eli5: why is gaining weight so easy but losing weight so hard
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Something worth mentioning that I haven’t seen here yet is why it’s so hard to *keep* weight off.
Think of fat cells as being like balloons. When you gain weight for the first time, you body creates new fat cells. When you lose weight, the fat cells don’t go away, they deflate. Then, when you start regaining weight, your deflated fat cells reinflate, which takes considerably less enery than building new ones.
The average life span of a fat cell is 7 years. Therefore, your body’s “default” weight is going to be whatever was your heaviest weight was in the past 7 years.
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