Skinny belly fat

[Slider94]

I am a 23 y/o skinny guy turning 24 this month and in the last two years I have developed belly fat. Back in high school I used to do a home workout which involved like 200 reps for inferior abs and 200 for superior abs among others like push ups and stuff, but in college I kinda dropped that because I had to focus on studying and whatnot.

Note that in HS I did them almost every single day. Now, first year of college I was pretty skinny and I sort of kept the shape I had on my abs pretty much and also throughout second year, but by third year I noticed that my stomach wasn't that flat anymore and things got worse in third year, then fourth year. Things to be noted is that I started drinking alcohol, a thing I did not do in HS, but it was mainly wine and vodka or whiskey and beer was on rarer occasions, so I am not sure it's that.

What I think the problem was is that I had a bad sleep habit in the 4th year when my belly kept getting bigger and throughout the last 2 years of college as a whole ( 3rd and 4th )I got more static and also had a small meniscus tear on my right knee which made me more cautious on stairs and whanot. I did try exercising again, but it didn't help much. I mean I gain some muscle in the area, especially upper abdomen, but the belly doesn't seem to go away at all. Tried eating less, but to no avail. I seem to lose some weight, but not in the lower abs area.

I wouldn't want to start lifting, I'd still want to be home workout-oriented, but maybe my exercises are not the proper ones?

I have to mention that I do 15 reps x 4 sets now on lower abs, but they are more demanding than the ones I did back in the day. Like, I sweat and also feel the lower abs working. But maybe I need something more.

Any tips ?

[complexity]

Yes, I can help you out with something, and I'll keep it very short:
Eat 5 times a day, smaller doses, healthy food. Do a minimal amount of daily workout, which can be a variation of squats, abs and pushups.
I would recommend you to do 1 day squats, 1 day abs, and 1 day pushups, that does not apply so much stress to your muscles and they have enough time to rest as your muscle needs 24-48 hours to fully recover from the previous workout.
Also, let me explain why you should eat 5 times a day:
If you are going to eat 3 times a day, big ass meals, that will keep your body very busy, it will even skip soaking in the nutrients(since your body cannot take too many at a time) and that way a part of the good nutrients doesn't get absorbed.
Now, if you are going to eat 5 times a day, that's something that you need to get used to, and it'll probably be hard at the beggining since your meals will not be as big as until now. You need to eat smaller doses of food, which you need to choose carefully so that your calorie intake doesn't go upwards too much(however you should still eat bacon because thats protein and fats also have their role).
The human body, burns about 2k calories a day without any effort. So keeping your intake under 2k, eating healthy and training your body to get used to 5 meals, at 5 exact hours, will get you to success! And you don't even have to give up chocolate or chips. Ain't that awesome? haha
Good luck!

[R.C]

I'll add some comments to the previous post for some clarifications. As a disclaimer, there's tons of contracting information regarding nutrition and fitness in general on the internet, so keep that in mind.

Eat 5 times a day, smaller doses, healthy food. Do a minimal amount of daily workout, which can be a variation of squats, abs and pushups. 

Eating 5 times a day has no research backing it up in terms of it bringing any benefits to the table from a physiological standpoint whatsoever. But. Does it help in other ways? Yes. If you ever went half starved to the supermarket then you know you bought half the aisle. And then you ate it. 
Eating less but more often will ideally keep you satiated all day without risk of you going starvation mode in a food place. It's simply a way to help maintain long term diets, but it can 100% be substituted by will. Having time to eat 5 times a day in ways that respect your macros more often than not means you cooking/prepping a meal five times a day. You won't always have time for that.

I'll comment about the pushups/squats and abs later.

I would recommend you to do 1 day squats, 1 day abs, and 1 day pushups, that does not apply so much stress to your muscles and they have enough time to rest as your muscle needs 24-48 hours to fully recover from the previous workout.

This is true if you're an intermediate or advanced lifter. That means 3-4+ years. The way the human body works is with extreme adaptability. If you're a beginner you will see exponential growth in strength levels early on. 


As you can see, the longer you lift the closer you get to your genetic limits. That said, you can train legs for the first 6-12months every day and you'll see little to no real muscle fatigue.

If you are going to eat 3 times a day, big ass meals, that will keep your body very busy, it will even skip soaking in the nutrients(since your body cannot take too many at a time) and that way a part of the good nutrients doesn't get absorbed.

Again this is not supported by research, but mostly locker room bro science. What is supported by research however is that you can eat 2000 calories in one meal and your body will absorb it just as it would if you ate it over 12 meals. 

