There wouldn't be a metabolic reason for the accumulation of fat if it didn't provide energy. Bill
Read the full replyThe article states that most people assume when losing weight that fat turns to energy. This is wrong because it turns to carbon dioxide and water. Say what?
To me this is like asking where petrol in the tank of your car goes. Energy? No, it just comes out of the exhaust as carbon dioxide and water.
My take is that it does turn to energy, with carbon dioxide and water as by products of the conversion. Therefore the assumption of the majority is correct.
Cheers
Dave R
There wouldn't be a metabolic reason for the accumulation of fat if it didn't provide energy.
Bill
It may be that people have trouble with metaphysical or emotional meanings of "energy". Simplest, and largely true, to say that it turns to heat.
No. It's the energy that is a (useful) by product of the chemical reaction:
petrol + oxygen -> carbon dioxide + water + energy
Just replace the petrol by fat and otherwise it's a similar reaction.
In a car, the energy comes out as heat, which expands the exhaust gases so they do useful work against the piston. In the body I think it's a bit more complex although the end result, mostly, is heat.
What does this have to do with anything?
Just a bit :-)
Avpx
Energy bars etc also mean fattening. It seems the basic concept is often not understood.
NT
I was just wondering aloud why the authors of the original piece had difficulty with the idea of fat being converted to energy. Reading the piece, they didn't really, they were just putting forward an explanation fo what happens to provide the actual loss of matter from the body.
Or down the sewers and they make exhibits of it in exhibitions as fat burgs. They say recycle your food containers, but wash them first. So you do and the plastic goes somewhere, but the fatty deposits go down the sewers. Brian
Very little of the *mass* of the fat is converted to energy. We aren't nuclear powered.
I don't think that article is likely to do much for people other than confuse them.
To say "the fat is converted to energy" is just a short-hand way of speaking.
All speaking is incredibly shorrthand for 'something is happening but we dont know what it is, but this MODEL of it seems to work..at the moment'
The value of looking at it this way is that a negative energy balance is the only way one is going to act to remove the fat. The actual physical process of removing the fat and metabolising it happens automatically and we can't directly influence it.
Having spent most of my life studying a degree on "stating the f****ng obvious" I can assure you that the fat is still on the arse of a fat arsed woman that had never tried to diet.
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