Empowered Health Course · Lesson 9 · 2:34
Why do we store energy as fat? So we can survive between meals, overnight, or during periods of food scarcity lasting more than a few days. That's not as commonly needed in our society today, so we tend to store more energy over time as fat.
There are different places to store fat. The best is under the skin — we call this subcutaneous fat. Those fat cells look white when we examine them, so we call it white adipose tissue, and it's the safe place to store fat. Each of us is born with a certain expandability of that space — think of it as a suitcase. In this case, Paul has a very expandable suitcase.
This explains why some people living with weight, even at very high BMIs, can be metabolically quite healthy. If we can store fat safely under the skin, that energy doesn't get into our internal organs — the liver, the pancreas — where a lot of disturbance happens. So safe storage protects against diabetes. I commonly meet people with a BMI of 40 who have no high blood pressure, pre-diabetes, type 2 diabetes, or gout. They may struggle with the mechanical pressures of fat, but not the metabolic, storage-related aspect.
This transcript has been lightly edited from the video for readability. For the complete experience, please watch the video above.