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About seven years ago,

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I saw this photo of myself

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and decided that I had to do

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something about this thing.

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So I ate less food,
moved around a bit more,

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and lo and behold, this happened.

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I lost 16 kilograms.

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And you're probably wondering,

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How did he do it?

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But I was wondering,

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Where did the 16 kilograms go?

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And I've been infatuated
with this question ever since.

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I ended up publishing a paper about it
in the British Medical Journal,

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very brief paper - 850 words, two figures.

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And then, I published a book about it,
which was no bestseller

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because it told you

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that you had to eat less
and move more to lose weight.

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No one wants to hear that.

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But it's now a first-year subject
at the University of New South Wales,

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and so I better explain

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that I did not figure out
where fat goes when you lose weight.

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That was done a long time ago.

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In fact, here's some time posts for you.

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When Captain Cook sailed
past Bundaberg in 1770,

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we didn't know what happens to fat
when you lose weight.

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But when the First Fleet
sailed into Sydney Cove,

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we did know the answer,

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and it was all figured out
by this bloke in between.

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His name's Antoine Lavoisier.

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He figured out that respiration
is a combustion.

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You turn food into
carbon dioxide and water.

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And in the process, nothing is lost.

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Nothing is created.

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Everything is just transformed.

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And so, what did I do?

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Well, when I lost weight and I first
thought about this, I was so infatuated.

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I wanted to know

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if I lose 10 kilos, where
does the 10 kilos go precisely?

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And it took me months to figure this out.

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But it turns out that
when you lose weight,

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8.4 kilos out of every 10
comes out of your lungs,

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which I think is the best fact
I've ever heard, so I gave -

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you've got to add oxygen to do this,
so you can't do it (snap) like that.

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It takes a while.

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So I gave a talk about this at TEDxQUT
a long time ago now,

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and then I did a story
for ABC TV Catalyst,

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and I met this fellow, 
Professor Andrew Brown,

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who teaches biochemistry.

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And I showed him my calculations,

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and he said, "That's pretty interesting.

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Let's try and get that published."

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And so he helped me get it
into the British Medical Journal.

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And the other thing we did

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was we surveyed 150 doctors,
dieticians and personal trainers

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and asked them what they thought.

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And here's the thing:

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what they think happens is impossible.

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You can't turn fat into energy,
because it's made of atoms.

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And you would need antimatter atoms
to annihilate them.

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So that's literally impossible.

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And since then,
I've realised, well, hang on,

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this is part of a much bigger gap
in health literacy.

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I've asked literally thousands
of kids this question:

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When you breathe in,
what are you inhaling? Oxygen.

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And what are you exhaling?

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Carbon dioxide.

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What they don't realise
is that they're breathing in atoms,

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and two go in, but three come out.

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And it's this atom here
that is the gap in health literacy.

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It's also the secret to weight loss

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because it means that your exhaled breath
is heavier than your inhaled breath.

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And when you ask around,
so few people know this.

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Well, have a listen to these people:

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(Audio) Ruben Meerman: What's
the gas that you inhale in out of the air

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that keeps you alive called?

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Oxygen.

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Oxygen.

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RM: And what's the gas you breathe out
because you're alive?

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Carbon dioxide?

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Carbon dioxide?

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RM: Now third question.

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Where did the carbon atoms
in the carbon dioxide come from?

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Oh ...

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I don't know.

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(Chuckle) No idea.

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I've got no idea.

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I wouldn't have a clue, mate.

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Ooh, ahhhh.

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Ummmm, wow! Good question.

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I should have concentrated
more in chemistry.

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So where do carbon atoms come from? Or ...

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Umm, pollution?

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Fumes? Gas?

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Cars and stuff? I don't know.

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Yeah. Vehicles.

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Don't know.

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Cow poop? (Laughter)

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Should know, but don't know.

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So to be somewhere in the body, right?

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Out of my lungs.

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My lungs?

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From the environment?

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From your blood stream?

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From living things?

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Maybe from the blood?

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From plants?

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My chemistry days are over.
I've got nothing.

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From the food we eat?

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RM: You know that! You got there!

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Really?

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So you eat it.

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RM: Yeah

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We eat it? From what?

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RM: Have you heard of carbohydrates?

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Yes.

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Oh, yes. Oh, OK.

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RM: What do you think
the carbo bit means?

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Carbon dioxide.

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Probably carbon dioxide?
Does it connect to somewhere?

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Like carbon and hydrogen
and oxygen together?

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RM: Yes!

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Carbon - carbohydrate, yeah.

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It's not the same word.

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Never thought. It's C-H-A.
Carbon-hydrogen.

