Here's a question that I hope doesn't sound to silly for you guys. I was wondering where the fat goes when a person losses weight durning the week.
I know some of it is water one loses by sweating. What about the actual fat? Is it absorbed? I read somewhere on here that when one losses say 5 lbs the space that 5lbs took is replaced with water then later expelled.

I believe it's burned off as energy.The way I understand it is food we eat is used for energy and what is not used right away is stored in the form of fat.We lose weight because we are burning off more fat then we are storing.

It goes from the fat cells to almost every cell in your body. In these other
cells it gets metabolized (burned) and ends up as carbon dioxide and water.
The energy that was in the fat is put into another compound called adenosine . (quote from nutrition help web site)

In other words, energy is being extracted from fat for your body to acccomplish it's regular duties (Move, digest, pump blood through each part of your body) What is not being used from the fat is expelled while urinating or doing number 2

You're right PamPSM - when you're using more energy than you're taking in as food, your body metabolizes the fat to get at the energy your body stored previously. There's a lot of complicated cellular biology going on to make that happen, but the end result is that you are powering your cells with energy, radiating some excess as heat and excreting what's left over in your, ahem, 1&2. That's one of the reasons that it's important to drink lots of water while you're losing - the breakdown products from fat are more nasty than the products from food and you want to flush that out of your system as quickly as you can!

Hope that helps!
Solarmama

Frenchiepolarbear;Your the man! Good answer and so detailed. I love learning new things. Solarmama,hi,thanks and nice to meet you.

WOW you guys are AWESOME!!! Give yourselfs a big hand!!! THANKS = )

Great info. I too never really thought about where it went to. I know that you keep your actual fat cells ... they just get smaller but I never thought about the stuff that was in them and where it went to.