| "Muscle dysmorphia" as an epidemic. Supposedly, young men being "hyper-fixated" on building muscle is the latest mental health issue. It's "wrong." These young men are lifting their way to mental illness. Go outside and look at the "young men" around you. What do you see? Do you see striated muscles? Do you see lean waists? Do you see fit, strong, athletic people walking around as the default? No. You see the opposite. Bird arms. Skinny legs. Slouched shoulders. This is the problem, not the fact that people are trying to counter it through strength training and healthier eating and constant low-level physical activity. The people who are trying to get better, fitter, healthier bodies are the ones we should be lauding, not decrying. We saw this years ago with the "orthorexia" warnings. Remember that? When the experts warned against trying to eat a healthy diet? Sure, there's a breaking point. You can stress out so much over your diet that you make yourself unhealthier in the process. You can overtrain to the point of catastrophic injuries and depressed metabolic rates and disappearing menstruation and impaired fertility. But that's not the most common issue. Far bigger problems in our world today are muscle atrophy and nutrient-poor obesogenic diets. Period. Wanting to look good at the beach is only a small sliver of it. Muscle tone throughout life benefits your heart, your joints, your overall metabolic health, and it can prevent devastating injury, especially in old age. You cannot budge on this. We cannot. Keep lifting. Keep "hyper-fixating" on your physique. Keep going. | 