Is it possible to convert fat into muscle? How to create muscle from fat?

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.

What can you do with it?

Muscle training is a versatile concept. There are many parameters that can be developed through intensive training, the main ones are:

• Gaining muscle thickness (muscle mass);
• General or physical endurance;
• Characteristics of muscle speed if you are involved in martial arts, for example.

The development of each of these and many other muscle parameters requires training, and for each of the above qualities there is a specific type of load.

Is it possible to make fat so functional? Unfortunately no. As already mentioned, fat performs only one function – energy. Therefore, it can only be spent on obtaining energy; in fact, this is precisely why our body accumulates fat reserves. Wasting fat has its own characteristics; there are 2 main conditions:

1) Since fat reserves act as a reserve energy source, the body can only spend them if certain dietary rules are followed.

2) To burn fat, there must be a constant “demand” for our internal energy. For it to occur, it is necessary to regularly but carefully increase physical activity.

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.

Muscle-fat connection

Like the engine of a car, your muscles need fuel to move. In fact, most of the energy you use during the day is intended to fuel your muscles, which have hundreds of important purposes beyond working out in the gym. One of the best sources of this energy is fat. It contains 9 calories per gram, while carbohydrates, another major source of fuel, contain only 4 calories.

You use fat for energy when you do low-intensity exercise, such as typing on a computer or walking. But when you increase your physical activity and your muscles begin to consume fuel faster, your body switches to burning carbohydrates, which are broken down into energy faster.

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.

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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.

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.

Pumping up muscles

But this is the most difficult thing in the iron world.

Many people can train for years, but they only see muscles in their dreams.

In order for your bones to neatly envelop mountains of muscle, you will have to plow in the gym from dusk to dawn and eat squirrel for three families.

Just coming to the gym and looking at the girls’ butts won’t be enough , you’ll have to lift so much weight that the administrator will call the priest. You need to give your best so that the priest crosses himself and leaves. And most importantly, you will need to constantly progress.

There really are no secrets here. The most important thing is to give it your all and eat enough so that your burned calories come back home in the kitchen.

The biggest secret, as it turned out, is that you don’t need to pound your biceps until you lose consciousness every day, but do heavy basic exercises, then your muscles will definitely begin to grow. Step away from the machines and lift dumbbells. It will be more efficient.

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.

What is it for?

A person who does not like to analyze can say something like the following about the “pyramid”: “Why on earth should I “steam”, change the weight after each approach, and why all these tricks? I’d rather warm up, put my maximum weight on the barbell and do three sets until failure. And then I’ll do the same with the rest of the exercises! I work with heavy weights even without your “pyramids!”

In some ways, such an individual will be right. Right, but not quite! Of course, if your working weight, for example, in a standing barbell press is 25 kg, then the problem of warming up, as such, does not exist for you. Well, what if your working weight is not 25 kg, but 125 kg? What to do in this case? Grab a barbell, put it on your chest and press?! But if you try to follow this scenario, you will get injured ridiculously easily. Do you need it - to look with envy at your friends getting ready for training, standing in the hallway with a compress on your shoulder?

And even if you do not take into account the injury, then you will hardly be able to work with such a weight without a thorough warm-up with stretching elements. There are immutable laws of sports physiology, which say that in order to produce maximum effort, muscle tissue must be thoroughly warmed up, kneaded, stretched and well ischemic. And all these conditions can be achieved only by completing several warm-up and conditioning approaches until barely noticeable fatigue. In other words, this is already from the realm of fantasy.

For this reason, before starting to work with the above-mentioned 125 kg, a thinking bodybuilder will definitely do 3-4 approaches with increasing weights. The work flow in this case will look something like this:

– 50 kg x 15- 70 kg x 10- 90 kg x 7- 110 kg x 5

And only after all these approaches will heavy – working – approaches follow: 125 kg x 6-8 x 3.

I would like to immediately draw your attention to the fact that in all “leading” – warm-up – approaches there can be no talk not only of “failure”, but also of pre-failure training! If you do each approach until “failure” or (which is not much better) bring it to a “pre-failure” state, you will lose all muscle biochemical resources ahead of time and will not be able to fully work with a real working weight; reserves of creatine phosphate and glycogen will already be fairly depleted, and motor units will not be able to produce powerful force. If you already thought that the only purpose of the “pyramid” is to prepare muscles for working with serious weights, then you were mistaken

For example, experienced athletes know very well that the power of force produced by a muscle can vary from workout to workout. Let's say that in the previous lesson you performed 8 repetitions of lat pull-downs with a weight of 120 kg, and in the next lesson you barely managed 5 repetitions with the same weight. The phenomenon is, in fact, quite ordinary and there can be quite a few reasons. The most common ones include lack of recovery, one-time or chronic lack of sleep, irregular or unbalanced diet, and a high number of stressful situations at work or at home. There is also such a thing as training the day after a “get-together” with copious libations. Why am I suddenly? And to the fact that by using a “pyramid”, in particular, not a very “sharp” one, but one in which weights are added quite smoothly, you can soberly assess your strength potential at the moment, reduce the working weight and conduct a more productive workout

If you already thought that the only purpose of the “pyramid” is to prepare muscles for working with serious weights, then you were mistaken. For example, experienced athletes know very well that the power of force produced by a muscle can vary from workout to workout. Let's say that in the previous lesson you performed 8 repetitions of lat pull-downs with a weight of 120 kg, and in the next lesson you barely managed 5 repetitions with the same weight. The phenomenon is, in fact, quite ordinary and there can be quite a few reasons. The most common ones include lack of recovery, one-time or chronic lack of sleep, irregular or unbalanced diet, and a high number of stressful situations at work or at home. There is also such a thing as training the day after a “get-together” with copious libations. Why am I suddenly? And by using a “pyramid”, in particular, not a very “sharp” one, but one in which weights are added quite smoothly, you can soberly assess your strength potential at the moment, reduce the working weight and conduct a more productive workout.

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