I'm guessing it will be a hard first couple weeks because of how dedicated these types are to their regiment. About the same for vegan and vegetarians. You eat what you can when you can or you starve. Very basic actually.

 

I don't get your statement about vegans and vegetarians. Body builders? Yeah, they would have a rough go at it. Unless they have a huge stockpile of whey powder somewhere?

But how would it be harder for veg-heads the first couple of weeks? Food related "beliefs" and "principles" would take a back seat in big hurry once starvation starts to kick in. ...or are you thinking about the green, lefty, "save the planet by buying birkenstocks" folk. They just might die of arrogance if they dont adjust...

My opinion is it would be easier to locate plants to eat (we only eat a fraction of the available edible plants in nature), especially after the local wildlife is hunted into oblivion. It never ceases to amaze me how much edible stuff is considered "weeds".

I eat a mostly plant based diet (love cheese though) but wouldnt have any issue eating meat if it came down to survival. My wife is full-on vegan and she feels the same way. But she doesnt eat any weird greeny-hipster-ironic-trendy foods. No supplements or anything, mostly just what our garden provides along with pasta, rice and beans plus some fruit she buys from the local grocery store. She's been eating this way for many years now and her health is tip-top.

We stock mainly beans, rice and pasta because thats really what a vegan diet starts at. Everything else can be foraged if you know where to look. In SHTF, foraging for edible plants might be all there is to eat for some folks...

...unless they don't mind cannibalism...:taped:

 

They will be fine, they have more to lose. I read a story a few years ago about a pro body builder that got shot in the guts. He had a hard time with infections etc. He lost a lot of weight. The Docs told him that since he had so much mass he was able to lose the weight, if not he would have died

 

A solid 250 lbs man will lose like 80 lbs the first year making him 170 lbs.
The 170 lbs man will weight in at 90 lbs the first year,these are the ones who didn't prep,and
got little food.

 

Those are people who aren't prepared right?

 

If you are running around with the srarving masses , it would be wise to look like them as well ,other wise you might have people fallowing you home.
Secondly ,
If there is marshal law and you appear to your captors, better fed than the rest it might inspire an investigation.
Mingeling in public may not be a good idea any way except to gather information ,but you and I know nothing can be trusted comming form the media or the government.
I'm not proud of being over weight ,and i'm working on it , though most of my mass is muscle or was , having an injury due to all the heavy work in my past professions , hampered my ability to excersize like I use to, but it didn't effect my apatite and love for food.
So I am tapering that.
This morning 3 eggs and one saussage. that's it.
Yesterday was oat meal.
it's not an ideal breakfast diet and there are some other changess I have to behave as well , still learning how to be retired .

 

If times get that bad, bodybuilders will make GOOD EATING!!! LOL jk...

 

If they aren't preparing to support that high food demand, then they'll eat less, workout less, and lose some of the mass. They would eventually settle into a mass that balances with their work level and food intake.

 

Pretty much, if the SHTF: working out, supplements, and a very specific diet would be least on their minds.

 

... and for the first 30 days, they will be on an emotional roller coaster, mood swings, and probably more susceptible to bacteria and virii. They will be toxic to those around them because they are used to a higher level of food/water intake, and a very self-oriented life as measured by their present use of time and resources on their own body. If they make it past 30, 90 days will be another hurdle. If they make it a year, yes they will have lost weight, and probably had an epiphany or 3. There's a lot more to this survival thing than caloric consumption, and the extra mass will not compensate for a whole lot of lack in other areas.

 

I'd be curious to find out if you have any science to back this up. By your definition, anyone other than someone that is used to starving will be toxic to people. Everyone in a situation like that is used to other living conditions. What about someone on anti-depressant meds and is suddenly stripped of them? Far more dangerous than a "toxic" bodybuilder. In a survival situation it would not take very long for the body to cannibalize the muscle. Muscle is much needed high density energy if you were starving. It would allow for a much more intense level of energy than that of a skinny person having had an equal amount of food.

There are other factors to consider as well. The level of discipline required to gain the mass we are talking about here can make them a valuable addition to any group. If other body builders are like myself they have taken the time to do extensive research into nutritional demands of various activities and how the body responds to different foods. I can name off the top of my head atleast a hundred different food items and nutritional pros and cons of each. I can tell you which have what kinds of proteins, useful carbs, harmful carbs, etc etc. When each meal counts, that could be very useful information.

