I'll give you two hypothetical situations, with the addition of an idea.


Situation 1: You're playing a character who, at his creation, was given the slimmest body possible. You choose to make your character follow the discipline of two-handed weaponry. Over time, from using the heavy weapons, you start to build muscle and gradually get bulkier. This situation would ignore the dietary requirements to build muscle as the game doesn't take into account food as a compulsory method to survive (unless you're using a PC mod or are RPing). A situation within this situation (situainception) would be a character who is slim and partaking in the discipline of one-handed weaponry or archery. He would also build muscle, but less-so in bulk and more-so in tone.

Situation 2: You're playing a character who, at his creation, was given the bulkiest body possible. You choose to make your character follow disciplines such as the use of daggers (if you're an assassin perhaps?) or magic. Over time, from the use of lighter equipment and no-equipment whatsoever (magic), your character would gradually slim down and develop more tone (as we already know that using a dagger would probably still require strenuous cardiovascular activity and the concentration of using magic also potentially so). A sub-question I also pose is, why on earth is everyone in Skyrim ripped? They could've made certain Jarls a bit chubby (the lazier ones for sure).

Your thoughts?

Thank you for reading.

Some people build up bulk when they exercise, some just tone up. It has more to do with the type of body, not the exercise. In other words, an Ecotomorph will probably never be a body builder, even though they can be quite strong.

http://www.muscleandstrength.com/articles/body-types-ectomorph-mesomorph-endomorph.html

However, someone who has a significant amount of muscle mass that was built up with heavier weights may very well lose that mass over time if they use less weight or less repetition. So, a skilled swords person may become smaller over time if they went pure daggers.

There are quite a few factors in this equation.

Nice addition. I'm surprised I overlooked the intrinsic aspect of metabolisms and genes. Thanks for adding.