor activities, even in winter. So, give the people what they want! You don’t have to lecture them about some biohacker lipostat psychobabble like I just did to you, but give them the optionality to stay healthy during a time of year when temptation abounds.

Second, to close out this article are the prospects for designing specific wellness-oriented experiences, events and programs throughout the year. These can be healthy menus, putting non-alcoholic beverages on the menu (permanently or seasonally adjusted) or offering interesting, fun ways to get guests moving. Then there are resorts that specialize in fat loss retreats with exciting, memorable activities throughout the day or supervised multi-night fasting and green juice detox protocols.

And then there are also those luxury hotels that are putting in advanced clinics that can offer medically supervised services like Ozempic (beyond scope, but much more to say on this one!) or other peptides that can help to induce the lipostat set point back to a lower BMI equivalent. Many other touchless wellness machines can help. Mindfulness and meditation practices are yet another strong way to refocus the lipostat. Finally, taking a biopsychosocial approach to adiposity reduction through counseling and educational workshops can also apply here.

Above all, you have options and knowing is part of the battle. If you can spare a meeting, then I can talk about some other more integrated and wilder multisensorial experiences that can be designed to specifically target the lipostat. I’m trying to keep this article under 3,000 words and it would take a lot more psychobabble to explain how these multisensorial and multi-experience programs would work. For now, happy holidays and always be mindful of the effects of compounding.