Not trying to make any profound statement or argument...this is just one of those “I was thinking...” posts. I’ll try not to ramble too much.
I’ve always been prone to being skinny, “scrawny” even. I’m 5’7” and have a dainty skeleton and concave rib cage. Before I started lifting at 16, I weighed about 135 pounds. By the time I stopped lifting at 24 I weighed about 155. During my 17 year layoff, I went back to my “normal” size of around 143.
Now, I wasn’t unhealthy or weak at those lower weights. I was (am) extremely fit, get plenty of real life exercise at my physical job, and I have always been what some call “cockstrong” for my size.
In any case...my body WANTS to be at that more efficient 143. It can do everything it needs to do in day to day life, it requires less fuel (calories), it even requires less rest. Every day I fight to maintain my current lifting weight of about 160, or struggle for a year in the hopes of gaining 1 or 2 pounds of quality muscle.
My maintenance calories are about 1000 a day over what I was eating when I wasn’t lifting, and another 500 a day when in a strong surplus, gaining maybe 2 pounds a month.
In any case, I did some rough math, and it came up to around $1,500 a year I spend extra on food to maintain/gain muscle. So these last 8 years of lifting have cost me around $12,000 (Just in food, including protein powder) to build and maintain my current physique.
Now, I enjoy lifting a lot. I like the actual activity of lifting, I enjoy building my home gym (another cost in the thousands, ha ha), I like researching and partaking in forums, I like the way I feel and the way I look (well, there are many things I would change if I could...but that’s another thread ;).
...BUT when you think about the shear cost, physically and financially to build and maintain a body, and look at it from the outside, it seems rather...odd. I mean, this is about 20 pounds of muscle I really do not need to be healthy and function. Not only that, it’s something that will “disappear” in short order if, by chance, I stopped eating in excess and/or stopped lifting like a madman.
I don’t plan on quitting this hobby anytime soon, ever really, this stuff just popped into my head. Not only that, but how fortunate I am (and it comes with some guilt, despite working extremely hard my whole life for what I have) to live in a place, and been given opportunities in life to do something so “silly” with food while less fortunate people struggle just to get a meal.
from Bodybuilding News Updates https://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=177161071&goto=newpost
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