As of my current understanding, you need calories to get fat, how can some hormonal issues lead to weight gain? Where does all the energy comes from?
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Fat comes from excess energy. There is no way to put on fat without eating. There’s lots of hormones that are in control of your eating and your energy expenditure, and hormonal issues is a term that encompasses multiple different problems.
Your hunger control is hormone based. You feel hungry because a hormone is released that makes you feel the sensation of hunger. And in response to that you go and eat food.
Hormone imbalances might be that your hunger response might be excessive, with your body giving you too much hunger stimulus and you eat in excess.
Your metabolism and energy use is also hormone based. You could have a reduced metabolism and low energy use, which also would mean you are eating in excess of what you need even if your diet might seem normal.
Ultimately it will all come down to the person eating more calories than they burn.
But how much you desire to eat and how quickly yoy burn calories are both factors that are heavily affected by hormones. And there are a number of conditions such as metabolic disorder that will cause you to feel a desire to eat more and more calories while also having a low metabolism that is not burning them off.
The energy comes from eating things, because that’s your body’s source of energy.
Hormonal issues – or whatever other issues – might affect *how much energy your body expends*, or might affect *how much energy you consume*. If the amount of energy you consume is greater than the amount of energy you expend (for any reason!), then your body converts the leftover extra energy into fat to store it for later, “just in case”.
There are a lot of possible hormonal problems that can cause this, so the answer is going to vary depending on what’s going on.
But broadly speaking, these are either going to increase your appetite – making you eat more, thus taking in more calories, or, they’re going to decrease your physical activity by tiring you out – making you burn fewer calories. Or perhaps both.
It doesn’t change the fundamental nature of the physics, yes, the calories have to either come from some where, or fail to go somewhere. What those hormonal changes do is alter your behavior to cause you to act in ways that are likely to increase your weight.
So, just add to OP question based on the responses of how it doesn’t exactly gain fat but that it kay change the way you eat, which makes you eat more than you expend. Can hormone issues change the amount of energy/calorie you use up? Basically can it mess around with metabolism?
Your body has a basal metabolic rate. The BMR determines how many calories you need to function, as well as how many to eat to gain weight. According to calorie calculators, it’s just based on height, gender, age etc. However, the BMR can vary between people. Hormonal issues, such as hypothyroidism can lower the BMR, which is why weight gain is a very common symptom.
How hungry do you feel?
This is partly hormonal.
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How high does your blood sugar need to be for your brain to be physically capable of concentrating properly?
This is partly hormonal.
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How quickly does your body convert the sugar in your blood into fat?
This is partly hormonal.
Because appetite is regulated by hormones. I happen to have personal experience with both sides of this. I’m 51 years old and I’ve weighed ~160lbs pretty much since I was 16 no matter what or how much I ate. Then about a year ago I found out I have adrenal and thyroid deficiency and started taking hydrocortisone and levothyroxine to replace the hormones my body doesn’t produce enough of and my weight started fluctuating for the first time in 35 years; I lost 10lbs at first, then gained 30lbs in 3 months, I’m hungry more often and have the urge to snack all the time, etc. I’ve had to start watching what and how much I eat and exercising for the first time in my life, all because of some hormone changes.
Hormonal problems such as insulin resistance and skewed levels of estrogen/testosterone also affect the way your body stores energy. Different things can cause your body to put more away as fat, have problems processing glucose into the muscles so more gets stored as fat, etc. These factors also affect where on the body fat is stored.
Drugs, hormones and most illnesses make people fat via three main mechanisms
1. Hunger and they eat too much which makes them fat.
2. Reduce energy expenditure, so they burn less calories, leaving more to turn to fat.
3. Water retention which increases weight but doesn’t make them “fat”.
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