LIFO or FIFO? A fat accounting question

BikeSwimLaugh

BikeSwimLaugh

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LIFO Last In First Out
FIFO First In First Out

Accounting terms indeed. It applies to inventory and value assessment. Enter Greenhorn Gal :) (she's a bean counter of sorts).

As it applies to body-fat. I'm just curious, do we burn the fat most recently stored or do we take a mix of old & new and am I tapping into reserves that were stored many many years ago. Just a curious question.

Now that I've lost a lot of weight and am leaner then I've probably ever been.....when I'm burning fat, am I actually burning fat that was stored from eating too many donuts when I was in High School some 25 years ago??? As example, if I ate too much it got stored as fat...and then if I continue to eat more and more and more and got 80-pounds overweight, how would the fat be burned as the 80 come off? Does the body constantly exchange in & out of the fat so it's always being rotated....or am I tapping into fat that was stored on my body some quarter-century ago?

If you know what I mean, great...if not, I don't think I can explain it any other way. I know it really doesn't matter, but I'm just curious if anybody has any thoughts on this.
 
I would assume that since we lose and gain fat uniformly, we lose fat from different times completely randomly. Fat doesn't slab on in layers, fat cells all over the body grow and shrink
 
Accountant here, and while I don't have an answer for you, I do find this thread awesome, in a nerdy, accounting type way. I am always partial to FIFO, but both have their place. Hehehe
 
I'm a software engineer, and we use FIFO and LIFO to explain various data structures (as in queues and stacks). Queues are FIFO, as in a line, and Stacks are LIFO, as in a pez dispenser.... just interesting to me to find that accountants also use FIFO and LIFO. As for the fat dispensing question, I tend to agree with already mentioned opinions, my understanding is the body decides what fat to burn when... so I think you may be burning up a mixture.
 
I laughed out loud when I read the name of the post. I'm majoring in accounting and finance in university.

I couldn't begin to tell you the answer as to which fat stores our body uses first - but I do wonder if our body is allowed to switch inventory systems annually to generate the highest net income or to give the prettiest balance sheet...just wondering:cool:
 
:luxlove: I LOVE it when burly contractor guys ponder the nuances of accounting! I, too, love this thread! :luxlove:

I love it even MORE cuz I was pondering this VERY concept the other day!!

I think the safe answer is that it's a mixture--who can really prove it wrong? However, I would like to make a logical argument for the FIFO method...

Our bodies all have a "fat pattern"--a manner in which our bodies add fat when we are gaining weight. For example (OK, not like I can really remember 150 lbs ago), mine starts on my butt and thighs, then moves to the stomach, then onwards to the farther reaches of parts--arms, back, neck, face, etc. As I have lost weight, it has come off of me in much the same way it went on--first off of those farther reaching parts, leaving piles on the belly, butt, and thighs. In fact, enough of my subcutaneous fat is gone that I now have some hard lumps of fat that I can feel on my hips. If I concentrate on my lumpy-fat areas, chant a mantra and meditate for awhile, I see visions of the restaurant I worked in as a late-teenager, and feel the vibe of my long-lost high school sweetheart. I definitely think that while there is a mixture, the very first place you put it on is the very last place you take it off.

And, to discuss the next point on the molecular level, it would be extremely inefficient for the body to burn a fat molecule deposited at age 16 with a fat molecule acquired today, just to rotate it and keep it "fresh". Fat is storage, not a constantly rotating population of fat cells. I don't think we could get fat for all the energy it would take to rotate them all!

This mix of psuedo-science and accounting is getting me hot--wish we weren't talking about fat!

Great topic, BSL!
 
shieldst said:
I laughed out loud when I read the name of the post. I'm majoring in accounting and finance in university.
cool:
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Bwahahahaha......perhaps I should have called this thread "Calling all Nerds" ;)

Nahh....I'm just kidding. In our battle to fight and rid our bodies of fat, there's nothing wrong contemplating how it all works. Want to know what inspired me on this topic? Lately I've been cranking hard in spin-class and really burning-up some fat that I IMAGINE has been on my body for years. Sometimes I get a weak feeling or more like I'm burning "bad fuel"...so I rather imagined it's because I'm tapping-into and burning old fat that isn't quite as potent, fresh or clean. I know, absurd, eh?

I've heard stories about people who did LSD in the 60's and some of the residual stuff gets caught/trapped in their fat cells and then years later it suddenly gets released (like a pocket of trapped air) and they get a quick rush/high. Seriously, I'm not kidding or making it up.


limestix said:
I would assume that since we lose and gain fat uniformly, we lose fat from different times completely randomly. Fat doesn't slab on in layers, fat cells all over the body grow and shrink
Click to expand...

I agree. I rather imagine our fat-storage as being a big flexible bladder of sorts, like a gas tank on a car that has the ability to expand & contract depending on how much is put in it. Actually, our fat storage IS a set-amount of fat cells that have the capacity to get larger or smaller, so it's like millions of little gas tanks. I've been told that our body doesn't make more fat-cells, it just make the cells we have get larger as we get heavier/fatter.

Anyways, much like a gas tank....I'm sure we still have a molecule or two of gas remaining in our tanks from the very first fill-up we made years ago when we first bought our cars: added gas just gets mixed with old gas and unless the tank goes completely dry, there's always a mix (granted diluted) of original gas in the tank. That's my theory. I don't think the fat is static, it's all constantly being tapped, spent & added to.

Hey, why think when you can OVER-THINK? :)

Next question: if you wear REALLY tight clothing over your fat areas, will the pressure help push-out the fat and convert it into energy more so then if we wore loose-fitting clothes? I propose we burn more fat (proportionally, relative to glycogen) when we wear tight clothing. There's a woman who had really small B-cup breast and she applied a large vacuum-dome to her breast: it sucked all the fat from her butt and moved it into her breast....now she has a tiny butt and DD breast! No, really...I read it in a reliable source: The Enquirer, right next to the section about how Aliens impregnated Brittney Spears! :D

Mirror-mirror on the wall, who's the most whacked mo-fo of 'em all? BSL's your man!!! :) But hey, if you can't laugh, what's the point of it all? ;)
 
BikeSwimLaugh said:
Next question: if you wear REALLY tight clothing over your fat areas, will the pressure help push-out the fat and convert it into energy more so then if we wore loose-fitting clothes? I propose we burn more fat (proportionally, relative to glycogen) when we wear tight clothing. There's a woman who had really small B-cup breast and she applied a large vacuum-dome to her breast: it sucked all the fat from her butt and moved it into her breast....now she has a tiny butt and DD breast! No, really...I read it in a reliable source: The Enquirer, right next to the section about how Aliens impregnated Brittney Spears! :D

Mirror-mirror on the wall, who's the most whacked mo-fo of 'em all? BSL's your man!!! :) But hey, if you can't laugh, what's the point of it all? ;)
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I was actually convinced that the reason I never got fat was because I always wore such tight clothing. The fat cells had no room to expand, so any fat I ate was simply disposed of ;)
 
i_love_muscle said:
I was actually convinced that the reason I never got fat was because I always wore such tight clothing. The fat cells had no room to expand, so any fat I ate was simply disposed of ;)
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Absolutely brilliant!!! Think about it; people who tend to wear tight clothes tend to be thinner and in good shape, so your theory stands to reason! Very similar to my theory that if you eat all your meals with a small fork the calories don't stick to the food. ;)
 
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