People are just going to have to face the fact of truth that they are FATTER than they think they are. Much Much Much fatter.
Good point. Here's something from an article I wrote a week ago that applies to what you are saying.
"Body Image As An Enemy
''But I gained fifteen pounds in three months and I didn't gain fat.''
This is something I hear often. If it's not possible to gain more than a few pounds of muscle per month (or around six pounds over a three month period) how come you see so many people claiming to have gained heaps of muscle without getting fatter?
It's most likely due to what I call the ''lean threshold.'' You see, there's a point (a certain body fat percentage) where you start to look lean (around 10% for most men). There's also a point where you start to look fat (around 18-20% for most men). Then in between you have a certain zone where you basically look the same; you aren't lean enough to look defined so you don't really have any muscle separation.
At that point, even if you gain a few pounds of fat, you won't visually see the difference. This is compounded by the fact that you're seeing yourself every day, so you might not notice the small changes in appearance. Most men won't be able to see a visual difference in muscularity between 13 and 16%. But if you're 200 pounds, going from 13 to 16% body fat can mean a six pound gain in fat!
So a guy could very well have gained six pounds of muscle, six to seven pounds of fat, and two pounds of glycogen and water over the three month period, and he'll actually believe that he gained fifteen pounds of solid muscle because he looks to be about the same body fat percentage.
Now, repeat that over a few training cycles and you have a guy who could end up with a gain of fifteen to twenty pounds in body fat! One day he'll wake up and find a fat bastard looking back at him in the mirror, then he'll need to diet down to look remotely decent!
The Illusion of "Big?"
Body fat can really be an odd thing. When someone carries a significant amount of muscle mass, adding a layer of fat can actually make him look much bigger when wearing clothes. That's because his muscle mass gives him a solid foundation, so the fat added over the muscle (up to a certain point) will make his body occupy more space while keeping a certain amount of shape, at least when wearing clothes.
Plus, as I mentioned earlier, there's a certain range of fatness where the body doesn't look visually different when it comes to definition and muscularity. When going from 13 to 16% body fat, you'll basically look to be at the same degree of fatness. In fact, some people who store body fat evenly might even look just as lean at 18% as 13%. So if someone goes from 220 pounds at 13% to 230 pounds at 16%, he'll basically have the same amount of muscle and ten pounds more fat, but he'll actually look bigger and more muscular because his degree of leanness will appear to be the same (while he occupies more space.)
So we could say if you aren't lean, adding body fat, up to a point, will make you look more muscular even if you aren't gaining muscle mass. This can make people underestimate the amount of fat they carry and put them in a situation where, over time, they can accumulate a lot of excess fat.
Something like that happened to me when I was young. At 17 years of age I was 180 pounds with a 32'' waist and around 13-14% body fat. To play football I decided to gain size and went on the ''see food diet.'' I was consuming at least 10,000 calories per day (7200 of which where from weight gainer shakes). In six months I went up to 225 pounds.
I really believed it was all muscle. I was getting stronger and looked much bigger in clothes. My mother kept telling me that I was getting fat, but I thought it was because she was trying to discourage me from training. The sad thing is that my waist ballooned up to 40 inches, but I never really noticed because at the time my mother was buying my pants. They weren't tighter (because she was buying larger ones) so I felt like I was just as lean.
Long story short, when I saw pictures of myself shirtless I went into shock. I was fat! It took me a whole year to drop back down to a size 32. The sad thing is that when I got back down to that size, I was down to 172 pounds. I actually lost eight pounds of muscle! I basically wasted 18 months of my life trying to gain muscle.
On the other end, losing body fat, at first, will make you look and feel smaller and less muscular. As I said several times, there isn't much visual difference between 13 and 16%. So the first 6-10 pounds of fat you lose won't make you look more defined. You'll look the same (definition wise) but your clothes will be looser and you'll feel smaller because your muscles will be flat from a lack of glycogen. So you'll look and feel smaller without actually looking more defined. Not very encouraging!
In the past, I stopped several diets because of that fact. I'd diet for four weeks or so, feel small and look like crap, so I'd think ''the heck with it'' and go back to my bulking habits.
Let me tell you this: a diet won't make you look good until you drop down to at least 10% body fat. That's the point where you start to actually look bigger even though you're becoming smaller (because of the fat you're losing). As you go down to 8% or so, people will actually believe that you're gaining size as your weight goes down!
Simply put, when you aren't lean, adding some fat will make you look larger and losing just a bit of fat will make you look smaller. But past a certain point (10%), you'll look larger by the day as you're losing fat. It's all an illusion. "
* That having been said; I do not agree 100% about no 5'9"-5'10" bodybuilders being able to reach 200lbs and relatively ripped naturally. I remember when I played football in high school we had a guy who played linebacker who was 190lbs on 5'10" just SCHREDDED and with full muscle bellies. Not only was he 100% natural... he didn't even train!!! Another one of my friend was a 5'6" 175lbs soccer player who was at a body fat level that could kick ass at most regional shows; he also never lifted a weight in his life and ate like shit (he was black, which surely helped in the genetics department). Now, I'm not saying that there are a lot of such phenemenons in the world, but I'm sure that there are many of them and that any one of them could reach a high level of muscular development and muscularity, beyond what is seen as attainable naturally, if they decided to train and eat properly.
