R
I have talked on here before about my struggles with skinnyfat/curry genetics and getting "buff". In short, I've tried for years to get buff but always remained weak, small, and skinnyfat. If I tried bulking I'd get fat. If I tried cutting, I'd get weaker. And so nothing changed.
I think I've finally found the solution in the past few months. The key seems to be a combination of 16/8 intermittent fasting with massive amounts of exercise.
I've been doing the intermittent fasting for a year now almost, and I definitely trimmed ~2-3% body fat off with it alone. But since adding the massive amount of exercise in the past 1-2 months, I've lost at least 1-2 inches off my waist in just that short time, while also maintaining the same weight. My pants and underwear are falling off, but my total weight has remained the same. This is "body recomposition" - the loss of fat and gain of muscle at the same time - which is the holy grail for skinnyfatters.
It's still too early to say "mission accomplished", but I've never lost that much fat in such a short time while simultaneously increasing my strength, endurance, and muscle mass. So I think this is it. If I keep going at this rate I should look pretty good in another ~6 months or so which would be a dream come true.
16/8 Intermittent Fasting
This is a dietary regimen where you don't eat for 16 hours straight each day, then eat for 8 hours, then repeat. It's simple and easy. Generally the most popular way to do it is just to skip breakfast. So for example, you might get up at 8 AM, eat lunch at 12-1 PM, and then dinner at 5-8 PM, then stop eating again until the next day.
This dietary strategy is designed for skinnyfatters. 16/8 intermittent fasting helps with body recomp by giving your body a longer time of caloric deficit per day (16 hours) to burn fat in, then feeding it (usually after or along with exercise) to help rebuild muscle. This allows you to burn fat without going into such aggressive catabolism that you burn muscle too. And it gives your muscles a chance to regenerate each day.
Other big advantages of 16/8 intermittent fasting:
- It's easier to do that the six meals a day trainers used to suggest or ketogenic diets which are exhausting.
- It's especially easy if you are lazy in the morning and hate breakfast.
- It makes you appreciate your meals more when they come.
I am doing 2 scoops of whey protein a day (extra 56 g protein since I don't like eating chicken breasts all day). One veggie shake a day. The rest is maybe a turkey sub, some chicken with rice and broccoli, lentils, or something else reasonable. If I want to cheat with some junk, I might have a chocolate bar to break my fast if I just finished working out as well, and I'll explain why in a moment.
Massive Exercise
The second component to what's been working for me is massive amounts of exercise. I have always previously bought into the "don't overexercise" philosophy trainers promote. Most bodybuilders/trainers will advise against doing too much cardio, or hitting the same body part too often. But in my case, whenever I followed those minimalistic approaches, I didn't gain enough muscle on bulks, and I lost too much muscle on cuts. I also have noticed most high level athletes exercise several hours every day and don't suffer from it - they look great, so why be so restrictive?
I think the need for high levels of exercise in my case is secondary to shitty genetics. In studies there are "nonresponders" to exercise who don't gain nearly as much muscle as "high responders" despite same diet and lifting regimens. I think I am a low responder at best. And I think I have now proven that for me, the solution has been to do way more exercise than people usually recommend.
The new exercise I have been doing is 1-2 hours biking 4 days a week. Today I did 3 hours. I don't set a maximum limit. I just bike as much as I have time and energy for. I bike as hard and fast as I can. This tends to emulate HIIT principles, though I don't plan anything tightly. I just go with whatever's fun for me. Since this is a massive amount of leg exercise, I am no longer doing leg workouts with weights. Most cyclists have incredible legs whether they lift weights or not.
I am then doing upper body weight lifting 3-5 days a week as well. This commonly includes a random rotation of bench press, incline press, dips on rings, pullups, rows, push ups, bicep curls, deltoid flies. Mostly compound exercises. I am not bothering with many isolation exercises. I am also no longer worrying about "giving enough time between hitting the same body part twice". Again, my philosophy now is that if you are a nonresponder you must hit the body longer, harder, and more frequently to get results. So as long as I feel well enough to rework a body part without injury, I do it.
Combining These
The absolute best combination of these two things comes on my days when I'm not working. I wake up with nothing to eat, and then I go biking for a few hours on an empty stomach. I will have consumed >100 grams protein the day before, and studies show this circulates in the blood for at least a day after. So I have protein in my system already during this to help protect my muscles.
