What actually happens to fat when you lose weight

If you think about it, losing weight is actually kind of a mind-boggling thing. One minute you’re carrying the extra pounds, but after a stint of healthy eating and regular exercise, you’re physically smaller.

So where does all the fat go?

You might imagine the globules of fat just sort of burst and cease to exist, but it turns out that’s very much not the case.

‘The correct answer is that most of the mass is breathed out as carbon dioxide. It goes into thin air,’ physicist Ruben Meerman says. Yeah, you read that correctly: you breathe out fat. This is unbelievable.

*Starts breathing quicker in an attempt to get rid of more*

Apparently, it’s a rough 80/20 split between fat predominantly being expelled from your body via your lungs, with the remainder being evacuated via your urine, faeces, sweating, and tears.

The process…

If you’re feeling a bit dim now for never having known this life-altering information, don’t worry, you’re not the only one. According to the head of the UNSW School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences in Australia, Professor Andrew Brown, there are plenty of doctors and dietitians who were convinced fat was converted into muscle, or that it turned into either energy or heat and was ‘burnt’ in that way.

Sadly, if you’re now thinking that instead of your next work-out at the gym you’ll just cry buckets while breathing quickly — if that’s how fat exits the body, why not give it more opportunity to go, right? — you’ll be disappointed. Fat has to go through a metabolic process before it’s actually lost — but having said that, there are some things you can do right now to help you get on the right track for weight loss.

Getting on the right track

‘Make more of your meals veggie-based, don’t go longer than three-to-four hours without eating and skip sugary beverages to cut out calories from added sugars that you might be unknowingly consuming,’ says the Good Housekeeping Institute’s Nutrition Director Jaclyn London. ‘Getting on the right track to weight-loss means starting with small, attainable objectives that fit into your lifestyle, and will ultimately help you meet your goal in a way that feels fun, not forced!’

From: goodhousekeeping.com

Photo: iStock/kali9