When you’ve lost weight in the past and experienced looser pants and lower numbers on the scale, have you ever wondered where those pounds went? You probably lost some water weight, and possibly lean muscle if you weren’t exercising, but hopefully the majority of the weight lost was fat. To make sure your next weight loss endeavor causes fat loss, it’s helpful to understand the process. Here, we break down the fat-burning process for you:

Understand how fat is converted to energy.

In the simplest form, our bodies break down fat molecules and put them to use as energy. When we’re primarily burning fat for energy, our bodies are in a state called ketosis. During this metabolic state, the body generates molecules called ketones. One particular ketone is called acetone. Because of its small size, acetone appears as a molecule in our exhaled breath as an indicator of fat burn. The more fat your body is metabolizing at any given time, the more acetone molecules there are in your breath.

Fire up your body’s fat-burning capabilities.

Your body always consumes fat for energy, but you can enhance that conversion of fat to energy production by doing one of the following: eating a high-fat/low-carb diet (also called a ketogenic diet) or changing to a calorie-restrictive diet. In a ketogenic diet, the majority of calories are acquired from fats because you’re only consuming less than 50 grams of carbohydrates. With a calorie deficit, you will notice elevated levels of acetone in your breath because your body is using its fat stores for energy.

Know when your body is burning fat.

The technology that will be used by the groundbreaking LEVL device is designed to detect trace amounts of acetone in your breath. After breathing into LEVL, your breath will be captured and analyzed, instantly providing you with a measurement of your acetone concentration. Scientific literature demonstrates that the higher your acetone level, the more fat you’re burning. When your body increases the amount of fat it’s using for energy, relative to the amount of carbohydrates, your breath acetone concentration levels ramp up. This increase happens over the course of three to seven days, until you reach an elevated level of breath acetone. By breathing into LEVL consistently, you would be able to know if your body is burning fat and modify your behaviors to fire up the fat-frying process.