Exit the Skinny Fat Zone

For those who are extremely overweight, there is a pretty easy fat loss formula: exercise and watch the diet, fat sheds off fat and loss of several pounds a week is normal. But, for those who are not really overweight but not particularly fit either, the formula is not quite as simple. When your muscle mass is too small to look buff and your body fat is too high to show off the muscle, you find yourself in the skinny fat zone: too high body fat, too low muscle mass.

Skinny fat people need to focus on both fat loss and muscle gain at the same time. Doing too little cardio and you will build muscle but also keep your fat belly for a longer time. Which is fine if you have no problem with waiting until you see some definition. Doing too much cardio and you’ll burn so many calories every day it’s too much for your body to even think about packing on mass. Adding muscle mass means your calories need to go to muscle building instead of just to compensate for the cardio you did.

Skinny fat people cannot just go on a hard gainer diet to build muscle unless they want to build more body fat as well. But going on a low carb, high protein diet won’t let you train hard and intense either. Remember, training requires carbohydrates.

I like to say “train like you’re goal is to build maximum amount of muscle, DIET like you’re going for ripped abs”.

Skinny fat people have another thing against them. Their bodies prefer to expend calories but not to build muscle, hence you can remain at a certain “normal” weight, but it’s tough to build muscle. You’re a hard gainer on muscle gain but a easy gainer on body fat.

So, what to do, huh?

Well, first of all, remember you don’t have enough muscle mass to sacrifice. You need to hit the weights heavy and hard. Remember you cannot do cardio for hours to burn fat because your body won’t let you burn that fat if you got more fat than muscle (not literally speaking, ok). Remember you need to work with your genetics, but also, genetics is ONE part, hard work is the other. You need to be patient. You need to keep it real. Be realistic. Don’t live by the scale, live by what you look like, strength gains and how clothing fits. It might appear nothing is happening, but your body is slowly building more muscle and the fat is slowly melting off.

Keep it up and enjoy the process!!!