Skinnyfat To Ripped: How To Decide If You Should Cut Or Bulk

hey folks Dr Mike here for Renaissance periodization answering a super common question that we get all the time is Dr Mike what do I do if I am skinny fat and I feel you 1000 and I think I have some good suggestions in your quest to look the best you came here for some reason made a mistake on your apartment we'll find out very soon so do you balk do you cut what the fuck are you supposed to do if you're skinny fat so first let's Define skinny fat it's uh you know not a clear

definition but it's a spectral definition so it's folks on the end of the spectrum where compared to their peers they don't have a ton of muscle but also they have some pretty significant fat stores like if you had to describe someone's body to someone before a blind date or a setup date that's more that's the kind of body that's a little tough to describe you know like you set up your friend Rob with Rebecca both our names isn't that nice and she's like oh my God like what does Rob look like you know could explain

David could shut up we can't tell you he's like hi just give me like a Clarence yeah oh is it like skinny you know yeah yeah it's like a skinny guy trapped inside a fat person's body and she's like oh like I said that wrong just kidding Rebecca it'll be more than you need or deserve Jesus I hate Rebecca for some reason in any case sorry Rebecca's out there didn't mean to use your name but skinny fat is actually the living proof of the fact that the body type system they used to use with mesomorph

endomorph ectomorph is bullshit because they forgot skinny fat as I remember ectomorph is like you're skinny but lean mesomorph is your fucking Superman jacked and lean endomorph is your fat but fucking jacked underneath skinny Fat's the other one man and they never talk about that one because that's fucking rough right but hey couple things first of all how your body is and how you look doesn't fucking matter hardly anything in life our fucking whole industry is a goddamn like legious Leisure industry it's the whole thing is a game it's a joke right so first of

all you're skinny fat don't worry about it another shit fucking matters anyway what does uh Elon musk's body composition and Jeff Bezos was going to say some shit boy got jacked on me real quick Bill Gates what does he look like doesn't fucking manage he's a goddamn billionaire right so if you're you've got solid game you're handsome you're rich and successful and just not a piece of shit you're gonna be doing just great in your life being skinny fat I wouldn't worry about anything but if you want to not be skinny fat or you want

to be less so what is the proper thing to do and a lot of times this is where standard advice kind of clashes with the predicament of the skinny fat person here it is a lot of people say you go to fuck both bro you got to just fucking start lifting you got to bulk and a lot of these folks are entering Lifting for the first time so they really have a lot of questions well yeah on the one hand like the bulk I feel you on that but they're like well I'm already fat if

I'm in a bulk I'm just going to be like a fucking sumo wrestler that's not why I entered the the training and nutrition game is to become that and then the other hand if you say well all right just cut well hold on a second I'm skinny underneath I'm fucking lifting all these weights you need all this goddamn protein powder so that I look like some kind of something and if I just died a bunch of weight off I don't want my co-workers and the girl of my dreams who also is at work and that's

problematic I don't want her to be like oh my God are you okay do you like have like cancer or something like Jesus Christ who the hell just says that to someone no I just started a fitness program you don't want that sort of shit you want her to be like oh my God you're like I'm staring dressed Rebecca and she's like Ah that's Rebecca again it was always Rebecca so bulking sucks cutting sucks what the fuck are we supposed to do with skinny fat people in order to get them in the kind of shape

that they want to be in more than they are in now so I think a really good approach to the skinny fat situation is something like this priority number one if you're a skinny fat and you just entered the fitness space you just started lifting or whatever is to just begin continue to lift hard or begin lifting nice and hard nothing crazy three four sessions a week is good for almost everyone at the stage like an hour each at a time train whatever muscle groups you want to develop probably all around is good and on

the nutritional end just try to make your diet nutritious and feed your muscles which is to say multiple meals a day of mostly healthy foods and keep trying to hit like the decent amount of protein okay for bodybuilder looks down at your meal on his way with his own meal out of the restaurant you're eating at he should be like oh there's some protein on that plate that's nice good for that guy as opposed to being like what the fuck are you four years old who made your plate for you or like oh are you

getting over breakup because there's only dessert foods on that so you want some veggies some fruit some whole grains nice good slab of meat or vegetarian protein source so glass of milk something like that just good nutrition and we have a ton of videos for you guys on just nutrition for healthy eating that we have I don't know where the fuck's got the video guys gonna put it he may put it nowhere he may tell me to go put it somewhere if you know saying he's often rude to me is that a problem comment below

so yes we have tons of ways to eat healthy but basically we just want this person this individual to eat healthy and not 100 healthy but just healthy Baseline and eat plenty of protein this is going to do a few things it is going to supply muscle growth so underneath the skinny fatness the muscles will be growing and in addition to that a lot of times when people cut out a bunch of junk food and try to eat more healthy they lose a lot of fat too often at the same time because they're just beginning