The body has around ~2000 calories worth of total glycogen stores which it initially uses for energy when you don't feed it. You are burning 100 calories per hour at baseline. So in the 16 hours fasting, you are burning 1600 calories. Biking burns another 500+ calories per hour. Two hours of biking plus the fast = 2600 calories burned at a minimum. So it is inevitable to start burning fat during this time.
After you've burned most of your glycogen and you are heavily burning fat, your body will go into ketosis. This is what people aim for on low carb diets. It's where your body is purely burning fat to make ketones. I find after 1-2 hours of biking, I start to taste ketones in my mouth. If you've ever done no carb you'll know the taste. Any exercise after that is almost guaranteed to be primarily fat burning. So this process allows you to basically enter and leave ketosis multiple times a week. It gives the benefits of a ketogenic diet without the exhaustion and carb cravings.
Once you finish your workout or bike, and are ready to eat again, because your glycogen stores are so depleted, you can really hammer carbs or even sugar hard. Any carbs or sugar you take in will almost purely go to replentishing your glycogen stores. You can even eat chocolate bars. Your body will not be able to use any sugar from it to make fat even if it wants to because the muscles and liver will soak it up instead. So you can eat a massive carb loaded meal with zero consequence (as long as it's not too fatty and still has some protein).
This constant oscillation between borderline ketosis (during the fasts) and excess (during the refeeding parts which ideally follow exercise) allows a simultaneous fat loss and muscle gain.
Again, I concede this might be premature to get too excited over, but I am excited. I've never seen my belt size go down so much in 1-2 months and yet my total weight is exactly the same. I also love the taste of ketones because it tastes like victory (fat burning) and I'm tasting them more and more on my long bike days. So if anyone is suffering with skinnyfat genetics, you might want to consider 16/8 intermittent fasting and upping your exercise to as much as you can physically handle.
The best article I have read which seems to confirm this philosophy is this one (although he's more anti-cardio than I am):
https://legionathletics.com/skinny-fat/
I wanted to write this while it was fresh in my mind and seemed interesting to me. I'll post back in a few months to see if I've made the same amount of further progress. I'm optimistic. It's hard not to be when you're tasting ketones.
I think I've finally found the solution in the past few months. The key seems to be a combination of 16/8 intermittent fasting with massive amounts of exercise.
I've been doing the intermittent fasting for a year now almost, and I definitely trimmed ~2-3% body fat off with it alone. But since adding the massive amount of exercise in the past 1-2 months, I've lost at least 1-2 inches off my waist in just that short time, while also maintaining the same weight. My pants and underwear are falling off, but my total weight has remained the same. This is "body recomposition" - the loss of fat and gain of muscle at the same time - which is the holy grail for skinnyfatters.
It's still too early to say "mission accomplished", but I've never lost that much fat in such a short time while simultaneously increasing my strength, endurance, and muscle mass. So I think this is it. If I keep going at this rate I should look pretty good in another ~6 months or so which would be a dream come true.
16/8 Intermittent Fasting
This is a dietary regimen where you don't eat for 16 hours straight each day, then eat for 8 hours, then repeat. It's simple and easy. Generally the most popular way to do it is just to skip breakfast. So for example, you might get up at 8 AM, eat lunch at 12-1 PM, and then dinner at 5-8 PM, then stop eating again until the next day.
This dietary strategy is designed for skinnyfatters. 16/8 intermittent fasting helps with body recomp by giving your body a longer time of caloric deficit per day (16 hours) to burn fat in, then feeding it (usually after or along with exercise) to help rebuild muscle. This allows you to burn fat without going into such aggressive catabolism that you burn muscle too. And it gives your muscles a chance to regenerate each day.
Other big advantages of 16/8 intermittent fasting:
- It's easier to do that the six meals a day trainers used to suggest or ketogenic diets which are exhausting.
- It's especially easy if you are lazy in the morning and hate breakfast.
- It makes you appreciate your meals more when they come.
I am doing 2 scoops of whey protein a day (extra 56 g protein since I don't like eating chicken breasts all day). One veggie shake a day. The rest is maybe a turkey sub, some chicken with rice and broccoli, lentils, or something else reasonable. If I want to cheat with some junk, I might have a chocolate bar to break my fast if I just finished working out as well, and I'll explain why in a moment.
