Muscle vs Fat what’s the difference between the two?


Before I started to get into a Health and Fitness routines in my early teens I had a lot of misconceptions in my mind with regard to Muscle and Fat.

I thought that you could turn fat into muscle by lifting weights and that if you stopped training that muscle would turn back into fat.

This of course wasn't true because in reality muscle and subcutaneous and visceral fat are two completely different things on our bodies.

On top of this, I also thought that if you did exercises for a specific body part then this would burn the fat off that particular region, in this case the biceps region.

Again this didn't hold true as there is no way to naturally spot reduce body fat.

Muscle versus Fat

Body Fat

Fat on our bodies comes into two types. Visceral Fat and Subcutaneous Fat.

Visceral Fat is the fat inside our bodies surrounding the internal organs. Subcutaneous fat is the fat we can pinch on the outside of our bodies. When we lose fat through a fat burning diet and workout we actually burn both visceral and subcutaneous fat.

Lean mass is constituted as the bones, connective tissue, organs and the muscles of our bodies. Everything else is regarded as fat whether subcutaneous or visceral fat.

We can lose body fat by living with a Calories Deficit day-by-day.

Simply put, a calories deficit is providing your body with less calories than it needs every day. The best way to achieve a calorie deficit is by eating a healthy diet and engaging in regular exercise 5-6 times per week.

Muscle Mass

Each muscle on your body is made up of thousands of cells known muscle fibers. These fibers if stimulated correctly can increase in density, size and endurance.

Muscle fibers cannot increases. What I mean by this is that you cannot add more muscle fibers you can only develop the existing ones you have.

Muscle can react in different ways from the diet we eat and in particular physical activity.

Diet and Muscle Mass

If we eat a Muscle Building Diet that contains more calories than our bodies require everyday and we get a lot of protein enriched foods (Fish, Steak, Chicken etc.) then this is placing the muscle of the body in the best possible environment to develop and grow as both muscle mass and body react by increasing the more calories we eat.

Akin to this, if we consume less calories then we need every day out muscle and body fat will begin decrease.

Physical activity

Muscles tend to increase in size and density if we carry out heavy resistance activity on a regular basis. This doesn't have to be just weight lifting; it can be anything from shoveling earth to flipping tractor tires.

The most tried and tested method that actually works though is weight lifting that incorporates many heavy compound movements such as Squats and Bench pressing into a Workout.