Why is it so easy to regain lost weight?

The body stores a considerable amount of fat even in very lean people. An average person with a body fat of 12% will store about 70,000kcal of fat. Enough to run 1.126km.

There are different types of fat found in the body however :

 

Essential fat- Needed to protect the organs and in women needed for reproduction.

 

Storage fat- Fat stored underneath the skin in adipose tissue. Fat cells are known as adipocytes and they store energy as fat in the form of triglycerides. These are made readily available to the body to be used as fuel.

 

An average person has around 25-30 billion fat cells whereas somebody who is overweight or obese can have as  many as 42-106 billion.

 

Fat cells produce lipoprotein lipase, an enzyme that facilitates uptake and storage of triglycerides. Fat cells can expand to huge proportions but once they have reached a limit they will then reproduce more fat cells in a process known as hyperplasia. In an overweight or obese person there can be up to 405 more fat cells than in an average person.

 

When an adult loses weight there will be no change in the no of fat cells they will just remain in the body waiting to be filled again.

 

If an overweight person loses weight the fat cells increase their production of lipoprotein lipase in order to try to restore the amount of energy stored in a fat cell. This makes it easier to regain body fat.

 

This is the reason that fad diets, low carb and celebrity diets do not work and why good nutrition must be combined with a high resistance exercise programme.