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OK, interesting.

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RM: What do you do for a crust?

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I'm a PDH PE teacher.

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(Onstage) This is not a gap
in health literacy.

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This is a gaping black hole
in health literacy.

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And the amazing thing is we supposedly
learned all this stuff at school.

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We learned all the dots, but no one ever
teaches you how to connect them.

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So the word carbohydrates is the big clue,

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and that's because it stands
for carbon atoms

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that have been hydrated by -

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well, if you're dehydrated,
you need to drink water.

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And water has a chemical formula,
which stands for a bunch of atoms.

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So where do these carbohydrates
that you eat come from?

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I mean what is this stuff?

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And it all starts in plants.

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So Step 1 in making carbohydrates
is plants suck water out of the soil.

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They take the water molecules,

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stick it into a molecule
called chlorophyll,

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you've all heard of.

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It takes a photon of sunlight
to zap that bond and zap that bond,

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and now we have the atoms free.

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You do that twice,

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and you've got enough atoms now
to make an oxygen molecule,

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which is the waste product
of photosynthesis.

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And by the way, you breathe that stuff.

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So every oxygen molecule you inhale
came from two water molecules.

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Step 2 is to take carbon dioxide
out of the air into the leaf,

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and into a chemical process,
which is called the Calvin Cycle.

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And if you get six carbon atoms
and stick them together,

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you can make glucose,

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which is the most important
carbohydrate in the cosmos.

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If you rearrange those atoms,
then you can make fructose,

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which is what sugarcane does,

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which I have a stalk of over there,

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and if you stick it in sunlight,

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it will turn carbon dioxide
and water into sugar.

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If you stick glucose to fructose,

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you get table sugar,

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and if you stick galactose to glucose,

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you get another famous disaccharide.

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It's called lactose.

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If you're lactose intolerant,

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you can't break the bonds between
this oxygen atom and its neighbours.

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So all of this stuff is understandable
if you know about atoms,

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and it all starts in plants.

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But you don't just eat carbohydrates.

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So here's everything that you eat,

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all the macronutrients.

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We've looked at carbs.

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Here's fats.

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The three most common
fatty acids in nature?

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palmitic acid gets its name from palm oil,

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oleic from olive oil.

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There's only three atoms there though.

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Three kinds. Three elements.

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And if you stick those three fatty acids
to a glycerin molecule,

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you'll make a triglyceride.

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This is what olive oil is;

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this is what every fat in nature is.

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It's the fat in your fat cells
that you want to lose

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if you're trying to lose weight.

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And when you burn it,

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what you're really doing is turning it
into carbon dioxide and water.

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You call it metabolism.

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People say they're burning fat.

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It means you're turning it
into carbon dioxide and water.

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And there's two ways to do it.

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The main highway is called
the beta oxidation pathway,

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but there's another way
called the ketogenic pathway,

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and the low-carb people
will be all over this.

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It's taking fatty acids and turning them
into smaller molecules -

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acetyl acetate - which can then
be turned into acetone,

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and beta hydroxybutarate.

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But the point is you still add oxygen

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and it still turns
into carbon dioxide and water,

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so it doesn't matter
what kind of diet you're on.

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If you're burning fat,
you're turning it into CO2 and H2O.

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And alcohol's made
of the same three atoms.

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Protein's an interesting one.

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It's made out of 20 kinds of amino acids,

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but there's only two more kinds of atoms.

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So for all their complexity,
there's only five elements.

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And if you eat them -
well, let's take a look.

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Because to make a human,
you need those 20 amino acids.

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All the protein in nature
is made out of these 20 amino acids.

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A baby, a human,

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is 60% water, 16% protein, 19% fat
and 5% a bit of other stuff.

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And when you burn protein,

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if you eat a lot of it,
you can't store it.

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So you'll burn it, and you'll turn it
into carbon dioxide and water,

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a bit of urea and some sulfate.

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Those two things will end up
in the toilet via your bladder,

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and now you know
where everything that you eat goes.

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You might be wondering, though,

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"I'm eating carbon, hydrogen, oxygen.

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What's all this talk about diets?"

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Amazingly, this junk diet is also made
of nothing but carbon, hydrogen, oxygen,

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but you're not getting
many vitamins and minerals.

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So let's take a look at those.

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Here's all 14 vitamins
that you need to eat.

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If you don't eat them, you'll get scurvy,
beriberi rickets - you'll go blind.

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But the amazing thing is

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per day, you only need
about half a gram of this stuff.

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The 14 elements that you have to take,
we call them minerals.

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Here they are.

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These are the recommended daily intakes,

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and if you stick all that together,
it's seven grams worth of stuff.

