Where do you think it goes?
More than 50 per cent of the 150 doctors, dieticians and personal trainers who were surveyed thought the fat was converted to energy or heat.
I thought it was excreted when you visit the smallest room.
It turns out we were all wrong!
You breathe it out. It disappears into thin air!
If you've every wondered whether it's worth starting an exercise program, this latest research might just convince you.
The authors of a study published recently in the British Medical Journal traced every atom of the fat as it is lost from the body.
They discovered that for every 10kg of fat which the body loses, 84.Kg are exhaled as carbon dioxide through the lungs. The remaining 1.6kg becomes water which which may be excreted in urine, faeces, sweat, breath, tears and other bodily fluids, the authors report.
“None of this is obvious to people because the carbon dioxide gas we exhale is invisible,” says the study's lead author Ruben Meerman.
This might lead us to ask if simply breathing more can cause weight loss? Sadly, the answer is no. Breathing controls the ratio of oxygen to carbon dioxide in the bloodstream. So if you breathe too much (hyperventilate) this balance is upset and this can lead to dizziness, palpitations and loss of consciousness.
However, this could explain why exercise, even gentle exercise like walking, is beneficial to weight loss, as the deeper breathing which occurs here might aid the fat removal process. So, a walk in the fresh air anyone?
This might be one good reason for starting to exercise as part of a slimming regime. Workout plans like the Adonis Golden Ratio or the very popular women's weight loss programs help us to metabolize stored fat and then we can simply breathe it out.
This ground breaking study was performed by Ruben Meerman and Professor Andrew Brown of the University of New South Wales, Australia.
For more information:
http://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/science/when-we-lose-weight-where-does-fat-go
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