Fat Cell Debate?

[robs477]

Hmmm, I just read this and found it very interesting? I’ve always known that we never lose a fat cell, (except surgically), it just elongates and shrinks releasing its inside adipose tissue, patiently lurking there ready to be re-filled again, but, I never heard this one?

http://www.livescience.com/49157-how-fat-is-lost-body.html

Exhaled Pounds: How Fat Leaves the Body

By Bahar Gholipour2 hours ago
When you lose weight, where does it go? Turns out, most of it is exhaled.
In a new study, scientists explain the fate of fat in a human body, and through precise calculations, debunk some common misconceptions. Fat doesn't simply "turn into" energy or heat, and it doesn't break into smaller parts and get excreted, the researchers say.
In reality, the body stores the excess protein or carbs in a person's diet in form of fat, specifically, as triglyceride molecules, which consist of just three kinds of atoms: carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. For people to lose weight, their triglycerides must break up into building blocks, which happens in a process known as oxidation.
When a triglyceride is oxidized (or "burned up"), the process consumes many molecules of oxygen while producing carbon dioxide (CO2) and water (H2O) as waste products. [8 Strange Things Scientists Taste and Eat]
So, for example, to burn 10 kilograms (22 lbs.) of fat, a person needs to inhale 29 kg (64 lbs.) of oxygen. And the chemical process of burning that fat will produce 28 kg (62 lbs.) of carbon dioxide and 11 kg (24 lbs.) of water, the researchers calculated.
"None of this biochemistry is new, but for unknown reasons it seems nobody has thought of performing these calculations before," study authors Ruben Meerman and Andrew Brown of the University of New South Wales in Australia, said. "The quantities make perfect sense but we were surprised by the numbers that popped out."
The researchers showed that during weight loss, 84 percent of the fat that is lost turns into carbon dioxide and leaves the body through the lungs, whereas the remaining 16 percent becomes water, according to the study published today (Dec. 16) in a special Christmas issue of the medical journal BMJ.
"These results show that the lungs are the primary excretory organ for weight loss. The water formed may be excreted in the urine, feces, sweat, breath, tears or other bodily fluids, and is readily replenished," the researchers said.
The calculations also show the frightening power of, for example, a small muffin over an hour of exercise: At rest, a person who weighs 154 pounds (70 kg) exhales just 8.9 mg of carbon with each breath. Even after an entire day, if this person only sits, sleeps, and does light activities, he or she exhales about 200 grams of carbon, the researchers calculated.
A 100 g muffin can cover 20 percent of what was lost.
On the other hand, replacing one hour of rest with exercise such as jogging, removes an additional 40 g of carbon from the body, the researchers said.
Even if one traces the fates of all the atoms in the body, the secret to weight loss remains the same: In order to lose weight, one needs to either eat less carbon or exercise more to remove extra carbon from the body.

 

[star0210]

That's rather interesting.
Also contributing to my inability to lose on my own I guess is the lack of exercise.
My lower back issues prevent me from doing much in the way of exercise. Couple that with the fact that I just don't LIKE to exercise...I guess I'm screwed. Lol

 

[DianaCox]

You know, one of the things that has always bothered me about the "calories in, calories out" theory - which conflicts as we all know with our experiences as high- or super-absorbers compared to other people - is the idea that normies absorb every calorie that goes into their mouths. This complicates the understanding of not only our metabolisms, but also causes us to be blamed as liars. Because calories in food are measured by the energy content of the food - NOT by what is actually absorbed (and even THAT isn't correct, as you'll see in a moment). These "exhaled" numbers are accurate for what is actually burned for energy (but do NOT take into account what is used to rebuild and repair our bodies, or what we poop out).

Notice this statement: "Even after an entire day, if this person only sits, sleeps, and does light activities, he or she exhales about 200 grams of carbon." Now I'm going to try and apportion where those calories might have come from, although it is freaking complicated (though doable), by figuring out the average WEIGHT of carbon by percentage of each of protein, fat and carbohydrates, based on an average diet of 2000 calories comprising 25% protein, 25% fat and 50% carbs.

Based on glucose, carbs are 40% by weight (72 g/180 g per mole) carbon.
Based on a medium-sized amino acid (arginine), protein is also about 40% by weight (72 g/174 g per mole) carbon.
Based on a medium-sized triglyceride (tristerin), fat is about 75% by weight (684 g/891 g per mole) carbon.

