1. Your white fat doesn’t turn brown
As you already know, the human body has two types of cholesterol: the good one, HDL, and the bad one, LDL. In addition to that, our bodies also have two types of fat, both good and bad.
One of them is white fat and it can make you more prone to getting heart disease and diabetes. You’ve guessed it: this is the bad one. Brown fat is completely different because it can help you burn those extra calories.
And if you ask what we are actually talking about here, there you go: when you are extremely hungry and you are also on a diet, your body can’t turn the white fat into brown fat anymore.
At least this is what happened to a group of mice during a study at Yale School of Medicine. The hungrier the little animals got, the less white fat was turned into brown fat, and the fluffier they became.
According to the study, if they gave them just enough food to satisfy their hunger, their bodies were encouraged to convert the white fat into brown. As a result, the mice didn’t get fat.
As Xiaoyong Yang, Ph.D., the lead author of the study, says, eating can send signals to the body that it is time to turn white fat into brown. However, you have to keep in mind that you can’t eat whatever you want and how much you want because it doesn’t work like that. You need to keep up with a healthy lifestyle, without starving yourself or overeating.
2. You are stressed out
Have you ever noticed that when you are feeling stressed, you tend to reach for those sugary or salty and fatty foods? That is because stress sends hunger signals to your brain, in order to make the body cope with the feelings you have.
In accordance with research from Ohio State University, it has been found that women who were stressed in the previous 24 hours burned 104 fewer calories compared to non-stressed women. The comparison was taken after both of the groups consumed a high-fat meal.
You might say that 104 calories won’t make a huge difference, but they can add up. For example, this adds up to 11 pounds in a year. We all know that everyone experiences stress every once in a while, so in order to avoid getting fluffier, it is better to get enough sleep and to reach for healthy and nutritious snacks.
