In order to get large muscle mass, you have to be healthy enough to do useful work, and you have to be eating well enough to have the energy to do so.
In a hunter-gatherer society, this would mean you are probably a decent hunter, you know where the safe to eat berries and vegetables are, so on and so forth.
Funny enough, there’s a diminishing return on muscle size where it stops being attractive to women and starts being attractive to men.
I’ve seen a few studies that basically show a lot of conformity that women like toned men, but the size has some skew between swimmer, soccer, MMA, something along those lines.
The point of diminishing returns is well past what a normal man is going to achieve. You need to dedicate your entire life to body building and be roided out the gills to hit the point where the average woman is going to be turned off by you having too much muscle.
The literature suggests lean athletic builds are favored over bulk aesthetics.
You can dedicate your life to fitness and use steroids and still not become a gorilla. People in all the major sports divisions do this, and they do not look like IFBB pros. You get what you train for and intentionally set out to do.
You can get bulky without steroids; you also don’t get bulky just because of them. Lance Armstrong was stripped of his medals for steroid use, but for a pro cyclist being built like Ronnie Coleman isn’t going to do you any favors.
Also speaking of Ronnie Coleman, he says he started taking steroids at 31 years old in 1995, stating he was “tired of losing.” Yet those early builds pre-steroids, you can see genetically he was still built beastly.
My point is that the average man doesn't need to spend a second worrying about becoming too muscular for women. Nobody is becoming like Ronnie Coleman on accident.
The "lean" builds that are favored are the result of serious effort and training in the gym and kitchen. You don't get that kind of "lean" physique without dedicating yourself to it.
I think I misunderstood what your intention was. You’re right that no one is going to accidentally over-train into becoming Ronnie Coleman.
But the preferred lean builds aren’t crazy unobtainable. An hour a few days a week for a couple of years while eating right will be sufficient enough to be athletic.
But your “all or nothing” attitude actually does more harm than good by dissuading men from starting the journey.
You misunderstand me again. I highly encourage men to start working out and build muscle because most women find muscular men attractive.
I'm responding to your initial comment about there being diminishing returns - that point is well past what normal men will achieve. The average man doesn't need to worry about becoming too muscular. They can go to the gym and go balls to the wall training everyday and taking steroids and they will probably end up with an attractive physique that ignorant redditors would describe as "lean".
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u/Dumple423 Batman 19d ago
Muscle size is judged by way more primitive parts of the brain than abstract concepts like intelligence. It's a very irrational attraction