Fitness professionals claim that they can help you convert your fat into muscle. But there’s one problem with that statement. It’s a big fat lie. Fat cannot be converted into muscle and vice versa. You can burn fat and build muscle separately. But even in an ideal world, fat doesn’t get converted into muscle. So what happens to all the fat you “burn”? Does it just vapourise into thin air or do we sweat it out? It’s actually just simple chemistry and no, it is not converted into energy!

Two researchers, Dr Ruben Meerman and Andrew J Brown, who was as curious as we are decided to put their doubts to rest. The findings of their study was published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), which finally gave us an idea as to where all the fat went. The excess fat is, in fact, exhaled out of our body as carbon dioxide….and the rest leaves the body as water.

In the paper published in the BMJ simply titled When Somebody Loses Weight Where Does the Fat Go? the researchers explain that there’s a process by which fat gets converted into carbon dioxide and water. When you eat a carbohydrate or protein intensive diet, the body converts them into triglycerides and stores them in the lipid droplets. It is then utilised by the body to create energy. The chemical equation is as follows:

C55H104O6+78O2→55CO2+52H2O+energy

To burn 10kg of fat, 29kg of inhaled oxygen is needed. The process then generates 28kg of carbon dioxide and 11kg of water. Out of the 10kg of fat, 8.4kg is exhaled as carbon dioxide and the remaining 1.6kg of water exits the body as urine, sweat and other bodily fluids.

So to sum it up, all the fat you “burn” is actually exhaled as carbon dioxide and excreted as water. Weight loss happens by virtue of the lungs and the more you breathe in, the more fats you burn. This explains how yoga pranayamas contributes towards weight loss.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Mar 26, 2018 07:59 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).