Your gallbladder may seem as unnecessary as bad goatees, but one of its functions is to help store bile—that digestive juice that helps your body absorb nutrients. Obese people have a greater than 50 percent chance of developing gallstones. Why? An overworked liver caused by being overweight makes bile, which is more like sludge than liquid, and predisposes them to developing stones. It’s also more likely that you’ll develop stones when you lose weight fast, like after weight-loss surgery—because the gallbladder doesn’t empty enough when it doesn’t see any fat. So it’s not uncommon for a surgeon to remove the gallbladder during a gastric bypass procedure. The risk factors for developing the painful stones are easy to remember, because they sound like an R & B group. They’re the 4 Fs: female, fertile, fat, and forty. (We don’t mean this to be a gender issue, but the fact is that women are more likely to have gallstone symptoms than men.)
Contrary to popular belief, not all ingested protein becomes muscle, and not all the fat in your food gets stored on your hips. Everything has the potential to turn into fat if it’s not used by your body for energy at the exact time it is absorbed through your intestines.