I remember watching some silly dating show on TV many years ago. It was a show where several guys would take turns going on a date with the same girl, one right after the other. If the girl wasn’t feeling the guy, she would say “next!”, he would leave, and the next one would come out. There was this one guy, of average build, who for some reason, thought it would be a good idea to take off his shirt. Right as soon as he came up to the girl to introduce himself, she yelled “next!” When the producers interviewed her afterward, she said… “How can someone be both skinny and fat at the same time?” Since I was pretty young when I saw all that, the concept was mind-blowing. At the time I was just 'regular' skinny, but a little bit later in life, I became skinny-fat myself, which is why I wrote this article. Like the poor fella I just mentioned, being skinny-fat means you look slim with your clothes on, but lack muscle definition, or even show ‘a little extra’ around the waistline when you take off your shirt. In essence, it’s a problem of body composition, and not something you can measure on the bathroom scale. Someone who is skinny-fat will carry too much weight in the form of body fat, but not enough of it in the form of lean tissue (i.e. muscle). These two things will offset each other on the scale and the overall weight will look normal. Although there’s no commonly accepted technical definition, I would say that for a guy, being skinny-fat means you have a BMI (Body Mass Index) in the normal or even underweight range, but have a body fat percentage in excess of 15%. 15% or so usually the point where visible abs start appearing on men. Women can be skinny-fat too, but the body fat benchmark is a little higher, perhaps more like 25%. For reference, here is a table showing both men and women at different body fat percentages. It’s not exact, but it should give you a rough idea of what the different percentages look like. You can click on the image to see it at a higher resolution. Now let’s talk about why it’s not good to be skinny-fat. The first reason is admittedly superficial. As I mentioned with the dating show example, the skinny-fat look is generally considered to be unattractive. Excess body fat is especially visually unfriendly to guys who are tall, with long arms, and narrow shoulders. The only guys who can pull off a higher body fat percentage (again, I’m only talking looks here, not health) are the stocky guys with wide shoulders, short arms, big bone structures, and lots of muscle underneath. Think of powerlifters... although fat, they still look big and strong. Lanky guys, on the other hand, will, unfortunately, only look soft and weak with excess fat. The more important reason why being skinny-fat is not good is because it’s unhealthy. In general, the higher your body fat percentage, the greater your chance of ending up with diabetes and other health problems.[1] There is also an association with the size of your fat cells, and how insulin resistant you are.[2] And the one insidious thing about being skinny-fat is that without a huge gut showing you the obvious, you may not even be aware of just how badly your health is compromised. Since the numbers on the scale look fine, the call to exercise and watch your diet doesn’t seem urgent at all. In 2014, one woman from New York City, Rachel Myers, at 5’2” (1.57m) and only 103 lbs (47 kgs) received quite a shock when she went to the doctor for a regular checkup. There, Dr. Michelle Soto told Meyers that her blood-sugar levels were similar to those seen in "someone who’s obese — someone who’s 200 pounds." So how do you know for sure if you’re skinny fat? First, you should take a look in the mirror and be realistic about what you see. If you have a normal weight and BMI, but see love handles instead of abs, then you are skinny-fat. The best way to know, however, is to actually measure your body fat percentage. There are several body fat calipers you can find online that are both inexpensive and simple to use. I don’t want to tell anyone here that they need to do this or that, but personally, if I'm a guy at 15% body fat or higher, I would diet and exercise my way below that number for the aforementioned reasons. For women who have a normal or underweight BMI, that cutoff would be more like 25%. You don’t want to take this too far though. Anything below 8% for guys and 20% for women is really pushing it the other way as far as health and sustainability go.[3] If you're already skinny and are worried about getting even smaller, let me tell you about my own experience... As I mentioned before, I started out 'regular' skinny and became skinny-fat at one point in my life. I got that way because I did things wrong when first I decided to lift weights and put on some muscle. The mistake I made was buying in to the whole idea that you needed to "eat big to get big". So I went on the 'see-food' diet and even though I did put on some muscle, I put on way more in fat. After years of floundering like this, I finally realized that I didn't have the frame or genetics to be 'bodybuilder big' and that I was not looking good at all. You see, we all have different body fat distributions. For example, some people may gain fat around the belly easily, but maybe not so much on their face. Some are the other way around. I'm one of the people who gets hit hard in the face. Since I was very skinny before I started and didn't have a naturally wide shoulder structure, I still looked skinny in clothing after years of weightlifting (don't be fooled - no one can put on 80 lbs of muscle naturally). So I looked slim, but still managed to have a double chin! Since I knew I didn't look good and had a family history of diabetes, I said to myself that since I'm small anyway, I might as well be small and lean. As I lost body fat, my jawline came out and so did my self confidence. My abs also became visible. In a future article I will talk about how to get lean and lose the excess fat based on what worked for me. Thank you and God bless. References
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