This article is a little misleading. When we gain or lose weight we do not gain or lose fat cells. It is the size of the fat cells that changes. This change in size is from the body storing excess energy you consume in the form of food and storing it as glycogen in fat cells. When the body then needs more energy than you consume, the glycogen is removed from the cells and burned to provide the additional energy. The number of fat cells in the body is fixed at a very young age. When you have liposuction done, you remove some of those fat cells, or glycogen storage areas. However, if you do this without altering your eating/exercising habits, the body will again start to store the excess. Since you have basically removed the storage location in one part of the body with liposuction, the remaining storage areas get more put into them. It really is not about the number of fat cells, but the amount of excess glycogen stored in each of the cells. This is why you see people who have had liposuction on their hips with bags hanging under their arms. You can only safely remove so much of the body's fat cells before your start to risk serious health problems. This is why competent doctors will limit the amount of fat they will remove from a patient.

Translation: EAT LESS.

Quick-fix surgeries for weight loss are like payday loans for shopaholics.

Re: JS in SD: "The number of fat cells in the body is fixed at a very young age."

This is a common misconception!! The article is right and consistent with latest findings in the field, i.e. fat cells can proliferate under certain physiological condition, e.g. when all the energy storage sites including fat cells are saturated.

Mike, I know! But the fact is I like refined sugar and simple carbohydrates. Veggies bore me to death. I'm doomed.

translation: if you are lazy and looking for a quick fix, it doesnt exist.

even people who get gastric bypass surgery and dont change their habits, gain all the weight back...and they too end up looking mangled after all is said and done.

bottom line - if you want to lose weight, exercise and eat better. and the weight DOES stay off if you dont go back to your old habits.

It's "lose", not "loose" (as opposed to tight.)

Actually, what this says is, you can always lose the weight. It just comes back. We already know this; clinical research shows 99% of diets fail long term. Not a lack of willpower, not an "excuse" or a moral failing. Just a biological fact.

I watch what I eat, don't eat fried or fast food or very much processes foods, and work out five times a week to include heavy biking. I still struggle to keep the weight down. You'da thought I had an olympian build. I wish.

This is complete BS, carefully crafted BS, but still BS.

Fat is not some magical substance that suddenly appears. Its nothing but deposits of glucose stored for later use. Glucose that your body metabolizes from food, namely carbohydrates and starch's.

Your body DOES NOT TRY TO BE OVERWEIGHT, people need to stop using that as an excuse. What makes them fat is they eat to much in proportion to the physical exertion. It's fine to eat 3500 calorie's a day ~IF~ someone has the physical output level to exhaust those 3500 calories. Its a simple balance between energy in vs energy out, if you have a positive balance then your going to gain weight, if its a negative balance then you'll lose weight. Yes its that simple, anyone telling your anything different is either lying to you, trying to sell you something, or both.

Next your body will always try to maintain a set amount of fat cells, what this article doesn't tell you is that your body doesn't make ~more~ fat cells as you gain weight, it makes them bigger. A girl who is 145 lbs at 21 will have the exact same fat cell count as when she's 300 lbs at 28. The body just shoves more glycogen molecules into the cells and makes them swell up.

So, if someone is eating too much and putting on weight, then goes in and has the stored fat "taken out", then they have indeed lost that weight permanently. The fat cells won't form black holes and jump back into the body. If that person doesn't alter their life habits to reduce their energy input ~after~ the surgery, then their positive energy balance will just cause their body to create more glycogen and shove it right back into fat cells. And since the storage area around the site has been damaged, of course the body will store it in a different location.

Everyone is looking for a quick fix, an easy solution that requires no hard choices. They are refusing to reduce their energy input or increase their energy output. Instead they crave the dopamine fix their brain generates when their stomach is full, and like drug addicts they keep up the habit of filling their stomach to generate that dopamine.

And to all the BS artists that will undoubtedly come on and try to tell me I'm wrong. Find me a fat starving person. If the theory that your body magically generates "fat" and makes you overweight is true, then there should be fat starving people in Africa. There should be a 300 lb women starving because she doesn't get enough food, but her body magically creates the "Fat" that makes her overweight.

