Is it possible to turn fat into muscle, where does muscle come from?

What is the difference between fat and muscle?

Muscle and fat tissue have completely different structures and purposes. Fat deposits are an emergency source of energy for the body, so the presence of such tissue is inherent in human nature. Even if a person stops eating, he will not die immediately. The average man can live about 25 days without eating. This ability is provided by fat deposits. The main reason for their formation is the excess of calories entering the body over their expenditure and lack of physical activity.

Muscles are primarily made of protein. Thanks to the ability of fibers to contract under the influence of nerve impulses, a person has the ability to move and perform various types of manipulations. Human nature provides only two possible states:

• accumulation of fat deposits and mass;
• loss of fat and mass.

Trying to lose fat and gain muscle mass at the same time will not work.

In order to begin to build muscle mass, the body needs an increase in calories entering the body, which in turn starts the process of storing fat.

In this regard, it is impossible to quickly turn fat into muscle, but you can start a process that in the sports environment is called fat burning.

Create a moderate calorie deficit

If you eat more than you burn, muscle will grow, but fat will not be burned. Therefore, a caloric deficit is a prerequisite. But it should be moderate to avoid muscle loss, constant fatigue and psychological problems.

But how much deficit is too big? Where is this golden mean ?

We would like to thank the researchers at the University of Jyväskylä [7] for their response. They conducted a study in which top track and field athletes with low levels of body fat (no more than 10%) took part. Participants were divided into two groups:

1. Daily deficit minus 300 calories (about 12% below their daily energy expenditure).
2. Daily deficit minus 750 calories (approximately 25% lower energy expenditure).

All participants followed a high-protein diet. After 4 weeks, the athletes in the 300-calorie deficit had lost very little fat and muscle, while the second group had burned an average of about 4 pounds of fat and very little muscle.

Thus, you can significantly reduce the calorie intake of your diet, but do not overdo it. I recommend a 20-25 percent deficit for fat loss.

Basic Rules

Fat can be converted into muscle fiber only by organizing proper nutrition and providing the body with a sufficient level of stress in the gym or at home. The mistake of many beginners is that they want to get this result quickly. It is worth knowing that fat burning does not happen instantly and for this it is necessary to take comprehensive measures. Basic recommendations:

• Provide the body with proper nutrition in the form of low-carbohydrate, high-protein foods;
• exclude foods with fast carbohydrates from your diet, such as sweet flour products, cakes, candies and other sweets;
• go to the gym 3 times a week;
• give your muscles rest after training for at least 48 hours;
• during aerobic exercise in the gym, monitor your pulse, it should not be less than 120 beats;
• Take advantage of special sports nutrition and fat burners.

No strict diet without exercise in the gym or at home will help quickly transform fat into muscle, and the effect of the achieved result in the form of weight loss can, after some time, turn the process into a greater gain of unwanted body weight.

It is worth remembering that aerobic exercise in the form of running, swimming and cycling quickly burns fat. Strength exercises and training with a large number of repetitions in one approach are effective for gaining muscle mass.

Use Cardio to Burn Fat, Not Calories

One of the biggest mistakes people make when trying to burn fat is doing long, monotonous cardio workouts. This helps burn calories, but can also lead to a deficit in which the body begins to burn muscle tissue rather than fat.

Therefore, for slimness and defined muscles, high-intensity interval training (HIIT) is more suitable as the main form of cardio. Why? HIIT has been shown to preserve muscle mass and even promote the use of fat as an energy source. Exactly what is needed!

HIIT is very taxing on the body, so don't do it every day. 1-3 classes per week are enough, with 3 being the maximum. If you feel like HIIT is making you perform worse with weights, reduce the load.

Fat burning: rules and recommendations

To start the fat burning process, it is necessary to create a deficiency of glucose in the body, which is synthesized from adipose tissue. At the first stage, two factors are of paramount importance:

• the diet should contain fewer calories than the human body uses during the day;
• workouts should include exercises to maximize energy expenditure.

A low-calorie diet will help to quickly reduce the level of body fat, but too strict diets should be excluded. Otherwise, the body will begin to break down muscle fibers.

