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  #1   ^
Old Fri, Jun-12-15, 19:14
Turtle2003's Avatar
Turtle2003 Turtle2003 is offline
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Posts: 1,449
 
Plan: Atkins, Newcastle
Stats: 260/221.8/165 Female 5'3"
BF:Highest weight 260
Progress: 40%
Location: Northern California
Default Where Does All the Fat Go?

Quote:
This is where body fat ends up when you lose weight

Breathe deeply, Australian research shows that it’s going to take a lot of exhaling to get rid of that excess fat.

Despite society’s obsession with weight loss, a study has revealed that, surprisingly, most health professionals don’t actually know what happens to fat when we “lose it”.

The research conducted by a team at UNSW Science in Sydney calculated exactly what happens to our fat when we shed kilos, and revealed that doctor's leading theories are wrong - we don’t convert our missing mass into heat or energy, we breathe it out.

Their results, published in the British Medical Journal, reveal that 10 kg of fat turns into 8.4 kg of carbon dioxide, which is exhaled when we breathe, and 1.6 kg of water, which we then excrete through our urine, tears, sweat and other bodily fluids.

“The correct answer is that most of the mass is breathed out as carbon dioxide. It goes into thin air,” said lead author of the paper Ruben Meerman, a physicist and TV presenter, in a press release.

Meerman first became interested in the biochemistry of weight loss when he dropped 15 kg - but when he asked doctors where this weight went, he was surprised by the fact no one could tell him.

After surveying 150 doctors, dieticians and personal trainers, he discovered that more than half thought that fat was converted into heat or energy as we break it down.

But, as a physicist, Meerman knew that this would violate the Law of Conservation of Mass.

To figure out the answer once and for all, Meerman partnered with Andrew Brown, head of the UNSW School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences, and the team started calculating the biomolecular reactions that result in weight loss.

We put on weight when excess carbohydrates and proteins that we've eaten are converted into triglycerides (compounds made up of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen) and are then stored in lipid droplets inside fat cells. To lose weight, you need to break down those triglycerides to access their carbon.

The results showed that in order to completely breakdown 10kg of human fat, we need to inhale 29 kg of oxygen (and somewhere along the way, burn 94,000 calories). This reaction produces 28 kg of CO2 and 11 kg of water.




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  #2   ^
Old Fri, Jun-12-15, 19:56
bevangel's Avatar
bevangel bevangel is offline
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Posts: 2,312
 
Plan: modified adkins (sort of)
Stats: 265/176/167 Female 68.5 inches
BF:
Progress: 91%
Location: Austin, TX
Default

Seriously???. I'm pretty sure I'm not breathing in any more oxygen now, nor exhaling any more CO2 than I did when my weight was stuck at 265 pounds all those years. I AM however putting out a great deal more water! But that could be because I'm also drinking more fluids.

I personally suspect that at least some of the excess fat gets excreted as solid or semisolid matter rather than being completely converted into gaseous CO2.
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  #3   ^
Old Fri, Jun-12-15, 20:09
Turtle2003's Avatar
Turtle2003 Turtle2003 is offline
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Posts: 1,449
 
Plan: Atkins, Newcastle
Stats: 260/221.8/165 Female 5'3"
BF:Highest weight 260
Progress: 40%
Location: Northern California
Default

I do recall Dr Eades explaining this a few years back. As I recall, he was talking about the weight lost overnight, which I had always thought was due only to water loss. You know, that first trip to the bathroom in the morning, but he explained that most of it was the CO2 exhaled as we sleep.
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  #4   ^
Old Fri, Jun-12-15, 20:34
bluesinger's Avatar
bluesinger bluesinger is offline
Doing My Best
Posts: 4,924
 
Plan: LC/CancerRecovery
Stats: 170/135/130 Female 62 inches
BF:24%
Progress: 88%
Location: Nevada Desert, USA
Default I read the article and it's fascinating

I read the article and it's fascinating, especially the last sentence:
Quote:
In fact, as this mind-blowing video below explains, not only do we lose our "lost" fat through breathing, if we were in a closed system, we would actually become trees.

Here's the video about where trees get their mass on Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KZb2_vcNTg
Are we being pranked?
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  #5   ^
Old Fri, Jun-12-15, 20:52
inflammabl's Avatar
inflammabl inflammabl is offline
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Plan: Atkins
Stats: 296/220/205 Male 71 inches
BF:25%?
Progress: 84%
Location: Upstate SC
Default

Quote:
that doctor's leading theories are wrong - we don’t convert our missing mass into heat or energy, we breathe it out.


Their premise, that no one knew this, is wrong. Peter Attia had a whole post on this, http://eatingacademy.com/nutrition/...d-state-part-ii , where he makes the point that CO2 and Water are the products when the Gibbs free energy is minimized.

