There is a big notion if you’re overweight with lots of fat on your body, all you have to do is go to the gym and throw up some weights and it can somehow turn all that fat into muscle. Tons of people think that if they’re overweight, it should be so easy to get big muscles because they already have the weight to transform into muscle. That thinking is incorrect and simply not true. Muscle and fat are two totally different things. First of all, muscle is a healthy living tissue and generally, the more muscle you have the more healthier you are. Fat is something stored by the body and used for energy to be used at a later time. If you don’t use it, all that happens is all that fat just piles up and you get larger and larger. That’s how people become overweight.
People also joke all the time with athletes and bodybuilders, telling them if they ever stopped working out, all that muscle will turn into fat. That is also not true. Like I said before, they are two different things. If you stop pumping iron, of course your muscle and size will decrease after a period of time but your muscle mass will not turn into fat. The reason people who used to be muscular get fat is because they still eat the same as when they did when they were training really hard. Or, they might pick up bad eating habits once they stop weight training and that’s the main reason they get fat. Remember, the fact is muscle cannot turn into fat, it’s impossible. Your lean muscle tissue decreases (atrophies) from not working out for long periods of time.
As you get older, you might decide you don’t want to maintain a muscular body anymore, so you stop weight training and maintain a healthy diet. That’s fine as long as you still maintain an active lifestyle with cardio and recreational sports. Also, remember that as you get older your metabolism slows down, so you have to adjust your calorie intake to match that (decrease it). When someone tells you that muscle will turn into fat or they want to turn fat into muscle, you will now know the real facts and that they are simply wrong.