When a person gains weight and keeps the weight on for a long time, is that old fat in your body, or does the fat get replaced over time?
from pelespirit@sh.itjust.works to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world on 04 Oct 16:33
https://sh.itjust.works/post/47302861

Not sure if this is clear. Our bodies are supposed to replace all the cells every 7 or so years. Does that mean the fat too? Or when someone loses 20 year weight, are you getting rid of 20 year old fat?

#nostupidquestions

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mushroommunk@lemmy.today on 04 Oct 17:06 next collapse

The 7 year thing is a myth. Howtown has a very good summary on it. 7 year myth some cells are replaced but how often depends on the cell type, some never get replaced.

When you gain weight your fat cells grow, and when you lose weight they shrink. You don’t actually gain and lose fat cells the way people think. However, the stuff in those cells could very well be old. It’s a complex system and hard to sum up and I’m only friends with the biology people from college but that’s what I understand from them.

DaddleDew@lemmy.world on 04 Oct 17:11 next collapse

That opens the door to new insults such as “You so fat your fat cells are the size of grapes”

pelespirit@sh.itjust.works on 04 Oct 17:29 next collapse

the stuff in those cells could very well be old.

So, losing weight, is like taking a long needed shower for your cells.

Edit: That link is awesome. Your gut lining turns over every few days and your skin is weeks? That brings up so many more questions about the biome then.

mushroommunk@lemmy.today on 04 Oct 17:34 collapse

Kind of? The cells, called adipocytes, primarily store triglycerides and a few other things in a liquid form. When you lose weight that liquid gets squeezed out and used as energy, to build other chemicals your body needs, or peed straight out.

So less a shower and more getting rung out like a sponge.

pelespirit@sh.itjust.works on 04 Oct 17:41 next collapse

My brain has to readjust to all this, very strange.

roguetrick@lemmy.world on 04 Oct 17:42 next collapse

Most of the weight is carbon that is breathed out actually, but metabolic water isn’t insignificant.

homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world on 04 Oct 17:53 collapse

*wrung*

TheRealKuni@piefed.social on 04 Oct 20:07 collapse

When you gain weight your fat cells grow, and when you lose weight they shrink. You don’t actually gain and lose fat cells the way people think.

But as my doctor explained to me, if they get big enough, they divide. Then even if you lose weight, you have fat cells hanging around who think they should be holding onto more fat than they are. So your body will want to be fat, and will enforce that with cravings.

It’s why it’s extremely hard to lose a large amount of weight and leave it off. I’m on my third major attempt now.

dylanmorgan@slrpnk.net on 04 Oct 20:21 next collapse

Seems like that would be an argument for liposuction as a way to supplement other weight loss because it would remove those cells.

TheRealKuni@piefed.social on 04 Oct 20:23 next collapse

I’ve had the same thought. Haven’t really looked into it though.

volvoxvsmarla@sopuli.xyz on 04 Oct 20:45 collapse

I’ve studied nutrition science and we talked about what you described and yes, the blunt “truth” is that liposuction is the only reliable way to really get rid of “emptied fat cells”. There are a lot of things playing into the dreaded yo yo effect but the fact that it is much easier to refill emptied cells than to make new cells via division is definitely a big factor.

(“Truth” is in “” because I dislike this term in a scientific context but english is my third language and it’s pretty late over here so I am struggling to find a better suited word)

Good luck on your weight loss journey. It is an incredibly hard and brave one to take and I admire that you are trying.

Aussiemandeus@aussie.zone on 04 Oct 20:44 next collapse

It absolutely is. But I’m pretty sure it’s expensive

dylanmorgan@slrpnk.net on 04 Oct 20:46 collapse

And of course health insurance wouldn’t cover it because it’s “elective”.

Bubbaonthebeach@lemmy.ca on 04 Oct 21:11 collapse

I don’t know much about liposuction but I believe it can only be done on subcutaneous fat (just under the skin) but not the deeper intra-abdominal fat that can be the cause of fat related health problems. If you can ‘pinch’ most of your fat then it is probably subcutaneous and lipo would help to remove the excess cells.

