eli5: why is it that fatter/bigger people in general have an easier time gaining strength and putting on muscle than skinny people?

269 viewsBiologyOther

This is not the place to give any measurements, so I’ll just say I was fat 7 months ago and I’m not anymore.

I put on a lot of muscle mass while losing quite some fat, so I can lift rather heavy (on my own perspective), but when I mock my friends about lifting more than them even though they’ve been training for years they all go “well, you used to be fat” or “that’s easier for you because you were bigger” and I have come to understand that’s just how it works because of the Internet too, but I don’t really know why.

I don’t know if it’s the language causing a misunderstanding here, but when I say “mock” I mean we joke with each other playfully in a way that everyone’s comfortable with.

In: Biology

20 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

I used to be a competitivo Olimpic lifter (at least regionally lol). One thing that gets enphatized a lot is a that mass moves mass, thats why you see soo many elite athletes move up in weightclasses, cause at their level if they don’t bulk up they won’t be able to have more strength. This also carries into non elite sports, if you are already a bigger bodied individual you have more strength from just moving your weight around.

You are viewing 1 out of 20 answers, click here to view all answers.