Massive Exercise
The second component to what's been working for me is massive amounts of exercise. I have always previously bought into the "don't overexercise" philosophy trainers promote. Most bodybuilders/trainers will advise against doing too much cardio, or hitting the same body part too often. But in my case, whenever I followed those minimalistic approaches, I didn't gain enough muscle on bulks, and I lost too much muscle on cuts. I also have noticed most high level athletes exercise several hours every day and don't suffer from it - they look great, so why be so restrictive?
I think the need for high levels of exercise in my case is secondary to shitty genetics. In studies there are "nonresponders" to exercise who don't gain nearly as much muscle as "high responders" despite same diet and lifting regimens. I think I am a low responder at best. And I think I have now proven that for me, the solution has been to do way more exercise than people usually recommend.
The new exercise I have been doing is 1-2 hours biking 4 days a week. Today I did 3 hours. I don't set a maximum limit. I just bike as much as I have time and energy for. I bike as hard and fast as I can. This tends to emulate HIIT principles, though I don't plan anything tightly. I just go with whatever's fun for me. Since this is a massive amount of leg exercise, I am no longer doing leg workouts with weights. Most cyclists have incredible legs whether they lift weights or not.
I am then doing upper body weight lifting 3-5 days a week as well. This commonly includes a random rotation of bench press, incline press, dips on rings, pullups, rows, push ups, bicep curls, deltoid flies. Mostly compound exercises. I am not bothering with many isolation exercises. I am also no longer worrying about "giving enough time between hitting the same body part twice". Again, my philosophy now is that if you are a nonresponder you must hit the body longer, harder, and more frequently to get results. So as long as I feel well enough to rework a body part without injury, I do it.
Combining These
The absolute best combination of these two things comes on my days when I'm not working. I wake up with nothing to eat, and then I go biking for a few hours on an empty stomach. I will have consumed >100 grams protein the day before, and studies show this circulates in the blood for at least a day after. So I have protein in my system already during this to help protect my muscles.
The body has around ~2000 calories worth of total glycogen stores which it initially uses for energy when you don't feed it. You are burning 100 calories per hour at baseline. So in the 16 hours fasting, you are burning 1600 calories. Biking burns another 500+ calories per hour. Two hours of biking plus the fast = 2600 calories burned at a minimum. So it is inevitable to start burning fat during this time.
After you've burned most of your glycogen and you are heavily burning fat, your body will go into ketosis. This is what people aim for on low carb diets. It's where your body is purely burning fat to make ketones. I find after 1-2 hours of biking, I start to taste ketones in my mouth. If you've ever done no carb you'll know the taste. Any exercise after that is almost guaranteed to be primarily fat burning. So this process allows you to basically enter and leave ketosis multiple times a week. It gives the benefits of a ketogenic diet without the exhaustion and carb cravings.
Once you finish your workout or bike, and are ready to eat again, because your glycogen stores are so depleted, you can really hammer carbs or even sugar hard. Any carbs or sugar you take in will almost purely go to replentishing your glycogen stores. You can even eat chocolate bars. Your body will not be able to use any sugar from it to make fat even if it wants to because the muscles and liver will soak it up instead. So you can eat a massive carb loaded meal with zero consequence (as long as it's not too fatty and still has some protein).
This constant oscillation between borderline ketosis (during the fasts) and excess (during the refeeding parts which ideally follow exercise) allows a simultaneous fat loss and muscle gain.
Again, I concede this might be premature to get too excited over, but I am excited. I've never seen my belt size go down so much in 1-2 months and yet my total weight is exactly the same. I also love the taste of ketones because it tastes like victory (fat burning) and I'm tasting them more and more on my long bike days. So if anyone is suffering with skinnyfat genetics, you might want to consider 16/8 intermittent fasting and upping your exercise to as much as you can physically handle.
The best article I have read which seems to confirm this philosophy is this one (although he's more anti-cardio than I am):
https://legionathletics.com/skinny-fat/
I wanted to write this while it was fresh in my mind and seemed interesting to me. I'll post back in a few months to see if I've made the same amount of further progress. I'm optimistic. It's hard not to be when you're tasting ketones.
