When you lose weight, body fat actually goes here

Interestingly, despite society’s concern with weight loss, a study found that the majority of medical professionals are unaware of what happens to fat when we “lose it.”

In 2013, a group of Australian researchers assessed exactly what happens to our fat when we lose weight and found that, contrary to popular belief, we do not turn our lost mass into heat or energy. In fact, we exhale it.

Their findings, which were published in the British Medical Journal, show that 22 pounds (10 kg) of fat breaks down into 3.5 pounds (1.6 kg) of water, which is then eliminated through urine, tears, sweat, and other bodily fluids. It also produces 18.5 pounds (8.4 kg) of carbon dioxide, which is exhaled when we breathe.

“The majority of the mass is exhaled as carbon dioxide, which is the right response. It vanishes into nothing “explained the paper’s lead author, physicist and TV host Ruben Meerman.

Meerman first developed an interest in the biochemistry of weight loss after he lost 33 pounds (15 kg) and was startled that no one could explain where the weight had gone when he asked his doctors.

More than half of the 150 physicians, dieticians, and personal trainers he polled believed that fat was broken down into heat or energy.

But Meerman understood as a physicist that this would go against the Law of Conservation of Mass.

Excess carbs and proteins that we consume are transformed into triglycerides, which are subsequently deposited in lipid droplets inside fat cells and cause us to gain weight.

You must digest those triglycerides to get to their carbon if you want to reduce weight.

According to the findings, it takes 64 pounds (29 kg) of oxygen to completely break down 22 pounds (10 kg) of human fat (and somewhere along the way, burn 94,000 calories). 24 pounds (11 kg) of water and 62 pounds (28 kg) of CO2 are the products of this process.

According to the team’s estimations, the lungs are the body’s main organ for excreting fat.

They were unable to pinpoint the precise nature of this reaction’s effects on the fat cells, though. After months of investigation, Meerman came across a formula from a 1949 paper that provided the answer. It demonstrated that the oxygen atoms in fat are distributed in a 2:1 ratio between the carbon and hydrogen atoms (forming carbon dioxide and water)

As a result, they were able to calculate that 84% of the atoms in a fat molecule end out as carbon dioxide in the exhalation, and 16% end up as water.

Unfortunately, this does not suggest that we may lose weight by simply breathing deeply; rather, we must exercise in order to release the carbon and break down the fat in the first place.

According to Meerman, who spoke with ABC Science, “you can only breathe so many times a day; on a day of rest, you breathe around 12 times a minute, so you’ll breathe 17,280 times in a day, and each one takes 10 milligrams of carbon with it, roughly. So that’s the maximum amount of weight you can lose a day without exercising.

But would the amount of fat we’re exhaling affect the climate? The quick response is no.

“This dispels alarming myths about how old carbon atoms trapped below in extinct species contribute to global warming. In just a few months or years, the carbon atoms that people breath that were formerly held in plant-made food will return to the atmosphere “Meerman noted in the press release.

The ironic aspect of this is that while the majority of medical professionals are unaware of what happens to fat when we lose weight, the majority of Veritasium viewers are almost certainly aware of it. In fact, as the mind-blowing video below reveals, if we were in a closed environment, we would turn into trees in addition to losing our “lost” fat through breathing.