By Dayne Hudson
Where on earth does our unwanted fat go when we lose it?
It's an interesting question isn't it?!
Apparently the common misconception among doctors, dieticians and personal trainers is that when somebody loses weight, it's converted into energy or heat.
But it's not true!
According to a new study printed in the British Medical Journal, most of the mass is breathed out as carbon dioxide into the air!
The authors show how losing 10 kilograms of fat requires 29 kilograms of oxygen to be inhaled, and this metabolic process produces 28 kilograms of carbon dioxide and 11 kilograms of water.
If you follow the atoms in 10 kilograms of fat as they are ‘lost’, 8.4 of those kilograms are exhaled as carbon dioxide through the lungs.
The remaining 1.6 kilograms becomes water, which may be excreted in urine, faeces, sweat, breath, tears and other bodily fluids, the authors report.
More than 50 per cent of the 150 doctors, dieticians and personal trainers who were surveyed thought the fat was converted to energy or heat.
Now some people get this information and ask:
WILL BREATHING MORE HELP ME WITH FAT LOSS?
And I have to laugh and answer: no!
Breathing more than is necessary for your metabolic rate can lead to hyperventilation, which results in possible dizziness, palpitations and loss of consciousness....so there's no easy way out!
So the next time someone tells you they've lost weight - you can tell them the truth about where it's gone!
"Stay Fit, Stay Flexed!"
REFERENCES
(1) Meerman R. When somebody loses weight, where does the fat go? BMJ 2014; 349 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.g7257 (Published 16 December 2014)Cite this as: BMJ 2014;349:g7257. http://www.bmj.com/content/349/bmj.g7257
