You Cannot Turn Body Fat Into Muscles!

Muscles and body fat are two distinct tissues. They have different structures, different functions, and react to workout in different ways. Therefore, as commonly perceived, you CANNOT turn fat into muscle or vice versa!

Facts On Fat

  • Fat cannot be converted into muscle.
  • Fat can be shed ONLY when the number of calories burnt exceeds the number of calories taken. If the reverse happens, fat is gained.
  • Fat WILL NOT increase, if you stop training but continue to take a weight-maintenance diet.
  • Fat WILL INCREASE, if you train along with an increase in your diet (you eat more).
  • Fat cells act as one unit. This means you can’t choose an area where you wish to gain fat or lose it.

Body fat is directly related to your diet. If you consume excess of carbs, dietary fat, and even protein, it will be deposited as fat in your body. The best way to deal with fats is physical activity. You can do this in any form, such as aerobics, resistance exercises, walking, swimming, sprinting, jogging, and other activities that burn calories. (Even ironing clothes burns calories!) Besides, innumerable fat cells act as one unit. They either grow and divide, or stay as they are, or shrink. What they do depends entirely on the ratio of calories consumed and calories burnt.

Facts Of Muscles

  • Muscles cannot be converted into fat.
  • Muscle size, efficiency, and density CAN be changed, if you stimulate it to push its limits further through training. This leads to increase in strength.
  • Weight training exercises are the best techniques to control and keep check on the changes happening in your muscles. You can get various results through altering your sets, weights, and reps. Thus, you can choose to increase muscle strength without increasing bulk, or increase both.
  • Your muscles return to normal, if you stop training. It may also stay as you built them, depending on your lifestyle.
  • You can target each muscle, UNLIKE fat. This means you can choose the particular area where you wish to increase bulk. Say, you can work only on your abdominal muscles and get six pack abs! Or maybe you wish to build just biceps or triceps. It’s your choice!

The strength of your muscle is not directly related to your diet. No matter how nutritious a diet you take, you still will have a lean muscle structure, if you don’t train them. Each muscle of your body is made up of innumerable muscle fibers. It’s not possible to increase the number of muscle fibers, but is possible to increase the density, size, and efficiency of each fiber. Although they may alter at varying degrees, you will still feel the strength building up. Muscles are affected directly by the stress you expose them to. The stress can be in the form of weight training exercises, aerobics, daily chores, or other strenuous physical activity. And mind you, the stress should be more than what your muscles are accustomed to bearing everyday.

One thing you need to remember is that you won’t be able to flaunt your enhanced shape of muscles, if there is a thick layer of fat covering it. So, you need to fight that fat before you think of building any shape.

It’s time you stopped thinking that fat turns into muscle and vice versa. No such thing happens. It’s good to understand your body composition well before starting any workout, whether for losing weight or building muscle. Get body smart!

Check your body fat with our calculator.

Share

HealthStatus has been operating since 1998 providing the best interactive health tools on the Internet, millions of visitors have used our blood alcohol, body fat and calories burned calculators. The HealthStatus editorial team has continued that commitment to excellence by providing our visitors with easy to understand high quality health content for many years. Our team of health professionals, and researchers use peer reviewed studies as source elements in our articles. Our high quality content has been featured in a number of leading websites, USA Today, the Chicago Tribune, Live Strong, GQ, and many more.

User Reviews

Reply

Your email address will not be published

four + five =

Written by HealthStatus Team
Medical Writer & Editor

HealthStatus has been operating since 1998 providing the best interactive health tools on the Internet, millions of visitors have used our blood alcohol, body fat and calories burned calculators. The HealthStatus editorial team has continued that commitment to excellence by providing our visitors with easy to understand high quality health content for many years. Our team of health professionals, and researchers use peer reviewed studies as source elements in our articles. Our high quality content has been featured in a number of leading websites, USA Today, the Chicago Tribune, Live Strong, GQ, and many more.

View all post by HealthStatus Team