Where Fat Goes When You Diet / Exercise
Michifan
Posts: 95 Member
http://www.sciencealert.com/this-is-where-body-fat-ends-up-when-you-lose-weight
Despite society’s obsession with weight loss, a new study reveals 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.
“Our calculations show that the lungs are the primary excretory organ for fat,” the team writes in the paper.
However, they couldn’t work out exactly what was happening to the fat cells in this reaction. After months of research, Brown discovered a formula from a paper published in 1949 that solved the problem - it showed that oxygen atoms are shared between the carbon and hydrogen in fat at a ratio of 2:1 (forming carbon dioxide and water)
This allowed them to come up with the final figure of 84 percent of a fat molecule’s atoms being exhaled as carbon dioxide, and the remaining 16 percent ending up as water.
F2.large
Meerman and Brown, BMJ (2014)
But unfortunately this doesn’t mean that simply breathing deeply will help us lose weight - we still need to do the exercise to unlock the carbon and break down the fat in the first place.
"You can only breathe so many times a day; on a day of rest, you breathe around 12 times a minute so 17,280 times you'll breathe in a day and each one takes 10 milligrams of carbon with it, roughly," Meerman told ABC Science. "So there's your limit on how much you're going to lose in a day with no exercise."
But will all this fat we’re breathing out will contribute to climate change? The short answer is no.
“This reveals troubling misconceptions about global warming which is caused by unlocking the ancient carbon atoms trapped underground in fossilised organisms. The carbon atoms human beings exhale are returning to the atmosphere after just a few months or years trapped in food that was made by a plant,” said Meerman in the release.
The funny thing about all of this is that, although most health professionals don’t know what happens to fat when we lose weight, most Veritasium viewers probably do. 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.
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The fat stored in your adipose tissue is a source of energy, it gets used up by the body for energy - the same as proteins in your muscles & glucose; this is why eating at a deficit causes weight loss, as the energy stored in your body is used to make up the energy you have taken away from your intake.
This is taught as fact at degree & diploma level, and I've poured through years worth of research that has told me the same thing. Fat being exhaled as carbohydrate... I don't understand the chemistry this is poking at. It seriously is not a contradiction to physics laws, thermodynamics in biology also needs to account for biological factors (hormones for example)
Like it's an interesting theory & what not, but the presentation is honestly making me regard it negatively.0 -
The fat stored in your adipose tissue is a source of energy, it gets used up by the body for energy - the same as proteins in your muscles & glucose; this is why eating at a deficit causes weight loss, as the energy stored in your body is used to make up the energy you have taken away from your intake.
This is taught as fact at degree & diploma level, and I've poured through years worth of research that has told me the same thing. Fat being exhaled as carbohydrate... I don't understand the chemistry this is poking at. It seriously is not a contradiction to physics laws, thermodynamics in biology also needs to account for biological factors (hormones for example)
Like it's an interesting theory & what not, but the presentation is honestly making me regard it negatively.
Heat is also produced, but the OP is referring the conservation of mass. Something has to happen to those carbon atoms they just don't vanish (exercising would be very dangerous otherwise!!). The breakdown of fat leads to Heat + CO2 + H2O produced. Fat is not exhaled as a carbohydrate, fat is not exhaled, the product of the breakdown of fat could be exhaled. I am sure other products are produced that are excreted through the urine of fecal matter as well.
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I learned this in grade school. This is not ground breaking research. Our body oxidizes what we consume to get energy, ignoring the ATP/ADP etc. it breaks down to just a combustion reaction (at least for sugar). Food + oxygen -> Water + C020
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The fat stored in your adipose tissue is a source of energy, it gets used up by the body for energy - the same as proteins in your muscles & glucose; this is why eating at a deficit causes weight loss, as the energy stored in your body is used to make up the energy you have taken away from your intake.
This is taught as fact at degree & diploma level, and I've poured through years worth of research that has told me the same thing. Fat being exhaled as carbohydrate... I don't understand the chemistry this is poking at. It seriously is not a contradiction to physics laws, thermodynamics in biology also needs to account for biological factors (hormones for example)
Like it's an interesting theory & what not, but the presentation is honestly making me regard it negatively.
