• Question: When you lose weight, do your fat cells disappear?

    Asked by mennie13 to Helen, Jenni, Mark, Martin, Stu on 13 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Jenni Tilley

      Jenni Tilley answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      Pretty sure I heard recently that they don’t. Instead they just ‘deflate’ when we use up the fat by reducing our calorie intake. This means that as soon as we eat more fat than we need, the cells can re-inflate and our size increases quickly. This is probably why crash dieting is so ineffective

    • Photo: Helen O'Connor

      Helen O'Connor answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      Yes, I heard the same as Jenni. And I think that for people who are in a normal weight range, this is the case – that fat cells simply expand or shrink but don’t disappear. But, like all cells of the body fat cells die off and are replaced.

      I worked at an obesity camp for teenagers last summer, and there I heard about some relatively recent (and controversial) research which suggests that when people get very seriously obese (I think it’s something like 170% of their normal ideal weight or above) this CAN trigger the production of more fat cells.

    • Photo: Martin Lindley

      Martin Lindley answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      Yep Jenni and Helen are correct the cells change shape and size.

      The number of fat cells you have begins to be determined before you are even born however the important thing is how much fat the cells store. Too much fat leads to a whole host of disease states eg Heart Disease HOWEVER not enough fat leads to its own problems and can seriously impact your ability to play sport.

      So like everything in life it is all about balance !

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