A question about fat cells

Your body doesn't create fat cells. You are born with a certain number of fat cells. They just get bigger when you gain weight, and smaller when you lose weight.

So I've always heard that when you gain weight (fat) your body creates fat cells. When you lose weight through exercise/diet, the fat cells don't actually go away, they just get smaller. What I'm wondering is that after you lose weight, do those shrunken fat cells actually matter (do they make a difference/show up on your body)? For example, lets say:

a 150lbs person loses 10lbs of fat vs a 150lbs person who gains 50lbs, then loses 60lbs of fat. Both people end up at 140lbs in the end, however, does the person who was 200lbs look any different (bigger) because they have more fat cells (even though they're shrunken)? Or are shrunken fat cells sooo small that it doesn't even make a physical difference?

Assume the 2 hypothetical people mentioned above in my example are the same person, going through 2 different situations so height, age, gender, genetics, etc doesn't make a difference.

This was my understanding too but it seems from the replies that people don't just grow more fat cells.ah dear what have I been learning in the past then?

The number of fat cells you have remains fairly constant throughout your life, regardless of whether or not you diet, or are thin or fat, say researchers at the Karolinska Institute, Sweden. In a study published in Nature they have demonstrated that we continually create new fat cells to replace those that are breaking down. The scientists have also demonstrated that fat people do this at a faster rate than lean people - obese people's fat cells die at a faster rate and are created at an equally faster rate.

It has been generally believed that adult humans cannot create new fat cells. We have thought, until now, that fat cells only and simply increase their fat mass by adding more lipids into fat cells that already exist in order to settle their body weight - this is true, but that is not the end of the story. Research lead by Kirsty Spalding, Jonas Frisén and Peter Arner has recently shown that adult humans constantly produce new fat cells regardless of their body weight status, sex or age.

Peter Arner, Professor, Department of Medicine, Huddinge, said "The total number of fat cells in the body is stable overtime, because the making of new fat cells is counterbalanced by an equally rapid break down of the already existing fat cells due to cell death."

Without trying to get technical, your fat cells aren't created equal. Some are bigger than the average (0.1mm ⌀) and some are smaller (your body is renewing them all the time) but they do have a maximal capacity (some studies say 4x, some studies say less). Once they reach their maximal capacity, they will divide and thus create more cells.

When you lose weight, these cells can shrink back to roughly the average diameter, but you will likely never get rid of the newly created ones.

That is true as far as it goes HappyStack, but at the same time you're growing more fat cells, others are dying off. The number tends to remain constant over your lifetime.

But what does it matter what the actual number of fat cells we have is? The fact is that we all have fat cells that contain more fat than we want to have on our body! I'm putting my fat cells on hunger strike :laugh: