Gaining

After re-reading my comment, I realize that there were a lot of things that I didn't include because I made some assumptions about what you were talking about.. I apologize.

What I meant is that in an otherwise healthy person, this doesn't play any impact. If the person has poor lymph drainage or lymphedema, then yes. That plays a part of it. But a lot of the people who experience the delayed weight gain do not have these issues.

Instead, of the lymphatic system, you need to turn your attention to the cardiovascular system.

training.seer.cancer.gov/anatomy/lymphatic/

The link above elaborates more, but I will give you the tl;dr.

When you eat something fatty, it spikes your triglyceride levels which is the amount of fat present in your blood. This is later turned into fat. If you drink a lot of heavy cream, it drastically spikes your triglyceride levels. Your body cannot immediately process this, so it leads to delayed weight gain.

I think I might be misunderstanding your point… even if blood triglycerides are higher and not stored in fat cells, they still contribute to the number shown on the scale, just like Doublefrosted’s point about ectopic liver fat.

Ectopic liver fat is a thing, but increasing this is more related to liver disease than it is delayed weight gain.

www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/ATVBAHA.114.303034

The average heavy cream gainer doesn't have liver issues.

TL;DR: could you further explain your point about blood triglycerides?

Sorry for the confusion! I wasn’t trying to discuss ectopic liver fat per se, just that another user made a similar point about it that I was trying to make about blood triglycerides—namely, that it can’t account for weight gain *after* the cessation of HC because it would already have been counted.

I’m confused because, by my reading of your comment about blood triglycerides, you were speculating that they were responsible for delayed weight gain after stopping HC; that doesn’t *seem* like a point you’d make, so I assume I must be misunderstanding it.

Sure!

I didn't got all that far into it because it's a complex topic and I didn't feel like typing all that out. But I can give you the quick and dirty.

You are right that the triglycerides alone do not cause the delayed weight gain. Rather, they are just the starting point. As your body breaks down the triglycerides, you get something called glycerol. It's an alcohol that is also used as a sweetener.

Glycerol is a normal part of the fat metabolic process, but if the levels get too high, it can cause pancreas inflammation and insulinemia (elevated levels of insulin).

One aspect of weight gain is triggering an insulin response. So as the triglycerides break down and release more glycerol, the pancreas will create more insulin. This elevated insulin encourages the body to take the food you eat and convert more of it to fat.

Keep in mind that a lot of gainers don't have the best diets already, so this adds to it.


Please understand that elevated insulin levels do not mean someone has high blood sugar. This doesn't necessarily mean heavy cream is bad for diabetics. The effects of diary on diabetics is not well understood, and there is a lot of conflicting evidence. You can talk to 10 different doctors on the matter and get 10 different answers.

Just wanted to add that what you eat in addition to consuming large amounts of heavy cream is important. Believe it or not, some people consume heavy cream to lose weight. And it works for some of them.

Thank you so much for that explanation! It really helped!