Body builds in games, and getting buff in a post-apocalyptic world *lifted*

Cannibalism opens up options...

 

Abby's muscles are just one of the Many Many Many hard to swallow poetic liberties this game took with actual economical/societal realities of a post apocaliptic world. I have a large list of hard to answer questions.

 

her musculature is not a problem, at least she is legit when she can take down big guys, contrary to lara croft for example

but

Spoiler

what she does, and she can get away with, like she is a good person, is what i can't stand

 

I think I get where you're coming from, but those examples don't quite sell me. If we put aside the fantasy (I suppose 300 is more stylised than it is fantasy) elements of both:

• The Mountain is a soldier for the richest family in Westeros. A few cows a day is chump change to the Lannisters.
• The 300 guys aren't that jacked. They're reasonably built, and more athletic looking IMO.

But yeah, anything set in the ancient times (or any time of scarcity) needs to give real consideration as to why anyone there is as ripped as the greatest athletes of our current time of abundance.

Haha well, you might be surprised just how far porridge can get you: it's dirt cheap, and relatively high in protein, fibre, and especially carbohydrates. All of those contribute to muscle growth. There needs to be a decent fat source though, for testosterone synthesis, and porridge is poor for that.

I've no idea what prison food's like, but if you can eat 50g of porridge for breakfast, 50g for lunch, and 100g of minced beef (30% fat content) for dinner, you're already looking at ~73 grams of protein.

If you want to build muscle, it's generally recommended that you consume 1 gram of protein per pound of your current bodyweight. So a great big 100KG/220lb lummox like me needs 220g of protein each day for those GAINS BRUH!

I can buy 500g of 20% fat minced beef, from my local Aldi, for only £1.20. If prisoners can manage 60 pennies worth of minced beef each day, they too can get hench.

So in a modern prison, assuming they have vaguely humane diets, I think it's doable. But in a fictional world without Aldi ( ) and cheap beef, I completely agree: prison doesn't magically enable muscle growth. Although the threat of buggery may motivate a man to look intimidating.

I think that's veering into a different discussion for a different thread... when I've actually finished the game.

The Lara Croft comparison is a great one: Lara looks like a high school gymnast and yet she's slapping about guys my size.

There are plenty of women who are plenty smaller than me, and could rip me to pieces (seriously, Amanda Nunes is a glorious, terrifying MACHINE!!!) but such women generally actually look like they could. It's why my issue with Abby isn't a big one: her design does convey physical presence. I just think they went a liiiiittle bit too far.

 

She did nothing wrong.

 

You need cows for that, as well. Where does all the calcium come from, then?

 

broccoli.

It's in your sig.

And spinach.. yum

 

For what it’s worth and now we are way off topic, the romans and Greeks lived in a time where agriculture really developed and caused a huge spike in food availability. Together with booming trade and developments in sanitation etc this caused a big boom in population and the rise of big cities and only once that overtook the temporary over-abundance of food did we get back to serious periods of poverty. This lead to mankind in Europe peaking in height around the year 0, and it went downhill from there and took until the 19th-20th century or so before it reached that peak again.

On the other hand and to bring it a bit (it’s a fungus here) back on topic, they’ve had issues with virus outbreaks from at least 500 BC and that got worse as cities grew larger of course (50.000 Venetians died during an outbreak in the 16th century).

All this from memory so some facts may be off

 

You'd need far larger amounts of those vegetables to get an equivalent amount of calcium, though... aaaaaaand spinach has oxalates which prevent calcium absorption, so...

 

Spinach apart from living on a false reputation of being extremely calcium rich based on a decimal point placement error, also has the ‘wrong’ kind of calcium irc. But adding cream somehow helps breaking that down into the calcium we can absorb more easily.

 

In a world where the usual left right extremists are doing their usual little dance over this game, the people of this forum have discussed nutrition...

Good work guys, we're not pricks!

 

question of point of view. For me yes.

 

Ummm...porridge oats are 17% protein. Ground beef 14% protein. You'll have all of 30g protein on that. If body-builders could get that much protein that chaeply, they woudln't buy supplements at 20-30g per drink.

It was the mis-represented iron content that spawn Popeye, not calcium.

Um...so, does TLoU2 feature a next-gen nutrition system with simulated vitamin deficiencies, requiring you to not only find food, but balance it effectively? *cough* *cough*

 

Good shout. I don't know how on Earth I didn't check my figures when my own whey protein isolate is ~90% protein, and £40-£60 for 2.5kg's of the stuff. That should've screamed out to me that I was at least wasting money - I'm a Yorkshireman, tightness is in my genes! Maybe it's because, having gained about a stone of fat in the lockdown, I only experience tightness in my jeans?

