The More You Know

Fat VS Muscle

Joe sent me the attached picture that absolutely blew my mind. In the picture is a model depicting 5 pounds of fat and 5 pounds of muscle. This led me to want to look into fat vs. muscle.
Fat
Fat is essential to have in our body fats store energy, insulate us and protect our vital organs. They act as messengers, helping proteins do their jobs. They also start chemical reactions that help control growth, immune function, reproduction and other aspects of basic metabolism. It’s when we have an imbalance in fats that they start to become a burden for our body and even deadly.
The cycle of making, breaking, storing and mobilizing fats is at the core of how humans and all animals regulate their energy. An imbalance in any step can result in disease, including heart disease and diabetes; it can also place strain and harden your arteries.
Body fat is completely related to calories, and the amount that we have is directly influenced by the number of calories consumed versus calories expended. Calories consumed obviously come from the foods we eat. It is important to recognize that when we consume any type of food in excess, whether it is carbohydrates, protein or dietary fat, it will be converted to body fat.
The flip side of the equation is calories used or expended. This brings exercise to mind, however, your body also expends calories in other ways. We focus on exercise because it is the method that can be most easily manipulated. Any form of exercise, at any intensity—aerobic training, resistance training, going out for a walk or performing a spring workout—burns calories and is, therefore, better than doing nothing at all. With all of this in mind, it is also important to understand that those thousands and thousands of individual fat cells that give us those nice love handles act as one unit and essentially have three options: 1.grow and possibly divide 2. rest as is or 3 shrink in size. The option your fat cells will choose completely depends on the calories you consume versus the calories you burn in your daily activity
When you burn more calories than you consume, your body uses fat (triglycerides) for energy. This causes your fat cells to shrink. In turn, triglycerides are broken down into two different substances — glycerol and fatty acids — which are absorbed into your liver, kidneys and muscle tissue. From there, the glycerol and fatty acids are further broken down by chemical processes that ultimately produce energy for your body.
These activities generate heat, which helps maintain your body temperature. The resulting waste products — water and carbon dioxide — are excreted in urine and sweat or exhaled from your lungs.
Muscle
Muscle is very different from fat. Each muscle is made up of thousands of individual cells, also called muscle fibers. While the number of muscles cells/fibers cannot increase, each individual muscle fiber has the potential to increase in size, density and efficiency. These changes may occur together but not necessarily to the same degree, however, all will translate to an increase in strength.
Unlike fat, strength gains are not related to calories; changes in the muscle physiology and resulting increases in strength do not occur as a result of dietary intake. Assuming you are eating a well-balanced diet, changes within your muscles are most influenced by the direct stresses that you place on each of them individually. These stresses can be through job-related activity, daily chores, aerobic activity or strength training. The key factor is that the muscle will only react if the stress placed on it exceeds the everyday stress it is accustomed to.
Again, this doesn’t mean you need to get to the gym forgo cardio and start lifting weights; however muscle is often associated with weight/resistance training because this is the easiest way to control and monitor the stress being placed on the muscle. It is also very effective because you can isolate any muscle and do so in a safe environment. A duke university study showed that when individuals ran consistently they reduced the amount of fat between their organs far more than those who strictly lifted weights. So a steady dose of both weight training and cardio will be the best bet to take care of all the fat throughout the body.
Muscle burns more calories than fat, according to the Mayo Clinic. Even when your body is at rest, you burn more calories with muscle mass than you do without. This is largely due to the fact that muscle is "metabolically" more active than fat, causing an increase in calories burned on any given day. Claims vary greatly on the average calories burned by muscle and by fat, which can make it difficult to discern a precise number. Some people claim that a pound of muscle burns upward of 50 calories a day, while others argue that each pound burns only an additional 5 calories over a 24-hour period. Regardless of who is correct, you're still burning more calories with muscle than with fat, since 1 lb. of fat is said to burn a total of 3 calories a day.
Fat has 3 times more volume than muscle. This is where the common phrase “muscle weighs more than fat,” comes from. The previous statement is a false statement because one pound of anything will weigh the same as one pound of something else. Although the statement is not correct the theory behind the statement is. Muscle is denser than fat and therefore takes up less room than fat. So if you burn 5 pounds of fat on your body and build 5 pounds of muscle in its place your body will have less volume. Often you will hear someone say I’ve been working out for 2 weeks, but I’m not losing any weight, at the same time their clothes are starting to be a bit loser. Losing fat and becoming healthy is not all about seeing results on the scale.

What we learned? fat is essential for our body to function and operate. It is when we have excess fat that it becomes an issue. Fat is created and stored when we intake food into our body and fail to burn this fat through physical activity and daily body functions. Muscle is built through placing stress on our muscle tissue. We cannot create more muscle tissue in our body, but we can increase the volume of our muscle tissue through exercise. Muscle is denser than fat, burns more calories, and makes the body leaner and healthier.

Does muscle weigh more than fat? No, but 5 pounds of fat has 3 times more volume than 5 pounds of fat.

Can I convert fat to muscle? Not directly, but you can make a swap for 5 pounds of fat for 5 pounds of muscle in the body through diet and exercise.

Does muscle burn more calories than fat? Yes, the actual numbers vary depending on who you talk to, but all agree muscle does burn more calories than fat in all states from rest to exercise.