A 2100 calorie diet (because it makes the numbers work more easily than 2000 cal) comprising 25% protein, 25% fat and 50% carbs means (based on 4 cal/g for protein and carbs, and 9 cal/g for fat):
75% by weight is 4 cal/g: 300 g x 4 = 1200 cal
25% by weight is 9 cal/g: 100 g x 9 = 900 cal

We're getting closer!

OK, now 40% of those 300 grams of protein and carbs is carbon = 120 grams of carbon to exhale to get rid of it.
And 75% of the 100 g of fat is carbon, or another 75 g.

Which adds up to 195 g of carbon or almost exactly that number of 200 g/day of carbon that the article suggested was a basal metabolic rate.

Well, here's the problem with that number. It doesn't account for all of the stuff you poop out, which includes a huge number of calories! And that's where I had to go looking for a good explanation, because I don't have the real numbers. And damn if I didn't find something that was EXACTLY what I have thought all along.
~~~~~~
http://mb-soft.com/public2/humaneff.html This is really long - I will try to excerpt the most important points, but you should try to read this yourself:

• A 2,000 Calorie daily diet regimen means that the person takes in food that includes 2,000 (kilo-) Calories of thermochemical energy in it.
  
• a human body has to give off around 90 Calories of heat per hour
  
• The number, regarding energy in the food we eat, is technically NOT true! The actual total chemical energy that is in the food and liquids we take in is actually greater than that! The difference between the two is generally referred to as the Atwater factors. Physics easily proves that one pound of many types of organic food material contains around 8,000 to 10,000 Btus of actual chemical energy in it (if the water is removed). This is around 2,000 to 2,500 Calories of food energy. (Officially, it is generally given as being 4.0 Calories per gram for either carbohydrates or proteins, which is an average number. That is 4.0 * 454 or 1816 Calories per pound.) There ARE exceptions, such as lipids or triglycerides (fats) having a greater energy content at around 3,500 Calories per pound. That is generally described as being 9.0 Calories per gram, depending on the specific fatty acids which are in the triglyceride molecules.
  
• Our ACTUAL diet is a mixture of carbohydrates, proteins and fats. The AVERAGE energy content for that mixture is generally around 5 Calories per gram, which is around 2200 Calories per the pound of food that we actually digest. So when anyone refers to a daily diet of 2200 Calories or 2000 Calories, there are a lot of approximations involved!
  
• We actually all ingest more than a pound every day, generally around 22 to 30 ounces of actual food content (after subtracting the water in it). Note that just a quarter-pound hamburger and its fries and drink are far more than a pound (including the water)! In fact, for comparison, a single 16-ounce drink is one pound (but in that case, it is nearly all water).
• What's the deal? Well, not only do we ingest food each day, but we also excrete and eliminate it; it turns out that a significant amount of the volume of food we eat later leaves us, where our body does not even try to process it!
• An average person might take in around 25 ounces of food values each day (which involves around 3400 Calories in a Physics sense), but then excretes around 9 ounces per day, which, in a Physics sense, contains around 1,200 Calories of chemical energy. Yes, the body did not even try to digest or absorb that last amount, along with an assortment of organic materials (and a LOT of dead bacteria) that the body no longer needed. The remainder, the amount that the body actually digests, is therefore around 16 ounces, or one pound, or around 2,200 Calories, the usual Nutrition description of a healthy food intake. So it is important to make sure whether any data is referring to the Nutrition value of a food or the actual Physics value. Nearly anything you will find regarding food ONLY refers to the Nutrition value, as few people seem to even care about the Physics perspective of all of this! (Humbug!)
• In other words, the common descriptions of the (Nutrition) Calorie content of foods does NOT include the materials that the human body will not even try to digest!
• When Physicians try to determine why someone is overweight or obese, they seem to virtually always blame the BMR (basal metabolism rate) as being the cause. What if another important factor might be that some people are just able to digest a higher percentage of the food they eat? Such people would tend to gain weight, wouldn't they?

My fellow fatties, you have been LIED to, when you have been accused of lying. You are taking in 3400 calories, not 2200 calories as described, or 1200 more calories/day than your doctors are willing to understand or admit, and unlike your skinny counterparts, YOU are capable of extracting a lot more calories from the food you eat. You are not photosynthesizing - you are MORE EFFICIENT!

 

[robs477]

Holy Crap Diana, You are just so unbelievable and you never cease to amaze me how smart you are. You guys still don’t know all that much about me, but, I’ve worked with smart people my whole career. I worked on the shuttle program from its inception, ***hole to elbow with some of the best Engineers, Scientists and Astronauts etc of our time, until 1996 when I left to start my own business, point being, I KNOW SMART when I see it!! And you blow me away!

