Building Muscle Isn't Just A Vanity Metric
Reconsider skipping the gym. From protecting your metabolic health to mental resilience, find out why building muscle shouldn't be optional for any high performer.
Alright, we’re going to get right into it.
No, building muscle isn’t just for gym bros or meatheads trying to max out their bench press or “get big.“
Sure, vanity might be the main reason people start hitting the gym — looking good aesthetically is appealing — but that’s far from the only reason to begin your fitness journey.
The people who discard the importance of muscle mass simply lack the education needed to come to an otherwise obvious conclusion:
Building muscle is beneficial for everyone.
Countless people say no to weight training because they don’t think building muscle is “for them.”
Here’s the thing: muscle is one of the most critical organs in your body for maintaining overall health.
Yet, it remains an afterthought to 99% of people.
If you feel even the slightest calling to take care of the only body you’ve got, then building muscle isn’t optional — it’s an obligation.
In fact, when the stakes are presented to you in plain terms, it’s hard to see building muscle as anything other than essential.
The goal of this newsletter is simple: to make you see that building muscle is essential for your:
Metabolic Health
Longevity
Mental Health
So if you’re already a gym-goer: great, keep it up.
But if you’re not?
I’m going to provide you with the data-driven reasoning you need to kickstart your pursuit of good health.
It’s your choice from there.
Here we go.
1) Muscle For Metabolic Health
The Hidden Cost of Neglect
Muscle is about so much more than just aesthetics — and it does a hell of a lot more than just help you lift heavy objects.
Muscle plays a critical role in maintaining your body’s overall metabolic health.
Now, what do I mean by “metabolic health”?
Simply put, we’re referring to how efficiently your body extracts, processes, and uses the energy from the food you eat.
Specifically, I want to talk about how muscle is the main driver in helping you metabolize the carbohydrates you eat — a process called glucose disposal.
To illustrate the importance of glucose disposal, I offer you my personal experience with prediabetes, a condition that occurs when your body fails to sufficiently process the amount of sugar in your blood.
Trust me: this is something that’s likely affecting you right now too, whether you know it or not.
If you aren’t being intentional about:
building muscle mass
your nutrition
Then odds are, you’re already on your way toward being diagnosed with it.
If you don’t know what diabetes is, you’d better start taking notes.
According to the American Diabetes Association, it’s now the 8th leading cause of death in the United States at around 100,000 people per year.
Here’s a chart showing how type II diabetes cases have skyrocketed in the United States in recent years:
Over the 42-year period from 1980 to 2022, the number of Americans diagnosed with diabetes has skyrocketed from around 5.5 million to roughly 25 million people.
And when you look into prediabetes — a precursor to full-blown type II diabetes — the numbers get even bigger.
The number of people that fall into this bucket is estimated by the CDC to be one-third of the U.S. population.
Freaking 98 million people.
What’s even more shocking?
Over 80% of the people who fall into this camp don’t even know they have it.
The lack of awareness here is staggering.
If you’re…
under-muscled
don’t know how effectively your body is processing the sugar you eat
your style of eating is anything like what I’m about to describe
…then you need to listen closely.
My Wake-Up Call: Poor Eating Habits → Prediabetes
My story begins when I got my driver’s license at 16.
With newfound freedom, I found myself driving anywhere I wanted.
Unfortunately, that included a lot of fast-food joints.
At the time, I was a pitcher on my high school baseball team, and I was obsessed with increasing my pitching velocity.
As the saying goes: “mass equals gas.”
In simple terms, here’s what it means:
The more you weigh, the harder you can throw the ball.
While it’s certainly not a 1:1 correlation, physics makes this at least generally true.
Anyway, I approached putting on weight in just… a horrifically wrong way.
I made use of my new car by driving to and from:
school
baseball practice
fast-food drive-thrus
Some days, I’d have fast food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner:
McDonald’s Egg McMuffin’s for breakfast
a pastrami sandwich from Togos or Jersey Mike’s for lunch
Chipotle burrito bowl or 4x4 In-N-Out burgers for dinner
And when I didn’t feel like getting in my car, I just had the food delivered.
