Month: June 2008

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What is Body Fat?

Note: The following is the entirety of Chapter 2 from my Stubborn Fat Solution where I describe what human body fat actually is.

Most people think they know all there is to know about body fat; I’m here to tell you that that isn’t the case.  If you’ve read my articles, you may have seen some of this before but I want to make sure everyone is on the same page before I deluge you with the technical bits.

What is Bodyfat?

The more technical term for body fat is adipose tissue, with individual cells being called adipocytes (adipo = fat ; cyte = cell). In humans, the primary type of fat cell is called white adipose tissue, or WAT, so named because of its color (it’s actually sort of a milky yellow). While there is another type of fat, called brown adipose tissue or BAT (which is actually reddish/orangeish), it’s generally been thought that humans didn’t have much BAT and hence it could be ignored. … Keep Reading

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Homeostatic and Non-Homeostatic Pathways and Food Intake

I don’t know how much the readers of my site care about the depths of neurobiology, although I wouldn’t be surprised if I had some given how I write or what I write about.  In any case, this is somewhat technical article where I want to look at what are called the homeostatic and non-homeostatic (or hedonic) pathways and how they impact on food intake.

The very simple distinction between the two is that the homeostatic system is involved in regulating food intake based on the body’s actual needs whereas the non-homeostatic/hedonic system is based on environmental factors and the fact that food tastes good.  Now let’s look at the complex distinction.  First let me start with a couple of definitions.

Regulation

The idea of regulation means that, well, a system is regulated.  Ok, that doesn’t help.  What this means is that a system has some way of attempting to keep itself at a fairly consistent level.   … Keep Reading