Fat Cells
I kind of suspected that weight loss does not reduce the number of fat cell, but now we have a confirmation. Say you lost 10 or 20 pounds of fat and you probably think that you zapped those fat cells for good. Think again.
While you might have shrunk the cells, you did not get rid of them. They lie dormant and will expand again if you overeat or stop exercising. Researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden found that people keep the same number of fat cells throughout life and that fat cell number is fixed during childhood.
More important, the body destroys and grows new fat cells continuously. Every year the body turns over about 10 percent of the fat cells. Also, while you cannot get rid of fat cells, you can create new ones. Fat cells fill with fat to a certain level and trigger the development of new fat cells that also stay with you.
As you know, I despise diet pills, but maybe they do not work because the drug companies are fighting the losing battle by trying to develop drugs that prevent fat accumulation in existing cells rather than focusing on preventing fat cell regeneration. [sources: Nature, Fitness Rx]
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