By bodybuilding, you probably mean steroid-fueled muscle building.
Most natural body-building will never reach that level. On the other way, there is plenty of good health reasons to train with weights, and build a good/solid muscle mass. It also improves a lot of other aspects in your life (social).
So, weight-training, bodybuilding - lite is great. Steroid ladden/extreme body building one is probably not healthy.
The issue is not building muscles, in almost any body building competition, what comes with it is lowering body fat to unhealthy levels.
Know well that something as simple as visible abdominal muscles already requires a body fat percentage that is lower than what is generally considered healthy.[0]
One's musculature should not be “defined” for optimal health, — that requires dropping below healthy fat levels.
Professional body builders go far beyond that, of course.
The article points out that for visible abdominals one needs to maintain less than 10%, typically 8%, and that doctors recommend between 15% and 20%
10% is at the outskirts of what is generally considered acceptable, it is not a disaster such as the 3% that some body builders go for, but gaining more is definitely better and to achieve 10% one must in general consciously malnutitrion and avoid eating food that the body can use to synthesize fat.
Just an anecdote, but I've had multiple dexa scans in the 8-12% range spanning across years of bulking and cutting and I've never had better than what I consider mediocre abs - probably much better than the average adult male in the U.S. but never magazine photo worthy or anything like that. Other people did comment on them at ~8%, though, so my own perspective may be negatively biased.
> to achieve 10% one must in general consciously malnutitrion and avoid eating food that the body can use to synthesize fat.
No, no! If you are eating foods that humans should eat and exercising about an hour a day, you will naturally fall below 10% no matter what else you do.
I never limit the amount of food I eat and in no sense am I "malnourished". I am 80 kilos at around 8% body fat and I still have a lot to spare before it would start to affect my athletic performance as a sprinter. Go take a look at the typical 100m sprinter physique and tell me that any of them are malnourished!
> No, no! If you are eating foods that humans should eat and exercising about an hour a day, you will naturally fall below 10% no matter what else you do.
Perhaps if you mean with that what human beings should eat without that exercise.
> I never limit the amount of food I eat and in no sense am I "malnourished". I am 80 kilos at around 8% body fat and I still have a lot to spare before it would start to affect my athletic performance as a sprinter. Go take a look at the typical 100m sprinter physique and tell me that any of them are malnourished!
Sprinters are very much malnourished to keep weight to a minimum.
You will notice that in other sports that do not rely on reducing weight such as shot put or powerlifting, the athletes tend to develop a very different physique.
> Sprinters are very much malnourished to keep weight to a minimum.
This is NOT how any professional sprinter trains. Due to the nature of the exercise and the massive caloric expenditure that happens during sprinting, the mindset is more about trying to fit in in as much food as possible (while keeping to reasonable macro-nutrient ratios) rather than attempting to "keep weight at a minimum".
Haven't you ever seen how practically every 100m sprinter looks? It is not a physique that could be described as minimal, at all! My PB for the 100m is ~10.4s, so not quite pro but very fast.
why would you link an article from "fatherly.com" as a reputable source
contest bodybuilders get lean and that has detrimental hormonal effects and tanks their metabolism / NEAT, but evidence on post-contest weight rebounds suggests these are acute effects and don't have long-term adverse health outcomes. if you want to read more, look for papers on "metabolic adaptation" by Helms, Trexler, or Schoenfeld
Nonsense, if your abs aren't visible as a man then you are carrying too much fat.
What's unhealthy about body bulding, beyond the direct effects of the roids, is that these guys are like 300+ lbs. That and becoming severely dehydrated from taking diuretics before competitions.
Then I'm sure you can produce a source that runs contrary to my own on that matter, because even searching with neutral phrases such as “Is having a sixpack healthy?” returns nothing but results to me with experts saying that it isn't, and that to achieve it one must go below the minimum recommended body fat percentage.
In countries that aren't undergoing an obesity epidemic it is completely normal for men to have visible abs. Any man who does aerobic and anaerobic exercise for an extended period of time (and doesn't eat garbage, like 90% of Americans) will develop a six pack without even trying.
You cannot possibly think that men like this are malnourished...
