The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Notes -
Anecdotal observation - sport and hard physical work are not the same. I don't know why but even people doing properly backbreaking labor - they can get really strong, insane endurance, but not really lose extra fat - at least not to the point where a person would expect them to be with their energy expenditure.
Does anyone has observations/explanations?
Agree with other replies but will offer one counterexample; to the extent they still exist, actual cowboys tend to have almost comically good physiques. The buff-but-not-puffy bodies to maybe "just" extremely wire-y (I.e. very trim or cut with ropey muscles).
My theory is that the specific nature of range work means that cowboys can't afford to tote around extra weight all day, so they naturally develop a leaner body composition, yet, the power / strength activities of handling livestock also mean they don't fall into marathon runner levels of non-muscle.
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The typical construction worker is an alcoholic who drinks soda for hydration all day and eats fast food daily. There are athletes with similarly unhealthy diets, but not in positions emphasizing endurance and sprinting, and they look the same way- a lot of fat on them over their muscles.
If you look at construction crews that skip lunch, they’re typically fairly skinny although not necessarily toned(the muscles that look good aren’t necessarily the ones you’d use on a jobsite).
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Sports are dopaminergic in a way that hard labor isn’t, and dopaminergic pathways compete against each other. So sports players are growing the pleasure pathways of competition and socialization, which compete against the pleasure pathways of food salience, whereas someone digging a hole isn’t having fun at all — and in fact craves pleasure after work, like in the form food.
A completely different explanation is that you are noticing class differences. Adults who do sports recreationally are healthier and more intelligent on average, whereas construction workers are not.
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They probably just enjoy food, a lot of construction workers eat huge portions of greasy fast food twice or more a day, for example, even if you’re expending a lot of calories you’re still very liable to get fat. Bodybuilders and gymbros know they have to both lift and eat well (or at least monitor their caloric intake and maintenance), “strongfat” manual laborers often don’t care. The young ones often do, and in that case they tend to be leaner.
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