LavaPlanet@sh.itjust.works on 04 Oct 21:53 next collapse

I’ve heard similar, that your body wants to keep the “norm” whatever that is. And it makes sense that any extreme weight loss, would seem, to your body, that there is a famine or something is wrong and then reset the balance back to what it was, as soon as it can.

JandroDelSol@lemmy.world on 07 Oct 14:57 collapse

Set point isn’t some magic thing, it’s just the fact that if you eat a consistent diet, you’ll gain/lose weight until your calories in is the same as your calories out. If you’re overweight, you’re eating more than the human body evolved to handle, so your stomach has to expand to accommodate that. When you try and lose weight, you’re usually eating less food, and so your stomach isn’t full and can cause discomfort.

Losing weight is hard, I get it. I’m working on it myself. But it’s not like your body is working against you. If perceived famine caused people to gain weight, victims of actual famines would be overweight, not skin and bones. It’s not your body against you, it’s the impulsive parts of your brain versus the rational parts.

LavaPlanet@sh.itjust.works on 09 Oct 12:12 collapse

Yea, but there’s more to it than that. Thyroid causes issues that cause weight to pack on, no matter what your caloric intake is, menopause causing low estrogen causes weight gain because the visceral fat around your organs, the type you can’t exercise off, makes a kinda knock off estrogen, so your body packs on weight, to try and make estrogen there. You could eat one meal a day, all healthy and still put weight on. And there’s so many more health conditions that cause weight gain. Just Genetics, even. The calories in vs calories out theory has been debunked as a singular cause. Sure, if you have no underlying health issues and you watch what you eat, focus on fibre, legumes, vegetables etc, exercise the right amount, you will lose weight, but, if you are able to do that, you are probably already thin. People who are overweight, overwhelmingly have other conditions causing issues, too.

jet@hackertalks.com on 05 Oct 10:09 next collapse

The weight set point theory doesn’t apply to low carbohydrate eating. The abundance of fat cells does not make people doing keto fatter. It’s mostly the carbohydrate insulin model of obesity. Eating food that drives insulin makes people gain weight.

The abundance of active adipocytes can drive leptin issues, and aromatase issues. But as those adipocytes get emptied, there are no longer being as metabolically active and aren’t an issue. Especially on low carbohydrate diets that don’t drive elevated insulin levels

JandroDelSol@lemmy.world on 05 Oct 16:05 collapse

your taste bud’s cravings are the the fault of America’s food culture, not your body

TheRealKuni@piefed.social on 05 Oct 21:47 next collapse

¿Por qué no los dos?

incompetent@programming.dev on 06 Oct 23:33 collapse

your taste bud’s cravings are the the fault of […] not your body

Can you cite a reputable source to confirm this? Doesn’t seem right to me.

JandroDelSol@lemmy.world on 07 Oct 14:40 collapse

i mean, it’s anecdotal, but I crave things that are super unhealthy, like Rally’s fries or ice cream, and I rarely used to crave anything that has real nutritional value. Now that I’ve cut back quite a bit on those, my cravings are starting to return to more healthy options, and right now I would kill for some roasted zucchini.

in my experience, people are more likely to crave fast food and sweets because they’re literally designed to be addictive. if most people follow their cravings, they aren’t going for the things that provide nutritional benefits, they’re going for the tasty stuff

shifty@leminal.space on 04 Oct 17:09 next collapse

The Tummy of Theseus

QuinnyCoded@sh.itjust.works on 04 Oct 17:39 collapse

yo momma so fat

gedaliyah@lemmy.world on 04 Oct 17:42 next collapse

The number of fat cells don’t really change in your body. The individual cells grow and shrink.

pelespirit@sh.itjust.works on 04 Oct 17:47 next collapse

It kind of says something different though. It says the amount remains stable, but they’re dying and replacing themselves. It’s quick in fat people and takes longer in lean people.

It has been generally believed that adult humans cannot create new fat cells. We have thought, until now, that fat cells only and simply increase their fat mass by adding more lipids into fat cells that already exist in order to settle their body weight – this is true, but that is not the end of the story. Research lead by Kirsty Spalding, Jonas Frisén and Peter Arner has recently shown that adult humans constantly produce new fat cells regardless of their body weight status, sex or age.

