Fat Cells Never Die!

cyclops

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Just watched a (rather depressing) video that stated that new fat cells are much more easily made as a child and once you have them they can never die, only shrink. So people who became fat or obese as children will have a much harder time losing fat as an adult.

Adults can still create new fat cells but it is much harder to, so if they were lean as children they will have an easier time staying lean.

I've heard this before, but as with many things, sometimes what you hear isn't true. Maybe you can kill fat cells as an adult? Or maybe its not that big of a deal to have many more fat cells? Or maybe the studies are flawed or the concept is overly simplistic?

Wondering what the implications of this are, especially for an adult who was obese as a child, but now takes health very seriously and follows a Peat way of eating. How screwed are adults who became very fat as children?
 
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johnwester130

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I am sorry but this sounds like mainstream, learned helplessness nonsense.

You can deplete PUFA quite easily
 
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cyclops

cyclops

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I am sorry but this sounds like mainstream, learned helplessness nonsense.

You can deplete PUFA quite easily

I don't feel "learned helpless" or whatever I just want to know the facts: are fat cells made more easily as a child, can they never die, and what the consequences are of that?

I know you can deplete PUFA, not sure what that has to do with my question though.
 

mmb82

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I also heard that fat cells form when you are young, stick around, and can only shrink or expand in size. I think newer research does suggest that adults can make new fat cells, as you said, but I don't know if they have any research on whether or not you can kill existing fat cells...unless you believe that "Coolsculpting" aka cryolipolysis works.
 
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Just watched a (rather depressing) video that stated that new fat cells are much more easily made as a child

They are made at birth just like any cells that are made at birth. Babies have fat.

and once you have them they can never die, only shrink

Yes but that is nothing to be depressed about. It's the physiology of the human being. Fat cells are like balloons. They can fill up with fatty acids and expand like a ballon and inside them are fatty acids. The fat cell itself it not "fat." When you gain "weight," (people inaccurately use that term because you can gain muscle and water too, which will make you weigh more) you store fatty acids inside your fat cells. For men it happens to be mostly the gut and for woman thighs and hips etc. Whether it's protein or sugar that gets into your blood, it has to be converted into fatty acids first before it gets stored inside your fat cells. Fat from food already is fatty acid, it doesn't need to be converted to get stored which is why Peat said the body prefers to storespufa first and burn glucose and sfa.

They can die from liposuction and things that kill them like Belkyra injections.

So people who became fat or obese as children will have a much harder time losing fat as an adult.

Anyone at anytime has a hard time losing adipose tissue mainly because it takes discipline. They didn't become fat because they have more fat cells than someone else. They got fat because they ingested too much of the macronutrients that were turning into (or already) fatty acids that got stored inside their fat cells. The only way to empty out their fat cells is to force their body to use that fat for energy. It doesn't just magically disappear because of a certain food, supplement or activity. It has to be used for energy. That's how they empty out and one becomes leaner.

Or maybe its not that big of a deal to have many more fat cells?

It's not. You're in control of if too much fatty acids get stored inside them.

You can deplete PUFA quite easily

It depends how serious a person is in firstly, not ingesting pufa rich foods. From what I've seen about people, most people, even "woke" about veg. oil, still binge out on it from time to time. But even if they do avoid it, they will still store some even from butter and coconut oil, and obviously there are some in other foods that are naturally low in them but if you can store them from butter and coconut oil then you can certianetley store them from eggs, oysters, milk etc.
 
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It is thought that the human being has this ability to store so much fat inside their fat cells because we evolved in an environment of scarcity so we developed a way to store fat very easily to help us survive food shortages.
 

lampofred

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Damn. Time to pack up and give up. No point in trying to lose weight or avoid PUFA anymore because some random YouTube video says "fat cells never die." Anyone adult who is currently skinny who claims to have been fat as a kid must be full of BS because it's too hard to accomplish in reality.
 
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cyclops

cyclops

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Yes but that is nothing to be depressed about. It's the physiology of the human being. Fat cells are like balloons. They can fill up with fatty acids and expand like a ballon and inside them is fatty acids. The fat cell itself it not "fat." When you gain "weight," (people inaccurately use that term because you can gain muscle and water too, which will make you weigh more) you store fatty acids inside your fat cells. For men it happens to be mostly the gut and for woman thighs and hips etc. Whether it's protein or sugar that gets into your blood, it has to be converted into fatty acids first before it gets stored inside your fat cells. Fat from food already is fatty acid, it doesn't need to be converted to get stored which is why Peat said the body prefers to stores pufa first and burn glucose and sfa.

