Embark on a journey into the heart of what really drives muscle growth and fat reduction with me, Rob Maxwell, your exercise physiology expert and personal training guide. Prepare to shed the cloak of fitness myths as we unravel the complexities of our body's transformations. We're not just talking about pumping iron and cutting calories; we're diving into the very fabric of cellular change—hypertrophy, hyperplasia, and atrophy—and why understanding these concepts is crucial for anyone looking to sculpt their physique. Tune in for a clear-eyed view of the role calories play in shaping your body and why expert guidance beats out the buzz of social media fitness fads.
Feel the power of knowledge as we explore the initial surge of strength that hits when you first take on strength training, a testament to the awe-inspiring adaptability of the human body. For the novice and the seasoned gym-goer alike, this episode highlights the importance of aligning goals with the body's natural responses to exercise and diet. I'll also illuminate the sometimes dark path of yo-yo dieting, a cycle that can sabotage your efforts to slim down by increasing your body's fat cell count. With this understanding, you'll be equipped to navigate the fitness landscape with a strategy that's built on a foundation of scientific insight and tailored to your body's unique journey towards health and strength.
Embark on a journey into the heart of what really drives muscle growth and fat reduction with me, Rob Maxwell, your exercise physiology expert and personal training guide. Prepare to shed the cloak of fitness myths as we unravel the complexities of our body's transformations. We're not just talking about pumping iron and cutting calories; we're diving into the very fabric of cellular change—hypertrophy, hyperplasia, and atrophy—and why understanding these concepts is crucial for anyone looking to sculpt their physique. Tune in for a clear-eyed view of the role calories play in shaping your body and why expert guidance beats out the buzz of social media fitness fads.
Feel the power of knowledge as we explore the initial surge of strength that hits when you first take on strength training, a testament to the awe-inspiring adaptability of the human body. For the novice and the seasoned gym-goer alike, this episode highlights the importance of aligning goals with the body's natural responses to exercise and diet. I'll also illuminate the sometimes dark path of yo-yo dieting, a cycle that can sabotage your efforts to slim down by increasing your body's fat cell count. With this understanding, you'll be equipped to navigate the fitness landscape with a strategy that's built on a foundation of scientific insight and tailored to your body's unique journey towards health and strength.
Speaker 1:
Welcome to. There is a Method to the Madness. My name is Rob Maxwell, I'm an exercise physiologist and personal trainer. I'm the owner of Maxwell's Fitness Programs and I've been in business since 1994. The purpose of this podcast is to talk to you about the science so you really know what you should be doing and what you shouldn't be doing, and maybe who you should be listening to. All right, and today I'm going to talk to you a little bit about the science of muscle gain and fat loss. I'm going to use some big words. I think you can handle it.
Speaker 1:
Before I get into that, let me thank Jonathan and Lynn Gilden of the Gilden Group at Realty Pros. Both of them and their entire team is committed to providing the highest level of customer service and home selling, and they have the sales and reviews to back that up. So you know what people I vouch for them. Check them out. 386-451-2412. Don't get stuck with a crappy real estate agent, all right. I mean, come on, it's happened to me before and it really sucks when it comes down to the paperwork and it sucks when it comes down to finding out that they really weren't on your team. Hire these guys, they'll be on your team, all right, speaking of hiring people, hire the right people to help you reach your fitness goals, please.
Speaker 1:
I talked to you last time about the importance of who to follow and who not to follow and for those that didn't yet listen to that, well, no big deal. Just follow people with actual backgrounds in science and physiology and biology and have all the proper certifications and all that stuff. Don't just follow people on social media because they may, may, may, look good. You don't know how much filtering might be going on, by the way. All right, so let's talk a little bit about the science, and today I'm going to do the best I can to explain to you the difference between hypertrophy and hyperplasia and atrophy. So I think a lot of people don't understand. And again, not to beat a dead horse, but like, why would you? I don't really expect everybody to understand. So it's perfectly appropriate, if you have a you know, a regular job you're not in the science world of exercise, physiology or whatever to not really know what's going on in your body. But there are too many hacks out there. There are too many people talking about weight loss, weight gain, and they really don't know what they're talking about. So it's kind of simple.
