A Look at How the Human Body Stores Fat and Why
Different weights for different shapes
Fat is not an uplifting topic for most people to discuss or even think about. As soon as we think fat we have visions of weighing too much and not looking as good as we wish.
What we often don’t think about is how our bodies store fat and why. Fat does have a purpose and it’s a good one. But when a person has too much fat on the body it can become a problem. Read on to learn more.
A simple explanation is fat is stored when our caloric intake on a routine basis exceeds our expenditure of calories. That is a fancy way of saying that if you consume more calories on a daily basis than you burn off through physical activity then the excess will be stored as body fat. On the other hand, if you burn more calories then you consume, you will lose weight. If you burn approximately the same number of calories you exercised off then your weight will remain roughly the same.
Fat storing is a little more complicated in the real world as certain foods turn to sugar and fat more easily than others but increasing your exercising will help with weight loss.
Why We Store Fat:
The reason our bodies store fat goes back to the earliest of times. Fat storage was a tool of survival for humans. When food was plentiful people ate as much as they could. The extra food was stored as fat tissue (also known in medical circles as adipose tissue). When food was scarce at other times of the year then the stored fat was used as energy. The bodies of these early humans required the stored fat tremendously for their energy source.
The world has changed a lot and in most industrialized countries the worry over famine no longer exists. Instead we now live in a society where we tend to overindulge in terms of food. The easy availability of fast and convenient foods and the option to buy larger portions has only made a bad problem worse.
Why Some People Store More Fat than Others:
Why do some people seem to put on weight easier than other people? The reason is because no two people have the exact same body chemistry. Gender, hormones and genes are the three main factors that determine why one individual stores more fat than another.
Fat distributes itself differently on a male’s body in comparison to a female’s body. Men are shaped more like apples and store fat on their bellies and in their abdominal region while women are more apt to be pear shaped. This means that women tend to have more fat in their pelvic region which translates to their buttocks, hips and thighs.
We do not have a say as to what parts of our bodies store the greatest percentage of our fat.
Hormones also make a difference and are tied in with gender. Men have a hormone known as testosterone which predisposes them to have more fat on their stomach. On the other hand, the female hormone known as estrogen causes women to have fat stored in the lower regions of their bodies, as described above. This is just the way nature does it.
Your genetic makeup also plays a significant role in where your fat is most readily stored. Your genes also work in the reverse in that they determine what parts of your body lose weight the fastest when you begin to shed pounds.
Becca Scott
Staff Writer
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Filed Under: Weight Loss
