Quote:
Originally Posted by Steakeater
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Looks like I'm alone on this, but I don't think it's funny at all. I actually feel bad for the kid.
The vast majority of gaining advice in bodybuilding/lifting culture is, in actuality, only applicable to the small percentage of people we can rightfully label "hardgainers." I'd say 80% of the gaining literature (articles, books, etc.) out there offers dietary advice that is basically a dressed-up version of "each as much as you can." Sure, there are caveats about food selection and quantity, but the dominant theme by far is "eat as much as you can--then eat more." This sort of advice is only useful to the proportion of the population that has difficulty gaining weight...Well, look at the obesity epidemic all around you: The hardgainer demographic can't be more than about 20-30% of the population. There's probably an equal proportion of "easygainers," and most people fall somewhere in between.
So why does all the gaining literature cater to this small demograpahic?
One, because its easy to give hardgainers advice (eat a lot and lift heavy)...it's a much more ambitious task to help
easygainers put on mass without getting fat. So, the authors usually pass on this topic, because it's hard and provokes questions they're not comfortable answering.
Two, I think it's fair to say that a larger proportion (if not total quantity) of ectomorph/hardgainer types gravitate to lifting (they want to get bigger) than endomorphs (they just want to stop being fat, and conventional wisdom says they need to do more cardio
). It's probably not fair to fault authors for writing to the easy audience...still, for those endos who DO want to get into lifting, the information is more scarce, and yet the task is more complicated. It's a bad combination.
So, as an endo who was overweight years ago, I can sympathize with this kid. Yeah, he needs to take responsibility for his ridiculous diet and training. Still, with hardgainer-specific advice being so pervasive in bodybuilding/lifting literature, and easygainer advice being so scarce, it is easy to see how he could have messed up. He actually did more or less what the bulk (pardon the pun) of the popular bodybuilding literature said to do.
/end rant
