If you’re interested in learning how a person becomes ‘’skinny fat’’, what this phrase actually means, and how to get rid of this skinny fat, we’re here to provide you with all the answers! Losing weight and having a perfect body may seem like a huge challenge, but the truth is that this dream is completely achievable!
You have to focus on your diet and make sure the exercises you do align with your goals, meaning they target all the right muscles. Once you do that, you’ll be able to include this in your daily routine and start seeing results in no time! We walk you through the entire process below, so let’s get right into it!
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What Does Being Skinny Fat Truly Mean?
How can someone be both skinny and fat at the exact same time? This is how the phrase “skinny fat” may appear paradoxical. Skinny fat individuals are those who maintain a low or moderate body mass index and seem small in clothing but have significant levels of body fat and little muscular mass. Therefore, they appear to be soft and lack much muscular tone underneath those clothing.
The term “skinny fat” has a legitimate scientific description that goes something along the lines of being metabolically obese despite maintaining a healthy weight, also known as having too little muscle and too much fat.
In essence, it’s an imbalance between your muscle and fat levels that can cause you to seem obese even when you’re at your optimal weight. The skinny fat individual will continue to be overweight.
Even if a person has the same percentage of body fat as someone who is ripped, the skinny fat syndrome might make them appear to still be overweight. This is due to the fact that body composition, and not weight, determines whether a person is skinny or obese.
If they exercise at all, skinny fat people often focus on cardio, and processed foods make up the majority of their diet. So, how can a skinny fat body be eliminated? You must absolutely alter your eating and exercise habits. But worry not, we’re here to guide you through it step by step!
Why Am I Skinny Fat?
If you’re wondering why a person gets skinny fat, we’re here to shed some light on the matter. Typically, an individual becomes skinny fat due to one of the four following reasons:
1. No Strenght Training
Lack of muscle is the key contributor to becoming skinny fat. Strength training is the best strategy to maintain and grow muscular mass, making it the best approach to avoid becoming skinny fat.
Essentially, lifting heavy, complex weights will help you lose your skinny fat. Even if you make every other error on this list, building muscle and reducing your body fat percentage will still occur if you lift a lot of weights often.
In order to make obvious changes, you just need to perform two to three weightlifting exercises each week—four to five workouts per week are about the most you’ll ever need to accomplish.
2. No Balanced Diet
Lack of protein makes it virtually hard to grow muscle and strength since it deprives your body of the building blocks it requires. To make matters worse, consuming insufficient amounts of protein reduces your ability to feel satisfied after meals, raising your risk of overeating and making fat reduction more challenging.
A decent general rule of thumb is that you should consume 0.8 to 1 gram of protein for each pound of weight every day, which, for most individuals, equates to 30 to 40% of your daily caloric intake.
3. Severe Calorie Deficit
A severe calorie deficit can cause a number of issues and inconveniences in general, but especially when you aren’t lifting weights. When you aren’t doing weights, a severe calorie deficit can cause quick muscle loss, which encourages skinny fatness.
For this reason, if you want to lose fat, we advise a modest calorie deficit of 20 to 25 percent. According to research, a high-protein diet, strength exercise, and this deficit in calories allow for quick fat reduction while maintaining muscle.
4. Too Much Cardio
Exercise helps keep you healthy and lean, but too much cardio might make you skinny fat because it prevents you from building muscle and strength. A very low-calorie, low-protein diet mixed with a lot of cardio will hasten the loss of muscle even further.
In order to maintain your health and leanness, you need to engage in a reasonable amount of cardio, but not to the point that it clashes with your weightlifting exercises.
How Do I Get Rid Of My Skinny Fat?
The two approaches to combating skinny fatness are “cutting” and “lean bulking,” which include both fat loss and muscle growth. The majority of skinny fat people would benefit more from adding muscle before shedding fat since this would have the greatest positive effects on their looks and health.
Then, after gaining some muscle, concentrate for a few months on eliminating your extra body fat, and you’ll start to see significant changes in your look.
If you’re a beginner when it comes to proper weightlifting, there is one exception to this rule: in such a scenario, you can increase your muscle mass while simultaneously reducing your body fat.
Given that you’ll still be able to add a reasonable amount of muscle as you go, you should prioritize decreasing fat in this situation. Take a look at the list below for three major tips on what to do to get rid of skinny fat:
1. Focus on Compound Weightlifting
The focus of your exercises should be heavy, complex weightlifting if you want to enhance muscular growth. High-rep “pump” workouts that focus on isolated workouts are significantly less effective for growing muscle and rapidly lose their effectiveness for the majority of people.
Your main objective should be to get extremely powerful on exercises like the squat, deadlift, bench press, and military press rather than trying to get a pump or see how many TRX push-ups you can complete. The majority of people have optimal results when they can perform these exercises three to five times each week.
Additionally, you should aim to increase the weight or repetitions for each exercise and in each workout. Progressive overload is necessary if you wish to permanently put an end to skinny fatness.
2. Do Cardio in Moderation
The ideal method to include cardio into a weight-reduction routine is to just perform what is necessary to achieve your goal pace of weight loss and maintain your fitness, and nothing more. Focus mostly on low to moderate intensity, such as rucking or walking. High-intensity cardio will interfere with weightlifting more than moderate cardio, but this will burn lots of calories and require very little desire to do.
If you like doing HIIT, try doing a small amount. You don’t actually need to perform HIIT because it doesn’t help you lose weight any more than low- to moderate-intensity exercise does, but you can gain some unique health advantages from it.
Do two 20 to 40-minute simple cardio exercises per week at minimum. This is a great place to start if you want to keep your health and increase your calorie burning.
Try to keep your weekly time spent lifting weights to no more than half your weekly time spent on cardio. Don’t exceed two hours of cardio each week if you do weights for four hours each week. If at all possible, alternate days for your cardio and weightlifting; if not, aim to space them out by at least six hours.
3. Maintain a Proper Diet
Even if you work out properly, if you don’t also know what to eat, you’ll still remain skinny fat. The good news is that, contrary to what most “gurus” would have you believe, dieting is not at all difficult or laborious. Keeping a modest calorie deficit to reduce fat is the way to go.
Crash dieting, especially when coupled with a low-protein diet, plenty of cardio, and high-rep, low-weight resistance training, is one of the most effective methods to lose your hard-earned muscle.
Building muscle requires a lot of energy, so if you’re eating only enough to maintain your weight or limiting your calorie intake, it won’t happen as rapidly as it should. Whether you’re lean bulking or cutting, always remember to consume 0.8 to 1 gram of protein daily.
Conclusion
No matter how skinny or fat you think you are, there are ways to get rid of the excess weight and have the body of your dreams. The important thing to remember is that results won’t come overnight, but if you put in the work and focus on staying determined, you will achieve your goals.
Lastly, make sure your diet is healthy and that you don’t go overboard with your exercises—being happy and content with your daily routine is also a part of the deal!
Lazar Sretenović, an IFBB and REPs Level 3 certified trainer, specializes in personalized fitness programs encompassing weight lifting, EMS, and endurance training. With a focus on tailored nutrition and holistic well-being, Lazar Sretenović guides clients through transformative health journeys, emphasizing safety and individual goals.