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When We Lose Weight, Where Does It Go?
Via The Conversation – By Ruben Meerman and Andrew Brown
Excerpt:
The world is obsessed with fad diets and weight loss, yet few of us know how a kilogram of fat actually vanishes off the scales. …
So if not energy, muscles or the loo, where does fat go?
The enlightening facts about fat metabolism
The correct answer is that fat is converted to carbon dioxide and water. You exhale the carbon dioxide and the water mixes into your circulation until it’s lost as urine or sweat.
If you lose 10kg of fat, precisely 8.4kg comes out through your lungs and the remaining 1.6kg turns into water. In other words, nearly all the weight we lose is exhaled.
This surprises just about everyone, but actually, almost everything we eat comes back out via the lungs. Every carbohydrate you digest and nearly all the fats are converted to carbon dioxide and water. The same goes for alcohol.
…
An average 75kg person’s resting metabolic rate (the rate at which the body uses energy when the person isn’t moving) produces about 590 grams of carbon dioxide per day. No pill or potion you can buy will increase that figure, despite the bold claims you might have heard.
The good news is that you exhale 200 grams of carbon dioxide while you’re fast asleep every night, so you’ve already breathed out a quarter of your daily target before you even step out of bed.
…
Therefore, to lose 100 grams of fat, you have to exhale 280 grams of carbon dioxide on top of what you’ll produce by vaporizing all your food, no matter what it is.
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Related Links:
WebMD: Obesity Epidemic May Contribute to Climate Change – 2019
But wait, climate change will cause starvation — potentially solving the obesity problem!
“Climate change will increase under-nutrition through increased food insecurity from extreme weather events, droughts, and shifts in agriculture. Climate change also affects the prices of basic food commodities, especially fruits and vegetables, potentially increasing consumption of processed foods.”
“Under-nutrition in early life increases the risk of adult obesity.”
A study says obesity and climate change have common drivers and mitigating actions
Why India may be at risk of obesity: Undernutrition and obesity are two forms of malnutrition. Severe food insecurity is associated with lower obesity prevalence, but mild to moderate food insecurity is, paradoxically, associated with higher obesity prevalence among vulnerable populations living on marginal-quality diets and ultra-processed food products. “Undernutrition in early life increases the risk of adult obesity,” says Dr Shifalika Goenka of the Delhi-based Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI).
Obesity, climate change and hunger must be fought as one, health experts declare – Maybe the steps needed to reverse a pandemic of unhealthy weight gain are the same as those needed to solve two other crises of human health: malnutrition and climate change.
Oxford University Professor: Tax Meat to Reduce Climate Change and Obesity
‘A peculiar new study published in the Journal of Epidemiology some researchers actually proposed such a bizarre linkage. According to these scientists, since growing and transporting food generates about a fifth of all manmade greenhouse gases, then the more each individual eats – the more he or she will contribute to rising emissions. The obvious implication, of course, is that since fat people eat more than lean ones, then they pose more of a threat to the climate’
‘The shift from a hunter-gathering lifestyle to an agricultural way of life…has caused some of dire medical disorders, from infectious diseases and obesity to the mental illnesses that are rampant in modern, urban living’
Doctors: ‘Exertion-free living’ spawning two great threats — obesity and global warming
‘Moving about in a heavy body is like driving in a gas guzzler’
Claim: ‘Globesity: How climate change and obesity draw from the same roots’