Just take a look at this screenshot of my DoorDash account:
Yeah — I saved over $3,600 in fees with their premium service.
Now, keep two things in mind:
This is just my savings. The actual amount I spent on fast-food? Likely 10x higher.
This doesn’t even account for all the fast food I physically drove to pick up.
Needless to say, I was eating junk food at an insane rate.
I was eating well over 4,000 calories a day — and that resulted in rapid weight gain (shocker I know.)
When I was a sophomore in high school, I weighed about 130 pounds at six feet tall.
Yes, I’m not joking, it’s still on my driver’s license to this day.
By the time I entered college, I had bulked up to 180 pounds — a 50-pound gain in just a few years.
My fastball velocity improved from 78 mph to 91 mph, earning me the opportunity to play Division 1 baseball.
On the surface, it was a huge success.
But it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows.
The composition of that newly added weight was suboptimal, to say the least.
Let’s just say that a lot of that weight gain wasn't muscle — I got a liiiiittle chubby.
But excess body fat accumulation wasn't the only place my eating habits began to rear their ugly head: they began to show up in my medical reports.
I hate to be the one to give you this reminder, but here it is:
When you’re a healthy guy, but you continue to do unhealthy things over time, you’re eventually going to be… unhealthy.
And my unhealthy habits caught up with me when I was 18.
My Prediabetes Diagnosis
After finally visiting my doctor’s office (it had been roughly two years since my last visit), he noticed that my blood sugar levels were much higher than they should have been.
He went straight to the logical conclusion: I was developing diabetes.
To test me for it, they gave me an Oral Glucose Tolerance Test (OGTT)
I’ll explain more on this later.
The test results came back with both good & bad news:
Luckily, I wasn’t yet a full-blown type II diabetic, but my results did place me firmly in the camp of having developed prediabetes.
At the time, I didn’t really even know what this meant for me.
I didn’t know anything about the severity of the issue, or even what diabetes was at the time.
But a single conversation with my doctor and a few quick Google searches cleared things up quickly.
“So what if the body can’t process the sugar from the carbs I’m eating efficiently?”
The inability to manage your blood sugar (aka type II diabetes) can lead to cascading health problems:
Fatigue & Low Energy: your cells are unable to absorb sugar (glucose) from your bloodstream properly, causing constant sluggishness, even when blood sugar levels are high.
Cardiovascular Diseases: damage to the blood vessels in the heart, increasing the risk of heart attacks, strokes, and arterial diseases.
Nerve Damage: damage to nerves throughout the body, causing tingling numbness, or burning sensations (can lead to severe pain or complete loss of feeling over time).
Eye Damage: damage to blood vessels in the eyes, can cause blurred vision, floaters, and even blindness.
Chronic Kidney Disease: damage the blood vessels in your kidneys, which can lead to kidney failure, preventing waste products from being filtered out.
Obesity: Excess sugar in your blood gets converted into fat, leading to rapid weight gain and all the risks associated with obesity.
That was all I needed to hear — that was my wake-up call.
Alright, long tangent, I know.
But I figured it was worthwhile to give you my personal experience.
Why?
Because many of you might be eating your way down the same slippery slope that I did without even knowing it.
But here’s the silver lining: building muscle can help defend your body against these problems.
To explain to you why this is true, you need to understand the underlying dynamics of glucose disposal — and how muscle is crucial to that process.
Let’s dive in:
The Basics: How Your Body Handles Glucose
When you eat carbohydrates, your body breaks them down into glucose (sugar).
Despite being essential to your body (it’s the main fuel your body runs on), an elevated blood glucose level is toxic to the body.
Your body also needs a mechanism to remove extra glucose from the bloodstream — this mechanism is called glucose disposal.
Muscle tissue’s role in this is HUGE — it’s responsible for a whopping 80% of all the glucose disposal your body performs.
And the more muscle mass you have, the better.