@Carolyn G

What is your daily energy balance? If you can't answer this question then that is the source of your weight issues. And here is a hint, its not fried food that is the problem or even candy (you body can't store sucrose / fructose / dextrose) its carbohydrates and starch's. Carbohydrates are the condensed stored glycogen from animals. Starch's are the plants version of this, condensed stored glycogen. You body will tear them apart and extract the glucose and if there is not an immediate need it will then convert that glucose into glycogen and shove it into your fat cells for "later" use.

Thus you can completely abstain from all fried / fatty foods and eat "healthy" but still have weight problems if you like to eat breads / pasta / rice / potatoes / corn or any starchy food. Those above foods are great if you live an active life style, they'll provide ample amounts of ready long term energy, but if your an office working doing 9~5 (40hr work week) then their toxic for your weight.

Thanks, otherguy, that makes alot of sense. I, too, like Carolyn G watch what I eat, and work out 5 days a week but I am still carrying around the "glycogen" that my body refuses to give up. I am also in my 40's which makes losing weight very difficult.

My BF is in his late 30's and lost more weight in 3 weeks than I have in 4 months, just by giving up McDonalds! ....not fair....

One thing lipo can't do for you is give you nice, strong, toned muscles that makes even the remaining fat "ride well".

I agree with the otherguy

I've been as heavy as 220 lbs and as low as 135 (freshman year in college)...and now hover around 165 lbs...and that 165 is minimal exercise, and watching what I eat - by that I mean, I dont gorge...but I dont "eat right" either.

As the otherguy says - I shed pounds fastest when I stick to an extremely low carb diet, high in protein...but thats a hard diet to stick to, and once I go back to carbs...the weight comes back (like magic!) - except, its not magic...its science.

currently I just balance eating what I want, with days of low carb/high protein to balance any weight gain...and hopefully to go down a little.

when I do get serious about wanting to lose weight, i add in exercise - usually running/sit ups/ ect...and strict about low carb, with 1 day of eating whatever I want.

Its hard to do, mostly because im lazy and enjoy eating whatever I want - not because its impossible, or my body cant do it.

Actually, no. If you read the whole article, it said that when fat cells are removed from the body through lipo, the body grows new ones to take their place-just depositing them somewhere else.

Fat cells are flat and empty when their made. Growing "new" fat cells won't effect your weight at all. Their like balloons, when empty flat and space efficient, but when they start to get filled they expand and take in water (glycogen is suspended in water).

Removing the full fat cells will indeed increase your weight, your body replacing those cells just moves the location of where fat is stored, it doesn't add any weight (measurable). Its when you keep eating those carbohydrates and maintaining that positive energy balance that the fat "comes back".

Its not fcking "coming back", the fat cells didn't jump out of the machine and fly through space to jump back into your body. Your putting on NEW weight, that is all.

Unfortunately, I have both!!

And you'd shortly die afterward. "Fat" is nothing but your body's fuel tank, it stores glycogen for later use. If you didn't have anywhere to store the fat then your body would be unable to function, you'd die of starvation.

I think Andrew was joking. Thanks for the laugh!

Weight lose is very logical, its the lack of understanding that makes it seem difficult. That and all the people trying to sell a confidence boost / good feeling to overweight people.

Weight loss (Fat) can be broken down into one simple rule.

Energy input (calories in) must be less then Energy output (calories out).

Weight (Fat) gain is the reverse,

Energy output (calories out) must be less then Energy input (calories in).

Never once in the entire history of the world has this been proven false. Its an ugly and hard fact of life. Other factors may make it harder / easier but ultimately (fat) weight is 100% controllable.

The problem isn't losing weight--it's what one does after the weight has been lost. Retraining of eating habits really is one answer, but the culture makes that very hard. We are surrounded by temping, high fat-carb-salt foods. Advertising throws them at us constantly. The culture has made overeating the national pastime. But, that aside, it really does come down to the individual.

Constant restriction and constant exercise can't be the answer because eventually you just get exhausted. Plus one's body does react to "force" you to want to eat. Check out the Minnesota Semi-Starvation Study. So the important part of any weight loss has to be--the transition into maintaining weight and the after plan, which is going to go on for life. That after plan has to be reasonable, not extreme. The weight at which one maintains may be higher than one's goal weight, and that is OK as long as it doesn't continue to slip upward.

JayEll, exactly. If the persons eating habits continue as they did pre-surgery or worsen their bodies will gain fat as usual except in the area that has been damaged by surgery. Pretty simple.

