Muscle Burns Fat?

[milly]

How does having muscle burn fat?

What happens in the body to do this and why?

[swanso5]

the more lean body wt you have (muscle) the more cal's are required to fuel the body at rest, thus metabolic rate increases...it takes more cal's to sustain muscle than fat so you use / burn more

[woodshedder]

Just to state it a different way, cells need a source of energy (or fuel) to carry out their normal functions. Muscle cells require a lot of energy (they are very active metabolically), and a major source of energy for them is the fat in your body.

[milly]

[quote="woodshedder"] Muscle cells require a lot of energy (they are very active metabolically),

Can you expand for me..how & why are they very active metabolically, what do they do?

[swanso5]

muscles provide movement for the body so everytime you move, cal's are burnt..fat mass doesn't do anything, it just gets fatter

[woodshedder]

Can you expand for me..how & why are they very active metabolically, what do they do?

I don't know how much you want here but... the movement of muscle is a process which requires a lot of energy. The direct source of energy muscle cells use is a molecule called ATP (adenosine triphosphate). (One admittedly incomplete way of defining "metabolically active" is "uses a lot of ATP"). ATP is made in subcellular organelles called mitochondria, which most skeletal muscle types have lots of. The making of ATP itself requires energy, and this energy comes from your body's molecules of fat, glycogen, etc. Fat and glycogen are two forms of energy storage which your body makes from the food you eat. The energy from fat, glycogen, etc. are converted by a couple of other biochemical pathways into molecular forms the mitochondria can use to make ATP.

Even when at rest, muscle cells (like all cells) use ATP. ATP is used as an energy source for many biochemical reactions in cells. Now I can't really quote authoritative sources, but I'm sure I have read that muscle cells are more active metabolically when at rest (i.e., when no muscle contractions are happening) than most cells are, and that makes sense to me.

[milly]

So with all this process going on in the body, how does the body use carbs and protein.

Are these the best sources for muscle growth and repair?

[swanso5]

basically carbs are stored as glycogen in the muscles for energy for activity and protein actually rebuilds / repairs damage done to muscle fibres through activity so obviously fast digesting protein is required here for best results as soon as you finish training followed by solid protein meals every 2hrs after to continue repairing but you still need to carbs because it's at this time that you'll store the most and the more you can store in the muscles, the less spill over there will be for potential fat gain

[Boss Man]

It should be mentioned as a side not though, don't expect things like simple Carbs to to replace Glycogen completely, as some of the simple Carb intake you have can convert to Fat in the Liver.

Also Protein when you analyse the Amino Acid profile, does do many things like Protect Organs, speed up heling, Improve Immune function etc etc.

Carbs are also converted to Glucose, which is a primary source of energy for humans.