Body fat: facts for and against

Why do you need body fat? How beau­ti­ful it would be with­out them, right? That’s not a drop of fat, one elas­tic skin and pumped up mus­cles, a flat tum­my with a hint of the noto­ri­ous cubes, and a round ass. And chest, of course, as with­out it.

But it won’t work, and it’s not even worth dream­ing about. There will be no fat in the body — there will be no beau­ti­ful skin, and you will have to for­get about lush breasts in gen­er­al. Because wom­en’s breasts are most­ly made up of fat. Yes, and oth­er func­tions of the female body require a cer­tain amount of fat …

Per­haps you should learn more about this impor­tant com­po­nent of the human body? Med­AboutMe offers 9 inter­est­ing facts about fat.

Why is fat needed in the body?

Could evo­lu­tion have made a mis­take and left us com­plete­ly unnec­es­sary fat for some rea­son? Prob­a­bly, she could, because for some rea­son men have nip­ples, for exam­ple, although they do not breast­feed their chil­dren.

But all peo­ple are born with a huge sup­ply of adipocytes — fat cells. And through­out life, the body care­ful­ly mon­i­tors that these cells are not too small. If, for exam­ple, part of the adi­pose tis­sue is removed through lipo­suc­tion, then new adipocytes will quick­ly form in oth­er parts of the body. Because there must be a cer­tain amount of body fat, peri­od.

Fact 1: The body stores energy

Body fat is the ener­gy reserve of the body. The body of an aver­age per­son of nor­mal build con­tains from 10 to 15 kg of adi­pose tis­sue. This is enough to live for 2 months, spend­ing about 2000 kcal dai­ly.

Does this mean that fast­ing can rid the body of excess fat cells? No, that won’t work. Even when the body begins to con­sume fat reserves, the cells do not dis­ap­pear any­where, but sim­ply decrease in size. And then, when the hunger strike stops, the cells of adi­pose tis­sue will again begin to increase, accu­mu­lat­ing an ener­gy reserve in case of the next hunger strike.

Fact 2: Subcutaneous fat — protection against hypothermia

… and gen­er­al­ly from tem­per­a­ture extremes. But, of course, most­ly from the cold. It is not for noth­ing that the north­ern peo­ples have a thick­er lay­er of sub­cu­ta­neous fat in the body than the inhab­i­tants of hot coun­tries.

Women have more sub­cu­ta­neous fat than men, and it is locat­ed in oth­er areas: main­ly on the hips and but­tocks, a lit­tle on the sides, in the chest. There­fore, the nor­mal shape of the female body is more round­ed, with beau­ti­ful smooth curves.

How­ev­er, in the female body there is gen­er­al­ly more fat by 10–15%. And it per­forms not only a pro­tec­tive func­tion.

Fact 3: Fat is part of the endocrine system

In the female body, fat acts as an estro­gen depot. If a woman los­es too much fat, this leads to the ces­sa­tion of men­stru­a­tion and the loss of fer­til­i­ty, as adipocytes syn­the­size a sub­stance called lep­tin, which is respon­si­ble for main­tain­ing fer­til­i­ty in adult women and puber­ty in ado­les­cents.

And in body fat stores a sup­ply of fat-sol­u­ble vit­a­mins nec­es­sary for main­tain­ing health. And beau­ty too.

Fact 4: Not only camels store water in fat

In camels, the mois­ture reserve is stored, as is known, in the adi­pose tis­sue of the humps. Although peo­ple do have humps, the water sup­ply is not stored in them, but in fat depots. There­fore, in the absence or a sharp decrease in the amount of fat in the body, the con­di­tion of the skin quick­ly dete­ri­o­rates: it becomes dry, los­es elas­tic­i­ty and becomes cov­ered with wrin­kles.

Fact 5: Fat is a source of stem cells

Fat cells can be con­vert­ed into so-called induced stem cells (iPS). Pre­vi­ous­ly, skin cells were used to obtain iPS, but it turned out that this hap­pens much more effi­cient­ly with adipocytes. The “rainy day reserves” pumped out dur­ing lipo­suc­tion can become “fat gold”. But this is not a rea­son to accu­mu­late excess weight.

