I do not agree with this. I did physical exercise my whole life, but I never tried specifically to improve my physical appearance. It is a totally different approach. All exercises are specific to certain muscles and will tend to change the person's appearance in certain ways, which is why it is not difficult to guess what sport someone does from their physical appearance.

Although I am not a runner, running is an excellent example of this. Runners really don't improve their physical appearance at all, especially as they get older they end up looking very old and thin. Long-distance running tends to reduce muscle mass in the upper body, which leads to the scarecrow look that is so typical of older runners. And there is a characteristic look for bicyclists, swimmers, etc. You will never get wide shoulders from bicycling unless you do additional upper-body exercises to compensate. Swimming is probably the best full-body exercise, although it is not perfect and all pro swimmers lift weights to build up certain muscles that they need to swim competitively.

Well I didn't say it was to improve one's appearance. I said it was good to build self-confidence, I didn't mention looks.

if you're going to work out (get jacked) do it for yourself, to feel better about yourself, to try to push yourself beyond your normal limits etc...

becoming more attractive to women is an added bonus but shouldn't be the main reason

Quit being childish. Here's what I do know. Women universally find a muscular body attractive on a man.
I SUSPECT that vastly improving your appearance increases your odds no matter who you are, even though I don't know what is or isn't NECESSARY for any single individual. For some people, it might be necessary, for others maybe not, but even the men who it's not at all necessary for, it still wouldn't negatively affect his chances at all to lift weights.
For a man who's already attractive to women, building some mass and getting cut will just make him that much more attractive to women.
For guy who's a 2 on a scale of one to ten, he could increase his attractiveness to a 6 or a 7 probably.
And it bears reiterating, like other posters have mentioned here, improving the way women see you is only one positive aspect to getting a more aesthetically pleasing body. You may not become a Don Juan, but you're guaranteed to see some kind of improvement in your life.

You and the Haitian criticize my advice for not presenting a cure all for all incel ills, and yet you both have devoted time and energy to arguing with me on the internet. How has that improved your condition?
It's also very likely that you spend a lot of time doing other things in your life, hobbies, TV, video games, and etc, which do absolutely nothing to increase your chances of attracting a female.
Did arguing with me increase your odds of finding a woman?
Do any of the activities that you do in your spare time increase your odds of finding a meaningful relationship with a woman?

Both are important. You can get a two-fer btw.



Why do people think that these things are mutually exclusive?



This x10.

this reply confuses me.... sure it makes sense, but what does it have to do with what dsea said?

If I did exercise only for myself and my own health, I would only worry about cardio-vascular fitness. When you talk about physical appearance, that is based on the opinions of other people, not yourself alone.

So having wide shoulders or big biceps is not an important contribution to one's own health. But the wider and stronger your shoulders are, the more positive interest and attraction you are going to generate from anyone else, male or female. People will respect you more, even though it seems like a stupid reason, that's how people act.

I've recently restarted my attempts after giving up many times. I don't want to get jacked as such, I just would like my arms and shoulders to look more manly and less like a 14 year old's, and gain a little definition to my stomach.

The difference this time is that I am actually doing this for me as I've pretty much given up on women, so hopefully I'll get better results this time. I've ordered a 2kg tub of whey powder too which I'm hoping will help as I've never tried any supplements or anything like that before.

This is fine. There are really only two kinds of supplements that work; whey and Creatine. Everything else is a scam.

Mild bitch to brag/confessional.

In the first year when I was 28 and the Bobbi Eden girl was after me, I had a distended belly. Sometimes I would unbutton my pant when sitting down during a lecture, if I thought I could get away with it. It took half an inch off my height as well due to an S shaped spine.

Now I still have a beer belly, but its a lot less, evidenced by no need to unbutton etc. and even wear blue jeans with only mild discomfort.

Going to exercise during the summer, maybe join a gym. But frankly, I dont think I care much.

ahh i see...


my main suggestion is to do your research. For example i hear if you're only going to take one supplement it should be a multivitamin. And with the whey supplement the healthier your body, the more good it'll do. Again the most important thing is having a workout plan. I saw great results when I stuck to my sups and plan after a couple of weeks but i lost all motivation...

i think the warmer weather will help out my motivation, if it ever comes... I'm thinking i have SAD on top of everything else because we had one warm day little while ago and I actually had a happy productive day. Trouble is i'd like the definition by the time summer comes around. My motivation pool is filling up though, think i might actually go tomorrow.. provided it doesn't snow.

Is it worth taking Creatine in combination with, or instead of whey, or should I be ok with just the whey for the time being?

or illegal and damaging to your health (taking testosterone-injections for to long will make you impotent i've heard)

It really doesn't matter. There's no added benefit to taking them together apart from what benefit you would get from each independently.
I will say that Creatine is more bang for your buck than whey protein, because the only thing whey does is help augment your protein intake. You could probably just do just as well by eating an extra Ham sandwich or something else with a lot of protein in it. Of course, taking whey doesn't do you any harm, just be dubious of any hyped up claims about this brand of of whey or that kind of whey. It's all animal protein and it all performs the same function your body. The only benefit to taking whey is getting extra protein in your diet.
Creatine is by far the best supplement I've ever taken, and I can attest from my own experience that it will help your muscles recuperate faster. Also, unlike with protein supplements, It would be impossible (without eating far too many calories) to get the benefits you'd receive from a Creatine supplement, naturally.

http://www.bodybuilding.com/store/creatine.html

I did some reading and quite a few people were saying Creatine is good if you keep using it, but when you stop you'll lose a lot of muscle mass, I don't know how much truth there is to that though.

Anyway, I was doing hammer curls yesterday, and on the last rep I somehow managed to strain the muscle between my spine and shoulder blade. Now I'm in almost constant pain, with the odd wrong move leading to agony - lying flat on my back is the only pain-free position I've found.

Remember kids, trying is the first step towards failure.