And so, if you find yourself skinny fat, the good news is it's not only a fixable solution,
but it's one you can fix fast, just like Jesse. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa who you calling
skinny fat? I mean, do you have a short memory?
No, but I have a bad memory. Too much head trauma.
What s up guys, Jeff Cavaliere, Athleanx.com. Jesse Laico, Athleanx.com.
By the way, skinny fat. Here you are. This is a picture because
pictures tend to help people with bad memories. Well, I thought we deleted those a long time.
No, we keep them around for just these purposes like this. Guys, if you're looking for
a solution to your skinny fat problem, the good news is, as I mentioned in the open,
it is fixable and it's fixable quite fast if you do the right things. All right. So, when
we're talking about skinny fat we're looking at a situation where you sort of look like this.
You're skinny and you're fat. I mean, let's look at a little bit differently.
You lack muscle and you still maintain some fat around your waistline, especially for men,
particularly around their waistline. You've got skinny arms, maybe skinny legs,
you got no chest, maybe not even any abs, but you got some midsection fat.
Well, that looks a lot like me in those pictures.
There you go. So now how do we fix that? We've got two choices, right? You can either opt to attack
your fat problem and try to get skinnier. However, I wouldn't advise that because when you do,
you end up looking like this. That doesn't look so good.
No. What this is, is this is just a very skinny person. See, the base of what's
happening in a skinny fat person is a lack of muscularity. They have no muscular development.
So, what you're going to want to do is make sure that you build muscle to start fixing
this problem. However, we do have to consider nutrition, too. And there's actually two things
that I know about every skinny fat person watching this video right now, two facts.
What's that? The first thing is they're not
following a training plan. Okay.
Sort of like you work following a training plan, Jesse.
All right. Why do you have to call me out? Which is why you were skinny fat.
We'll get into that in a second. The other thing that I know is that you are not hypocaloric.
You know what that means? That means less calories
than your maintenance level. Maintenance level. That's right. You are
not there because if you were, you lose the body fat that still remains around your midsection.
Yeah. In the case of Jesse, his hypercaloric
state wasn't there because he was eating too many gummy bears and some other things. Right?
Still calling me out. But you're still accumulating too many calories
from all those sugary foods. So, let's start there. What is the game plan for you and what
you're going to have to do to fix this problem once and for all? From a nutrition standpoint,
the fact that I know you're not hypercaloric means at least you're at maintenance.
Yeah. If not, you're in some sort of calorie surplus.
Well, guess what? You're in a good enough state to build muscle. Because we actually know that
you can build muscle at the same time that you're losing fat in a caloric deficit as long as your
protein content is high enough. Right.
The recommendation there is about .8 grams per pound of body weight. If you're in that
range and you're slightly hypercaloric, not very hypercaloric, but let's say 200,
300 calories below your maintenance levels, you're still going to be able to add muscle mass,
albeit at a much slower rate. But you can still do it if your protein levels are up. But we know that
you're at least at maintenance, if not above. Yeah.
My recommendation from a nutrition standpoint, just to ensure that you've got the building blocks
to build muscle, it's just to take out some of your carbohydrates and swap in some protein. So
do me a favor, just count your protein content and grams for one or two days. We generally like
to eat around the same things almost every single day, so just do it for two days. Though I don't
ever really advise becoming a mathematician when it comes to counting your calories and
measuring out things every single day. Just for your own awareness it might help you to see how
much you're taking in. Yeah.
Because if you're not at that .8 grams per pound of body weight right now, you might be surprised
at how below that level you are. Simply taking out some carbohydrates on a gram per gram basis,
they have the same amount of calories, that's four you can make that easy swap. We don't have to play
around with increasing or decreasing calories. Right.
Now, nutritionally that's good enough. But we have to focus on that other thing. I remember I said
you're not training. No, you're exercising.
You're exercising. Look, if you're not on some sort of a committed plan, you're not going to
build muscle. If you exercise and think that that's a committed plan, it's not. And it's
the reason why you haven't built any muscle. You can't look like this and be a skinny fat person
and have any real training history under your belt. And what I mean by training is having a
progressive plan that is followed consistently. Because I'm sorry, even a bad plan--
Not dangerous plan. Not a dangerous plan, but a bad plan,
and a lot of them out there by the way. But a bad plan follow consistently is still going to help
you to build muscle. Yeah.
So, you need to get on a training plan and these are the things that have to be
part of that plan. Number one, you have to have a focus, as we always talk about here,
on building your base strength around a strong foundation in the bigger compound lifts.
Right. Just like Jesse has.
Yup in the squat, bench and deadlift. I've been progressing the weight that I've been using over
a long period of time, but short increments of that amount of weight and the weight has
gone up actually pretty significantly. So then in two-or three-time body weight.
Three times, yeah. So, then your squat is going up as well.
Yeah. So, building around this foundation.
But let's talk about reality here. Reality is you might have something called extra phobia.
