The Skinny Fat Workout & Diet Guide
Skinny fat is when you’re overfat but undermuscled, giving you a normal BMI but an unhealthy body composition. It’s when you’re not quite fat but not quite skinny, either.
The good news is you aren’t overeating or undereating, so you won’t need to force yourself to eat more food (bulking) or less food (cutting). That’s the hardest part of any physique transformation. You don’t need to worry about that. Not yet, anyway.
Instead, the best way to get rid of skinny fatness is to improve your nutrient partitioning. You need body recomposition. There are a few methods that can help with that: following a good workout program, eating a good diet, living a good lifestyle, and getting enough good sleep. Each can work on its own, but combining them all together works much better.
- What Does Skinny-Fat Mean?
- How to Know If You’re Skinny-Fat
- What Causes Skinny Fatness?
- Should You Bulk, Cut, or Recomp?
- Cardio for Skinny-Fat Guys
- The Skinny-Fat Workout
- The Skinny-Fat Diet Plan
- How to Sleep for Body Recomposition
- The Best Supplements for Skinny Fat Guys
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Conclusion
What Does Skinny-Fat Mean?
“Skinny fat” is when you’re both under-muscled and overfat, giving you a normal BMI but a poor body composition. It’s a casual term for someone with normal-weight obesity, also known as Metabolically Obese Normal Weight (MONW).
We covered a study by Wroblewski and colleagues in our article on how age affects muscle growth (study). The researchers compared the MRI scans of people with different exercise habits, looking at their body composition:
Both of these guys have legs that are about the same size, but the skinny-fat man’s leg is made of fat, whereas the fit man’s leg is made of muscle. You can see the difference in bone density, too. Look at the thick pearly white bones on the right.
Skinny fat isn’t a body type. The study found that inactivity led to simultaneous muscle loss and fat gain over time, causing people to grow gradually more skinny fat with every passing year. However, exercising allowed people to maintain their leanness and muscularity into their 70s. (There are other factors, too. More on that in a moment.)
How to Know If You’re Skinny-Fat
To figure out if you have a below-average amount of muscle mass, you can measure how big and strong you are. The average American man has 13.3-inch biceps and can bench press around 185 pounds (source). If you’re smaller or weaker than that, you’re less muscular than the average man. You might call that being skinny.
That brings us to the fat part of skinny fat. It’s common to say that 20% body fat is enough to make you skinny fat, but it’s the visceral fat underneath your abs that causes problems, so I think it makes more sense to measure your waist circumference (at the height of your belly button).
Most research shows that body fat becomes a problem when your waist circumference passes 37 or perhaps 40 inches (source). Most guys have that problem. The average American man has a waist size of 40 inches (CDC report). If your waist circumference is greater than 37 inches, you can probably improve your health by burning fat.
It’s also possible to be “thin chubby,” where you aren’t quite skinny or fat but still don’t look strong, lean, or athletic. Your situation isn’t as dire, but it can still be frustrating, and you can still use this article to build a leaner and more muscular physique.
What Causes Skinny Fatness?
Nutrient Partitioning
Skinny fatness is a problem with nutrient partitioning. Your body is storing the extra energy you eat as body fat instead of using it to build bigger muscles, denser bones, and tougher tendons.
When you have poor nutrient partitioning, bulking will merely make you fatter, and cutting will only make you thinner. Neither will bring you closer to your goal. It can be incredibly frustrating.
Sometimes, it can feel like conventional advice is failing. That’s dangerous. That’s when you’re most at risk of falling into the worst trap of all—unconventional advice:
- Maybe insulin is making you skinny-fat, so you try keto.
- Maybe more growth hormone would help, so you start intermittent fasting.
- Maybe sugar is the problem, so you do a clean bulk.
There’s nothing terrible about any of those approaches, but none of them address the root issue, so none of them can fix your skinny fatness.
There’s nothing revolutionary in this article. We’ve used this same approach with professional and Olympic athletes. Your doctor will probably nod along with all of it. We aren’t trying to do things differently; we’re trying to do things correctly. That’s what produces the best results:
The good news is that when you fix your nutrient partitioning, you’ll be able to bulk more leanly, build some muscle while losing weight, or gradually improve your body composition while staying at the same weight. Once you fix your nutrient partitioning, you can destroy your skinny fatness once and for all.
Fixing the Skinny Part of Skinny-Fat
To understand the skinny part of skinny fat, it helps to look at what’s going on in your muscle fibres. The strongest predictor of someone’s response to hypertrophy training is the number of nuclei in their muscle fibres:
These nuclei are permanent. They don’t fade away when you stop exercising. And guys with good muscle-building genetics have more of them. Maybe they were born that way, maybe they acquired them through a childhood of being active, or maybe they gradually added them by following a rigorous workout routine. Regardless of how they got their nuclei, they have them, making it easier to gain and maintain muscle—forever.
Each of these nuclei has an area it can affect, almost like a wifi router. Your nuclei can build muscle within that area, but to go beyond, you’ll need to gain new nuclei. This partially explains “newbie gains,” where beginners build muscle quickly and then hit a plateau:
These nuclei also explain “muscle memory,” where a 43-year-old dad who hasn’t exercised since he played football in college explodes back into muscularity as soon as he touches a barbell. You might have seen some of those transformations. They’re wild.
And these nuclei shed light on the skinny-fat trap, where you gain and lose the same 10 pounds of muscle every time you bulk and cut, never accomplishing a lasting change. Your muscle fibres inflate and deflate without ever being forced to go through the arduous process of adding new nuclei. You aren’t venturing deep enough into muscle growth to make any permanent changes. But you can:
Once you’ve added these nuclei to your muscle fibres, you’ll be “naturally” more muscular for the rest of your life. If you stop working out, your muscles will still deflate, but they probably won’t ever shrink as small as they were before. And when you start lifting weights again, it will be easy to get back into peak condition.
Here’s the takeaway: If you bulk, bulk leanly, and do it for long enough to gain a significant amount of muscle and strength. The goal is to become permanently more muscular.
Fixing the Fat Part of Skinny-Fat
To understand the “fat” part of skinny-fat, it can help to look at your fat cells. Similar to how you can gain new nuclei in your muscle fibres, you can gain new fat cells (fat cell hyperplasia). Brad Dieter, Ph.D., talks about fat-cell hyperplasia starting to take place once people reach a BMI of about 35. For example, if you’re 5’10 and 240 pounds, gaining more fat might increase the number of fat cells you have.
Most skinny-fat guys haven’t gained extra fat cells. You probably have the same number of fat cells you’ve always had. Those fat cells are just inflated with energy. That won’t reduce your ability to get and stay leaner. In fact, it helps. The more inflated your fat cells are, the easier it is to access their energy, and so the easier it is to lose fat. In fact, you can probably use some of that energy to build muscle, achieving body recomposition.
You can’t recomp forever. When your fat cells get too deflated, they’ll grow more protective of their energy, and they’ll stop giving it up so easily. You’ll need to cut to lose fat and bulk to build muscle. I wish I could say exactly when that turning point is, but it’s different for everyone. You’ll know when you stop gaining strength on your lifts. That’s a sign you aren’t building muscle anymore.
There’s another implication that’s important for skinny-fat guys. If you cut down too lean, you’ll wind up with these ravenous fat cells that soak up every calorie you eat until you’ve regained a comfortable amount of body fat. For example, let’s say you cut down to 8% body fat (chiselled abs) and plan to do a lean bulk from there. You might not be able to. You might gain a disproportionate of fat until your body gets back up to a more comfortable 12% body fat (faint abs) or maybe even 15% body fat (flat stomach).
Here’s the takeaway: If you cut, stop before the cut gets too difficult. Keep your waist healthfully lean (under 37 inches), but don’t worry about abs until you’ve gained a significant amount of muscle and strength.
Should You Bulk, Cut, or Recomp?
Skinny fat guys have a choice. Skinny guys are underweight and under-muscled, so they benefit from bulking, sometimes quite aggressively. Fat guys are overweight, so it’s often best to focus on pure fat loss, losing weight without losing muscle. Skinny fat guys can benefit from either approach.
You also have a third option. You’re neither underweight nor overweight. Your weight isn’t a problem, so it doesn’t need to change. You can recomp.
- Lean bulk: you could start by slowly gaining weight and building muscle as leanly as possible. This works best for the skinny-fat guys who are skinnier than they are fat. It can be a good place to start if your waist circumference is well under 37 inches.
- Recomp: you could start by improving the quality of your diet, letting your appetite guide you. Your weight may not change very much. It may not change at all. But by lifting weights, being more active, eating a better diet, and living a good lifestyle, you should still be able to build muscle, gain strength, lose fat, and improve your health.
- Cutting: you could start by getting into a calorie deficit, losing weight, and focusing on burning fat. This works best for skinny-fat guys who are bordering on being overweight. This is a great place to start if your waist circumference is 40 inches or more.
As is often the case, the middle option makes for the best default. If you can’t decide whether to bulk or cut, don’t do either. Let your appetite dictate how much food you eat. You’re one of the lucky people who can do that. You’ve been eating the right amount all along.
Whatever you choose, you have to be adaptable. Start where you want, track your results, and adjust as needed. If cutting or recomping prevents you from gaining strength, you may want to gear into a lean bulk, giving your body the energy it needs to build more muscle. If you’re struggling to burn fat, you may want to veer into a cut, forcing your body to get its energy from around your gut instead of inside it.
Cardio for Skinny-Fat Guys
Cardio isn’t as powerful as lifting weights, but it can make for a very easy first step. If lifting weights seems intimidating, you can ease into a healthier routine by spending a couple of weeks getting into the routine of going on a brisk morning walk.
Cardio’s main selling point is that it’s by far the best way to improve your cardiorespiratory fitness. The other big advantage is that it’s exercise. All forms of exercise, including both cardio and lifting weights, help burn visceral fat.
If you’re out of shape, cardio can be very simple. Going on a brisk 20-minute walk every morning is more than enough to improve your cardiovascular fitness and speed up fat loss. For example, in a study by Keating and colleagues, walking for an hour per week for 8 weeks was enough to trim an inch off the participants’ waistlines (study).
When walking becomes too easy, you can think about increasing the intensity. The simplest ways to do that are increasing the pace (jogging), increasing the load (rucking), or adding inclines and difficult terrain (hiking).
The Skinny-Fat Workout
The Importance of Resistance Training
The most powerful way to improve nutrient partitioning is to follow a rigorous hypertrophy training program—a workout program designed specifically to stimulate muscle growth. When you stimulate muscle growth, your body will prioritize building bigger muscles over storing extra energy as body fat. Any calories sent to your muscles are calories diverted away from your gut.
The best data we have comes from a meta-analysis of 116 studies (meta-analysis). 15 weeks of resistance training caused people to gain 1.8 pounds of muscle while losing 2.2 pounds of fat. This study included all types of resistance training (not just hypertrophy training), and the participants didn’t improve their diets or lifestyles or do any cardio. Even then, resistance training yielded body recomposition.
If you’re already in great shape, you can’t expect to get results like this. But if you’re skinny-fat, you can probably do quite a bit better, especially if you combine a good hypertrophy training workout program with the rest of the advice in this article.
The Importance of Hypertrophy Training
There are a few different types of resistance training. All of them can make you bigger, stronger, and more athletic, but each has its own specialty:
- Callisthenics is for improving your gymnastic strength and skill, giving you mastery over your body weight.
- Olympic weightlifting is for improving your explosive power, allowing you to jump higher and run faster.
- Strength training is for improving your maximal strength, allowing you to lift more weight for a single repetition.
- Hypertrophy training is for building bigger muscles (full explanation).
We recommend hypertrophy training. It’s by far the most efficient way to stimulate muscle growth. But you don’t need to be a purist about it, and you don’t need to train like a bodybuilder. After all, athletes, gymnasts, and powerlifters all use hypertrophy training to build bigger muscles. They just do it in a way that suits them.
You can use bodyweight exercises, dumbbells, barbells, exercise machines, or train at a fully stocked gym, using a fruitful mix of everything. Even if you have weights and machines, you can get better results by including some of the best callisthenics exercises: push-ups, dips, chin-ups, and pull-ups. And if you want, you can go heavier on some of your bigger exercises, developing your maximal strength.
The Basics of a Good Workout Routine
The best thing to do is follow a premade workout program, and each program has its own way of fitting all the pieces together. See what a good workout program feels like. See the results you get. From there, if you want, you can learn how to make your own workout routine.
Still, it helps to know what a good program looks like. Here are the basics:
- Focus on compound exercises. Start with beginner variations like goblet squats, push-ups, Romanian deadlifts, and lat pulldowns.
- Add isolation exercises for the muscles you’re eager to grow. For example, if you want bigger arms, add biceps curls, triceps extensions, and lateral raises (full explanation).
- Start with 3 full-body workouts per week. For example, you could do the exercises listed above every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday (full explanation).
- Do around 6–20 reps per set. Most people prefer doing 6–10 reps on the bigger compound exercises and 8–15 reps on the smaller isolation exercises (full explanation).
- Bring your sets within a rep or two of failure. It’s crucial to challenge your muscles. Take some of your sets to failure, especially on isolation exercises and on your final sets (full explanation).
- Rest for 2–3 minutes between sets. Shorter rest periods can make it harder to get enough good reps in. Longer rest periods can make your workout take far longer than it needs to (full explanation).
- Add weight or reps every workout. Fight to grow stronger, adding weight or squeezing out more repetitions whenever you’re able to. This is progressive overload, the heart of weight training (full explanation).
If you want a fully periodized 6-month workout program, including tutorial videos for every exercise, spreadsheets to fill in as you work through the program, and online help from us, check out our Bony to Beastly Program.
The Skinny-Fat Diet Plan
Hypertrophy training stimulates muscle growth, but to actually build that muscle, you need to eat enough calories and protein. It also helps to eat foods that reduce visceral fat storage. And it helps to eat a balanced diet that gives you all the micronutrients you need to thrive.
We’ll be talking about calories, but we’re just trying to give you an idea of what a balanced diet looks like. You don’t need to track your calories. You can, if you want—here’s our review of the best calorie-tracking app—but you don’t need to. You don’t have an issue with calories.
Let’s go through the full skinny-fat diet step by step.
How Much Protein Do You Need?
Protein gives your body the building blocks it needs to build muscle. If you aren’t eating enough of it, you won’t be able to build muscle as quickly or as leanly.
If we look at this study, all of the participants were put on a hypertrophy training program and instructed to eat in a calorie deficit. Half of them ate a fairly average amount of protein (about 0.5 grams of protein per pound bodyweight), whereas the other half were instructed to eat a gram of protein per pound bodyweight per day. For a 150-pound man, that’s the difference between eating 75 grams versus 150 grams of protein per day.
After four weeks, the participants who kept eating a typical amount of protein lost 8 pounds of fat but failed to gain a significant amount of muscle. That’s great, but the group who added protein to their diets lost 11 pounds of fat while building 3 pounds of muscle. They got body recomposition while cutting.
However, once you’re eating enough protein to build muscle, it’s no longer a limiting factor, and eating even more won’t help. The goal is to eat enough protein, not necessarily more protein.
If we look at every study, it seems that 0.7–1 gram of protein per pound of body weight per day is enough to maximize your rate of muscle growth (meta-analysis). Some people get perfect results with a little less, and some need a little more. That’s why the minimum target is a range. If you’re worried you might have bad genetics for building muscle, you could err on the higher side of that minimum intake, aiming for a full gram per pound.
How Many Carbs Should You Eat?
Carbs are fantastic for building muscle leanly. That may seem like a controversial take, especially since keto and low-carb diets are popular right now. It isn’t controversial among experts, athletes, or bodybuilders, though:
- Carbs for muscle growth: guys tend to build muscle faster and more leanly when they get 40–60% of their calories from carbohydrates (study, study). That’s standard advice for anyone trying to build muscle. It works just as well for skinny-fat guys.
- Carbs for strength and performance: The Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition recommends getting 45–55% of your calories from carbs to maximize your strength and performance (reference).
Why are carbs so good for building muscle? Carbs are a great source of energy. Your body breaks them down into glucose and stores them in your muscles as glycogen. This glycogen makes your muscles look bigger, harder, and fuller, and it fuels your workouts.
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. Plus, it seems that having muscles inflated with glycogen sends a signal to your body to build muscle faster (study, study, study).
Some skinny fat guys worry that eating more carbs will cause more fat gain. That isn’t how it works. The most impressive muscle growth I’ve seen from a study came from giving the participants tons of extra carbs while following a rigorous hypertrophy training program (study). Also, keep in mind that many carbs are rich in fibre, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and other important micronutrients.
Why are carbs so often demonized? Most guys have a tendency to overeat. The foods they overeat tend to be rich in both processed carbs and fats (chips, ice cream, donuts, fast food, and so on). When they remove carbs from their diets, it removes processed carbs (like soda), and it also removes foods rich in both carbs and fat. This can make it easier, sometimes, to control cravings while losing weight.
Skinny fat guys don’t have a problem with overeating. You’re over-fat, not overweight. It can definitely help to cut back on junk food, but you don’t need to remove carbs. Instead, think of eating more nutritious carbs: fruits, veggies, legumes, whole grains, oats, brown rice, potatoes, sweet potatoes, honey, and Greek yogurt.
If you have any other concerns or questions about carbs, drop a comment below. I know it can be confusing.
How Much Fat Should You Eat?
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). That means you probably don’t need to intentionally eat more fat. Rather, you should try to eat more nutritious fat.
Dietary fat helps to regulate hormones (including testosterone) and can be rich in important nutrients, including fat-soluble vitamins and minerals (study, study). However, not all fats are equally nutritious. Some saturated fats (butter, palm oil, and coconut oil) can harm body composition, whereas some monounsaturated fats (almonds, avocados, and olive oil) and polyunsaturated fats (walnuts, flax, and fatty fish) can improve it (study).
For example, in a study by Bjermo and colleagues, the participants given foods rich in butter (saturated fat) gained visceral fat, whereas the participants given foods rich in vegetable oil (polyunsaturated fat) lost visceral fat. You can do even better. You can favour even more nutritious sources of fat, such as nuts, seeds, avocados, olives, olive oil, avocado oil, fatty fish, and Greek yogurt.
Skinny-Fat Macros
The conventional muscle-building diet is high in carbs, moderate in protein, and moderate in fat, giving you macros of around 40–60% carbs, 20–30% protein, and 20–30% fat. That’s enough carbs to pump your muscles full of glycogen, enough protein to maximize your rate of muscle growth, and enough fat to regulate your hormones. For a more detailed breakdown, we have a full article on muscle-building macros.
As long as you’re somewhere in that neighbourhood, the overall quality of your diet matters more than the exact proportion of your macros. So, let’s talk about how to eat a balanced and nutritious diet.
How to Eat a Balanced Diet
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. Think of chili, lentil stew, stir fry, burritos, vindaloo, baked salmon and vegetables, or the bodybuilding classic: chicken breast, rice, and broccoli drizzled with olive oil.
There are a few powerful benefits to eating balanced meals:
- Muscle growth: every time you eat a meal with a serving of protein, you’ll build a small amount of muscle.
- Regulation: fibre helps regulate blood sugar, blood lipids, and digestion.
- Nutrients: if you’re eating balanced meals, it’s much easier to get the macronutrients and micronutrients you need to support your health, fat loss, and muscle growth.
- Energy: balanced meals contain a mix of energy sources, are often easier to digest, and will probably leave you feeling better.
A balanced diet is made up of a few balanced meals per day. Those are usually spaced out fairly evenly, but there’s nothing wrong with intermittent fasting if it suits you.
To start, try to eat at least 3 balanced meals per day. When that gets easy, try to add more balance to your snacks. It doesn’t need to be difficult. Trail mix is balanced. So is Greek yogurt with frozen berries and dark chocolate chips. You could also dip apple slices into peanut butter. Maybe have some cottage cheese with fruit.
How to Eat a Nutritious Diet
We can thrive on a variety of different diets. You can eat American salmon, Scottish oats, Mexican avocados, Asian soy, African beans, Canadian blueberries, South American quinoa, Australian Macadamia nuts, and Antarctic krill.
But you don’t have to eat everything. Different cultures eat different cuisines. Within those cultures, different people prefer different foods. That’s perfectly fine. Pick the foods you like. Just make sure you have a good mix of them.
- Lean meat is high in protein and rich in vitamins and minerals. Leaner cuts are lower in saturated fat. Think of extra-lean ground meat, white fish, shrimp, and chicken breast.
- Fatty fish is high in protein and rich in omega-3s (such as EPA and DHA). These omega-3s reduce inflammation and support your overall health. Think of salmon, sardines, and mackerel.
- Eggs are high in protein and rich in healthy fats and micronutrients.
- Fermented dairy is rich in protein, calcium, and probiotics. Probiotics are great for digestion. Think of cheese, cottage cheese, Greek yogurt, and kefir.
- Other fermented foods are rich in probiotics, too. Think of sauerkraut, miso, natto, tempeh, kombucha, and kimchi.
- Whole grains and legumes are nutritious starchy carbs. They’re also rich in soluble fibre, which regulates blood sugar, blood lipids, and digestion. Think of corn, quinoa, oats, beans, lentils, soybeans, peanuts, and brown rice.
- Fruits and berries are rich in vitamins, minerals, fibre, phytonutrients, and antioxidants. Think of bananas, mangoes, papayas, apples, pears, oranges, limes, and frozen mixed berries.
- Fibrous veggies are pitifully low in calories but make up for it by being rich in fibre and phytonutrients. Many are rich in nitrates, giving you bigger muscle pumps and increasing muscle growth (study). Think of carrots, spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, asparagus, beets, and peas.
- Nuts and seeds are rich in healthy fats, protein, and fibre and packed full of micronutrients. Think of walnuts, almonds, Brazil nuts, cashews, pistachios, pumpkin seeds, chia, and flax.
- Herbs, spices, and garnish add flavour and nutrients to your meals. Think of garlic, onions, diced tomatoes, pepper, turmeric, oregano, cilantro, mint, hot peppers, and soy sauce.
- Sauces and dips can be nutritious. Think of honey, mustard, nut butter, soy sauce, hot sauce, tahini, homemade mayonnaise, olive oil, vinegar, hummus, salsa, Tzatziki, and guacamole.
- Oils can be grout sources of nutritious fats. Extra virgin olive oil is great for drizzling on salads and veggies. Avocado oil is great for cooking with.
- Coffee and tea are natural sources of caffeine and rich sources of phytonutrients. Just make sure not to have them in the afternoon. It takes many hours for caffeine to clear your system.
How to Sleep for Body Recomposition
Getting good sleep is part of living a healthy lifestyle, with a myriad list of health benefits, ranging from better hormone production to improved willpower and appetite. What many of us don’t realize, though, is that getting enough sleep can help you build muscle faster while burning more fat.
These results are from a study by Jabekk and colleagues (study). The researchers split the participants into two groups. Both groups were put on the same workout program, but only one group was given tips about how to improve their sleep. The group who focused on improving their sleep gained 30% more muscle while simultaneously losing fat.
What I love about this study is the difference came from simple tips. You can follow those same tips and get those same benefits. This brings up the obvious question: how do you improve your sleep?
My sister is a sleep researcher. I spoke with her about this, going over the common tips and how to best implement them. The first thing to focus on is getting to bed on time. Try to go to bed at least 7 hours before you need to wake up. Some guys benefit from as many as 9 hours in bed.