 

Actually, they may have more issues due to cardio inabilities to run or work... I dated a National Collegiate Power Lifter in College for a while - he was huge - sweetest boy in the world.

Back in those days, when I weighed a total of 105 lbs and he weighed over 250 lbs (he was only around 5'8" or maybe 5'9") , my manual little Renault died. No problem - push it until you get enough speed and pop the clutch. He literally passed out while trying to get enough speed on a flat surface to do so!

After reviving him, he had to get in the car and I had to push him and the vehicle fast enough to get it going - which I did so without injury.

Something to think about besides food intake..

 

So when the SHTF, we can work out at the gym all the time?

I thought everyone was heading for the hills/woods?

No Gold gyms in the wilds, are there?
Or will they lift trees and boulders to curb their need?

 

Or will they lift trees and boulders to curb their need?

I already do that.

For once, I'm ahead of the game!

 

Nature will take its course. By that I mean they'll survive because their bodies will adapt to the new diet. They'll get smaller since they won't have enough to feed their muscles and leaner because of the newer stamina and endurance regimen.

 

This.

the bulk of guys in the gym train in a limiting manor, often picking one thing to work on over other's.

Endurance vs strength
range of power (or ability to use strength while stretched)
Fast twitch vs slow twitch muscle groups
ect ect.

I have noticed that the MMA trend is slowly doing away with this, getting people work work a much wider range in the gym.

 

True. If you look at the workout of a bodybuilder, and then go see what kinda training a fighter is doing you will see a big difference.

Bodybuilding is more about simply making you muscles bigger by repetitive motion. You isolate a muscle, and you work it.

A fighter wants bigger muscle too, but also trains his muscles to work together, not isolate them.

A bodybuilder isnt training his muscles for anything other than looks and size. Sure this type of training does improve strength, but it does very little to train the entire body to work together.

Look at your worlds strongest men. Yeah, they big dudes for sure, but rarely do they look like traditional "bodybuilders" They are not usually as ripped and defined. This is due to the fact that they train for power, and the best way to achieve raw power is to use the entire body as a single muscle. They don't isolate. They focus on compound movements that work more than one muscle group at a time.

As to whats going to happen to all those "pretty" muscles after shtf.....unless they can maintain their diet and continue to spend hours doing pointless workouts, they will lose allot of that mass. Its not going to kill them. And I dont think they are going to be any worse or better off than the rest of us.

 

The muscle bound guys WILL be a liability for most survival groups. The Marines in WW2 found out that when they invaded an island, sitting on the equator in the hot tropical sunshine, the guys least likely to pass out from heat exhaustion were the skinny young kids who could profusely sweat. All the jocks had built up their bodies for specific sports or specialized activities and were not able to adapt to the heat.

Police agencies found that if something or somebody climbs on the back of a muscle bound guy, that muscle bound guy does not have the flexibility to reach back and remove that item or person. Next time you're at the gym, put something on the back in the center of one of the weight lifters and see if they can reach around and simply pick that item off. They can't do it if they're heavily muscle bound. Then think about a 15 year old girl on that guy's back slashing at him with a razor sharp knife and stabbing him from behind.

That was why all our recon guys in Viet Nam had to be able to place their hands in the middle of their backs. Flexibility and brains were needed, not muscle, to be on a recon team.

 

That was why all our recon guys in Viet Nam had to be able to place their hands in the middle of their backs. Flexibility and brains were needed, not muscle, to be on a recon team.

Those were some dangerous 15 year old girls!

 

I gotta agree with Herd Sniper. The really big guys have a hard time eating a sandwich. In a survival situation, they'll likely be the first to go.

 

Biggest pile of rubbish I have read in a while. It isn't even humorous to read about out of shape and weak people pontificating about how lean athletes are liabilities, will die off first, must for through epiphanies to survive, etc etc.

First things first. It takes more to be able to kill someone that is healthy, muscular, and strong. Second, anyone that is used to disciplining their body through diet and exercise is an asset in times of danger and stress. Two of my friends were army ranger snipers, one had an Iraq combat weight of 242 lbs, the other weighed 225. If you look at your average special operator they carry more weight and muscle than an average soldier. You fools think that you can carry a 100lb ruck very far and you have no strength or muscle...well you are wrong. For most of recorded history"might made right". Those that were big and strong found themselves in charge... And that is still the way for alot of the world.

But keep living in your uneducated world where strength, size, discipline, fitness, and sacrifice mean nothing.

