The 7 Skinny Fat Mistakes Holding You Back (And Wasting Your Time)

Knowing what to do is crucial but being mindful of potential mistakes is also necessary. Navigating your way around errors could save you months, even years of frustrations, wasted energy, and money.

With that in mind, let’s review the seven biggest skinny fat mistakes you could make on the road to getting fit.

Mistake #1: Not Eating Enough Protein

Protein is an organic molecule made of amino acids––the building blocks of living tissue. Eating enough protein is necessary for your body to carry out many processes that keep you alive and healthy (1). The nutrient is involved in producing hormones, enzymes, antibodies, neurotransmitters, and more.

In the context of fixing the skinny fat physique, protein is vital for building muscle and maintaining it during a diet. One of the biggest mistakes skinny fat people make is not eating enough protein, which prevents them from building muscle, recovering well after training, or maintaining lean tissue during weight loss.

Fix the mistake by increasing your protein intake to at least 0.7 grams per pound of body weight (2). For instance, if you weigh 170 lbs, aim for a minimum of 120 grams of protein daily. Fantastic sources include meat, fish, poultry, eggs, cottage cheese, and protein powder supplements.

Mistake #2: Training to Failure All The Time

Training to failure refers to the act of lifting a weight or performing an exercise until you can no longer train through a full range of motion or do repetitions smoothly. For example, if you’re curling a pair of dumbbells, muscle failure would occur when your biceps are too tired to keep lifting the weights, forcing you to swing your body back and forth or shorten the range of motion.

Lifting weights to failure provides some benefits, and it can undoubtedly be useful when done intelligently. First, pushing your muscles to their limits causes a more prominent stimulus to promote more growth and strength gain. Second, taking the occasional set to failure is an excellent way to see how strong you truly are and if you’ve been making progress in recent months.

The problem some skinny fat people make is training to failure all the time. As with most things, small quantities can be beneficial, but overdoing it can quickly lead to recovery issues, technique breakdown, and a higher risk of getting injured (3).

Avoid the error by leaving one to three reps in the tank on most of your sets. Only take the occasional set to failure and be careful when pushing yourself hard on compound exercises like the bench press, squat, and deadlift.

Mistake #3: Not Getting Enough Sleep

Getting enough sleep is one of the best things you can do to ensure good post-training recovery, maintain your health, optimize your gym performance, and upregulate processes related to muscle growth and fat loss.

Numerous studies find that sleeping well is essential for good athletic performance, vitality, recovery, mood, cognitive function, and more (4, 5). On top of that, sleep is vital for optimizing muscle protein synthesis––the process by which your body accumulates proteins, resulting in the repair of damaged tissues, muscle growth, and other beneficial outcomes.

A study from 2010 also finds that sleep is crucial for optimal fat loss and that depriving yourself can impair your ability to burn fat (6). In the particular study, subjects lost more fat and less muscle on a calorie-restricted diet when they could sleep for over seven hours per night.

Some skinny fat people make the mistake of not sleeping enough, which prevents them from building muscle or losing fat optimally. Lack of sleep can also impair recovery and hinder motivation, making it more challenging to adhere to a training plan.

Fix the error by prioritizing sleep and getting at least seven hours of uninterrupted rest each night. Though it might not seem that important, good sleep can make a huge difference in how you feel and how well you perform in the gym.

Mistake #4: Eating too Little Food

Prevailing wisdom suggests that eating less food leads to better fitness outcomes. While that can certainly be the case in some scenarios, chronic undereating is not good for anyone. It impacts your health, keeps your metabolism slow, prevents you from building muscle, and makes you food-obsessed.

A common error made by skinny fat individuals is chronic dieting. Doing so can help with fat loss and lead to some favorable results. But, as mentioned, being in a deficit indefinitely is not ideal because it stops you from building muscle.

Avoid the mistake by spending brief periods in a calorie deficit and avoid reducing your food intake too much. Rapid weight loss can feel rewarding, but it puts you at a higher risk of muscle loss, which only contributes further to the skinny fat look (7). Aside from dieting, you should spend long periods in a surplus, aiming for steady weight gain. Doing so is necessary for building muscle, which impacts how your physique looks much more.

Mistake #5: Solely Relying on Cardio

Cardio is beneficial for many reasons. It brings numerous health benefits, burns calories, helps us maintain a healthy weight, and boosts our mood. There is nothing as peaceful as going for a run on a cool morning to start the day on the right foot.

Unfortunately, relying solely on cardio and overdoing it is a recipe for disaster because:

• Aerobic exercise doesn’t cause the same growth stimulus as weight training does
• Most cardio activities don’t involve all major muscle groups in your body
• Cardio burns calories, making it more challenging to be in a calorie surplus for muscle growth
• Doing cardio leads to fatigue, which can impact your recovery and weight training performance (8)

Skinny fat individuals who combine cardio with a calorie-restricted diet will lose weight, but most of it will end up being lean tissue. In contrast, dieting and weight training allow you to hold onto more of your muscle mass and achieve the lean and athletic look you desire.

Some cardio can be beneficial, but the majority of your training should be resistance exercise.

Mistake #6: Trying to Fix The Skinny Fat Physique Without Training

A while back, one reader of the blog asked me something interesting:

“Can I fix the skinny fat look with little to no exercise and instead focus on a specific dietary approach?”

The question surprised me because I never considered the possibility or thought that people believed they could lose fat and build muscle without physical activity.

Losing some fat without exercise is possible because you can achieve that through a calorie deficit––eating less food (9). But, fixing the skinny fat look without physical activity is impossible because movement is necessary for optimal fat loss and muscle gain. First, training provides the stimulus required for muscle growth. Eating more protein helps, but it alone won’t stimulate hypertrophy to the same degree. Second, training is necessary for maintaining muscle mass while dieting. Not doing anything physical during a deficit will likely result in significant muscle loss, alongside the fat.

Most people don’t consider the possibility of getting fit without training, but if you’re in that camp, do yourself a favor and introduce resistance training sooner rather than later.

Mistake #7: Not Tracking Your Progress

Tracking progress is vital for three reasons:

• It shows you if what you’re doing is working
• It motivates you to keep going when things are moving along well
• It kicks you into action when your progress stagnates

Plenty of skinny fat individuals train hard and eat well but sabotage themselves by not tracking their progress. As a result, they aren’t genuinely sure if they are moving in the right direction, which increases the risk of losing motivation, changing the approach, or falling for gimmicks.

The four best ways to track your progress are:

• Weekly weight averages
• Progress photos
• Circumference measurements
• Logging workouts

You can read more about each progress method and how to apply it in my guide.

Final Words

The above are seven mistakes many skinny fat individuals make. Memorize these and take active measures to avoid each mistake to save yourself time, wasted effort, and money.

I’m curious to learn:

Which of the above mistakes have you been guilty of? Let me know by dropping a comment below.