With ready to eat food this is not a fruit or veggie so easily in anyone's grasp it is hard to resist the temptations we see everywhere. As a culture we are sugar and salt addicts, it gets added to everything, even when it's not needed in such high doses it trains our minds into thinking that non-sweetened/salted stuff taste bland.

Losing fat is a hard battle, but not impossible. Porportion sizing is the biggest help and was the hardest hurdle for me. With current marketing trends and lack of education about how your body is supposed to eat it's hard to understand that when I can easily get a 16oz prime rib steak that is oh so yummy I am only really supposed to eat 4oz of it and feel full. Once I started sizing down my portions combined with exercise I was able to eat the same stuff as before and still lose a healthy 1-2lbs a week.

I was a sugar addict when I was younger. No sh!t addicted to sugar intake, it played havoc on my body but I eventually overcame it and learned to carefully moderate my sugar intake. Here are a few things I've since learned.

Your body will ~always~ try to trick you into eating more / increasing your energy intake. This is left over from when we survived an ice age and were getting chased by tigers in the jungle. At that time we didn't know when your next meal would be, thus the body's plan was to gorge whenever possible. A cave-man era human could go days without food and thus needed to take on as much as possible whenever they had an opportunity. This also applies double to pregnant women, the body knowing its pregnant will want to force the woman to double up on everything even though she doesn't need the extra energy. The body is anticipating a period of time post-birth that the women will be unable to hunt for food and rely on the male who may or may not be successful in killing things. This would give the mother + child the maximum chance at survival.

Today we have instant high-energy good available everywhere around us. There is no longer a need to gorge and horde energy, but our bodies don't know this. We need to control our bodies and suppress the instinctual desire to consume food constantly. We need to be the ones in control of our energy intake, not our bodies.

Lastly people have "metabolism" understood completely wrong. The real word your looking for is homeostasis, which is just the term used to describe the process's the body use's to maintain temperature / blood flow / distribution of nutrients and so forth. Everyone has the same "metabolism", we all process sugars the same and render the exact same amounts of energy per unit of carbohydrates. Different people have different levels of homeostasis, more importantly different body's handle it differently. A near-hyper "skinny" person doesn't have a high metabolism, they have a high level of homeostasis, their body is burning through tons of energy to maintain itself. A "bigger" person has a slower level of homeostasis, their body conserves energy and is very frugal with its use.

This above fact can easily be observed by watching two office workers. One is the skinny near-hyper type, the other is the bigger slower type. Observe them throughout the day, watch what happens when they sit down. The skinny person is constantly fidgeting and moving something, even as simple as tapping their feet. They never stay in one spot for very long. The bigger person plops down and literally their entire body stops moving. What happens is your body has a natural "power-saving" mode that kicks in whenever a muscle group stops moving for a long period of time. The bigger person sits down and withing a few minutes the body has kicked in that power-saving mode, their muscles cool down and their energy use bottoms out. While the skinny person is constantly moving, their body never enters into this power-saving state, its constantly burning through energy the entire day.

On the flip side, the bigger person is ~far~ better equipped to survive another ice age, their body's frugality with energy would be a boon in an energy restricted world. The skinnier person wouldn't last long, their energy use is simply too high.

Check back in ten years, Rick. Clearly you are not fat now, but things change. It's not a matter of willpower, but you won't understand that until you face it yourself.

...but were I single, I would never date an overweight person. Gross.

Or perhaps your skinny little wife will "let herself go".

Your shallowness speaks to YOUR weak character.

If you have liposuction without changing your bad habits, I would expect fat to return. fix your habits first, people.

Did you miss the part about these women NOT being obese? Lots of normal weight or slightly overweight people get liposuction to spot reduce fat, which you cannot do with exercise. I'm not saying they should, just that they do, and that the women profiled for this study--IF YOU READ IT--were not "fat."

FailureToCommunicate, that's assuming that HE hasn't let himself go. In my experience, those who are so hateful towards others with a few extra pounds tend to not be Mr. Universe themselves...

very nice line

If only it worked that way.

Yeah... problem being that when fat goes to the bust, it drops. So there's that idea out the window.

I read somewhere that a surgeon was actually experimenting with using the bodies own fat for breast implants, so people can avoid the risks involved with artificial implants. I can't find the link, but the challenge is that getting the fat cells to replant themselves so they gain blood supply and not die then get reabsorbed by the body leaving you with the originals you started with.

