In people with obesity who don’t have diabetes, fat cells still respond normally to insulin — the high fat levels are just because they have more fat tissue, not because their fat cells are broken.

In people with obesity, insulin doesn’t reduce fat release from fat tissue as well as it does in lean people — but if you account for how much fat they have, insulin works just as well.

People with obesity have more fat circulating in their blood at rest, and their bodies are breaking down and re-storing fat at a faster rate than people without obesity.

Insulin reduces fat burning in the blood the same way in obese and lean people, but obese people still burn more fat overall because their bodies are burning fat stored inside cells — not just from the blood.

When insulin levels rise, it reduces the breakdown of fat in fat cells by suppressing the enzyme hormone-sensitive lipase.