Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Why Are People Skinny Fat and How Do You Fix It?

Episode Date: December 14, 2017

“Skinny fat” sounds like a paradox. How can you be both skinny and fat at the same time? Easy: have too little muscle and too much body fat. It doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things, of course, but hey, some of us just don’t want to be skinny fat. And we don’t have to be if we do three simple things: 1. Do a lot of heavy compound weightlifting. 2. Get our calories and macros right. 3. Don’t do too much cardio. These steps apply equally to men and women, too. Contrary to what most fitness magazines would have you believe, weightlifting doesn’t make women bulky, and cardio isn’t all that great for weight loss and maintenance. Weightlifting and maintaining a high body fat percentage is what makes women bulky, because any muscle added underneath a hefty layer of fat is just going to make you look fatter, and cardio should be used sparingly if you want to optimize your body composition. So, in this episode, we’re going to take a closer look at the three steps of not being skinny fat given above and learn how to do them right. Let’s do it. Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

Hey, this is Mike and welcome to another installment in my in five minutes or less series where I answer one common question quickly and simply because while long form content is great, sometimes it is also nice when someone just gets right to the point and tells you what to do and how to do it in five minutes or less. And that's what I do in these episodes. This time around, we're going to be talking skinny fat, what it is, why people wind up skinny fat, or at least the most common reason why people wind up skinny fat, despite dieting and exercising and taking a bunch of supplements and what to do about it. All right. So first let's talk about why many people wind up skinny fat, despite obsessing about eating clean or following one kind of diet or another, doing a bunch of exercise, usually a bunch of cardio, taking a bunch of supplements and so

forth. And the primary reason why so many of those people are skinny fat, despite working pretty hard at trying to not be skinny fat, is they are paying too much attention to their body weight and not their body composition. Now, body weight is obvious. Of course, you step on the scale, you get your weight, body composition, not so obvious because it refers to what that weight is comprised of. How much of that body weight is muscle? How much of it is fat? How much of it is bone? How much of it is water? And so forth. Now, body composition is far more important than body weight because body composition is what determines what you're going to look like at any given weight. And as a general rule, the less muscle you have, the lower your body fat levels are going to have

to be to have any sort of noticeable muscle definition. And that really strikes at the heart of the skinny fat problem, which is having way too little muscle, which then makes you look, even though your body fat levels aren't that high from a per, you know, body fat percentage perspective. So let's say a guy is at 15% body fat, or let's say it's a, it's a woman and maybe she's at 25%. Those are not bad body fat percentages. Those would be generally considered athletic. But if you combine those body fat percentages with too little muscle, you get a skinny fat look. If however, you add quite a bit of muscle. So if you take a guy or you take a man or a woman with above average muscularity,

and you put them at 15 and 25% respectively, they look very different. And so the goal then is even when people say, you know, they want to lose weight, really, the goal is not just to lose weight, but to lose fat and not muscle. And then if somebody says they want to gain weight, the goal is not just to gain weight, but it's to gain muscle and not fat, or at least gain as much muscle as you can with as little fat gain as possible. So the first thing here is to, again, rewire your thinking toward body composition and away from body weight. In the end, you want a certain look in the mirror and how you should look at that is not what is that weight going to be, but what is that body composition going to

look like? What body fat percentage is that going to be? And approximately how much total lean mass are you going to need to gain to achieve that look? And when you start thinking that way, then you see that what most people do to try to get into shape or lose weight is really counterproductive. So you have very low calorie dieting, like starvation dieting, very low protein dieting. You have excessive amounts of cardio and minimal amounts of resistance training. That's the recipe for skinny fat, because while doing that will definitely help you lose weight. No doubt, you know, if you're in a huge caloric deficit, that alone, of course, is going to drive weight loss. But then if you add on top of that, low protein intake, excessive cardio, and little or no muscle training, yes, you're going to lose a lot of

weight. You also, you know, you're going to lose a fair amount of fat, but you're also going to lose a fair amount of muscle. And that's bad. That's really what contributes to the skinny fat look. Again, when you have people that they lose large amounts of weight, they lose 20, 30, 40 plus pounds, which is great, but are very unhappy with what they see in the mirror because they've lost too much muscle. They don't have the muscle tone that they want to have that overall look that they expect, you know, with whatever body fat percentage they're ending at. Hey, quickly, before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the word about it? Because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth.

