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Asked by beep127tea to Tonia, Sam, Emily, Ejay, Edgars, Charnett on 10 Jun 2019.
Question: When you lose weight where does it go?
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Tonia Tzemanaki answered on 10 Jun 2019:
that is a question I also had – and it is not my expertise. But I once went to a conference where they said that it mostly comes out of your breath (and not really the sweat as most people thought).
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Sam Gaughan answered on 10 Jun 2019:
When you are losing weight, it is because you are burning fat for energy, either because you are doing more exercise than normal and you need more energy, or you are on a diet so you are taking in fewer calories, which means you need to burn fat to keep going.
Burning fat has three products – energy (which you convert into whatever form you are using, it is never ‘lost’,) water and carbon dioxide. You will produce almost the same number of water and carbon dioxide molecules when burning fat, but because carbon dioxide is a lot heavier you will lose a lot more of that weight by just breathing out than sweating and urinating, which is where the rest goes.
So yes as Tonia said, most of it comes out of your breath 🙂
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Charnett Chau answered on 10 Jun 2019:
Agree will Sam, fat in your body is broken down to give your cells energy to function. When fat is converted into energy it gives off water and carbon dioxide too which is passed out of your body either by sweat, urine or by breathing.
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Comments
Matt commented on :
What Tonia said makes sense! When we exercise, we break fats and carbohydrates down into sugars. These sugars are converted to water and carbon dioxide and release energy in a process called respiration. This CO2 and water would be transported in the blood to the lungs where they are then breathed out.