Heat is also produced, but the OP is referring the conservation of mass. Something has to happen to those carbon atoms they just don't vanish (exercising would be very dangerous otherwise!!). The breakdown of fat leads to Heat + CO2 + H2O produced. Fat is not exhaled as a carbohydrate, fat is not exhaled, the product of the breakdown of fat could be exhaled. I am sure other products are produced that are excreted through the urine of fecal matter as well.
Indeed. I mainly wanted to kek at the presentation "we would become trees" tickled me.0 -
It is a stretch to say that, in a closed system, we would become trees. Sure, trees gain mass by taking in the CO2 that we breathe out, but we would only survive by eating the fruit from the trees. It is more like we use something for a while, discard it and something else uses it for a while before discarding it and allowing us to use it again.0
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If you go for a run, your mass increases due to Einstein's theory of relativity. When you stop running, your mass decreases again. Where does the extra mass go?0
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There are only so many ways for anything to leave the body, lol. I'm surprised anyone would have trouble taking a guess, but I didn't read the whole article and I'm sure they had their reasons for not knowing,
They may have just forgotten. Different people work in different areas and over time, people forget things they learned in college if it never comes up again.0 -
lol doctors theories. Its just that they haven't thought about it very much before answering the question. Of course most of it is converted to CO2 that is what happens in metabolism but this is an energy exchange , no question.0
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Like it's an interesting theory & what not, but the presentation is honestly making me regard it negatively.
The article is correct.
Fat doesn't turn into energy - fat turns into (eventually) CO2 and water, releasing energy (and heat, indirectly) in the process.
This is first-semester level organic chemistry.
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I took Organic Chem and remember precious little. I know we didn't go over that in Organic Chem because I never learned anything I enjoyed in that class. (Which is not a slam on people who did enjoy Organic Chem and God bless them for it.)Like it's an interesting theory & what not, but the presentation is honestly making me regard it negatively.
The article is correct.
Fat doesn't turn into energy - fat turns into (eventually) CO2 and water, releasing energy (and heat, indirectly) in the process.
This is first-semester level organic chemistry.
Except for things they use, most people forget a lot of what they learned in college.
Someone asked me about Great Expectations last week, did in think it would be a good gift for someone. My reply: "Pip! I remember Pip! I liked it. That's all I remember." They pressed me, but it's gone. I read it. I liked it. I remember nothing else. Mid I picked it back up, it would come back to me, but I can't remember it now.
When my nephew took a math class, I had to do a problem to remember how so I could show him. I came up with two answers and said, "Wait, this isn't right. I have two ans...oh, wait-wait-wait, I can have an extraneous answer, can't I? I can." Kid stared at me like, "She's the math whiz who is going to help me?" But I could. It just took a minute to remember. (And he learned it, lol.)
It's hard to remember everything for decades, you know? If you don't use it, you lose it. For many of us, anyway.
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What! no one linked the video to make it more entertaining. Like watching people try to figure it out short notice.
http://youtu.be/vuIlsN32WaE 0 -
I knew that .. guess that makes me smart. Thanks YouTube, but not the video above, learned this months ago.0
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So by losing weight, and breathing out all that extra CO2, we are contributing to the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere ... in a very small way of course. Time to plant a few more trees to suck some of it up
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First thing I thought when I read it was, "I thought second hand smoke was bad..." lol Obviously you can't gain weight from someones' breathing...if for no other reason than if that were true my husband wouldn't be anorexic... :P0
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What if I eat fossil fuels, though?
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uconnwinsnc1 wrote: »What if I eat fossil fuels, though?
You mean explosive dinosaur juice?0 -
Yeah, but the problem with that is that the greenhouse gas folks don't want us heating with wood burning stoves either. If they really thought the CO2 from plants wasn't an issue then they would be promoting the use of firewood. So by that same logic (whatever that is), we shouldn't try to lose weight.
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Mass is not created or destroyed, just changed into another form. This is just another law of physics (similar to thermo laws). Mass and energy are always conserved and just changed into other forms. The science is there and valid. The calorie is just a form of energy that our body uses to "fuel" itself when operating. This energy is converted from what we eat. Products of combustion (which is how we change the form of food in our body...sort of) are heat, CO2, and water.
The article is correct in all but that last idea about turning into trees. That is just ridiculous.0 -
fat turns into Kayser Soze?0
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I took Organic Chem and remember precious little. I know we didn't go over that in Organic Chem because I never learned anything I enjoyed in that class. (Which is not a slam on people who did enjoy Organic Chem and God bless them for it.)Like it's an interesting theory & what not, but the presentation is honestly making me regard it negatively.
