Why can’t we ingest or inject some Pac-Man type thing that runs around eating our fat cells?
In: 5
It’s not, but to do so effectively and consistently it takes time. Generally expect to lose 1-2 pounds per week. If you carefully evaluate your caloric intake it’s a simple method of calories in vs calories out
If you developed a pill that targeted fat cells and broke them down or otherwise transported them to be pooped out, you would be a billionaire almost overnight. Losing weight is difficult, but it’s not hard. You just have to eat fewer calories than you burn. The problem is, people don’t have the discipline to eat less and work out consistently enough to see improvement. A caloric deficit of 500/day will cause you to lose 1lb per week, if someone ones to lose 50lbs, they would have to do things consistently for a year, or still 6 months if they had a daily deficit of 1000 calories. It’s a long time to stick to something if it’s difficult and you don’t think it’s working.
For a good while storing fat was beneficial. It’s only relatively recently that humans have been able to have such an excess of food and lack of activity that storing fat has become an issue.
Starvation was a much bigger problem for our ancestors than excess fat. So being able to easily store, and then easily reuse the storage was beneficial.
Fat cells don’t really go away. They shrink. Once they’re created though they’re easier to “refill”. Great when trying to maximize how easy it is to store excess food while a hunter gatherer, bad when trying to show off abs.
As a direct answer to your question about the Pac-Man thing.
A level of fat is essential for bodily processes. Many vital structures like nerves and skin have fat as part of their structure.
So an indiscriminate fat remover would also remove a lot of important things. It would have to very targeted to remove excess fat, without also removing essential and healthy fat.
Part of this is what makes cancer so hard to treat. Cancer is made up of the same tissues as the body. It’s hard to selectively kill certain parts of the body, without killing the entire body.
I’ve found it’s easy to get rid of by simply rendering it in a frying pan and draining it out.
Because to experience the “payoff” of losing weight via diet and exercise takes time and effort. The gratification is a long way off.
To experience the “payoff” of a donut, you just shove it in your face hole.
This is why many people join structured diet plans, programs and support groups. The diet plan *supplies gratification* in the short term via positive encouragement and affirmation, to somewhat replace the gratification supplied by the food.
This is also why grinding out workouts doesn’t work for a lot of people. It’s pure work until the training starts to show results, and that could take awhile. Doing a fitness activity you *actually enjoy* is one way to counter this, particularly group activities.
Humans with normal metabolism have a built-in mechanism to regulate fat mass using the hormone leptin.
Most people who are overweight these days are overweight because they are insulin resistant, caused by large amount of processed foods and sugar. The insulin resistance gets in the way of fat metabolism and messes up the leptin regulation of hunger.
Those who think that you just need to eat less are likely insulin sensitive, and if you are insulin sensitive and clean up your diet a bit, you will lose weight.
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