Does muscle turn to fat when not used?

[montage]

Ok...if somebody has a fair bit of upper body muscle...not lodes....but pretty lean...then stops going to the gym but really up's the cycling then will this upper body muscle turn into fat which can then be lost?

 

[Bigtwin]

No. And yes.

The very muscle tissue does not transmute into fat cells. But, if you keep feeding the same and don't exercise the muscle, the body will break down the muscle, and will store the excess calories that used to go to maintaining/building that muscle, as fat. Plus generally, the muscle will acquire a coating of fat, and thus look flabby and fat.

 

[col]

Muscles will atrophy, that is return to their normal state before training, fat is only gained when you over eat and or under use the energy you eat.
if you stop training then you must reduce the amount of what you eat to fuel training or it wont be used and will be stored as fat. Muscle cannot turn to fat.

 

[GrumpyGregry]

what col said. Thus you can change your shape from back from fat to muscular without necessarily loosing much weight as muscle is way more dense than fat.

 

[grafter]

no, what happens is the body burns off the muscle before the fat. the body trys to hang onto the fat for survival. extra muscle isnt essential. the muscle will stay around if you eat enough protein. so if you cycling and not eating enough calories the body will grab that muscle as a energy source.

 

[Trisam]

A Side note to the whole debate, is that you de-train 3 times quicker than you train. So if it took you a year to get to your fitness, in 4 months you will have lost it all again.

 

[ramboto]

What you eat will contribute to FAT accumulation. It will be alleviated if you will not remain sedentary.

 

[dickothedrafter]

As grafter, but if you train your top half, say once a week instead of the usual three times, then because you are still using this new found muscle you should maintain most if not all of what you have gained so far