The human body, burns about 2k calories a day without any effort. So keeping your intake under 2k, eating healthy and training your body to get used to 5 meals, at 5 exact hours, will get you to success! And you don't even have to give up chocolate or chips. Ain't that awesome? haha

The human body does tend to need about 2k calories per day to maintain weight, however that is extremely subject to influence. Gender, age, natural metabolism, daily energy expenditure (a programmer burns less calories sitting at a desk 8 hours per day than a construction worker hauling material), and so on. 
What complexity says about not having to give up chips and chocolate is technically correct but strictly by doing it in a controlled way by counting calories and macro nutrients alike. If you do it randomly, well, you won't see any results. 

The point of my post is to give accurate information on a subject heavily infested by broscience. I'm not firing shots at complexity here for having his facts not entirely correct, because it took me years to get them straight myself, and if I replied to this thread about 5 years ago my reply would be more or less identical to his. 

In closing there's 2 points I want to make. 
1. If you want a fit body, with decent muscle mass you must go to the gym. This is not optional. I know there's a plenitude of at home "workouts" that promise ridiculous results in terms of muscle gain, but they don't work. You cannot gain muscle while doing body weight workouts.
You can lose weight, but that doesn't mean fit. You'll just be skinny. 
2. As I stated above, in your first few years you will be extremely susceptible to progress. If you want my honest opinion, take full advantage of that and do it right. I'll take my time and create a detailed, in depth nutrition and fitness newbie guide on this forum if that's the case, because it will serve as a reference for future guys in your position as well. 

If on the other hand you have no interest in pursuing fitness and just want to lose weight, you still need to be informed on nutrition but there is one at home solution. It's called Insanity by Shawn T. The name is self explanatory with regard to difficulty. You will lose weight because you will be burning your ass off. But you will not gain muscle. 

[N2thevoid]

RC is right about building muscle, it helps bump up your resting metabolic rate so you're burning fat even at rest with the more muscle you have.

Try doing HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training), its the closest things to a silver bullet for fat loss. I do 45 second intervals on the treadmill for 12 'sets'. 45s walk/45 sprint for around 15 minutes. It works. Very well.

Post your diet, and include times of day you're eating these things. Its not only the kind of stuff you're eating, its also WHEN you are eating it. You may need to use a calorie counter program for the next few weeks to get a good birds eye view of what you're putting into your body content wise and calorie-wise. I can also see your macronutrient intake as well.

[complexity]

Well, I'm happy to find out that I was so wrong on that. Lol. Thanks for correcting me R.C

[dyneira]

When you say you lost some weight, but not in the lower ab area, you are making proper progress.

The problem is, you can't really aim to get rid of fat from specific parts of the body. The fat falls off where your body wants it to. Killing yourself with an ab workout will help fat fall off, but it can be from any part of the body. It's usually down to genetics.

I'm in the same situation and recently came across an article regarding 'recomp' workout. It' recommended for people who are skinny fat and is aimed at burning fat while gaining some muscle. It works by eating more calories than you burn on workout days and the opposite on rest days. Some good articles on Google that will help you further.

[R.C]

Mar 21, 2018 1:24:32 GMT dyneira said:

It' recommended for people who are skinny fat and is aimed at burning fat while gaining some muscle. 

That's physiologically impossible, yet strictly applicable, but in a rather inefficient way still,  to people who have never trained in their lives. Your body has extreme growth potential at that point and your muscles do not grow as much as they "properly activate" in your beginning stages. That's why you're given this illusion of gaining muscle while losing fat. Again, this applies strictly to beginners. 

Physiologically though, gaining muscle equates to gaining weight. With a good diet (and other factors like genetics, routines and so on) you'll primarily gain muscle mass with minimal fat gain. Minimal, not zero. You will always gain fat when you gain muscle. There is no way around it. You can only control how much.
As a general rule, you should start off at ~25% more calories than your caloric maintenance levels (the amount of kcals your body needs on a daily basis to remain the same), while keeping a proper macro nutrient balance. 

Likewise, you will lose muscle when you lose fat. Again, it's a matter of min maxing via your diet. You want to lose large amounts of fat while losing minimal amounts of muscle. 

You cannot do both at the same time. Your body doesn't care if it's been 24 hours since your last diet cycle. If you eat more on your workout days but burn, and less on your offdays, then over the course of a week you've still eaten less than your weekly caloric maintenance and you're still losing weight. You are not building muscle. Unless again, you're completely new. In which case again, you're not really building muscle, you're just activating them. And really that's highly inefficient, because you'd get twice the results in half the time if you'd compliment your potential with a proper diet. 



You're right though, targeted fat loss is a myth. 