If you’re getting 7–9 hours, you fall asleep within half an hour, you aren’t spending long periods awake during the night, and you wake up feeling refreshed, then you’re all good—you don’t need more. If you do need more—I did—we’ve got a full article on improving sleep for muscle growth.
The Best Supplements for Skinny Fat Guys
Supplements are ridiculously overrated. Even the very best ones pale in comparison to the benefits of lifting weights, exercising, eating a better diet, and getting enough sleep. Still, some can help. I won’t go into depth here, but you can click the links to read our deeper articles.
- Creatine is the best muscle-building supplement. It improves our workout performance, increasing our lean mass and improving our ability to build muscle.
- Protein powder makes it easier to eat more protein. If you aren’t eating enough protein, protein powder is an easy way to get the benefits of eating enough protein.
- Pre-workouts give you more vigour to lift weights. However, they’re only good for people who train early in the day. If you train after work, the caffeine will interfere with your sleep, reducing your energy.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can You Bulk When You’re Skinny Fat?
You can bulk when you’re skinny fat. There’s an old bodybuilding myth that having a higher body fat percentage makes it harder to build muscle leanly, but the evidence points the other way. Most research shows that having more body fat makes it easier to build muscle leanly (full research breakdown).
However, if you’re still relatively new to training, your body might be happy to burn body fat to get the energy it needs to build muscle. You might not need to bulk. You might want to wait until you start struggling to make progress in the gym before you worry about eating in a calorie surplus.
If you decide to bulk, we recommend bulking slowly and rigorously, trying to build muscle as leanly as possible.
How Lean Should You Get Before Bulking?
Before bulking, I recommend getting your waist circumference to well under 37 inches (at the height of your belly button). That way, you aren’t gaining so much visceral fat that it starts to harm your health.
You also want to be able to bulk for long enough to build a meaningful amount of muscle. You might gain a little bit of at while bulking, so it helps to have a couple of inches of wiggle room. 35 inches is good.
The bigger issue is getting too lean before bulking. It’s hard to get very lean, and then when you switch to bulking, you may regain a few pounds of fat before you start building muscle again. It’s usually better to bulk at a more moderate body fat percentage (of around 12–20%).
Conclusion
Skinny fatness is defined by being both under-muscled and over-fat, giving you two clear goals to work towards: build muscle and lose fat. The best way to do that is to:
- Follow a good hypertrophy training program. The more muscle growth you can stimulate, the more calories will be invested into muscle growth, and the fewer will be stored as fat. You can even burn some of your body fat to fuel muscle growth.
- Eat enough protein. You can maximize your rate of muscle growth with as little as 0.7–1 gram of protein per pound of body weight per day. There’s no evidence showing a benefit (or harm) to eating more protein than that.
- Eat a good diet. Eat a balanced diet, and try to get at least 80% of your calories from nutritious foods. Think of eating more fruits, veggies, grains, nuts, seeds, legumes, lean meats, fish, and yogurt. Season your food with herbs, garlic, onions, spices, and hot peppers. Drink coffee and tea in the morning. Keep caffeine and alcohol well away from your bedtime.
- Be active. Being active can range from doing cardio to simply going on more walks. For example, you could start by going on a brisk 20-minute walk every morning. Doing more intense cardio can be great, too, but there’s no need to rush into it.
- Get enough good sleep. Sleeping enough every night will give you more energy, motivation, and willpower. It will also improve your hormone profile, allowing you to build more muscle and burn more fat.
When you first start lifting weights, doing more exercise, eating a better diet, and living a healthier lifestyle, you don’t need to worry about calories. Even if your weight doesn’t change, you can expect to build muscle and lose fat, achieving body recomposition.
When you stop making progress in the gym, that’s a good sign your muscle growth has plateaued. To continue building muscle, you’ll need to eat more calories, gearing into a lean bulk. Or, if you want to focus on losing more fat, you could eat fewer calories, veering into a cut.
When you bulk, try not to let your waist circumference pass 37 inches. When you cut, don’t get so lean that it feels uncomfortable or unsustainable. It’s often better to aim for a flat stomach instead of chiselled abs. You can try for abs later, once you’re happy with your strength and muscularity.
If you want us to walk you through the process of building muscle and losing fat as a skinny-fat guy, check out our Bony to Beastly Program. It includes a 6-month workout routine, diet guide, recipe book, and online coaching. Or, if you want an intermediate hypertrophy training program, check out our Outlift Intermediate Bulking Program.
If you want the latest and greatest muscle-building information straight to your inbox, we have we have a free newsletter.
Shane Duquette is the founder of Outlift, Bony to Beastly, and Bony to Bombshell, each with millions of readers. He's a Certified Conditioning Coach (CCC), has gained seventy pounds, and has over a decade of experience helping more than ten thousand naturally thin people build muscle. He also has a degree in fine arts, but those are inversely correlated with muscle growth.
Marco Walker-Ng is the founder and strength coach of Outlift, Bony to Beastly, and Bony to Bombshell. He's a certified trainer (PTS) and nutrition coach (PN) with a Bachelor's degree in Health Sciences (BHSc) from the University of Ottawa. He has over 15 years of experience helping people gain muscle and strength, with clients including college, professional, and Olympic athletes.
Muscle-Building Mini-Course via EMAIL
Sign up for our 5-part muscle-building mini-course that covers everything you need to know about:
- Hardgainer genetics and how to make the most of them.
- How to take a minimalist approach to building muscle while still getting great results.
- What you need to know about aesthetics, health and strength while muscling up.
Hey, great article as always guys 😀 I think I’m kind of stuck in the path to Florida Strong haha. I keep making strength gains in my workout not as fast as I used to but still I see improvement, yet my weight and body fat seems to remain the same. I’m trying to stimulate muscle growth with a caloric surplus, but an extra protein shake wont cut it right? So I don’t really know what I’m asking you right now I’d just like some advice to push me in the right direction I guess. Thx guys 😀
Thanks, Jan! If you’re still making strength gains you can be confident that you’re moving in the right direction, except you’re right—if your weight is staying the same and your strength is only very slowly increasing you’ll be heading there very very slowly (and at some point you’ll need to gain weight). A protein shake might cut it! Depends how close to a surplus you are, and how large that protein shake is. If it causes your weight to move up on the scale each week, perfect, but if not you’ll need more calories. Maybe that means mixing a couple scoops of whey with milk instead of water, blending up a fruit smoothie instead, having a handful of nuts, etc.
Sounds like you’re close 🙂
Not the right article to ask this but still, should I experiment with different rep ranges and see if that helps? I currently start with 12 increase the weight 10 and increase and then 8 reps and move on to another exercise still focusing the same body part. And yeah I always mix the powder with milk because chocolate tasting water seems weird to me haha but I’ll throw in some berries in there to see if that helps out 😀 thank you
Varying rep ranges and exercises is great, yeah. You can do it by changing the rep range per set, you can do it by changing the rep range per phase, changing the rep range per exercise, etc. For example, you could do a few sets of 5 rep bench press, then a couple sets of 10 rep (weighted) push-ups, then 15 rep pec flys or something. Maybe one after another, even better split up over the course of a week. Then maybe a couple months later you switch the rep ranges and exercises up a little.
Berries aren’t very high calorie. If you’re blending it and it’s chocolate flavour, maybe toss in a banana and some cocoa?
May I chime in here? Being a skinny guy most of my life and also training hard for years, I tried all kinds of bulking methods and training plans. But when I followed the usual method of adding more carbs for extra calories, I ended up gaining more fat then I wanted. Yes, muscle gains came along for the ride, too, but belly fat is belly fat right?
It wasn’t until I got fed up and decided, “Stuff it—let’s dirty bulk and see what happens,” that I found the winning formula for us skinny guys! Fats! Namely peanut butter! Smooth, no added sugar or salt peanut butter! It’s dense with calories and doesn’t provoke an insulin response like carbs do, so there is little incentive for your body to shuttle those calories to be stored as fat like carbs often are.
Here’s what i found works best for me: add 1–2 tablespoons of peanut butter to 1–1.5 cups of milk and add 1–2 scoops of protein powder. You want a blend of whey isolate/whey concentrate and casein, and if it has egg album in it, even better. That way, you get amino acids trickle-fed into your muscles for many hours so you grow for many hours.
My morning shake is made with 1.5 cups of full-fat milk, 3 tablespoons of peanut butter, and 2 scoops of protein powder for a grand total of around 800 cals—58 grams of protein, plenty of fats, and some carbs to fuel growth. I have the same before bed, too.
1,600 cals from those 2 shakes alone, on top of normal meals. And believe me, it works! The rest of the day, I have carbs with every meal, but I have a SMALL portion of carbs with those meals. My fat gains are way down while muscle growth is definitely up.
36 pounds gained in about 500 days of serious training. Yes, some of it is fat, but going from 132 pounds to 168 pounds, I’m able to carry that extra body fat quite well and still look quite lean.
If I was to redo my 500 days of bulking, I’d have added the peanut butter from the start and kept my carbs lower.. but you learn as you go right?
So, long answer short: add peanut butter. My shake is often chocolate or banana flavour, too. Those flavours go amazing with peanut butter.
So adding peanut butter helped you reduce fat gains? The 36 lbs were mostly muscle and not all fat?
That’s awesome, man! Congratulations on all your gains!
Sounds like a great homemade weight gainer 🙂
Peanut butter is super nutritious. Nuts, seeds, and legumes are great to eat while bulking. Milk is great for building muscle, too. That shake sounds like a great way to get into a calorie surplus, and it’s clearly working for you.
Most guys have an easier time gaining muscle leanly while eating a diet that’s higher in carbohydrates. Usually that means around 40–60% of calories from carbs, 20–40% from fat, and 20–30% from protein. But it’s not a major factor. I’d rather someone focus on the quality of their diet than trying to min-max their macros.
Hi guys, thanks for this tremendous job you do, it’s all very interesting!
I’m thinking about following your program, as I’m an ectomorph and as you say, most of the programs out there are for fat people, so I always have to make adjustments and/or I don’t get all the answers I need. I’m in a good shape, I do an hypertrophy-based workout 3 times per week, but I’m 41 years old, and I’m not sure if your program is mainly focused to teens. Do you have any special section or modifications to older people like me? Thanks a lot and keep this awesome work up !
Hey Peter, thanks for the kind words, man!
We’re in our thirties ourselves, and most of our members are somewhere between 20–50. Some are single, some are boyfriends, some husbands, some dads. At 41, you’ll fit in just fine.
As far as physiological changes go, there aren’t any major differences in muscle growth between the ages of 18–40, and probably not between the ages of 40–60, either. Even then, we’ve got a couple of members in their sixties who are bulking up just fine. More on that in our article about how age affects muscle growth.
You might need a slightly different approach than younger guys, but that will have less to do with age and more to do with circumstance. We can help you customize things in the online coaching community.
I hope you decide to join us!
Thanks Shane, I appreciate the effort and time you spend replying all the comments, because it means you really care about people. This is important, and reading your answer to my question, seems that soon you’ll have a new member! See you soon!
My pleasure, and that’s awesome, man—I hope to see you on the other side soon! 🙂
Peter,
I am 37years old and been using the Outlift program from these guys for about 18 months (completed and started again)and saw a great increase in size and strength. Shane has answered multiple questions from me on a variety of threads and emails as well.
Get after it
Woot! Thank you so much, man 🙂
Hi Guys, once again very intuitive & informative. I use to be in the same boat weighing at only 158 pounds, 6 feet tall all my life.Skinny fat all my life. All your research you guys did, I also went down the same track, only to properly train & diet the last 2 years the ” right way” At 36 years of age, now sitting @ 189 pounds, 10% body fat – I realize everything you guys wrote down is so true! keep up the good work, I look forward to your next article.
Thanks, Peter. Really glad you dug it 🙂
Congrats on your transformation! A super lean 189? That’s amazing 😀
How exactly did you diet and train the “right way” Peter? Did you bulk first? Cut first? Count macros?
Hi! What do you think about doing HIIT to lose fat and without losing muscle?
HIIT is great, yeah! It will help you burn visceral fat and stimulate a little bit of muscle growth. If you’re completely out of shape, you can expect some body recomposition.
Hypertrophy training is the more powerful stimulus, so ideally you’d do a mix of weight training and HIIT, but you don’t need to start everything all at once. It’s okay to start with cardio for a few weeks and then add the lifting later.
Both types of cardio are great. HIIT and steady state both have their place. You can go with your preference.
For more, we have an article about how to combine cardio with a muscle-building program.
Hello. Quick question: how can you measure your lean body mass percentage?
Hey Jacob,
The most common way people measure their body fat is with a BIA scale, but I don’t recommend it. They aren’t accurate. They tend to show weight loss as fat loss and weight gain as fat gain.
Most bodybuilders use skinfold callipers. They’re good at tracking the fat right under your skin (subcutaneous fat). That’s the fat that affects your muscle definition, so it makes sense for bodybuilders to prioritize that metric. You can do that if you want.
My favourite way of estimating body fat is to look at photos and guess. It isn’t as accurate, but it doesn’t need to be. You can often get a good idea of how your body fat percentage is changing just by comparing progress photos. We have an article on that here.
You don’t necessarily need to know your body-fat percentage, though. You may want to track your waist circumference instead. That will do a good job of measuring the fat around your organs (visceral fat), which is the type of fat most associated with poor health and skinny fatness. If you can get your waist circumference moving down, you’ll do a great job of improving your health and appearance, and your skinny fatness will soon be gone.
I hope that helps. Good luck!
Another great article.
I really want to get involved, and don’t want to wait until I start my new job, but cash flow is a beetch! I’ve read on some other posts about a payment plan, can you please shed some light on this?
Many thanks,
Just sent you an email with the details 🙂
Excellent read again shane. Thanks again for putting me on the right track in the program. For everyone that is still on the fence yet…i can so find myself in this article..before i signed up to b2b i got stuck no matter what i did. Now after just some weeks of training b2b style i saw progress for the first time!! If your still on the fence…save yourself the time and stress and sign up. These guys are Awesome and really helpful.
Thanks so much, Dutchdude! You’re a perfect example of someone going for a cut, losing weight overall, and successfully coming out with muscle gains while doing it 🙂
I’m stoked to see your next progress update. Keep killing it!
awesome article sane i’ve always been a fun of your work .most ectos like me would have been lost without you
Thanks for the kind words, Kidus—really glad you dug it 🙂
Finally I found someone who understand me! Thank You. But I’m still on the fence. I always stop doing workout after a while after seeing no progress or small (probably I don’t progress because after doing 30-45 minutes I don’t have energy left) And I don’t really eat well. I do my workout at home on my bowflex and curved bar. My concern is I’m not sure if your workout program will be a good fit for me since I’m not planning to go in a gym (time & money) From what I read and viewed on your website seems to be a great team to work with who wants to help us out. Thanks
Hey Jeff,
Our pleasure! Glad you liked it.
30-45 minutes can be enough if you do efficient compound exercises, especially at first. By the time it stops being enough, you’ll be fit enough to do more anyway 🙂
However you’re right—you do need to be consistent, you do need to have at least a little patience, and you do need to combine training with nutrition.
Exercise machines can be great for building muscle. Most research shows that machines, dumbbells, and barbells all stimulate similar amounts of muscle growth, at least in the prime movers. More on that in our article on exercise machines.
If you want to use a BowFlex machine, that’s great. You can build a ton of muscle that way 🙂
Really interesting read. I’d like to know if the B2B program integrates home gym workouts with only dumbbells & barbells with weight discs. What’s your view on bodyweight workouts/calisthenics for ‘ectomorphs’ trying to put on weight and/or muscle mass?
Thank you, Muskee!
Dumbbells and barbells are perfect. That’s everything you need. To build a full home gym, all you’d need to add is a bench and chin-up bar, but those are optional.
Callisthenics can be good for building muscle. It depends on which movements you use and how you program them. Push-ups, chin-ups, and dips are fantastic muscle-building exercises. I’d argue they’re even better than bench presses and lat pulldowns. We use plenty of them in our programs.
It’s much harder to replace exercises like deadlifts, squats, biceps curls, triceps extensions, and lateral raises. That’s why it’s easier to build muscle when you have access to your body weight AND some weights. But we can make do with anything.
For more, we have a full article comparing callisthenics versus weights for building muscle.
I hope you decide to join us!
Hey Shane,
Unfortunately i’m limited to just dumbbells & barbells without a bench. I would love to jump on board, but I’m somewhat restricted in terms of budget so the prospect of purchasing the program is out of the window.
You’ve got more than enough equipment to build muscle. That sounds like a perfect setup.
We’ve got a ton of free information on the site, and we’re working hard to constantly add more. I’m also happy to answer questions in the comments.
Good luck bulking up!
I really love your articles and your writing style, but what you say here is ignorant.
I highly encourage you to try some moves like Full Planche, V-Sit, Manna, Pike Press Handstand, Front-Lever and you’ll suddenly realise that, even at your level, you’re not nearly as strong as you thought. You might even realise that you’re infact a total noob when it comes to strength and you still have a long way to go before considering yourself “strong”.
Weight lifting is just the start of a good strength foundation.
Calisthenics is literally the next level.
Try those moves and report back 😉
Hey Patrick,
Callisthenics can be great for building muscle. It depends on what exercises you focus on and how you program them.
Those movements aren’t designed for building muscle, but they’ll stimulate some muscle growth regardless. The best exercises for building muscle tend to be simpler. Think of exercises like push-ups, dips, chin-ups, crunches, knee raises, leg raises, and so on. There’s less emphasis on balance and technique, more emphasis on gradually growing stronger.
But there are many ways to build muscle. There’s nothing wrong with using exercises that are less efficient, especially since they can still work great 🙂
While i personally dont have much experience with callisthenics personally – i did have a long term GF who was a competitive pole dancer and believe me these girls *(and guys) are super strong!! And build like brick sheds too!! But that strength and muscle doesnt transfer well to weight lifting and vice versa. I trained hard in the gym while she trained hard at home on her brass pole and the flag pole move she did as a warm up blew me away!! I could hardly hold my body weight up on the pole!! But callisthenics is mostly aimed at learning to control your own bodyweight thru strength.. and while being super strong is nice -it doesnt build muacle the same way as the gym does with weights. There is some really good youtube vids out now – look up worlds strongest teen- and find the vid of the girl training with a really lean guy covered in tatts. That guy has a vid in his series that does compare both of them and he has done both of them.. and they dont translate well to each other.. if your from a callisthenics background and really strong- then doing weights will make you bigger but you will lose the ability to move your own bodyweight easily thru a calli work out and same if your a gym buff and switch to calli then you will get better at bodyweight moves and get stronger in those areas while losing muscle mass. You really need to do BOTH if you want to get the benifits of each one without losing the benifits from the one your not doing.
Its basic bio mechanics- explain to me why i can do 10 reps of lat pull downs with 80kgs easily but cant do more then 8 reps of pull ups and i only weight 75kgs? And if i do a second set of 80kg pull downs i can hit 8-10 reps but if i try the second set of pull ups im lucky to hit 4 -6..
I see guys in the gym who almost never do pull downs and just do loads of pull ups and their backs are amazing looking.. but if i do catch then doing pull downs its with bad form and using bodyweight to cheat the rep and they are only using like 48kgs or so.. and here i am – SMALLER then they are – pulling down more weight easier with no cheating. But i struggle to do pull ups!!
At the end of the day any action preformed in repetition will grow muscle as long as you find ways to increase the work load on that muscle…be in more weight or more reps.. but you need to repeat the movement over and over the same way. So if you were to try callisthenics as a muscle building workout- you would need to do the same 30-60 second routine over and over 6-12 times before moving on to something else and over time go from say 6 times thru to 8 times thru then 10 and then 12 and so on to force your muscles to grow as the workload increases.
Thanks for sharing, Ben!
I agree. For the most versatile physique, it definitely makes sense to be versatile with your training. The specificity of training can go even deeper, too. Barbell strength doesn’t transfer perfectly to dumbbell strength, 10-rep strength doesn’t transfer perfectly to 1-rep strength, powerlifting strength doesn’t necessarily transfer to olympic weightlifting power, etc.
However, this is largely due to coordination. If the 10-rep bodybuilder gets some practice doing powerlifting, he’ll very quickly build up extremely impressive lifts. After all, the size of a muscle is directly related to how much strength it can produce. The only catch is that you need to learn how to use that strength—aka, develop the coordination to use those larger, more powerful muscles in the ways you want to use them.
So the guy who can do a bunch of pull-ups but has trouble doing pull-downs. This riddle can be solved by the fact that he’s probably not very coordinated yet at doing the pull-downs. But so long that he’s already developed the muscle size and strength by doing pull-ups, he’ll quickly become great at the pull-downs too. No new muscle needs to be built, he just needs to get better at using what he already has.
I agree with you that lifting weights is hands down the best way to develop muscle size and strength. However, there are other ways that can also work. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with using a few different techniques to develop your muscles.
Even in our Bony to Beastly Program, you could say that it’s a bodybuilding program because its primary goal is to help guys build far bigger muscles, but we add in some aspects of powerlifting, callisthenics and strongman training. We take the pieces that are best for our muscle-building goals and combine them together.
Hey Shane, great article again! Would like to read more articles, you guys are quite quiet nowadays. 😀
Anyway, I have some questions pretty big problems and i’d need your help.
1. I’m 170 cm and about 60-61 kg and fairly lean. I can see my lower abs and i have veins popping out on my lower abs too, not just my arms. Should i cut or should i start to bulk? I think i’m near the fit category, but i want to reach the strong one and i think that weight would be somewhere around 70-72 kg for my height. I haven’t used any supplements yet, so i’m wondering if i could make a 2 kgs/month progress leanly safely with e.g creatine?
2. Also, i figured out that i might be fast twitch dominant (you might know the 80% 1rm test, and i got 3 reps at squats e.g), so i focus on heavy lifts in the next months. Is it possible to be an ectomorph and very fast twitch dominant? In the last 2 weeks since i started the heavy lifts, i went from my 60 kg squat to 110 kg squat, so i started to lift almost 2x bodyweight in just 2 weeks. 😀 My problem is i’m not sure about the volume. How many sets should i use per week per bodypart, if i would use 3-4 reps per sets?
3. My biggest problem is: i have almost no shoulder developement. I mean, i have a 70 cm waist and a 110 cm shoulder circumference. My chest and lats are pretty nice, but my shoulders simply wont grow. Especially my lateral delts, they have no size at all. I wonder is you have any tips at this? I think now i’ll start this heavy lifting thing and they might grow, but how many sets and reps could i do, if i wanted to grow this musclegroup the most? Really, it’s the only bodypart that looks really bad, i’m satisfied with the others. So how could i modify a training program to make my shoulders grow much faster than the other parts? (even at the expense of the others).
4. This isnt really bodybuilding, but might be something related. 😀 So I’m 20 years old and i play the guitar since the age of 6. In recent years i had problems with my wrists and my arms. My wrists hurt well because i had something high in my blood tests.(i dont know what it’s called in english, sorry). I got medicines and they took it back to normal levels so i was fine for a while. Now it started to come back so i started taking omega 3 and 6 supplements and in a week my pain was gone. So now i have no problem with this. However, my other limiting factor, my cold hands are still there. If it’s under 20 celsius, my hands become numb and i think you know how difficult it is to play instruments with hands like these. I noticed recently that sometimes when i eat a lot of carbs, my veins pop out and my arms are filling with blood and become warm again. But well, i dont think it might be a permanent solution so i wondered if you had any problems like this and how you managed to deal with it.
