A healthy adult has around thirty billion fat cells. They are a part of our genetic make up and help to survive when the body doesn’t get sufficient food. In past times, food was scarce and these fat cells were needed but, with the abundance of food today, we no longer need to store fat to survive.

If you eat too many calories, your body will store these as fat for times of survival but, in this era, that time doesn’t come. Therefore, your body continues to keep on storing all that extra fat leading to the problem of being overweight or obese.

We all know that if you eat fewer calories than the body needs, energy will be provided from the stored fat. Although this seems simple enough, you need to understand the different kinds of fats.

Men generally store their fat deposits around their stomach or chest whereas women store it around the hips, bottom, thighs and the back of their arms. It is also a fact that certain hormonal stages determine the distribution of fat.

Many people who have followed diets before know what its like to lose weight successfully for a time then hit the ‘plateau’ where that stubborn fat just wont go. This situation is what causes many dieters to lose their motivation and enthusiasm and return to old habits. What happens next? The fat comes back because of the programming of the fat cells. Every time you try to lose this body fat, it becomes harder to do so.

Most modern diets and weight loss programs seem to work well in the beginning but not when you reach the phase of the plateau, that last bit of fat that just doesn’t want to go.

As you get older, fat deposits increase and are harder to lose. Although you have no control over this factor, there are things you can control. Some of the things that make these fat deposits more resistant are:

• Yo-yo dieting

• Crash dieting

• Decrease in exercise

Advances in technology and our modern lifestyle have caused many of us to become lazy and inactive. This is why we have more of a problem with stubborn fat deposits than our ancestors who performed physical labor and were constantly moving around.

To make matters worse, the modern sedentary lifestyle and our modern dietary habits often result in insulin sensitivity which makes it even more difficult to lose that last bit of fat.

Because diets only concentrate on calories, they are doomed to fail. By failing to see the importance of lifestyle and exercise, you are only dealing with part of the problem. Even if you do lose some weight, it is bound to return if you don’t change the other factors.

Physically, men are generally larger than women and a lot stronger due to the hormone testosterone. This hormone fuels muscle growth and bone development.

These factors actually make increase the oxygen to a man’s blood cells much more than a woman’s. A man may work at fifty percent during activity but a woman would have to work at seventy percent to get the same affect. This is because a woman has less lean tissue and more body fat than a man.

The two main differences in a woman are found in the hormonal functions and the fat cell structure and the way they function. These factors determine the woman’s metabolism and the likelihood of conditions such as osteoporosis.

A woman’s fat cells are five times the size of a man’s. They are genetically programmed to hold more fat. This is because of the genetic role of the woman as child bearer. The woman is genetically built to be able to carry enough fat cells to nurture the growing fetus and to breastfeed the newborn infant.

Also, in addition to feeding babies, the women in our ancestry also stored extra fat for times of famine. This was stored around the hips, bottom, and thighs. These are the women who passed on their genes to current generations so it is little wonder that women of today are proficient at storing fat.