Wednesday, October 1, 2014

thermodynamics - How does mass leave the body when you lose weight?


When your body burns calories and you lose weight, obviously mass is leaving your body. In what form does it leave? In other words, what is the physical process by which the body loses weight when it burns its fuel?


Somebody said it leaves the body in the form of heat but I knew this is wrong, since heat is simply the internal kinetic energy of a lump of matter and doesn't have anything do with mass. Obviously the chemical reactions going on in the body cause it to produce heat, but this alone won't reduce its mass.




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