So if you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well, please do tell them about it. It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say thank you. You can find me on Instagram at Muscle for Life Fitness, Twitter at Muscle for Life, and Facebook at Muscle for Life Fitness. All right. So if that's how people, or at least a lot of people, wind up skinny fat, what's the solution for those of you that are there now? And for those of you that are not

skinny fat, but are about to embark on a weight loss journey, what about you? And fortunately, the solutions are pretty simple. Okay. So if you are currently skinny fat, what should you do? Well, let's approach it like this. So if your caloric intake is currently very low, so if you are eating somewhere around your basal metabolic rate because you've simply been restricting your calories for a long time then your first priority should be getting that number back up to where it should be and i don't want to make this video slash podcast too long so i'm just going to send you to an article that you can read about this actually there are two articles I recommend you read just so you have a full understanding of what you're

supposed to do and why. The first is if you go to muscle for life and you search for metabolic damage, you should read that article, which breaks down obviously the whole subject of metabolic damage, which just so you know, is really kind of fake news. At least if nothing else, it's a misnomer. But anyways, check out that article and then search for reverse diet. So your first priority from a dietary perspective is going to be getting your calories back up to a healthy range. Really what we want to do is we want to get them up to where your total daily energy expenditure should be. And we're going to be combining that with exercise, of course. So your TD is probably going to go up, but we want to make sure that you are not in a caloric deficit, that you are eating more or less the number of calories

that you're burning every day, and that this is a high healthy number. So then when we go into a deficit to lose fat, we are not starving you basically. And if your caloric intake is currently at a healthy level, so if you are, if you understand what I just was talking about in terms of total daily energy expenditure, and that's more or less where your intake is at. So you're more or less eating the number of calories that you're burning every day. And this is a, a normal healthy number. you haven't been severely restricting your calories for a long period of time, then you can focus your dietary efforts on losing fat, meaning you can go into a caloric deficit to lose fat because chances are, if you are skinny fat,

you are going to be new to weightlifting and resistance training, at least a proper weightlifting resistance training. And that means that you are going to experience glorious newbie gains. You're going to be able to gain muscle while losing fat. So we might as well take advantage of that and just have you go into a deficit to bring your body fat percentage down. And then we're going to use your exercise to drive muscle growth up and you will achieve the holy grail, the body recomp. Also, as a quick note on that last point, I'm assuming that your body fat percentage is too high as well. So you have a healthy metabolism and your body fat percentage is too high.

So if you're a guy and you're over 15% body fat, or if you're a woman and you're over 25% body fat and you have a healthy metabolism, then recomp is the way to go. And from the dietary side of things, that means caloric deficit. Now, if your metabolism is healthy and your body fat percentage is not too high. So if you're a guy around 10%, if you're a woman around 20%, your metabolism is healthy, then we actually want to just focus on maximizing muscle growth. You could call that clean bulking, lean bulking, you know, there are different terms for it, but it's basically going to boil down to eating slightly more energy than you burn every day,

which helps your body's muscle building machinery work as efficiently as possible. And if you want to learn more about that, head over to legionathletics.com and search for clean bulk, and you will see an article there wrote on it. Now, in terms of exercise, and this applies to all three cases noted above, you want to focus the majority of your efforts on heavy compound weightlifting. And by heavy, I mean working with 75 to 85% of your one rep max. By compound, I mean, of course, multi-joint exercises, compound exercises that involve multiple muscle groups, as opposed to isolation exercises that involve, you know, just one joint movement or one muscle group. Now, in terms of cardio,

you actually don't have to do any to lose fat. The diet and the weightlifting will be enough. However, doing cardio does help speed up the process. And so I myself do like to include cardio in my routine when I'm cutting. The key though is not doing too much because it's going to interfere with your weightlifting and it's probably also going to accelerate muscle loss. So what I recommend is that you do no more than an hour and a half to maybe two hours of cardio per week when you're cutting. And you can start even lower than that. You could start with 30 minutes or maybe 60 minutes of cardio per week when you're cutting. And then as time goes on and you need to keep your energy expenditure up, then you add a little bit

more cardio, but you never get excessive. And in case you're wondering what I myself like to do, I like to do 25 to 30 minute high intensity interval sessions when I'm cutting. And I'll do three to four of those sessions per week. I prefer biking because it's convenient. I have a little bike down in my exercise room in my basement. little bike down in my exercise room in my basement. And also research shows that biking is one of the better forms of cardio for minimizing the interference effect with the weightlifting. Hey there, it is Mike again. I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did, and don't mind doing me a favor and want to help me make this the most popular health and fitness podcast on the internet, then please leave a

quick review of it on iTunes or wherever you're listening from. This not only convinces people that they should check the show out, it also increases its search visibility and thus helps more people find their way to me and learn how to build their best bodies ever too. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then just subscribe to the podcast and you won't miss out on any of the new goodies. Lastly, if you didn't like something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email at mike at muscleforlife.com and share your thoughts on how you think it could be better. I read everything myself and I'm always looking for constructive feedback. So please do reach out. All right,

that's it. Thanks again for listening to this episode. And I hope to hear from you soon. And lastly, this episode is brought to you by me. Seriously though, I'm not big on promoting stuff that I don't personally use and believe in. So instead, I'm going to just quickly tell you about something of mine, specifically my fitness book for women, Thinner, Leaner, Stronger. Now, this book has sold over 150,000 copies in the last several years, and it has helped thousands of women build their best bodies ever, which is why it currently has over 1,200 reviews on Amazon with a four and a half star average. So if you want to know the biggest lies and myths that keep

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