Getting un-skinnyfat

[H1N1]

I know where you guys are coming from, but personally I disagree. The thing with the whole SL/SS 'start light and make long term progress' thing, is that all you are really doing is starting way below your base strength levels, with an extremely light weight, and then spending weeks or months working up to a level of strength you already have, before you then make a few months progress if you're lucky, before stalling.

If you've already been sick, or for whatever reason have a very low initial base of strength, my own view is that 5x5 programs are horrible, as they do not build a particularly large work capacity, nor do they leave you much room to progress, particularly if, as our friend in the OP has suggested, you are already unable to 'bulk'.

It is my view that a longer term approach aimed at increasing work capacity is far more beneficial than a quick strength spurt that would most likely leave OP with some extremely underwhelming numbers in powerlifts he probably cares very little for. Much better to increase the amount of submax work you can do gradually, without unduly stressing yourself.

I'm not entirely sure what 'real talk dude' means, as I'm not tremendously hip, but I would say that 10 sets of 20 pushups done throughout the day once your max set is around 60 reps is a very mild stress on the body, compared to a progressive 5x5 add weight each session/each week type program. That is the point, to my mind, of doing it. In addition it will build a greater all round work capacity, even if (debatably) it builds less strength. I would say that I consider the numbers I posted for total daily volume to be very low. I typically do hundreds of pushups situps and BW squats each day (each set being well below a rep max), and the only side effects are greater work capacity, healthier joints, and 'sick abs'.

 

[RexImperator]

I did some bodyweight work before Starting Strength myself, but if insulin resistance is playing a role in fat gain, I'm not sure that bodyweight work is intense enough to fix the metabolic issues. I recommend the OP watch Doug McGuff's presentation to the 21 Convention on YouTube. He goes into the biochemistry of insulin resistance, fat loss, and the role of intense exercise.

 

[Prof. Ligate]

Best workout is always going to be the one you enjoy the most - it's going to be callisthenics for some, barbell work for others, or maybe something like swimming suggested earlier

I personally beat "skinny fat" myself with kettlebell training and MMA. Truth is everyone "knows" how to lose weight or gain muscle. Just fuck all people actually stick to something long enough to reap the benefits. If OP sticks to any of the above programs for 3 months he will have great results

 

[Nascimento]

To get insulin to work in your favour, you have to get your body fat levels under control. This is what I am working on right now.

Ideally, you want your body fat levels at 10-12% before even considering muscle gain. Otherwise you're going to be bouncing around between weight gain and weight loss without significant progress in either direction.

For those who are skinny fat, weight loss should be your priority. Lift weights/do cardio while you do it, but lose that fat. Get as lean as possible. Then add on mass, slowly.

 

[civpro]

Some good information here, other information I cannot agree with. As a guy who's intimately familiar with the topic I thought I'd weigh in and lay out what I strongly believe to the best way to know the problem and tackle it.

Skinny-fat is looked upon in the fitness community as a 'special' condition that requires a 'special' method to combat it ("Only eat clean foods from now on!"). This is not true, it is nothing special, and the mechanics behind building muscle and losing fat are simple and remain the same for all people, skinny-fat or not.

What skinny-fat is, is simply the short end of the stick in terms of body genetics. It is poor genetics, hormones, and structure, which lead to a certain Worst of Both Worlds: 1) a tiny 'ecto' frame, PLUS, 2) a massive depositing of fat all over it.

The website Skinny Fat Transformation does well to demonstrate this root of the problem. However, paradoxically, the site still takes the 'special method' route in dealing with it, and in line with this, the owner's sudden ascension to a 'normal' or 'super-normal' progression, when the whole point is that he's sub-normal, makes me think he's on TRT. But it's a business after all.

TRT is a legitimate cure and will shave off years of a painful body recompositioning journey. But if you're gonna go the natty route here's what I suggest:

1. Set aside conventional bodybuilding advice. With your genetic profile it doesn't apply to you. Most of it is written by gifted & juicing bodybuilders and powerlifters.
"Bulking" will turn you from skinny-fat to morbidly obese with your poor metabolism and partitioning.
"Recompositioning" is not an option because of your poor hormones. If they were good enough to allow it, then your body wouldn't be resting in a skinny-fat state in the first place. Even if hypothetically you could, it would still be way too slow compared to straight up fat loss.
"Cutting slowly" won't work because your basal metabolic rate will naturally be very low.
"Going hard" in the gym with a vast array of exercises will be a waste of time, as initially you're gonna be cutting (see below) and your body won't even be anabolic to make good on your efforts.

2. Get a DEXA Scan. This is of FUNDAMENTAL IMPORTANCE. An absolute MUST. Drive far and away to do it. Pay for a hotel in the big city where scans are done if you have to. A scan in my city costs $125, but the information it gave me was so illuminating upon hearing it that I would have paid a grand to know it.

A DEXA scan, for those who don't know, is a low-intensity x-ray that determines body composition (lean mass vs. body fat) accurately in a way that calipers or visual inspection cannot. As a skinny-fat, the results thereof will be depressing. The scan will show that your body fat percentage vs. lean mass ratio is significantly worse than even your most unflattering estimates. It will show that you don't have a normal frame, but that you all along you've had a small frame underneath an illusion of fat. It will show that in order to get normally lean you will have to lose a huge amount of bodyweight and become very, very 'skinny'. All depressing, but also uplifting, because now you know for sure what you have to do.