It is worth remembering that the training program in the gym should be comprehensive, even if the fat deposits are located locally, for example, in the abdomen or thighs. It is impossible to remove fat from just one part of the body, so the whole body must work to eliminate fat deposits.

About fat burning drugs for men >>

You can quickly remove excess weight and subcutaneous deposits with the help of cardio exercises. It is recommended to use the following types of loads:

• traditional running;
• exercise on a treadmill;
• jumping rope;
• fast walk;
• swimming, cycling.

Experts say that to lose weight and body fat, it is not necessary to train in the gym or at home; it is enough to start with intense walking. To maintain muscle tone and normal body function, a person only needs to walk about 5,000 steps a day. You can quickly start losing weight by providing your body with about 10,000 steps a day. Today it is not difficult to purchase a device for counting steps, and a significant number of modern gadgets are equipped with this function.

If you can’t go to the gym, you can organize jumping rope at home. Calorie burning during such training is several times higher than during traditional running. Daily jogging will help you quickly achieve the effect of burning fat. When organizing a low-calorie diet, jogging 3 times a week is enough.

Training should be intense and not long in time. Exhausting exercise can lead to the consumption of muscle glycogen, as a result of which they begin to break down.

Reducing the percentage of subcutaneous fat will allow muscles to appear and will be a signal for the possibility of building muscles to give them relief.

Why is burning fat and building muscle at the same time a difficult task?

The reason many people think that building muscle and losing fat at the same time is a pipe dream is due to the process of protein synthesis in the body.

Every day your cells undergo “maintenance.” As a result, damaged, faulty and degraded cells are eliminated, and new ones take their place.

Protein synthesis refers to the creation of new cells, and protein breakdown refers to the elimination of "faulty" ones. In a healthy person who follows a proper diet, muscle tissue is fairly stable [1] and the cellular regeneration cycle is balanced.

That is, the average person does not lose or gain muscle very quickly - his muscle mass remains at approximately the same level. If you don't take any action, the percentage of muscle in your body gradually decreases as you age [2]. When you exercise, the cells in muscle fibers are damaged [3], which forces the body to speed up protein synthesis to repair the damage.

The body is an incredibly smart machine that constantly adapts to better cope with the physical stress that causes muscle damage. It does this by adding cells to the muscle fibers, causing the muscles to become bigger and stronger (which is why progressive overload is so important for building muscle and strength).

Thus, what we know as “muscle growth” is actually the dominance of protein synthesis over protein breakdown.

In other words, when your body synthesizes more muscle proteins than it loses, you build muscle . If it creates less than it loses, your muscle mass goes away. If the body synthesizes approximately the same amount as it loses, the muscles do not grow, but they do not shrink either.

This is why bodybuilders do everything they can to increase the rate of protein synthesis and suppress protein breakdown. They use, among other things, the following methods:

• high protein and high carbohydrate diets;
• basic exercises with iron (do the “base”);
• nutrition before and after training;
• eating protein before bed;
• limiting cardio;
• sports nutrition;
• steroids and other drugs (in many cases).

Now that you understand the basic physiology of muscle growth, let's look at how it relates to fat loss.

To burn fat, you need to consume fewer calories than you burn.

This is known as a calorie deficit, without which fat loss is impossible. No matter what you eat, if you take in more calories than you burn, you won't burn fat.

A calorie deficit forces your body to adapt differently. First of all, we are interested in reducing the level of anabolic hormones [4] and the rate of protein synthesis [5].

Many people trying to burn fat make mistakes in nutrition and training, which further impair muscle gain and accelerate muscle loss.

This is why it is generally believed that a person cannot build muscle and lose fat while on a calorie-restricted diet. In such situations, the rate of protein synthesis may not outpace its breakdown, and therefore there will be no muscle growth. This is true for some people, but not for everyone. Is it possible to lose weight and get fit at the same time? Yes, but not everyone.

What to do to gain muscle mass?

The difficulty of the stage of gaining muscle mass is to organize such a diet so that the amount of protein in the food is sufficient for the growth of fiber, but does not lead to the re-formation of fat reserves.