Let’s break this process down step-by-step:
1. Carbohydrates → Your Mouth
Enzymes in the mouth & small intestine break down carbohydrates into glucose
2. Glucose Bloodstream Absorption, Blood Sugar Spike, & Insulin Release
Glucose is absorbed into your bloodstream, raising your blood sugar levels
The pancreas detects this rise and needs to remove some glucose from your bloodstream (excess glucose is toxic)
To do this, the pancreas releases insulin, a hormone that helps glucose enter your cells (think of insulin as a key unlocking the door to your muscle, fat, and liver cells so they can use or store glucose)
3. Glucose Storage (Glycogen)
Muscle Glycogen: glucose that’s extracted from the bloodstream can be stored inside muscles as glycogen, a molecule ready to provide those muscles energy when you exert them (muscles hold about 80% of the body’s glycogen stores)
Liver Glycogen: the liver also stores glycogen so it can regulate your blood sugar, releasing glucose back into your bloodstream when it sinks too low (this is where the other 20% of the body’s glycogen is stored)
Fat Accumulation: if there’s no room to store excess glucose in your muscles or liver, it will be converted into fat (Note: you’d probably like to avoid this)
4. Glucose Disposal
Muscle Exertion: your muscles burn through glycogen when you exercise, fueling your performance and creating more room for new glucose to be absorbed
Glucagon Release: when blood sugar drops (like between meals), the pancreas releases the hormone glucagon (the opposite of insulin), which tells the liver to release stored glycogen into the bloodstream to be used by your cells as energy
Insulin Decreases: after your body uses or stores glucose, insulin levels drop
5. Cycle Repeat
Once your existing glycogen stores have been diminished, you can now eat more carbohydrates and safely store the excess glucose as needed
Now that you understand this system from a high level, you’re probably wondering:
So where does this mechanism go wrong when it comes to type II diabetes & prediabetes?
On the surface, it may seem like the above outline has all the bases covered: it can dispose of extra glucose via muscle, your liver, and in the worst case scenario, fat accumulation.
But even still: excess glucose can and will build up in your blood over time if you over-consume carbohydrates.
And when it does, it will wreak havoc on your body.
Here’s how:
Glucose Disposal Gone Awry
Let’s start with some basic statistics:
The average American eats upward of 300g of carbs per day (likely around 250g of glucose per day when subtracting fiber)
The average person burns approximately 150g of glucose per day through essential functions, assuming a sedentary lifestyle
60-70% of Americans fail to meet the CDC guidelines for physical activity (150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity)
A person who exercises will burn through an additional 20-80g per hour of training depending on the intensity and duration of the exercise
Given these statistics, and what you now know about glucose disposal, it shouldn’t really be surprising that we’re facing both an obesity and type 2 diabetes crisis in the United States.
Why?
The vast majority of the population:
doesn’t exercise to burn off any of the excess glucose stored in their muscles
is under-muscled, so they wouldn’t have the initial capacity to store the excess glucose even if they were to start working out
This means the following:
The sedentary person consuming 250g of glucose daily, yet burning just 150g has a major problem here.
This equates to roughly a 100g surplus of glucose daily — or 66% more glucose than the body can safely dispose of without muscular exertion.
Disastrous.
This excess glucose has nowhere to go, causing you to develop chronically high blood sugar levels (and by extension, all of the life-threatening effects of diabetes.)
But hold on: you might remember that excess glucose can be stored as fat as well.
So why can’t the body just continuously store the excess glucose as fat without elevating your blood sugar levels?
Here’s the answer:
The number of fat cells your body has to work with is actually relatively limited.
Additionally, the amount of fat each of these fat cells can store is also restricted.
Eventually, these fat cells accumulate so much fat that even they become overwhelmed by the amount of excess glucose — they become dysfunctional.
The creation of new fat cells can’t solve the problem either, as new fat cell creation tends to be limited, especially in fully grown adults.
Once your body can no longer use fat as a venue to store the excess glucose, disaster starts to kick in.
In response to chronically high blood sugar levels, your pancreas will resort to pumping out increasing amounts of insulin in a desperate attempt to make your cells absorb the excess glucose.
As you might imagine, this is NOT a fix to the problem.
It’s the beginning of a vicious cycle that can quickly become a runaway train without treatment.
When your cells experience a state of elevated insulin for a prolonged period, your cells actually become accustomed to insulin.