Which I definitely had. And you're not alone. A lot of people,
when they first start out of the plan, again, no muscle on your body, which means you've
probably never even hit the gym. Because we know even as a newbie, you're going to gain
muscle sometimes just by looking at the weights, but you have to look at the weights consistently
in order for that to happen. You need to understand that some of those exercises are
going to feel a little daunting to you and you may avoid them altogether. And that's a mistake,
right? I talked about and in many videos before, you need to start somewhere on them, realize
that just because these are basic exercises, don't assume that they're so simple to do.
Right. The more compound the exercise is, the
more complex it actually is to perform it. You've got a lot of different muscles working together
in sync. You've got to move an uncoordinated body, oftentimes through space, through these multiple
joints, which can become challenging. And you have many different areas up and down the kinetic chain
for these weaknesses to actually rather ugly head and cause that lift to go the wrong direction.
Yeah. Right? You could have tight ankles,
you could have a lack of mobility in your hips, you could have a lack of thoracic extension. All
these things would inhibit your ability to perform the squat, let's say, safely and also maximally by
adding as much weight as possible because you're not moving through space in the most efficient
way. So, you would actually just look up some of the Athlean-X videos when you identify what
some of your postural and biomechanical flaws are and work on fixing those.
Yeah. As you continue to attack those weights and as
you continue to build upon that solid foundation. But in no instance are you supposed to avoid the
exercises altogether. We need to focus on those. Yeah.
The next thing you have to do, and this might come as a shock to some of those
on the skinny fat spectrum here, and that is, should they be following any of the
other exercises? Is the minimalist approach enough or should you be doing more?
You should definitely be doing more because the isolation exercises or
the smaller exercise will not only help to build hypertrophy and build larger muscles
and improve your physique, but it will also carry over into your bigger lifts and compound lifts.
You're learning something here Jesse, after all these years.
Hey, I ve been listening to you a lot. The head trauma hasn t completely shot your
brain there. But the fact is, yes, when you follow these other exercises and supplement
them into your routine, there's three things that actually happen. Number one, you might
actually have some fun, right? Because though the compound is maybe a little bit scary to you
at the beginning of your journey, these are the exercises that you tend to look forward to.
Yeah. Right? Because you
just get to feel a little bit better and perform them where you like the pump that you get from
doing that. So, guess what? I do them because it'll increase your attraction to the gym and
keep you on that consistent training plan. At speaking of the pump, just like Arnold talked
about how great the pump is-- Oh Jesus, here we go.
You know, I get the feeling of coming. Coming all the time with this pump.
You know, I feel like I'm coming in the gym. I'm coming at home. I'm coming, you know, backstage
before a show. I'm coming all the time. And we know we heard about pump story with Arnold.
Secondly, as you learn that not only do you have fun doing these, but you get a better my muscle
connection from doing these smaller exercises. Guess what that does? That actually helps you
to create a larger sum of the parts so that when you go back to the compound lift, the output is
overall better. Yeah.
So, it helps you to actually increase your overall output. The third thing that doing these lifts
actually does is it increases some of the overall training volume to assist in the hypertrophied
that you're talking about. So, you want to make sure that you add those to your training routine.
If you were doing these things, guys, the only other thing that you can sort of screw up here
is the consistency with what you're doing and the training frequency. So,
what I would say is even again, a plan that got you in the gym three times a week.
Like our perfect total body workout, that will be enough if done in a progressive manner
to start to help you to build the muscle that we were talking about in the beginning. Remember,
the muscle growth is going to be the solution to your skinny fat problems. Now, if you want
to go back at the end and start looking at how you're going to address the overall
excess fat that you have, well, then you can start fine tuning it from there.
Yeah. And again, that's
where I oftentimes say continue to try to pursue both, albeit at a little bit of a slower pace,
by allowing yourself to manipulate your protein content, getting a slightly hypercaloric state to
get rid of the fat and keep the muscle going. That is an option. You still have the option to do the
alternative and go in a slightly hypercaloric state to try to make that happen a little bit
faster. The point is, starting with the muscle growth, is how you're going to solve your skinny
fat problems. And making the few but important changes to nutrition is going to have all the
difference in helping you to get to your goal. Now, I talked about it being fast. Here's the
reason why. If you have no appreciable muscle mass in your body right now, because you're
never have followed a training plan, guess what? Those new gains come in handy here. They allow
you to start adding weight and muscle weight at a much faster rate than any other time in your life.
If you do this right, guys, I promise you, you're going to start to like what you see at a much
faster pace than you may have even expected. If you like, the video found it helpful make sure
you leave your comments and thumbs up below. If you like, skinny fat Jessie or not skinny
fat Jessie better. Bigger Jesse.
Bigger Jesse. The only thing that s getting bigger is your head.
Okay, that s mean. And your deadlift, but that s fine. Guys if you re
looking for a training plan, progressive and built around sound training principles as well as a
step by step nutrition plan you can find them all over at athleanx.com. And if you haven't done so,
make sure you click, subscribe and turn on your notifications so you never missing a video when
we put one out. All right guys see you soon. That s for calling me skinny fat.