Fatty meals increase waist size in just three hours, study finds

People who begin new diets usually want immediate results. Unfortunately, breaking your diet can also bring immediate results. Researchers from the University of Oxford have found that an average person's waist gets fatter just three hours after eating, the Daily Telegraph reported.

The study, by Fredrik Karpe and Keith Frayne, found that fat is "caught" by the body much more quickly than previously thought. Weight gain used to be thought of as a gradual process. But the study found that fat enters a person's bloodstream just an hour after being eaten. And in three to four hours, most of that fat goes to the waist, according to the Telegraph. 

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"By the time three to four hours have passed, most of it has been incorporated into our adipose tissue, mostly in the shorter-term fat stores around our waists," Karpe said, according to Fox News. 

Luckily, that extra fat tissue in the waist is just temporary. And it's not necessarily a bad thing; it can also be used for energy during exercise.

But the temporary fat becomes problematic if it doesn't get burned off.

"If you eat too much, you don't get into this phase of starting to mobilize it," Karpe said, according to the Times of India. "There will just be constant accumulation and you will start to put on weight."