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Mitochondria use oxygen and the nutrients from the food you eat to produce energy. Most of the energy produced by your mitochondria comes from breakdown of glucose or fat from your diet. Since the mitochondria produce the energy used by other parts of your cells and throughout your body, they must have some way to transport this energy. They do this using a molecule called adenosine triphosphate, or ATP. ATP is like an energy currency in your body: it can be produced in one part of the cell and transported to another place where it is 'spent' for energy.
ATP transports energy through a high-energy phosphate that is removed at the site where its energy is used. When ATP gives up, or 'spends,' its energy, such as when your muscles need energy for movement, this high-energy phosphate is stripped off the ATP, and it becomes adenosine diphosphate, or ADP. ADP is then transported back to your mitochondria, where it can have another high-energy phosphate put on it to form ATP again, and therefore -- like an energy shuttle moving the energy back and forth ' it is used and reused to transport energy.
On an average day in which you are not doing anything particularly strenuous, you will use the equivalent of roughly half of what you weigh in ATP, about 40 kilograms. Approximately 90% of the oxygen you breathe will be used by your mitochondria to produce this energy. Since the ATP is recycled to ADP and then converted back to ATP to transport more energy, you don't gain or lose weight in this energy generation process. The production of energy uses a multitude of nutrients, as well as many other molecules from food. Let's take a closer look at the chemical reactions involved in energy production and where these nutrients function during the production of ATP.
