Does Muscle Turn Into Fat When You Stop Working Out?
Q: Is it true that muscle turns to fat if you stop working out? I’ve noticed that some jacked people become, let’s say, “sloppy” when they quit lifting weights. So it must be true that muscle becomes fat because, shit, my personal observation is as scientific as it gets!
A: Wanna know if muscle turns into fat, huh?
Well, ummmmm, is it possible to turn water into wine, as Jesus supposedly did in performance of his first miracle?
HUH, IS IT?!?!
If you’re sane, then you’ll say no because while water and wine are both liquids, it’s not possible for one to become the other because they’re made of completely different substances and what they do share in common is in varying proportions.
Well, the same goes for muscle and fat, or adipose as it’s called by fitness elitists such as myself.
Muscle and adipose are both tissues but one is skeletal tissue and the other is connective tissue consisting of a completely different chemical composition, which gives it a completely different structure than the former.
So wait, you ask, if muscle can’t be converted into fat because their properties aren’t interchangeable, then why does it appear that muscle gets replaced by fat when you stop working out for a significant amount of time?
The answer to that lies in the fact that muscles atrophy, or decrease in mass, with disuse. That’s because muscle requires a lot of calories to maintain and the body would rather break it down when you’re less active so not as much of its resources have to go toward the preservation of more muscle mass than is needed. Now, on account of muscle being a calorie-burning tissue and the body no longer having as much of it as it once did when you stop lifting consistently, you burn considerably fewer calories at rest. This in turn leads to the fat cells increasing in size and the appearance of looking softer and/or possibly gaining weight. The latter is especially the case with individuals who continue eating the same amount of calories they consumed when they were active while no longer engaging in the same amount of exercise to burn the excess calories.
Basically, when fit people stop working out and become a fatter version of themselves, what you’re seeing is a change in body composition from the ratio of muscle and adipose flipping around — not some abracadabra shit with an actual change from muscle into fat!
Now, does anyone else have a fitness or nutrition question of their own that they want to ask?
Glossary: adipose, atrophy, calories, exercise, fat, fitness, muscle, work out
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