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When somebody loses weight, where does the fat go?

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Re: When somebody loses weight, where does the fat go?

#101
post #15
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the paper "Replacing one hour of rest with exercise that raises the metabolic rate to seven times that of resting by, for example, jogging, removes an additional 39 g of carbon from the body, raising the total by about 20% to 240 g. For comparison, a single 100 g muffin represents about 20% of an average person’s total daily energy requirement. Physical activity as a weight loss strategy is, therefore, easily fo…

200g are what would be "breathed out" in one hour without exercise? So you can only increase your "burn rate" by 20%?

200g is what a typical sedentary person breathes out in a day.

You can definitely increase your burn rate by way more than 20% with heavy exercise. A Tour de France bicyclist will burn several thousand calories (4,000-7,000 depending on the stage and rider) in only about six hours. For comparison, a typical sedentary person will burn 2,000-2,500 calories per day. It can be physically difficult to eat enough at that rate, and riders lose a substantial amount of weight over the race. (A friend once told me about an endurance cyclist he knew who would eat a big bowl of cereal each morning, except instead of milk he'd use olive oil. Disgusting, but an effective way to get enough calories in.)

It's pretty tough for most of us to achieve anything like that much exercise, of course. Even Tour de France riders only do it for a few weeks at a time.

Re: When somebody loses weight, where does the fat go?

#102
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried it? I did, it's easier only for some time. After you lose about 6-7% of your body weight it's very hard to eat less, your whole behaviour changes.

I tried it - I lost nearly 25% my weight (down from 132 kg to 101 kg) over this year by eating less and walking on foot a lot more. Eating less is certainly having a lesser effect than it did at first, but I'm still losing weight bit by bit.

Will have to try walking more, this may be good suggestion.

Re: When somebody loses weight, where does the fat go?

#103
post #4

For anyone coming straight to the comments looking for an answer to the question: it turns into CO2 (and a bit of water) and you breathe it out. When you realize that you have to breathe out all the weight you lose, I think it gives you a bigger appreciation for how difficult weight loss can be.

It's better for HN to let the reader dig for information. It attracts the curious. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20%22work%20a%20little...

Yeah with all due respect to dang sometimes I don't have the time or inclination to do so. "It attracts the curious" is (apologies) bullshit.

Re: When somebody loses weight, where does the fat go?

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't help but groan at some of the "obvious" health and weight loss platitudes that get smugly thrown around. " Calories in, calories out! " " You can't outrun a bad diet! " " Weight is lost in the kitchen! " Sure, things ultimately boil down to intake-vs-expenditure. However, it IS more complicated than that in practice . As software developers, we complain when management makes decisions based on inadequate or p…

Those platitudes are also, well... Wrong. My favorite example: > "Calories in, calories out!" Well, sure, but those calories on the label are calculated by burning the components in a machine and measuring the heat output. The human body isn't going to convert the input food at 100%. That percent is going to depend on a lot of factors!

Irrelevant. As long as you eat less than what you burn, you will lose weight.

If you're not losing weight, cut what you eat until you see results.

Re: When somebody loses weight, where does the fat go?

#105
post #27
post #3

Reminds me of the question “what are trees made of?” (The answer to both questions is “mostly atmospheric CO2.”)

Hehe, true. I once saw a documentary about "big animals" in the past. Like, why did we have giant spiders and insects while they have a rather simple respiratory system that doesn't scale very well. Because: trees! Somehow plants managed to create wood, which bound the C from CO2, but the rest of the biosphere didn't know what to make of the wood. So there were more and more trees and more and more C got removed from…

That is very interesting. Is it related to coal? Will the trees today nor form coal because they will be processed by fungi?

Re: When somebody loses weight, where does the fat go?

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those platitudes are also, well... Wrong. My favorite example: > "Calories in, calories out!" Well, sure, but those calories on the label are calculated by burning the components in a machine and measuring the heat output. The human body isn't going to convert the input food at 100%. That percent is going to depend on a lot of factors!

Irrelevant. As long as you eat less than what you burn, you will lose weight. If you're not losing weight, cut what you eat until you see results.

You're assuming a constant factor there that isn't necessarily constant.

Re: When somebody loses weight, where does the fat go?

#107
post #63
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also take daylight savings into account, you could get an extra hour one day a year. Thats a lot more breaths.

Supercharge your weight loss by running west.

But optimize this by not running too close to c (or is it the contrary ? My restrained relativity courses are rusty)
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