“It’s time to turn that mush, into Muscles!â€
– Arnold Schwarzenegger
It’s a common expression, “to turn fat into muscleâ€, but are we really doing that with resistance training?
Resistance training can increase muscle mass, primarily through becoming damaged and then sending out signals to the body to turn ingested proteins into new muscle tissue as a repair mechanism.
We use our Carbohydrates and fats as energy to fuel this process (killing another myth of “carbs are badâ€)
Resistance training can also decrease fat mass, by using up body fat stores to fuel both this muscle building process and also using fat stores directly as fuel for the exercise that is needed to damage the muscle.
What Resistance training DOESN’T DO…
The technical, literal, direct conversion of fat into muscle.
Fat is comprised of triglycerides, comprising a backbone of three chains of fatty acids. These chains are made up of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen almost exclusively.
Muscle mass is made up of muscle tissue, glycogen, water, and some intra-muscular fat. The muscle tissue (the only tissue able to contract FYI) is made up of chains of amino acids in which contain nitrogen, and nitrogen is almost exclusively stored in the body as muscle.
It is impossible for fat to directly turn into muscle, since fat lacks the nitrogen and no mechanism exists in the body to convert fat into amino acids. No evidence has surfaced implying that amino acids can be made in the body from anything other than other amino acids, a process known as transamination.
The vast majority of muscle built is from dietary nitrogen intake where dietary protein is the only significant source of nitrogen in the human diet.
So although lifting weights can both build muscle and induce fat loss, these should be viewed as two separate results and not one being the result of another.
But, if it provides that “kick in the ass†you need to pick up the weights
“It’s time to turn that mush, into Muscles!â€
…extra points to you if you can name that movie
Till next time,
Coach Dan
