The male equivalent seems to be attaining the much fabled ‘6
pack’. For some men with large abdominal muscles and reasonably low body fat, this
can be not too difficult a task, however for others it can mean losing
ridiculous amounts of body fat so as to reveal the abs lying
underneath. This, when taken to extreme levels, is known in gym circles as
getting ‘shredded’. And with so many ‘shredded’ models appearing on front
covers and on social media everywhere this look has become accepted as the new
gold-standard in healthy. But is it really? I’ll leave you to decide…
THE PHYSICAL DOWNSIDE TO LOW BODY FAT LEVELS...
As well as being constantly cold, and having energy
levels lower than a sausage dog’s belly, extremely low body fat levels can
cause your workouts to be rubbish too. Not only that, but your recovery between
workouts can be poor as well. Low body fat levels go hand in hand with low
levels of stored carbohydrate in the muscles and liver, and this stored
carbohydrate is vital to help you recover from exercise. This leads to almost
no improvements in strength or hypertrophy and in all likelihood ,muscle mass
and strength will be reduced.
If this weren’t enough, low levels of the hormone leptin
causes you to be constantly hungry. And to add insult to injury,
extremely low levels of bodyfat can also lead to reduced levels of testosterone
which in turn can reduce your sperm count. In some cases, the reproductive
system begins shutting down all together so you may end up like a novice boy scout
attempting to put up a tent…struggling to get an erection!
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL DOWNSIDE TO LOW BODY FAT LEVELS…
If that weren’t bad enough the psychological drawbacks may
be even worse. Achieving extremely low body fat levels whilst retaining a
muscled physique requires some quite difficult lifestyle changes. For most people,
it requires tracking every single calorie that passes your lips. Which may
sound easy enough, but in reality, it is much harder than you think (a bit like
having to sit through a 1 Direction concert). It often means spending endless
hours preparing your own food and stressing over its exact macronutrient
composition, almost never eating out with friends or family and almost
certainly not drinking any alcohol! Heck you may look ‘good’ but end up
becoming a bit of a bore!
And if this social isolation weren’t enough to make you feel
bad, the reduced levels of essential fatty acids in the brain will probably
make you irritable and prone to severe mood swings anyway! It may also leave
you less able to concentrate and suffer from general mental fatigue!
IN CONCLUSION…
Extremely low levels of body fat combined with relatively
large muscles may make for an impressive looking physique, however it’s not
without its drawbacks. For the dedicated few who can endure what is required to
achieve this, many of them are only able to maintain it for a very short period
before they ‘break’ and return to somewhere near normal levels of body fat. And
as for those who manage to maintain such well-muscled, low fat physique all
year round, they are one of two things: either genetically gifted or, a
real pain in the bum to live with!
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