So your dreams of natural feeling big boobs to motorboat without implants is a possibly in the near future.

Thanks, Bacchae-3405698-you actually typed up the basics of metabolism for all those people looking for shortcuts, and who are running into the cold, hard wall of reality instead!!!

I really don't type very well, so you are now my hero for the day!!!!!!! You saved me from having to explain it to the ignorant masses.

To make it real simple folks, remember the cliche' G.I.G.O. from Computer Science class? "Garbage in, garbage out"! It applies to almost all human endeavors, including weight loss.

Change your habits, and you can change your life. I know, I know...it's an oversimplification-but that doesn't make it any less true!

but you can't change your body TYPE! just like people who are super thin NATURALLY who eat tons and never gain weight. Not sure why the general public can't accept that some people will never be thin no matter how healthy/little they eat!!! We're all different! not sure why it's "ok" to be super think but not "fat" either. The only way to prove THIS would be a similar double-blind with control experiment where a group of people were all given exactly the same diet for several months. Would be interesting to see.

Bacchae-

Totally correct. Covered this a little while back in a Cell Biology Class.

The "different body types" excuse is a weak however still somewhat valid argument.

In Glycolysis produces a net total of 2 ATP, Citric Cycle Produces about 2.5 ATP and then the Electron Transport Chain and Oxidative Phosphorylation produces a total of 34 ATP (sometimes calculated at 36) and then the Oxygen is coupled with a Hydrogen to create H20 to leave the Mitochondria in Cellular Respiration.

This DOES NOT WORK THE SAME IN PROKARYOTES.

Plus Structure equals Function. Change the shape of proteins and it changes the way they Function.

ATP Synthase

http://vcell.ndsu.edu/animations/atpgradient/movie-flash.htm

Electron Transport Flash Video

http://vcell.ndsu.edu/animations/etc/movie-flash.htm

Thank you to North Dakota University for this Flash video open to Public Use.

I'm just a Science Minor currently. Art is where it's at :P .

Probably the same reason you don't bother to form complete sentences.

BTW....I used spellcheck!

In a forum like this, the important thing isn't spelling, it's whether what is typed is understandable. Of course, lots of errors do make a poster look uneducated--but all I can say is, if you can't stand misspellings, don't read the forums... it doesn't change.

Yes, you are certainly superior to those OTHER people!

I know this is a type-quick, first impressions kind of forum, but repeated misspellings are distracting and do make the poster look uneducated, as JayEll points out. Spell check won't catch all grammatical errors, even though it's more sophisticated than it used to be. There's no substitute for learning the spelling and grammar rules they were supposed to teach you in HS and it will make you more credible to others.

Bubalooslzzy, you don't have to be obnoxious to make your point.

I think this is a forum for people to express their thoughts and/opinions on a particular topic for fun of it. I don't think people should critique it like we are trying to obtain a college education. But I guess if it make you feel better to make it known that you can write and/or spell you should take that superior personality to another forum with like minded people. And remember an occasional misspelling is not an indication of one’s intelligence.

Sometimes obnoxious is necessary to make a point. I used to think good spelling was linked to intelligence, but have encountered people of obvious "smarts" that can't spell.

Still, I can't help but find it really irritating when I see the same errors being made over and over. How can people not understand contractions, or the difference between "loose" and "lose"?

Obnoxious is never necessary to make a point. All it does is make you look low class. I never take rude posts as seriously as one written by someone with a vocabulary.

I didn't say good spelling indicated intelligence, just education. How those two link up is a matter of diverse opinion!

@Bubbalooslzzy - so you're of the opinion that poor spelling or grammar is bad form while off-topic rants and ad hominems are good form? Are you sure you've thought this through?

Wow BubaloosIzzy. That really got them fired up didn't it?

READ THE ARTICLE. These women were not 'fat.'

I am sure they used non-obese women to prove their theory. I do not believe the study would have been effective if they had use an obese person who already has fat distributed over their body. I believe this study because I had liposuction only to notice approximately a year or so later across my chest was wider and my arms have hanging flab you would not believe. So I know for a fact that fat deposits itself in other parts of the body however, like someone previously said, you must also undergo a lifestyle change after liposuction.