Body Fat Storage Cells & Influences
The dominant human genetic structure, which was “survival of the fattest,” developed over the thousands of years that humans have been on this earth. This means that in the past when food supplies were variable from “feast to famine,” that the people who survived to reproduce and thus pass on their genes, were those that carried the most storage fat to get through the “hungry times.” It has just been within the last century that our food supply has become stable and overabundant in parts of the world.
Our human genetic system has not caught up with this development yet, as it often takes thousands of years for the human gene pool to evolve to a different form. Therefore, these ancient survival body mechanisms have now become a hindrance to human attempts to lose weight and keep it off.
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| DNA Helix strand |
Most of body fat is stored in cells called adipocytes which have features similar to other body cells, but these are pushed over to the side of the cell to make room for the fat droplet. The stored fat is in a constant state of flux with some being broken down and others stored.
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| Fat Cells |
When we are born we have relatively small numbers of fat cells, but they increase in number over the years of growth and development such as preschool years, adolescence, and pregnancy. The increase in number of fat cells in adolescent girls is greater than for boys as their bodies prepare for child-birth years ahead. It seems that there is no natural method of reducing the number of adipocytes once they are formed, but we can add more to their numbers at any stage of life. So when our food intake exceeds our energy output, the body will make more fat cells. However, when fat is lost through illness, dieting, or increased physical activity, the body moves the fat droplet out of the cell to make energy. This shrinks the cells to a very small size, but they are still there. Your body interprets this as being a time of famine and starvation and sends the brain a signal that we need to eat more. Because you don’t have to build more fat cells as the body refills the ones that are already there, it is easy to regain the fat weight lost once old eating and exercise patterns are resumed.