Nope, I'm making it too complex. The historical method to find "how many calories are in something" is to burn it. Burning it produces CO2 and H2O. Wait a second, even children who read about global warming know this, i.e. here.

I just read what they quoted again, "convert our missing mass into heat or energy." What did they think we thought, that we were converting our mass into actual energy, like in a nuclear reactor?

Hrmph.
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  #6   ^
Old Fri, Jun-12-15, 20:59
inflammabl's Avatar
inflammabl inflammabl is offline
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Posts: 2,371
 
Plan: Atkins
Stats: 296/220/205 Male 71 inches
BF:25%?
Progress: 84%
Location: Upstate SC
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by bevangel
I personally suspect that at least some of the excess fat gets excreted as solid or semisolid matter rather than being completely converted into gaseous CO2.

100% of fat gets converted to CO2 and H20 then you breath it out (at least the CO2 part. The water part does what water does). 100%. The interesting thing I think is that drinking more and sweating more, your body loses heat and you have to burn more calories to stay at the same body temperature.

Last edited by inflammabl : Fri, Jun-12-15 at 21:38.
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  #7   ^
Old Fri, Jun-12-15, 22:35
M Levac M Levac is offline
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Posts: 6,498
 
Plan: VLC, mostly meat
Stats: 202/200/165 Male 5' 7"
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Default

Seriously. There's precisely nothing useful here. It's one giant mess of seriously flawed interpretations of the First Law. Think about it. What happens to this lost fat between the moment it's released from fat tissue and the moment it's exhaled? Let me rephrase. What happens to gasoline between the moment it leaves the gas tank and the moment it's exhausted? It's converted. Converted to what? Work. Same thing happens to "lost" fat. It ain't lost, it's used. In fact, conversion is work. In an internal combustion engine for example, gasoline is combined with air, ignited in the combustion chamber which is sealed, combustion produces heat and pressure, this pressure has no place to go so the piston moves, this in turn moves the connecting rod, the crankshaft, the transmission, the wheels, the car moves. Work was produced directly from the conversion of gasoline/air into its elements, from mass to mass. No mass was destroyed nor created in the conversion, yet work was produced. In fact, the opposite conversion that produced the gasoline in the first place required work. When we burn gas in our cars, we're merely extracting this work. Thus, when we're converting fat to CO2 and H2O, we're extracting the work that went into converting CO2 and H2O into fat in the first place.

Thus, the real question ain't what happens to fat when we lose it, but what happens to work when we convert fat back to its elements. That physicist needs a refresher course.
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  #8   ^
Old Fri, Jun-12-15, 23:09
inflammabl's Avatar
inflammabl inflammabl is offline
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Posts: 2,371
 
Plan: Atkins
Stats: 296/220/205 Male 71 inches
BF:25%?
Progress: 84%
Location: Upstate SC
Default

"That physicist needs a refresher course."

That's the way I read it at first but I have to cut him a break. It's the writer that lays out the physicist's argument in a cart before horse sequence. I guess just to increase the suspense of the article or something.

The physicists guy published the results of a survey of doctors, dieticians and personal trainers about "what happens to fat" then helpfully shows how to figure out the right answer from the first principles of thermo. He's not presenting this as a new discovery but as something doctors, dieticians and personal trainers should know but don't. He ends his publication with "We recommend these concepts be included in secondary school science curriculums and university biochemistry courses to correct widespread misconceptions about weight loss." Which is right and helpful.

Interestingly the only people surveyed who got it right were ~6% of the dieticians!
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  #9   ^
Old Sat, Jun-13-15, 08:15
mudgie mudgie is offline
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Posts: 89
 
Plan: LCHF
Stats: 206.5/161/155 Male 69.5"
BF:20%
Progress: 88%
Location: Chicago-ish
Default Interesting (I suppose)

One might conclude that merely performing more exercise would generate the needed heavy breating. You could do the same with perverted crank phone calls I guess.

I appreciate the fact that they correctly describe how we accumilate fat. I guess they're not saying that the fat was lost because of the breathing, but that it was the mechanism the body disposes of it when you lose it. I still believe that carbohydrate restriction is the best means of losing weight. How it leaves the body really makes no difference whatsoever. Like I said, interesting I suppose.
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  #10   ^
Old Sat, Jun-13-15, 09:15
Just Jo's Avatar
Just Jo Just Jo is offline
A'72 Lifer Hard Core
Posts: 15,566
 
Plan: A'72 Induction Lifer + IF
Stats: 265/114/130 Female 5'4"
BF:Not so much now!
Progress: 112%
Location: South Central New Mexico
Default

Okay on a lighter note, cause I've thought about this too:

“The law of conservation of mass states that matter cannot be created nor destroyed.”

So does that mean that there is 151 lbs of my ugly fat lurking in one of my closets??
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