Become a fat burning expert!
How is fat burned and where it goes when it's burned? No more nonsense about “changing fat into muscles”! Learn how your body works. If you understand it, the weightloss gets much easier.
We are all born with approximately 5-6 billions of fat cells. As we mature this number increases and in adulthood we have around 25-30 billions fat cells. This is, if we are healthy weight and normal body composition and the number of fat cells also depends of our genetics and gender. A typical overweight adult has around 75 billion fat cells and in case of severe obesity it can be up to 300 billion.
Fat cells are located beneath our skin, around our organs and on the top of our muscles. The less fat person has the more muscle definition can be seen. That is why some people are “skinny fat” – they are small in size but have quite a lot of fat compare to muscles (but that is a different story).
Fat cell is our reservoir of energy. Inside of a fat cell, the unused extra energy that we consume is stored in form of triglycerides. When you “lose” body fat, the fat cell itself does not go anywhere, unfortunately, it stays right where it was. The fat from this fat cell is burned, but this does not happen inside of the fat cell. It must be liberated from the fat cell through somewhat complex hormonal and enzymatic pathways. When your body needs energy and you are in caloric deficit, the hormones and enzymes are released to stimulate the fat release from your fat cells. The triglycerides are broken down into glycerol and three fatty acids and released into the bloodstream so they can be transported to the muscles that need them. An enzyme called lipoprotein lipase helps the free fatty acids inside the mitochondria of muscle cell, where they can be burned for energy. Mitochondrion is the “power house” of the muscle cell where the energy production takes place. This explains why it is so important to build up muscles when you want to lose fat – muscles are the place where the fat is burned. So the more muscles you have, the more fat you burn.
When the fat is released from the fat cell, the fat cell does not disappear but shrinks. Therefore when you want to get leaner, smaller of empty fat cell is what you are after. The weight of a fat cell can be anywhere between 0,2 micrograms to 0,9 micrograms. What happens when the fat cell reaches its maximum fat store capacity? Yep, you guested it! It multiplies. Hence the fat cells can increase in the size and the numbers. The thing is, once new fat cell is born, it stays right there. If you are gaining fat so much that your fat cells are multiplying, you make it harder for yourself to lose fat in the future. You have to stop right now! And don’t forget that once you have lost weight, you fat cells are not gone, they just shrunk so you have to continue living healthy lifestyle if you don’t want to fill them up again.
Genetics are only minor factor and while it is true that you can’t control the number of fat cells you were born with, you can control how much fat you store in them. Its your choice – you either have excuses or you have results. You cannot have both!
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