(bulkpowders for any UK'ers here - they're always running deals and they've got solid customer service. Just don't choose free shipping - it's Yodel and they're shit. £4.99 will get you DPD, who ACTUALLY DELIVER!!!!! Guess who had to deal with Yodel within the last fortnight...)

So, bearing those revised figures in mind: for a 220lb inmate to gain muscle, he'd need 200g of porridge and about a kilo and a half of minced beef.

I think you have a point.

That's still only £5 a day though, marginally more than a Tesco meal deal.

 

ModEdit: Copied OT stuff to other thread

Either steroids or serious bodybuilding + high protein diet (not meat as there would be too much fat).

I doubt any of this is realistically possible in a post apocalyptic world between torture sessions.

 

Maybe eating a few dozen humans a day?

Eating...ummmm...

Spoiler

testicles?

Unfortunately, that's not a valid comparison in this case. Porridge oats isn't a complete protein and thus misses some key amino acids that ground beef has. If you're relying on vegetables for a large portion of protein you need to supplement it with other things to get all the amino acids that meat provides. Eggs or milk are generally a good choice.

https://www.livestrong.com/article/398372-oatmeal-nutrition-protein/

And body builders go for supplements mostly to reduce fat consumption so they can look "cut."

That said, not all of them do. Just look at Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. What he eats and how he works out. Lots of meat and veggies. Mostly fish, however, as that's low in fat.

Regards,
SB

 

I think decades of Hollywood fake action scenes have messed with people's minds and their expectations of reality.

For example: people don't get instantly disabled after getting shot, they don't get knocked off their feet either after bullet impact, even if shot to the chest or abdomen, bad guys can often function well even few minutes after getting shot, as during high octane action, Adrenaline floods the circulation numbing the pain, many soldiers report realizing getting shot in the legs or arms well after the battle has ended. That's why the stopping power of the bullet matters a good deal, the greater it is, the greater the internal damage is being transmitted to the target, and the quicker it goes down.

Same thing for melee encounters, those flashy kung fu moves are just that, flashy moves, they don't bring targets down quickly, even if delivered in quick succession, especially if the target is big, and especially if the target is trained in melee combat and is engaging you at very close distances. These flashy moves require a great deal of stamina as well, and take longer to execute, which renders you less potent the longer the fight goes on against big targets.

That's why any veteran in mixed martial arts (kick boxing) will almost always bring down any opposition (kung fu or whatnot), as kick boxing involves getting closer to the target, knocking off it's balance and delivering high impact strikes to key areas. Thus the bigger you are the more formidable you become, provided of course you have the necessary flexibility and stamina to be a potent fighter.

Eating will only get you so far. Most people forget that body builders don't look that big off season, they get big in cycles that corresponds to seasons of competition events. During those cycles, you need to eat a lot (and administer hormonal supplements), sleep a lot, and train a lot, interfere with that rhythm and the body brings down all those excess useless muscles that are quite literally a burden on your heart and kidneys.

 

You really don't need to eat cows have Ellie's build. It's a weird misconception. There's plenty of vegetarian and vegan athletes, nevermind normal people who are just a bit fit/sanctimonious.

Do the infected attack livestock as well, or just people? The acres of land you need for crops are presumably high risk places to work regardless.

 

I was thinking exactly that yesterday watching something or other. I was thinking, "what actually happens when a person gets shot, because there's no way a bullet is going to knock a person over?" What you describe is exactly my expectations - no awareness as adrenalin keeps one in the fight, and then bleeding out. For the inexperienced, there may be s hock element.

You'd need a great supply of high protein content like nuts, which'll be hard to come by. Grazing animals will provide a low-maintenance, high protein source. They'll roam wild, eat anything, and convert non-human-consumable plant matter into human-consumable foods. You'd be looking at rabbits, deer, and pigs/boars in over-grown woody areas, and sheep/goats on grassland and hillsides. Obviously also buffalo and zebra and the like for those not trapped into a western-European mentality.

Also, insects! Worm pies. Slugs, maybe. All those gross things most of us don't want to eat could probably be farmed easier in a post apocalyptic world. Worms could easily be cultivated en masse. The numbers in my composter are !!!!

 

They live next to a forest!

Field grazing animals are only convenient if you have lots of open pasture. I'm assuming they don't from the videos I've seen. Is there more to their town in-game?