As obesity has begun to reach alarming rates globally, scientists are more determined than ever to discover the perfect treatment for it. Unfortunately, it will take years to solve this problem, as workout sessions or severe dieting do not seem to alter the number of fat-hoarding cells in our bodies.

These fat cells will remain constant throughout adult life and losing or gaining weight affects only the amount of fat stored in the cells, not the number of cells.

Scientists at the Karolina Institute in Sweden led by Dr. Kirsty Spalding, a neurobiologist, studied more than 680 lean and obese adults and found that the number of their fat cells remained constant during adulthood, with the fatter people having about 50 percent more fat cells than the thinner ones. As the number of fat cells remains unchanged, it is hard to keep kilograms off after slimming.

The scientists went even further with their research and analyzed people who underwent a surgery with the purpose of losing weight. They compared the number of cells the subjects had before the process of losing weight and afterwards. Unfortunately, there was no change in the number of fat cells. No matter how thin or fat you are, there is a loss of 10 percent in your fat cells, but the body replaces them in a short time.

“It explains why it’s difficult to lose weight and to keep it off – those fat cells aren’t going anywhere, and they are crying out for more,” Dr. Spalding said, as quoted by BBC News.

The results of this study are of great significance, scientists, who have long searched for answers to the annoying queries related to controlling obesity, said. For example, Dr Paul Trayhurn, from the University of Liverpool, said the research is a “firm foundation” for further studies into obesity.

“It would be nice if we could find a way to lose fat by manipulating the numbers of fat cells, but there are a lot of other options higher up the queue than that - such as diet and exercise. The real benefit of this is that it gives us solid evidence that we can use in future research into obesity and its causes,” he said.

But the findings also raised controversy among some doctors who took the finding for just an interesting one, as they consider this mechanism of the body to replace fat cells too complex to be controlled.

"I suspect that the body's regulation of weight is so complex that if you intervene at this site, something else is going to happen to neutralize this intervention," said Lester Salans, an obesity researcher and emeritus professor at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, as quoted by the International Herald Tribune.

Prof. Jonas Frisen and Prof. Peter Arner of the Karolina Institute also participated in the study. The findings were published online Sunday in the journal Nature.