Many people find themselves in a frustrating situation: they appear slim in clothes but have a disproportionate amount of fat and little muscle definition underneath. This is often referred to as "skinny fat." This article provides a comprehensive guide to understanding and addressing the skinny fat physique through diet and exercise.
Understanding the Skinny-Fat Condition
The term "skinny-fat" is slang for someone who is metabolically obese but has a normal weight. While it lacks a formal medical definition, it generally describes individuals with a normal Body Mass Index (BMI) but a high body fat percentage and low muscle mass. These individuals often have bodies that look imbalanced, such as a protruding stomach or love handles, despite appearing slim in clothes.
It is important to note that being skinny-fat isn't necessarily the same as being overweight or obese. Overweight or obese people tend to have more muscle mass to match the fat, whereas skinny-fat individuals often lack significant muscle development.
Health Risks Associated with Being Skinny-Fat
Being skinny-fat is unhealthy. People with too much fat in the abdominal area can have increased risks of:
- Diabetes
- Heart disease
- High cholesterol
- High blood pressure
- Vitamin deficiencies
Additionally, the lack of muscle mass common in skinny-fat individuals can lead to a slower metabolism, increased risk of injuries, and difficulty performing daily activities.
Read also: Skinny Guys Bulking Guide
One study divided 6,400 people into four categories:
- Low muscle/low fat mass (“skinny-fat”)
- Low muscle/high fat mass (“fat”)
- High muscle/high fat mass (“fit & fat”)
- High muscle/low fat mass (“athletic”)
The "athletic" group had the lowest risk of death and best heart health, followed by the "fit & fat" group.
Root Causes of the Skinny-Fat Physique
Several factors can contribute to becoming skinny-fat:
- Little Muscle Mass: Lack of muscle mass means that the body doesn’t burn calories efficiently. The more muscle mass you have the more energy your body consumes even while at rest. Long stretches of time without resistance training can lead to becoming skinny-fat.
- Low Protein Intake: Eating a protein rich diet filled with muscle-mass-building foods is a vital aspect to building muscle mass. Without proper protein intake your muscles are unable to be repaired and rebuilt after any type of resistance training.
- Lack of Strength Training: The optimal method of gaining muscle mass is hypertrophy training.
- Improper Caloric Deficit Diet: Cutting weight with a smart methodology will lead to fat loss but if not done properly then your body might start cannibalizing muscle for energy rather than fat.
- Excess Stress: Stress causes the hormone cortisol levels to rise. If you’re stressed for long periods of time the heightened cortisol levels can result in insulin resistance. Insulin resistance can make us fatter by not being able to convert carbohydrates into energy.
- Not Enough Sleep: Without proper sleep, ghrelin (a hormone that tells us when we should eat) and leptin (a hormone that signals us to stop eating) can hinder our capability of losing weight. If you’re not sleeping enough, you will have less leptin and more ghrelin, equating to increased weight gain. Your body’s metabolism also slows down when you’re sleep deprived.
- Genetics and Upbringing: Genetics and upbringing can play a role. The better someone’s genetics are, the worse their lifestyle will need to be before they start becoming skinny-fat.
Strategies to Fix Being Skinny-Fat
The key to fixing the skinny-fat condition lies in changing your nutrition and starting resistance training. This involves eating at a caloric deficit while getting plenty of protein, combined with a hypertrophy or strength training regimen.
Body Recomposition
Body recomposition involves losing fat and gaining muscle at the same time while keeping overall bodyweight almost the same. This is achieved by exploiting small fluctuations throughout the day to enable us to reach our end goal of gaining muscle and losing fat.
Read also: The Truth About Skinny Fiber
For newcomers, body recomposition is a bit easier to pull off as the body will respond quickly to new exposure to resistance hypertrophy training and increased protein intake. The potential for even better results is possible with improved sleep and reduced stress. Body recomposition is a strategy best served for novices to strength training.
Bulking and Cutting
For people extremely overweight, people who are leaner and stronger than the average person or advanced trainees; have to resort to bulking or cutting to see good progress. A mixture of bulking and cutting will yield better overall results in a shorter period of time for most people including the skinny-fat.
Cutting: Cutting is an overall calorie deficit where you consume less calories than you burn; helping to transform the" fat" part of skinny-fat. The benefits of cutting include promoting fat loss, increasing insulin sensitivity, enhancing muscle appearance. The downsides of cutting can be muscle loss, increased feeling of hunger and lowered sex hormones. However, cutting done right can lead to more than 20 pounds of fat loss in a few months. If you’re a beginner trainee you can also build muscle while cutting.
Bulking: Bulking is an overall caloric surplus where you consume more calories than you burn; helping to transform the "skinny" part of skinny fat. The benefits of bulking include lowering cortisol levels, promoting muscle gain, increasing bone density, enhancing strength. The negatives sides are increased fat gain, feel tired more often, can decrease insulin sensitivity. Bulking can result in over 20 pounds of muscle gain within a few months of consistent hypertrophy training but it will also come with a few pounds of fat gain.
Nutrition Strategies
- Caloric Deficit: To lose 1 pound of fat per week, you’ll have to be at a 500 calorie/day deficit. It’s easier to stay in the caloric deficit by restricting what you eat rather than sweating it off.
