So I was thinking about dieting and the like a few weeks back (thinking in the philosophical sense, not the "I need to implement this" sense), when I started wondering: how do we lose weight? I didn't mean in the sense of "exercise and eat well", I meant what is the physical mechanism for losing the mass (the opposite mechanism is all too obvious). After some thought, I ruled out waste excretion, since clearly not all of what we eat is wasteful, and exercising doesn't make us go use the restroom more often than not exercising. Then I thought back to 9th grade biology, and it all became clear.
The most basic form of cellular respiration essentially takes oxygen from outside the body and glucose from inside the body and produces carbon dioxide, which we breathe out, water, and energy to phosphorylate ADP into ATP. If we treat the body as a black box, then we input oxygen and output carbon dioxide. In other words, we breathe.
You lose weight by breathing. Breathing out, specifically. Am I the only one that finds that really cool?
Friday, August 29, 2008
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What about density and composition of solid waste (an composition of liquid)?
What if the waste products of physical exertion change what we expel into the toilet?
I find it incredible that weight loss is primarily through CO2 exhaust, especially since transforming fat into less energetic compounds won't result solely in an excess of carbon, but also of other elements, too. (I'm not sure what the chemical formula of a fatty acid is, though. Could it be strictly a hydrocarbon?)
However, yes, I find your thought on the matter really cool. Er, that is to say that, no, you aren't the only one!
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