Your adult fatness may be determined by your childhood fatness.

A fat childhood is doing something to your body that can’t be reversed… even as an adult.

There are regularly comments and articles in the media about Australia having an obesity epidemic and especially with children.

I think everyone is aware of the health implications of being obese, overweight, fat or whatever term you like to call it, so I won’t go into that.

Lifestyle factors such as physical activity and diet play a major role in weight management but in childhood being overweight is doing something to your body that can’t be reversed.

What can’t be reversed?

The number of fat cells in our body increases in our childhood and continues up to our adolescence years when it reaches its peak. If you have been a fat child you will have made more fat cells than a healthy weight child.

When you are an adult the fat cells then increase in size only, not number.

So if you feel your fat cells have increased in size a bit too much and you are looking to lose weight,  your childhood fatness will have a bearing on how low you can go.

Example: (these numbers are for demonstration purposes only.)

A fat child may have made 3 000 000 fat cells whereas a healthy weight child may have made 1 000 000 fat cells. When they become an adult and put some weight on, the fat child still has 3 000 000 adult fat cells against the 1 000 000 cells of the healthy weight child.

What about losing weight?

Losing weight makes the fat cells smaller and all things being equal, 3 000 000 fat cells will be a fatter body than 1 000 000 fat cells.
Now, of course, we need to look at why the person has put on weight as lifestyle choices is usually the main cause of obesity, fatness, or overweight, but that is a topic for a another time.