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It's not very much.

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That's why we call them micronutrients.

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So when I tell people this,

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the first question I get asked is
"So what? I just have to breathe more?"

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And they'll start hyperventilating.

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(Laughter)

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So let's talk about breathing.

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Talk to anyone who works in an ICU unit,

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and they'll tell you that a human
who's lying perfectly still

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needs 3.5 millilitres of oxygen,

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and 2.6 to 2.9 millilitres of CO2
will come out of them

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per kilogram of that person.

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Now, I weigh 72 kilos,

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so that means I need about
252 millilitres of oxygen

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just to stay alive.

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That's 15 litres per hour, and over here,
I have an hour's worth of breathing.

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00:11:01,015 --> 00:11:02,988
This is how much air I have to breathe

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just to get that one balloon of oxygen
into my bloodstream.

250
00:11:07,436 --> 00:11:09,110
A balloon is about 15 litres.

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00:11:09,746 --> 00:11:15,334
So that's how much oxygen I need per hour
just to stay awake and alive -

252
00:11:15,624 --> 00:11:17,506
not awake, sorry - I mean alive.

253
00:11:17,506 --> 00:11:19,469
It's my resting metabolic rate.

254
00:11:19,469 --> 00:11:24,047
And in that hour, when I breathe
all this air back out again,

255
00:11:24,047 --> 00:11:26,345
it'll have a balloon worth of CO2 in it,

256
00:11:26,345 --> 00:11:29,418
and these numbers just get better
and better and better.

257
00:11:29,418 --> 00:11:34,414
If you add up all the carbon
atoms in that much CO2,

258
00:11:34,414 --> 00:11:38,399
it's 136 to 151 grams a day
of just carbon.

259
00:11:38,399 --> 00:11:39,925
It's about a kilo a week.

260
00:11:39,925 --> 00:11:43,046
It's about 49 to 55 kilos a year.

261
00:11:43,046 --> 00:11:46,683
If you want to lose weight,
don't eat that much carbon back in.

262
00:11:46,683 --> 00:11:50,700
That's the whole key
to breathing yourself thin.

263
00:11:52,310 --> 00:11:57,202
Doctors will - if you are not breathing,
they will monitor your breathing.

264
00:11:57,202 --> 00:11:58,891
If you're having an operation,

265
00:11:58,891 --> 00:12:00,960
the anaesthetist
will look for your breaths.

266
00:12:00,960 --> 00:12:03,467
This is how much CO2
there should be in your breath.

267
00:12:03,733 --> 00:12:08,061
If you hyperventilate,
your body is not producing more CO2.

268
00:12:08,061 --> 00:12:10,374
You're just breathing out
more than you need to,

269
00:12:10,374 --> 00:12:11,538
and so this will happen.

270
00:12:11,538 --> 00:12:13,712
You're pumping out
more than you're making;

271
00:12:13,723 --> 00:12:16,169
the amount in your body will go down.

272
00:12:16,169 --> 00:12:17,900
It's called hypocapnia.

273
00:12:17,900 --> 00:12:21,609
It will lead to a loss of consciousness
if you do it for too long.

274
00:12:21,609 --> 00:12:22,719
And some people ask me:

275
00:12:22,719 --> 00:12:25,626
"What about people
who have COPD or emphysema?

276
00:12:25,626 --> 00:12:29,564
Could they get overweight
because they can't get rid of enough CO2?"

277
00:12:29,564 --> 00:12:32,155
Well, they can't do the Calvin Cycle -

278
00:12:32,155 --> 00:12:33,292
a plant can -

279
00:12:33,292 --> 00:12:35,887
so you can't turn the CO2
that you're not breathing out

280
00:12:35,887 --> 00:12:36,902
back into fat.

281
00:12:36,902 --> 00:12:38,478
It's impossible.

282
00:12:38,668 --> 00:12:43,540
So, you know, there's a lot
of misconceptions about this business.

283
00:12:44,052 --> 00:12:48,610
Now, it takes a while to breathe out
the carbon that you eat.

284
00:12:48,610 --> 00:12:52,234
So let's have a look at how much carbon
you can put in really quickly.

285
00:12:52,234 --> 00:12:53,708
I quite like this stuff,

286
00:12:53,708 --> 00:12:57,780
and there is a lot of sugar
in lemon-flavoured soft drink.

287
00:12:57,780 --> 00:12:59,008
It's one of the highest.

288
00:12:59,008 --> 00:13:01,236
So, how much sugar are we talking about?

