You exhale the carbon dioxide and the water mixes into your circulation until it's lost as urine or sweat. If you lose 10 pounds of fat, precisely 8.4 pounds comes out through your lungs and the remaining 1.6 pounds turns into water. In other words, nearly all the weight we lose is exhaled.
Coming to the point, you will first lose “hard fat” (visceral fat) that surrounds your organs like liver, kidneys and later, you will burn soft fat (belly fat, thigh fat, back fat, etc.). Women accumulate fat cells around their belly area, hips, thighs and these areas are usually the last from.
You will first lose hard fat that surrounds your organs like liver, kidneys and then you will start to lose soft fat like waistline and thigh fat. The fat loss from around the organs makes you leaner and stronger.
Women tend to lose weight all over, and experience fat loss first in their belly, breasts, and arms. Generally the last area they lose weight is from their lower body (hips and thighs). Depending on body shape, men generally tend to lose fat first from their trunk, followed by their arms and then their legs.
The first place men typically lose weight is the belly, while women tend to lose weight all over, but hold onto weight in their thighs and hips, Dr. Block explains.
Excess visceral fat can pose serious health risks, but when you embark on a healthy diet and exercise plan, this fat is often the first to disappear. This means you're likely to notice weight loss in your abdominal area first. Too much visceral fat can make your belly protrude.
Research shows that 84% of fat loss is exhaled as carbon dioxide. The remaining 16% of fat is excreted as water. During the conversion of energy, carbon dioxide, and water are byproducts of waste. They are excreted via urine, perspiration, and exhalation.
While everyone loses weight differently, dropping as little as 3 to 5 pounds can show up on your face first, Eboli says.
As against areas such as legs, face and arms, our stomach and abdominal regions possess beta cells that makes it difficult to reduce the fats easily and lose weight in these areas. However, as per research, belly fat is the most difficult to lose as the fat there is so much harder to break down.
The bottom line
When your body uses fat for fuel, the byproducts of fat metabolism are often excreted through urine. While peeing more frequently is unlikely to lead to weight loss, increasing your intake of water may support your weight loss goals.
In terms of how your body looks, “it usually takes 4 weeks for your friends to notice weight loss, and 6–8 weeks for you to notice,” says Ramsey Bergeron, a certified personal trainer. “Your friends who don't see you every day are much more likely to see a change than someone you're around all the time,” he adds.
On average, a 15 to 20-pound loss (approximately 2 to 5 percent of your starting body weight) is enough to notice "significant changes in your body," he said. You can start seeing differences in yourself as early as two weeks with rapid weight loss.
"A lot of people feel and look less tight and toned when they stop working out," he explains. "It's more of a cosmetic thing." When you aren't working out regularly, your body composition starts to change. With little physical activity, muscle cells will shrink.
Instead of nutrients fueling your body, some of them, including fat, can be passed in your stools. If you have a condition that makes it difficult to digest fat, you may also develop fatty stools or fecal fat. When this happens, you may experience digestive issues such as pain, gas, or diarrhea.
In addition to an oily appearance, your urine might also have a milky white color. This is due to the presence of fat and protein in lymph fluid.
The unused calories from dietary fat and alcohol also are converted into body fat. Body fat, then, is the stored form of excess calories from any food source. Your body converts the fat you eat into body fat much more efficiently than it converts carbohydrate, protein or alcohol.
If you are on a low-carb diet, it will help you lose weight as there will be water loss from glycogen in the muscles. But in this case, fat will not burn. Also, if you are doing cardio, you may lose weight quickly but burning belly fat might take time.
It's possible to gain muscle and reduce body fat without actually seeing a change in your weight. This happens when you lose body fat while gaining muscle. Your weight may stay the same, even as you lose inches, a sign that you're moving in the right direction.
Hunger indicates that you are running low on nutrients and energy, not that your body is starting to burn fat storage. Furthermore, long-lasting hunger induced by the drastic calorie restriction is an indicator of starvation, which will only slow down your metabolism and weight loss.
The first week you're on a diet, almost 70 percent of weight loss is water, Clayton says, a rate which drops to about 20 to 30 percent over a couple of weeks and then stabilizes as your body starts tapping into fat stores.
A loss of fat in the facial region can happen due to the natural aging process, weight loss, a shift in hormone levels, exposure to UV rays, smoking, injury, along with certain medical conditions that necessitate the consumption of specific medicines that prompt volume loss.