Fat Cells
In order to lose weight, a person must consume fewer calories than the body needs. By burning more calories than your body takes in, it must eventually turn to fat cells. When the body lacks the fuel it needs for energy from dietary sources, it begins converting the molecules in fat cells. If you don't consume enough calories through eating, there isn't sufficient glucose in the bloodstream to stimulate cellular metabolism. Fat cells in adipose tissue are actually stored fuel reserves. As the body burns fat for energy, fat cells shrink. This breakdown of fat cells produces heat, energy, water and carbon dioxide. You excrete water from the body in the form of urine and sweat. When you exhale, you breathe out carbon dioxide from the lungs.
Lean Body Mass
As the body loses weight, it loses water, lean body mass and stored fat. But health care providers advise that the majority of weight loss should come from fat loss and not lean body mass. Reducing the number of calories you consume each day is usually the first step toward weight loss. However, as you take off the weight, the goal is to preserve more lean body mass. A study conducted by researchers at Purdue University's Laboratory for Integrative Research in Nutrition, Fitness and Aging found that consuming more protein while following a reduced-calorie diet may help people maintain more lean body mass while losing weight. Findings of the study published in a 2007 issue of the research journal Obesity suggest that eating lean sources of meat protein during dieting may help people achieve their weight-loss goals. Muscle burns more calories; therefore, preserving lean body mass is essential to long-term weight control.
Diet and Exercise
Diet and exercise work together to reduce the size of fat cells in the body, although neither of these approaches can get rid of fat cells entirely or reduce their numbers. Yet gaining weight increases the number of fat cells in your body. Every calorie your body consumes that is not used for energy is stored as fat. Everyone's body houses billions of fat cells. But the more overweight you are, the more fat cells there are in your body, making it harder to lose weight. People who are overweight also have bigger fat cells. Even after you lose weight, you still have the same number of fat cells in your body, only they shrink. Staying active and eating a nutritious diet can help you control how much fat your body stores.
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