I’m really skinny . . . bird legs and everything. But as a young professional, my diet has been terrible with lunches and dinners and whatnot, and I’ve put on about 5 to 10 pounds. For guys like me, fat goes to one place and one place only . . . our guts. Guts are not flattering to most, but in my opinion are especially unflattering on someone like me who is also extremely skinny.
So I guess it’s the “lose the last 10 pounds” situation. It seems like it just won’t go away. I know there’s some simple advice. . . eat less, eat healthier, exercise more, which I’m doing. What’s the most appropriate exercise plan for us skinny guys?
Asked and answered, really. As has been mentioned in threads before, there is no magic wand to make unwanted fat go away. It’s great that you’re exercising and all, but it can take a while for a small change to take place.
Situps. Well toned tummy muscles will contribute to the result you want. (You still need to burn calories though). And cut down on carbs. When was the last time you had a breadless lunch?
I used to be in the same situation (though at this point it’s more than 10 pounds), I was 5’7" and weighed between 125-130 pounds with a 26 inch waist. It didn’t matter what I weighed, I always had a bit of a stomach. Lots of situps or crunches have never really been an option for me because of GI problems. Wish I could give you better advice, but I do understand the irritation.
What’s the most appropriate exercise plan for us skinny guys?
It depends on how you want to look.
I suppose we can forget all of the healthful reasons for exercising and just concentrate on its effects as part of a fat loss program. The main thing it does for you if you go into calorie deficit is to keep your metabolism from slowing down. Unless you’re training at a very high level, the number of calories you burn during exercise are trivial compared to the number of calories you burn the rest of the 24 hour day. But exercise keeps your basal metabolic rate from slowing down and that is the real benefit of exercising while dieting. Aerobic training at 60% to 70% of maximum heart rate is excellent for this. Distance runners are a great example of aerobic athletes and if you want to look like a distance runner, then aerobics and nothing more is the way to go. You could even take it to a higher level by doing intensity interval training and actually increase your basal metabolic rate and not need to restrict calories much, if any. Skinny people are usually consuming at or below maintenance levels as it is and unless you put on those extra ten pounds in a month or so, then I suspect that you are just above maintenance and so increasing your metabolism through intensity interval training may be enough by itself to get rid of the flab.
If looking like a gladiator is more what you had in mind, then cut back on the aerobics and add resistance training. Start seriously pumping iron. The increased muscle mass will raise your basal metabolic rate and you’ll like what you see in the mirror. I’m not talking about looking like the guy on the cover of a muscle magazine, I’m talking about the difference between looking skinny, looking squishy, or looking fit. It takes a certain amount of muscle mass to look fit and resistance training is the only way to increase muscle mass.
Unless you’ve studied nutrition, don’t fool yourself into thinking that you know how to eat right. Unless you can tell me what percentage of your current diet is carbs, proteins and fats, I’m betting that you also don’t really know what those percentages should be. Proper diet is critical to making changes in your body composition and if you do nothing else, get some decent nutrition information.
I have a personal favorite that I’ll pass along, but both t-nation.com and bodybuilding.com have nutrition archives with plenty of good information. Don’t automatically scoff at bodybuilder sites as sources for diet information. Proper nutrition is critical to the sport and you can find lots of good information that will apply to anyone serious about nutrition.
My favorite is Dr. John Berardi. His credentials are top-notch and I’ve personally achieved remarkable results following his Precision Nutrition program.
I think it’s great that you recognize the importance of both diet and exercise to achieving the changes in body composition that you want make and I wish you all the best. Feel free to e-mail me through my profile link any time if you’d like to discuss your diet and exercise program further.
I’m at just dinner every day and still am in the same situation as the OP. Self-cooked dinners from scratch, too, easy on the butter and cream and all that. No pre-packaged gruel for me. Still… there’s a bit of a roundness.