As usual, you hit the nail on the head and rang my bell in particular because I have been blamed my whole life, like most of us, for being fat when I eat nothing comparatively speaking. I had to do a cut and paste on what you wrote, because after reading it TWICE, I didn’t absorb what I need to because of the complexity of it and will re-read it again when I’m not at work..lol. But, the one thing you said that really jumps out at me is this…. “What if another important factor might be that some people are just able to digest a higher percentage of the food they eat? Such people would tend to gain weight, wouldn't they?”After researching this for over 35 years and living inside my own metabolic prison, I think that is the one MAJOR over driving factor that is not being addressed by science. Yes, all the other hormonal and endocrine and thyroid pituitary adrenal interactions ARE a factor, and diet and exercise, yes, BUT, I just flat out KNOW we/I absorb too efficiently. I only poop 2-3 times per week! My body KEEPS everything and absorbs it. I never fricking eat, and when I just had my recent labs done, ALL normal, WTF????? I’m talking about vitamins, minerals, protein!! Everything normal! Then of course the Dr.’s are sure your lying! SOOO GD FRUSTRATING!

I think either the sections of our intestines that do most of the absorbing, the ileum, are either longer, or, maybe have more villa or microvilla and or some chemical hormonal trigger that allows them to “transport” absorb more efficiently delivering more nutrients faster or some combination of it all. I also believe that we “Storers” or “Super absorbers” evolved this way and are by products of our evolution where are ancestors probably came from parts of the world where they only got to eat a couple times a month, after a big hunt and their bodies learned to adapt and store everything as a survival mechanism. Again though, IMHO, the medical community and science in general still doesn’t have a flippin clue how it all works..LOL!!

 

[star0210]

Ya know...I consider myself to be a fairly smart woman. I very successfully run a multi million dollar company, but damn if I really understood what all you wrote @DianaCox. I THINK I got the jist of it. Science isn't a strong subject for me! Lol
Quite fascinating. I'm going to get my chemical engineer husband to read both articles and let him give it to me in layman's terms to make sure the jist I got is correct...lol.

 

[DianaCox]

The summary is, the amount of calories in food is HIGHER than what the packages say. Normal people don't absorb all the calories in food. There are more calories in what we eat available to superabsorbers, and many people who are morbidly obese probably absorb more of those extra calories than normal people, in addition to being highly efficient at not wasting the energy we DO absorb (lower metabolic rate, don't dissipate the excess calories as heat). Therefore, there is nothing magical, nothing that violates the laws of thermodynamics, nor are we lying about how much we (don't) eat - and YES, it is possible for morbidly obese people to gain weight while on a low or even VERY low calorie diet.

 

[Munchkin]

Tried to look up the carbon content of foods and that was a fail. Here's what's out there...Is my cheeseburger adding to global warming?

@robs477 said...some chemical hormonal trigger ... THIS is, I believe, the key to understand and treating DM2. Hormone production is stimulated by food passing through the small bowel. If food no longer comes into contact with this portion of small bowel, no more diabetes. And the DS usually bypasses most of the small intestine. A long time ago, one of my jobs was researching what specific piece of the intestine produced Secretin. The protocol I came up with was pretty close to doing the DS on a rat. In the big scheme of things the Secretin is not important. The piece that is important is I learned that we, collectively, still know nothing about intestinal hormone production and there is much more that needs to be studied.

Calorie physics vs calorie nutrition is a good distinction. The study I always wanted to do was superabsorbers vs average people. Give both groups the same calories in and see the differences in what comes out. Wouldn't be glamorous but it needs to be done.

There is another group. Makes sense that if we have superabsorbers, we have to also have superpoopers. I have known one person I can classify as a member of this group. She was a tiny Asian woman. I bring up her ethnicity because it may be a factor. An average day for her was about 8K calories and yet she maintained around 102lbs. And calorie math screams out that is not possible. She spent a lot of time in the bathroom though.

So we all laughed when @Spiky Bugger posted the glitter capsules but transit time is one of the things I would like to study. And the difference in the caloric value of the poop between the 2 groups. Cutting down transit time is also the logic behind my yet to be tried SF gummy bear diet. We know the DS cuts down transit time. Does it surgically change us from superabsorbers to superpoopers?

 

[star0210]

