where does fat go?

I have am down from 222 to 211 now in only three weeks. I want to know where that 11 pounds of fat went? Do you urinate it out, or is it my understanding that the burned fat exits thru your lungs when breathing.

 

You urinate at least some of it out. That is why they do drug tests with urine. The fat cells in urine are what hold the trace drug amounts.

Other than that, I would have to direct you to doing study on Einstein's theory. You know the whole mass becoming energy thing. That is why they call it "burning fat"

 

yes I realize fat is energy. But I think it is vaporized into your breathing. I know you can have a test done on your breath to gauge your metabolic rate. I think you breath alot of the fat out.

 

It is true that fat can only be used for energy in the presence of oxygen (it is oxidyzed). What happens is that when you are sleeping, low intensity walking, simply breathing, etc - you are burning fat for energy but it is at such a slow rate that it won't make you lose any weight. when you diet or excercise, glycogen stores (basically carbs stored in the muscle) are depleated. Once this happens, the body starts to draw energy from free-fatty acids that are being metabolized from fat tissue stores on your body. When the body reaches this state, more calories burned will be coming from fat than carbohydrates. The fat actually changes chemically when oxidyzed...the term oxidyzed means there is a chemical reaction with the oxygen. Most of the "weight" from fat is water and you piss that out. The energy from the fat is used by the muscles and it does give off a by-product (I can't remember what it is called...when you burn glycogen, the by product is lactic acid) that is eventually removed by the kidneys and pissed out. The oxygen comes from your lungs into the blood, the oxidation takes place when the fat energy is used. Therefore, you aren't breathing fat out of your lunges.

edit: now I remember. When your body turns those fatty acids into energy, it turns them into ketones. Ketones cannot be turned back into fats, so any extra ketones in your system are just peed out

This is why you see that "fat burnning zones" on excersize machines. When you are excersising at lower intensity, you are bringing in enough oxygen to burn fat effeciently. As intensity increases, you start to breath harder and you need more energy to sustain the intensity leve. Eventually reach a point where you can't metabolize fat efficiently because you are not brining in enough oxygen. a lot of people call this point "hitting the wall" where all of a sudden you become lethargic and out of energy. High Intensity interval training works by increasing metabolism in the 24 hours after your excercise session causing more fat loss.

 

well there you have it! thanks