Speaker 1:
Now, if we want to gain weight, we have to have a caloric surplus. That means we have to eat more than our body needs to gain weight, and that could be fat weight or that could be muscle weight Really depends on what you're doing. If you're not working out at all, the weight gain is probably going to be all fat. If you are working out, it's probably going to be mostly, if not all, muscle, if not all muscle. Same goes for fat loss or weight loss. I should say so like you're going to lose both fat and muscle when you are going through a restriction process. So to lose weight we have to have some sort of a caloric deficit. So this we know, we absolutely know. There's no way around it. There's no special macronutrient diets, there's no special hacks, there's no jumping into an ice cube bath to make you lose fat or any of this crap that is propagated around there. It's really simple Calories in, calories out, but what's going on in your body?
Speaker 1:
So I'm, when we gain muscle, that's called hypertrophy. When we gain fat, that is also hypertrophy. So what that means, what hypertrophy is, is the individual cells are getting bigger. The individual cells themselves are going through sort of a split reconfiguration and they get a little bit bigger. Whether it be muscle cells or fat cells, the individual cells get bigger, all right. So, like in the case of muscle tissue, a bunch of individual muscle fibers have gotten bigger in a muscle belly, therefore making the entire muscle bigger. All right, that's hypertrophy. That's what goes on predominantly when we gain weight. If we gain muscle, we have hypertrophy of the muscle cell. If we gain fat, we have hypertrophy of the fat cell.
Speaker 1:
For the most part and this part I don't know that everybody talks enough about meaning the people that really should be out there giving you the science. So you know what you should be doing, all right, now, as I get into that, this is where hyperplasia comes up. So hyperplasia is actually increase in cell number, all right, that means that not the muscle cells or fat cells themselves have gotten bigger. That's hypertrophy. But there actually has been an increase in cells. Now, if you're talking fat, that's not a good thing, because now you have more fat cells.
Speaker 1:
And guess what? There is no way to get rid of fat cells except through liposuction, which I don't think anybody wants to get rid of fat cells except through liposuction, which I don't think anybody wants to get to that point and it's very superficial, meaning you can only really go to certain places. It's not like you can do it everywhere around your body. I mean I guess you could, but that's going to be like major, major surgeries, cosmetic surgeries and everything. So we don't really want the fat cells to multiply, but guess what they do in some cases.
Speaker 1:
So fat cells can go through hyperplasia in extreme obesity situations. So, in other words, once somebody is getting to a point where they're gaining weight and gaining weight and gaining weight, not only may the fat cells be going through hypertrophy, getting bigger, which isn't great, but it's also not awful, because what gets bigger can get smaller and the opposite of that is atrophy. So you get atrophy of the fat cells, but they also could be increasing their fat cells themselves. Now that really doesn't happen in the case of muscle cells. About 20, 25 years ago the science said it did not happen at all. Like the only way muscle cells get bigger in adulthood after adolescence I should say is through hypertrophy. That is it.
Speaker 1:
Well, there's been a little more science in the last decade or so talking about like there might be not even, but maybe up to 5% of an increase in hyperplasia, meaning you actually will multiply your fat cells. From what the studies show, that's like really, in extreme situations of working out Somebody may be fine-tuning their body, their workouts down almost perfectly. The studies didn't say this because you know it's probably don't really want to print that, but I will give you my opinion on that. It probably only comes in extreme cases of pharmacology as well, because from what we know that really just doesn't occur a whole lot. But science is starting to keep a little bit more of an open mind.
Speaker 1:
Where hyperplasia of muscle cells might happen in extreme situations Definitely happens in extreme obesity situations. Now, in normal times hyperplasia of the fat cells will occur in infancy. So the fat cells kind of become maybe I don't want to say stuck, but they become very stable around birth and infancy and then, unfortunately for women, around pregnancy. If they become pregnant there can be an increase in the amount of fat cells for them, which may explain why it might be a little harder for some women to lose the weight after they are postpartum. So that's a possibility with that. Other than that, the only time hyperplasia of fat cells occur again is in extreme obese situations, but it does occur. Now we don't want that because, again, once we get the cells, you can't get rid of the cells except again through liposuction. So that's why it becomes more difficult to lose the weight later on.
Speaker 1:
And, as I've harped on before, we don't want yo-yo dieting. I mean, we don't want somebody to stay stuck in obesity either. No, I'm not saying that. But an ideal situation is to reach your ideal weight or close and pretty much try to stay there, just maintain it. When I say just maintain it, that's kind of an oxymoron because it's really hard. It's not just so, you know. Sometimes people say, well, I don't want to go for just maintenance. Maintenance is a great thing, like really try to get there and maintain it. It's not as easy as it sounds, but that's an ideal situation because once we start gaining fat cells and then we lose the weight, well, now it's harder to lose the weight as we try. Then we might gain weight again. So we're going through this cycle of potential hyperplasia of the fat cells every time we gain a significant amount of weight. So it's really best not for that to happen.