289
00:13:02,786 --> 00:13:04,617
Well, one stick is 3 grams,

290
00:13:04,617 --> 00:13:07,039
so there's 23
and a third of a stick in there,

291
00:13:07,039 --> 00:13:08,375
which looks like this.

292
00:13:09,005 --> 00:13:12,353
And if you want to turn that much sugar
into carbon dioxide and water,

293
00:13:12,353 --> 00:13:13,939
well, it's going to take a while.

294
00:13:13,939 --> 00:13:16,426
You're going to need to breathe in
that much oxygen.

295
00:13:16,426 --> 00:13:17,789
You'll make that much CO2.

296
00:13:17,789 --> 00:13:19,987
How much is that?
It's four balloons worth.

297
00:13:19,987 --> 00:13:22,284
And it's four balloons' worth of CO2.

298
00:13:22,284 --> 00:13:26,089
So, how long is it going to take me
to breathe out that much carbon?

299
00:13:26,089 --> 00:13:28,386
It's going to take me four hours

300
00:13:28,386 --> 00:13:32,429
because I only breathe out one balloon
of carbon dioxide per hour

301
00:13:32,429 --> 00:13:33,752
if I stay still,

302
00:13:33,752 --> 00:13:37,342
but if I go for a walk,
I'll breathe it out in an hour.

303
00:13:37,342 --> 00:13:40,216
If I run, it'll only take me 30 minutes.

304
00:13:40,216 --> 00:13:42,384
That's why they say eat less, move more.

305
00:13:42,384 --> 00:13:45,075
Because when you're moving more,
you're breathing more.

306
00:13:45,075 --> 00:13:46,907
And there's always CO2 in your breath.

307
00:13:46,907 --> 00:13:49,580
What about if we compare it
to something a bit healthier?

308
00:13:49,580 --> 00:13:51,706
Because this has got vitamins
and amino acids

309
00:13:51,706 --> 00:13:53,711
and all the good stuff in it.

310
00:13:53,711 --> 00:13:55,313
But if we take those ingredients,

311
00:13:55,313 --> 00:13:58,924
and we chuck it 
into the equation for food,

312
00:13:58,924 --> 00:14:01,883
then you discover that, actually,
it's four hours as well.

313
00:14:01,883 --> 00:14:06,725
And so is this tuna salad sandwich
on organic wholemeal bread,

314
00:14:06,725 --> 00:14:10,688
grown on the north side of the hill,
blessed by a monk, all the things.

315
00:14:10,688 --> 00:14:11,713
(Laughter)

316
00:14:11,713 --> 00:14:13,910
But it's still four hours 
of breathing, right?

317
00:14:13,910 --> 00:14:17,243
So the point is they're not equivalent
in how healthy they are,

318
00:14:17,243 --> 00:14:19,942
but they are equivalent
in how long they take to exhale.

319
00:14:19,942 --> 00:14:21,291
An apple takes an hour;

320
00:14:21,291 --> 00:14:24,189
a fun size chocolate bar,
an hour, 10 minutes;

321
00:14:24,189 --> 00:14:27,524
regular size, 3.5 hours;
and a king-sized, 5.25.

322
00:14:27,524 --> 00:14:30,214
If you're trying to lose weight,
don't drink soft drink,

323
00:14:30,214 --> 00:14:32,051
because that's got carbon atoms in it.

324
00:14:32,051 --> 00:14:33,520
Drink water.

325
00:14:33,520 --> 00:14:36,796
If you like this stuff -
and who doesn't? -

326
00:14:36,796 --> 00:14:38,749
a large coffee and a piece of cake.

327
00:14:38,749 --> 00:14:40,810
That's 10 hours of breathing

328
00:14:40,810 --> 00:14:43,231
between breakfast and lunch.

329
00:14:43,231 --> 00:14:44,929
So be careful.

330
00:14:44,929 --> 00:14:47,972
A large, lovely burger
like this guy - 7 hours.

331
00:14:47,972 --> 00:14:50,817
Have a large fries with it, 13 hours;

332
00:14:50,817 --> 00:14:53,380
large drink, 16 hours;

333
00:14:53,850 --> 00:14:57,539
bang in a large sundae -
it's a whole day worth of breathing.

334
00:14:57,539 --> 00:14:59,668
You can see why
there's an obesity epidemic,

335
00:14:59,668 --> 00:15:02,692
but no one knows what really
is going on in their body.

336
00:15:02,692 --> 00:15:06,478
So, usually, we talk about
calories in, calories out.

337
00:15:06,478 --> 00:15:08,709
How's this information going to help you?

338
00:15:08,709 --> 00:15:11,307
Well, I would like to talk about
atoms in, atoms out.