Thanks for your answers, Ben.
Hey Bence, glad you like them!
We usually publish a couple of articles per month. The research and illustrations can take quite a while, and we like to take our time with them. Plus, we need to work on updating and improving the programs we sell, and we also coach clients.
1. You sound pretty lean! Definitely under 15%. If you’re interested in building muscle, I’d definitely recommend aiming for lean muscle-building right now. How quickly you can gain weight depends on a number of things: training experience, how far away you are from your genetic potential, genetics, the quality of your training, the quality of your nutrition. We have a lot of members who can gain 2kg per month leanly—sometimes as much as 4kg/month when starting out—and I think that would likely be true for you as well if your plan is a good one and you’re good at following it.
2. Sounds like you’re a strong guy! That’s awesome. For optimal gains you’ll still want to use a variety of rep ranges and exercises—check this article out—but doing lots of heavy stuff is definitely great.
3. Add in lateral raises! 2-3 sets of 10-15 reps at the end of a training day a couple times per week for a couple months usually works very well.
4. Unfortunately, this is totally outside of my area of expertise. I would ask your doctor about that.
I hope that helps! Good luck!
Hi Shane.
I’ve noticed that strength training (low reps) does NOT build muscles IN MY CASE.
I seem to respond well to high frequency, high reps (even as high as 25 or 30) training.
I workout 3 days a week, full-body workouts.
I choose ONE exercise each bodypart and do 4 sets of 25 (30 for legs).
Something like 4x training but with very high reps.
When I do the last set in perfect form, I up the weight next time that I do that exercise.
I was very thin when I was a child.
And maybe my prevalence of Type 1 fibers (slow twitch) has some consequences and I need to overcome the resistance of my muscle fibers by doing high reps.
…. I was almost forgetting… no more than 30 seconds rest between the sets.
Hey Fabrizio,
There’s a lot of research showing that higher reps (up to 30) performed with the right intensity (in this case going to failure) and with minimal rest (under 30 seconds) can build muscle fairly well. In your case, it built muscle more than well enough 🙂
There’s a lot of research showing that the best way to build muscle is to use a mix of different rep ranges. You’d train on the heavier side (4–6 reps), in a more moderate rep range (8–15 reps) and occasionally delve into higher rep ranges (20–30 reps). You don’t have to do it that way, but it tends to yield faster and steadier muscle growth. More on that in our article on the hypertrophy rep range.
This is a great article. I, too, am always trying to figure out “what to do.” I eat a lot, then start feeling and looking fat, so I chicken out and don’t eat as much. I’m 38, 5’10”, and about 160 lbs. I WANT TO GROW! I do a ton of squats, deadlifts, and presses. My testosterone levels are low, but I’m on TESTIM which gets me back in to the “low” range (total=275). I guess I’m worried about getting fat and not being able to reverse it! How can I mentally overcome my barriers? I think I need a good pep talk! Thanks, again, for all of the wonderful info on this site!
Joel
Hey Joel,
I know what you mean. It can be hard to bulk when you’re stressed about getting fat. As a naturally super tiny guy I feel it the other way around. When I lose weight, even if I’m just losing fat, I get stressed because I don’t like the idea of getting lighter. Add in the fact that you’re worried that you’re actually just going to gain fat, and this gets psychologically tricky—the true skinny-fat hell we talk about.
My favourite pep-talk post is one that Jared wrote a couple months ago: Why Skinny Guys Fail to Build Muscle. I think it might give you the strategy and attitude you’re looking for?
Let me know if that helps!
Thanks for the reply and the link to the article. As always – GREAT advice!
My pleasure, Joel—good luck!
This article is a real gem. Starting out at rather fat, losing about 50lbs and crossing strong-fat territory while doing so, I’m currently “skinny-fit”, approaching 10% bf and visible lower ab/unflexed upper ab territory, but I’m also really small now, wearing size 30 pants with belts and buying S and XS shirts. Next, after reaching that marker of 9-10% bf, having exhausted most of my “noob gains”, I will be completely primed to bulk properly and you guys are one of the guides I trust will lead me there.
I’m also perma referring skinny friends to this site here as it is just that informative and one of the very, very few where I basically never see something “wrong” or something I disagree with. Hats off guys and keep up the great work!
Congrats on losing all that fat, Daniel! Getting to 10% bodyfat is wicked impressive, especially when you were 50 pounds away from it. That’s awesome 🙂
Thank you for the all the kind words, and for sending skinny guys our way. We really appreciate it! Hopefully we see you on other side soon too!
Good luck, man!
Hi Shane
Do you think I’m skinny-fat? (photo)
In these pictures I’m squeezing my glutes and tilting my pelvis as you suggested
Also I’m normal weight 5’9 and 165 lbs
I’m not sure if I should become skinny-fit before attempting a bulk or I need muscles and the fat is not as much as I think.
What diet and training do you think works best for skinny-fat people?
Push/pull 4x times a week or full-body 3x a week or push/pull/legs 1x a week?
Would something like: incline bench, OHP and squat on push day and deadlifts, pull ups and barbell rows on pull day work or is it not enough exercises?
Does low-carb or low-fat works better for skinny-fat people ?
What’s the best way to figure out our TDEE? I think I might be burning 2500 calorie only on workout day, but I’m not sure and always feel like I’m either eating too much or not enough, never the “right” amount. So I’m yo-yoing a lot with my weight.
Thanks again for your great articles and your help!
I don’t think you’re skinny fat. You’re looking pretty strong. You aren’t very fat, either. Your gut is hanging out, yes, but that looks like it’s more because your abs are relaxed. Still, if you’re smaller and fatter than you want to be, you can build muscle and get leaner.
You’ve already built up a fair bit of muscle. You could cut and come out looking pretty lean and athletic. It’s also okay to bulk, focusing on gaining more muscle and strength.
A good default is to follow a 3-day full-body workout split. That’s what we do in our Bony to Beastly Program. When those workouts start getting too challenging, you can split the work up over more training days. Our Outlift Intermediate Hypertrophy Program gives you workout programs for training 3, 4, or even 5 days per week. For more, we have a full article on training splits.
Your lifts sound like a fairly minimalist routine, and that’s okay. You can build muscle faster by including more isolation lifts, though. If you want bigger arms, it pays to include biceps curls and triceps extensions. If you want broader shoulders, it helps to have lateral raises. If you want bigger abs, you should train them directly. Still, compound lifts can take you far.
Most people build muscle faster and more leanly by eating a balanced diet. Usually that means getting around 40–60% of your calories from carbs, 20–40% from fat, and 20–30% from protein. More on that in our article on bulking diets.
Best way to figure out if you’re eating enough is to weight yourself regularly to see if you’re getting heavier!
I hope that helps. Good luck!
Shane…how much of a calorie surplus is required to gain a pound a week?
We have a calorie calculator here. That should give you a good idea of how many calories you need to eat to build muscle. It’s just a rough estimate, though. No calorie calculator is accurate enough to guarantee results. It’s just a starting point.
You’ll need weigh yourself every week and adjust your calorie intake accordingly. If you don’t gain weight for 2 weeks, add another 100–200 calories to your diet. Keep weighing yourself and adjusting.
Naturally thin guys often need to adjust their calories by quite a bit. More on that in our article about hardgainers.
Hi, awesome blog by the way! I have one quick question and I’ll be happy if you can give me a little bit of advice. I have noticed as ectomorph that the first thing that I lose is muscle if I am trying to lose fat, I am bulking right now, I am 62kg and 1 72 cm tall my bf is %10 but I can’t see my abs very well. Anyway my question is how to lose fat without losing muscle? I noticed that if I cut a lot of carbs I’ll lose muscle for sure really fast even though I’m eating enough protein.
Thanks, Juan!
10% bodyfat is great! Nice job!
If you cut while eating a lot of protein, you don’t really need to cut carbs, per se, but rather cut calories. Those calories can come from carbs or fat.
The reason why your muscles shrink in size so quickly when you drop your carb/calorie intake is partly due to glycogen storage. Glycogen is the sugar you store in your muscles to use as fuel. When you’re eating fewer calories and carbs, you hold onto less of it, so your muscles look a bit smaller and flatter. It isn’t anything to worry about. They’ll reinflate when you start eating more calories and carbs again.
Or it could be that you’re losing muscle because your workout program isn’t powerful enough to preserve muscle, your diet isn’t good enough, you aren’t getting enough sleep, or you’re losing weight too quickly. Don’t worry too much. Rebuilding muscle is much easier than building it. But you should still check to make sure you aren’t doing anything wrong.
You should be able to maintain most or even all of your strength in the gym. If your performance is decreasing, you know you’ve got to find the source of the problem.
If you’re at 10% body fat and you can’t see your abs, you need bigger abs. Your abs are muscles that grow just like your other muscles. To make them grow, you need to train them. Poor posture can also hide your abs.
You can train your abs while working on your posture by doing exercises like dead bugs, planks, ab-wheel rollouts, and push-ups.
I am lean and thin how to get weight?
Every other post on this site 😉
I’d recommend this one about nutrition, and this one about exercise.
And there’s The Bony to Beastly Program too, which is a full muscle-building guide for skinny guys, a recipe book, coaching, community, etc.
Hey Shane, what would you recommend I do to escape skinny-fat territory? Stats are: 5’7, 162 lbs. Minimal training experience. Found a 5×5 program that I want to try out, but not sure whether to bulk up say 10 lbs and re-evaluate or cut down to 10-12% bf (with the little muscle I have).
Thanks!
Hey Cody,
Looking at your pictures, you’re too muscular to be skinny, too lean to be fat. You look like a pretty healthy guy. You can definitely build more muscle and lose more fat, though.
You’re in good shape, so you could bulk or cut. When in doubt, I’d go with a lean bulk. Getting lean before bulking doesn’t help, but there’s no harm in getting stronger before getting leaner.
Hey shane, great article! Life saver. But I have a question can I do calisthenics in the morning (45 min) and then weight training at night while bulking? Calisthenics make me sweat a lot so I hope that wont be a problem. Also can I do the bulking and cutting cycle without supplements? Because I cant seem to digest them. Also how much cardio can I do in a week while bulking and how many minutes?
Thanks!
Hey Manuj,
You can do all of this without supplements for sure. Supplements really aren’t that important at all.
As for combining the lifting with the callisthenics, it depends! You need to make sure you can recover from your training. If you’re making progress in the gym, that’s a good sign you’re recovering and adapting.
Same goes for cardio. Combining cardio with lifting is great, provided you can recover from it, and provided it doesn’t interfere with your progress in the gym.
Great article. I’ve been working on figuring this stuff all out.
I’ve been a skinny guy for most of my life, but within the past 4/5 years I’ve started putting on weight. I’m 5’9 and weigh 172. I’m skinny fat, but I think 175/180 would be the perfect weight for me if it was muscle instead of fat (I’m at 24% body fat). So I’m trying to only gain like eight pounds, not 20+ like some of the other guys whose picture’s you share (amazing gains though!). So I’m wondering if there’s anything different for me to do since I’m not looking to lose weight, just fat, but still only gain like 5 lbs?
Hey Michael,
I think you’re right. A lean 175-180 at 5’9 would look quite strong and athletic for sure.
Your path just has an extra step. If a guy comes into the program at 5’9, 150, 10% bodyfat, he’d have a similar amount of muscle as you. To get up to a lean 175, he’d need to gain a good 25 pounds. If he does that fairly leanly, maybe he arrives there at 14% body fat, still with the faint outline of abs.
You’re looking for a more dramatic change in body composition, losing quite a lot of fat while building even more muscle. You could start by recomping, trying to gain muscle while losing fat. When your progress stalls, you could switch to a lean bulk. When you’re happy with your muscle size and strength, you could do a slow cut, trying to preserve all your muscle. You’ll finish strong and lean.
Hi Shane. Thanks much for the article and the incredible resources you guys have put together at BTB. One question from the article above…in it you said “If you’re like most skinny-fat guys and you aren’t as lean as DoctorB or as muscular as Eric (we’ve got a more typical example still to come), the decision can be tricky.”, and I was just wondering where I would find that more typical example you referenced? I’m pretty sure that’s me, as I’m not quite as rail thin as DoctorB but not as big as Eric. My problem sounds quite typical…not enough muscle mass and too much belly fat to look good in a t-shirt. I’m 43, so the belly fat didn’t come around until my mid thirties. Everything aside from the belly is the same as it’s been basically all my life. Looking forward to seeing results from the wisdom ya’ll are dispensing here…
Ah I meant “Dead Bear” at the end. He came in not all that muscular, not all that lean. His transformation shows both a cutting and a bulking cycle, with a total net gain of 11 pounds. That’s what a skinny-fat guy would normally do—both a cut and a bulk.
Does that help at all?
The accumulating fat likely isn’t age related, per se, but rather time related. Old guys are often sedentary for a very long time, and the muscle loss and fat gain gradually accumulates over that time period. Lean and muscular guys go on to turn into lean and muscular old guys (check this image out), so long as they keep up with the lifestyle that keeps them that way (e.g. lifting weights and eating well).
Just a matter of getting back into a lifestyle that encourages lean muscle growth 🙂
First of all, AWESOME blog! I always had this problem of getting a big belly when bulking up, while still with really weak arms and legs. My problem is that I have REALLY huge arms and legs and a short torso. My body structure is pretty identical to Jon Jones. With that in mind I found this picture of him.
This is pretty much how I look like now, except that my belly is not that big, and my arms are much smaller. It just seems that all my bf is concentrated in the mid-section. With that in mind, what do you think I should do? Bulk or cut first?
I really thinking about joining your program!
Thanks!
Hey Sam,
Glad you like it, man!
I can definitely relate to the struggle of having very long arms. My legs are pretty short, but my arms go on for miles. Marco, on the other hand, has exactly that build. He has the arm and leg length of someone who’s like 7’0 feet tall. Seems to be pretty common with us ectomorphs. Doesn’t make it easier to deal with, just saying you aren’t alone in this, and there are some good solutions for it 🙂
Having your fat concentrated in your belly is pretty normal for men. It’s also something worth addressing. It often indicates a greater amount of visceral fat, which can pose problems. We want to get rid of that. It really helps to keep your waist well under 40 inches in circumference.
If your waist is over around 37 inches, I recommend starting with body recomposition or a cut. Keep going until your strength starts to stall in the gym. Once your waist is under 37 inches and you’re having trouble gaining strength in the gym, you could switch to a slow and lean bulk.
As for joining the program, you should! We can help you with all this stuff on an individual level, and we’d love to have you!
“Good old days”, my body is just to carry my head around, are gone. From ecto belly to ripped skinny 🙂 I am really happy I found this programme.
And we’re really glad to have you, man 😀
An ecto can gain muscle by eating more and working out. A skinny fat,otoh, can’t. If he eats too much, he will gain fat. If he doesn’t he wont gain muscle. So it is catch 22. The only solution is years and years of training, after which the body may adapt and change for the better.
I disagree. A skinny-fat guy will often even be able to build a little muscle even while losing fat (and losing weight overall). They’re often able to build a ton of muscle when gaining weight too, and often decently leanly. They can make very rapid progress whichever way they go.
But you’re right. To reach your full potential (in terms of health, strength, and aesthetics), it takes many years of making progress. The natural lifters with the most impressive physiques have usually trained for over a decade.
Hi Shane, what ur doing is remarkable, you’re helping a lot of people with very good info. But on this point alone, I have to disagree. A skinnyfat is not like an ecto – he has the traits of ecto in that he can’t gain muscle, but he also has a tendency to store fat despite eating little.
Also most of the people who call themselves ecto (and who later on make phenomenal progress) are actually mesomorph who don’t eat much during their teens. That is why once their teens are over and their metabolism slows down a little – and they start eating a lot and training – their muscles grow fast. So most likely you’re a mesomorph.
But anyway, my point applies to skinny fats, basically, because they have the worst of both worlds – they gain fat easily but not muscle.
Thanks so much man, I really appreciate it 🙂
Ectomorphs can gain muscle just fine once we learn how to do it properly—lifting well, eating enough, etc. Most studies seem to show that the guys who are starting off skinnier gain more muscle mass. And even the guy with the worst fat storing traits wouldn’t store fat in a calorie deficit.
An ectomorph is a loose term, but generally it applies to people with slenderer bone structures who start off with less muscle mass. Even after gaining 50+ pounds of muscle I’m still an ectomorph. I don’t have stubby limbs, a barrel shaped rib cage, a thick neck, thick wrists.
You’re right that with skinny-fat guys it’s a nutrient partitioning dilemma… but once they get their diet and training in order their nutrient partitioning improves 🙂
Greetings from Asean (and from fellow ectomorph :p ), Shane. I’m 23, 5’7″, and 144lb (65.5kg) with 75cm waist right now. I have been doing solely 5×5 for 3 weeks (this is my 4th week) with starting weight of 141lb and 77cm waist. I’m planning to add a few isolations like arms+shoulders in Monday, Lat machines in Wednesday, and chest+core in Friday, all isolations done in 3×6-10 reps fashion.
Do you think this routine will build strength and mass properly? Big thanks for your answer 🙂
P.s. my body image look much alike Doctor B right now, with a bit of belly
P.p.s I have nearly no training experience when I started 5×5
Hey Adhika, greetings from Canada!
Props for gaining 3 pounds in 3 weeks. That’s a great pace to be gaining at.
Your idea to add in isolation lifts is probably a wise one. The big compound strength lifts offer a lot of bang for your buck, are extremely versatile, and are great for building up muscle mass… but they’re also difficult to recover from and hard on your body. Building a program around them is great, but it also helps to add in some isolation lifts, which are a safe, fun and easy way to increase growth in your target areas without adding much stress to your body.
Is your exact routine perfect? That’s pretty impossible to say. But I dig the idea of adding lighter isolation lifts to your heavier compound ones 🙂
Hey,
So, I have run into the problem of being fit, suffering a lower back injury, then developing love handles and becoming skinny at the same time. What would you recommend for that? I have read through the article, and it seems like it is geared towards skinny without the flat tire.
Thanks!
Hey Joe,
I’m so sorry to hear about the back injury, man. Nothing can derail a transformation like hurting your back. All of a sudden life becomes so painful and you feel so fragile. They can take quite a while to recover from too, and many people make the mistake of stopping physical activity entirely, which leads to muscle atrophy everywhere (including in the injured area) and can delay recovery even more.
For back injuries I’d recommend seeing a local sports doctor or physiotherapist. (With a program like ours, once that’s done we can help work around the limitations and advice they give.)
As for what to do about the spare tire, then the article still applies. You could bulk yourself into some muscle and then cut the tire off after. Better still, you could start by cutting the tire off (while trying to build some muscle) and then bulk once you’ve gotten to a nice lean body fat percentage.
So muscle-building oriented weightlifting + a high protein diet + a calorie deficit. Adjust calories as needed to be losing 1-2 pounds per week. When you get lean enough, you can go into a calorie surplus and aim to gain 0.5-1 pounds per week.
I hope that helps, and good luck!
[…] However this doesn’t help us skinny guys. Bulking and carbs go well together, but if we bulk on a higher fat diet we’re going to get fat. Since junk food has a huge amount of heavily processed and unhealthy fat in it, this makes it a bulking disaster. This is why a lot of skinny guys who are finally able to eat enough to gain weight become skinny-fat. (If you’re already skinny-fat, here’s our skinny-fat article.) […]
Hey Shane, I’m a classic skinny fat type who has developed good arms and ok chest after a few years of casual gymming BUT have never been able kick the fat stored on my torso.That’s all I care about rn. I plan to cut for this summer (that’s January in my country) in an attempt to finally sort it.
Would you recommend creatine for me or do you just recommend it for typical skinny skinny guys?
Congrats on the new guns and pecs, Josh!
Creatine will cause your muscles to swell up a little bit, improving muscle size and definition. It will also improve your ability to build muscle, which means fewer calories sent towards fat, more towards muscle. So it won’t hurt any body type… except perhaps the genetically gifted athletic woman who aspires to look more like a model and thinks that she’s too lean and muscular looking already. And given the mental and physical health benefits it’s something even someone who cares nothing about body composition could benefit from.
It’s far from necessary, but if you’re already on the fence I think there are a lot of compelling reasons to use it. Very few reasons not to. (If you’re balding perhaps, since it could maybe potentially possibly theoretically speed up the rate that you lose the hair you’re already losing a little bit.)
Good luck with the cut!
Hi Shane and everyone
After reading this article I have started a cut in order to improve my skinny-fat body.
Everyone told me I should bulk but I was afraid I would gain too much fat.
At the same time I was afraid to cut because I thought I would lose muscles and become even flabbier and shapeless.
But I decreased calories anyway and started to lose weight, even if I wasn’t overweight to begin with.
I’d like your opinion on whether the cut is working and improving my skinny-fat body or if I’m losing muscles and should increase calories or start a bulk.
http://i.imgur.com/3Y4HkuM.jpg
Thanks!
Jared
Looks to me like it’s working quite well!
Also, you definitely weren’t skinny-fat, dude! You were pretty damn strong looking even in your before photo. Beefy, not skinny-fat. And now you’re looking even stronger, since you’ve seemingly lost some fat and perhaps even gained some muscle. Good work 🙂
Diet or eating habits are key to proper nutrition and growth. are you a nutritionist?
Yeah, one cannot physically grow without a calorie surplus. And it’s definitely important to eat a nutritious diet for general health (and to a certain extent body composition). We are not nutritionists. Nor a doctors. Nor physiotherapists. When it comes to medical concerns and injuries experts should definitely be consulted. Our primary goal here is helping guys get way bigger, way leaner, way stronger and way more athletic. We are experts at that. And we’re even pretty good with general health stuff!
Hi Shane,
Great article – I just discovered your site the other day by chance and will be going over it in more details over the next coming days.
I’ve been trying to ‘fix my self’ since May 2015 and have made slow but good progress. I have tracked all my weekly measurements on my website and have monthly progress pictures on there too.
I am currently 182 cm, 69.9KG and according to those impedence tests you get in modern weighing scales, I am 14.6% bodyfat.
(Side question: How reliable are those tests/devices?)
My aim is to get to 12% bodyfat before bulking, as you can see from my pictures I don’t really have a belly anymore (compared to my June 2014 pic) but I do have horrible love handles and struggling to get rid of it.
I’m currently on 1600 calories now (since this month) made up of 36%, 33%, 31% for Protein/Carb/Fat using Intermittent Fasting and 4 day a week at the gym using PULL/PUSH method (60-90 minutes) in hopes to lose the handles.
My question is should I stick to this to try cut (my fear is that I have gained some good muscle definition on my shoulder, chest and back and worried I may lose a lot of this) or should I just focus on bulking now by increasing to 2900 cals (same nutrition split), same program and hope the extra muscle mass will burn off the remaining fat that I have or will I just put on a big belly again by doing this?
Just as an example my shoulders grew from 112cm to 116cm from October to December
On my website I have tracked:
* Weekly measurements (hips, waist, weight, shoulders, arms, chest)
* Monthly pictures
* Workout routine
* Diet
Thanks in advance
Ps. The link to your forum does not allow me to create an account as it says page not found and takes me back to your main site.
