Your Fat Can Help You Lose Weight? No Way!

This Type of Fat Helps You Lose Weight and Stay Healthy

May 16, 2025

woman stretching sitting on bed inside bedroom — Photo by alan KO on Unsplash

Fat gets a bad rap—and for many of us, it’s personal. I’m in a constant effort to “lose the fat,” thinking of it as the enemy.

But what if I told you not all fat is bad? In fact, there’s a special kind of fat in your body that works for you rather than against you. It doesn’t just sit there—it actually burns calories and might even help with weight loss.

Sounds too good to be true? Well, science proves it.

Brown Fat vs. White Fat

Most of the fat in our body is white fat, which stores excess calories (from food) as glucose for later use.

White fat is important for energy storage, but too much of it can lead to weight gain and increase your risk of metabolic diseases like diabetes and high cholesterol. This is why most people are advised to get rid of it through diet and exercise.

Brown fat, on the other hand, does the opposite—it actually burns energy to produce heat. It’s packed with mitochondria (the powerhouses of the cell) and burns calories to generate heat, a process known as thermogenesis. This is why brown fat is sometimes referred to as “good fat.”

It’s also rich in blood supply and nerve connections that help activate it quickly so it can deliver energy and efficiently regulate its use.

Researchers have recently identified beige fat—a hybrid between white and brown fat. Unlike brown fat, which is naturally present in certain areas, beige fat is basically white fat that transforms into brown fat through a process called “browning.”

Things like cold exposure and exercise trigger this change, allowing beige fat to behave more like brown fat, burning energy instead of storing it.

What Does Brown Fat Do?

Brown fat’s main role in the body is to keep us warm. It does so by burning calories to produce heat. When exposed to cold temperatures, your body releases norepinephrine, a hormone that activates brown fat. The mitochondria in brown fat cells then break down glucose and fatty acids to generate heat, keeping your core temperature stable without the need to shiver.

As a baby, you had plenty of brown fat stored around your neck, shoulders, and spine to keep you warm before your body developed other ways to regulate temperature. However, most of this brown fat disappears as you grow older—leaving adults with only about 0.1% to 0.5% of their total body weight as brown fat.

Can Brown Fat Help You Lose Weight?

For the exciting part: studies show that brown fat protects against obesity in animals—and humans with more brown fat tend to be leaner overall.

People with more brown fat tend to have subcutaneous fat rather than visceral (around-the-organs) fat—the harmful type linked to heart disease and liver problems.

Experts are still exploring the connection, but one big reason is brown fat’s calorie-burning superpower. It’s incredibly efficient—even more than muscle, which is usually the body’s main calorie burner. Even small amounts of brown fat can burn significant energy, which can potentially help with weight loss.

By cranking up energy use, brown fat lowers blood sugar levels and increases insulin sensitivity, reducing the risk of obesity and type 2 diabetes.

It also plays a key role in diet-induced thermogenesis, meaning it helps burn extra calories from the food you eat instead of storing them as fat.

But brown fat does more than just burn calories. It filters out excess amino acids like leucine and isoleucine, which—when too high—are linked to obesity and diabetes. It even releases special molecules that help your muscles burn fat more efficiently and keep your heart healthy.

Case in point: research on 52,000 people found that those with more brown fat had lower rates of type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, coronary artery disease, and even heart failure.

In short? Brown fat isn’t just sitting there—it’s actively working to keep you lean and healthy.

Can I Turn My Fat Brown?

The good news? Yes—you can encourage the “browning” of white fat into beige cells! Here are some ways researchers believe this can happen:

Cold exposure: Spending time in cooler temperatures (or taking cold showers) can activate brown fat.
Exercise: Physical activity releases hormones that stimulate the browning process.
Spicy foods: Capsaicin (found in chili peppers) may help activate brown fat.

On top of these, scientists are exploring other ways to safely activate brown fat. Some drugs can stimulate brown fat activity, but many come with unwanted side effects. Gene therapy, which involves modifying genes to enhance brown fat function, is still in its early stages but could lead to long-term solutions in the future.

Make Your Fat Work For You

Who would have thought that some types of body fat could actually work for you instead of against you?

While we’re still learning how to maximize the potential of brown (and beige!) fats for weight loss and overall health, simple lifestyle tweaks, like staying active, exposing yourself to cold, and eating spicy foods, might just help you tap into its benefits.