What happens to fat when you lose weight?

As pioneers in weight loss surgery in Australia, our main focus is helping our patients to lose excess body weight following their surgery. Surgery isn’t sufficient on it’s own to lose weight, but our patients must commit to a life long diet/lifestyle change to achieve the significant weight loss they desire.

Within the first year some patients can lose as much as 50% of their excess body weight following weight loss surgery. But have you ever wondered what happens to fat when you lose weight? It’s not what you might think!

 

‘Sweat is fat crying’

Although this statement is popular amongst the personal trainers of this world, sweat is not fat crying, well, sweat is not the primary way our body excretes fat.

So firstly where does fat gain come from? Simplified, fat gain occurs when more kilojoules are consumed than the body is able to use over a period of time. For example when you go away on holiday you may notice you come back a couple of kgs heavier; this is likely due to a higher number of calories consumed (eating out, alcoholic beverages etc.) and less physical activity (depending on the type of holiday you prefer of course! We’re quite partial to reading a good book and relaxing). So more calories are being consumed that your body actually needs, causing weight gain.

 

Scientific approach to weight gain

Okay so you were probably aware of how fat is gained, so let us break it down a little further and introduce the scientific side.

When we consume excess carbohydrate and protein, it is then converted into triglycerides. Triglycerides are a fat that is usually found in the blood, and are made up of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. Triglycerides are stored in our fat cells as little drops, so when you are losing weight your body is trying to get rid of these ‘drops’.

 

Where does the fat you lose actually go?

A recent study from the British Medical Journal explains that the fat you lose is essentially ‘breathed out’ as carbon dioxide. Yes that’s correct, researchers discovered that “the lungs are the primary excretory organ for weight loss”.

Dietician Chloe McLeod explains this in more detail:

“As an example, when you’re trying to lose 10kgs of human fat, this means you are going to inhale around 29kgs of oxygen and that will produce 28kgs of carbon dioxide and 11kgs of water”.

So basically it is about breaking down those compounds and then they are exhaled as a combination of carbon dioxide and the moisture on your breath.

Although while breathing may be the main way that fat loss is excreted from the body, small amounts of water that are formed in the above process can also be released in other ways, such as your urine, faeces, tears, or sweat. This is why the term ‘sweat is fat crying’ isn’t quite accurate, as it is a very, very small portion of fat that is released this way. The majority of fat excreted from the body is via your breath.

 

Source Huffington Post: https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2017/07/25/what-happens-to-fat-when-you-lose-weight_a_23046347/