I'm fairly certain that if that's what the Dr. told her, then the Dr. is incorrect. Imagine fat cells as being like individually wrapped pats of butter. You pretty much can't suck the butter out of the wrapper without destroying the wrapper, and some of the wrappers will be sucked out as well. My understanding is that fat cells can fill and empty, and they can divide. As to whether some of them will eventually go away if you stay trim enough, long enough, I, like Nat, have read that once they divide on you, lipo is the only way of getting rid of them. That doesn't make intuitive sense to me, though, because we do know that the body is capable of reabsorbing the extra skin, blood vessels etc that we no longer need once we shed the weight, so I wouldn't be surprised if it's someday 'discovered' that the number of fat cells will indeed fall off after losing fat and keeping it off. This is also why it's so easy for those of us who have been really heavy to gain the weight back. We may have emptied out those cells, but all things said and done, we still have more of them just waiting to fill up again than the person who never got fat in the first place.

Cheers,

Friday