RSSDebunking the funk: Turning fat into muscle and vice versa
May 27, 2011
You may have heard the myth about how weightlifting can turn fat into muscle, and how stopping weightlifting can turn muscle into fat. While it is true that fat mass can be reduced and lean muscle mass increased, muscle and fat cells are very different and specialized cells that cannot transform from one to the other.
Body re-composition, i.e. increasing lean muscle mass while decreasing fat mass, is sometimes confused for turning fat into muscle. Similarly, when retired athletes gain weight this is sometimes attributed to muscle turning into fat. The truth is, both are physiologically impossible, as muscle and fat cells are different type of cells with different properties and function.
So what happens?
The process of reducing fat mass while building muscle is sometimes referred to as "body re-composition". Through diet and exercise we manipulate our bodies to shrink the size of fat cells while increasing the size of muscle cells, to overall increase lean muscle mass and decrease fat mass. In a similar but opposite way, once we stop exercising and thus reduce our total calorie expenditure without reducing calorie consumption, our fat cells will increase in size and our muscle cells eventually shrink due to understimulation.
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