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Many are the myths that circulate around the development of muscle mass and loss of body fat. More than once we have heard say that fat has the quality of turning into muscle and vice versa. This concept is totally wrong, since both are different tissues that do not have the ability to transform one into the other.
It is true that the muscle is obtained from a correct and adequate training to generate the desired hypertrophy. In this process, fat is not the raw material through which we obtain muscle development, but is generated from a stimulus that encourages the fibers to grow and for this, protein is necessary, the main component of muscle in addition to Water.
The muscles of our body are made up of 75% by proteins that we obtain from the diet and they are those that intervene directly in the creation of new muscle fibers and with them in the growth of them. The function of these is to hold the bones and allow us to move, stay upright, carry out all daily activities. On the other hand, we have fats that are usually between 15% or 30% of our body weight (in a person of healthy weight), depending on the sex and physical constitution of each individual. The functions of fats are several, for example, through it some fat-soluble vitamins are metabolized, they are part of the cells, they are involved in the synthesis of hormones and it is part of most of the organs of our body.
Fats and muscles are two different elements of our body, the only relationship they have is that fats are an important source of energy in our body, necessary to perform physical exercise that helps increase muscle mass. This is why many people associate muscle with fat and the transformation of this into muscle through exercise.
This is not the case at all since the muscle is created as long as we carry out a correct diet and
the body receives the proteins it needs to grow. All fat does is oxidize for energy. It is true that with the practice of exercise the levels of our body fat decrease and increase the muscle mass, but it does not happen that one is transformed into the other. If, on the contrary, we stop doing physical activity, our metabolism will begin to slow down and the burning of calories will be less, which will contribute to a greater accumulation of fat and a decrease in muscle mass.
Lic. Romina Krauss-Nutritionist
M.P. n° 147
DL-CP
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