For starters this is NOT a weight-loss thread. This is very specific about a certain aspect of weight control. This is not about “losing fat” but specifically killing fat cells.
So I have always learned that once you have a fat cell, it is with you forever and when you lose weight you have “empty” cells just waiting to fill up with fat again - in other words you cnnot starve your fat cells to death. That is why someone who was fat and lost weight finds it so easy to put on weight again if they are not careful.
So what is the solution? Clearly sucking all of those old fat cells out via liposuction. But now there is cold-sculpting (freeze them to death?) or that fat is the result of “inflammation” (which I put in quotes because it doesn’t sound like the inflammation I am familiar with) and stop being inflamed and the fat goes away. There seem to be a few drugs out there that may kill off the adipocytes. What is the SD on how to kill (and not just empty) fat cells?
From what I read, they never disappear naturally. Still, what’s wrong with that? You can empty them through proper diet and exercise and then simply leave them to their own peaceful, skinny existence.
What I learned years ago is that you’re born with x amount of fat cells and you always have the same amount, unless you get liposuction. What causes weight gain has something to do with the lipids somehow splitting off, though the actual number of fat cells remains the same.
Can anyone further explain or clarify that? I think it was a video from CDC or NIH so I know it isn’t a crackpot theory but I honestly can’t remember the mechanics of it.
However they all seem targeted. None seem to work on a system wide level. Plus they seem more for subcutaneous fat. Visceral fat is the fat that causes health problems.
Also even if you kill off your fat cells, who knows if your body will just produce more to regain weight. I don’t know the biology of weight loss/gain well enough to know if killing off empty fat cells will correct the endocrine imbalances that make weight regain easier. At root, leptin deficiency seems to be the hormonal imbalance that leads to weight regain after a weight loss effort. I don’t know if killing off fat cells will fix that.
Continue being careful about eating less and exercising more. It’s a lifelong commitment.
There are no short cuts to lose weight by “killing your fat cells”, whatever the Daily Mail is gushing about. Also, the idea that not eating “inflammatory foods” is the key to a slimmer you is essentially snake oilscience.
Losing fat cells doesn’t change your propensity for either staying thin or gaining weight. If your body needs fat cells to store excess calories, it will just make more. Killing fat cells gains you nothing.
Not exactly true, at least based on some recent research. It takes more calories to generate new adipose cells then fill them, than it takes to just fill empty adipose cells.
There’s also some research that shows that empty adipose cells do start dying off after about a decade or two of being empty.
Well, it’s better than nothing. Sounds about like quitting smoking, once you lose the weight your real long term benefit come in the real long term. sigh.