Hey SFT, great work, man! You’re looking way, way leaner, and your shoulder measurement going up throughout is a pretty sure sign that you’ve been gaining muscle while losing fat. Amazing 🙂
Those BIA scales aren’t very accurate. I prefer just looking in the mirror and guesstimating that way. If you want to get to 12% before bulking, cut until you can see your abs in the bathroom mirror.
If you’re feeling okay-ish eating 1600 calories per day, your strength isn’t going down in the gym, and you’re losing around a pound on the scale each week… I’d keep going.
If things aren’t going so smoothly, maybe take a break from cutting. You could take a break by bulking, or just by increasing your daily calorie intake by 500 for a couple weeks until you feel fresh and motivated to cut again.
If you do decide to bulk, I would switch to 3-6 meals spaced out relatively evenly over the course of the day. Intermittent fasting can work well when cutting, but it’s far from ideal for bulking.
If you want to join the member/coaching community you can sign up here 🙂
Hey there, really helpful article.
I currently am 151 lbs, 6 ft and a bf between 11-12%. Would you advise bulking up or cutting? If so, now long would you suggest for either.
Thanks.
S.K.T.
11-12% with a BMI of 20.5? Definitely bulking!
How long? You can bulk for as long as you like. Just make sure your waist circumference doesn’t creep past around 37 inches. But a good rule of thumb is to bulk for 5–8 months. That’s enough time to gain a significant amount of muscle.
Hi there,
I really enjoy your website, and seriously thinking about the program. At 40-something with no experience in training (or sport in general) or food considerations, I joined the skinny-fat group 1 or 2 years ago. At 5’9 and 167lb (76kg, all in the belly), I think the cutting road is probably best.
So my question is: how do I go in “deficit”? I read your posts about how to eat and supplements, but I have no clue what to do with all that. What should I eat (or not)?
I would like to get started a little on food and doing a bit of exercise (fix my posture) first, and from there build the confidence that I can commit to the program, join in, and one day feature on your homepage 🙂
So can you make a few suggestions?
Thanks, and keep it up!
Hey jjf,
First of all, you can join our program at any experience level and with any body. The program begins simple and grows far, far more advanced as you continue reading. This means that as you begin things are simple and easy to get into, and as you progress to a more advanced level you can even get into what a fitness model would be doing (if you so choose). We can also help you customize things to suit your situation and goals in the community.
To answer your question though, being in a deficit simply means eating few enough calories that your body is forced to burn its body fat stores for energy, resulting in weight loss. You can tell if you’re a deficit by weighing yourself each week to see if you’re losing weight. (Reducing your intake by about 500 calories per day, or by about 20% of what you eat, will probably get you into a good fat burning deficit.)
What should you eat? Mostly whole foods (i.e. foods with minimal processing). Maybe some protein powder too, if you don’t tend to eat a lot of protein. When cutting you’ll need a lot of protein in order to maintain your muscle mass (around 1 gram per pound bodyweight per day). We have some people who eat a lot of lean meat, dairy, beans, grains, etc who hit that number easily without supplements. Many guys find it easier/cheaper to have a couple scoops of whey protein or rice/pea protein each day to boost their protein intake up to the optimal range.
Perhaps the most important thing of all is that you lift weights. If you do a good job of lifting then you may even gain some muscle while you lose fat, especially if your body fat percentage is a little high and you’re totally new to exercise! 🙂
Lifting weights is also fantastic for improving your posture.
Does that help / answer your questions?
Hi Shane,
Yes, this helps a bit. That’s a lot to learn for someone who has no idea about how to count calories or protein (I have no clue how much I eat!!). You mention “rice protein”: how does it compare to simply eating (white steamed) rice? I normally eat rice 2 or 3 times a day, with meat and veggies. eggs too. I dont have access to supplements where I live right now. So… lean meat, right?
Good to know that the program also consider total newbies. I dont even know what are “bench press” or “curls” and that kind of stuff; let alone who to do them “properly”. I do have some questions about lifting (at home), but I’ll ask them in the other post!
Hey JJ,
Rice protein is the protein found in small amounts in brown rice that has been isolated into pure protein powder. So nutritionally rice protein is more similar to eating a chicken a breast than to eating rice. (Rice is a starch—a carbohydrate.) So lean meat, yeah.
Ahaha we can teach you how to bench and curl, squat and deadlift, row and chin-up 🙂
We have an article about lifting at home here, if you’re interested.
Hi again!
So, It’s been like 2 weeks I’m trying to “cut” while doing some lifting, to get in the mood before starting the program (I’m travelling right now). I tried being mindful about the food, have more protein (eggs and meat) and less calorie (no sweets, less bread & rice, not too many fruits). I also take 5g creatine and drink a lot of water.
Thing is: I dont see any kind of improvement (beside feeling stronger from the lifting, and maybe bulking a bit). I’m a steady 75-76kg and it feels I have the same amount of belly fat. Any insights?
If you aren’t losing weight then you aren’t in a calorie deficit. Think less about whether something is sweet and more about how many calories you’re consuming. I see in your other post that you’ve started tracking your calorie intake, and unfortunately, your calorie intake is already quite low. If 1,900 isn’t enough for you to lose weight, you’ll either need to burn more calories with walking or cardio (more calories out), or consume fewer calories (fewer calories in). Both will help get you into a deficit.
Getting your protein intake up a little bit will help too, if you can manage it. (More of the energy within protein is burned off as body heat than with the other macronutrients.)
Also, be sure to lift weights while cutting. This will not only force your body to spend some calories building muscle (if you’re a beginning), but it will also burn some calories. If while travelling you’re unable to lift or unable to eat enough protein it may make more sense to begin your cut later, when you can.
I hope that helps!
Oh, and I did something today. Found an app to collect what I eat and tell me how much calories and protein (and other stuff) I had during the day. Well….
Turns out I am around 1900calories for the day, but I also realize it is almost impossible to get as much protein as I should at that rate, ie without a supplement. I barely made it to 97g by adding two duck eggs after diner, where I should get about 167g (@1g/pound).
So… the cutting line _really_ requires taking a supplement like Whey! Maybe you should write it up high and clear.
And so… if protein supplement is not an option (almost impossible to find here), am i doomed to loose the muscle I’m trying to build while lifting and cutting at the same time? (this is also not a place where you can eat steak or chicken breast 4 times a day!)
thank again!
Using duck eggs in an attempt to reach your daily protein target, eh? After years of doing this I’ve never heard that before. Ahaha I love it.
You don’t have to take whey. It can definitely help—especially when following a plant-based diet—but lots of guys reach it just with food like greek yoghurt, cottage cheese, chicken breast, fish, lean red meat, pepitas, milk, etc.
If you’re from a place where it’s difficult to get sources of protein though… yes, unfortunately it will be more difficult to get enough protein to keep your muscle mass around when in a calorie deficit.
Cutting more slowly (with a smaller calorie deficit) should help a lot though. You’ll have more calories to eat, allowing you to get more protein in, but more importantly the degree of the calorie deficit is the biggest influencer of whether your losses are lean or not. Maybe aim for 0.5 pounds lost per week instead of 1–2 🙂
Dammit! How did I forget about that good old equation… burning more calories, of course!
Just a clarification question (and a treat for you): would you think of walking or cadio OVER lifting more often (e.g. every day instead of every second day)?
Here’s the treat: they where not even simply duck eggs, they were balut..! (google at your own risk).
Again, thanks a lot Shane, you guys are really great. I think i need to find a way to estimate my body fat now because I feel I might have but on enough muscular mass to hide the fat loss on the scale. (I’m eating lean meat like I never did before!)
Oh wow! I’ve heard of those. I think on Fear Factor? 😛
Lifting every second day instead of every day? Yes, that’s probably better. You build muscle ideally with just three full body workouts per week, or four upper/lower split workouts. I wouldn’t recommend lifting every day.
Walking works well to burn calories, yep! Lower intensity cardio can work well too. Something like 20–60 minutes on a stationary bike with your heart rate between 120–150.
Hey man,
Sorry if this has been asked before but assuming I start increasing my intake to say 4000 calories to reach my goal, will I still have to eat 4000 calories after that in order to not lose the weight put on or will the maintaining diet be much lesser?
No, no, not at all. That’s just the amount of food it takes to rapidly gain weight. When you want to maintain your weight you’ll be eating more similar to how you eat normally, as how you eat normally is the amount that keeps your weighing about the same each week.
You will need to eat slightly more though. Each pound of muscle burns an extra 6 calories per day. So if you gain 50 pounds of muscle (like I eventually did) that will increase your daily calorie needs by 300. For an example, that’s a pint of milk per day in addition to what you’d normally eat.
Ah thanks man, good to know. I’ll probably be signing up soon If I see no weight gain eating that much.
Well I hope you do succeed in gaining weight without us, but I’m also hoping to see you in the community soon 🙂
Hi shane,
Cool website i must say. 1 question,my bf is 23%,i want getting lean until 12-13% around that. Let say i losing 2lb per week,until what bf is safe to lose 2lb per week?i heard somewhere at certain bf,we need to lose 1lb per week.
Thanks in advance.
That really depends! I’m 10.9% body fat (according to a DEXA scan) and I could probably lose a couple pounds per week for several weeks no problem, just because my calorie intake right now is really high, I have no problem eating fewer calories, and it would be a very brief sprint. But that’s just me in my situation. You could assume that since your body fat percentage is higher that it would be easier, and there’s some logic there, but there are many other factors to consider as well.
If you’re a seasoned lifter you could track your strength in the gym as a way of seeing if you’re losing muscle mass. That’s a good way to know if you should slow the pace. (This only works if you’ve been lifting well for a while though.)
You could also slow the pace when your calorie intake needs to become very small in order to keep cutting at a rapid pace. If you need to eat like 1,000 calories per day in order to zoom forward… maybe you slow down a little.
Then there’s also stress levels and your mood to consider. And your sex drive, and immune system. Some of these things depend on what foods you’re dieting on, but some of it is also based on the severity of the caloric deficit.
I hope that helps a little!
Well said Shane, to sum it all,if you feel bad losing 2lbs per week,slow it down. And if you feel good doing it, keep doing that until at certain point,you feel terrible and can increas
e strength in weight tr
aining. Well said shane,those kind of answers i want to hear. Right now im skinny fat 23% bf.
That’s a good way of putting it, yeah 🙂
(If you’re new to lifting you should make strength gains. If you’re an experienced lifter just make sure you aren’t getting weaker.)
Hey there, great article. I’ve been bulking for two weeks and my belly feels wierd. I don’t know if i’ts because of all the food I’m eating or my posture or if I’m actually putting on a loot of fat (hope not)
check it out: http://imgur.com/a/B0FsS
First two images is me trying to hold my posture and the second I’m just standing letting my belly go where it wants to go…
You think I’m becomin skinny-fat?
Nah, that’s normal. When you let your belly hang loose it… hangs loose. This would be true at 6% or 60% body fat. With better posture and stronger abs your abs will naturally gravitate to those first two positions though. Just need to work on your posture a little to get your abs turning on more naturally 🙂
Great, thanks for your repply.
I’ve been skinny fat all my life. I currently do weight-lifting (on my own, so I’ hope I have good form and enough weight. I do it three times a week. I do cardio intervals for 30 minutes on those days and 60 minute walks 3 days a week. I only want to lose like 4 pounds and maybe earn a pound of muscle, but I want to do it slowly. but right now, my maintenance calories is 1632, so if I drop it more than 10%, I won’t get to eat much. What do you recommend for me, both nutrition wise and exercise?
Hey Andrea,
If you’re doing all that exercise and really maintaining your weight on just 1,600 calories per day… yeah, you’re going to need to eat less than you’d like in order to lose a few pounds. You’ll probably need to spend a few weeks eating more like 1,300 calories per day. Or maybe a few weeks walking a little more every day.
Alternatively, you could try to gain a pound or two of muscle first by adding in a couple hundred calories to your diet, rev your metabolism up a little and then cut from there.
(If you’re hitting your daily protein targets it will make it easier to burn fat also.)
What would you recommend? Bulk a couple pounds or cut?? And how do I make sure that the pounds I gain would be muscle? and if I were to add in more walking (although everyone tells me that doing more cardio would burn more muscle, which I don’t want to do)
Making sure that what you gain is muscle is a tough question. You need a good weightlifting program, enough protein, a good diet, enough sleep. Whether you should bulk or cut is a tough question also. We’d need to know more about where you’re at and what your goals are. If you’d like a good lifting and nutrition plan, as well as coaching from us along the way we could do that for you with the Bony to Bombshell Program.
As for walking burning muscle, don’t worry—it won’t. It will burn calories, not muscle. We have more about how cardio affects lifting here though 🙂
Hey, I am a skinny fat guy and im 22! Last year i tried to bulk first but I failed, because i am so weak to lift! (I tried whey supplement and the result was so good and it made me stronger but i can t afford it for every month because in my country good supplemnts are expensive) So i became frustrate and left excersing. Now I make a decision to start again but this time i wanna try cut first! My height is 190 cm and weight is 90 kg and i have lean legs, shoulders, arms and fatty belly, hips, chest also my testestrone level is 530! Do you have any tips to help me!?
Hey Alireza, I’d recommend following the basics that we outlined in this article: consuming at least one gram of protein per pound bodyweight, following a good weightlifting program and getting plenty of good rest. If you can do that, I suspect you’ll even be able to gain a little muscle as you cut 🙂
Good luck!
Brilliant article and a great read.
I’m just approaching my 30th birthday and all my life I was pretty athletic, would run, do karate and keep fit. Until 4 years ago was struck down with a virus and ended up bed bound for nearly 3 years with chronic fatigue. I’ve never been a big guy, my weights always stayed around 60-65kg and I’m 6 ft 1 (186cm).
Last year I started cycling just 5 minutes a day to try and get my life back (I wasn’t going to give in to fatigue) and managed to get up to 40 minutes a day, then started weight training. I did start doing power lifting last year in October, but all that’s happened is my guts got really soft and weak. Plus my knee now is badly bruised (from a long standing injury) meaning no running, squats or deadlifts for 6 months to a year after an MRI scan showed heavy bruising of the bone.
All the running and weights I do is having no effect and I’m constantly tired. Not feeling great about myself at all. I’m proud I’ve beaten the fatigue and got back to a normal working life, but I tire quickly and suffer with panic attacks if I push. My PT would push me to the point I’d throw up, and I saw zero results. Thing is I have to exercise to keep the fatigue at bay, but also I just look super skinny and soft now.
Unfortunately the ‘normal way’ where someone can push themselves into high intensity, I just can’t achieve right now and I can’t tell if I’m just stressing my body out. I don’t know if it’s diet, don’t know if it’s because I just can’t do enough. Any help would be massively appreciated.
Hi Shane! I`m so glad I`ve found your blog! Amazing articles and tips. I’ve bookmarked it and will recommend to all my friends 🙂
I’d like to hear you opinion in my case too. I`m 37 year-old woman, 1,67 cm height and weighting 54,5Kg (I think in cm and kg). I lift 4 days per week in the morning (I try to do for 40 min with heavy weights and in a max of 30 sec of rest pause between sets). I also do hiit workout for 20 min twice a week.
I eat clean and prepare all my meals and snacks, trying to keep a radio of 150 g of protein, 100 g fat and 120 g carbs (about 70-80 % of the carbs around my pre and post workout), eating a total of about 2000 calories. However, I`ve still got 19% BF but look very skinny with a small pouch of fat at the front of my lower abs.My posture plays a role here as well (I can send you a picture) but it’s clearly that my fat is concentrate there.
My objective is to build more muscles and burn this fat without losing weight, but when I was in a more restricted diet, I noticed I look skinner and burn some muscles instead, while my evident fat was still there. I don`t know how to bulk either, I thought 2000 cal would put me in bulking mode, but nothing has actually changed.
If you have any advice, it would be great!
Thank you in advance and kee[ up the great work!
Hey Yara, glad you like it! What you’re doing is already pretty good. For your weight, while 150 grams of protein per day is awesome, 120 grams would be similarly awesome. But that’s definitely not the problem. Carb cycling and whatnot is good too.
I think the issue is that it’s very hard to build muscle without all the anabolic effects of being in a calorie surplus (i.e. without gaining weight) and it’s very hard to lose fat without creating the need for your body to burn stored energy by putting it into a calorie deficit (i.e. losing weight). You can see both things happening at once sometimes, but that would be more realistic if you were new to lifting weights and eating well.
I think if you want to lose that fat you’ll need to lose a little weight. Losing say, four pounds of fat is four pounds of weight loss, after all. With a high protein intake, a good muscle-building lifting routine, and good rest I think you’ll keep your muscle mass and avoid looking too much thinner. And to build muscle you’ll want to gain weight. So do one then the other. That would be my advice for you. I hope that helps!
Oh! You’ve seen Bony to Bombshell, yeah? (www.bonytobombshell.com) That’s our site for women who are looking to build muscle / gain weight (and even lose some fat!). There’s some good free info that might help in the two most recent articles 🙂
Hey man, I hope all is well and I love your advice a lot. So I was very skinny/skinny-fat about 6 months ago and began to dirty bulk pretty badly going from 130-156 in about 6 months. If I start cutting now, am I gonna lose a ton of muscle mass? My lifts have been going up, but have plateaued of late, therefore I think it is time to start cutitng. Would you mind taking a look at my picture and now and let me now what the best route would be?
Hey Harrison, I don’t see an attached photo, but this isn’t really the best place for that anyway. (The member community is where we give personalized feedback like that.) As for your questions though, 1) So long as you do a good job cutting you can expect to at least maintain your muscle mass, and 2) If you’re above 15–17% body fat then cutting down to 12–14% is oftentimes a good idea, as you’ll be able to make leaner gains with a lower body fat percentage. You’ll look better too 🙂
hey im 19 and I would like to know how to get muscle im skinny fat
Hey Daniel,
I’d highly recommend joining our program if you can. That way you can be sure you’re covered nutritionally and with your workouts. And we could help you personally through the coaching side of things in the community. Otherwise I’d definitely give all of our articles a read for starters 🙂
I love the ilustrations you guys have. Do you make them yourself?
We do! I make them.
Shane, just a question on skinny fat physique:
Normally fat is the excess of calories. But skinny fat people may even be underweight, which means there is no excess calories. So without excess calories how did they manage to get fat on belly????
Don’t you thinjk I’ve asked a great question?
I’m no expert but i’ll try to aswner your question.
Combine a sedentary life style with a poor died high in fat and sugar and you will have a metabolism working not as good, and every bit of excess calories (witch would be easy to achieve) would be stored in your belly since it’s primary where it goes .
Thanks, Rafael, but that’s NOT what I am asking. Underweight person = less calories, belly fat = excess calories. So how can an underweight person (less calories) have belly fat (excess calories)? Is that not a contradiction?
Hey Oscar. Rafael is actually correct! The type of exercise you do and the types of food you eat will determine what ratio of muscle to fat that you gain in a calorie surplus, and what ratio of muscle to fat that you lose while in a calorie deficit.
So if someone who is thin eats in a calorie surplus while doing, for example, endurance exercise, he will gain more fat than muscle. Similarly, if that person were overweight and eating in a calorie deficit, he might lose both muscle and fat, winding up skinny-fat by the end of it.
This is why it’s important to lift weights, eat enough protein, and eat quality foods when trying to build muscle, not just get your calories right. Same deal when trying to lose weight.
Does that make sense?
Oh! How well you sleep, your genetics, how stressed you are, etc—all of that will impact the ratio of muscle to fat that you gain/lose as well. There are a ton of factors, I just tried to simplify it down a little bit.
Hello Shane!
This is an awesome article 🙂 So I started off fat at 90 kg with 33% body fat percentage last August. I started blind bulking (without closely monitoring the caloric intake) and kept lifting hard until I was at 101 kg at 35.1% body fat percentage in April 28th. Since the 1st of May, I decided to go on a cut with a daily deficit of approximately 500-750 calories. I lost weight steadily for 6 weeks until I’m now at 93 kg with 29% body fat. What I’d like to ask is, I got advice that I shouldn’t cut longer than 15 weeks, as too long of a cut is potentially unhealthy, while at the same time I got an advice that I should cut all the way until 10% body fat before starting a lean bulk. Which path should I take?
a) Stop the cut at week 15 (I probably should end up at about 20% body fat or so) and go in a lean bulk for 6-12 months and then cut again to get leaner.
b) Cut all ghe way until I’m left with 10% then start lean bulking from there
C) Your suggestions?
Thanks!
Jay
Hey Jay, congratulations! 90 kg with 33% up to 93 kg with only 29%? Doing some very rough math here, you’ve lost 3 kilos of fat while gaining 6 kilos of muscle? That’s awesome! Really awesome.
I’m going to go with option C.
For someone who accidentally found themselves at 33% body fat, I don’t think cutting down to 10% body fat on your first try is helpful. I’d cut down to something like 15–18% body fat instead. You’d have a flat stomach, the hint of abs, great muscle definition in your arms. When you switch to lean bulking, your fat cells won’t be starved and desperate, and you should have an easier time of keeping your gains lean.
You can cut for longer than 16 weeks, yeah, especially if you’re taking a sensible approach and losing weight at a reasonable pace.
Does that make sense?
Hey there its fernando, ive read lots and lots of articles yours really was the most interesting and helpful. I am still quote confused though. I am 5’7. Approximately 145lb. And i ised to weigh 180 goin onto 190 but i went on a calorie deficit diet and did lots and lots of cardio. Now im skinny fat and i dont know where to start i tried lifting and i saw no progress and i dont want to eat alot because i already have a big gut. And ive seen all of the skinny fat guys i think i have it bad my gut is pretty big and arms are literally sticks im embaressed to wear short sleeve shirts.
Hey Fernando,
Congratulations on losing around 45 pounds! That’s really impressive, man.
Losing weight while just doing cardio (or being sedentary) will result in both fat and muscle being lost, especially if you aren’t eating a higher protein diet, and especially if your genetics aren’t amazing. We usually recommend that guys take their lifting and nutrition fairly seriously when trying to lose a serious amount of weight.
Fortunately, rebuilding lost muscle mass is very easy, so it will spring back as soon as you get into a good lifting/nutrition routine.
As for why that didn’t work for you in the past, it’s really hard to say. It could be because your lifting plan wasn’t very good, your nutrition plan wasn’t very good, you weren’t sleeping very well, your calories were off, etc. Without knowing more we can’t really troubleshoot it.
Moving forward though, lifting is the type of exercise that will make you leaner and more muscular, so that’s the type of exercise that will help you accomplish your physique goals. Might just need to take a more strategic approach with it.
As someone who was able to lose 45 pounds, I think you’ll be quite successful with it. Losing all that weight isn’t easy, so you’ve already shown that you’ve got what it takes 🙂
Im skinny fat, im 200 pounds , 5’8, age- 16 and Im really havin’ a hard time with it. I was 14 when i first started pushups but somehow that deteriorated my hand strength. I used to be the strongest before my teenage years. But when everyone hit puberty I still had a 3 year decline in Testosterone production. I still do. The pushups probably killed everything in me. Ive acquired weak and small wrists (Im unable to lift a chair easily even with both hands), my punches started slowin down. And whenever i lift somethin’ theres some kinda stress up my wrist, forearms and biceps. What should I do to rehab? Also could you recommend exercises I can at the gym OR at home which doesnt involve weights? I dont wanna cut. I just want to bulk up and atleast ‘look’ like a 16 year old.