339
00:15:11,307 --> 00:15:15,972
And when you're counting calories,
you're actually counting carbon atoms

340
00:15:15,972 --> 00:15:18,786
because the energy in food

341
00:15:18,786 --> 00:15:22,210
is wherever you see a carbon
and a hydrogen atom stuck together.

342
00:15:22,600 --> 00:15:24,479
And it's in all food.

343
00:15:24,479 --> 00:15:27,972
So just - and it's sunlight
that put that there.

344
00:15:27,972 --> 00:15:33,502
So my project that I really want to get up
and running here at Bundaberg

345
00:15:33,502 --> 00:15:35,477
is let's teach your children this,

346
00:15:35,477 --> 00:15:36,492
and you can do it.

347
00:15:36,492 --> 00:15:38,416
Little kids love learning about atoms.

348
00:15:38,416 --> 00:15:40,630
Adults freak out at the idea.

349
00:15:41,286 --> 00:15:43,889
But little kids absolutely love it.

350
00:15:43,889 --> 00:15:46,976
This is Ithaca Creek
State School in Brisbane.

351
00:15:46,976 --> 00:15:49,253
This is a school in India,

352
00:15:49,253 --> 00:15:53,008
and these kids are using amino,
and they're making amino acids

353
00:15:53,008 --> 00:15:55,178
and sticking them together
to build a protein.

354
00:15:55,178 --> 00:15:59,496
You can do that with amazing resource
that my friend Ian Stewart invented.

355
00:15:59,836 --> 00:16:01,372
They're called "sticky atoms".

356
00:16:01,372 --> 00:16:04,792
He's a retired physics
and chemistry teacher.

357
00:16:04,792 --> 00:16:06,205
He taught in Brisbane.

358
00:16:06,205 --> 00:16:09,660
They have magnetic bonds
so three-year-olds, even younger,

359
00:16:09,660 --> 00:16:12,255
can play with these things
and learn about atoms.

360
00:16:12,255 --> 00:16:14,163
And for the educators in the room,

361
00:16:14,171 --> 00:16:17,949
they conform to the concrete
pictorial abstract way of teaching.

362
00:16:17,949 --> 00:16:19,685
It's a fantastic pedagogy,

363
00:16:19,685 --> 00:16:21,703
and Ian and I are hoping to work together.

364
00:16:21,703 --> 00:16:24,594
We took this out backstage,
just moments ago.

365
00:16:24,594 --> 00:16:28,605
Because what we want to do
is teach children

366
00:16:28,605 --> 00:16:31,278
what's actually going on in their bodies.

367
00:16:31,618 --> 00:16:33,318
And you can't do that

368
00:16:33,318 --> 00:16:37,168
if you're not talking about
the atoms that they're made of.

369
00:16:37,642 --> 00:16:39,521
Unfortunately,

370
00:16:39,521 --> 00:16:42,878
the curriculum does not introduce
the concept of atoms and molecules

371
00:16:42,878 --> 00:16:45,685
until kids are in Grade 9,

372
00:16:45,685 --> 00:16:49,262
and they don't see the periodic table
until they're in Grade 10.

373
00:16:49,262 --> 00:16:50,407
Why?

374
00:16:50,407 --> 00:16:56,316
Because a fellow called Jean Piaget,
who was kind of a contemporary of Freud.

375
00:16:56,676 --> 00:16:59,422
He thought that kids
can't have these abstract thoughts

376
00:16:59,422 --> 00:17:02,168
until they're about 14.

377
00:17:03,091 --> 00:17:05,665
We don't use Freud's psychology anymore.

378
00:17:05,665 --> 00:17:08,347
We still learn it, but we don't use it.

379
00:17:08,347 --> 00:17:09,367
But our curriculum

380
00:17:09,367 --> 00:17:13,798
is still under the spell
of a person who died long ago,

381
00:17:13,798 --> 00:17:17,607
whose ideas about education were, well,
someone had to have those ideas,

382
00:17:17,607 --> 00:17:18,931
but they were wrong.

383
00:17:19,199 --> 00:17:23,913
So I hope to see what happens
if kids grow up with this knowledge.

384
00:17:23,913 --> 00:17:28,150
In 10 years, what do obesity rates
look like in a town like Bundaberg

385
00:17:28,150 --> 00:17:32,396
if all the children learn this
at primary school?

386
00:17:32,396 --> 00:17:35,478
Will they grow up to accept the advice

387
00:17:35,478 --> 00:17:41,525
that to lose weight, just eat less,
move more and keep breathing?

388
00:17:41,946 --> 00:17:43,244
Thank you.

389
00:17:43,244 --> 00:17:45,659
(Applause)