- Protein Intake: Eat 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight. You should try to get at least 30 grams of protein in per meal plus a few small snacks throughout the day that contain protein. You can use whey protein powder or plant-based protein powder to supplement your intake.
- Unprocessed Whole Foods: The calories you consume should be from only unprocessed whole foods with a focus on protein.
- Intermittent Fasting: Intermittent fasting or IF can kickstart your cutting, helping you to shed fat faster. The most suitable for skinny-fat men or women that are cutting is the 16:8 method. With this intermittent fasting method, you can still fulfill the requirements of protein intake while restricting calories. Simply put, you can eat during an 8-hour window of time and the remaining 16 hours you won’t consume calories.
Exercise Strategies
- Strength Training: Strength train at least 3 times a week, following some type of hypertrophy routine. Begin each workout session with the compound lifts such as squats, pullups, deadlifts, bench press and overhead press. If you don’t know how to do these exercises properly start with assisted versions or bodyweight versions of these exercises. Over time you will need to add weight/reps to stimulate the muscles enough to grow through the process of progressive overload. After you’ve completed the big lifts you can move on to isolation or accessory lifts like triceps pressdowns, biceps curls or lateral raises.
- Light Cardio: Skinny-fat cutting shouldn’t include a high amount of cardio. Instead, you should try doing light cardio like walking around the neighborhood. A good starting point is at least 5,000 steps daily.
Lifestyle Adjustments
- Sleep: Try to keep your sleep schedule regular as large variances in sleep can change metabolism and reduce insulin sensitivity. A few tips include: don’t eat right before bed, try to sleep in a dark room, reduce stress, get to sleep earlier and wake up earlier.
- Stress Reduction: To reduce stress, you should follow the above points of strength training, get better sleep, be more active and eat healthier.
Hypertrophy Training Explained
Hypertrophy training simply means “training to build muscle.” It’s ideal for gaining muscle mass and general strength. Like strength training, it focuses on getting stronger at the big compound lifts. Like bodybuilding, it includes isolation lifts for target muscle groups.
Read also: How to Gain Weight if You're Skinny
- Challenge your strength
- Eat enough food and protein to recover and grow
- Challenge your strength again
You can train at a gym or at home. You can use barbells or dumbbells, or exercise machines, or a mix of all three. Your body doesn’t care if the weight comes from a barbell, a dumbbell, or a kettlebell. You can build muscle with both light and heavy weights. But to make it as easy as possible, choose an amount of weight you can lift for 6-20 repetitions. If you do 2-4 sets per exercise per workout, that’s usually enough to stimulate a maximal amount of muscle growth. A challenging workout can stimulate up to 2-3 days of muscle growth. To keep your muscles growing all week long, you’d train them every 2-3 days.
Example Workout Plan for Women
Here is an example of a full-body workout plan for women:
- Bodyweight squats: 3 sets of as many reps as you can do.
- Push-ups: 3 sets of as many reps as you can do.
- Dumbbell rows: 3 sets of 10-15 reps per side.
- Overhead press: 3 sets of 10-15 reps.
- Bodyweight hip thrusts: 3 sets of as many reps as you can do.
Take every set close to failure, and rest at least a minute between each set. Every workout, try to improve in some way. This workout stimulates all of the muscles in your body, putting a bit of extra emphasis on your glutes.
Detailed Nutritional Guidelines for Recomposition
- Protein: In one study, the participants combined hypertrophy (muscle size) training with two different protein intakes. Half the participants ate 0.5 grams of protein per pound bodyweight per day. The other half ate a whole gram of protein per pound bodyweight. Twice as much. After four weeks, the group eating an average amount of protein lost 7.7 pounds of fat but failed to gain any muscle. If we look at the other group, though, the results are incredible! Not only did they lose nearly three pounds of fat per week, but they were also able to gain three pounds of muscle. That cut-off point is usually around 0.8-1 gram of protein per pound body weight per day. So for a skinny fat woman who weighs 130 pounds, she should aim to eat about 104-130 grams of protein per day.
- Carbs: Carbs are fantastic for building muscle leanly. Guys tend to build muscle faster and more leanly when they get 40-60% of their calories from carbohydrates. Carbs are a great source of energy. Your body breaks them down into glucose and stores them in your muscles as glycogen. The more carbs you eat, the more glycogen you’ll store in your muscles (to a point). The more glycogen you have in your muscles, the better your workout will go, allowing you to stimulate more muscle growth.
- Fats: You can maximize your rate of muscle growth, fat loss, and performance with as little as 20-30% of your calories coming from dietary fat (reference). Dietary fat helps to regulate hormones (including testosterone) and can be rich in important nutrients, including fat-soluble vitamins and minerals.
A balanced bulking meal contains protein, healthy fats, nutritious carbs, fibre, and a wide variety of micronutrients. If that sounds complicated, don’t worry: most traditional meals are quite balanced. A balanced diet is made up of a few balanced meals per day.
Addressing Common Misconceptions
- Carbs make you fat: That’s partially true, eating a huge amount of fat AND carbs, will make you fat.
- You need to avoid compound exercises: "Some of those exercises are going to feel a little daunting to you," he continues. "You may avoid them altogether, and that's a mistake." It's also common for beginners to assume that a compound lift is simple or easy, when that is not the case.