Behold a curious factoid:
Researchers have found that the number of fat cells in your body remains more or less constant once you are out of your teenage years.
In other words, when you gain or lose weight as an adult, it is the size and not the number of fat cells that change.
This goes a long way towards explaining why those who were overweight or obese as a child struggle greatly to manage throughout their entire lives irrespective of how hard they train, how careful they are with their food, and so on.
The deck is stacked profoundly against them, meaning they have to be far more diligent than those who were not fat as children, often for far less by way of results (because an abundance of fat cells cause all sorts of physiological problems).
Speaking from experience (I was frighteningly fat until I started training just before my 19th birthday), it sucks, but that is how it is I am afraid.
All the more reason to never let your kids get fat if you have them (and judging by what I see at the school gates, most parents sadly don’t give two hoots in this regard). And if you were fat as a child, understand that this is one of those vanishingly rare occasions when whatever challenges you are facing are not actually your fault.
Not entirely, anyways.
Obviously if you are still shovelling down monster portions and slacking in the training department (or not training at all) as an adult then that is very much on you. But I’m not going to sit here and pretend you haven’t been dealt a rubbish hand.
On the subject of de-obesifying oneself, my approach differs from most.
I don’t advocate calorie counting, for example.
In fact, I don’t recommend people worry about their diets much at all until training consistently and correctly is so ingrained they cannot imagine life without it.
To learn why I teach weight loss this way and what it looks like in practice, consult my relatively inexpensive book:
“The Weight Loss Manifesto”
Unlike my other Real Paper books, I’ve priced this one so that basically anyone with a job can afford it.
Actually, come to think of it, a homeless person could probably scrape together the required funds by spending a morning sitting on a moderately busy high street in front of a cardboard sign emblazoned with a sob story.
To learn about what’s inside the book, go here:
https://philtyreman.co.uk/manifesto/
Thank you,
Phil Tyreman