Fact 6: Exercise is the best prevention of obesity

And not only because it burns a lot of calo­ries. Sci­en­tists have found that with reg­u­lar phys­i­cal activ­i­ty, the mech­a­nism of split­ting fats is turned on and their accu­mu­la­tion decreas­es. If a per­son leads a pre­dom­i­nant­ly seden­tary lifestyle, moves a lit­tle, then under load, glyco­gen stores are first bro­ken down, then pro­teins (includ­ing those that make up mus­cles), and only then the turn comes to fat depots.

This means that a seden­tary per­son, in order to burn 100 g of fat from the abdomen or sides, will have to work hard­er than a sports fan.

Fact 7: To avoid excess weight, you need to sleep

Just not just sleep, but on time, reg­u­lar­ly and enough. That is, at night, and at least 7–8 hours every day. Vio­la­tion of the nat­ur­al rhythms of wake­ful­ness and sleep leads to dis­rup­tions in meta­bol­ic process­es. As a result, not only more body fat is formed, but the risk of devel­op­ing dia­betes mel­li­tus and dis­eases of the car­dio­vas­cu­lar sys­tem, up to stroke and myocar­dial infarc­tion, also increas­es.

Fact 8: Fat does not turn into muscle, and vice versa — too

There are no exer­cis­es or diets that will turn the fat pads on the sides or thighs into mus­cle tis­sue. The oppo­site is also true: a break in phys­i­cal activ­i­ty will not cause the mus­cles to turn into a clus­ter of adipocytes.

You can not pump up the female breast, you can only strength­en the mus­cles that lie under the mam­ma­ry gland and its fat­ty envi­ron­ment. No exer­cise will be able to remove fat on any one part of the body so that the rest do not lose weight. Excess weight either goes away from every­where, or does not go away at all. No mat­ter how much you want to dri­ve fat from your stom­ach, leav­ing a mag­nif­i­cent chest, noth­ing will come of it. The breast, as a rule, los­es vol­umes first. And the pil­lows on the stom­ach and but­tocks hold on to death, until the last not want­i­ng to leave their homes.

Fact 9: It is harmful to get involved in low-fat foods!

The desire to get rid of excess fat some­times makes you do the wrong things. For exam­ple, switch to low-fat foods. But the lack of fat in the diet leads to dis­rup­tion of nor­mal metab­o­lism. As a result, the body tries to com­pen­sate for the lack of ener­gy with a large amount of car­bo­hy­drates. Skewed towards car­bo­hy­drates caus­es an increase in insulin lev­els, and increased pro­cess­ing of glu­cose into fats.

And instead of the desired weight loss, a per­son receives an increase in weight, a dete­ri­o­ra­tion in well-being and a bou­quet of dis­eases in addi­tion. Because lipids play an impor­tant role in meta­bol­ic process­es, they are nec­es­sary for the con­struc­tion of cell mem­branes, the nor­mal func­tion­ing of the endocrine sys­tem, etc.

Expert com­ment

Ali­son Ted­stone, Dietit­ian, Direc­tor of the Health and Well­be­ing Direc­torate of Pub­lic Health England​

We are con­cerned that obe­si­ty is becom­ing a nation­al prob­lem and we are doing a lot to change the sit­u­a­tion for the bet­ter. But don’t demo­nize fats. It is a nec­es­sary com­po­nent of any healthy diet, and it is impos­si­ble to main­tain health if there is not enough fat in the body.

It is impor­tant to main­tain the cor­rect ratio, avoid­ing both the lack of fat and its excess.

To do this, you need not to overeat, eat healthy foods with a pre­dom­i­nance of com­plex car­bo­hy­drates and pro­teins, and reg­u­lar­ly give your body phys­i­cal activ­i­ty.

It is unac­cept­able and unwise to try to get rid of all the fat in your body.