Protein foods should predominate in the diet, and the amount of fats and carbohydrates should not exceed the norm. The recommended protein intake is 1.5 grams per kilogram of an athlete's weight. It is recommended to include protein foods low in fat and carbohydrates in your diet:

• lean meat;
• seafood;
• various types of fish;
• low-fat cottage cheese and cheeses;
• egg white.

Read more about the nutrition program for gaining muscle mass >>

When visiting the gym or exercising at home, cardio exercises and deadlifts are effective for strengthening the muscles of the back and buttocks. To work out the abdominal muscles, leg lifts in a lying or hanging position and various pull-up techniques provide good results. When training in the gym or home exercises, it is necessary to include dumbbells in a set of exercises. The recommended number of sets of basic exercises is 3, and the number of repetitions should be at least 15.

Muscle growth and weight loss - the principle of periodization

Bodybuilding specialists have long solved the problem of anabolism-catabolism.

If you can’t run both processes at the same time, then you need to manage them one by one.

As an example, use the following periodization scheme:

1. Work for mass - 2-3 months
2. Drying - 1.5-2 months
3. Short holiday - a week
4. Repeating the entire cycle again

The point of alternating such varied workouts is to increase muscle volume during the mass-gaining period and burn the excess fat that you gained along with them during the cutting period.

At the same time, it is necessary to constantly achieve the growth of new muscle mass from one mass-gaining cycle to another, each time reducing the percentage of fat more. If you do everything right, you will make constant progress.

Sample program for muscle gain

Before starting a set of exercises, it is necessary to organize warm-up exercises. Completing within 10-15 minutes is considered sufficient:

• circular swings of the arms at the elbow or shoulders;
• turning the body in different directions;
• 10 or 20 traditional squats.

It is recommended to start training by working out large muscle groups. The first exercises in the form of squats can be performed with an empty bar. Next, it is recommended to use plates weighing 5 kg and perform similar exercises with a load of 3 sets of 6 or 8 repetitions.

Next, it is recommended to work the pectoral muscles. To do this, it is fashionable to use the exercise on a bench in a lying position. To warm up, an empty bar is lifted, then a load of 5 kg is added, and a chest press is performed in an amount of 43 to 5 sets of 8 or 10 repetitions.

An effective exercise for working the back muscles is considered to be performing deadlifts in the amount of 3 repetitions and 6-8 repetitions. To work on the biceps muscles in the gym and at home, it is recommended to use dumbbell lifts weighing 2 or 3 kg. There are quite a few techniques for performing exercises with dumbbells, so there is always the opportunity to diversify your training program.

The final stages of the training program are exercises for the abs and deltoid muscles. To work out the abdominal area, body lifts on a sports bench and various types of crunches are recommended, the number of which can vary from 10 to 30. After completing the complex, you need to do a cool-down and include stretching exercises.

Burn Fat and Build Muscle: Intermittent Approach

The main mistake beginners make is trying to combine two things: losing weight and building muscle. Such attempts are most often made by girls, trying to repeatedly perform abdominal exercises, in an effort to achieve ideal abs and “cubes”. Until the fat in the abdominal area decreases to 15%, the desired result will not be achieved.

Among bodybuilders, the so-called periodic approach is common, which allows you to quickly transform fat into muscle. Each period lasts 4-6 weeks. The first stage is aimed at burning fat. During this period, cardio exercise is of paramount importance and nutrition is aimed at expending additional energy from the adipose tissue of the whole body.

The next stage aims to gain muscle mass. To do this, high-calorie nutrition is organized, which is supported by intense strength training and sports supplements. An important role is played by:

• strict training schedule;
• food restriction;
• compliance with the rest regime.

If you follow all the rules, you can quickly reduce the level of fat reserves in the body and turn them into muscles. Such measures must be used with caution. It is important not only to achieve the desired result, but also not to harm the body. Instructors and nutritionists say that if the fat content in the body is less than 10%, then this result will negatively affect human health.

It is important to remember that getting rid of body fat and turning it into muscle are separate tasks. You can quickly achieve results by organizing proper protein nutrition with a low content of fat and carbohydrates in combination with a sufficient level of exercise in the gym or when exercising at home. Conventionally, this approach can be called the transformation of fat into muscle.

