Where does fat go after you lose weight?!
Question:
Where does fat go after you lose weight?
My theory is that since fats are lipids, and lipids are proteins, you urinate the fat away. But that seems kind of weird, right?
But then again, the human body is weird.
Answers:
you're right, the human body is weird.
you don't actually urinate the fat away, though you are right...vaguely.
see, fat can be convereted to energy. it is a form of stored energy. so when you move and work out, you burn a little sugar and you burn a little fat.
it all comes down to something called ATP (adenosine triphosphate).
ATP is sometimes called the universal energy currency of all organisms. when you eat sugar or food containing sugar, it goes through a complex pathway to get converted to ATP. ATP is required to store fat. ATP is required for your muscles to move, for your brain to work, for your heart to beat...everything. all meat and veggies contain ATP.
basically, every function of your body requires ATP and has required ATP since when you were still one cell old, when you actually became a "you". throughout your development and your birth and your life right now, you've been using ATP for...everything. So when sugar is converted to fat, and fat breaks down, you're using ATP and making more ATP than you lose. which is how your fat becomes energy. and ATP is the universal energy currency. think of it like money.
just like how you invest money in a car, atp is exchanged to be stored as glycogen or fat as a part of the transaction. when you sell something, you get money in return. so you've replaced something for money. you've replaced fat for ATP.
i know it's really confusing but any biochemistry book should help you there. or you could try wikipedia.org, but it didn't really tell me as much as i wanted.
so your fat isn't exactly being sent away in urination. fat doesn't get into your kidneys to be urinated out. fat is converted into energy and you use up energy by running and swimming. that's why people lose weight by exercise and not by going to the bathroom ;-)