They can die form liposuction and things that kill them like Belkyra injections.

Thanks for taking the time to write this up Westside PUFAs.

Definitely helpful, but I'm still unsure as to the answer to part of my original question. Basically I'm wondering if younger people (the video I watched said up to younger teens) actually create new fat cells (and do so quite easily) but adults do not (or if they do, it is much harder).

So say most humans start off with 1 million fat cells (just picking random number). A 9 year old overeats terrible food and becomes rapidly obese and he easily creates new fat cells and now has 10 million fat cells. Another 9 year old does not overeat or eat too bad and stays at 1 million. Now the child with 10 million has 10 million for life? Say the child with 10 million fat cells then slims down for many years. Then at age 30 both of these people overeat terribly, supposedly the former child who has the 10 million fat cells will be worse off then the former child with 1 million fat cells.

Basically that is what the video I had watched was saying. I wanted to know if there was any truth or anything else to be learned from this.
 
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cyclops

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Damn. Time to pack up and give up. No point in trying to lose weight or avoid PUFA anymore. Some random YouTube video says "fat cells never die." Anyone adult who is currently skinny who claims to have been fat as a kid must be full of BS.

No one said to give up on anything. You could call most any youtube video "random;" some are correct and some are not. I didn't say fat kids cannot become skinny adults. I was asking if this info is true (it very well may be) and what the implications are.
 
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lampofred

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No one said to give up on anything. You could call most any youtube video "random;" some are correct and some are not. I didn't say fat kids cannot become skinny adults. I was asking if this info is true (it very well may be) and what the implications are.

Not being dramatic, being too sympathetic to people tends to push them into learned helplessness while being a slight ***hole does the opposite.
 
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cyclops

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Not being dramatic, being too sympathetic to people tends to push them into learned helplessness while being a slight ***hole does the opposite.

I'd just like to get the real/true answers to these questions if science has made them available. Every person can then choose how to behave after being exposed to the correct information.
 
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Kyle M

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Hyperplasia vs. hypertrophy, the same concept is discussed a lot in muscle as well. It seems like hyperplasia, an increase in the number of cells of a given tissue, is more active during childhood, for all cells. Makes sense, doesn't it? I don't understand the antagonistic responses, it's not saying it's impossible to lose fat if you were fat at a kid, it's just a cellular concept to take into account.
 
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cyclops

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I don't understand the antagonistic responses, it's not saying it's impossible to lose fat if you were fat at a kid, it's just a cellular concept to take into account.

Of course it's possible to loose fat if you were a fat kid, but did the fat kid create new and unnecessary fat cells in his youth (that would have been very hard to create as an adult) and now can never be destroyed? If so, what are the consequences, if any, of him having many more fat cells then his peers who were not obese as children?
 

Kyle M

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Of course it's possible to loose fat if you were a fat kid, but did the fat kid create new and unnecessary fat cells in his youth (that would have been very hard to create as an adult) and now can never be destroyed? If so, what are the consequences, if any, of him having many more fat cells then his peers who were not obese as children?

Afaik it changes the hormonal milieu of fat-secreted hormones, such as the infamous leptin. The body can more effectively defend its fat stores with more cells to secrete more adipostatic hormones, because even though the fat stores of large hypertrophied fat cells are bigger, the rest of the cellular machinery of them isn't increased apace.
 
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Thanks for taking the time to write this up Westside PUFAs.

Definitely helpful, but I'm still unsure as to the answer to part of my original question. Basically I'm wondering if younger people (the video I watched said up to younger teens) actually create new fat cells (and do so quite easily) but adults do not (or if they do, it is much harder).

So say most humans start off with 1 million fat cells (just picking random number). A 9 year old overeats terrible food and becomes rapidly obese and he easily creates new fat cells and now has 10 million fat cells. Another 9 year old does not overeat or eat too bad and stays at 1 million. Now the child with 10 million has 10 million for life? Say the child with 10 million fat cells then slims down for many years. Then at age 30 both of these people overeat terribly, supposedly the former child who has the 10 million fat cells will be worse off then the former child with 1 million fat cells.