3. Diet AGGRESSIVELY to a low bodyweight. Stay on a calorie restricted diet for as much as 6 months to shed bodyweight and reveal your underlying frame. Make the diet meat-focused for satiety/fullness and for the protein. Add in regular cardio to rack up higher deficits. Again, don't listen to thick-framed juicers talking about "cutting slowly". They can say "I'm cutting at 2700 cals brah!". That's their world. With your metabolism you may have to go sub-1500. This will be a period of severe mental hardship.

4. Do calisthenics. The purpose of lifting weights during a calorie deficit is to preserve muscle mass. The purpose of doing calisthenics here rather than barbell work is that it's simply more time-efficient. Jumping on a dip bar and cranking out some reps is just a lot easier than going through the motions of loading up a barbell and getting spotted for some intense reps on the bench. You have barely any muscle in the first place, and it's not gonna go up much while you're dieting, so better to just mentally and time-wise do the bare minimum to preserve what little you have now. One added benefit of calisthenics is that your reps will go up as you lose weight.

5. Once you're gotten to a level of leanness you're satisfied with, maintain or eat very slightly above maintenance for years and very slowly pack on mass. Never "bulk". The take-away here is that as a skinny-fat "The Diet" never really ends. Your body, your natural appetite, and your metabolism/hormones, want you to be a skinny-fat. To prevent a return to this you need to maintain the constant vigilance of a diet even though you're not actually on one anymore calorie-wise. This is where eating "clean" works.

Here are 2 strong examples of exactly I'm talking about. First guy, probably normal BMI, normal arms, but conspicuously puffy belly. Leans out and a tiny frame is revealed. Second guy, Indian, is somehow simultaneously 45% body fat yet has twig arms and tiny wrists. Loses a quarter of his bodyweight yet is still kind of fluffy.

Hope this helps. It would have helped me immensely starting out. Skinny-fats are often chided for a lack of effort based on a lack of results, but behind the scenes we are the ones who have to work the hardest.

 

[Captain Gh]

If I was you I'd look into intermittent Fasting to shift your body composition and get crazy lean until you're able to lift some serious weight to get your body mass in place. This Website on Intermittent Fasting is a great place to start. Dropping the body fat does not requite you to lift heavy weights. It makes you get there faster, but it's not mandatory for you to get crazy lean. Check it out

 

[Hannibal]

I don't know your lifting history, but if you haven't used barbells or anything in the past, I would recommend the exercises from Convict Conditioning. The actual routines are pretty terrible, I would do a 4 day a week split that looks something like this. If that's too much, do 3 days and rotate the workouts (so you'd be doing workout 1 twice the first week and workout 2 twice the second week).

Workout 1: Pushup progression
Pullup progression
Handstand pushup progression

Workout 2: One legged squat progression
Bridge progression
Leg raise progression

You can use the rep/set ranges in the book. It's high rep, but it's only 2 sets so you won't be completely fucked after every workout. Don't bother adding merely 1 or 2 reps a week, just go a rep short of momentary failure. Rest 1-2 minutes between sets, the workouts won't take too long.

As far as dieting, just eat fairly normal (maybe bump the protein up a bit) and fast once or twice a week. For fasting, all you have to do is not eat anything for 18-24 hours. Diet drinks, sugarfree gum, coffee, etc are OK. If you want to take your dieting to the next level, do what H1N1 said and learn how to count your calories. Myfitnesspal is a good resource.

You're not going to get fucking huge, but you'll preserve your muscle mass, build some strength, and get leaner. The leaner you get, the more reps you'll be able to do with bodyweight exercises. That's double the motivation right there. Your joints will thank you for the high rep stuff. Whatever definition you do have will be much more visible.

 

[birthday cat]

There are a lot of good options in this thread and at the skinnyfattransformation website. If it was me, I would pick a program and stick to it for 6 months. Then I would pick another program and stick to that for 6 months. By then you will know a lot more about how body, how to train, if TRT is something you should consider, what type of training you want to focus on such as strength or endurance, etc.

I think barbell training can be very effective but I agree with all the others on this thread that Starting Strength or StrongLifts is probably not the program for an overweight beginner in his 30s. If you really want to include barbell training then there is a program based on Starting Strength which is essentially doing SS two days a week (Monday & Thursday) and doing conditioning two days a week (Tuesday & Friday). You can find a lot of info on that program and its origin by doing a search on “justin lascek strength and conditioning program”

 

[RIslander]

My suggestion is to not attempt lifting heavy weights or doing complex lifts on your own.

1. Get on the Paleo diet
2. Start walking 3-5 miles per day
3. Join a fitness class such as kickboxing or some sort of bootcamp that emphasizes flexibility and body weight workouts
4. Once you find yourself leaned out and you're feeling good its time to get into lifting weights... get into something like crossfit or hire a trainer at a powerlifting gym

 

[cascadecombo]

My suggestion is to not attempt lifting heavy weights or doing complex lifts on your own.

1. Get on the Paleo diet
2. Start walking 3-5 miles per day
3. Join a fitness class such as kickboxing or some sort of bootcamp that emphasizes flexibility and body weight workouts
4. Once you find yourself leaned out and you're feeling good its time to get into lifting weights... get into something like crossfit or hire a trainer at a powerlifting gym

For a newbie, crossfit is a far from optimal suggestion. The rate and chance of injury is so much higher, and a newbie won't be able to spot if a trainer is actually being strict about proper form etc etc.

The kickboxing / body weight workouts though are an excellent suggestion. I have found sparring to be the best way to get my body in better shape.