Do muscles atrophy and turn into fat? No, and here’s why

President of the Fitness Professionals Association (FPA)

Founder of Banana Gym club, head of the FPA Training, Consulting Center and Management School, partner of the International Festival of Health and Sports SN PRO EXPO FORUM and expert of the “Championship”.

“How to pump fat into muscle”, “muscles sagged and turned into fat” – have you heard that? Is it possible? If not, why not? Let’s figure it out together.

Can muscles turn into fat?

It’s quite simple: muscle is the engine, fatty tissue is the gas tank with fuel. Different organs, different tissues. How do you turn one into the other? You can’t.

“Wait a minute,” they say, “there was once an athlete, handsome, well-developed relief muscles. Little fat, trim, athletic. Years passed, the muscles sagged, became flabby, instead of them fat.” That’s right. Less muscle, more fat on top of it. There is nothing to be surprised about, indeed, muscles atrophy when they are not used, they shrink – they use less fuel. And if a person eats, as before, portions to which he is accustomed, the unspent excess energy replenishes the reserves.

When they say, the muscles “sagged”, “flabby” – this is just a figurative expression. There are no strings on which muscles “hang” to “sag”. And then pull them up for nothing. Sagging skin under the influence of gravity and the weight of fat under it. It creates the appearance of flabby tissue. Muscles there, under the sagging fat folds, the same tightened, but small and weak, not at all visible under the layer of tissue.

In order to reverse the situation – to make, as they say in fitness, recomposition of the body – you will have to organize two different, little related to each other process: to reduce the fat component and again try to increase muscle. How? There are no secrets here. For muscle growth – workouts, for fat reduction – eat so much that you constantly lack energy for vital activity. The body will have to spend the accumulated energy.

In general, we pump muscles in the gym and reduce fat in the kitchen.

How are weight gain and drying related?

Do these two different processes – muscle gain and fat reduction – interfere with each other? In different ways. If there is little muscle and a lot of fat (in beginners, athletes who have not trained for a long time and have lost their shape) – no, they do not interfere. Strength training and a sufficient amount of protein in the diet will do their job. At the same time, the total amount of food should be slightly below the body’s caloric needs. As a result, muscles grow and fat decreases.

It is more difficult when there is a lot of muscle and little fat. In this case, we eat less – muscles do not grow. If we eat more, muscles start to grow, but fat stops decreasing, and maybe even starts to increase.

They try to solve this problem in different ways: increasing the share of protein in the diet, using periodization. In any case, you should beware of “frenzied drying”, rapid weight loss by dieting and exhausting workouts. Fat will go away, but even more muscle, strength and health will go away – all gained by hard work, as they say.

Gradually, by maintaining intense strength training, creating a small calorie deficit, and ensuring sleep and recovery, you can get into the shape you want. Sleep, by the way, has a big impact on body recomposition. When you are sleep deprived, muscles atrophy and fat increases. Get enough sleep and recover!

And if you want to remove fat in specific areas?

Separately it is worth saying about how to remove fat from specific places. The answer is the same – there is no way. It does not matter what muscles are working: on the abdomen, legs or hips. When they need energy, including fat, the endocrine system gives a signal to the fat tissues. It releases the appropriate hormones – adrenaline, noradrenaline, cortisol. Once in the tissue, they give the fat cells the command to give up some of the fat to feed the muscles.

Hormones are in the blood. Blood is in the blood vessels, the capillaries. Capillaries are everywhere. So the signal is given to all the fat tissue at once, wherever there are capillaries. All subcutaneous fat tissue in this sense – as a single gas tank. Somewhere fat will be broken down faster (face, arms, shoulders), somewhere – slower (buttocks, abdomen, thighs). The fat on the flanks and hips of a human, like the humps of a camel, are strategic reserves. So it happened in the process of evolution, nothing can be done about it.

Conclusion: eat right, train properly, get enough sleep, control stress and give up bad habits! Then you can get into any desired shape.