{"id":653,"date":"2013-04-15T09:30:05","date_gmt":"2013-04-15T16:30:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gahealthguide.wordpress.com\/?p=653"},"modified":"2013-04-15T09:30:05","modified_gmt":"2013-04-15T16:30:05","slug":"fitness-myth-if-i-stop-working-out-my-muscle-turns-to-fat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devinephysiques.com\/blog\/2013\/04\/15\/fitness-myth-if-i-stop-working-out-my-muscle-turns-to-fat\/","title":{"rendered":"Fitness Myth: If I stop working out, my muscle turns to fat!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Everyone has heard that–\u00a0 “Be careful!\u00a0 If you gain too much muscle, when you stop working out it will turn into fat.”<\/p>\n

Does anyone out there believe it?\u00a0 I hope not.\u00a0 Before we get into where this myth came from (There is a logical explanation for why this exists), let’s look at muscles and body fat.<\/p>\n

Muscles are responsible for causing “force and motion,” and taking care of most internal functions.\u00a0 They’re composed primarily of water, and the fibers are made up of protein filaments.\u00a0 There are three types of muscles in your body:\u00a0 Cardiac, Smooth, and Skeletal;\u00a0 Skeletal muscle being what we’re talking about today.<\/p>\n

Body fat, also known as “Adipose Tissue,” is your body’s storage system.\u00a0 Body fat is made up of fat cells (“Adipocytes”) that act as little compartments to store energy in the form of lipids.\u00a0 (It’s important to note that lipids include oils, waxes, fat soluble vitamins, but no water.)\u00a0 As you gain weight, your fat cells fill with lipids, and if you run out of available storage space, your body will create more fat cells.\u00a0 What is equal parts fascinating and terrifying is that your body can only create new fat cells;\u00a0 It has no natural way of getting rid of fat cells.\u00a0 Body fat is found beneath the skin (“Subcutaneous Body Fat”), around your internal organs, in bone marrow, and in breast tissue.\u00a0 Notice it’s not found within muscles.<\/p>\n

So, we now have a slight idea of what muscle is, and what fat is. . .\u00a0 Now we can address this myth:\u00a0 “If you stop working out, your muscle will turn to fat.”<\/p>\n

That’s impossible.\u00a0 At the risk of making a religious joke, unless you’re a deity, you cannot turn water into oil.\u00a0 Also, since these parts of your body are entirely separate, your body can’t simply transport muscle tissue into your fat cells and transform that into oil;\u00a0 Your body is not capable of such sorcery.<\/p>\n

If your body isn’t capable of doing that, though, where did this myth come from?<\/p>\n

From health nuts, bodybuilders, and fitness gurus retiring or taking a break.\u00a0 When you have more muscle than your body naturally wants, it takes a lot of work to maintain that muscle mass.\u00a0 If you stop weight training, you will slowly begin to lose that muscle–\u00a0 Your body will catabolize that muscle, breaking the tissue down into amino acids, which will then be used for energy.\u00a0 This is done for survival purposes.\u00a0 The human body is an incredibly smart and adaptable machine that will make sure it can survive;\u00a0 Muscle takes a lot more energy to maintain than fat, and if you don’t give your body a reason to maintain that muscle, it makes better survival sense to hold on to the tissue that doesn’t require as much maintenance.<\/p>\n

So what happens while your body is breaking down the muscles?\u00a0 It’s in a fat sparing mode.\u00a0 While it’s creating energy from amino acids and dietary intake, it is not oxidizing fat for energy.\u00a0 So the amount of lean body mass goes down while the amount of fat stays the same–\u00a0 Thus, you will begin to look fattier.<\/p>\n

There’s one more important part to this equation, though.\u00a0 Think of what is no longer happening to our hypothetical health nut, bodybuilder, or fitness guru.\u00a0 They’re no longer being active, and the chances are, if they’re giving up that lifestyle (or taking a break from it), they are no longer watching what they eat, or working out.\u00a0 So what does that do?\u00a0 It leads to gains in body fat.<\/p>\n

So, with our hypothetical person, all of this is going on:\u00a0 Their body is sparing body fat while eating away muscle for energy, all while the subject is already gaining body fat.<\/p>\n

It’s easy to see where the myth comes from, but just remember, it’s just that–\u00a0 A myth.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The difference.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Everyone has heard that–\u00a0 “Be careful!\u00a0 If you gain too much muscle, when you stop working out it will turn into fat.” Does anyone out there believe it?\u00a0 I hope not.\u00a0 Before we get into where this myth came from (There is a logical explanation for why this exists), let’s look at muscles and body […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-body-building","category-fitness","category-fitness-myths"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3DfsS-ax","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devinephysiques.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devinephysiques.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devinephysiques.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devinephysiques.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devinephysiques.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devinephysiques.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devinephysiques.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devinephysiques.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devinephysiques.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}