Losing weight is the new emerging problem of this generation having technology based and junky lifestyle behind the scenario. Obesity is the talk of the town and it has not forgiven even the newborns putting their mothers into painful labor. Therefore, you will see people irrespective of their age talking about their body weight and body shape, how they have gained weight and how they should lose it.

Well, when you step in the fitness community, you witness that it is not only about how you gained weight and how you’re going to lose it. There come plenty of other questions too you might worry about. Such as can you even lose the weight you have been gaining for so long? Does all the effort in the gym or to the nutritionists worth it? If you are losing weight, how would you know it? If you really have lost weight, where has it gone? And many more like these.

Let’s talk about the last one, if you really have lost weight or you’re going to lose weight, where will it go?

Fact behind the weight loss

There are a lot of misconceptions about weight loss and about where does the fats go when we burn it. But the fact is that we breathe it out.

Yes, when we carry out some physical activity to lose weight, we exhale them in the form of carbon dioxide (CO2) or water.

You might think how that is possible?

Let’s have a detailed look at it to better understand how to lose weight.

A research carried out by a team at UNSW Science in Sydney provides a deep evidence for the fact that we breathe the fats out.

The team first considered 150 doctors, nutritionists, fitness trainers and dietitians volunteering for their study and asked them the same question.

“When we lose weight, where does our fat go?”

Half of them talked about fats converting into energy, some of them were blank about the answer and some answered incorrectly.

And that led the Andrew Brown, the PhD scholar head of bimolecular science at the University of Australia and Meermen test the lost fat practically. They found out after analyzing the whole process involved in fats burning that almost 84% of the lost fats converted into CO2 that you breathe out and rest of the fats were turned into water that you excrete through excretory system, through precipitation and crying and they published their results in the special Christmas publication of The Medical Journal BMJ.

While talking about the fats burning process the researcher added that

“These results show that the lungs are the primary excretory organ for the weight loss. The water formed may be excreted in urine, feces, sweat, breath, tears or other bodily fluids, and is readily replenished”.

How do fats convert to carbon dioxide or water?

Basically, when you eat food, your body stores proteins and carbs in the form of fats that convert into lipid cells as triglyceride molecules that comprises oxygen, hydrogen and carbon only.

Now, if you want to lose weight, you need to break these triglyceride molecules to let oxygen, carbon and hydrogen molecules out and that’s what called oxidation.

When you do some work out or intensive physical activity, your sleeping fat cells or triglycerides get disturbed. They wake up and strike with your body for disturbing their sleep. But don’t worry, they are helping you out. When they move a lot, they get oxidized or say burnt releasing water and carbon dioxide molecules as byproducts or waste.

Scientifically, it is said that if you want to lose 10kg weight, to carry out the whole burning process you’ll need to inhale 29kg oxygen and you’ll be excreting 28kg of carbon dioxide and 11kg of water.

While answering the questions about their research Ruben Meermen and Andrew Brown added the statement:

“None of this biochemistry is new, but for unknown reasons it seems nobody has thought of performing these calculations before”

And

“The quantities make the perfect sense but we were surprised by the numbers that popped out”

Upon asking about the huge proportion of carbon dioxide being released in the process of weight and its relation to global warming, Meermen described that it doesn’t affect the environment that much.

One more important point augmented by Meermen was that you should never try to breathe than your need because that can make you hyperventilated which is chronic.

Important to remember: The fats you accumulate in your body never increase in number. Good news? No. The fact is that fats you contain in your body only get enlarge and can even reach to the destructive level. So, before they turn your body into diseased one, work for your weight loss by getting right guide for how to lose weight.