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RE: Abdominal Obesity in focus (The science of what happens to your body when you lose body fat)

in #steemstem6 years ago (edited)

Hi @njokueruchi. Nice article, however, I need to point out some doubts:

  • Firstly, it is true that there are two types of fats which are subcutaneous and visceral. Both of them can potentially cause obesity but one is more detrimental than the other. Some studies in the past have found that removing your subcutaneous fat by liposuction would do you almost nothing if the amount of visceral fat around your organs are not changing. It's therefore reasonable to assume that, people with lots of visceral fat (some of them look skinny) are predisposed to illnesses which could have increased their morbidity or mortality rate despite of their obesity profile.

  • Secondly, in glucose metabolism, the secretion of cortisol is not the main concern. Sure, cortisol can induce over-eating which can lead to obesity but the main reason while people are getting fat is the insulin itself. Insulin is quite flexible. If all of the cells are fully occupied by glucose that is used for energy, they (insulins) have to transport glucose into the adipose tissue through a process called de novo lipogenesis (literally translated to new fat making). Think about people who have diagnosed with diabetes type I (can't produce insulin or produce fewer insulins than normal). Without insulin treatment, they can be extremely thin despite high cortisol level in the blood. After insulins have been prescribed, they will gain some weight. This can be due to the fact that insulin contributes to the making of new fat cells and it can increase the expression of ghrelin (which would cause you to become hungry). That's why no-carb diet has been popular (and working) this day; if you took less carb, less insulin would be secreted. You can read about ketosis to understand the subject more.

  • Caffeine is actually fine unless you took them with a lot of sugars. That would be fattening; no, fatty food items such as coconut oil and butter does not make you fat.

  • I'm quite confused regarding the fact that you have presented about how do we lose fat through exercise. In my knowledge, ketosis plays a role in it. You will be using glucose as an energy source until cells run out of it. It would need an alternate energy source, so if the insulin level was low, the body would mobilise fat cells to the liver so that it can be converted into ketone bodies to be utilised by cells. That's how we lose fat cells through exercise. Why is it important to keep your insulin level low during exercise? Fat cells would not be used when insulin level is high because it signals that the body has a lot of glucose which is in fact, untrue. So if cells need energy but the insulin level is high, how it's going to acquire energy sources? The answer is by degrading muscles which would reduce your resting energy expenditure hence metabolism. Through a process called gluconeogenesis, muscle protein would be converted into glucose in the liver. That's why, if you are not paying attention to what you eat, people who exercise regularly would find it hard to reduce their weight after 4 weeks of exercise. This can be attributed to the muscle loss hence reduced metabolism.

Indeed there are a lot of weight-loss programs on the internet that we can choose from but it is also important for us to understand the basic biochemistry of how we became fat in the first place and how to prevent it.

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Hello @conficker! I have seen all you've written, and they are all well noted. However, there are so many lectures and research especially on the subject of weight loss

Thanks for taking out time to read this post, i appreciate

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