drethelin comments on Solved Problems Repository - Less Wrong

25 Post author: Qiaochu_Yuan 27 March 2013 04:51AM

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Comment author: shminux 28 March 2013 07:57:57PM *  1 point [-]

the mechanism by which burning calories actually causes you to lose weight is exhalation of carbon dioxide

Probably not as much as excreting all the unprocessed food from the other end.

Comment author: drethelin 28 March 2013 08:31:21PM 1 point [-]

That's not true. Most of the material in bowel movements was never in your fat to begin with.

Comment author: shminux 28 March 2013 08:35:32PM 1 point [-]

Indeed not from burning calories, sorry. However, it still has to be subtracted from the intake, just like the amount you exhale, so reducing absorption is just as important as increasing burning.