Question

How are fats cells involved with weight loss, gain, and loss?

Answer 1

• The average human can have between 10 to 30 billion fat cells. The amount of fat cells in a person’s body is set during adolescence and levels off into adulthood.Regardless of weight, you replace about 8 percent of your fat cells each year. Your fat cells shrink when you lose weight because of an energy deficit and your body's release of waste products.
• Fat cells, referred to as adipocyte cells, absorb the storage form of fat, called triglycerides. Fat cells are able to store triglycerides when you are in an overfed state and need to store excess energy. Insulin, your energy storage hormone, regulates the flow of triglycerides into your fat cells.
• If you begin to expend energy, your fat cells can be used as a source. When your body needs to burn energy, two enzymes -- hormone sensitive lipase and adipose glyceride lipase -- break down the triglyceride in the fat cells to help fuel items such as the heart or skeletal muscles. This process of breaking down triglycerides is referred to as lipolysis.
• Although, you lose triglycerides out of your fat cells in the short term, your fat cells will still be there. The fat cells just shrink as a result of this process. If you overeat in the near future, your fat cells can always expand to their original size and even grow larger.
• As adults, we keep the same number of fat cells throughout our lives, regardless of whether we gain or lose weight over time. Losing or gaining weight only affects how large those cells become, not their number. Even when fat cells are removed by liposuction, the body would produce fat cells to replenish those lost .
• The body’s natural processes renew about 10 per cent of fat cells every year.The only exception to this is significant weight gain , during which the body produces new, additional fat cells. This happens when the fat cells have expanded and have reached their limit. The actual stretching of the fat cell stimulates the release of chemicals, which signals the body to make new fat cells from dormant cells . These cells mature into normal adipocytes or fat cells.
• Exceeding one’s calorific limit may trigger the body’s response system to produce more fat. Thus how much weight gain a person needs to produce new fat cells depends on:
• Current number of fat cells
• Current percentage of body fat
• Metabolic rate