How to Not be Skinny-Fat

You know exactly what I’m talking about — the guy or gal that is kind of thin. Thin arms, thin legs. But they’ve got a belly like they’re hiding a pillow under their shirt. No disrespect, it’s just the truth. Maybe your friend is like this, maybe you are.

This is skinny-fat. And it’s extremely prevalent in the world today. But you might be wondering… how can someone be skinny and fat?

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The answer is simple, actually. They have no muscle, which is essentially causing them to be fat. Now it’s not exactly that simple, so let me quickly break that down:

1. Person A is skinny. Great

2. Person A does nothing to maintain or improve their muscle mass (many such cases)

3. Person A leads a regular life where they eat burgers, pizza and drink beer.

4. Person A continues to slowly lose muscle while eating roughly the same amount of calories year in and year out

5. Person A becomes fat around the belly but still skinny in their arms and legs as a result of them being in a calorie surplus due to no muscle.

6. Person A is skinny-fat.

Skinny-fat is a major issue because it’s not a metabolically healthy place to be. Pre-diabetes or diabetes is common, as well as numerous other health issues:

• Cognitive decline

• Inflammation

• Cardiovascular disease

• Elevated blood lipids (Cholesterol)

On the topic of diabetes: Muscle uses glucose as it’s primary fuel source (that’s sugar). And if your muscles aren’t using glucose, or there isn’t any muscle for the glucose to go to, it stays in your blood stream for way too long, resulting in long insulin spikes and eventually, diabetes and other health issues (listed before).

So, now that we know what skinny-fat is, and why it’s a problem, how do we fix it?

Muscle and Metabolism:

Muscle is expensive tissue, metabolically speaking. It takes a lot of energy to build new muscle, maintain existing muscle, and use that muscle to its fullest potential. So if your body doesn’t think it needs it, it will get rid of that muscle to save energy. Pretty logical.

But, the problem is that when you are shedding muscle over the course of months and years, you are still (likely) eating the same amount of calories. So as you lose muscle, your body burns less calories, but you keep pumping calories in, resulting in fat gain. But you’re STILL losing muscle while adding fat, resulting in skinny-fat.

So the goal is to build and maintain muscle mass as you age to keep you lean and healthy.

“But Doc said I’m a healthy weight for my age”

Doc was probably right. BUT the problem here is that your “normal” bodyweight could be made up of way too much fat, and not enough muscle. So just because doc said you’re good on weight, doesn’t necessarily mean you’re good on body composition (percentage of bodyweight made up of fat).

Healthy body fat percentages for men and woman are:

• 10-15% for men

• 15-20ish% for women (varying based on cycle/pregnancy)

How to not be Skinny-Fat - Action Items

1. Recognize you have a problem (above healthy bodyfat %, and agree that you need to fix it) — this is the hardest step.

2. Strength Train 3x a week minimum

A simple Push / Pull / Legs training plan (will be releasing our own soon for Premium Members) is a great place to start.

Day 1 - Push movements - Bench pressing, incline pressing, chest pressing, dumbbell raises, military presses, and pec flys are a good place to start. 3 sets of 10 reps per exercise

Day 2 - Pull movements - Dumbbell rows, lat pulldowns, pull ups, cable rows, and face pulls are good exercises here. 3 sets of 10 reps per exercise.

Day 3 - Leg movements - Lunges, goblet squats, barbell squats (with proper technique), dumbbell step ups, calf raises, and leg press are good exercises here. 3 sets of 10 reps per exercise.

3. 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight in your diet (good for building muscle and not overeating carbs and fat)

Simple will always beat complex when it comes to this stuff. Simple doesn’t mean easy or fast. If that was the case, everyone would have huge muscles and a billion dollars.

But stick with weight training for a long enough time and you will see the results.

Pro tip: Track your workouts so you can add weight, reps and see total volume. Use MyLiftLog.

In conclusion

Muscle isn’t just for looks, it’s a critical organ system that will help you stay lean, healthy, and feeling good. Lifting and building muscle add a lot of other benefits not covered in this post, but keeping fat off and looking better is a really good place to start, eh?

Skinny-fat is an epidemic. Many are walking around thinking they’re a healthy bodyweight when in reality they’re 30+% body fat. Not good. Building and maintaining muscle is the first step to solving this.

Build muscle, and avoid being skinny-fat.

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