The result of this? It requires more and more insulin to get the muscles to accept glucose from outside the cell — otherwise known as insulin resistance, the defining characteristic of type II diabetes.
Once this happens… well, congratulations.
You’re officially a diabetic.
When you’re presented with this brutal reality, it’s difficult to maintain the belief that building muscle is simply a luxury — your views shift to understanding muscle building as a necessity.
Building muscle saves the average American from the catastrophic effects of excess carbohydrates.
Remember, as long as the intensity of your workouts is high enough, you can burn through roughly 80 grams of glucose in an hour — almost all of the excess caused by the standard American diet.
Better yet, the more muscle you build, the more glycogen you can actually store within your muscles.
Here’s the bottom line:
Building muscle is one of the best defenses we have against insulin resistance, and in turn, maintaining overall metabolic health.
Now you might be wondering:
Is there a way to measure the degree to which my cells are insulin-resistant?
The answer is yes, and it’s called an Oral Glucose Tolerance Test (OGTT).
It’s the same test that was given to me during my personal run-in with diabetes.
OGTT: Quantifying Insulin Resistance
Here’s what an OGTT is and how it was administered to me:
I arrived to my appointment in a fasted state and then immediately took a blood test to determine my baseline blood glucose reading
I then received an orange sugary drink (think of it as Fanta on steroids) to see how well my body processed the sugar
Over the next couple of hours, they took blood samples at regular intervals to see how efficiently my body had processed the glucose out of my bloodstream
In a healthy person, your blood glucose level will rise after consuming sugar, but it should return to normal range in as your pancreas produces insulin to counteract this.
However, in cases of prediabetes or full-on type II diabetes, insulin resistance prevents the body from effectively processing that glucose bloodstream, leading to chronically elevated blood sugar levels.
Here’s how this process looks graphically for a healthy individual, a person with prediabetes, and a person with type II diabetes:
Each of these groups has a different ability to metabolize glucose, and this is visible in the shape of the curve and the timing of blood sugar returning to baseline.
Healthy Person (Green)
Baseline around 90 mg/dL
Peaks at around 135 mg/dL about 40 minutes into the test
After 2 hours, blood sugar returns to about 95 mg/dL (5 mg/dL away from baseline)
Takeaway: Quick rise and return to baseline. The body efficiently uses insulin to bring blood glucose back down, reflecting healthy glucose metabolism.
Prediabetic Person (Yellow)
Baseline around 105 mg/dL
Peaks at around 160 mg/dL about an hour into the test
After 2 hours, blood sugar returns to about 120 mg/dL (15 mg/dL away from baseline)
Takeaway: Delayed peak and slow return. Insulin resistance is emerging, and the body is having a harder time handling glucose, but it still manages to bring levels down slowly.
Type II Diabetic (Red)
Baseline around 140 mg/dL
Peaks at around 220 mg/dL about an hour into the test
After 2 hours, blood sugar still stats are around 180 mg/dL (40 mg/dL away from baseline)
Takeaway: Sharp peak and slow return. Severe insulin resistance leads to prolonged high blood sugar, confirming that the body is struggling to process glucose and is at risk for further damage.
Alright, this is already a pretty convincing argument in favor of building muscle.
I mean… come on.
The main takeaway here?
The amount of muscle you’ve packed on could very well determine whether or not your blood tests look like the green line or the red line.
But I’m not going to stop there.
There’s even more reason to build muscle I haven’t even talked about yet.
Convinced already? This next one’s a no-brainer too.
If not? I forgot to mention, you gave me three strikes when you started reading.
Let’s start with the next section.
2) Muscle Helps Fight Aging
If you read the title of this section and thought, “I’m young, this doesn’t apply to me,” I totally get it.
I’ve been there myself.
Most of us, if we’ve been lucky, know what it feels like to be relatively invincible in our youth — that implicit confidence that you can put your body through anything and still recover unscathed.
But here’s the truth: “I’m young, I’ll worry about it later” isn’t a rational perspective.
It’s easy to believe while you’re young, but as you age, reality will slowly set in.