Peter Arner, Professor, Department of Medicine, Huddinge, said “The total number of fat cells in the body is stable overtime, because the making of new fat cells is counterbalanced by an equally rapid break down of the already existing fat cells due to cell death.”

Edit: I can’t wrap my head around this. Why would anyone keep gaining weight then? If the cells are replaced really quickly, why does it get replaced with the exact same amount of weight? It must be from evolution or something, but it’s weird. That means biome, skin, fat, etc, the stuff that replaces itself quickly, keeps the healthy and unhealthy.

idiomaddict@lemmy.world on 04 Oct 18:15 next collapse

From your body’s perspective, fat is insurance. Our bodies aren’t used to excess, so we’re built to accumulate fat whenever we can.

jet@hackertalks.com on 05 Oct 10:05 collapse

People eating a whole food diet don’t keep gaining weight throughout life, it’s the modern diets that are tied to the epidemics of modern obesity.

Basically it’s the carbohydrate insulin model of obesity. Eat carbs, drive high blood glucose, drive high insulin, which drives weight gain.

RBWells@lemmy.world on 07 Oct 18:54 collapse

Kind of. I eat well, not much junk, and was underweight for most of my life, hit menopause and now at a normal BMI but that is like 25lb (11kg) more than I weighed when young. I do work out heavier now, but no way could I have maintained this much weight as a young woman, my body would not do it.

Stable again now, it’s not like I keep putting on weight just not skinny like before. More like a medium - not average for the US, our average would be fat - but true medium like about the middle of how much my body can healthily weigh, rather than a little less than it should.

My mom and grandma both gained in midlife then lost weight in old age and told me not to diet in midlife because that weight you might be glad for when old, it is cushion for getting sick and losing weight.

ramble81@lemmy.zip on 04 Oct 17:52 collapse

So then I’m curious what happens with liposuction as the fat cells are literally removed. Does your body create more, or no longer store fat, or does it get stored somewhere else?

9point6@lemmy.world on 04 Oct 17:57 next collapse

This is a very good question that I’m now curious about

Munkisquisher@lemmy.nz on 05 Oct 05:01 collapse

It gets stored elsewhere if you continue to consume more than you use, like the fat cells deeper in your abdomen where it’s much more dangerous to the health of your organs

zlatiah@lemmy.world on 04 Oct 18:00 collapse

From what I remember from nutrition science research… our body fat are literally living, breathing cells. As in, fat cells which specialize into fat storage, which can grow/shrink, and are in fact very metabolically active. So not only do they get replaced over time, they are biologically quite relevant and probably more “active” than, say, the nearby muscle cells

Wikipedia does have a page for adipocytes, not sure how up-to-date it is but it explains better than I could. Beware that it is quite technical

pelespirit@sh.itjust.works on 04 Oct 18:06 collapse

Wow, this is something that hasn’t been said. I wonder if this is still current.

An average human adult has 30 billion fat cells with a weight of 30 lbs or 13.5 kg. If a child or adolescent gains sufficient excess weight, fat cells may increase in absolute number until age twenty-four.[3] If an adult (who never was obese as a child or adolescent) gains excess weight, fat cells generally increase in size, not number, though there is some inconclusive evidence suggesting that the number of fat cells might also increase if the existing fat cells become large enough (as in particularly severe levels of obesity).

Edit: Also, this explains why some people have it easier and harder

People who have been fat since childhood generally have an inflated number of fat cells. People who become fat as adults may have no more fat cells than their lean peers, but their fat cells are larger. In general, people with an excess of fat cells find it harder to lose weight and keep it off than the obese who simply have enlarged fat cells.[3]

jet@hackertalks.com on 05 Oct 10:02 collapse

Hypertrophy vs hyperplasia

Europeans tend to be hyperplastic and can handle being fatter

Asians tend to be hypertrophic and get worse outcomes at lower levels of fatness

pelespirit@sh.itjust.works on 05 Oct 15:38 collapse

I looked this up. Do you mean with muscles or with the fat cells?

jet@hackertalks.com on 05 Oct 15:39 collapse

fat cells

pelespirit@sh.itjust.works on 05 Oct 15:47 collapse

It’s good for me to remember that these are tendencies. Now I’m wondering about other body types.