What happens if you lose weight without exercising?

Illustration of an overweight and a skinny guy

What do you think would happen if you lost weight by either:

  • Just dieting
  • Dieting and doing cardio workouts
  • Dieting, cardio, and weight training

Which protocol is going to cause the most weight loss? The most fat loss? And what’s going to happen to your muscle mass?

There are two studies that answer that question. But before we go over the results, try and guess what would happen. I think it could be fun to test your intuition.

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Why Are Overweight People So Muscular?

Illustration of an Overweight Person

As a skinny guy, I always wondered why overweight people were so much stronger than I was, especially in their lower bodies. I mean, I didn’t exercise and neither did they. I didn’t eat well, neither did they. Where was all that extra muscle coming from?

I understood how they had become overweight. I knew I had a small stomach, a meagre appetite, and a fast metabolism. My high metabolism was obvious to everyone who knew me—I was always fidgeting, always moving, always radiating heat. I was a classic ectomorph.

What I didn’t understand was how much muscle overweight people were gaining simply because they were overeating.

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The most attractive male body-fat percentage: is it possible to be too lean?

What's the most attractive male body-fat percentage according to women? Do women like abs? Is the healthiest body-fat percentage the most attractive?

The main scientific theory explaining why we find certain traits attractive is that they showcase genuine advantages (study, study, study). For example, the healthiest body-fat percentage range for men is between 10–20% (study), so we’d expect that amount of fat to be considered the most attractive by women. That’s not what we see on magazine covers, though, where men are typically far leaner.

Do women really find men with the healthiest body-fat percentage the most attractive? Or do they have a preference for even leaner men with more chiseled abs?

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The ideal male body—is it possible to be too muscular?

Do women find the most muscular men the most attractive? Is it possible to gain so much muscle that you start to become less attractive?

A few years ago, we ran a survey where we asked women to rate photos of male bodies to see which physiques they found the most attractive. Our results showed that the vast majority of women preferred men who looked strong but not overly musclebound.

However, a new study titled Cues of Upper Body Strength Account for Most of the Variance in Men’s Bodily Attractiveness, authored by Aaron Sell, PhD, found that the more muscular a man’s body was, the more attractive women found it. None of the male bodies were rated as being overly muscular. In fact, the most muscular body in the study was rated as being the most attractive.

I think this new study, combined with all of the other research published since 2011, show that we need to adjust our description of the ideal male body… although maybe not in the way you’d expect.

Let’s dive in.

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Bony to Bombshell, our strength training program for women, is now in Beta!

Bony to Beastly is doing great. Our guys are doing fantastic, and they’re a fun and supportive bunch. Every couple weeks a new jaw-dropping transformation hits the member area, but everyone who’s nearing completion of the program is kicking some serious ass.

Word of our bony-boy muscle-building spread across the interwebs, and we started getting emails from women asking us to make a program for bony babes.

Always up for an experiment, Marco ran a girl through our Bony to Beastly program, bicep curls, beastly eating and all.

The result?

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