The ability to take a long-term view when it comes to your health is a superpower that will pay huge dividends in the years ahead of you.
The Modern Cheat Code: Low Time Preference
We live in a world geared toward instant gratification — fast food, social media, quick dopamine hits.
And it’s tempting to think, “I want to live now!”
But here’s the reality: if you choose to “live it up” in your 20s without thinking ahead, you won’t have a strong foundation to build the rest of your life on.
This doesn’t just apply to health, but finances, personal growth, and more.
At the end of the day, you have a choice.
You can either waste your 20s partying and find yourself staring at the ceiling at 30, wondering why you’re still the same person.
Or, you can use your most robust years to work hard and set yourself up for success later in life.
There are no do-overs.
For those who choose the long-term perspective, I’m here to help.
Muscle is Your Retirement Account for Physical Health
You can think of building muscle like investing in a retirement account.
The goal of an investment account is to ensure you can maintain your standard of living even after you stop working.
Building muscle isn’t much different at all.
It ensures you maintain a similar quality of life even after your body begins the physical and cognitive decline that comes with aging.
The more muscle you build up in the present, the longer your…
physical function (like walking up stairs or carrying groceries)
self-reliance (performing daily tasks without assistance)
life enjoyment (participating in hobbies and sports, avoiding being bedridden)
…will last into old age.
Just like neglecting your financial investments won’t yield a secure future, living a sedentary, high-stress lifestyle isn’t going to cut it if you want to age well.
You have to be proactive about this.
This is your reminder: muscle isn’t just about looking good.
It’s about setting yourself up for a healthier, stronger, and longer life.
Most people intuitively understand what lifespan means — it’s simply how long you live.
But when you invest in yourself, you’re focusing on something far more important: healthspan.
Healthspan extends the idea of lifespan and asks a more important question: What portion of your life are you physically functional, autonomous, and free from chronic health issues?
Living a long life is one thing, but living a long and healthy life is something entirely different.
What’s the point of adding more years to your lifespan if you can’t enjoy them?
If you’re riddled with health complications, immobile, or reliant on others, those extra years lose their quality.
Muscle is More Than Just a Vanity Metric
Muscle is critical to your overall health, and here’s the reality:
You start losing it quickly as you age.
The above chart illustrates the average decline in muscle mass by age group.
It’s important to note that these figures are what you would expect to see in a person who lives a sedentary lifestyle and doesn’t exercise often.
As you can see, without intentional training, the average person begins to lose their precious muscle mass as early as age 25, at around 3-5% per decade
From 40 to 70, that loss accelerates to around 8% per decade.
After 70? Muscle mass drops by up to 15% per decade.
This age-related muscle loss is known as sarcopenia, and while it’s not impossible to build muscle later in life, it gets a whole lot harder.
Why You Should Start Building Muscle Now
This muscle loss means two key things for you:
You get the best return on investment while you’re young. You’ll gain more muscle for the same effort when you start early. In other words, putting in time at the gym in the present gets you more results compared to waiting until later in life.
The muscle you build now creates a buffer for the future. The larger the muscle base you build while it’s still relatively easy, the better off you’ll be when natural muscle degradation kicks in.
But if you’re already past those younger years, don’t worry.
The good news is that if you start working out today, you can still slow, prevent, and in some cases, reverse muscle loss.
The Data Speaks Clearly
Let’s look at this from a data-driven perspective.
As Dr. Peter Attia points out in a recent discussion, the decline in muscle and physical function as we age isn’t as steady and inevitable as we think.
Contrary to popular belief, this decline isn’t a smooth, continuous process — it’s preventable to a large degree.
The gradual loss of strength, mobility, and autonomy comes in discrete step-downs, often triggered by periods of inactivity.
As guest Dr. Luc van Loon points out, there are plenty of examples of an elderly relative who experienced a sharp decline in health following a sudden period of inactivity — a hip surgery for example.
Oftentimes, it’s this period of inactivity that leads to the downward spiral that culminates in their eventual passing.
Why?
This period of being bedridden accelerates the loss of muscle mass and physical function, making it harder for them to recover, leading to a cascading effect of declining health.
