This is the best thing I've seen on the water-replacing fat topic:
http://forums.lylemcdonald.com/showthread.php?t=14

I think your point about fat cells gained over time (as opposed to fat cells bloated with fat short term) is a good one. And when you mentioned applying negative pressure, I took it that you were talking in a biochemical sense but it made me think about how plastic surgeons advise their patients after lipo to wear tight-fitting surgical garments for many weeks to months to mold the shape as a person heals. I'm not really suggesting outside the healing process that compression garments could keep fat cells small, well, not more than a .0000000001% chance anyway.

Shaping the body with compression garments has been done for ages and works pretty well. Smaller feet in Japan, longer necks in Africa, elongated craniums in South America, smaller waists in Europe. Even muffin tops and love handles could be attributed to low cut jeans and tight belts. All done by applying pressure over time to a specific body part in order to change its shape. But yes, I was talking about hormonal pressure, not physical.

I just noticed this on one of my favorite reference websites.

http://www.why-low-carb-diets-work....odystrophy.html

Now that I think about that some more, I'm wondering about the hormonal effect of fat reduction this way. Obesity could be said to be due to insulin resistance. As lean cells become resistant, fat cells remain sensitive and grow fatter because they take in more insulin than the rest. Merely reducing fat tissue probably won't change the other cells' insulin resistance status. But it will probably change the insulin level. If we reduce fat tissue, there's fewer fat cells to take care of the higher insulin level due to insulin resistance. This will allow insulin to rise again, and start the whole chronic hyperinsulinemia/fat tissue growth all over again. In order to avoid this problem, we have to apply pressure on fat tissue and all other cells simultaneously. Reduce fat tissue physically, and reduce insulin resistance in other cells.

It's just an idea.

I think another factor that has to be considered is that fat cells do have a function in the body. I you look at the woman with lipodystrophy in GCBC and WWGF. Little or no bodyfat up top--"obesity" from the hips down. I don't think the woman actually had any sort of obesity, that was just how much fat she needed on her legs to make up for the lack of functioning fat cells on her upper body.

It makes sense that if fat cells develop in an environment that inhibits their ability to fulfill their function of providing the body with nutrition--or maybe inhibits their ability to receive the feedback that would normally signal that this function is being fulfilled--this might lead to the proliferation of fat cells, especially during childhood and the teen years. But by the same token, it seems possible that if the environment is changed, the fat cells might find themselves better able to fulfill that function of providing the body with nutrition. A person could have twice the number of fat cells as usual, but with the right hormonal environment, each fat cell could have less work to do. Twice as many cells putting out leptin and adiponectin. Twice as many releasing and storing free fatty acids. Each cell's needed triglyceride stores to fulfill its function might be less--again, given the right environment--than it would be if there were less cells.

The right hormonal environment. I agree. And I've thought about it some more. When we cut carbs, we take care of insulin directly. But that's just one side of the problem. The other side is insulin resistance. As insulin resistance rises and drops, insulin level rises and drops accordingly, and its effect rises and drops, i.e. we grow fatter or leaner. So how do we reduce insulin resistance? Believe it or not, I've decided that exercise isn't so useless for fat loss anymore. Not just any kind of exercise, heavy weight lifting (let's call it HWL). I can change my mind you know.

Just recently, I was listening to Taubes again and he said something about high intensity exercise and how it affects insulin resistance. Then he mentioned that carbs have the effect of raising insulin resistance, especially after exercise. He says, this effect is due to cells trying to replenish glycogen after the workout. So, for those who believe high intensity heavy weight lifting is good for fat loss, do it. But if you believe you need carbs to recover faster, or a carb refeed during the weekend a la CKD, don't and don't.

I believe lean people are lean only because they're insulin sensitive, nothing more. The whole thing is just an idea but even to me it sounds convincing enough. I don't think HWL will take care of the surplus fat cells we've grown over the years but it we keep it up not too religiously, I think we can still grow just that much leaner this way with only a little more effort than otherwise.

If I remember correctly, Taubes said the effect of HWL on insulin resistance lasts for about a couple of days. So maybe we could get away with one workout every 2 or 3 days for a pretty good bang. If I remember correctly still, I think Bear (RIP) said he only worked out once a week.

I just thought of a more eloquent way to describe the whole problem.

For equal fasting insulin, two fat cells will contain twice the fat as one fat cell.

Go on from there.

Humorously, I can take three completely different topics from this thread and combine them in one post that ties it all together. This is unfortunate since if I were not insanely metabolically dysregulated this wouldn't be the case...


