Men and women who exercise generally live longer...

You’ve almost certainly heard somebody say it about themselves or about someone else…. “If you stop exercising your muscle will turn into fat”. In fact some people say that the reason they don’t work out is because when they get old all that muscle that they would have built up will just turn into fat and be wasted. Like many things that we come upon in the world of weight loss it is just a load of rubbish.

To put it simply, muscle is muscle and fat is fat and the two are not interchangeable. Muscles breed muscles and fat breeds fat so the more muscle you attain the better and the less fat you get the better too. The more muscle you get the more calories you need to burn to keep those muscles working all day and thus the chances are you will be slimmer and in better health. What may happen in older people is that as some of the muscles are becoming redundant they made look a little bit flabby, but they look better and are far healthier than having bundles of excess fat on your body.

Men and women who exercise generally live longer and have far better mobility then their peers who do not exercise at all and who have less muscle mass. If you want to make sure that you are mobile in old age, a few gentle workouts a week could really work wonders for you, and research has shown that even people who start exercising well into their sixties can benefit from it even after a short time.

So the next time you hear somebody make the ridiculous statement about muscle turning into fat, make sure that you point out to them poiltely that they are talking to load of complete and utter hogwash in the most charming way you can think of!