> In countries that aren't undergoing an obesity epidemic it is completely normal for men to have visible abs.
Umm, which countries are you talking about here? I've been to several countries and I really don't think I've been anywhere where it's "completely normal" for men to have visible abs (let's say for definition's sake, I don't think I've been to a country in which >10% of the adult male population has abs). Not that I could necessarily tell most of the time, most people have shirts on during the day.
I do agree with your point though - I don't think visible as are unhealthy.
Not only do I do think they are, but I couldn't help but notice your lack of source as I asked.
They are very much malnourished and their body fat percentage is lower than is optimal for good health and they most likely suffer from the associated complications of too little body fat.
I find it interesting that most of my friends/social set will (rightly) dismiss "high school health class" fearmongering over drugs, but when that drug is anabolic steroids suddenly every warning is true.
It seems reasonable to me that the same skepticism applied to claims about any drug's danger - claims which frankly derive from government sources interested primarily in social engineering - should also be applied to steroids.
My reasoning is the following, and as someone who likes to do weight lifting I would love to be proved wrong: if steroids are not necessarily bad and we surely know they work wonders how is it possible that, in a world obsessed with looks and moving so much money in all kind of (absurd) products, they have not been legally commercialized somehow.
They absolutely have been legally commercialized. In the United States (and presumably elsewhere) you can easily find a doctor who will legally prescribe you a host of steroids, growth hormones, and various other "anti-aging medications".
My understanding is that many of them don't do bloodwork to test existing hormone levels and many that do use very liberal interpretations of what standard levels in men should be at a given age, etc.
Think of the "pill mills" that lead to the opiod crisis where as long as you had the cash someone would write a prescription. Note that I'm not insinuating similar levels of risk or harm, merely pointing out the flexibility of medical ethics for some doctors in these areas.
Use your favorite search engine and search "anti-aging clinic". They're in many US cities, available online, and a popular medical tourism destination.
EDIT: I also suspect these kinds of medical "interventions" are prevalent in Hollywood and elsewhere. For example, Hugh Jackman in Wolverine. This guy was born in 1968, which puts him at ~44 years old during filming. Look at his physique as a 44 year old man and tell me that was just from broccoli and chicken (especially considering his physique in roles leading up to Wolverine).
I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm just saying that the chances that so many of these mid to late 40s Hollywood actors have a physique that would be excellent on a 20-25 year old isn't likely due to just freak genetics, diet, and hard work at the gym. Especially when the budgets of these films can easily exceed $100 million.
> medical "interventions" are prevalent in Hollywood and elsewhere. For example, Hugh Jackman
Another factor is that there is relentless competition from a huge number of people trying to become a famous star: severe filtering that will select for intensely driven people (amongst other attributes that would drive someone towards interventions).
Same as why vodka is legal but mdma isn't: deeply entrenched interests, on both sides. Listen, kids: All Steroids Are Bad, and anybody who disagrees is a Bad Person, and probably a criminal.
But that is exactly my point: we have legalized lot of substances bad for health and yet we cannot buy steroids freely. Steroids have at least an upside compared to vodka.
We could ask this question about almost every substance which has been declared illegal.
Indeed, we should.
I don't use androgenic steroids, but I'm right on the cliff where natural levels start falling off, and once I'm over it, I will give it some serious consideration.
Just go to an "anti-aging" clinic and get testosterone replacement therapy (TRT). For $1000/month it's not hard to find a doctor who will find your test is low (below 95th percentile of a 25 year old man).
Vitamin D is technically a steroid, not a vitamin. You can also do nutritional support for hormone-producing organs in the body. Off the top of my head/anecdotally: Peanuts have proven to be good pituitary support (though they are pro-inflammatory and I have to limit them for that reason); good quality salt is important to the adrenals and adrenal support is important to thyroid health.
I probably know more than that and haven't paid that much attention to hormones per se, so I imagine if this interests you, you could figure out a whole lot more from readily available information on the internet.
Most natural body-building will never reach that level. On the other way, there is plenty of good health reasons to train with weights, and build a good/solid muscle mass. It also improves a lot of other aspects in your life (social).
So, weight-training, bodybuilding - lite is great. Steroid ladden/extreme body building one is probably not healthy.