The article is correct.
Fat doesn't turn into energy - fat turns into (eventually) CO2 and water, releasing energy (and heat, indirectly) in the process.
This is first-semester level organic chemistry.
Except for things they use, most people forget a lot of what they learned in college.
Someone asked me about Great Expectations last week, did in think it would be a good gift for someone. My reply: "Pip! I remember Pip! I liked it. That's all I remember." They pressed me, but it's gone. I read it. I liked it. I remember nothing else. Mid I picked it back up, it would come back to me, but I can't remember it now.
When my nephew took a math class, I had to do a problem to remember how so I could show him. I came up with two answers and said, "Wait, this isn't right. I have two ans...oh, wait-wait-wait, I can have an extraneous answer, can't I? I can." Kid stared at me like, "She's the math whiz who is going to help me?" But I could. It just took a minute to remember. (And he learned it, lol.)
It's hard to remember everything for decades, you know? If you don't use it, you lose it. For many of us, anyway.
Definitely not Organic Chem 101 for me. I do remember that class because I hated it so much. Endless memorization of reactions involving organic compounds, emphasis on petrochemicals. Very little actual teaching other than a bit about catalysts and energies of activation. Labs with partners that managed to spill boiling sulfuric acid on me, thank God I was wearing loose heavy-duty jeans under the lab coat.
Nothing about fats or similar biologics. That was Biochem 101.0 -
In the event I wasn't as clear as possible: I hated Organic Chem. Oh, how I hated it.
I took Organic Chem and remember precious little. I know we didn't go over that in Organic Chem because I never learned anything I enjoyed in that class. (Which is not a slam on people who did enjoy Organic Chem and God bless them for it.)Like it's an interesting theory & what not, but the presentation is honestly making me regard it negatively.
The article is correct.
Fat doesn't turn into energy - fat turns into (eventually) CO2 and water, releasing energy (and heat, indirectly) in the process.
This is first-semester level organic chemistry.
Except for things they use, most people forget a lot of what they learned in college.
Someone asked me about Great Expectations last week, did in think it would be a good gift for someone. My reply: "Pip! I remember Pip! I liked it. That's all I remember." They pressed me, but it's gone. I read it. I liked it. I remember nothing else. Mid I picked it back up, it would come back to me, but I can't remember it now.
When my nephew took a math class, I had to do a problem to remember how so I could show him. I came up with two answers and said, "Wait, this isn't right. I have two ans...oh, wait-wait-wait, I can have an extraneous answer, can't I? I can." Kid stared at me like, "She's the math whiz who is going to help me?" But I could. It just took a minute to remember. (And he learned it, lol.)
It's hard to remember everything for decades, you know? If you don't use it, you lose it. For many of us, anyway.
Definitely not Organic Chem 101 for me. I do remember that class because I hated it so much. Endless memorization of reactions involving organic compounds, emphasis on petrochemicals. Very little actual teaching other than a bit about catalysts and energies of activation. Labs with partners that managed to spill boiling sulfuric acid on me, thank God I was wearing loose heavy-duty jeans under the lab coat.
Nothing about fats or similar biologics. That was Biochem 101.
Thank God there are people who find it interesting! It's important! I'm not putting it down! But I hated it and everyone taking it with me hated it and I've yet to meet anyone IRL who took it and enjoyed it. It was boring as hell and not easy. And the ridiculous labs and lab questions - "Who cares."
I remember almost none of it. I couldn't draw today any of the crap we had to in that class. Not on bet - not if my life depended on it. Decades later, I still hate it, lol. Someone brings up an Art class and I'm like, "Yeah, I didn't love that," but I couldn't care less. Organic Chem still makes me cringe.
Horrible, horrible class.0 -
LumberJacck wrote: »If you go for a run, your mass increases due to Einstein's theory of relativity. When you stop running, your mass decreases again. Where does the extra mass go?
You don't increase/decrease your mass because of temperature changes, you expand/contract it. The mass is still the same, it is the volume that fluctuates.
Here's a good explanation of how it works: bbc.co.uk/bitesize/ks3/science/chemical_material_behaviour/behaviour_of_matter/revision/2/0
This discussion has been closed.
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