The level set representation of shapes is useful for shape evolution and is widely used for the minimization of energies with respect to shapes. Many algorithms consider energies depending explicitly on the signed distance function (SDF) associated with a shape, and differentiate these energies with respect to the SDF directly in order to make the level set representation evolve. This framework is known as the ``variational level set method''. We show that this gradient computation is actually mathematically incorrect, and can lead to undesirable performance in practice. Instead, we derive the expression of the gradient with respect to the shape, and show that it can be easily computed from the gradient of the energy with respect to the SDF. We discuss some problematic gradients from the literature, show how they can easily be fixed, and provide experimental comparisons illustrating the improvement.