Article also featured on DC Alumni Sports.com
Recently, a patient was discussing how to put on some muscle mass and to lose fat. Do you want to know what he said?
“Justin, you should turn your fat into muscle.”
I humored him because he must have forgotten for that split second what I do professionally, and that he was at my clinic to SEE ME about how HE got hurt.
Patronizing him I said, “Now, how do you suppose I do that?” knowing very well that after his initial statement I was going to refute any of his advice.
He responded with this: “Well most people don’t know, but muscle is created in layers.”
“Where did you get this information?” I asked.
“A body builder at the gym.”
I smiled and then became the bad guy - delightedly thwarting his health misconceptions.
Fortunately, this patient went home with the correct information this time around.
At first this seemed funny, but I then realized my patients are just microcosms of a more pervasive problem in society: people get poor information about health from unreliable sources that have little education in the field.
If you fall victim to this, it’s ok. With all those websites, news articles, meat head magazines, who can you really trust? Certainly not the Ghostbusters…
Please do me - and yourselves - a favor and seek the correct advice from Licensed Health Care Providers. That means we all took a national or state board of some sort to be able to practice.
What did I say to him?
I told him muscles aren’t built in layers or aren’t built by tearing other ones. Going back to physiology, muscles are made up of small fibers and those fibers are made of small cells. These cells actually undergo hypertrophy or swell in a sense to a point where new muscle cells are created by replicating itself; you might remember a term from seventh grade science, mitosis. Our bodies are no different.
The soreness after a “good” work out is BAD! Quoted from my fitness blog, “here’s why: Our bodies tend to follow the General Adaptation Syndrome or (GAS).When introducing a new stressor, like an exercise, our body will become stimulated. The body will respond in two ways: If it meets the correct stimulation and threshold, your muscles will get stronger and bigger or become more “toned." However, if the stress is too much, it goes into the exhaustion phase and leads to breakdown.
Soreness is our body’s response that our muscles are breaking down and trying to recover. It also means you likely have an inflammatory process (much like a blunt injury) that creates a little or a lot of swelling in the area. Swelling has been shown to deactivate important muslces for stabilization of moving joints. If it persists for a couple days after, it is called Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness or DOMS. In simple terms, if you don’t give yourself adequate rest and continue to break down too much of your muscle cells, this will eventually lead to injuries or the compensations of wrong muscle groups. If you are experiencing soreness, remember to ice several times a day, on and off for 20 minutes.
What’s that mean? If you trying to rehabilitate your shoulder with the mindset that you need to be sore in order to be working out correctly, you will likely see little or no progress.”
So you actually can build muscle without being sore!
My response to his misconception of turning fat into muscle was simple. Fat cells are not muscle cells. They are two completely different cells. Fat cells lie amongst muscle cells and are the energy store for depleted or “hungry” muscle cells.
Basically you get rid of fat two ways:
- By creating a small shortage of calories. Calories are a measurement of energy (you see them in all the food and drinks you consume, and, since we’re involved in CAN, that also means alcohol). By decreasing 200 calories per day off your resting metabolic rate, you could burn 1.5-2 lbs a week and still be healthy. Calculate your resting metabolic rate.
- The other way is to build lean muscle mass. It’s been said for every pound you make, you will burn 50 extra calories a week at rest. It doesn’t factor in that you may burn more by moving that extra lean muscle around.
Before you take any health advice from Mr. Body Builder, remember where you should be getting the real information.
Thanks and remember to live in the way of the warrior!
Justin C Lin MSPT, CSCS
Justin is a featured columnist for DCAS’ “Weekend Warrior,” a practicing physical therapist in the DC metro area and founder of Wellness Revolution 101. If you wish to learn more, please visit his site and read his biography.