Exactly What You Need to Avoid Becoming Skinny Fat (4 Tactics)

Let me ask you something:

Have you ever lost weight, only to end up skinny but with a layer of fat covering your body?

If so, don’t worry because that is a common problem many people face.

The best part?

You don’t need a radically different approach. All you have to do is tweak a few things to avoid becoming skinny fat.

Let’s explore…

But First: Why Is The Common Weight Loss Approach Flawed?

Prevailing wisdom suggests that one of the best ways to lose weight is to reduce your calorie intake and bump your activity level drastically. Doing so would place you in a significant calorie deficit, leading to quick weight loss.

While the above might seem like a great tactic, it isn’t. First, doing so isn’t sustainable because reducing your food intake drastically leads to excessive hunger and food obsession. Sure, you might follow the approach for a few weeks, but you will eventually run into a wall (1). At some point, you won’t be able to keep going, and you will likely binge eat and re-gain all the weight you had managed to lose.

Second, the approach isn’t ideal because it doesn’t consider muscle retention. As a result, folks lose a lot of weight, much of which ends up being lean tissue. In other words, people don’t avoid the skinny fat look but end up looking exactly like that.

The Problem With Being ‘Skinny Fat’

I know what you might be thinking:

“Well, what’s so bad about losing some muscle? I get to be slim, right? Isn’t that what healthy and fit means?”

In short, no. Being slim isn’t necessarily the same as being fit or healthy because of two reasons:

1. You would still carry a high body fat percentage, which could keep you at a higher risk of health issues. The medical term for ‘skinny fat’ is normal weight obesity (2).
   
   
2. Being slim doesn’t necessarily mean you’re fit in any way. Losing weight doesn’t make you strong, fit, athletic, or more endurant. Training for specific goals leads to adaptations like the ones we mentioned.

Plus, being skinny fat might seem okay at first, but you won’t like how you look, and you won’t stop being self-conscious. I was in that situation once, which allows me to speak from experience.

I went from 240 to 170 lbs in six to eight months back in the day, following the traditional approach of clean eating + lots of cardio. Sure, I felt great at first. I was lighter, and I got to buy myself many new clothes. But, despite that apparent success, I wasn’t satisfied with how my body looked. I had no muscle definition, and I still had a layer of fat covering my body. The only difference was that I was slimmer and appeared ‘thin’ while wearing clothes.

How to Avoid the Skinny Fat Physique (And Get Lean Instead): 4 Crucial Requirements

Before diving into the four points, it’s important to note that no tactic can help you spot-reduce body fat and get rid of your love handles, belly, buttocks, or man boobs.

1. Lose Weight More Slowly

Everyone wants to lose weight quickly, but doing so is counterproductive because it leads to excessive muscle loss. The reason for the effect is that your body can only break down so much fat in a given period before it has to start breaking lean tissue. By restricting your calories significantly, you burn more fat, but you also lose more muscle, which contributes to the skinny fat look.

According to research, we should aim to lose no more than 0.5 to 1 percent of our body weight each week (3). For example, if you currently weigh 180 lbs, that would mean a weekly weight loss of 0.9 to 1.8 lbs. The more fat you have on your frame, the quicker your weight loss can be. But, as you get leaner, you should reduce the calorie deficit to slow down your rate of weight loss and prevent significant muscle loss.

Here is how the process might look like over 20 weeks. Of course, weight fluctuations will happen and the process will never be as linear in the real world:

Week 1: 180 * 0.01 = 1.8 lbs (loss) - 1 percent
Week 2: 178.2 * 0.01 = 1.78 lbs (loss) - 1 percent
Week 3: 176.4 * 0.009 = 1.58 lbs (loss) - 0.9 percent
…
Week 10: 167.5 * 0.007 = 1.17 lbs (loss) - 0.7 percent
…
Week 15: 161.2 * 0.005 = 0.8 lbs (loss) - 0.5 percent
…
Week 20: 157.7 * 0.005 = 0.78 lbs (loss) - 0.5 percent

As you can see, we kickstart the weight loss a bit more aggressively, but the rate slows down progressively. Check out these tactics on how to track your skinny fat progress.

2. Eat More Protein

Consuming enough protein is the second essential tactic you need to take care of if you want to maintain your muscle as you diet. Protein is vital because it provides the body with the building blocks for tissue repair, muscle growth, and maintenance (4). Not getting enough protein would stop you from holding onto your muscle mass because you won’t have enough of the necessary nutrients to make that happen.

The good news is that eating protein is beneficial, especially while dieting, because it leads to greater satiety, making it easier to stick with caloric restriction. Plus, protein offers a slight metabolic boost, courtesy of its higher thermic effect. The effect isn’t huge, but we are talking about calories you get to burn without doing anything.

According to research, we should consume anywhere from 1.6 to 2.2 grams of protein per kilo of body weight (4). The recommendation translates to 0.8-1 gram of protein per lb of weight. For example, if you weigh 180 lbs, consume 144 to 180 grams of protein daily.

Fantastic sources include meat, fish, poultry, eggs, cottage cheese, and protein powder.

3. Lift Some Weights (And Limit the Cardio)

Cardio is a popular fat loss method, and countless people consider it mandatory if they ever hope to lose some weight. But, the truth is, we don’t need cardio for fat loss. In fact, aerobic exercise can do more harm than good.

Cardio can be harmful because high-impact activities like running can put significant amounts of stress on the ankles, knees, and hips. Over time, the stress can lead to injuries. If anything, the cardio overweight folks do should be less stressful: riding a bike, swimming, walking, etc.

The second reason cardio can be harmful is that it leads to compensatory eating in some people (5). In other words, you might burn 200 calories from a cardio session, go home, and eat an extra 200-300 calories, defeating the session’s purpose.

Plus, resistance training appears much more effective for preserving muscle when compared to aerobic exercise (6). This is because low-intensity cardio cannot provide a strong stimulus for our muscles, and we are more likely to lose them while dieting. Sure, you will get thinner, but you won’t lose enough fat to end up lean and athletic. In contrast, lifting weights provides a strong stimulus, signaling your body that, “Hey! Muscle is important, and we are using it every day! Don’t break it down for energy.” (Or something along those lines.)

As you can imagine, the effect is essential because preserving your muscle is vital for not ending up skinny fat after weight loss. Aside from that, having more muscle helps you maintain a healthy metabolic rate, burn extra calories during your workouts, and require more energy to recover from training.

4. Get Enough Sleep

A study from 2010 illustrates the importance of sleep beautifully (7). In it, ten overweight but otherwise healthy middle-aged people had to go through two conditions, each lasting for two weeks. In the first condition, subjects had to follow a calorie-restricted diet and got to spend 5.5 hours in bed per night. The participants followed the same diet in the second condition but could spend 8.5 hours in bed per night.

Subjects lost 6.6 lbs during both conditions, but here are the differences:

• 8.5 hours in bed (slept an average of 7 hours, 25 minutes) - 50/50 muscle and fat loss
• 5.5 hours in bed (slept an average of 5 hours, 14 minutes) - 80/20 muscle and fat loss

With everything else being the same, sleeping for over seven hours resulted in more fat loss and better muscle retention. In contrast, sleep deprivation increased subjects' muscle loss, cravings, and subjective hunger.

The study does have its drawbacks. Most notably:

• Short duration
• Significant caloric restriction
• Lack of any exercise
• Low protein intake

But, it does an excellent job of comparing two sleep conditions and their impact on the quality of weight loss. So, aside from following the above tactics on avoiding the skinny fat look, get at least seven hours of sleep per night.