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...
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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.
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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.
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to what extent do fat cells vary in their percent of water content
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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.
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Ever since I made up my mind about lipodystrophy/-hypertrophy, I can't help but make the clear distinction between fat, and fat tissue. Consequently, this explanation of what must be done to reduce fat tissue permanently just doesn't make sense anymore. We can't reduce fat tissue permanently just by releasing more fat than we store. This balance is controlled by hormones, and if hormones are back in balance after going low carb for a while, then whatever the size of fat tissue will dictate how much fat we'll end up with. The bigger the fat tissue, the more fat we'll end up with. And what dictates how much fat tissue we have is how much insulin we've secreted for how many years, just like with local lipohypertrophy due to injecting insulin in the same spot for years.
So, a more appropriate explanation of what we must do to reduce fat tissue permanently is to do something that will actually reduce fat tissue, not just the amount of fat it contains.
And, since releasing more fat than we store merely changes the amount of fat that fat tissue contains and not the size of fat tissue itself, and since eating normally after having starved ourselves will make us regain, we have to keep doing whatever we're doing to keep this abnormal balance intact.
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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