Musings About A Bag Of Sugar = 5 Pounds

I would say all of us have bought a bag of sugar or two in our time and we know that they weigh in at 5 pounds and they're pretty hefty and a good size bag.  Right?   But when we lose 5 pounds, we don't lose this massive size of body fat.  So it makes me wonder where we are losing the weight at and how much at a time.  I'm guessing we must lose an ounce here and a couple of ounces there, to equal a couple of pounds a week (if you're dieting, that is). 

If you google a picture of 5 lbs of fat (I did and I'm not going to post one because it's yucky), it does look bigger than this bag of sugar.   Imagine losing that in your stomach, all at once...it sure would make the clothes fit looser and make a person look a bit thinner.  And if you multiply it by 2 or 4 or 10, it just seems like one would be skinny (depending on how much they had to lose of course).  But no, unfortunately it doesn't work that way....we lose it so it isn't all that noticeable until you've lost a lot. So then I wondered, what happens to the fat that you lose? Does it just melt away or what? Then I remembered that Google is my friend, and this is what I came up with: The short answer is that our bodies convert molecules in fat cells to usable forms of energy, thus shrinking the cells. Interesting. It's too bad they don't shrink faster, or all at once in one spot like a 5 lb. bag of sugar size. Reading on, I found that muscle takes up less space than fat, so that if you have a pound of fat and a pound of muscle, the fat portion will be larger. Somehow that doesn't really make sense to me; it seems like it would be the reverse. But what do I know...I'm not a doctor or scientist. Ah well. A little here and there is better than none at all I suppose. So let me take my bag of sugar and go make cookies. ;-)