How does the body decide where to add or take away fat when gaining/losing weight?
In: Biology
You have a set number of fat cells in your body. Depending on your genetics there may be more or less of them in certain parts of your body. If you gain more body fat, you’re not gaining cells, they’re just getting bigger. The same with losing body fat, those cells get smaller. They more or less all grow and shrink at the same rate.
It is mostly genetic and changes with body types. You can’t burn fat from spesific places either. You can’t burn only tummy fat for example. You can however add some muscle mass for a neater look.
It doesn’t ‘decide’ per-se. Fat is distributed in a rough order that varies with your sex. Males for example are more likely to store fat in their upper-body and abdomen (hence the Beer Belly phenomenon) whereas Females are more prone to store it around their hips and thighs. This is what largely contributes to the ‘pear’ shape we associate with women.
Males are also more likely to store ‘visceral’ (around the organs) fat which is what results in the skinny-fat phenomenon where people can be overweight, but not look it. Females are more likely to store fat subcutaneously (under the skin) where it’s more noticeable. This combined with our bodies preference for storing fat in certain places is what contributes to the difference of appearance as a result of our weight.
Places like your face, neck and arms are lower down the list. Which is why when someone gains/loses a lot of weight this is where you notice it. It’s one of the last places for fat to get stored, but when you start losing weight that means it’s one of the first places to go.
When you lose weight, it comes off in the reverse order that it went on. So if you’ve noticed that you’ve recently started accumulating mass in a certain place, then with improved diet and exercise that is the exact place it’ll start coming off first.
Edit: The order I’ve given is more of a broad trend rather than something you can usefully apply to individuals, various generic and environmental factors will affect the order from person-to-person. Your personal order may be different, but regardless of the order it’s a last-on/first-off system.
Edit2: There’s some back and forth in medical journals about whether there is *any* consistency to the order or if it’s purely an individual/genetic thing. I’m not qualified to really judge that and deep dive into them so please take that particular claim with a few pinches of salt. But while the notion of a consistent order seems contentious, there is nevertheless an order for you.
TL;DR – Fat goes on in a particular order on different parts of your body that varies between people, and it comes off in the reverse order that it went on. Areas like our belly/hips are often the first place it goes on (but not for everyone!), so it’s the last place it comes off and you have to do everything else first.
Latest Answers