I've been researching about fat cells in the past couple of days and found really confusing information.
1. Number of fat cells: I understand that this is not yet figured out completely by researchers and research is still very much ongoing and professionals disagree, but can anyone tell me of the better theory at this time? I found four different theories during my research, these are all about adulthood (not childhood or teens):
Can anyone tell me which one of these are more true?
2. Assuming the number of fat cells does increase when we gain weight - or we have a lot of them from our childhood, and the fact that the number of cells do not decrease, when we overweight people lose weight and go back into the healthy rage, we actually have much more fat cells than people who were never overweight but our fat cells are smaller. How does this affect our maintenance? Is it more difficult for us? Can we gain more weight by eating the same amount of calories? or is it just that we have more hormones made from these fat cells which increases our hunger and appetite? This is very unclear to me.
3. If we are aiming for low body fat (say below 7-8% for men), is it healthy to have the size of our fat cells shrunken that much? Because if you've never been fat and go for 8% body fat, your fat cells will be larger than ours because we have more cells. So what is the healthy size (or weight) of the fat cells? Is there a limit? Is there a minimum?
1. Number of fat cells: I understand that this is not yet figured out completely by researchers and research is still very much ongoing and professionals disagree, but can anyone tell me of the better theory at this time? I found four different theories during my research, these are all about adulthood (not childhood or teens):
- Number of fat cells during adulthood remains constant no matter how much weight you gain or lose. The cells just change in size.
- Number of fat cells can increase during adulthood during intervals of extreme weight gain. However they will never decrease. They will just shrink when we lose weight and are there for life.
- Number of fat cells can increase at any time. Even professional athletes who go for example from 5% body fat to 10% body fat actually have the risk of increasing the number of their fat cells. They are there for life.
- Same as above, only that the number of fat cells can actually decrease very slowly if we lose and maintain our weight. It might takes tens of years to reach normal levels though.
- There are different types of fat cells, some can increase and some can't. More specifically, most of the fat cells in the upper body will get bigger when we gain weight, and the cells in our lower body will increase when we gain weight. The number of fat cells will never decrease.
Can anyone tell me which one of these are more true?
2. Assuming the number of fat cells does increase when we gain weight - or we have a lot of them from our childhood, and the fact that the number of cells do not decrease, when we overweight people lose weight and go back into the healthy rage, we actually have much more fat cells than people who were never overweight but our fat cells are smaller. How does this affect our maintenance? Is it more difficult for us? Can we gain more weight by eating the same amount of calories? or is it just that we have more hormones made from these fat cells which increases our hunger and appetite? This is very unclear to me.
3. If we are aiming for low body fat (say below 7-8% for men), is it healthy to have the size of our fat cells shrunken that much? Because if you've never been fat and go for 8% body fat, your fat cells will be larger than ours because we have more cells. So what is the healthy size (or weight) of the fat cells? Is there a limit? Is there a minimum?
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