Liam Rosen

Muscle is what gives your body its ability to move. It's involved in the endocrine system (as this rather crappy article illustrates), it is heavily involved in your metabolism and energy levels, especially including blood-sugar regulation. Building muscle, engaging in regular physical activity (lifting and cardio), and eating healthily (minimal processed carbs) will greatly reduce your likelihood of developing metabolic syndrome and (type II) diabetes. Many people can control T2 diabetes completely through strength training and exercise.

It also helps in injury avoidance, improves your posture (assuming you're training in a whole-body mode, not just chest+biceps). Load-bearing strength training also strengthens bones, joints, and connective tissue. And you can pick up heavy shit and not get tired.

As you get older, starting in your 30s for most people, your body is losing muscle mass at the rate of about a pound every year or two (this is called "sarcopenia"). Eventually this starts effecting your body's ability to regulate body fat, and though your weight may not change, your body composition does, with fat tissue increasing as your muscle wanes.

Most people look better with more muscle rather than more fat, if you're into vanity.

And you should end up with a much better appreciation with how your body works and responds to training, diet, and recovery.

you have to feed it and lug it around.

Well, yeah, there is that feeding it. But you've got to eat anyhow. …

the article is more about getting your shit together than what a healthy lifestyle actually is. if you have another 20 minutes, i would highly recommend this, which covers the basics of exercise and nutrition.

http://liamrosen.com/fitness.html

the problem today is that there is so much misleading information that even if you're motivated you'll still waste your time and effort taking useless supplements and using dumb products when you can see much better results in your health much more easily.