Out of the many ways that nature could have created us, it chose a pretty tricky path. As many of us who dread the fat would have had it, fat should have been a derided ingredient for the body and should only have been stored in right proportions in the first place. But sadly, reality eludes fantasy.
The fat that a body takes in through food goes on to be stored inside cells that are dedicated to the storage of fat, which the doctors call Adipocytes. These cells are made up of over 95 percent fat and form a layer above the muscles right below our skin that prevents sharp muscle contours to be visible in obese people. As was earlier believed to be true, the number of fat cells in a body were predetermined and remained set throughout a lifetime. This theory should have further implied that losing or gaining weight was not something that a human brain should worry about. But what has been discovered later on comes as a respite to all those on the path of weight loss.
Obesity is not all about the number of these cells that a body possesses. It is concerned with the amount of fat that these fat cells store within them. Our bodies are programmed to store fat as a reserve source of energy. As we incline towards less physical activity, this store increases multifold and becomes visible in the form of flab. As an alternative to create and kill these cells to suit the current fat requirement of the body, nature instead made the fat cells flexible in their shape. Unlike a gas tank that possesses a definite shape, fat cells in our body are able to shrink and grow in size as per the prevailing conditions. Much like the balloons, a fat cell's size is simply dependent upon how filled it is. The cell of an average adult weighs about 0.6 micrograms. In people who are skinny and underweight, this mass could go as low as 0.2 micrograms. And for the severely obese, a fat cell could weigh up to 10 micrograms. And obesity fundamentally has at its roots not just the count but the swollenness of fat cells.
An infant has fat cell count of about 5-6 billion. This grows up to 25-30 billion cells in an average healthy adult. The number of fat cells grows through childhood and remains more or less constant in adults with normal health status all through life. But when pushed to the limits of their fat holding capacity, a fat cell divides into more cells to make room. This exacerbates the situation since losing weight becomes increasingly difficult when the number of cells is already on proclivity.
What is perhaps not in our control is the number of these cells we are born with. But attributing the weight to just the number of these storage spaces is nothing more than a grave misunderstanding of the process, for how little we store in them is something in our control. Burning calories through exercise and mindful eating are probably just what the cells ask for.
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