Around the early 2000s, I was having trouble with my work. I was a lead programmer then, from home, and some project management of other offsite workers, and I was working literally all the time. I know for some people that means "gosh overtime an hour or two every weekday!" When _I_ say all the time I literally mean "I fell asleep at 3am and woke up at 6am with keyboard imprints in my forehead. 7 days a week." (I needed a laptop even then.) I was working all the damn time sitting on my ass writing code. I varied from eating nothing at all for long periods (1-3 days) to overeating fast food (superfast/delivery). I was in the upper 400s then I think. I didn't have a scale.

My father had a blood clot surgically removed and was put on Coumadin, aka Warfarin, aka "rat poison" for the rest of his life. And he had to drastically avoid vitamin K (which is strongest in "anything green"). This struck me as a total nightmare for his health. Around then I also read an article about blood clots caused by sitting in airline seats too long.

Around that time I was having the problem that due to my weight, a) almost no office chair fits me (I carry majority weight in butt and thighs) and b) no matter what chair I sit on, it *profoundly bruises me.* I mean think about what it's like to put 480# of pressure on ANY part of your body for ANY length of time -- let alone all day! I was in pain, I kept getting distracted and having to get up. My office chair died and I went to sitting on folding metal chairs I had around the house. My legs would fall asleep because literally the pressure against the back of my thighs on the edge of the chair was that major. (This still happens in restaurant booths [those I can fit in] and chairs, although my regain of 70-80# is obviously part of that. I just can't sit in them for very long is all.)

Then I started worrying about blood clots, for obvious reasons. After thinking about it, I decided there was only one obvious decision: CAPTAIN KIRK. Yes, I needed something akin to a recliner that would have a "full coverage" from butt to knee to distribute my weight and would not be cutting my leg at the back thigh or bruising me profoundly. Something cushioned. So I went to the furniture store looking for some kind of recliner that I could use, drag my monitor to edge of desk and keyboard to some kind of board or table across the arms perhaps.

The furniture store did not have any recliners to fit me. Yes, I'm serious. "Big men" tend to be big in the gut and shoulders -- not in the ass and thighs. So even their "big man" recliners were not real workable for me, they were as small in most cases as chairs I couldn't, or could barely, fit into. Plus most of them had a rating not equipped for my weight. There allegedly were more expensive ones if I drove a couple hours to Tulsa but I didn't have that much money.

Then I saw this armchair. It was actually from the same furniture group that I had just given away a couch from (when its life ended) and I liked the look of it. It was a "one and a half" sized armchair, which meant it fit me beautifully. Well cushioned. Deep. If I sat back, the back of my knees folded perfectly at the edge of the cushion and my feet touched the ground. It was a bunch of money. I bought it and started using it immediately.

Over time I found that the way I sat in it must be slightly offcenter. My right left was just slightly more leaned to the side and open and more of my weight shifted onto my right side as a result. I didn't really notice this and when I did finally I didn't really think anything of it. I was sitting in this chair literally 12-20/7 a great deal of the time, with exceptions, for a good year.

This anomaly was going on with my right thigh. It's like there was this 'lump' of fat that I could tell was actually 'displaced'. The back of my thigh (where my weight rested) was somewhat thinner, while the inside of my thigh had this large growing lump where all the fat was getting "squashed to the inside." Kind of between the inside and the back. The lump was really tight as if it were seriously bulging out the skin, uncomfortable, and it got so pronounced over time that it actually got hard to walk, because literally it was in the way of my legs crossing each other in normal stepping. It took me awhile to understand that it was the chair causing this, I mean I knew that sure but I didn't realize it was THAT chair specifically I just thought it was any chair generally. It didn't occur to me that what I had managed to do was shift the distribution of the pressure of my weight in such a way to nicely avoid blot clots and putting my legs to sleep and bruising my ass, but had just managed to accomplish some other problem instead.

By the time I got rid of the chair and got a laptop and shifted to sitting on my bed with my back against the headboard, I had a semi- half-football shaped lump on my right thigh. A woman's exam had the doc referring to it as a "fatty tumor." I hate the word tumor (probably some side effect of my mom dying of cancer when I nine, though it's not a pretty word for anyone!) and I was really aghast. I explained to her how no, it was NOT that the fat had 'grown' there in this bizarre way, it was a side effect of this chair I'd sat in for a year but I was sure that now that this chair was out of my life that it would go away, obviously fat was 'mobile' and could be sort of shaped by long term pressure, so now that I had removed that pressure for the most part and was sitting on my soft bed instead, my leg would return to its normal shape.