So, what does this all boil down to?
You have the power to take control of your healthspan.
The solution is deceptively simple: take the long-term view, start now, and be ruthlessly consistent in your approach to diet and physical activity.
Every workout, every healthy meal, and every step counts toward extending your healthspan.
Your children, grandchildren, and future self will thank you for it.
By maintaining muscle mass and physical function, you’re not just adding years to your life, but life to your years.
Real quick: if you want to further explore maximizing your longevity, check out one of my previous newsletters on VO₂ Max — it’s got all the information you need to stay solid on the aerobic front.
Anyway, onto the last benefit of building muscle I’ll go through: enhancing your mental health.
3) Building Muscle Benefits Your Mental Health
Okay, this will be brief.
But I just want to touch on the mental benefits you’ll get from building muscle — because they’re THAT important.
I don’t even need to cite studies for this part — it’s just common sense.
But for all the data-oriented people out there, trust me, there are plenty of studies out there to support this, like this one: PMID: 27789950
Plus, you don’t ALWAYS need a study to know something is true.
It’s called inductive reasoning — recognizing patterns based on experience.
And this is one I’ve witnessed in my own life and seen repeated in countless others.
Building muscle is tangible proof that you can stay consistent and build toward something real.
There’s something powerful about physically transforming yourself.
Whether it’s slipping into a smaller pair of pants, noticing the definition in your shoulders, or seeing your quads start to take the classic tear-drop shape, it’s exciting.
Maybe you hit a new personal best on your squat or deadlift.
Or maybe it’s the simpler things, like doing 10 push-ups for the first time, or nailing your first bodyweight pull-up.
These little wins? They’re addictive.
If you can push through that initial phase where progress seems slow, the dopamine hit you get when you finally see results will keep you showing up.
And I’m sure plenty of gym-goers will back me up on this: exercise makes life’s other challenges seem smaller in comparison.
When you push yourself through a tough workout — when you willingly embrace physical difficulty — you build mental muscle too.
Developing the mental toughness to grind through a grueling session in the gym doesn’t just prepare your body.
It prepares your mind.
It strengthens your resilience for other challenges in life, whether they’re physical or mental.
This kind of discipline has a ripple effect.
Over time, you’ll notice it not only improves your physical strength but also helps to stabilize your mental state.
Suddenly, the difficulties in your life don’t feel quite as overwhelming because you’ve already proven to yourself, over and over again, that you can push through hard things.
And the confidence that comes from that? It’s priceless.
Building muscle isn’t just about aesthetics or strength — it’s about showing yourself that you can consistently show up, put in the work, and transform.
And that’s a skill that will serve you well beyond the gym.
The Solution: Start Building Muscle Now
By now, hopefully, I’ve convinced you that building muscle isn’t reserved for gym bros who are solely focused on their physique.
In fact, an enhanced appearance is trivial in comparison to the main benefits you’ll accrue:
You’ll enhance your overall metabolic health
You’ll extend your healthspan for longer than it would otherwise be
You’ll supercharge your confidence and mental resiliency
Building a solid base of muscle should be a priority for everyone reading this.
The topic of how to build muscle optimally will make up an entire newsletter of its own in the coming weeks.
But I do know that some of you will want to take action and get started as soon as possible.
It’s completely understandable!
So for now, here’s some actionable advice you can apply TODAY to start seeing results immediately:
Progressive Overload: Gradually increase the weight, reps, or sets in your workouts each week to challenge your muscles and encourage growth.
Be in a Caloric Surplus: Consume more calories than your body burns daily to provide the necessary energy for muscle growth and recovery.
Eat Enough Protein: Aim for about 0.8-1 gram of protein per pound of body weight daily to support muscle repair and growth.
Prioritize Rest: Ensure 7-9 hours of sleep per night, and include rest days to let your muscles recover and grow.
Track Your Progress: Keep a log of your workouts to track weight lifted and reps completed so you can have confidence that you’re continually iterating and improving.
These simple steps will take you probably 80% of the way there.
Take them and apply them.
“I wish I hadn’t started,” said no one ever.
Until next time.
— Landon
Always excellent reads.