the process so what's your body weight gonna do in you basically shoot for maintenance calories with this whole plan or just eat enough food to where you're not super hungry anymore and just call it there you may lose weight you may gain weight based on how your body responds to the hunger signaling of weight training some people may start weight training even if they eat well they gain weight that's solid they're going to gain mostly muscle anyway or all muscle it's going to be amazing once you cut down later if you just aren't super hungry

when you start eating healthy foods you're going to be building a ton of muscle under the hood because of the high protein and the great health value of the food and because you're training for the first time in your life but you may actually lose a bunch of weight so by the time it comes time to like cut on purpose you're already pretty fucking lean and you're not even skinny fat anymore amazing what I would recommend doing that for is I don't want to put too fine a point in it but like basically here if

someone comes to me if you came to me this is the way I I make all these videos as far as like the Powerpoints for them the way I answer questions in these videos is if a human being actually came up to me and like had a real fucking life situation asked me what to do this isn't like just hypotheticals this is like real shit so I don't ever want to say like it has to be a year but like yeah at least six months and maybe as long as a year and a half to

two years so I'd say a year is a good goal so if you just started lifting weights you're kind of skinny fat you don't know what to do eat healthy and at maintenance with plenty of protein train hard or just fucking put the horse blinders on for one year straight is it the most rapid body transformation you can have no but it's the one that'll make the biggest impact shortly after a year so let's say about a year of this you've done it the prediction is that you are going to be substantially harder I don't

know about down there my doctor says that's an intractable problem for me at this point that's neither here nor there what you are going to be is like less mushy you may have a similar overall shape maybe but your shape will probably be better your shoulders will be a little bigger your arms are all tighter at the sleeves and you are physically harder for the touch because more of you underneath his muscle and less is fat this is already really good news but it's just the beginning after that year of essentially recomping gaining muscle while

losing fat and taking advantage of the fact that that's really all you need to make crazy transformation crazy progress after that what I recommend is taking like about a 12-week fat loss phase where you lose like oh a half a pound to a pound and a half per week depending on how large you are but like for your average you know 170 pound 180 pound person maybe just even a pound per week just a little above that you lose maybe 12 15 pounds in the course of three months and remember you have built quite a

bit of muscle and now that muscle gets revealed substantially more now you're looking way way way different this is when the people start complimenting you this is when Stacy from accountings like um I'd really like to account for your deck is that too much holy shit Stacy you've been in this job for like four days of course yes tonight at eight no yes I live with my Grandma she's cool she'll be asleep by 7 30. anyway it's like I practiced this before huh so after this fat loss phase you're gonna look pretty fucking good way

better than ever and then depending on sort of which way you want to Zig or zag you can choose your destiny and there are a couple of options you can choose to maintain for a few months to let the diet fatigue cool off before going again and doing another Fat Loss phase because you're like oh I love this look but I on that it's I'm so close to being actually fucking lean I need a little maintenance and another three month diet and then I'm gonna get a fucking world champion amazing totally fine uh answer if

that's you you could get down to this new body fat level and be like oh my fucking God I look unbelievable by social life's night and day my confidence is incredible I'm not a fucking freak bodybuilder weirdo asshole steroid addict say some other words but the current social justice movement prevents that so uh I'm not into that sort of thing so I'm just going to maintain and keep lifting three or four times a week keep eating fundamentally healthy and just do me for the rest of my life beautifully perfect answer we don't all have to

go and like what am I now year 23 of a self-improvement journey that's actually killing your insides and or you could say hey like I love this new look but fuck man I could do with a little more muscle and you start a slow muscle gain phase and then you do maintenance fat loss muscle again Etc and then you're in the life of getting more jacked over time and lean over time which at some point you like the way you look and all the way up to that point you are better looking than ever I

will say one thing before we wrap this up a lot of folks who have been skinny fat before they harden up they diet it off and then they're pretty fucking chiseled they are like I want to be bigger but I feel like if I try to gain weight I'll just get really fat again the answer here is if you're gaining it like half a pound per week for 12 weeks that's like six pounds total there's just no way that let's say you only gain pure body fat that's not gonna happen you're gonna eat some fucking

muscle maybe most of it will mess in your first try if you gain only six pounds of pure body fat you started at like 174 pounds you went to 180. that is barely an impact on your physique that's like three three just over three percent body fat gain if someone goes from 12 to 15 or 15 to 18 you're not like holy shit Jim what happened to you was Japan opening up a new Sumo division that's not even a thing so you just get like a little pudgier and then here's the deal just a few

weeks of hardcore fat loss to heading will wipe that slate clean for you so if you've been skinny fat before if you have a decent control of your appetite regulation situation you're not just going to fall in to a White Castle portal and go through a Taco Bell portal and get shit out of a Burger King portal that's not going to happen to you uh then there's not any way you're gonna make magically back to super fat status so don't worry about it take your time do it right do it calmly do it with mostly

healthy foods and a little bit of junk you absolutely can put on cycles of muscle and go through Mass gains even if you've been fatter before or skinny fat before folks I sure hope I made some sense um you know about all the jokes are funny that's all I'm gonna say see you next time