Well, yeah. Adipocytes multiply when you get fat. But when you lose weight, they don't apoptose, they just shrink in volume by giving up their lipid stores.
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Once you’ve reached a level of physical strength it’s easier to return to that level in the future. This has been a topic of debate in the sports world because past anabolic steroid use could therefore carry benefits into the future long after the athlete has stopped using the steroid. Non-professional athletes shouldn’t get too excited about using steroids, though, because the damage steroids do to the body’s own hormone systems also has lasting effects unless you plan on doing TRT for the rest of your life, which has its own downsides.
For average people this does show the importance of getting at least some exercise when you’re young. It’s much easier to get a little bit fit when you’re young which then makes it easier to stay fit in the future. Never too late too start.
If you're reading this and you're < 30 and physically weak (not overweight, but lacking muscle mass) I cannot stress enough what a year or two hitting the gym could do for your permanent strength and muscle mass.
I was ridiculously skinny and physically weak going into my 20s and I just assumed that was the way I was built. But I got into fitness in my early 20s and packed on quite a bit of muscle and it's genuinely shocking to me how much base-level muscle mass and strength I've retained now 15 years on.
I always felt one of the most demotivating things about working out was that all the effort I was putting into the gym would eventually go to waste when I stopped, but that's not true. Had I known this I'd probably have started working out much earlier and for much longer than I did.
Two years and I was bigger than anyone I knew unless they also trained hard.