Fitness Myth: Muscle turns into fat

Among the many excuses I've heard for people not wanting to work out on a regular basis is this perennial favorite:

"I don't want to put on a lot of muscle because it'll turn to fat if I ever stop exercising."

What a load of bunk. Muscle is muscle and fat is fat. If you want to turn one into another you'd better find a biological alchemist.

If you see older guys that used to be very muscular and are now overweight, here's the reason: They stopped exercising but did not adjust their eating habits accordingly.

It's really obvious if you think about it... you've got someone who works out super hard year after year and puts on 10, 20, 30 pounds of muscle. That muscle doesn't appear out of thin air, you've got to eat a LOT of food while working out like a horse to add all that lean mass.

So what happens? Eventually the workouts taper off a bit, maybe even stop altogether, but being accustomed to eating a certain amount of food every day, the person just keeps on eating like before. The calories that were previously going towards supplying energy for the workouts and growing muscle in response to the exercise now have nothing to do, so what happens? Those calories go right into the fat cells.

So the next time you hear someone say that muscle turns to fat (because I know that you would certainly never say that), you can set them straight.