What is up guys, coach Joe here at the Lionsland Locate in Culmar, PA, and on this video we're going to be talking about skinny fat. Really where this whole thing came from is I put up questions on my Instagram and I answer them, but the problem with doing that on Instagram is it's always a really short version of an answer. Right, and I try to give as much context as I can as in a little time as possible, but the cool thing about this video is I can dive deeper, and I think this video will really help a lot of you. The first thing I want to say is that at one point in my life I was skinny fat, so I've been in this position, and the other thing is I deal with this question all the time from people on what they should do when they are skinny fat. The question that I got on Instagram was, I'm skinny fat, 5 foot 8-mail, 160 pounds, 90% body fat, do I bulk or do I cut? Great question, we're going to answer it. The first thing I wanted to find is basically what is skinny fat? And it's weird because we all kind of know what skinny fat is, and it's basically like you're in between kind of two body types, right? Where you have fat stores or fat in areas, but you're not necessarily a fat person or obese, but you're also not jacked. I remember when this first happened to me is I was overweight when I was younger, and then I started doing a lot of cardio and a lot of body weight movements, and I just wasn't eating as much, so I lost a good chunk of weight. And I thought I was going to get shredded, right? That was the image I had in my mind. I was only going to venture, like a superhero, but when I looked in the mirror, obviously there was a huge change in my physique, but it was in between. My muscles weren't bulging or popping. I wasn't fat. I kind of had some stomach definition, but still had a belly. Just like the dad bod, for example, right? He's good looking, like he's not fat, but he's not super jacked. Like he just is. He just is. Yeah. So that's where I was at. Back to the main point, when you're in that position or you have that body type, what do I recommend you do? Do I recommend you bulk or do I recommend you cut? So the first thing right off the bat is I feel like we need to establish some sort of consistent eating and nutrition and also a training program. And what I mean by nutrition is the first thing right off the bat is increasing your protein intake, and a really basic rule of thumb is having some sort of protein source, the size of your hand with every meal. But just having a gram of protein for however much you weigh. Okay, so if I weigh 160 pounds, I want to try to get in 160 grams of protein. And that's an issue I see across the board with a lot of people I work with is that they're not getting adequate amounts of protein. And they're also not consistently eating throughout the week, like maybe one day out of the week, right there at MainisCaller. Then the next day in the week, they're at a deficit. And then the day after that, they're eating a ton, right? So the weekend they start binge eating and going out and kind of just like lose control. What I would try to say is try to develop some sort of consistency with your meals and increase that protein. So with that increased protein, you're going to build muscle. Okay, protein is the foundation for just building muscle in general. You know, maybe throw in more fruits and vegetables, maybe cut out the processed food. You know, slowly try to chip away at just developing a better nutrition. The other thing is a training program. A lot of people who are skinny fat aren't consistently training or maybe you haven't started training yet. And I am a huge advocate of strength training for all its benefits, especially when it comes to body composition and building muscle. So if we have a nice sound structured program that we're running and then we have our nutrition kind of a like a main and slow level of some sort or just consistency with nutrition and that higher protein intake. If you're doing that and I want to say for like, you know, six to 12 months is a good time frame of just just doing that consistently. I guarantee you're going to have some sort of body comp change, right? So that's like my first step is the nutrition and the training needs to be sound with the nutrition. It needs to be sound with the high protein and doing some sort of resistance training, okay? My mistake was I was doing a ton of cardio and I wasn't building muscle. So if you're exercising, but you're not using the proper modalities to build muscle, you probably are going to end up in that category of like a skinny fat type of body type. So make sure that we're doing resistance training and we're fueling our body accordingly. And what I mean by body recomp is during that time, you're probably going to lose some of that fat and you're probably going to gain muscle. A lot of people are like, you know, can you body recomp? I've heard that it's really difficult to do. Well, the best case scenario for a body recomp is people who are just starting to train or people who are overweight and are novice lifters. Because when they throw that new stimulus in with better eating habits and a training plan, we tend to drop body fat, we tend to build muscle. And I guarantee you over that six months to a year when you look in the mirror, you're going to now have more muscle. You're probably going to have less fat. And that's going to put you in a better position to then make the call whether you want to bulk or then you want to cut. And when you get to that position, it's totally up to you. You know, if you're happy with how your physique looks and you've put on more muscle and then you want to die down or go into death. And kind of reveal that muscle that you've built, then do the deficit. You know, a slow deficit. Just drop your calories by 500 calories. Maybe increase your daily step count. Very simple stuff here. Do that for a couple of months. And then you can be like, okay, well, this is where I'm at. If you like it, stay there. Okay, figure out where your main ins level is and just keep that physique. Now, if you find that and you're like, you know what? I like where I'm at, but I want to increase muscle. Now you have a better base to put on that muscle. So from there, I would probably do a massing phase and the massing phase, the opposite of the deficit, we just increase those calories by, you know, 500 calories. We see how that works over the course of a couple of weeks if the scale is going up. And our nutrition is more in track where we're eating a high protein diet. We've increased those carbohydrates around training. We're having moderate fats. Then you're going to see that you are putting on good quality muscle, but you're not so worried about being fat. Right? When the beginning, if you just started and you put on a lot of size, you're probably not going to be as happy with your physique because you're like, well, yeah, I got bigger, but now I just look more fat. And instead of the skinny, it's just fat. The other thing on top of that is once you kind of get consistent with training and nutrition and you do that recomb, it builds your confidence. I mean, that's one thing that I don't think it's talked about enough is, is you just feel better. You're more motivated and you're going to be more into the training and the nutrition because you kind of got hooked now. You build that habit. So that's what that's kind of the route I would take. So just a quick recap guys. If you made this far in the video, you know, I really recommend you guys like the videos that's driving the channel. Really appreciate means a lot. But if you were my client working with me, first thing we would do is just get a baseline in nutrition. We'd increase that protein to around one gram per body pound. So if you're 160 or 150 pounds, you're eating three meals a day. I tried to get in 50 grams of protein per meal or do three meals with a little bit less protein than have a shake as like a snack. You know, anytime during the day to hit that kind of general target of protein from there, we want to develop our training regimen. And I definitely recommend strength training or resistance training, not just cardio and body weight stuff because we do want to push our capability of building muscle along with that increased protein intake. We're going to really spark that recomb. Once we've hit that level after good six to 12 months of training, we reevaluate. Once we reevaluate, we said, okay, I probably want to cut pull out that muscle a little bit more, go into a slight deficit or, you know, I want to mass now. Okay, I'm comfortable with where my body's at. I looked more like of a jacked body type than I did before. So I'm okay with adding, you know, five to 10 pounds. It's not all going to be muscle, but it's going to be a much better base to start from. If you feel more confident about it, then you did in the past. That's my take. All right, if you are skinny fat, hopefully this video helped you. I've been there before. I'm a big advocate of strength training, proper nutrition, and just you becoming the best version of yourself and being as healthy as you possibly can. And having that physique that you do want. Okay, it's okay to want those things. And I'm an advocate for getting those things in life. So that's my take on it. All right, stay at Lean Meat Drank Machine. Make sure you subscribe to the channel. And I'll catch you guys next time. Peace.