Tuesday, February 10, 2015

The Muscle Will "Turn to into Fat" Myth

A client told me that his girlfriend does not want to build too much muscle because when she stops exercising her muscle will turn into fat.

Mental knee-jerk reaction: why would one ever stop exercising?

And now the myth, one of the greatest, MUSCLE WILL TURN INTO FAT. Not physiologically possible, although scientists are very near doing just the opposite. They are two intrinsically different cell types. (Thank you Pasteur. Indeed, an old box of clothes in your attic will not "turn into" a mouse.)

There are lots of different types of cells in the human body, but here we are concerned with two types; skeletal muscle cells and fat cells.
Skeletal muscle cells are the ones we are so concerned about making bigger, stronger and more visible. As we get stronger, those muscle cells actually increase in size, hence, you like what you see in the mirror. Fat cells are the ones we want to make smaller so that our muscles can be seen. When we are aerobically fit, our fat cells decrease in SIZE, not amount, and the result is a leaner look. Fat cells are smaller, therefore there is less "room" between our skin and our muscles resulting in a leaner look.

Muscle cells use what we eat in the form of carbohydrates for fuel. The cell consumes a usable form of what we eat called glycogen. Glycogen is a form of sugar, it is muscle fuel. It is energy for the cell, and, therefore, energy for the muscle.

A fat cell is quite different. Fat cells are designed to store fats, which they acquire from your blood stream, hint hint, watch your saturated fat consumption.They basically store energy, energy that your body does not yet need. That is a good thing, but there can be too much of a good thing. Fat cells do more than just store energy. They also insulate the body, and manufacture many hormones, incredibly important stuff. The fitter you are, the more of what you eat will be stored in the muscle cells, and less in the fat cells. The reverse is true the less fit you are.

If you stop working out, specifically, stop lifting weights, the muscle (cells) that you have built, increased in size, will, in time, lose that size. You still have the same number of muscle cells, but each cell has gotten smaller. Quite simply, the supply is meeting the demand. The muscle is not doing the work it used to, and therefore the cell does not need to be bigger and stronger. Consequently, if you continue eating the same amount of food (calories) you were when you were working out, the fat cells, which were always there, just smaller, will now expand. You see, the muscle cells then get smaller, and the fat cells get larger. The muscle cells no longer need as much energy, strength and size, so their nutrition (fuel) is stored in the fat cell. The fat cell is just doing its job by storing that energy and getting larger. But in no way has the muscle "turned into" fat. We still have two different cell types doing two different jobs. Bottom line: Build muscle, not bulk, just muscle, to keep your body functioning as efficiently as possible. Keep fit to feed muscle.

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