Ever Hear Of Muscles Turning To Fat?
One pervasive myth is that of muscles turning to fat. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard someone talking about an aged bodybuilder who has softened with age, so to speak, and that all there muscle has turned to fat. Arnold Schwarzenegger is a great example of a person who has supposedly experienced all of those muscles turning to fat.
In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. Muscle and fat are 2 diametrically opposed entities of which neither are capable of molting or transforming into the other.
If a heavy set guy trimmed down and added muscle, we know that he lost the fat and added muscle. The reverse is true as we get older and lose testosterone levels which make us capable of regenerating muscle tissue at the same rate as in our youth. As we get older, our metabolic rate slows considerably, which when paired with the literal pains of growing older, such as arthritis, for example, and you have a person who is less active as well as more prone to building excess fat stores due to their more sedentary lifestyle.
In the case of Arnold Schwarzenegger, for example, we see pictures of him in his youthful physical prime and compare them to the pictures we see in today’s tabloids. This is an apples and oranges comparison, and one that is nothing more than a fitness myth, and a waste of time to make. As we age, provided we are in decent health, muscles certainly atrophy from a reduced movement, flexibility, and so on, but muscles turning to fat is nothing anyone needs to worry about as they age. Furthermore, there’s nothing wrong with growing older, and if you can do so gracefully, as he has done, then all the better.
Andy
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