Basically that is what the video I had watched was saying. I wanted to know if there was any truth or anything else to be learned from this.

You're confusing fat cells with triglycerides. Triglycerides are what pops out the skin and makes someone look fat. They are the things that are filling up the fat cells like air filling up a balloon. See the picture below. Think of the fat cell as the purple part. That is what is storing the triglycerides/fat inside the resivoir. They come from the food you ingest and are converted to triglycerides from amino acids, mono and disaccharides and fatty acids (protein, carbohydrate and fat). In terms of being fat, it doesn't matter how many fat cells someone has. What matters is if they do things that cause their fat cells to store too many triglycerides inside those fat cells. Just because someone has more fat cells than someone else, that doesn't mean that they will just become fatter or sicker. They were born with the genetics to have more fat cells but that is not a disease. It's meaningless. It's like saying that someone who is taller than someone else is going to have a problem because they're taller. The phrase "fat cells never die" is a misleading one because it's not a problem of the fat cells, it's a problem of storing too much fat inside of them, which the person is in control of no matter how many fat cells they have. The fat cells don't just create fat to store inside them out of nowhere or from magic. Obviously looking at photos of someone who was fat and is now lean shows that yes their fat "cells" did die. They obviously went somewhere. The person used their massive store of triglycerides for energy to the point of them becoming lean, like every other person who's lost body fat.

Fat-Cell-Structure-and-Components-Weight-Loss.jpg
 
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Vinero

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You're confusing fat cells with triglycerides. Triglycerides are what pops out the skin and makes someone look fat. They are the things that are filling up the fat cells like air filling up a balloon. See the picture below. Think of the fat cell as the purple part. That is what is storing the triglycerides/fat inside the resivoir. They come from the food you ingest and are converted to triglycerides from amino acids, mono and disaccharides and fatty acids (protein, carbohydrate and fat). In terms of being fat, it doesn't matter how many fat cells someone has. What matters is if they do things that cause their fat cells to store too many triglycerides inside those fat cells. Just because someone has more fat cells than someone else, that doesn't mean that they will just become fatter or sicker. They were born with the genetics to have more fat cells but that is not a disease. It's meaningless. It's like saying that someone who is taller than someone else is going to have a problem because they're taller. The phrase "fat cells never die" is a misleading one because it's not a problem of the fat cells, it's a problem of storing too much fat inside of them, which the person is in control of no matter how many fat cells they have. The fat cells don't just create fat to store inside them out of nowhere or from magic. Obviously looking at photos of someone who was fat and is now lean shows that yes their fat "cells" did die. They obviously went somewhere. The person used their massive store of triglycerides for energy to the point of them becoming lean, like every other person who's lost body fat.

View attachment 8517
Interesting, that would be a good point to increase our intake of starch. Triglycerides seem to be synthesized in the liver from fructose.
Question to you Westside: do you think Buckwheat is a good starch to eat? As in pancakes from buckwheat flour or buckwheat porridge.
 
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cyclops

cyclops

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Interesting, that would be a good point to increase our intake of starch. Triglycerides seem to be synthesized in the liver from fructose.

This goes against Peat who highly recommends sugar over starch and says that starch is better for fat gain.
 

Vinero

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This goes against Peat who highly recommends sugar over starch and says that starch is better for fat gain.
I still eat a lot of sugar, dont worry.
But starch has some unique anabolic benefits I think.
Starch stimulates more insulin release than sugar, which potently lowers free fatty acids.
I think the combination of starch and sugar is the best metabolic booster there is.
 
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cyclops

cyclops

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Obviously looking at photos of someone who was fat and is now lean shows that yes their fat "cells" did die. They obviously went somewhere. The person used their massive store of triglycerides for energy to the point of them becoming lean, like every other person who's lost body fat.

Thanks for the picture, it's helpful to understand how this all really works.

With your explanation I would not guess that a person who was fat and got lean had their fat cells die though, I'd say that their fat cells released their stored triglycerides and simply shrunk. But according to you it does not really matter if a person has more fat cells because it is not any easier for them to get fat or lose fat then a person with less fat cells.
 
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