For a guy in your situation, weights would definitely be the way to build muscle while losing fat without overly stressing your wrists. For example, the deadlift may help strengthen and rehab your wrists, and the dumbbell bench press is way easier on your wrists than push-ups (which require a ton of wrist mobility/stability).
Is there a reason you’re trying to avoid weights?
Hi, I’m Michael.
I think I have a skinny fat physique. I’m a 19 year old boy from Malaysia and I weigh 143lbs at 5.9ft(180cm) tall. The thing is, I have love handles and lower abdominal fat as well as my chest having quite a large amount of fat, making it somewhat flabby. Measurements around my chest are 36 inches, around my waist are 33.5 inches and around my hips are 36.5 inches. How should I approach this? Should I bulk? I’m scared of cutting because 5more lbs under and i’d be underweight but if I bulk, I’d get fatter and flabbier won’t I? What do i do?
You should cut first, building a little muscle as you go. Even though your weight will drop into a too-low BMI, it will just be fat that you’re losing. This will actually be better for your health, since it will do a better job of improving your body composition. Then you can build up muscle leanly from there, bringing your BMI back up to an ideal point.
Hi Shane,
I must say I love the work you guys put in your content, kudos! I too, think that I am skinny fat. I used to be super-skinny a few months ago, had a flat stomach and as you mentioned, a hint of abs when flexed in appropriate lighting. However, due to my lifestyle in the past few months, I have put on a lot of fat around my stomach and there’s actually a small paunch out there.
I weigh 150 pounds and my obesity analysis reveals that my Percentage Body Fat (PBF) of 21.2% and my Waist Hip Ratio is also high at 0.85! While my BMI is normal but on the higher end of the scale at 22.5, my skeletal muscle mass is quite low, merely 67 pounds.
I’m caught up in the cut first-bulk first conundrum, I wish to build muscle but not settling for a thick layer of mass around my tummy. What should I do? I have been advised to take muscle mass gainers by my gym instructor but I’m wary of it, and need a second opinion. Having said that, I love your articles!
Thank you so much, Manan!
I recommend starting with a recomp. It sounds like you’re fairly new to lifting and eating for muscle growth, so I think you can gain some muscle while losing fat. You can focus on lifting weights, being more active, getting enough sleep, and eating a better diet. When your strength gains start to stall in the gym, you could switch to a lean bulk.
Perfect, exactly the sort of response I was looking for. Yes I’m fairly new to lifting and would very much like to reduce the body fat to 15% or thereabout. Does this mean I should refrain from consuming muscle mass gainers (I have been advised to, but ..)?
Gainers are just protein + processed carbs and maybe some fat. Sort of like your trainer telling you to have more chicken breast and cake. That’s more something that helps when trying to gain weight, not when trying to lose it. In your case, I’d recommend whey protein instead.
We have an article that covers supplements here, though, and we talk about the purpose of gainers throughout (since they’re a supplement designed for skinny dudes who struggle to eat enough to gain weight—exactly our clientele).
https://bonytobeastly.com/bulking-supplements-for-skinny-guys/
Hi. To cut first (I’m 158lb and 21%fat) what calorie deficit a mount would you recommend? I weight train four times a week and have a physical job.
First take a look at how your macros are structured would me by guess and then go into calorie deficient diet. You can achieve plenty by just increasing protein intake and lowering your carbs and fats. But i think about 250 calorie deficit would be a safe way to lose fat. Thats just from what I’ve known to work Shane probably has 5 studies to back up his answer 🙂
I think he could handle a larger deficit. A daily deficit of about 500 calories, for example, would have him losing around a pound per week. That’s still slow enough that he wouldn’t be losing any muscle or feeling awful.
If you don’t know how much you’re currently eating and want to calculate your calories instead, you could start at around 2,200 calories per day, weigh yourself each week, and reduce your daily calorie intake by another 200 every time you don’t lose enough weight on the scale. You may or may not lose enough weight during that first week, but it’s self-correcting, so it would be fixed as you adjust based on your weekly weigh-ins.
If 2,200 seems like more than 500 calories less than you’re currently eating, start higher. Maybe 2,500.
I’m currently eating 2700-2800. I run 4 miles at 5 am then go into my gym for 50 minutes after then work a full day working as a mechanic and just didn’t want to have too much of a deficit and end up in starvation.
Hah, no way! So my guess of 2,200 was spot on! (2,700 – 500 = 2,200)
Loving the blog Shane!
I think one cool thing to look into for gaining muscle and losing fat at the same time is targeted ketogenic diets.
Basically for a period of time you eat keto (high fat, low carb) to increase fat loss and then before workouts you consume most of your daily carbs 30-50g usually in a quick form like maltodextrin, fruit sugars etc.
This will go straight into your muscle glycogen stores and make gains and it will only take you around 8 hours to get back into ketosis burning that fat.
Most research shows that ketogenic diets produce similar results to regular caloric restriction. The main advantage is that some people find it easier to eat in a calorie surplus when they restrict carbs. Other people find ketogenic diets needlessly difficult, so it depends.
Keto doesn’t pair very well with lifting weights. Our muscles run on glycogen (sugar), and people tend to store more glycogen in their muscles when they eat diets richer in carbohydrates. That’s why most lifters eat plenty of carbs. It’s why the best muscle-building diets have plenty of carbs in them. But it’s not a major factor. You can build muscle while eating fewer carbs if you need to.
For more, we have a full article on ketogenic diets for muscle growth.
My friend needs help. He’s ecto-skinny-fat(15-19.9% body fat with skinny muscles). Should he cut or bulk first? Body types:Skinny-fat(20-22.9% body fat with skinny muscles)Endo-skinny-fat(23-24.9% body fat with skinny muscles) Fat-weak:25% body fat and above with skinny muscles.
Body recomposition is usually a good place to start. It’s easier, too. There’s no need to intentionally over-eat or under-eat. He can track his strength in the gym and recomp until his progress starts to plateau.
But if he’s really gung-ho on building muscle, getting bigger, that’s okay too! He could start with a lean bulk.
He wants ripped abs. He wants to be strong which is below 10% body fat 22-24.9 BMI
Shane maaate, arghh I’m 5ft 10 and 35 years old, but been spinning my wheels in this damn skinny fat to even skinnier fat cycle for 5 years!! No matter what I do I can’t get out of it. I’m fed up of dieting! I checked myfitnesspal last week – I’ve dropped from 176lbs to 155lbs dieting slowly from February this year. Still no abz in sight, literally all my flab sits on my sides and stomach. I don’t even give a monkeys about having dem razor abzz all the kids want, I just can’t add muscle without a tonne of fat so I figure I need to start from the skinniest possible to reset my nutrition partitioning.
Very frustrated with it all. The most annoying thing is, Ive forgotten more about training and nutrition than most gym rats will ever know!
Great article by the way.
And here I was thinking that Paul was just an apostle!
So I take it you’ve been dieting while following a good hypertrophy training workout program? How’d your strength hold out over the course of your cut? And were you consuming enough protein?
Something is wrong, but it’s hard to say what it is without taking a deeper look at what you’ve been doing. When there’s a mysterious problem with nutrient partitioning, and if the obvious solutions (outlined in the article above) aren’t working, it often takes one-on-one coaching to get to the bottom of it.
Yeah I’ve tried numerous ways of lifting but tend to come back to either a 3 day full body or a 4 day upper/lower split which fit my schedule well. My pushing strength tends to plummet whilst my pulling strength holds just about, although I’m at the point where I’m losing 2 or 3 reps now.
At my strongest I’ve strict pressed OH 48.5kg for 5 x 5 where as now I can only get 40kg. I also had a back injury which set me back months and was at 100kg for sets of 5 squatting and 145kg deadlifting, but I don’t do either now. I learned Front squats (safer back angle) and had to half the weight, which is humbling!
Like I said, I’ve been dieting since February and my maintenance has shot down to 2100 calories now. I’m having a diet break this week because eating 1700 cals p/w as a grown man is getting too much. Protein has always been 180-200 g p/w (I’ve tracked for 5 years also), I sleep for 6-7 hours a night and don’t have any stress in life apart from the stress of no gainzzzz!
I should say, your article suggests the best way to get out of this vicious circle is to cut down to skinny fit or bulk up to strong fat. As strong fat hasn’t worked for me, I just get skinny monster belly, this is why I’m trying to lose the fat. I’m at a good stage right now, I love being able to fit in my old jeans again – but this is usually the point where I would start bulking again. I’ve already established this doesn’t work for me, perhaps my calories went to high to fast? Perhaps I jumped from diet calories to bulking calories (I went from 1700-3000 one time)? Maybe the answer is to diet a few more weeks to 150lbs, and then move back to maintenance for a while before starting a slowwww bulk adding in calories very slowly?
Hmm. For example, an ideal bulk/cut cycle might look something like this:
1st Bulk: bench goes from 135 to 185
1st Cut: 185 drops to 175
2nd Bulk: bench goes from 175 to 205
2nd Cut: 205 drops to 195
3rd Bulk: bench goes from 205 to 225
Whereas spinning your wheels looks more like this:
1st Bulk: bench goes from 135 to 175
1st Cut: 175 drops to 165
2nd Bulk: bench goes from 165 to 175
2nd Cut: 175 drops to 165
3rd Bulk: bench goes from 165 to 175
So perhaps you’re losing too much strength during your cuts? Not gaining enough strength during your bulks? As for why, that’s harder to say without more information. 6–7 hours per night is not a lot. Have you tried sleeping more? Could be that you’ve had a bad run of luck (or bad technique) that brought on some injuries.
You could try maintenance before shifting to a bulk, yeah. And then when you shift to a bulk, go up by 250–500 calories. All you want to do is gain 0.5–1 pound per week. More than that and you’re too likely to gain too much fat. Patience is good with this stuff.
Hey thanks for replying so fast man.
Yeah I think you’re right about not gaining enough strength during a bulk and then going back to where I was on a cut. It happens every time, I don’t know why. I used to have really bad sleep after doing shift work, something like 4-5 hours a night and it was broken. Now I get nearly 7 so I’m really happy with that but I couldn’t get more if I wanted to.
I definitely over ate on the last bulk so I will take your advice on the calories. Your article gave me a bit of extra motivation that I needed to trim a bit more fat before I go back to maintenance so thanks for that! I’m just so tired of it having dieted for most of this year already.
Glad I could help, man! Good luck with this next round 🙂
Are these the body types taking account body fat? Skinny ripped:below 10% body fat. Soft Skinny: 10-14.9%Ecto-skinny-fat: 15-19.9%Skinny-fat: 20-22.9%Endo-skinny-fat: 23-24.9%Fat-weak:25% and above.
Hello, i’m 19 years old and i guess i’m a skinny fat since im only 156 pounds and 6,1ft. The thing is my bf is like 17%. My arms are very skinny(31cm biceps), but i have pretty big belly and legs compared to my arms. I’m not sure if i should cut, since my weight is already too low(i guess). Do you think i can bulk?
Here are photos: first, second.
I would say cut first even tho im so skinny already?
Sorry for bad english
Cheers
Hey Cal, I’d peg your body fat percentage at over 20%, but I’m not any kind of master at that. Are you new to lifting and dieting for muscle gain? If so, even while cutting, you’ll still be able to build a fair amount of muscle. Not as much as if you were bulking, but still a fair amount.
So you can have the best of both worlds for a while 🙂
Hi! I got around 60 kg and my height is 173 cm.I’m 30 years old and i got a bad lifestyle ,usually i spend a lot of time at pc (work+free time )and smoke a pack of cigarettes every day ,i eat 2-3 times per day ,i eat a lot of dark bread at every meal also I can’t restrain myself not to eat something sweet once at 2-3 days ,most of the time i’m tired and drowsiness and i can’t sleep enough. My constitution is skinny ,the skinniest are my shoulders and arms and i got some fat around belly.I wanted to ask if it’s better to start with some cardio exercises or with bodybuilding ?and what kind of exercises ? Also i want to ask about nutrition, i read on a healthy nutrition site that there are some rules how to combine food like – don’t eat concentrated protein and a concentrated carbohydrate at the same meal (ex. meat with bread ) -never consume two concentrated proteins at the same meal (eggs+meat) -eat fruits only in morning before any meal .Should i start with supplements or should i take them just when i can’t handle ?What kind of supplements should i take (carbs or proteins ) ?
Hey Tony, this is a pretty complex question!
1. Smoking is certainly unhealthy but probably isn’t a significant reason why you’re skinny-fat. Let’s put that aside as far as this conversation is concerned.
2. Eating sweet things 2–3 times per day is perfectly fine. Best if those things are fruits. Even if they aren’t, sugar isn’t inherently fattening in the context of a solid overall diet. Best of all, carbs in general (including sugar) is great for building muscle if you’re lifting weights and eating enough protein. That habit may not needing changing, but aiming for fruits instead of junk food would probably be wise. I don’t think the timing of this would really impact your ability to lose fat or build muscle perfectly well, but if you wanted to be a perfectionist about it, you could keep the sugars/junk/carbs to the couple meals before and after the gym.
3.You should absolutely lift weights first and foremost. That will start sending your nutrients towards muscle development instead of fat storage, and it sounds like that’s exactly what you need most of all. Cardio could be nice too, but considering that an hour spent lifting also gives you 30 minutes worth of cardio exercise, lifting makes for a good place to start. If you lift 3 days per week, that leaves 4 days where you could do cardio if you like.
4. I would guess that combining different foods together into a meal is good. All of the healthiest and longest living cultures in the world tend to eat mixed meals: stir fries, stews, chilis, curries, soup, etc. That isn’t proof, but it’s a good clue. Anyway, as far as building muscle and losing fat goes, I can say for sure that you should be eating fairly balanced meals whenever possible. focusing on having a protein source with every meal would help you the most.
5. I would check out our supplement article. (You probably don’t need the maltodextrin.)
I hope that helps, and good luck, man!
Hi Shane, I just stumbled upon this website. Recently, I became inspired to work out. Anyone who knows me in real life would drop their jaws to the floor if they were to know that I am actually going to start working out. I will be working out on Saturday, or Sunday. Right now, I am between 179 cm – 185 cm tall. The last time I checked my height was 6 years ago, at age 15. I weigh 58 kg now, which is 129 lbs. My inspiration came after stumbling upon a picture of Cam Gigandet topless in Never Back Down. In the movie, he is at 160 lbs. I really love the way his body looks. I should bulk, but I am just going to tone my body to see what it looks like, so cutting, while following his supposed workout routine. And after 6 months, I will start bulking, to further reach my goal. The reason I am going to cut first, is because I might be content with my body after cutting and working out at the same time. If not, I will bulk. What do you think of this? Do you have any tips?
When I was 188 cm tall and 120–130 pounds, I was very desperate to bulk even if it meant gaining fat. I was just so damn tired of being the skinniest person I knew—the skinniest person in every room I walked into. I was so skinny and untrained that by the time I finished my first 20-pound bulk, just from my muscles growing bigger (including my abs), I looked a lot leaner. And I wasn’t skinny anymore.
But your story sounds different. It sounds like you aren’t as lean as you’d like to be yet. Mind you, sounds like your target body is 30 pounds heavier than you are. So it probably does still make more sense to bulk. At least eventually.
If you can’t see a hint of abs, then cutting makes sense no matter what.
If you can see your abs okay while flexing in favourable lighting, I would bulk, just take a slower pace—not more than a pound per week—so that you’re doing it fairly leanly.
I have no idea what his workout routine was, so I can’t comment on that. Might be great, might be horrible.
Most importantly of all, that’s awesome that you’re going to give working out a shot!!!
I highly recommend checking out our new post about newbie gains. I think it will help you out a lot 😀
Hi B2B Team,
Would your program be suited for me – A skinny fat person who puts on fat around waist (belly and handles) very fast, even when training and in calorie surplus?
I have done a paid online program for a year but not really happy with the results. I just need an honest answer if I should enroll on your program or if your program is tailored mostly for the skinny community as oppose to the skinny-fat community?
I have been training for a year solid, between 3-5 times a week.
I look forward to your reply.
Hey Curious, that sounds really frustrating, especially if you’ve been at it for a year. Not just the wasted money, but the wasted time and motivation—time and motivation that should have gotten you closer to your goals.
We’re a program for skinny guys, whether they’re skinny-fit or skinny-fat. You’re right that your approach will need to be a little bit different, but we built that into the new version of the program, and you’ll find both types of guys in the community. We also have online coaching alongside the program to make sure that it fits you like a glove 🙂
I hope you decide to join us!
Shane – I tried to join this morning but it said the coupon is expired!!! Please advise as I understand it expires 21st Dec 1159 and I did it at 10am UK time
Sorry about that, Sunny. You’re absolutely correct. I checked with Jared about what could have happened and he fixed it 🙂
HI Shane, I´m from Colombia (the country) and after one year of calisthenics I add some muscle (not too much but more than ever) but the belly still there, my body fat percentage is 17% and thinking in cut seems like lost the effort from the past year. The real question here is that I´m thinking to use kettlebells before barbells or bumbbells , I just read that is a much better way to use external objects before too much weight and after calisthenics, do you think is a good idea? and how much weight could be good?. My idea is start with weights and feel more comfortable cuttng with some more muscle there.
I´ll like to have that information about the payment plan too, will be really helpful. Thanks.
Hey Cesar, congrats on adding the muscle 🙂
Kettlebells are great, and I have all of Onnit’s primal bells. They look pretty cool and they’re great for when I want to do some lifting at home. When I began, the chimp was the most versatile weight (36 pounds). Now that I’m stronger, I favour the orangutan (54 pounds).
Dumbbells are better for building muscle and strength, though. If you’re trying to train your chest with a kettlebell, oh boy, it’s not easy. Even something simple, like a curl, is much easier to perform with a dumbbell than a kettlebell, and then the next week you have the option to make the dumbbell just 5 pounds heavier. With a kettlebell you’d want to be doing all the specific kettlebell lifts and routine, and those are usually more about general fitness and athleticism than muscle and strength.
Check out this article about building a home gym, and if you still have any question drop me a comment there, yeah?
Oh, and I’ll shoot you an email with the payment plan info 🙂
Hi Shane,
Thanks for all the info! I’m 20 years old, 5’9, weigh 149 pounds and am skinny fat as a result of poor eating habits and general avoidance of muscle-building physical activity throughout my life. I am looking to cut by calorie deficit + lifting weights so I can lose some of the fat I accumulate in my belly and love handles. I have not lifted in the past so it will be new for me. However, I have poor posture and anterior pelvic tilt, and I’ve read on some sources that you shouldn’t be lifting until you fix these issues because lifting can in fact make it worse. I was wondering what your take on it is – should I be doing some posture exercises to fix my posture/APT before lifting, or do both at the same time? Also, do you have any links on this website in terms of what weight lifting routine / exercises I should be doing as a newbie looking to cut, as well as what my food and macro and protein breakdown should be?
Thanks a lot.
On top of this, I was wondering how to exactly find out what my base metabolic rate is (to my understanding, that is the number of calories I burn in a day without doing any exercise) in order to find out what # of calories I should be eating every day in order to properly operate at a calorie deficit. I used various sources on the internet, with some asking for my activity level (which I would say is sedentary to lightly active; I walk for a total of around 20 minutes 3 days of the week) and have gotten ranges of my BMR from 1734 – 2000. If the 1734 is correct, would that mean I would have to eat -500 calories a day from that to lose about a pound a week, so 1234 calories/day? That seems quite low. Perhaps I’m calculating/doing this all wrong, so some guidance would be much appreciated! Also I read in one of your comments that you recommend 1 g of protein per 1 lb of body weight, so I can figure that out on my own. However, how do I ration out the rest of the percentages between Carbs and Fat? Does it matter?
If 1734 is correct and I wanted to lose about a pound a week, would I be eating -500 calories every day, so 1234 calories?
Sorry for the last question being repeated again – a typo.
Hi Shane! This article is yet another of many great reads to be found on your site.
In the article dealing with myths surrounding protein intake, you suggested that an ectomorph looking to bulk up (through muscle gain) would benefit from consuming a diet made up of approximately 50% carbs, 30% fat and 20% protein, per day. However, what macronutrient ratio do you recommend for an ectomorph looking to cut down to around 10% body fat (whilst performing either three full body, or four upper body/lower body, workouts per week?) Would adjustments need to be made, both in terms of caloric intake and macronutrient ratios, based on training and non-training days?
Hey Hassan, glad you liked it!
You want about the same amount of overall protein—1 gram per pound bodyweight per day—but you want to lower your overall calorie intake, i.e., you’ll be lowering your fat and/or carb intake. That means that the percentage of your calories coming from protein will go up.
There’s no need to cycle carbs/calories based on whether you’re working out that day, but you can. Seems like it might have a small positive effect on body composition while bulking and cutting. Also, a recent study found that at least 40 grams of protein post-workout is ideal for guys doing full-body routines (more muscles are worked so more protein is required), so if you’re doing your 3 weekly full body routines, maybe an extra large protein shake or serving of protein afterwards 🙂
Cheers for the very helpful response, Shane!
Hi Shane, I’m really enjoying reading your articles. Lots of great information.
I’m very much a beginner to all this. I’ve been pondering whether to cut or to bulk for some time now and am finally edging towards cutting but I have one major concern:
If I cut properly (re weights, sleep, nutrition etc) I would expect to lose fat and gain some muscle, but as a beginner would cutting rather than bulking negate the benefits you talk about beginners expecting to see? When it came time to bulk would I have used up that period of newbie gains while I was cutting?
Also, I’m really interested in joining your community but money is rather tight at the moment. Do you offer some sort of payment plan to enable people in my situation to join?
Many thanks.
Hey Paul, glad you’ve been enjoying our articles!
No, no, don’t worry about losing your newbie gains. Newbie gains have to do with how much muscle you’ve gained relative to your ultimate potential, not how long you’ve been trying to gain. So if you gain 5 pounds of muscle while cutting and your newbie gain potential is 20 pounds of muscle, say, then when you switch to bulking, you’ll gain that remaining 15 pounds of muscle fairly quickly and easily 🙂
Yeah, we’ve got a payment plan option. For anyone else reading, send us an email at us@bonytobeastly and Sunny will set you up. For you, I’ll shoot him your email and he’ll take care of you 🙂
Hi Shane,
Great article. I’m a skinny-fat ectomorph. I have thin arms and chest but I have a relatively big belly. I’m a 26 year old guy, 145lbs, 5’9″, with about 14% body fat. I’m trying to lose 3% body fat to start a clean bulk. However, I’m struggling with diet and setting my macro intake. I have a high tolerance for carbs. I set my macro to 50% carbs, 30% protein, 20% fat. Despite my high carb intake, I still feel weak and loss of energy. I’m currently doing heavy weight strength training (5 reps sets).
I don’t know if I should continue to cut to lose the 3% body fat or if I should bulk instead. If I cut, what would be the best maco split?
Thank you for your help!
Hey Adrian,
I think your estimate is a little off. 14% body fat is well in the flat stomach territory. Should be seeing some upper abs also. If you got down to 11% that would be a nice set of abs, albeit not chiseled ones like you’d see on a magazine cover.