Take the right sports nutrition

I made this last because, frankly, sports nutrition is much less important than diet and exercise. You see, sports nutrition is not a guarantee of excellent physical shape, unlike a commitment to proper nutrition and exercise .

Unfortunately, manufacturers and suppliers of sports nutrition often create unjustified hype, make pseudoscientific statements and practice false advertising. They offer cheap products containing unhealthy ingredients and/or insufficient dosages of basic active ingredients , trying to attract the attention of buyers with colorful labels.

Therefore, many sports supplements are a waste of money. However, the right foods can help you get big and lose weight at the same time. There are safe natural substances that help increase strength and muscle mass, enhance fat burning, and also increase endurance.

Below I will talk about supplements that will help you lose fat and build muscle at the same time.

Creatine

Creatine is a substance produced in the body and found in foods such as red meat. This is perhaps the most researched substance among sports supplements. Its effects have been studied in hundreds of studies.

Taking creatine helps:

• gain muscle mass and increase strength [24];
• improve anaerobic endurance [25];
• reduce muscle damage and soreness [26].

You may have heard that creatine is bad for your kidneys, but these claims have been categorically and repeatedly refuted [27]. In healthy people, creatine has been shown to have no harmful side effects, both short and long term [28]. However, people with kidney disease are not recommended to consume creatine [29].

If you don't have kidney problems, I strongly recommend that you use creatine. It's safe, cheap and effective.

Protein

Protein is not necessary for gaining muscle mass. But considering how much protein you need to eat every day to maximize muscle growth, protein shakes can be a big help. Plus, it's a great post-workout meal.

Fat burners

The truth is that most fat burners are dummies. But there are several natural, safe substances that have a scientifically proven fat-burning effect. Therefore, you need to carefully choose a supplement. I have compiled a list of the most effective fat burner components that you need to look for in the composition:

• Synephrine. This substance increases the rate of basal metabolism and lipolysis (the breakdown of fats), inhibits the activity of certain fat cell receptors that prevent the mobilization of fats, and also increases the thermic effect of food (the energy that is spent on digesting food) [30].
• Naringin . It stimulates the production of a hormone called adiponectin, which is involved in the breakdown of fat cells and activates the PPARα receptor in fat cells, which regulates fat mobilization [31].
• Hesperidin. Like naringin, this component stimulates the production of adiponectin and activates the PPARα receptor . It also improves blood circulation and reduces inflammation of blood vessels [32].
• Epigallocatechin gallate ( EGCG). The substance inhibits the activity of another enzyme, also responsible for the destruction of neurotransmitters that cause lipolysis. EGCG in particular has been shown to help reduce belly fat [33].
• Forskolin. It increases cAMP levels in the blood and inside cells [34]. When cAMP is high, it means there is a lack of ATP (the main form of cellular energy in the body), which activates the process of increasing the amount of ATP by burning fat in the body. Research shows that forskolin accelerates fat loss and increases testosterone levels [35].

Pre-workout

The pre-workout complex gives you strength and motivation for training. However, not all pre-workouts are good, and some can even be dangerous to health, for example, 1,3-dimethylamylamine.

In general, you need to be as careful with pre-workouts as you are with fat burners. Look for the following substances in the composition:

• Caffeine. Increases energy, increases endurance and muscle strength [36].
• Beta-alanine . It is a natural amino acid that reduces exercise-induced fatigue [37], improves performance [38], and may accelerate muscle growth [39].
• Citrulline malate . It is an amino acid that improves muscle endurance and reduces muscle soreness [40].
• Betaine . This compound is found in plant sources such as beets. Betaine improves muscle endurance [41], increases strength [42], and increases the production of growth hormone and insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF1) in response to intense exercise [43].
• Ornithine. Large amounts of this amino acid are found in dairy products and meat. Ornithine reduces fatigue during prolonged exercise and promotes the burning of fat [44] (rather than carbohydrates or glycogen) for energy.
• Theanine. This is an amino acid found in tea leaves. It reduces the negative effects of stress [45] and improves blood circulation. In addition, theanine increases alertness [46], focus [47], attention [48], memory, mental performance and mood [49].