It did not. I still have it years later. Apparently some kind of 'reverse' of that pressure would need to happen. I have in some occasional experimenting found that if I sort of press it slightly more under me while sitting and intentionally put bodyweight pressure on that for awhile, it does slightly seem to move more of the fat cells to the back again and slightly reduce the size of the inner/back 'long lump'. That does not seem to last but it implies that maybe consistently over time that would work.


And thanks to this bizarre accumulation of just-fat sticking out of me--there is absolutely no confusion about precisely how much of this body mass is fat, obviously--I've seen a very interesting thing about water and carbs.

When I am close to zero carb for an extended period of time, this lump will shrink, and keep shrinking, until it is just a small little lump in a big bunch of skin. This is, I'm sorry to say, even more unattractive than the lump 10x that size, since the skin minus all that bulk is a bit like a deflated testicle or something (sorry LOL). Although this is not too far from the real experience of losing weight when morbidly obese, when every pound of fat you lose equals one pound more deformed thanks to skin. Moving on:

When I eat carbs, I have the lump. When I eat a lot of carb, I have it in full size. If I am on a massive carbfest replete with gluten and sodium, this lump is so huge and heavy, so _tight_ in the skin it kinda hurts, so dense and hard, that I can't sit in a chair as backing up to it pushes it off behind me so I have to brace it against a wall or sit sideways on the corner of the chair leaning on the other side. It's so major it's very difficult to walk at all let alone 'and look normal while doing it'. I drop the carbs and the first thing -- within two days -- is that it softens. And it keeps softening, and loosening in density and reducing in weight, as I lose the water weight from the carbs. It's never totally gone and since the time when zero carb suddenly made me feel like crap it's always been there somewhat.

But it is directly, EXTREMELY and totally affected by my 'water weight' and this includes the normal womanly bloating at PMS time, and the very sudden bloating that megacarb gluten-sodium (like pizza) can cause for me overnight. I have had people tell me that water did not store any more in/around fat cells than others but I am here to tell you that in personal experience that is not true. That is a big collection of nothing but fat cells and their drastic and immediate response to fluid retention makes obvious that is just not so.


If I'm understanding you correctly, you are saying that fat TISSUE has a homeostasis expectation of being fully fed just like any other part of the body, and when we 'lose weight by dieting' we lose content from fat cells in that tissue, but that just leaves the tissue itself feeling that it is starving and wanted to replete itself back to homeostasis point. Suggesting that unless we're willing to continuously starve a little in SOME fashion (and trust that our body will simply allow this without other 'adjustments' such as reducing the eOUT variable) there is no (or very unlikely) way to maintain the 'loss'. That one has to reduce the tissue itself, not just the contents the tissue holds. Yes?

PJ

Yes, that's exactly what I mean.

40 years of hyperinsulinemia will cause fat tissue to grow bigger, even if fat content did not grow bigger. Imagine, it's entirely possible to starve oneself on a high carb diet and maintain a low body fat % throughout one's life but once we start to eat normally, we finally allow fat tissue to grow to its full normal size based on hormonal pressures, suddenly making us very fat for no apparent reason. We must also consider that with age, the hormonal picture changes. Testosterone in men decreases, estrogen increases proportionally, estrogen decreases in women, progesterone increases, growth hormone drops, thyroid drops, insulin resistance increases, etc. All these changes together eventually make a significant difference in body composition. But the single most significant factor is insulin. It literally causes fat tissue to grow bigger over time through pre-adipocyte differentiation (before they become proper fat cells).

Send me a PM.

This has been a. great thread and thanks MLevac and rightnow in particular.

On the topic of reducing fluid weight, I've long wondered about alcohol. I rarely drink spirits but on one particular occasion decades back I recall the deepest purple ketosis strip ever, amid a hangover. (I can nearly zero-carb and not show any indication of ketosis on a strip usually.) This made me curious about alcohol metabolism and what all it does besides dehydrate. I ran across this study noting it may be an insulin sensitizer. (My body feels different on it, including increased body heat and energy along the lines of when glucagon is flowing. Then I fall asleep!)
http://www.jclinepi.com/article/S08...0441-9/abstract

Also separately wanted to mention re the earlier discussions about fat compression... those posts also made me tangentially wonder if any role is played by the firmness of cell walls, and extent to which saturated fat *might* be involved. (That's a long-shot tangent, would need to read up on cell-wall physiology.)

You mean cell membranes. Only plant cells have cell walls.

--Melissa

yes, just used the simple term

Very interesting thread! Thanks all.