When You Lose Fat, Where Does It Go?

[SCU_Bay_Area_MBA]

Hi. This might be a silly question, but where does the fat go when you lose weight? Is it literally "burned?" And if it is, how does this work?  I also heard from a friend that you cannot get rid of fat cells in your body-she said the fat cells just reduce in size.  Is this true?  That seems really odd. Also, if you count your calories and for example, you burn 3500 calories more than you take in the whole week, so that you lose one pound (approx 3500 calories = 1 lb of fat), is that lost pound all fat? Thanks!

[xoxLaurynxox]

Your friend is right. I am in Biology this year and we are doing nutrition so we've talked about this topic. When you eat your fat cells grow in size untill they grow too large and then they spilt (Mitosis). So when you lose weight, the cells just shrink. It is physically impossible to lose fat cells. Well, besides plastic surgery. Also, this is why if you gain a large amount of weight it is extremely hard seemingly impossible to go back to the orginal size.

And to the question about calories, I believe that you are just burning the fat in your cells shinking. this i'm not too sure about but i think that's is right.

A good article on this is:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7724727/

I'm pretty sure this information is correct. This was what I was taught so I supoose it is.

[Pum]

The fat is used as "fuel" and is turned into other forms of energy to power your breathing, walking, digestive systems. Ultimately it is dissipated as heat into the universe. Burnt isn't really the correct word, it's more "converted".

The sun starts the energy system, then in the end it comes out as you slightly warming the planet.

Not sure about the rest.