Heavy strength training and cutting isn’t the worst thing in the world, but it can be taxing. You’d beat your body down less by switching to lighter, higher rep sets. You could boost overall volume that way also, burning more calories and depleting more glycogen (which will help with the cut). Might be time for a switch of program. Strength programs are more optimized for gaining strength, not bulking or cutting. They can work, but if you’re feeling the downside of it (that it can beat up your body), then I bet you’ll get more out of a more optimal program for your goals 🙂
If you cut, it’s best to think about hitting 1 gram of protein per pound bodyweight per day. Your carb and fat macro split isn’t very important, other than needing to get enough fat to stay healthy, which shouldn’t be a problem, and enough carbs before training that you don’t feel super drained in the gym. You can fiddle with your carb/fat breakdown, but starting with a 50-50 split should be a good place to start.
I hope that helps, and good luck!
Hi Shane,
Thanks for the reply. You make a good point that strength training and cutting at the same time can be taxing on the body. I forgot to mention that I’m still fairly new to weight training (not a brand new beginner but not yet a intermediate). When I first began weight training, I didn’t really train properly (did only lighter weights / higher reps) and I didn’t eat properly. I’ll take the diet and macro info into account. As for heavy vs light training, wouldn’t it be more ideal for (fairly beginner) skinny-fat ectomorph to build a bigger stronger physique? Thanks!
Okay so you’re saying “bigger and stronger,” which are slightly different things.
The best way to get bigger is to do a higher volume program with tons of high-rep sets. So, for example, let’s say somebody wants to build up their chest size as quickly as possible. We’d get him doing 4 sets of 10-rep bench press, then another few sets of incline dumbbell bench press, then 4 sets of pec flys, etc. Maybe do that a couple times per week so that he’s got 12–20+ sets of chest work per week. This will make him a fair bit stronger, but the main goal here is just to buff up his muscle size by as much as possible.
The best way to get stronger is to focus on neural gains, aka, learning how to use the muscle you already have more efficiently and maximally. So, for example, let’s say somebody wants to increase their bench press 1RM as quickly as possible. In that case, we’d get him doing 1–5 rep sets of bench press 2–3 times per week. Then we’d use assistance exercises to bring up his weak points. If his triceps are the limiting factor, that could be a tricep assistance exercise, for example. This program would build a little size, but mainly he’d be learning how to better use the muscle he already has. (It won’t build size optimally because the training is too taxing to use a higher volume approach.)
Neither approach on its own is ideal for building a “bigger stronger” physique, but both combined together sure is. You could do a reduced number of heavy bench sets (3 instead of 5 sets, say) followed by lighter assistance stuff to pump the volume up. That way you’re building tons of muscle mass and teaching yourself how to use that muscle mass to lift heavy.
For a beginner, though, you don’t really need strength training much. Beginner’s don’t tend to have a lot of muscle mass yet, so there isn’t that much use in teaching them how to lift maximally with what they already have. It’s usually a better idea to bulk them up quickly and then bring the strength training focus in. The lighter “bodybuilding” sets allow guys to practice technique a little more easily also, which can lead to better results with less risk of injury as they get started.
So I’d say that until you gain 20–30 pounds, you don’t need to focus that much on strength-oriented programs. You’ll actually gain more strength by just focusing on building muscle mass, and higher rep stuff would be a more efficient way to do that. It’ll also be better for cutting, since you can do a higher volume program that burns a ton of calories and depletes a ton of glycogen 🙂
Your approach isn’t bad at all, though. Not even close. I think it’s interesting to talk about what’s truly optimal, especially since we try to help so many people. Helping 5,000 people gain an extra pound of muscle per month in their first few months of lifting is a huge deal to us, you know? We want every detail perfect. But what you’re doing sounds just fine. If you enjoy it and are consistent with it, you should be able to do well 🙂
Hi Shane,
I really appreciate the feedback. Thanks! 🙂
Great article. I’m a marathon runner. 175 lbs. Focusing more on muscle building this year, but I love the running community so I’ll keep running 3x week and balance it with my strength training.
I understand the ‘when in doubt, eat’ , and I did that last year while putting on quality muscle. I’m doing the opposite now at least for 6 weeks to trim some fat. Couple inches off waist and/or taking 3-5% off body fat is a goal this year.
Question: any other tips for endurance athletes taking a strong interest in building muscle? I’ve heard keeping the nutrition high is important. Training load is 9-10 hours a week (str + run)
Alex Viada has some good information on that. We have a coach in the community who’s good with combining endurance training and weightlifting together as well. It’s not necessarily the ideal way to build muscle, but it can be done, and it can be done very well 🙂
You’ll want to eat a lot, yeah. And you’ll want to make recovery a big priority. With a high training load, you’ll want to minimize stress in other areas of your life and really make sure you’re resting well. Lots of emphasis on sleep, relaxing, de-stressing emotionally, eating well.
I’d also say that you might want to shift your emphasis depending on your shorter term goals. So if you want to build a lot of muscle, gear down the endurance training into maintenance mode until you’ve hit your muscle target. Then you could maintain those muscular gains with minimal lifting while focusing on making endurance progress again. You want to figure out the absolute minimum amount of work you can do to maintain your results in one area so that you can shift more energy to the other without moving backwards at all. Switching like that should work better than always trying to do both.
Can you please tell me if [Eric] has used any supplements to get rid of unwanted fat? Why because i am in same position after strict HCG diet. I lost almost 20 kgs in 3 months after using HCG drops.
We just recommend lifting, nutrition and sometimes a little creatine or whey protein. That way, the side effects are all positive: improved fitness, health, mood, etc, etc. It’s very effective for losing fat while maintaining or gaining muscle mass also. But there are other ways, and sometimes in more dire circumstances, more intense methods are warranted 🙂
[…] The good news for us is that we have a genetic advantage here. Even skinny-fat guys don’t have this issue. Moreover, if you’re already very lean, then your hormonal profile will also make it easier to stay lean. This is why bulking at 15% body fat or lower tends to allow guys to build muscle more leanly, whereas bulking at 20% or more can make it really hard to build more muscle than fat. (Skinny-fat guys do run into issues with this, and we’ve got some advice for that here.) […]
Hello! Really cool article. The information helps me a lot. I want to ask something . I have a decent belly something like Dead Bear in the picture above but my weight is normal, my BMI is 21.8 which means normal but i really don`t have a lot of muscle so i am really confused should i i either bulk or cut. Also, at the first picture Dead Bear has some decent amount of fat at the stomach area but he adds some pounds and he looks much more good and the belly fat disappears. Is that possible?
Thanks in advance!
Glad you dug the article, Tsvetan!
We generally recommend approaching this in phases. For example, starting with a cut and then switching to a cautious bulk once you’re lean. Dead Bear took that approach, and his time spent cutting explains how he was able to lose that fat.
Should you bulk or cut? That depends! If you can’t see your upper abs even in flattering lighting, then you might benefit from starting with a cut. If you’ve got the hint of abs already, then feel free to start with a bulk.
I know your BMI is fine now, and if you cut, it might worsen, dipping under 20, say. That’s okay. Remember that you’re just losing fat. Nothing bad is happening. I know it can be demoralizing, but it’s helping you become lean and strong in the end!
How do you guys feel about short bulk and cut cycles? Say two weeks bulk and two weeks cut? My bodyfat is around 16% and I can’t bear the thought of losing weight/cutting.
In other words, what if I did several mini two week on and two week off cycles until I can get my bodyfat near 10% and then do an extended bulk?
Note: I’m two years into lifting so my chances of cutting while gaining muscle are long gone.
I would recommend longer periods just to give your time to get into the swing of the cutting/bulking routine, and then also to allow you to properly track your progress. With just a 2-week cycle, it will be very hard to tell if you’re losing fat or muscle. For example, let’s say you begin a cut. After the first week, you lose 2 pounds. Is that because of a calorie deficit? Or because you’re simply eating less food, you’re storing less glycogen, there’s less food in your stomach, etc. You don’t really know. So you keep cutting for another week, and that second week you lose another pound. You’re getting ready to start your bulk again at that point, so you take some measurements. You find that you’ve lost a lot of size in your waist—great. But is that because of less food or fat loss? Why knows, at this point. You’ve lost size in your arms and shoulders too—shoot. But it could just be that your muscles deflated a little bit because they’re holding onto less glycogen. Then you start bulking and you run into the same confusion. Your waist balloons back up because you’re eating more, your muscles re-inflate, and even if your cut was a total success for both weeks, you probably aren’t going to notice any more muscle definition because you only lost a tiny bit of fat.
A big problem with being skinny-fat is not being able to understand how you’re progressing. Going into longer periods of cutting (12+ weeks) and bulking (several months) tends to clear up that confusion quite a lot.
So I’d recommend longer periods even just for that reason.
Hi, I know it’s not possible to ONLY gain muscle but with my body I gain around 100 grams of muscle and 200-400 grams of fat whenever I’m in a surplus. But when I try to lose the fat I lose it in the same manner. I’ve tried bulking and cutting repeatedly but I have the same amount of muscle mass and more fat than ever. According to my scale, when I was 61.5 kg I was at 12.5% body fat with 29.9 kg of muscle. Then at 63.5 kg I was at 14.3% bf with 30.0 kg muscle and now at 66.4 kg I’m at 17% bf with 31 kg of muscle. Any suggestions to gain muscle while keeping the fat gains at a minimum?
Hey Vinit. This answer is going to be atrocious, but there’s not much other way to answer it. So I apologize in advance. But here it is: you haven’t been building muscle or cutting fat properly.
I know, that’s not specific at all… but I don’t know the details of what you’re doing. So many factors are involved. Are you eating enough protein? Is your lifting program good? Are you lifting with enough intensity? Those would be the first questions to ask, but with issues as complex as this one—a nutrient partitioning issue—we can really only get to the bottom of it once we’re sure you’re following a good program properly.
In rough order of importance:
1. Make sure your lifting program is optimal for muscle growth, and that you’re following it properly.
2. Make sure you’re eating at least 1 gram of protein per pound bodyweight per day.
3. Make sure your calorie intake is reasonable (no more than a pound gained per week)
There are many other factors, even including sleep quality and quantity, but those would be a good place to start.
I’ve bought your Right To Bear Arms, Pectoral Powerhouse and Posterior Powerhouse programs. Have been doing the arms program for last 2 weeks and a self created full body 3 days a week program before that. I consume around 150-160 grams of protein daily. It’s the calorie intake that messes me up I think. I gain around 2-2.5 lbs per week. :/
Ahh, yeah, that explains it. Your body isn’t going to be building more than 0.5–1 pound per week at most, so gaining 2–2.5 pounds per week means 1–2 pounds of fat gained per week. The good news is that you you’ll make leaner gains without having to put as much stress on your digestive system 🙂
[…] Their genetics don’t suck, they’re just not lean enough to bulk properly. They should be reducing their body fat percentage a little bit before trying to bulk up. Here’s how that works: what to do if you’re tired of being skinny-fat. […]
Hey there you dear skinny-no-more wonders you – I am curious as to your opinions here in intermittent fasting for recomposition – no food until midday or more for instance then all your calories during the next 8 hours in order to increase GH, test, insulin sensitivity etc?
Understanding and assuming that doing so is possible.
Thank you
Hi, I just discovered your site and am loving the info I’m 45 and did a cut from 20 down to 10 % this winter. The 15%break point really seemed to be a turning point and will now be my max when adding strength/muscle.
My wife has a question. From your research is there an equivalent body fat magic number for women? My wife is also an ectomorph who lifts and focuses on diet. Maybe an article for the ladies with some illustrations and advice would bring you a wider audience.
Thanks in advance, Randall
Congrats on the successful cut, Randall—that’s awesome!
Your wife would probably prefer our articles over at https://bonytobombshell.com/ 🙂
What’s the magic number for women? That’s a good question, and to be honest, I’m not entirely sure if it works quite the same way. However, I’d bet a good amount of money that the magic number for women is still at around that same (relative) level of leanness, though—something like 22-25%. But we should write a properly researched Bony to Bombshell article about that for sure.
Great post.
I’m confused on which I should do.
I’ve always been extremely skinny (6 foot, 125 pounds). Over the last year, I’ve managed to put on thirty pounds (up to 155), and while I am still fairly skinny, I have a small gut now. Similar to DoctorB, but mine isn’t quite as big.
I think the gut is a result of a lack of consistent lack of exercise. I had gotten to a fairly toned appearance despite my weight, but I’ve put the gut on in the last eight months or so.
I really want to lose it while staying lean, but I can’t cut, or I will be too skinny again. I don’t want to get as large as DoctorB, though. Is there no reasonable middle ground?
I generally eat about 3000 calories a day. If I maintained that while doing more consistent and intense workouts, will that help shape my body better? I am still pretty weak, so I’m wondering if getting more muscle would help solve the problem naturally.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Hey Jared, the middle ground would be just cutting for a shorter amount of time. If you have less of a gut to lose, then instead of cutting for twenty weeks, maybe you only need to cut for ten. However, if you want to lose that gut, you DO actually need to cut.
I understand your worry well. I felt the same way. I hated the idea of cutting because I didn’t want to be light again. In my case, this happened to me later on. I was so proud of making it up to 200 pounds, and I didn’t want to drop back down to 180. However, I bit the bullet and cut. People thought I’d GAINED weight because of how much more defined my muscles were.
Do the cut. Keep your muscles, lose the gut. When your gut is gone, go back to bulking. You’ll make leaner gains and you won’t be stressed about your growing gut anymore.
The other option would be, yeah, you go with the DoctorB approach and you go for the bulk. However, as happened with DoctorB, you’ll probably finish that bulk looking a little chubbier than you planned. (He went on to do a cut afterwards.) However, since you aren’t trying to get as big, perhaps you wouldn’t gain as much of a gut.
In the end, it’s up to you. Don’t just keep treading water, though. Pick a goal and go after it.
Great article which I learned a lot from but I’m still a little confused. I definitely fall into the skinny fat category and can relate to everything that is being said regarding the traits and issues with being in this category. I have experienced the problems of just gaining fat when trying to bulk and losing muscle when cutting and just seem to be going through these phases and making minimal gains, maintaining the same body weight. What I am struggling to understand is that the conclusion to the article seems to be telling me to do exactly this as a solution. I am probably not understanding properly and may just need some further clarification and guidance as to what I am doing wrong and how to change things.
That’s a good point, and I’ll clarify that when I next update the article.
The best approach is indeed to cut and then bulk, but we need to make sure that when you’re cutting you’re just losing fat, not muscle. This involves following a good lifting program, eating enough protein (at least 1 gram per pound bodyweight), keeping your calorie deficit modest (losing about a pound per week), and sleeping well. Once you’re doing that, make sure to cut underneath 15% body fat so that your insulin sensitivity and hormone production improve, encouraging lean muscle gain instead of fat gain.
Most people who get caught in the cycle are missing one of those fundamental principles, either not realizing it’s important, or not doing it properly. For example, perhaps they’re doing cardio instead of lifting while cutting, or perhaps they do lift, but it’s not a good lifting program for muscle growth/maintenance.
Does that clear up your confusion?
Hey there, I have developed muscles following advice from your wonderful articles, and many people compliment me on my chest, shoulders etc. But I still have lower belly/oblique fat, which technically makes me skinnyfat.
So I was wondering: is it possible for a person to look muscular enough to get compliments despite STILL looking skinnyfat to some extent? The skinnyfat look is still there but it’s not the same look it was last year or so – this time I get compliments for my muscles.
So is it possible that there are different levels of skinnyfat – like skinnyfat without being muscular, skinnyfat with some muscle etc.? Hope that makes sense, lol
Hey Ahmed, glad you’ve been getting so much value out of our articles! Congrats on the gains, man—that’s awesome 😀
Yeah, it’s possible to build up a great physique that people remark on even while having some extra body fat. As a man, that body fat is most likely to be stored in your lower lower stomach, and it’s not uncommon for guys to have stubborn love handles as well.
There are definitely different levels of skinny-fat, but it sounds like you aren’t skinny OR fat, just more chubby than you’d like to be. I’d recommend spending some time in a calorie deficit, cutting away that extra fat. That way you keep the compliments on your chest, shoulders and etc, but you lose the love handles that are frustrating you 🙂
Hello Shane,
Over the years I have been working out off and on and then give up because of frustration of not seeing results. I’m 51 years old and considered skinny fat, I’m 5’10 weigh 168 with 24% BF a 36” stomach but only 12” arms, 40” chest and 21” thighs. I’ve currently been going to gym everyday for month with a very rigorous weight lifting program, and I’ve been eating healthy but still not seeing any results. I want to gain muscle and loose belly fat. I’ve heard everything from cut first then bulk, to bulk first then cut. I’ve heard eat 3500 calories and I’ve heard eat 1800 calories. I’ve heard high fat low carb diet to high carb low fat diet. Maybe I don’t give one thing a try long enough before I think I should be doing something else so I change. I’m not 30 and don’t have time to try something that’s wrong. I don’t want to go another year and realize I lost a year doing everything wrong. Trying to find the tried and true proven program with the right diet, macro %, and work out program that will get me results the first time.
Great article, but I feel that my situation isn’t exactly like your definition of skinnyfat/ectomorph.
I have a huge appetite and I don’t think that my metabolism is that fast. I weight 165 pounds at almost 6 foot and 1. I have no muscles at all, small wrists, an ultra thin neck, man boobs and love handles, etc. With a shirt on, everybody thinks I’m too skinny.
However, it was completely different before. I was obese in 2016 (around 230 pounds) and pretty much overweight since high school in the 2000s. I decided to change and lost 80 pounds in a couple of months in 2016-2017 (with intermittent fasting and huge caloric deficits). I probably lost muscles as well.
In 2007, at 150 pounds, I still had love handles and man boobs. I felt super weak too. Now I’m stable at around 165 and I feel a little bit better… but still skinny fat. I decided to start lifting some weights just a few days ago… but I’m confused. Am I an ectomorph or not? Should I cut to even lower than 150 pounds to get a flat stomach?
Hey Marc, congratulations for losing all of that weight! Losing 80 pounds is incredible. That’s amazing, man!
If you check out our articles on body types, or our article about how to determine how much of a hardgainer you are, you’ll see that most people are a combination of at least a couple body types.
We’re a site for guys who are naturally skinny and who struggle to gain weight. That lines up well with the typical description of an ectomorph or a hardgainer, but most of us still have some traits from other body types. For example, Marco is incredibly tall and narrow, but he also has a barrel-shaped ribcage that seems to have made room for a pretty sizeable stomach. He’s sort of a Michael Phelps, where he can be active all day, eat 10,000 calories, and still wind up lean. If that were me, I’d be comatose on the couch from the calorie overload, but Marco does just fine. He’s able to eat a bulking diet with no appetite or stomach capacity issues.
In your case, being tall, having thin wrists, having a long neck, and having little muscle mass—these are ectomorph traits. But having a higher body-fat percentage, a large appetite, and a slower metabolism are endomorph traits. It sounds to me like you’re a hybrid body type, which makes sense given that you’re currently struggling with being skinny-fat.
As for what you should do, to be clear, my specialty is helping naturally skinny and skinny-fat guys, so take my advice with a grain of salt. The good news is that you’re already on the right track. The most essential thing for you is to lift weights. That’s going to help you fill your frame back up with muscle. You’ll be able to eat more food, feel more satisfied, and look strong in a shirt. It will also help you stay lean and get even leaner, since building that muscle mass is going to be calorically costly.
If you’re currently above around 15% body fat, I would recommend starting with a cut. However, you might want to check that looser skin isn’t creating the illusion of having a higher body-fat percentage. You lost a substantial amount of weight, so that’s certainly possible. Mind you, 230 pounds on a 6’1 frame isn’t that fat. I’d think your skin would have rebounded right back. So yeah, a cut is probably best.
There’s more good news, too. Since, yeah, given that you weren’t lifting weights, you surely lost muscle while losing those 80 pounds. That muscle you come right back once you start following a good lifting program, eating enough protein, and getting some quality sleep. Being in a calorie surplus would help, but as a new lifter who was previously more muscular than you are now, you should be able to build muscle even in a deficit. (Intermittent fasting might pair well with this, if you enjoy it.)
Then once you lean out, slowly start to rev your calorie intake up until you start ever so slowly gaining weight. I wouldn’t gain more than 0.5 pounds per week until you’re confident that you can build muscle leanly. At this point, you may wish to abandon the intermittent fasting. It’s up to you. Here’s our article on how intermittent fasting effects muscle growth.
Does that help at all? You’ve already proven that you can do what it takes to accomplish incredible things. I think you’ll do great with building muscle 🙂
hi shane . i am 15 year old from india . my height is 174cm and my weight is 68 kg and i am skinny fat . my father and mom are skinny and i think i have ectomorphic genetics . i look healthy or even skinny in clothes but i have soft belly love handles and flabby chest . when i was born i was so skinny and tall that everyone was amazed that how can a new baby can look like this and i remained skinny till my 5th standard. from last 4 years i am skinny fat . plz tell me how can i get ripped physique like bradpitt (i cant lift weight bcoz of my age and i dont want to stop my height from growing)
Hi Shane,
thank you for all these useful articles, really helpful. I have been practicing martial arts for 15 years which led to a lot of injuries. For the past year I have had a sitting job and a wife who cooks delicious food…so I gained 6 kg…
Still have the skinny fat body, currently at 17.1% body fat so according to what I have read I should be cutting to around 12% first before bulking. I have a question regarding my injuries. Due to my injuries I am not able to lift heavy, for example: I am 80 kg but only deadlifting 60 kg at the moment. Am afraid any heavier will make the injury worse. Does cutting still work for me if I can’t lift as heavy as I should be able to? I am trying to gradually raise the weights.
Thank you
Do you have any more articles / guidance on cutting for skinny fat / low T guys, and also for insulin resistance and those who tolerate carbs poorly, and how they can ideally cut and bulk?
This is our main skinny-fat article, although I’ve got a few more planned. In the meantime, you might like Jared’s articles over on Outlive. He talks about a lot of those issues.
We’ve also got an article on testosterone written by a urologist.
Thank you, really looking forward to more!
How much of the program is applicable and has details specifically for skinny fat guys?
Also if one was a full on skinny guy first, then eventually skinny fat, once they finally get lean again, do they retain skinny fat characteristics, or go back to full on skinny guy characteristics, in terms of how weight is gained and distributed in muscle vs fat, etc?
The whole program is written with both skinny and skinny-fat guys in mind. For skinny guys who are eager to bulk up, we recommend a “lean and eager” approach, whereas for skinny-fat guys who want to keep fat gains at bay, we have a “soft and cautious” approach.
Some skinny guys have a propensity to store more body-fat than others. Most people get skinny-fat because of their lifestyles, diet, and exercise habits, though, not because of that genetic predisposition. Before you can really tell what your genetics are, you need to start eating, sleeping, lifting better.
Most skinny-fat guys find that once they start lifting a healthier lifestyle, their body-fat percentage is naturally much, much, much lower.
Hi Shane, great article but I have a rather complicated question. Bear with me.
Let’s say a guy is extreme ectomorph, we’re talking about a guy struggling to even reach 50 kg bodyweight at one point. Let’s say he eats a lot, works out and gains a muscle and is now around 70 kg. Not all of it is muscle, some of it is fat so he has the skinnyfat look despite having gained muscle.
Question is, once a skinny guy becomes skinny fat (like the above example) wouldn’t the new fat he has acquired be so stubborn that it’d be impossible to lose? Naturally fat people may lose fat because they were NEVER skinny in the first place. But if skinny people acquire fat later on, wouldn’t the body see this fat as a survival thing and be reluctant to drop it?
