Remedies To Shrink Fat Cells

A lean adult has about 40 billion fat cells, and an obese adult has at least two to three times that, according to "Medical News Today." Too much fat in your body acts like a poison, spouting out toxic substances that cause heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure and diabetes. Shrinking fat cells helps your body not store as much fat so you have a healthy body weight.

Diet

The best way to get rid of visceral fat and shrink fat cells is diet and exercise, according to "Medical News Today." Burning more calories than you eat creates a negative energy balance that melts fat and slims down bloated fat cells. There are several guidelines for eating a healthy diet, including reducing your portion sizes by 10 to 15 percent; consuming a variety of fruits and vegetables, whole grains and low-fat dairy products; and limiting alcoholic beverages.

Determine your body’s basal metabolic rate, which will tell you how many calories you burn at rest in order to survive. This number accounts for about 60 to 75 percent of all the calories you will burn in a given day, according to the American Council on Exercise.

Exercise

Muscle tissue burns more calories than fat. Due to this, strength training increases the amount of calories you burn and shrinks fat cells, even while at rest. As you increase the amount of muscle you have, you will also increase your resting metabolic rate. According to the American Council on Exercise, lower-intensity exercise uses more fat as fuel compared to higher-intensity exercise. However, lower-intensity exercise does not burn as many calories and will not burn as much fat overall. High-intensity workouts keep your metabolism elevated even after you have finished working out.

Sleep

Sleep is an important part of losing weight and shrinking fat cells, according to Jillian Michael in her book “Making the Cut.” This is thanks to four hormones that control your appetite—leptin, ghrelin, human growth hormone and cortisol—all of which are affected by how much sleep you get. Leptin and ghrelin work together to regulate how full you feel. The release of cortisol is triggered by lack of sleep, promoting abdominal fat. Additionally, growth hormone levels are decreased by lack of sleep. Hormone growth levels regulate your body’s muscle and fat proportions. With a decreased amount, you gain more fat than muscle.

Reduce Stress

It may sound too good to be true, but limiting the amount of stress you have may shrink your fat cells. According to a 2007 article in “The Washington Post,” stress can promote obesity. Researchers at Georgetown University’s Department of Physiology and Biophysics tested the idea that chronic stress causes people to put on pounds by subjecting mice to chronic stress and giving them either standard food or a high-fat food, similar to a junk-food diet. After two weeks, only the stressed out mice fed the junk-food diet gained a significant amount of weight. These mice had sharply elevated levels of neuropeptide Y (NPY), a chemical messenger produced by nerves in fat, proving that NPY trigger stress-induced obesity.