The Ideal Male Body: Which Bodies Did Women Rate As the Most Attractive?

guys-girls-ideal-body-survey-results

We wanted to figure out which male body types women would find the most attractive, as well as which body types men thought women would find the most attractive. To do this, we ran an informal study, surveying over 1000 people to see which bodies they preferred. The results surprised us.

We created several photo arrays and asked women to rate which male bodies they found the most attractive. Then we asked men to guess which bodies the women had picked. It quickly became apparent that most men were trying to build bodies that women didn’t even find attractive, let alone ideal. (We’ve since confirmed these results with a second survey using illustrations instead of photos.)

There were some surprises for women, too. For example, when we asked women which celebrity had the most attractive body, the most popular response was Ryan Reynolds. However, when we cropped his head off and placed his body in a line-up, they told us he was overly lean and musclebound.

On the other hand, Brad Pitt’s headless body (as Tyler Durden in Fight Club) performed incredibly well in the photo arrays, being rated extremely attractive by both men and women, showing some overlap between male and female preferences. But what was so special about this particular body type?

After all, Ryan Reynolds is only slightly leaner and more muscular than Brad Pitt, and yet those tiny changes made a dramatic difference (for the worse). Women thought that Brad Pitt looked strong and healthy, whereas they thought Ryan Reynolds looked like a fitness model, assuming he must be obsessed with his appearance.

Along with covering which male bodies and physical traits were rated as the most attractive by women, we’ll also cover which physiques men found the most impressive and what level of leanness and muscularity guys were most eager to achieve.

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4HB – Cheap Adjustable Kettlebell for Workouts

We made a quick video putting together the T-Handle for two-handed throws as shown in Tim Ferriss’s (check out his blog here) new masterpiece, The 4-Hour Body. Kettlebells are a great workout for your posterior but it can quickly become expensive as you buy new, heavier weights or adjustable sets. This is a DIY kit simply made of typical plumbing items that can be taken apart and transported, assembled quickly, and is cheap. Read More

Ideal Male Body Survey: A Few Fun Minutes Of Your Time Will Really Help Us Out

Update: the results are in! Check ’em out.

We’ve been posting about health, fitness, rapid fat loss, HIIT, weight training and adding lean muscle mass to your frame. We’re pretty passionate about it. We like the results, we like the process and we even like the science behind it. What we’re trying to figure out now is what do you guys have as an end goal?  What do women want in a man when it comes to their body, health and fitness? What are men striving for when they change their diet and head to the gym? Who’s the top dog? Ryan Reynolds, Brad Pitt, Ollie Sykes, Bob Harper? Zyzz? Arnold? Ronnie Coleman? Frank Zane? In order to help you get there we need to find that out.

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Lean to Mean Finale! A Summer’s Worth of Packing on Muscle and Tearing Off Fat. From Bony to Beastly.

Lean to Mean Finale, Shane Duquette, Jared Polowick, Willem

Lean to Mean was the name of our four-month “ectomorph transformation,” as we’ve learned it’s often called. We followed a different bodybuilding routine each month, we diligently tracked our progress, and we photographed absolutely everything.

2019 Update: we’ve come a long way since then. Read the updated story in our article about going from skinny to muscular.

Now, Jared and I are both “ectomorphs.” We’re naturally skinny guys, we’ve always had a hard time gaining weight, and we have a lot of trouble eating the sheer volume of food in most bulking diets.

However, to make things more interesting, we added in a control group. Or, rather, we added in an average overweight guy who was trying to lose weight. His name is Willem, and he started his journey last year when we planned out a diet that helped him lose twenty pounds in a single month. (More on that in our article about how to lose fat.)

Jared and I, skinny ectomorphs that we were, decided to do a hypertrophy training program designed to help us gain muscle. Willem, on the other hand, decided to be more physically active and do more cardio.

So, what we’ve got here are before and after pictures and measurements. We’ve all gotten bigger. We’ve all gotten leaner. And we’re pretty happy with our results. We’ve gone from Bony to Beastly (or at least we’d like to think we did) in just one summer.

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