Hey Alfa, I see what you’re saying. If the body is desperate for fat, then once it finally gains it, it will hold onto it more firmly. That can be true, and if I recall correctly, we see that happen in starvation studies, such as the Minnesota Starvation Experiment.
That has nothing to do with being an ectomorph, though, it has to do with weathering famine and starvation. If someone is an extreme ectomorph because they have a lower appetite, naturally fewer fat cells, thinner bones, or longer limbs, that’s a whole different thing. It’s not that they’ve been starved and their body is desperate for body fat, it’s just that they’re naturally skinny.
In fact, it tends to have the opposite effect. If someone isn’t naturally fat, then even if they gain some fat, it tends to melt away fairly easily. For example, in my own experience, I started bulking at 120–130 pounds at a height of 6’2, meaning that I was severely underweight. My body fat was naturally around 11%. Now I’m 193 pounds, and my body fat is still naturally around 11%. Over the course of gaining those 60-some pounds, I’ve had some rougher bulks, and I’ve gone through periods of carrying 20+ extra pounds of fat, but it was always fairly easy to lose. After all, I likely still have the same number of fat cells as I did when I first started bulking.
When formerly skinny people get fat and have trouble losing it, it’s often due to a shifting lifestyle. Maybe someone is super skinny in high school when they take the bus to school, play some sports, and are always walking around. Then as an adult, they don’t play sports anymore, they spend more time sitting at a desk, and they drive everywhere. It’s rarely because of a starvation mechanism or because they’ve gained new fat cells, and so once they fix up their lifestyles, engaging in regular resistance training, being more active, eating a better diet, it’s often fairly natural to maintain a lower body-fat percentage again.
Hi Shane,
I have a very interesting question on weight/height for ectos. I used to weigh 105 pounds at 5’10” (extreme ecto, I guess). Now I weigh 155 pounds. My question is, even though people will say 155 is still too light and that at least 170 may be ideal for someone my height, considering I only weighed 100 pounds before, is it possible that 155 is ideal for an extreme ecto like me? Because I’ve been stuck at this weight for a year or so now, so wondering if adding 50 pounds to my frame is my genetic limit and that I shouldn’t try to add more.
Hey Ahmd, congrats on gaining those fifty pounds! That’s awesome, man 😀
I suspect that you could keep gaining muscle, if you wanted. I doubt you’re at your genetic muscular potential at that size. And as for your “ideal” weight, at least in terms of attractiveness, being more muscular is generally a good thing, so continuing to climb towards your genetic potential would probably make you more attractive.
But, with that said, some people have lighter bone structures than others, some people prefer being lither, some people suit being thinner, and you may already be plenty attractive at your current weight. You may also have reached a point of diminishing returns, where gaining extra muscle is difficult, and even though it will have a positive effect on your appearance, the difference won’t be all that dramatic.
If you want to continue getting bigger, stronger, and more muscular, I bet you can. But you certainly don’t have to 🙂
Thanks so much, Shane. Means a lot that you respond with so many insights and important details. I also made an interesting observation reg. fat-fat and skinny-fat.
What I mean is, a fat-fat person is overweight, whereas a skinny-fat person is usually normal weight or sometimes even underweight. Yet in both cases, they complain about having belly fat, love handles, etc. But the difference is, the fat-fat guy is in caloric surplus, which is why he’s overweight. But the skinny-fat guy is NOT in caloric surplus, which is why he’s normal weight. Meaning, he’s NOT eating too much. Then how come he has belly fat to begin with? I understand skinny fat guys may be under muscled, or they don’t move around, diet sucks, etc. but my question is: without caloric surplus how come they have fat in the first place? This confuses me a lot.
If someone eats a lot and gains fat in their midsection (or anywhere), it should reflect in the scales (as it does for obese guys). But if the weight is normal for skinny-fat guys, then technically they’re NOT in caloric surplus, so where did the extra fat come from?
Hey Ahmd, my pleasure! 🙂
Let’s consider two different scenarios:
1. An obese person is on a diet and is losing weight. They are obese, but they are also in a calorie deficit.
2. A underweight person is bulking and is gaining weight. They are underweight, but they are also in a calorie surplus.
So what we’re seeing is that people at varying weights and body compositions can be in a calorie surplus or deficit. The surplus or deficit determines whether we’re gaining or losing weight, not whether we’re overweight or underweight.
Now, for a skinny-fat person, yes, he was in a calorie surplus at some points, surely. After all, he was born at, say, 7 pounds, and now he weighs 150 pounds or whatnot. He’s gained weight during his life. He has been in a calorie surplus. He may also have gone through periods in his adult life where he’s gained weight, too, perhaps gaining a pound here, losing a pound there. Or just gaining a little weight after meals, losing a bit of weight while sleeping. The weight gain and loss may not ever have been noticeable.
What makes the skinny-fat person different from the person who’s lean and strong isn’t necessarily their weight, or the fact that they were in a calorie surplus or deficit, but rather that when they gained weight, they gained too much fat, and/or when they lost weight, they lost too much muscle. It’s a “nutrient partitioning” issue, where weight is stored as fat instead of muscle.
Thanks again, Shane. Very insightful.
I am a little curious, though. Let’s say a person is in caloric deficit, but his body sucks at nutrient partitioning and stores all the food he eats as fat, then even if he eats very little wouldn’t he still be fat? So what’s the point of dieting, then? If nutrient partitioning sucks for some people, then their bodies store fat if they eat more but it stores fat even if they eat less. So what’s the point? For such folks, wouldn’t exercise be more important than diet?
People don’t really gain fat in a calorie deficit. The worst case scenario is that you lose only muscle, and that would only happen in someone who already has virtually no fat on his body. If someone has too much body fat, a calorie deficit will almost always result in most of the weight loss being fat.
Is exercise more important than diet? That’s a totally different question. If you’re trying to gain/maintain muscle while losing fat, yeah, exercise is crucial. If you’re trying to improve nutrient partitioning, resistance training is the most powerful tool. But is it MORE important? I don’t know. That’s kind of like asking whether food or water is more important for our survival. The answer is that we need both.
But exercise being crucial doesn’t downplay the importance of using a calorie deficit to lose weight/fat, and a calorie surplus to gain weight/muscle. It just means we’re in a situation where we need to do more than one thing at once—working out, lining up our calorie intake with our weight loss/gain goals, eating enough protein, eating mostly whole foods, and getting enough good sleep.
I weigh 143lbs, but have no abs or stomach definition to speak of. I spent a couple of months eating aroun 1200 calories a day, and finally started to see results. Gyms have just reopened so I’ve started going to the gym again, and based on you calculations I’m eating 1750 calories a day, with 143 grams of protein. Within a week I’ve gained 3 pounds and am losing my stomach definition. I don’t know what to do, because 1750 calories is clearly too much for me, but how can I gain muscle on such low calories?
Hey Adam, there’s always a bit of chaos when you first adjust your calories. Adding 550 calories to your diet is a lot more food in your stomach, a lot more salt, and a lot more everything. I wouldn’t worry too much about that number. With that said, gaining 3 pounds is a lot. Give it another week to let things settle down a bit, but if it keeps up for more than that, try scaling back your calorie intake. You want to gain more like 0.5 pounds per week.
If you’re gaining 0.5 pounds per week, eating enough protein, getting enough sleep, lifting weights, and STILL gaining a noticeable amount of fat, I’d look at your weight training routine. You really want to make sure you’re lifting hard enough and stimulating enough muscle growth all through your body.
Cheers, I’ll give that a go. I’m following the Bony to Beastly program (love it, by the way) and I’ve been going to the gym for years so I’m pretty confident that I’m lifting hard enough. Right now my goal is to lose enough stomach fat to have a little bit of ab definition. I’m 40, and will never be getting rock hard abs, but I’d like a little bit of visibility.
Woot, glad to hear you’re liking it 🙂
If your main goal is chiseling out your abs, I’d recommend cutting. But if you want to look at it longer term, oftentimes it helps to try to build muscle slowly and leanly, gain a tidbit of fat of the course of several months, and then trim if off afterwards in a few weeks. You never need to be in a big surplus or deficit, so it’s never too overbearing. But that long period of slowly gaining weight is what really allows you to accumulate a ton of muscle mass.
That can be hard psychologically, though, sometimes. If you get attached to your abs, it can suck to see them get a bit murkier, or for your lower abs to disappear, or to go from having abs to having a flat stomach. It feels like going backwards. But if you’re making great progress on your lifts, building muscle, and seeing your arm and shoulder circumference going up, it’s usually a good thing, and you can always trim off a couple of pounds of fat later on.
I’m close to getting on the program. Just a question. I’m 43, with a long history of being prickly skinny, than transformed into skinny fat. Also have a long history of weight training. 14+ years but not much to show for it. I’m currently 173lbs (max was 185) at 6ft 1, 15% body fat, measured with InBody 720. All my other values are perfectly balanced for general health but without much muscularity, and still, to my eyes, a persistent skinny fat look, especially with my lower gut and love handles.
I have a home gym with rack, olympic barbell and curved bar, enough plates, an adjustable bench and dumbbells, olympic rings, etc. I can do pull-ups no problem. My personal record with weird form was 24 reps at 161lbs. I could also manage a single hand negative “pull-up.”
Problem is, I generally hype into too much working out, which eventually builds into overtraining because I’m scared of losing muscle if I take a day off. That results in bad sleep, a vicious cycle. You know, that Saturday feeling that my arms have shrunk. So I think I should add 3 sets for bi’s and tri’s, and some forearm work. But it just adds to total weekly volume, and bye bye quality sleep again.
I also made an Excel calorie calculator, so I know exactly how much of which macros I consume and a total value of each, both in grams and percentage. I eat 100% clean if pasta (white flour) fits the bill. I think main culprits are volume and sleep deprivation because of too much volume.
So my question: how does the program cope with above-40 individuals who are said to have slower recuperation?
Hey Denis, I hear ya. That sounds frustrating. And I think you’ve already come up with some good ways to improve your training: train every second day, make sure to prioritize getting good sleep, and don’t be afraid of a couple days away from the gym. If that has you getting better rest and hitting the weights more consistently, I think it would be great for your longterm progress.
Can you do the program as an older individual? Totally. But I wouldn’t call you an older individual. Once you’re pushing up near 60, that’s when the differences really start to show. And even then, we don’t really see much difference in results. The transformations we see from guys in their fifties and early sixties are awesome.
At 43, you’ll do great. No problem there at all.
With that said, I definitely realize that we go through different phases of life. Now, as a 32-year-old dad running a business, it’s much harder to train than when I was a 22-year-old bachelor. It’s not any sort of bad thing, and I’m still setting personal bests in the gym, but there’s more to juggle, more stressors. So I really need to make sure that I’m getting a good night’s rest.
So I don’t doubt that things are getting harder as you get older, but as far as lifting weights and building muscle goes, you’re still a young guy. No problem there at all 🙂
Hi. I’m 22 and have never worked out in my life and have always been skinny, but in the past year I have started to gain weight around my stomach. I am 5ft7 and weigh around 140 lbs. From the article, I gather that cutting first is better for beginners like me and I am a little confused on how much I am supposed to be eating. According to the article, for cutting you are supposed to get 30% from carbs, 40% from protein, and 30% from fats unless I’m reading it wrong. And the article also says to eat 1g protein/lb of bodyweight so I would be eating 140 grams of protein a day, and from what I gathered from the CDC’s website, that is 560 calories. Also in the article, it mentions to start by eating 13-15x your weight in calories which would lead me to go for 1960-2100 calories a day. And 40% of those calories is between 784-840 which is way more calories than 140 grams of the protein that was suggested. I’m just trying to make a diet and workout plan ahead of time before I start working out and getting into it to make sure I do it right. If anyone has any idea which is the correct amount of calories, I’d appreciate the help.
Thanks!
Hey Dominic, we usually recommend that people start by working out. Even if you don’t change your diet, working out should result in muscle growth and/or fat loss—often both simultaneously. And then from there, improving your diet only makes the results all the more dramatic.
Cutting first works great, especially if you’re eager to trim off the excess body fat. However, this idea that we should cut first has been challenged recently by the researcher Dr Eric Trexler, who found that there’s little link between our body-fat percentage and the leanness of our muscle growth. I wrote an article about it here, including asking him his advice for skinny-fat guys. The point being, you can go with your preference. Cutting and bulking both work similarly well as a starting point, and you’ll need to do both anyway.
For cutting, those macros sound great, but as a beginner, it’s often easier to start by just focusing on working out, eating enough protein (140 grams per day), and getting into a small calorie deficit, allowing you to lose weight. The same is true with bulking, except instead of a deficit, you’d aim for a small calorie surplus, allowing you to gain weight.
For your carbs and fats, just aim to get a balance. There’s no need to be super precise about it. If you want to track your macros using a calorie tracker, though, yeah, you can input those percentages and it should work well 🙂
For your calories, yeah, starting with around 2,000 calories per day sounds great! From there, just see how your weight changes on the scale and adjust accordingly. If you don’t lose weight, or if your weight loss plateaus after a few weeks, try eating 1,800 calories (or adding in a daily walk to burn more calories). Or if you’re losing weight too quickly and you’re perpetually starving, try eating slightly more calories—maybe 2,200 calories per day.
The important thing is to weigh yourself each week, see if you’re losing weight, and then adjust.
But the very first thing is to start working out 🙂
Hey guys, great guide!
I’m in the process of changing my skinnyfat physique, currently in a deficit with a starting weight of 93kg and now just at 81kg. I’ve also been getting stronger in the gym and eating well ( lean protein, carbs, veggies etc).
Where I need help is should I stay consuming my usual calories (2,500) or increase that to 2,700 calories so I’m still in a deficit even at that number but more focused for muscle growth but fat loss can still happen? So closer to maintenance calories. It’d beginning to get to the point where it’s harder to tell how much fat I’ve lose because there isn’t a whole lot, like not abs visible but not a vast amount either
Thank you, Jake 🙂
You’re doing great, man! Gains in strength are a great indicator of muscle gain, and you’ve lost 12 kilos! I’d keep doing what you’re doing unless you’re getting so hungry that you could use a break. But if your willpower is good, I’d just keep going.
You’ll gain muscle much faster when you gear into a slow surplus. So I’d finish your cut, and then go forward with a slow, lean bulk. That’s where taking your time tends to pay off best.
Ok thanks man!
Also, what would you suggest I do in terms of metabolic adaptation? For the past 5 weeks now, the scales is staying at 81kg even though I feel increases in strength when working out.
I get 10,000-12,000 steps for NEAT everyday and strength train 4 days a week making sure I get protein in. Should I lower my calories from 2,500?
Yep! Exactly. Calorie intake always needs to be adjusted depending on what the scale tells you. So if your weight loss has plateaued for more than 1–2 weeks, it’s time to trim off another 200 calories or so.
Hey Shane,
First of all, thank you for this detailed guide. The information you’ve provided has been really helpful for tackling my skinny fatness.
One thing I am wondering though is apart from low testosterone levels and high estrogen levels, are there any conditions that seem to be common with skinny fat individuals?
So glad to help, Robert!
That’s a good question. Most skinny-fat people we’ve coached haven’t had a specific medical condition causing the issue. Rather, it’s usually a lack of overall activity, a lack of resistance training, a lack of protein, or a bad diet. Genetics can certainly play a role as well. Some people are more susceptible than others. But it’s what happens when people let themselves get out of shape. What separates them from the average overweight person is simply the fact that they haven’t been overeating.
This is just my experience, though. I’m not sure.
Hi, I’m a 178—180lb guy, 6ft 1, and skinny fat. I a low-to-medium frame size (6.7″ wrists).
The amount of protein I should eat is 180g. How can I fulfill that need? Do all sources count, meaning there’s 1.2g in apple, 7g in rice, 12g in pasta (per 100g), which all add up?
I usually end up at 140—160g protein, depending on caloric intake for the day, which currently fluctuates between 2400—3100 (work or off-day).
What makes it hard to reach a higher protein intake is the fat content in certain protein sources like eggs, cheese, prosciutto, nuts. Because I’m lactose intolerant, low-fat dairy intake is minimized. Otherwise bloating seems to interfere with digestion.
Hey Dennis,
Yes! You can count the little bits of protein in all of your food. Animal sources like meat and dairy tend to have the most protein, but the little bits coming from seeds, nuts, grains, legumes, and peas can add up fast, especially when eating a bigger bulking diet. It’s harder when cutting.
The easiest way to get an extra 20 grams of protein is to buy a protein powder. If you’re lactose-intolerant, you could get hydrolyzed whey or a pea/rice protein.
If you’re getting 0.8 grams of protein per pound bodyweight per day, though, that’s okay. You’re very close. It’s close enough. Just make sure to get that 144+ grams of protein per day and you’ll do great 🙂
Hi there,
I’m currently in a calorie deficit after slowly losing excess body fat since January 2021. Now I would say I’m more on the skinnier side of skinny fat after dropping my high body-fat percentage.
I still have some fat that’s visible, especially when I sit down, but overall I just look thin as there is no muscle on my frame.
My question is, is it possible for me to build muscle while eating at maintenance calories? As I still have that small amount of body fat to lose?
Hey Brian, congrats on losing the excess body fat! Nice job 🙂
It’s totally normal to have fat that’s visible when you sit down. That will happen no matter how lean you are. Even at 8%, you’ll still have a stomach with skin that folds when you sit. Such is being human. I wouldn’t worry about that at all. Judge yourself at your best. Flex your abs in a mirror with flattering lighting.
As for being thin, the best way to build muscle is to eat in at least a small surplus. But, yes, you may succeed in gaining a bit of muscle and losing a bit of fat if you eat at maintenance and follow the principles outlined in this article.
What I’d recommend is this: eat at maintenance while focusing on adding reps and/or weight to the big compound exercises. If you’re able to make progress, great. If your bench slowly goes from 135 pounds up to 185 pounds over the course of the year, that’s stellar. Keep going. But if you find that your lifts aren’t improving week after week, that’s a sign that you aren’t gaining muscle. And if you look back at what you were lifting 2 months ago and you aren’t noticeably stronger, you know it isn’t working anymore. At that point, it’s probably time to gear into a surplus.
I’d like to add something to this conversation. It may be an unpopular view…
I’ve been working out for years, eating the right diet, etc. But you know what? No matter how much my body has changed (more muscle, less fat), the fat on my lower belly and obliques never goes away. I think skinny fat people are stuck with it.
There may be exceptions, but for most skinny fat people, even a little fat is going to be stored in the belly and oblique area. So to reduce even that little bit of fat, one has to starve, which is not a good idea.
So for skinny fat people, it’s not about eating less. Even eating less, the body could still store the little fat in the belly area. You’ll be forced to eat so little you end up starving. The midsection/oblique fat will never go away for a skinny fat person because the body stores it there despite the right diet and exercise.
Just what I feel.
Hey Ahmd, I almost entirely agree with you.
The fat on the lower belly is the hardest fat to burn. That’s true for most men, skinny fat or not. It’s not a sign of anything being wrong, that’s just the last place where most men lose fat. So, yes, it’s hard to burn that fat. And unless you cut down until you’re very lean, that fat will remain there.
I also agree that getting exceptionally lean means dealing with hunger. Losing weight means eating in a calorie deficit, and eating in a calorie deficit almost always causes people to be hungry. This is especially true when the diet goes on for a long period of time. And it’s also common when cutting to very low body-fat percentages. For most people, skinny-fat or not, our bodies just don’t want to be exceptionally lean. In fact, getting under 10% body-fat and maintaining it there isn’t realistic or healthy for the average person.
So I agree with you that it might be best to learn to live with a bit of fat on your lower abs and obliques. A body-fat of 10–15% is often easier and healthier to maintain than 8–9%, and so that’s what we usually recommend. And that means having a bit of fat over your lower abs.
Where I disagree is that having a bit of lower ab fat means that you’re skinny-fat. Most strong, healthy men have a bit of fat there.
Thanks, Shane.
Two points.
1) A bit of lower belly fat may not mean you’re skinny fat, but it still ruins the figure. It’s like even if you have great upper-body muscles and no fat elsewhere, this one concentrated area of fat is enough to make you look (and feel) fat. Even with broad shoulders/lats, with that extra fat in the obliques, the elusive v-taper remains elusive.
2) I feel skinny fat people have the worst body-fat distribution. A skinny person or even a somewhat heavier person with more even body-fat distribution may look good even if they carry a little extra fat.
Just what I feel.
It’s hard for me to know exactly what you mean without seeing an example. It’s very normal to have stubborn fat on the lower stomach. Most people don’t have any abs, let alone chiselled lower abs. To expect to walk around with chiselled lowered abs isn’t realistic for most people, at least if they want to feel good and be healthy.
Does not having crisp lower abs ruin someone’s figure? I don’t think so. Not unless someone is dead set on looking like a fitness model. But that’s a whole career path. That would be like a fitness model being upset that his math skills aren’t as good as an accountant’s.
With that said, maybe you’re talking about a substantial amount of fat on the lower abs. In that case, most people can get rid of it. A flat stomach with a hint of upper abs in the right lighting is healthy and achievable for most people. That’s a body-fat percentage of something like 10–15%. Somewhere in that range is great for most people.
If you build muscle, you can build a more powerful upper body. You can have a v-taper without needing to cut down to under 10% body fat. And if you build muscle in your core, it will have shape and structure. There might still be a bit of fat over your lower abs, but you’ll still have a v-taper, and you won’t look out of shape.
I hope that makes sense.
Hi Shane, I hope you’re doing well.
First of all, great article, I’ve read this, and a few others on here, and the simple info (backed up with good sources) and the illustrations are great. Also, I’ve read few of the comments and it’s amazing to see that you are still viewing and replying to them all… So I thought I’d give it a go 🙂 maybe you could give me some advice.
I’m a 21M 5’11 and last year I started working out doing bodyweight exercises during the many lockdowns (UK) as I was unhappy with my figure (photo). I’d say that I was the pinnacle of skinny-fat, nearing underweight (140Ibs) with fat built around my love handles and chest. I really had no idea about diet or anything so I kind of just winged it. I wanted to lose the fat but I already felt light so I knew a diet wasn’t for me. At the time, anyway.
I later bought a weight bench with 50kg of weights and used them for about 6 months. By the time Feb 2021 came around, I had gotten to about 155lbs, but I still had the same body. Just bigger. I felt like giving up as, to me, I hadn’t made any progress.
But…
Gyms finally opened in April, and I joined my FIRST gym at the start of May. I got a relatively good workout plan from a personal trainer, and I worked my way up to another workout plan. Both are good and are a good mix of compound and isolation movements using free weights and machines. I eat around my maintenance (2200), and I managed to gain weight and got up to 170Ibs. Actually, eating well and working out felt great. It was so much better than weighing 140ish, which I was 1.5 years ago. And some people even noticed a difference in my body. In a shirt, of course, haha. I’ve been doing this for just over 3 months now.
However, unfortunately, I still feel skinny-fat. My love handles are still there, and my chest still has fat around it. This sounds stupid, but it makes my nipples and chest seem really fat (photo).
Now my question: I’ve been lifting for about 3 months at maintenance (for me that’s about 2200-2300), and I’ve made progress in my lifts. But I REALLY want to get rid of this fat. I thought that I could go on a 2–3 month deficit (maybe 1700 on rest days, 1900 on workout days), lose about 12-15 pounds, and then go on a lean bulk till next May. Then I could reassess. Does that sound any good?? I’d say that I’m about 20% body fat. I fear that going on a lean bulk now would only emphasize the FAT in skinny fat body.
