Top Five Fitness Myths #5: Muscle Turns to Fat When you Stop Working Out
This is one of the oldest myths in the fitness world and completely false; muscle cannot turn into fat and fat cannot turn into muscle--they are two different body tissues.
In the early days of fitness, men especially, would weight train to increase muscle size which also required eating more calories. When these individuals stopped working out, their muscles began to atrophy, reducing in size and strength. However, they did not take into consideration that their bodies no longer needed the volume of calories they were consuming while training. Those extra calories that were used as fuel while they were training was then stored as fat because the body no longer required that much food. The outward appearance seems as though their hard earned muscle was turning into fat, but the reality is that their bodies were getting fatter because they were taking in more than needed.
If you cut back on your training, or stop, you must reduce your calorie consumption because your body will store those excess calories as fat.
