The Troubles Of Being The Skinny-Fat Guy

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Truth be told, I have the worst body type for a guy ever. Regrettably, there isn’t much information on this body type as it’s quite unique. In fact, most people haven’t even heard of it. This body type is commonly referred to as the Skinny-Fat guy. When you have this body type, your limbs are usually skinny overall but you can be easily hiding over 20% body fat in your belly, love handles and dare I say it, in your “man boobs”.

You see, when an average person gains weight, it spreads out pretty evenly. When this person decides to lose it, it drops off quite evenly too. However, when a Skinny-Fat guy decides to hit the gym, the weight doesn’t come off that easy. In fact, you have to spend extra weeks if not months on one particular area before you can move on.

So if you are overweight at the moment and feel down, just remember the phrase “Someone always has it worst than you”. In this case, it is the Skinny-Fat guy.

Anyways, I’m not a whiner (At least not most of the time) so I wanted to tackle this issue head on. Like most people, my research began on Google. Not surprisingly, there isn’t much information on the skinny-fat phenomenon yet.

After all, it’s is a rare body type and since it mostly belongs to men, you won’t really hear us talking about it over a cup of tea. So as you’ve probably know by now, it wasn’t easy trying to figure this thing out on my own. However, what I’ve learned is if you can’t understand something by just reading about it, figure it out by taking action.

First thing I did was decide on what I should eat. Again, everyone is different but for my body type, I realized that it was responding greatly to plant based foods. I came up with this awesome salad that contained beans (Kidney Beans), lentils and added some lettuce, cucumber and onions for flavor. Sometimes I would add corn for more variation in the flavor but that would be all. This would usually be my meal for lunch and dinner. Of course I had my cheat days but I kept it fairly clean.

For breakfast and if I needed to munch on something dinner, I would just make a nice green smoothie (I did get a super greens powder) and munch on baby carrots or almonds.

Before you ever start any kind of training regimen, make sure you get your diet in check. I think diet plays a massive role in changing your body, especially when you are trying to lose weight.

So I started going to the gym and did some very specific exercises. On my abs (Excuse me, I mean my tummy), I started doing reverse crunches and lower back exercises to build some muscle around my core. Believe it or not, lower back exercises are not just good for your abs but can really make your lose your love handles.

I also didn’t want to lose any muscle. Yes I actually had a pretty sweet upper body (That is until you gazed lower and saw my love handles) and I didn’t want to lose all that. So I continued doing dead lifts, squats, training my arms with dumbbells and even dips.

So my previous muscle building routine remain intact, I just switched up my diet.

One major thing I did (At least for me), was running on the treadmill after each work out. Whether I was working on my arms or my lower back, I would always begin my workout with a 5 – 8 minute cardio (Warm-up) and end it with a 20 minute fast jog on the treadmill. Initially I had to build my stamina up from 3 minutes to 5 and so on but I got to the 20 minute mark in about 40 days.

Soon, I started getting lean. I could actually see some definition in my body and I was now getting in shape. It was an incredible feeling. My love handles were shrinking (Which was the most mind blowing part for me).

Long story short, I have finally found a way to conquer my ridiculously hard to tame body type.

So I kept it all up for the next 6 months, got in the best shape of my life, looked incredible (If I must say) and felt even better.

Fast forward 2 years and I’m now worst than when I started. In fact, I’m almost 25 lbs more overweight. My knee got injured and I couldn’t run or lift weights. There is not much you can when your knee is injured to a point where you can’t lift or run. So I resorted to what most people who end up being overweight usually do, eat!

Oven baked pizzas, eating out, drinking lots of wine led to a lot of unwanted fat. A pretty awesome way to gain weight but let’s face it, it’s not the right thing to do to yourself, especially in the long run.

If you are reading this and it’s still not the end of June 2015 (When my knee brace comes off), then I’m pretty much in the same situation.

One thing’s for sure, I can’t wait to hit the gym but this time, the Skinny-Fat guy won’t be there.