Overweight people have one good thing going: the overeating and the heavy weight burden on the joints give some solid muscle tissue underneath the jiggly surface. When those folks decide to melt off the spare tire (s), the double chin (s)  and the saddle bags, some nice muscle bellies and definition pops up!

Skinny scrawny people with nothing but bones and some skin on them have another path to travel. They don’t weigh much, the body is not used to heavy resistance, so even small dumbbells are heavy and hard to lift. With a lot of food on a consistent basis and progressive overload starting SLOW and building up step by step, you will see tiny puny muscle grow like mini mountains lol. .

But then, we have the SKINNY FAT PEOPLE. Oh yeah, it’s the most common type nowadays. The 21st century human body formed to complete imperfection from sitting hunched over at the laptop and from the heavy exercise regimen of rolling the chair over to the vending machine. Skinny Fat people look AWESOME with clothing on. Seriously. Slender, legs that look great in skinny pants because they tend to hold everything tight. Until the pants go off.

When skinny fat people now want to get in shape, we get some problems: dieting for fat loss or going for muscle gain? Well, here is the low down, and I thought you wanted my opinion because I get questions from skinny fat french fries people daily…:

You have no muscle, you need to build it.

Since you are new to training you will build muscle quickly.

Train like you are going to build massive muscle (hard and heavy), but diet like you want to lose fat.

Realize you don’t have enough muscle to support a super hard cardio program AND serious dieting.

Accept that just because you don’t weigh much does not mean you can eat cookies, crackers, cheese. Those calories might end up easier in your fat cells due to a less perfect nutrient partitioning. This means more calories end up in your fat cells than in your muscle cells. You can change this to be the other way around with a sound weight training routine and consistency in a sound diet plan.

You might need to get a bit bigger first (jeans get tighter etc) because muscle growth comes first, fat loss later. It is ok.

If you are skinny, get it, you cannot overdo cardio to burn the fat off: you need more muscle mass to support your metabolism.

Don’t compare yourself to seasoned, well trained fitness models/athletes. Just because you weight the same or have the same height you cannot follow the same routine in the gym or at the table.

Skinny fat people, you might not gain much from eating junk, but you won’t see any muscle definition if you keep on eating crap.

Remember you ate and did not exercise for a LONG time. Now don’t expect miracles in a month… It takes time.

There is only one solution to a firm body: weight training.

The other week I met a lady who said she loved my arms. She always wanted toned arms she claimed. She grabbed my arms and said “but not this big, I don’t want this big, smaller!” and all this with her foreign accent lol. “Hey, grab a tape measure” I said to her and she came over with it. “Measure my arm” I demanded. She did. “Now measure yours”. She did.

“WOW!!!! I have bigger arms????? How can that be!!!” she said in shock.

She had regular “high rep biceps curl with 5 lbs and only running because she does not want to get big” and yet she had about 1 inch thicker arms than me without definition. And she wanted smaller arms than me… LOL