Fitness Together Brecksville: Trainer Tuesdays: If I Stop My Physical Activity, Will My Muscles Turn to Fat?

Trainer Tuesdays

Welcome back to the weekly edition on Trainer Tuesdays. Make sure to check in at our blog every Tuesday evening to learn the expertise of our great staff. Aside from being fantastic exercise coaches, they are also extremely knowledgeable in many aspects of health and fitness; so, it's time that you get to know them a little better! Each week, we will post a frequently asked, or sometimes just a fun fitness related question followed by the answers of each of the trainers at Fitness Together Brecksville.

If I Stop My Physical Activity, Will My Muscles Turn to Fat?

Kelly Bailey: Spend time at the gym and you may overhear people talking about muscle turning to fat or vice versa. If you don't trust me, your doctor can assure you that this is not possible. However, if you stop working out, you will begin to lose muscle mass, and in turn may gain weight in the form of fat. Muscle is more metabolically active than fat tissue. This is a fancy way of saying that muscle tissue burns more calories. A loss of lean muscle tissue means you will be burning fewer calories throughout the day. Depending on your eating habits, this can make it easy to gain weight in the form of fat. Add to this a reduction in physical strength and functional mobility, and you have some pretty good reasons to continue working out!

Taynee Pearson: There is a myth out there and has been for a while that muscle will turn to fat if you don't workout or vice versa. This myth is not true, muscle and fat are two different types of tissues and cannot convert from one from to the other. When you stop working out, your muscles will decrease in size making it easier for fat tissue to overtake, it's not necessarily that the muscle turns into fat. So a solution to this problem would be to keep exercising, and do resistance training regularly to increase and maintain lean muscle mass as well as decrease adipose (fat) tissue.

Lisa Clark: It is a myth that muscles turn to fat when you stop exercising. It is impossible for muscles to turn to fat since they are made up of different types of cells which have completely different functions. What does happen after you quit exercising is that your muscles actually shrink to allow your body to conserve energy when your activities no longer require as much muscle mass. As your body loses muscle mass, however, you require significantly fewer calories and therefore it is easy to gain fat quickly if you don't adjust your food intake to compensate your decreased caloric needs. Hence the myth that your muscles turn to fat.

Bronson Rotaru: Your muscles won't exactly turn to fat. The muscles will always be there, they will lose some of their size though. The more muscular you are, the more fat you will burn around the clock even when not training. So if you were to make the mistake of ceasing physical activity/training, yes you will eventually replace the loss of muscle gains with stored fat. It is very difficult for people to start over in the gym, exercising etc. once they have stopped, so don't stop exercising!

Steven Madden: Thinking that your muscle tissue will turn to fat if you stop your physical activity is wrong, but it is an understandable mistake. It stems from over simplifying how trainers focus on body composition changes. I know I'm guilty of it. I've told clients that we will focus one changing five pounds of fat into five pounds of muscle. What I'm really saying is that at some point you may get on the scale and see that you weigh the same, but you have still dropped a size or two. What we did was add an equal amount of lean muscle tissue as fat that we lost. One pound of lean muscle tissue is smaller than one pound of fat. It is also worth noting that you never create more muscle tissue, you simply improve your muscle cells.

Now, what happens when you stop your physical activity? No, your muscles will not turn into fat, but they may start to atrophy. This means the cells will start to get smaller and shorter, affecting strength and mobility. You will also probably put weight back on as your metabolism slows down. Muscle tissue burns calories everyday just existing. If it's thicker and stronger, it will burn more for you. If it starts to atrophy, it will do the opposite.

This process doesn't take as long as you would like it to either. On the 4 th of July, I was thrown off a horse and hurt my lower spine. As a result, I couldn't work out for six weeks. I went from working out everyday, to not at all, in fact I tried not to move too much altogether. As a result, I'm 15 pounds heavier than I was before the accident. Now that I've started working out again, I am not as strong as I was before and I weigh more. Now it's time to turn some fat into muscle!

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Trainer Tuesdays: If I Stop My Physical Activity, Will My Muscles Turn to Fat?

No comments:

Post a Comment