eli5: why do we need to workout to be jacked, why cant our bodies make us naturally shredded
In: 90
Up to 30 – 50 years ago we were on the farm, in the factory or whatever…. Physical labor. That’s what we were evolved for. Now people on sitting on the couch Netflix or Xbox and chilling.
Because it’s intensive in terms of energy expenditure.
You can tell because in order to “trick” your body into growing muscle mass you need a combination of two things: strenuous workouts and abundant, healthy, caloric food.
Your body would then think “it seems that larger muscles would help in my daily life; does it make sense to take the risk and use the calories to grow them, instead of storing fat? will I need my fat reserves soon?” if the answer is “there is plenty of food everyday, go ahead” then your muscles grow. If the answer is uncertain (even just because you are sleeping poorly and the body things this is due to a harder time in your life, which used to be mostly because of uncertain food sources), then your body will rather store the calories as fat, just in case.
Your body is malluable and adapts to your everyday needs in a certain range, but always tries to use the least amount of energy.
If you need muscles because you use them, the muscles will grow to use energy more efficiently, but if you don’t use them, they chrink back because even the maintenance uses energy.
Like having a huge engine a car it is fuel efficient because it is efficient on high power output, but if you are only use it close to idle, that would consume more fuel than a smaller engine at it’s most efficient usecase
If you used your muscles your body will tell itself to build muscle there as it’s required using protein from food. If you eat bad food and don’t use muscles, it gets stored as fat.
Humans are designed to only develop the minimal amount of muscle. Muscle cells have the second highest energy use (behind braincells), and that’s not very good for a species that evolved to use brains and endurance to outlast and outsmart its competitors.
So humans have a lot of Myostatin, a muscle inhibitor manufactured by muscle cells. If we had a lot less myostatin we’d grow muscles like gorillas, and we could basically sit around all day and still end up with huge muscles (because that’s their survival strategy. Size and muscle and spend their day chewing on leaves).
Because being jacked is not natural for humans. Maintaining a huge muscle mass requires a lot of energy, and it’s not beneficial to anything. Except when you’re regularly working out. You’re basically tricking your body into thinking you absolutely need those muscles for survival. “Look, I suddenly need to lift these heavy things every day, build up larger muscles so it becomes easier.”
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