Just to summarise it all
21 years old, male.
5’11.
Probably 20% body fat.
Went from 140 to 170 pounds over 2ish years
Maintenance: 2200-2300
Potential cutting: 1700-1900
Sorry about the wall of text. I hope you are having a great day/evening, and hopefully I’ll hear from you soon 🙂
Hey Jack, it looks like you’ve made some great progress! You don’t look much fatter than you did when you started. You DO look much buffer and stronger. And it sounds like you’ve gotten in the habit of eating a better diet and following a good workout routine. It sounds like everything is going great 🙂
Yeah! Cutting sounds like a great way to continue improving. Your main issue right now is the extra fat. Cutting is the best way to get rid of that fat. Going into a calorie deficit is how to do it. Everything you’re saying makes sense.
The only thing I’d say is to be flexible with how long the cut will take. 2–3 months is great, but maybe at the end of it, you still feel like you want to get even leaner. Or maybe partway through you need to take a maintenance break because it’s too hard being hungry all the time.
As you cut, try to build muscle. Keep eating plenty of protein, keep trying to gain strength on your lifts, and keep trying to improve your lifestyle—spending more time walking and more time sleeping. I think you’ll be able to make great improvements in these next 2–3 months. I hope you post an update, too, to let me know how it goes!
Good luck! You’re doing great 😀
Hey again Shane,
First of all, thank you for the quick and well thought-out response, it definitely helps. It’s honestly so great to see someone as knowledgeable as you consistently commenting and helping people.
And secondly, thank you for saying that I look better than I did. It’s one thing when a friend/family member says you’ve changed, but when a stranger says it, it feels great, a nice boost in confidence!
It’s good that you agree that a cut makes sense for now. I’ll definitely keep to the things you’ve said in this comment and this article like sleeping and getting enough protein.
I’d also like to ask something that I was thinking about yesterday that I forgot to ask. When I was previously working out and eating at maintenance, I NEVER ate back my calories. I didn’t know that I really needed to so I never bothered. But now that I’m on a cut of 500, I think exercise as well will make my cut even greater:
I walk to the gym;
Do 10 minutes of high intensity on the rower;
Workout weight training for an hour;
And jog home.
Together I’ve guesstimated this comes to about 300-450 calories burnt. So I thought of eating back a few calories on my workout days (like 200) so I’ll eat 1700 on rest days and 1900 on workout days to decrease the deficit just a little. Does this sound okay? I now know that I should’ve been eating back my calories before, but tbh, I never really felt hungry eating at maintenance and my weight plateaued at 170Ibs at 2200. So, does this sound like a good idea to you?
But yes, thank you for the extra advice. I started this cut on the 1st of this month, so November 1st will mark 3 months. I’ll try my best to remain consistent and I think I’ll reply to these comments on the 31st October (Halloween just seems like a fun day to work towards haha) with an update. From there I’ll decide whether to continue with the cut and lean up or head slowly into a lean bulk.
Have a great day
We recommend adjusting your calorie intake based on how much weight you lose each week. It’s adaptive. So whether you eat back your calories or not, the system will correct itself.
What you’re talking about is calorie cycling. The idea is that on workout days you should eat more calories to encourage more muscle growth, whereas on rest days you should eat fewer calories to encourage more fat loss. It’s a good idea in theory, but it hasn’t really panned out in the research. With that said, I still think it’s wise to have a bigger meal after lifting weights, including a hearty amount of protein and maybe some extra calories, too. Eating an extra 200 calories on workout days sounds great.
Just remember to adjust your calorie intake each week depending on whether you lose weight or not 🙂
Out of curiosity, how do we take progress pictures? What’s the method normally used for realistic pictures with proper lighting? Do we stand before the bathroom mirror and take the picture that appears in the mirror?
I am asking because my lower belly looks like crap in the mirror, but the upper abs are not only well-defined but in certain lighting, I even appear to have a 4 pack.
Everyone you see is presenting themselves in the best light. That includes bodybuilders, fitness models, influencers, actors, and everyday people posting fitness selfies and progress photos. But a lot of people judge THEMSELVES in the worst light. They’re sitting down and noticing how their belly bunches up. That kind of thing. Better to judge yourself in the best light, too. Measure your biceps flexed. Take photos of your abs when they’re flexed and under flattering lighting.
The important thing with progress photos, though, is to keep them consistent. You don’t want to make the mistake of taking a dumpy before photo and then a perfect after photo. The difference between the photos might just be the pose and lighting. It might look inspirational, but it’s too hard to judge your progress.
What I recommend is keeping as many variables consistent as possible. Take your photos in the same place, same angle, same pose, same lights turned on, and same time of day. That way the only thing that’s changing is your body composition. Also, take a few photos from a few different angles. Take a front photo, side photo, back photo, relaxed photo, and flexed photo. Repeat those same poses every month.
To answer your specific question: yeah. Taking a photo in the bathroom mirror is not only fine, it’s also a classic 🙂
Hi. As a skinny-fat, I decided to cut and it goes fairly well. What I’m interested in is what’s going to happen when I reach my ideal body weight and start with bulking? When bulking, you gain fat as well, it’s not just muscle, am I correct? Will that fat be distributed more evenly across my body? I’m kind of unfortunate about this, I’m now at +-15% body fat, already very thin arms and legs but still lots of visible fat on my belly. So does it make sense to continue with cutting for now? Will I gain most of that unwanted body fat in my abdomen after I switch to bulking? Thank you.
Hey Shane! Would your outlift 3×9 routine be good for skinny fat guys? https://outlift.com/stronglifts-5×5-for-building-muscle/
I already answered you over on Outlift. But for the sake of anyone else reading, sure! It’s a solid, simple routine.
Our flagship bulking program is also great for skinny-fat dudes. But it’s paid.
Long post here. I’m interested in one of your programs as I want to build muscle and need a good program to give some direction. I love the approach of both building mass and strength – a sweet spot between bodybuilding and strength training is exactly what I want. I am having trouble deciding which program to start with.
I don’t know whether I am “ectomorph” enough for BtB, but I also don’t know if I fit the “intermediate lifter” marketing for Outlift either. Outside of a recent experiment, I have not seriously lifted weights for years and haven’t ever really made progress in the gym except for a season during high school (15 years ago), which was one of the few times in life I felt strong and not skinny or skinny-fat. I don’t know what my current bench press is (been avoiding it from embarrassment), but certainly under 185 lb. I’m not so sure whether I’ve ever done over 120.
I am kind of a hard gainer, but probably not as much as the men in your promotional materials. I naturally have a small appetite. I weighed 140 at 5’ 7” for several years, where I definitely would have qualified as bony. In 2020 I bloated up to the 150s (pure fat, due to eating lots of sugary foods and very little “real food”, I still had scrawny arms and felt weak during this period).
Recently I took part in an experiment with a “Fill the Sleeves” challenge, doing basic upper body while basically eating as much as I possibly could while on a sugar-free diet. It worked wonders, as in 45 days I gained 15lb (159 to 171). Arms went from under 13” to over 14”, and chest from under 38” to over 41”. I am definitely chubby at this point, though I stayed at 24% bf from beginning to end with the same waist size. I have never eaten like that before and don’t know how to maintain or adjust it over time. I definitely don’t qualify as skinny-fat today, but I did a couple of months ago. I don’t mind being chubby-strong, especially during a bulking period (in fact, I think it can look good on men, though I know I am in the minority in that regard). I would rather focus on building mass than cutting body fat this season.
In the end, I want to continue the muscle growth but feel this basic program is plateauing and could use more direction on diet and overall lifestyle for muscle gain. Would you recommend the B2B program or Outlift, or something different?
Hey TW, that’s awesome! Congrats on those gains, man! 14 inches is sweet!
Our Bony to Beastly Program isn’t just for so-called “ectomorphs.” It’s for skinny and skinny-fat guys, but it’s a fairly conventional hypertrophy training program along with diet advice that makes it easier to bulk up and build muscle. We’ve also got a protocol in there for skinny-fat guys. Whether you identify as an ectomorph or not, that’s totally okay. It’s not just for total beginners, either. We have a “Phase 0” for beginners, and then Phase 1 is for novices and early intermediates. Personally, I did the program after having already gained a lean 35–40 pounds.
I think being “chubby strong” doesn’t necessarily sound super great, but there’s a much cooler word for that physique: buff! And being buff is definitely cool. I totally agree with you on that.
Outlift assumes you’re a true intermediate—that you already know the basics of eating a good bulking diet, that you know how to do all the hypertrophy lifts, and that you understand how to live a good muscle-building lifestyle. I think in your case, you’d probably be better off starting with a more foundational program. I think the Bony to Beastly Program sounds like a better fit. (And it’s what I personally did in your situation.)
Does that help / make sense?
And congrats again on the killer progress!
Yes, that clears things up. Thank you for the time!
My pleasure, man! I hope to see you on the other side.
First off! Thank you for this article man, it helped a lot. My case is hella weird I think. I don’t know what I’m hahaha. I noticed I’m storing more fat or muscle in my belly, thighs and calves.
OBS: I have always been an active guy. I’ve been rollerblading on the weekends for 2 years now, but never regularly.
These are my measurements:
I’m a 26 year-old guy
Height 5’9 /1,75m
Weight 150 pounds/68kg
Shoulder 104 cm/40.9 inches
Neck = 36cm/14.1 inches
Biceps = 28cm/11 inches unflexed/31cm/12.2 inches flexed
Forearms = 27cm/10.6 inches
Chest = 91 cm/35.8 inches
Waist = 84cm/33 inches (measured a little below the navel height)
hips = 96cm/37.7 inches (measured the thickest section including the glutes)
Thighs (upper thighs) = 58cm/22.8 inches (measured in the thickest part 29cm/11.4 inches above the knees)
Calves = 38cm/14.9 inches
I can’t believe I’m more muscular on my lower body than on my upper body without ever working out for it. I worked out at the gym for three months this year and my thighs grew almost 2 cm/1 inch. I’m skinny-fat, but with “bigger” thighs for my size. My lower body tends to grow more than my upper body even not focusing on it. I can only imagine the skates as a culprit, but some friends of mine have always said that I had bigger legs for my body, even when I was young and skinny. But I suppose this should be different. People have pointed it out. Saying I have good legs or “big” legs, they aren’t big, my upper body is small I think. A girl, a friend of mine, said that I’m with big thighs and glutes. I want to grow my upper body too. I slept on the idea of stopping working out my lower body, but I believe what’s causing the most of this volume on my lower body is fat and not muscles, but maybe underneath this fat there is more muscle and I’m more muscular on my lower body than in my upper body, I really don’t know. I thought I had Lipedema too, but lucky, that’s not my case. My genetics seems to be built for it. Any hint or knowledge to share in this case man? Thank you again in advance!
Hello shane,
Based on another article i read for you guys on lean bulk, you recommended minimum 0.8g of protein for body while here you guys recommended 1g of protein, which means that it would be different or can i still only work on a 0.8 gs?
Thankss!!
Hey Saadoosh! You’re right, yeah. This is an older article. When we first wrote it, the expert consensus was to aim for a full gram of protein per pound of body weight per day. It later shifted down to 0.8. Now it’s shifted slightly lower, with more evidence pointing to 0.7 being enough.
What’s happening is that researchers compared lower intakes (like 0.5g/lb/day) with higher intakes (like 1g/lb/day) and found that higher intakes produced faster and leaner muscle growth. That doesn’t tell us much about eating 0.6–0.9g/lb/day, though. Later studies had to investigate where the benefits stopped. Most studies show that 0.7g/lb/day is enough to get all of the benefits. Some studies show a benefit to eating a little bit more. That’s why the minimum amount is usually listed as 0.7–1g/lb/day. Personally, I aim for at least 0.7.
Note that when you’re restricting calories, it could be that a higher protein intake is better. If you’re cutting, and if you’re losing more than around a pound of weight per week, or if you’re getting very lean, you might want to aim for that full gram of protein per pound of body weight per day.
I’ve updated the article 🙂
Hey Shane,
As someone who has struggled with being “skinny fat,” it has been frustrating to find so many conflicting opinions about the right approach to take. I appreciate that your articles are consistently supported by research, and this one has given me the clearest understanding of how best to approach nutrition and training in order to achieve a leaner and more muscular physique.
However, as someone who has already made progress in cutting down from 185 pounds to 159 pounds, I am now faced with the dilemma of whether I should continue cutting or start a lean bulk. I estimate my body fat percentage to be around 14% and would like to get down to 10%, but I am not sure if I should aim to lose more weight or begin focusing on building muscle.
Despite seeing some definition in my upper abs, I am still struggling with stubborn belly fat and love handles. I am concerned about becoming too thin, but I also want to avoid undoing the progress I have made so far. I would greatly appreciate any guidance you can offer on how to approach this situation. Thanks again!
Best regards,
Joe
Hey Joe, congratulations on your progress, man!
What are some of the conflicting opinions you’ve heard? Maybe I can make content going into greater detail on those. Oftentimes there’s a whole grain of truth in there. One person says to count calories to get into a calorie deficit (while focusing on eating nutritious foods). Another person dislikes thinking about calories, recommending certain foods instead (creating a calorie deficit). Both people recommend a nutritious diet that causes weight loss, but they have different ways of communicating it. To someone familiar with the fitness industry, it’s easy to see past the seeming contradiction. For someone newer to it, it can be confusing.
How determined are you to get to 10% body fat? Some people can maintain that body-fat percentage comfortably, but they tend to be the people who are naturally fairly lean. If you have a natural propensity towards being skinny-fat, it might be unpleasant to sustain such a low body-fat percentage.
Perhaps more importantly, you won’t be able to make progress there. If you have the ultimate goal of building muscle, cutting to 10% body fat will just be a temporary vacation. But it’s not the sort of vacation where you relax by the beach. It’s more like the sort of vacation where your car breaks down in the middle of the desert. And as soon as you start trying to build muscle again, you’ll need to eat more food, and your body fat percentage will pop right back up to a more sustainable level. Switching to a bulk—even a very cautious one—will quickly undo the progress you’ve worked hard for. You’ll quickly find yourself back at 14% body fat.
Our bodies like having some fat around. Fat is important. We need it for emergencies. If you have less than your body feels is necessary, it will prioritize getting those emergency savings back.
It’s really hard to give proper advice with so little information. Usually with our members, we look at progress photos. 14% usually looks pretty lean! I think I’m probably at about 14%. That’s the body-fat percentage a lot of professional athletes have. It could be that you aren’t at 14%. It could also be that you’re overly critical. Maybe you don’t have love handles. Sometimes it’s hard to judge ourselves objectively.
But let’s say you’re at 14%. That’s pretty ideal for a bulk. I’d do a slower, leaner bulk.
I want you to get great short-term results, and I think you will, but don’t lose sight of the long-term. You’re building a healthier lifestyle, learning new methods, and hopefully getting fitter and stronger. All of these things you’re learning and practicing will help you far into the future. Even if you regain a little bit of fat, you’ll find it much easier to burn off next time. Plus, you’ll be bigger, buffer, and stronger. Even if you regain some fat, you’ll look and feel way better!
Hey Shane,
Thank you for your response! Some of the conflicting opinions include that (a) skinny-fay guys should never cut, or (b) they should try body recomposition. It’s all very confusing.
I do have a lean appearance. Truth be told, I’m skinnier than I’d like to be right now, but my goal is to become as lean as possible before starting a bulk. I understand that I’ll gain some fat even with a lean bulk, but I tend to gain weight quickly, so I guess I’m being overly cautious. I’d like to lose a few more pounds before starting a lean bulk.
Once again, thank you for your advice and all the great work you do!
Best,
Joe
Ah, yeah. That guidance isn’t wrong if your goal is to build muscle. Cutting won’t help you build muscle. But most guys want to be strong and lean. Or at least attractively, healthfully lean. And cutting can definitely help with getting leaner.
Right on. You’ve already made it this far. I’m sure you can make it a little further. When you switch to bulking, remember that you know how to cut. You don’t need to stress about temporarily gaining a little bit of fat. You know how to get rid of it 🙂
Keep track of your rep PRs on all of your major lifts. For example, maybe you can do 12 push-ups. Or bench press 100 pounds for 8 reps. Write it down. Keep trying to improve. As you bulk and cut, keep trying to work those numbers higher. You’ll probably make most of your progress while bulking, and that’s okay. Hopefully next time you’re cutting, you’re maintaining a far higher level of strength 🙂
Good luck, man!
What about women? Do you have specific studies?
Hey Vanna, the same principles hold true for women. We also have a whole separate site for women: Bony to Bombshell.
What are you looking for studies on? I try to keep up with the research. I can probably help.
I’m definitely a skinny-fat woman, but it took me months to realize it! 49 years old, normal weight (60 kg at 170 cm), 30% body fat.
I started lifting weights in 2018, but I only started being consistent last year, plus running.
In my last two years of dieting (May 2021-March 2023), I observed that if I cut, I lose fat and muscle, and if I bulk, I gain only fat. In these two years, I’ve become much stronger, but I haven’t gained any kg of muscle.
Now I’m cutting at 1600 kcal/day (1.5 g/kg protein) and I’m losing almost only fat (-0.3 total weight, -0.25 kg/week FM). During the last 2 months: – 1.5 kg FM, -1 kg FFM (from 31.3% to 29.8%). I presume that in November I should have lost 4.5 kg FM.
But the problem is: AND AFTER? How do I build muscle? Otherwise, I’ll only became a MORE skinny-fat woman…
Thanks a lot!!!!
Are you measuring your body composition using one of those bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) scales? They can give you a rough idea of your overall body composition, but they aren’t accurate enough to track changes in body composition while bulking or cutting. When you lose weight, they tend to show a loss of both fat and lean mass, regardless of what you’re actually losing. When you gain weight, they tend to show gains of both fat and muscle, no matter what you’re really gaining.
It’s much better to track your strength every workout, your weight every week, and then take body measurements and progress photos every month or two.
The goal is to gain strength on some lifts most workouts, adding either weight or reps. That’s a fantastic sign of gaining muscle. Plus, strength itself is valuable. If you’re getting stronger, you’re doing great.
You also want to reduce your waist circumference when losing weight, especially if you tend to store fat there. (Some women don’t.) And you want to keep your waist circumference under control when gaining weight. Ideally, your measurements would go up in the places where you expect to gain muscle (such as your shoulder circumference) and go down in places where you expect to lose fat (such as your waist circumference, and perhaps your thighs and hips).
Progress photos are valuable because your self-image can change as you make progress. Sometimes it’s only when you look back at your starting photos that you realise how far you’ve come.
This is all to say that it sounds like you’re doing a good job. I can’t say for sure, but if you’re getting progressively stronger while gradually improving your lifestyle, diet, and exercise habits, this all sounds amazing. It sounds like you’re doing great.
A good next step might be to follow a better muscle-building workout program. I don’t know how good your program is right now. We’ve got free and paid muscle-building programs for women over on Bony to Bombshell. If you choose the paid one, we can help you customise the program, track your progress, and give you feedback along the way.
Thank you so much for your kind reply. The FM is taken both form BIA scale but also with professional BIA, I reported the professional BIA data. Moreover I measure the fold and the circumference of waist and hip, and data go in the same direction (FM=30%). I feel that I am stronger than one year ago, now I’m doing squat, deadlift, bench press but I can stay under 30% (29…) only with a 1600 kcal/day… if I increase the kcal, waist, fold and BIA come back on 30% and over. Now I’m losing, hoping to reach 26% at the end of October, but… and after? I need to stay on 1600?
Mm, yeah, if your waist and skinfold measurements line up, that’s a much stronger sign. Poor nutrient partitioning—where you gain fat instead of muscle or lose muscle instead of fat—is the hardest problem to solve without knowing almost everything about your training, diet, and lifestyle. The main issues are outlined in this article, but sometimes it takes a full audit to figure out what’s going on.
Steadily getting stronger is a really good sign. If you get stronger while gaining weight and keep that strength while losing weight, then reach a new peak when you start gaining again, you’ll eventually get there.
You don’t need to keep eating a weight-loss diet forever. Only while losing weight. When you finish losing weight, you can stop eating in a calorie deficit. Your metabolism will probably increase, too. When you’re losing weight, your metabolism tries to slow down to cancel out the deficit. When you stop eating in a deficit, your metabolism will speed back up 🙂
I work out rigorously and have seen some gains but am not satisfied and still carry some of the skinny fat ectomorph. I am just curious if this program is for said ectomorph and includes the hypertrophy training mentioned in the skinny fat ectomorph article you wrote.
Hey Neal, absolutely! Our Bony to Beastly Program is for both skinny and skinny-fat guys. We have an entire section explaining what to do if you’re skinny-fat.
It includes a 5–6 month hypertrophy training program, yeah 🙂
I just re-read this article, having read months ago before deciding to bulk with b2B. Im in phase 4 and cant keep bulking – too fat with 38 inch waist – but the idea of going right into a cut feels weird. I want to keep getting stronger and have purchased outlift program with this in mind. My mentality now is to roughly maintain/recomp for a little while and then cut if necessary a few months down the road depending on how things shake out. I just want to make sure this makes sense. The article really focuses on zig-zagging between bulking and cutting and doesn’t say much about phases where we would maintain or recomp for a while in between. Is recomping for a few months a waste of time? Should I dive right into a cut instead? Note: reverse bulking/listening to my appetite when I eat appears to amount to weight maintenance at this juncture.
Hey Darren,
I’ve giving this article a major update these past few days. I’m almost done. You can read about body recomposition in this new article.
Reverse Bulking can be a really good way of maintaining/gaining muscle while leaning out after a bulk. It can make for a really good transition period. If you naturally tend to maintain your weight, you won’t lose as much fat, but you might still be able to get some body recomposition. You could test it out, seeing if you can steadily gain a little bit of strength on your lifts without intentionally gaining or losing weight. If you’re making progress in the gym, that’s a really good sign good things are happening. The Outlift program can be really good for that.
Your plan makes sense to me. If you were in a great hurry to burn fat, cutting would be the fastest way to do it. I think your approach is wiser, though. I haven’t seen much research about transition periods between bulking and cutting, but they seem to work well for most people, and you might be able to recomp while doing it.
Thanks Shane. Glad to know my thinking isnt too off track here. I look forward to reading the updated version when it’s ready.
Ah looks like you did update it yesterday. I see the changes in your thinking. Recomping without trying to specifically cut or bulk now has more of a role. The summary section seems to still be locked in the bulk/culk binary. Thats a little confusing. You might say a few words there about the role of maintenance/recomp as well.
Hrm, I haven’t intentionally updated it yet. I’m not sure why it updated like that. I’m still working on it.
This updated version makes a lot of sense, Shane. It’s gotta be tough keeping your many articles current. Thanks so much for the revisions as they help steer me in the right direction in the battle with skinny-fatness. With your help, I will conquer it!
Okay, I think I’ve gotten it fully updated. I’ll read it over again tomorrow just to make sure it’s not missing anything important.
Yeah, I think we’ve got something like 300 articles between Bony to Beastly and Outlift. I try to keep all the important ones up to date, but it’s tough sometimes. It’s also really fun, though. I enjoy keeping up with the research and making little changes here and there.