I'm not far enough out from my revision to know how it's going to affect my pooping. So far, I have the same issues I've had ever since I had the VSG in 2010. I don't go often at all. Sometimes only once a week and I usually have to take a laxative for that to happen. This summer in Europe..after 9 days of no poop...we finally found a pharmacy and I got some laxatives. I was miserable. It took three doses over two days before I finally went.
Right now..only nearly 3 weeks out from my revision, I'm taking stool softeners everyday (Colace) and I'm also taking a magnesium oxide pill every night. I seem to be going every other day...but not much.
But of course, I'm not hardly eating anything either...protein shakes, soups, greek yogurt...had eggs yesterday for the first time...that was like heaven! but that's about it.

 

[Larra]

Here's a very simple factor that most people don't know - we are taught that food is absorbed in the small intestine, and the colon (large intestine) only absorbs water. Turns out that some people continue to absorb nutrients, i.e. calories, in their colons, up to 500 additional calories/day. Maybe this is related to the type of bacteria populations different people have in their colons.
Those extra calories that we are so good at absorbing add up in a big hurry, and of course we as individuals have not been studied for this, but I think it's one of those factors that make some of us superabsorbers.

Which has nothing to do with the original subject of where fat goes when you lose weight, but is just one more factor in what is really a very complicated subject.

 

[Sheanie]

@star0210 , honey, you need more Magnesium Oxide. Trust me on this. I currently take 6 capsules daily, eat 6 Nutella Fat Bombs, and eat high fat. I also drink over 12 thermoses of tea a day.

 

[star0210]

@star0210 , honey, you need more Magnesium Oxide. Trust me on this. I currently take 6 capsules daily, eat 6 Nutella Fat Bombs, and eat high fat. I also drink over 12 thermoses of tea a day.

Holy crap!!
So being this early out you think it's ok to take that much? Could it be with as little as I'm eating there just isn't much poop being made in my body?
Now that I'm starting to venture out and eat some real food...I'll be able to add more fat to my diet. Last night I scrambled the one egg, but I put HWC in it and I cooked it in a big ole hunk of butter. It was yummy!

 

[Munchkin]

Here's a very simple factor that most people don't know - we are taught that food is absorbed in the small intestine, and the colon (large intestine) only absorbs water. Turns out that some people continue to absorb nutrients, i.e. calories, in their colons, up to 500 additional calories/day. Maybe this is related to the type of bacteria populations different people have in their colons.
Those extra calories that we are so good at absorbing add up in a big hurry, and of course we as individuals have not been studied for this, but I think it's one of those factors that make some of us superabsorbers.

Which has nothing to do with the original subject of where fat goes when you lose weight, but is just one more factor in what is really a very complicated subject.

Read an article several years about how we adapt to surgically induced malabsorbtion. The author thought we would start absorbing nutrients in the colon and had some data to back it up...

 

[Sheanie]

Holy crap!!
So being this early out you think it's ok to take that much? Could it be with as little as I'm eating there just isn't much poop being made in my body?
Now that I'm starting to venture out and eat some real food...I'll be able to add more fat to my diet. Last night I scrambled the one egg, but I put HWC in it and I cooked it in a big ole hunk of butter. It was yummy!

I am not telling YOU how much Mag Ox to take. I increased mine from what you are currently taking. Increase it one capsule at a time until you find your "sweet spot" for comfortable pooping.

Pre-op, I was the opposite I am now. I credit the 2,000 of calcium I take post-op.

 

[star0210]

I was never a regular go every day kind of person before my vsg. But it got much worse after my VSG.
I was really kinda hoping the DS would make me more regular!

 

[Parousia]

So much great info in this thread! Just woke up half an hour ago, so haven't had my ADD meds yet and not quite ready to tackle the numbers. Nevertheless, it all makes a great deal of sense.

I do get a bit irritated when people quote the calories in vs calories out mantra to me as the solution to all my weight problems, because it is clearly a very simplistic explanation of the reality and just gives people an excuse to abuse people who are obese and to accuse them of bringing it on themselves. Real life examples of how inaccurate that mantra is abound, if people would just take the time to stop and think about it.

My (female) IT manager, many years ago, lived on a diet of chocolates and doughnuts, and never exercised, but had a tiny frame and weighed all of 48 kg (105 lbs). Another girl I was at boarding school with ate constantly (and always had 3 slices of bread in addition to a big dinner and dessert at night, which made quite an impression on me at 11, lol!), weighed 47 kg (103.6 lbs) at 16 (fully developed) on a medium-large frame. Her case was different, because she had suffered from anorexia and almost died. After that she was always hungry, but couldn't put on weight, so obviously something had changed in the way her body processed food.