Stubborn Fat: Does It Affect You?

E VERYONE walking the face of this earth has an abundance of fat cells throughout their bodies. In fact, if you’re a healthy adult with normal body composition, you have approximately 30 billion fat cells. This is an astronomical number when you think about it. Did you ever wonder why you have so many? Have you ever wondered what those fat cells are for?

The answer is, fat cells are part of our genetic code and they enable us to use stored energy when food is scarce. This survival mechanism works very much the same today as it did 10,000 years ago. However, there is an abundance of food in modern society today, and we no longer need to store so much fat to survive.

When you consume too many calories, your body goes into storage mode for the “lean times,” so to speak, but the lean time never comes. So your body simply stores those extra calories as fat. When you eat fewer calories than your body demands, your cells release stored fat for energy. Pretty simple equation; however, not all fat is the same.

The placement of fat deposits on our bodies varies depending on each person’s genetic influences, lifestyle choices, and nutritional intake. Men tend to store their body fat around their bellies and chest. Women tend to store it around their hips, buttocks, thighs, and the backs of their arms. A complete discussion of hormones and fat storage is beyond the scope of this article, but let it suffice to say that certain hormonal processes do determine body fat distribution.

Many people who attempt to lose body fat fail to account for one major factor, a stumbling block to long-term success. They approach fat loss and fitness with great enthusiasm and determination and, with this attitude, they lose body fat and feel great. Even so, they just can’t seem to get rid of all the fat they want to. They lose fat successfully for a time, but ultimately get stuck just before all of the fat is completely gone.

This is commonly known as a plateau, and this phenomenon causes many people who were previously successful to lose their enthusiasm and return to their old ways. When old habits take over again—and this happens to the majority of dieters—the body fat comes back with a vengeance. This is due to programming of the fat cell. Each time you try to lose body fat again, it seems to take longer and require more effort.

So what is the real solution? It’s simple: you must understand how fat cells work and how to move past the plateau phenomenon and lose the last bit of body fat—what we call “stubborn fat.”

I have worked with many clients and I would say most of them have a good amount of stubborn body fat. This fat is literally programmed to be very difficult to lose. It seems to remain on our bodies no matter what we do, hence the phrase stubborn fat. Most modern diets and weight loss programs seem to work in the beginning, but they never really address this crucial part of fat loss—the last bit of stubborn fat.

Stubborn fat develops when your hormonal pathways are broken down. Age does play a role in this: fat deposits increase and become more resistant to fat loss methods as you get older. This you have little control over, but some things that lead to stubborn fat development are under your control. Yo-yo dieting is one of them. Losing weight on crash diets and then regaining it—often known as the “rebound effect”—only increase stubborn fat in the long run. A decrease in exercise and activity level also compounds the stubborn fat problem. This is why people who crash-diet on low calories and refuse to exercise often have the worst stubborn fat problems of all.

Our ancestors really never had to deal with this problem because they moved and engaged in physical labor as a regular part of daily life, whereas technological conveniences and the modern lifestyle have caused many of us to become lazy and inactive.

Stubborn fat is metabolized extremely slowly and resists the hormonal process that takes place when the fat burning process starts up. To burn fat, the adrenal hormones (better known as adrenaline and noradrenaline) attach to the fat cell receptors and essentially “open them up” so the fat can be used in the energy pathways. There are two kinds of receptors in your fat cells: one is alpha and the other beta. The beta receptors are much more active and respond to adrenal hormones. To lose body fat, the adrenal hormones switch on and the body begins to use fat as energy. However, in the case of people with stubborn fat, this does not occur, so no body fat is lost.

According to my good friend and colleague Ori Hofmekler, author of The Warrior Diet, stubborn fat has a lower ratio of beta receptors to alpha receptors. Therefore, your body’s hormonal “fat dissolver,” adrenaline, is unable to enter the fat cell and open the door. Hofmekler also points out that “to make these matters worse, stubborn fat has more estrogen receptors, which cause even more stubborn fat.”

If all this sounds bad enough, what makes it even worse is that if you indulge in the typical modern diet and sedentary lifestyle, this often results in insulin sensitivity. (For more information, read my past article on “Insulin Sensitivity.”) On top of everything else, your fat tissue becomes so incredibly resistant to your attempts to lose it, it seems like you will be stuck with it forever.

Diets fail because they only look at the caloric reduction side of the equation. You need to understand the other variables in the equation—exercise and lifestyle. You must understand the deeper issues you are really dealing with. Getting rid of stubborn fat is not nearly as simple as just slashing calories and dieting. Stubborn fat is the result of a complex interplay of biological and hormonal processes—all of which are affected by how you eat, how you move, and the type of lifestyle you lead.

Now that you understand why you have stubborn fat, right down to the hormone and receptor level, the question is: How do you alter your nutrition, exercise, and lifestyle to get rid if this resistant body fat?