Thank you so much, this is exactly what I needed . . . I do want to look like a gladiator. I’m no stranger to resistance training, either. In fact, when I join my next gym (just changed jobs, so the old gym won’t work) I’m going to make my emphasis my legs.
Anyone here successfully add significant muscle mass to bird legs? I just want to hear from someone who has pulled it off. I have 4 brothers with my exact same legs . . . very unflattering.
Thanks to all for you input, it’s extremely useful!
Oh, yeah. I was built like a medium-height stork when I was a kid (but with a bit of a belly). That lasted until about a few years ago when I started doing heavy compound stuff like squats and such, with the occasional foray into deadlifting. I’d say I have pretty muscular legs now. Nothing amazing, but I am definitely not built like a bird anymore, at least.
The key thing for me was to eat a lot more, dieting off the fat regularly when that got to be a bit much and concentrating on heavy compounds, like squats (instead of, say, leg extensions).
Gladiators apparently ate lots of barley and beans to develop a layer of fat that minimized recovery from cuts in the arena.
Also, to the OP: be careful of overdoing the crunches and ab workout; if you’re really skinny and overdevelop your abs, you’ll still look like you’ve got a thick midsection. You want your abs strong enough to hold everything in place, but otherwise you’re better off focusing on cardio.
Um, no. Unused carbs get converted to fat. You don’t have unused carb deposits on your body. And remember that the body needs fat (though not as much as some people stuff their faces with), but we can really do away with most of the carbs.
Just a little side thing, if you do fat-burning exercise, is there a way you can control where the fat comes off? I would like fat to come off my stomach but not my ass.
Along with bird legs came “sensitive” knees . . . squatting stresses them out. I do the leg sled . . . is that a decent alternative? The leg sled can stress my knees as well, but if I work my way up slowly and stretch propertly I can consistently use the machine.
What about your calves? Mine will develop over time, but both my calves and my forearms are really extremely thin. I generally try to do 4 to 6 sets of 10 down to 6 reps, but only once per week to maximize muscle gain. I do this for all muscle groups.
One thing that frustrates me is that I need to gain muscle AND lose fat . . . I want to do them at the same time, which means I need to really nail the nutrition side. I could gain mass by eating more, but I don’t want to gain fat.
One thing I do have which is a result of high school swim team (and subsequent focus do to motivation provided by noticable gains) is my chest. I have unusually large and defined pecs, especially for my body type. I need to get my legs to match because right now I have nice pecs, a gut, bird legs, and no forearms or calves. I need to balance everything out.
It’s really insane with my body type HOW LONG it takes with dedicated weight training to see significant results. Right now I’m in this pattern where I stay dedicated for about 4 months, which is right when I’m starting to really see some improvements, and then I fizzle out and lose most of my progress in a matter of a month or two. I really need to go the distance and change my lifestyle.
One nutrition question (haven’t checked the links yet, but I will) that I’ve pondered is breakfast. What’s the deal with breakfast? If you skip it, doesn’t that work AGAINST you in terms of losing weight since it screws up your metabolism and your body starts burning muscle or something?
Such has not been my experience. I was shaped kind of like Snoopy in the Peanuts strip in '01 (all the paunch in the belly, none elsewhere), got rid of some of it by running once a week + a routine of situps and other gym activities (squats, benchpress, leg press, etc) designed to divert anabolism to catabolism.
But what really got me back to almost-skinny was modified Atkins. I don’t recommend doing strict Atkins (I don’t think it’s healthy to eliminate that much carb intake) but if you cut way back on carbs you’ll skinny up. Cutting back on fats doesn’t seem to have the same effect at all, not to mention that it makes your food stop tasting like food and therefore the dropout rate on lowfat diets is higher.
But whatever diet you do, I suggest you do a diet that you can stay on and be healthy and happy with, perpetually. Diets that are designed for folks to go on until they hit a magic number (pounds, waistline, whatever) and then go off them are generally not good for people and promote pendulum gain/loss cycles.
