Health "facts" truth-a-meter #1: Number of fat cells

So this week, I heard 3 health related "facts" that I made me wonder, "is that really true?"  So in the form of a truth-o-meter, I will dive into some of these every now and then as it really annoys me how much people take what they hear or read as "gospel" and don't question the truth or go research it a bit to see if it's actually true.  With Internet, Bing and Google, there's no excuse other than laziness and denial. 

A big part of my weight loss journey, especially in the past 18 months or so, has been spent researching, reading, questioning, pondering, and trying to get a better understanding of metabolism and not only have my body works, but the body in general.

Fortunately, we have Google and Bing nowadays and can look up so much information on this.

Unfortunately, we have Google and Bing and there is a TON of misleading and sometimes outright wrong information out there, including actual so-called "medical studies".

So I do not believe everything I read and dive into the actual medical studies that were done, how the studies were done, etc. because this really does matter.   Even then, new studies can make older studies obsolete or prove them wrong.  Thus, it helps to keep looking, and to keep an open mind.

So 3 things for fact-checking.  I will tackle just one today on "fat cells".

"When you've been so very overweight and then lost the weight, you still have more fat cells and that makes it easier to regain weight and you have to work harder with diet and exercise to keep weight off"

I had to go look into this.  Did I ruin my body forever by being overweight for so long?

True or false? Depends but more toward being false.

If you are obese as a child, when fat cells are forming and growing as you head toward adulthood, then you might end up with more fat cells but not necessarily.  Thisk, among many other reasons about auto-immune conditions, setting up good eating habits and knowledge, etc. is why it is important to eat well and healthy and exercise as a child.

As a adult who then became obese (more typical), no.  You do not add more fat cells when you gain weight.  You just fill the ones you have.  When you lose weight, you empty them. 

Fat cells do die off and get recreated, but the total humber does not change.

Link to this:
http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080505/full/news.2008.800.html

Two questions I will dive into later are:
If we could just get leptin injections, it would be much easier to keep weight off when you lose it.

And:
Red meat takes longer to digest which is why we shouldn't eat so much of it.