Speaker 1:
Now, when we lose weight, when we lose muscle, we atrophy. So we have to understand that there's nothing mystical going on. When we create a caloric deficit, our cells shrink. That's atrophy. That's what happens. The individual, whether it be muscle cells or fat cells shrink. They get smaller. That's simple atrophy. That's what occurs Basically.
Speaker 1:
The body is really really smart. It realizes what you're not using it wants to get rid of, because it sees it as wasted energy. So your body is working with you to lose the weight, so to say. Unfortunately, it could be working against you, even though it thinks it's working with you in the case of losing muscle tissue as well, because the old principle of reversibility states that if we don't use it, we lose it, and that is why. So we're not using those muscles. The body is looking at them like a waste of energy. Everything is basically a war or a battle of energy. Your body is fighting for the energy that is going through your body in the sense of, or in the case of, calories. It's fighting for that. So if your body sees that you're not really using your bicep muscles anymore because you're not going to the gym and you're not doing curls, you're not doing pulling exercises, those muscles are going to begin to atrophy. They just get smaller. The individual muscle cells get smaller. The individual fat cells get smaller when we create a caloric deficit. That is what goes on, all right. So hyperplasia, hypertrophy and atrophy Key words. That's what goes on in the body.
Speaker 1:
Now how do we use this information? First off, just understand that. It really is just as simple as that. Fat cells get smaller, fat cells get bigger, muscle cells get smaller, muscle cells get bigger. Just understand that and also understand for either to go up, you need to have a caloric surplus, you need to have a caloric surplus.
Speaker 1:
Sometimes people think, well, I'm going to the gym, I want to get big and strong, and then you find out they're dieting, meaning that they're on sort of a restricted calorie diet, and I'm like okay, so how do you think that's going to occur? Now? Neurological adaptations occur. That's called recruitment, when we start doing strength exercises or lifting weights. What that means is that our brain and muscles start to work together to coordinate how you recruit the muscle fibers. So that's like a learning curve that goes on and for those of you that have kids, you need to understand that as your kids get stronger that's the only way they are getting stronger is what we call neurological adaptations.
Speaker 1:
They're not getting stronger through hypertrophy, because hypertrophy can't occur until you've gone through a maturation process. Until you have enough testosterone, you're not going to go through hypertrophy. So all of your strength gains early on are from neurological adaptations. So when you're on a restricted diet, the same thing is going to occur. You're going to get stronger via neurological adaptations, but that only really lasts, like for the first three weeks. You don't really get any more neurological adaptations after you've been doing a specific exercise for about three weeks or maybe six times that you've done it.
Speaker 1:
After that, if you want to get stronger, you're going to have to rely on hypertrophy. You've done it. After that, if you want to get stronger, you're going to have to rely on hypertrophy. If you are on a restricted diet, hypertrophy is not going to occur. So you say, well, I'm not getting stronger. You know what's going on. It's well, you're not eating enough and I know that balance is there. When you're trying to lose fat, I get it. I've done a podcast on how hard that is to do, but it is doable. I get that it's hard, but as long as we understand, that is what is going on in the body.
Speaker 1:
The second thing I really want you to get out of today's message is to understand as I preach about a lot is don't get in the cycle of yo-yo dieting. Quit fluctuating that 20, 30, or 40 pounds, whatever it is up and down. It is not good for you and every time that this happens you are at risk for hyperplasia of the fat cells. We don't want to increase those fat cells knowingly, meaning that if we're gaining weight, we kind of know we're gaining weight and we're just setting ourselves up for harder weight loss in the future and then you might not be able to get down to that weight that you really want to get down to because you've allowed yourself to gain too many fat cells. So just understand the science behind that and I think you'll be better off and glad that you did All right.
Speaker 1:
Speaking of glad, everybody is glad when I refer them to Overhead Door of Daytona Beach. They're the best garage door installers, the best garage door sellers and fixers. So if you don't have a contract with them, if you haven't bought a door through them, no big deal. You can still get them to come out and fix any issue you might have going on. So give them a shout at overheaddoordaytonacom.