Are six-pack abs and mermaid lines a healthy body shape?

Recently, a reader asked Scott a good question: Are the six-pack muscles and mermaid lines that are popular among modern people a healthy body shape?

After spending a few days thinking about this question, I came up with the following answer:

Different goals: health, body shape, physical fitness

Fitness/diet knowledge is a means to achieve certain ends, and I believe that for most readers, these ends include health, body shape, and physical fitness. Here is a rough definition of these three purposes:

Health: Promote health, prolong life, and prevent disease and disability.

Body shape: Changing physical appearance to conform to self-expectations.

Physical fitness: Enhance muscle strength, muscle endurance, explosive power, aerobic endurance, coordination and other athletic abilities...

For most modern people, working out and paying attention to diet are beneficial to all three of the above goals. For example, if an overweight office worker can drink one less sugary drink a day, or start basic muscle strength training, his health, body shape and physical fitness will all improve at the same time, and the three will not conflict with each other.

But after a critical point, the three began to conflict with each other. How do you explain this?

If you are a bodybuilder who prioritizes your physique, in order to achieve an amazingly low body fat percentage and muscle definition, you will have to control your diet very strictly and take extreme measures to dehydrate your body. These practices may affect gonadal secretions, cause eating disorders, and even damage the kidneys. An extremely perfect body shape is in conflict with health, as can be seen from the article Scott shared about the higher mortality rate of professional bodybuilders. In addition, in the process of controlling diet and reducing body fat, physical fitness will also decline slightly. I believe many bodybuilding enthusiasts have this experience.

If you are a reader who prioritizes health, then you will definitely not adopt high-risk training methods to achieve a monster physique. As mentioned above, extreme body shape requires extreme diet control, which is also not good for health.

Readers who prioritize physical performance are the opposite of health seekers, who must constantly explore their bodies' limits, battle injuries on the brink of overtraining, and in many cases, even take performance-enhancing drugs. Moreover, physical fitness goals must be set, and the body shape can only "cooperate" obediently. For example, marathon runners will not have too many muscles, and powerlifters will not have abdominal muscles full of blue veins.

(Some people’s goal is six-pack abs, some want a perky butt, and some want neither. Everyone has different expectations for their body, which should be respected.)

(I know, I know, some powerlifters like Dan Green have physiques comparable to bodybuilders, but these are the exceptions, not the rule. Not everyone has such excellent genetics and training.)

Conclusion

Middle-aged people who never exercise to exhaustion for fear of injury, athletes who are injured all over from training for the Olympic gold medal, or female bodybuilders with irregular menstruation have all made rational choices for themselves, but they are also the best examples of how it is impossible to have all three.

Back to the original proposition, is the six-pack abs and mermaid line a healthy shape? My answer is: it depends.

If a high-fiber, high-protein, minimally processed diet with adequate calories and a well-designed fitness routine gives you an abs that everyone will envy, then six-pack abs are a healthy shape.

But if your six-pack comes from dieting, anorexia, menopause, overtraining, or illegal drugs, then the answer is no.

This article comes from: Dr. Scott's One-Minute Fitness Class

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