[N2thevoid]

RC honestly I can disagree on losing muscle with fat. My cardio centres around anaerobic activity (HIIT) and I lose fat but retain all my muscle in fact looking far denser, while holding my strength and muscle.

I do agree however with your statement on targeted fat loss.

[R.C]

You said retain, not gain. Like I said, that's entirely possible with optimization. But I doubt your max reps go up on a constant basis while doing HIIT on a caloric deficit. Do they?

[N2thevoid]

Let me rephrase, gain.

But I don't maintain a caloric deficit, I come close ot my macros and have just a few hundred calories at my maintenance caloric intake. I've also been training 25+ years so I have an intuitive sense as to how my body responds.

Just got in front HIIT around the hood at 1230am, nice and peaceful in the rain. 15-20 minutes done. Helps burn while I sleep, I'll be sure to down some concentrate whey before bed to help prevent me from going catabolic.

[dyneira]

Mar 22, 2018 7:50:30 GMT R.C said:

Mar 21, 2018 1:24:32 GMT dyneira said:

It' recommended for people who are skinny fat and is aimed at burning fat while gaining some muscle. 

That's physiologically impossible, yet strictly applicable, but in a rather inefficient way still,  to people who have never trained in their lives. Your body has extreme growth potential at that point and your muscles do not grow as much as they "properly activate" in your beginning stages. That's why you're given this illusion of gaining muscle while losing fat. Again, this applies strictly to beginners. 

Physiologically though, gaining muscle equates to gaining weight. With a good diet (and other factors like genetics, routines and so on) you'll primarily gain muscle mass with minimal fat gain. Minimal, not zero. You will always gain fat when you gain muscle. There is no way around it. You can only control how much.
As a general rule, you should start off at ~25% more calories than your caloric maintenance levels (the amount of kcals your body needs on a daily basis to remain the same), while keeping a proper macro nutrient balance. 

Likewise, you will lose muscle when you lose fat. Again, it's a matter of min maxing via your diet. You want to lose large amounts of fat while losing minimal amounts of muscle. 

You cannot do both at the same time. Your body doesn't care if it's been 24 hours since your last diet cycle. If you eat more on your workout days but burn, and less on your offdays, then over the course of a week you've still eaten less than your weekly caloric maintenance and you're still losing weight. You are not building muscle. Unless again, you're completely new. In which case again, you're not really building muscle, you're just activating them. And really that's highly inefficient, because you'd get twice the results in half the time if you'd compliment your potential with a proper diet. 



You're right though, targeted fat loss is a myth. 

I'm going by an artile I read as it seemed to have pretty good points and explanations. It's also seems realistic with the progress they expect anyone to take.

It explains that it's technically impossible to do both at the same time. But it then goes on to say that the way it works is by alternating your body between being in an anabolic and catabolic state. They mention that doing so during the day would produce minimal results and recommend doing so over a week. 3-4 days where you work out and eat a calorie surplus, and the rest on a calorie defecit. The article I found is this: romanfitnesssystems.com/articles/body-recomp/

Now I'm a bit confused as I don't know what the best option for me is. I'm skinny fat and up until recently, I haven't really thought of how to get rid of being so. I go to the gym and eat healthy foods, but I don't count calories or macros and don't see much change. I feel stronger, but don't see much physical change. That's why I though doing a recomp might help as thw article looked helpful. Now wondering if it's best to cut first then try to bulk, or bulk first and then cut. Any suggestions as to the best method?

[N2thevoid]

How long have you been training for?

[dyneira]

Mar 23, 2018 4:17:39 GMT N2thevoid said:

How long have you been training for?

I've been training on/off for years, but until recently I was going through an off patch due to change of circumstances two years ago. During this time, I trained a little bit buy only for a couple of weeks before being off again for a few weeks.

Started back properly where I enjoyed it around October last year and went pretty consitantly up until the end of Feb. A holiday then illness and injury has kept me out now though for four weeks.

[R.C]

Mar 22, 2018 23:21:19 GMT dyneira said:

Now I'm a bit confused as I don't know what the best option for me is. I'm skinny fat and up until recently, I haven't really thought of how to get rid of being so. I go to the gym and eat healthy foods, but I don't count calories or macros and don't see much change. I feel stronger, but don't see much physical change. That's why I though doing a recomp might help as thw article looked helpful. Now wondering if it's best to cut first then try to bulk, or bulk first and then cut. Any suggestions as to the best method?

There you have it then.

[dyneira]

Yeah I was a little late to the party regarding that. Have now been looking into setting up a realistic and manageable meal plan. I've also been getting myself into meal prep.

Been looking more into recomp and it doesn't seem the best option for myself. Think I'll cut for a while and then bulk and take it from there.