 

So I thought ya'll were referring to Type A - but not as scary... not a person who is fit and muscular thus why I talked about CARDIO. I am sure the ranger snipers had mad cardio abilities.. which the average WEIGHT lifter/Body builder does not.

 

Quick Question, are we talking:

Body Builder A:

or Body Builder B:

?

I definitely think Type B will do as well as anyone, not sure about type A

 

Yrs of workin bridges and high iron structural,I've seen the oversized brothers git back on the ground....On my best dayin my 30s,I might hit 180 lbs and that was pushin the limit as far as mobility in the air for me...Don't take me wrong,every size has it's place...Know limitations...Ex spidermonkey...

 

I use to work with "Mr. Virginia", I wont mention the year. We called him the "oxymoron". We worked in a R&D facility, ocassionally all would have to help lift some heavy equipment, except him.

He had been injured so many times over the years, he could not lift anything without a 30 minute warmup stretching session. He said it took him 10 minutes to get out of bed in the morning, so he would not throw anythng out.

 

My grandfather reported from the WWII prison camp that those muscle guys that were coming in were the first ones to die. (Mostly guys coming from hard calorie burning jobs like farmers, steel workers and so on).
They were able to make bets of the life expectancy with an accurracy of about +/- 2 weeks.
They did this with thousands of prisoners over the years because they spent over 10 years in prison...

 

It's all about adaptability and the will to survive. If they have the will then they will survive.

 

Wrong, wrong, wrong.
A complete army (6th Army of Stalingrad) went into prison- all battle proven, surrendereing because they wanted to stop fighting for common sense.and to avoid killing.
100.000 went into prision. Only 1000 came back home.

And you talk about adaptility and the will?


Grandfather was one of them.

 

Nature finds a way and people's bodies adapt to changing conditions. Assuming they don't meet their demise via violence, I think their chances of survival depend more upon their decision making skills than on their particular normal caloric intake level.

 

A prison camp environment isn't quite what we are talking about though. In the camps, prisoners were forcibly worked to death and purposefully malnourished from all accounts. Add in mistreatment at the whim of the Soviet guards (who held a grudge) and the death toll was likely far higher than if they were just dumped there in the wilderness and left to their own devices. In that situation, the big and strong prisoners were probably artificially worked harder and treated worse.

In the west, German prisoners had a different result from what I heard. It was the smallest and weakest whom died first from malnutrition, disease and exposure. They weren't being worked to death, just starved and improperly housed.

 

In the west, German prisoners had a different result from what I heard. It was the smallest and weakest whom died first from malnutrition, disease and exposure. They weren't being worked to death, just starved and improperly housed.

Draw your own conclusions...rense.com TP

 

Look, musclebound guys do have their advantages. But they also have their disadvantages. I've seen a musclebound weightlifter pick up the front end of a Volkswagen Beetle like it was nothing. But the same guy could not put his hand in the middle of his back. I saw the same guy pick up a big, bruiser who was causing a scene at a bar, carry the moron across the floor of the bar and actually throw him out the door. But later on that same strong man couldn't pick a 15 year old girl off of his back once she had climbed up there. But being musclebound is a specialty item. And in the general course of survival, strength is nice but it doesn't always mean long term survival. The caloric intake of these guys is unreal! Many of these guys also have very special diet restrictions too. And once that muscle starts to go what you end up with is a lot of flab.

So, do you need strength to survive? Yes, in the right proportions. Do you need to be musclebound? No, and you don't need the diet problems or special diet restrictions associated with such an activity in a survival situation. How about having some common sense on this issue. Oh, and as a side note, too many of these guys were at one time using steroids. That's right. I've seen some of these guys so determined to be "strong" that they'd use steroids to enhance their muscle growth. Trouble is it also messes with their brains and gives them terrible mood swings too. Ever hear of "rhoid rage?" Until you've seen a musclebound maniac gone nuts you can't believe how bad anger can be. So I tend to avoid most guys who are physically overbuilt or been kept in the box too long. Sort of a simple survival plan of mine.

 

Seems like a non issue to me, but interestingly enough there was that 80s celebrity sports show where, in 100m, Gretzky came in an easy first and Lou Ferrigno gassed out and couldn't finish.

In basic we had an enormous dude who fired off pushups and did the rope climb with just his hands, but when it came to runs halfway through he'd puke his breakfast up and fall out of the group.

Uh-oh....LoL at members who'll start posting against the merits of lifting weights...

 

A couple of missed workouts is not going to kill anyone.