OPERATION SOCKS OFF: ANTHONY MYCHAL’S 3-PHASE SKINNY-FAT SOLUTION

You’re skinny-fat.

You don’t want to be skinny-fat.

You’re lucky you found me.

This is my skinny-fat transformation philosophy. If you’re drop-dead ready to change your skinny-fat body for the better, check out the 60-day challenge.

PART 1 of 3

Skinny-fat syndrome isn’t a medical condition. The word “syndrome” is misleading. Skinny-fatness is nothing more than a distinguished physical appearance. You see an unclothed bystander with string-bean arms and larger-than-life love handles and say, “You’re skinny-fat,” the same way you see someone with bangs and say, “You have a bad haircut.” (Bulma being an obvious exception.)

A skinny-fat appearance is a byproduct of a unique body fat distribution atop a linear under-muscled frame. You probably have a few of the following attributes:

• Wide hips
• Thin wrists
• Narrow shoulders
• Rounded jaw structure
• Underdeveloped muscles
• Body fat accumulation in the chest, love handle, and belly-button regions

You can’t change your skeleton. You’re stuck with your linear bone structure. To this day, I can wrap my hand around the opposite wrist and touch pinky finger to thumb. You can, however, lose fat and build muscle. Doing either will eliminate your skinny-fat appearance.

If you build muscle, you’ll no longer have an under-muscled frame. Poof! Just like that, you won’t be skinny-fat anymore (but you’ll still be fat). If you lose fat, you’ll no longer have a unique body fat distribution. Poof! Just like that, you won’t be skinny-fat anymore (but you’ll still be skinny).

I know you don’t want to be skinny-fat, but, at the same time, I doubt you want to be bone thin or soft-serve fat. I’m guessing you want to be lean and muscular. Well-built. And if that’s the case, you need to lose fat and build muscle.

For some reason, skinny-fat dudes guys tend to overestimate how much muscle mass they have even though their upper arms look like cardboard paper towel tubes. (I have something known as “personal experience” with this delusion.) If you sucked the fat from your body and got six-pack lean right now, you wouldn’t look like Brad Pitt in Fight Club. You’d look more like a prisoner of war.

You probably don’t want to be a bodybuilder (same), but you need to add some muscle to your frame to look somewhat respectable at a low body fat percentage.

Assuming you don’t want to look like a less-muscled Mick Jagger, you need to lose fat and build muscle. 

Your gut reaction to this news probably leans towards double-dipping: “How do I lose fat and build muscle at the same time?”

Losing fat and building muscle at the same time is known as a “recomposition” (“recomp” for short), which sounds stiffer than a teenage boy’s secret sock. It’s known as double-dipping around here, got it?

Double-dipping is the dream, but it’s generally considered a daring pursuit because losing fat and gaining muscle are often portrayed as physiological opposites.

Losing fat requires catabolism, which is taking big things and breaking them into smaller things, like dismantling a LEGO tower brick by brick. Building muscle requires anabolism, which is creating bigger things with smaller things, like building a LEGO tower brick by brick.

The internet’s greatest sci(fi)entists say you can’t lose fat and build muscle at the same time because you can’t simultaneously destroy something and create something. You can either dismantle the LEGO tower or build the LEGO tower.

The good news?

The sci(fi)entists are wrong. Losing fat and building muscle aren’t absolute opposites. You CAN lose fat and build muscle at the same time. (They’re two separate structures.) You MIGHT accomplish said feat if you follow my breadcrumbs.

The bad news?

The probability of double-dipping usually overshadows the possibility of double-dipping. In other words, it’s like having a threesome with your wife and her best friend. Possible? Sure. We’re not talking about regrowing a finger. Probable enough to risk the fallout associated with trying? Doubtful.

Double-dip hopefuls usually end up empty-handed: They don’t lose fat or build muscle. They get caught in purgatory. Few things in life are more demoralizing (one of which is clogging a toilet in an acquaintance’s house and not being able to find a plunger).

You’re better off single-scooping. You can either bulk and prioritize muscle growth, or you can cut and prioritize fat loss. If you happen to double-dip along the way, great. If not, no big deal. At least you’re making progress in one of the two verticals, which is better than a double-dip disaster.

Should you bulk first, or should you cut first? Does it matter?

At first glance, this question looks more innocent than Riley Reid in plainclothes and the answer probably seems more obvious than Botox in a boomer: Solve the bigger insecurity.

What keeps you up and night? If you’re sick of your stomach having the consistency of mucus, then cut first. On the other hand, if you can’t forget about that time your six-year-old niece opened a pickle jar you couldn’t, then bulk first.

Attacking the bigger security isn’t a bad idea and may ultimately hold the hammer, but the situation is more of a Sophie’s choice than it appears because these two insecurities aren’t mutually exclusive and they’re volatile. It’s almost as if each insecurity sits on opposite ends of a seesaw. When one goes down, the other one goes up.

As mentioned, you won’t gain boatloads of muscle mass during a cut. Even if you double-dip, I doubt you’ll gain enough to fill out your frame. Granted, there are exceptions. You might. I don’t want you to build yourself a false ceiling. However, my pessimism forces me to undersell, always; I’d rather surprise than underwhelm. The easiest way to exceed expectations is to have low expectations.

There might (might!) come a time during your cut when you’re finally able to see what was hiding underneath your inner tube of insulation: not much. You don’t have as much muscle mass as you thought you did (I warned you). This makes your muscle-related insecurities skyrocket. You aren’t as lean as you’d like to be (you still jiggle when you jump), but you fear what you’ll become (nothingness?) if you continue to lose fat.

Fat insecurity decreases
Muscle insecurity increases

With this future played out in front of you, it might make sense to bulk first. Build a bunch of muscle so that you’ll reveal a strong-shaped silhouette as you cut down.

Well.

Body fat accumulation is a common side effect of bulking. You gain muscle, but you also gain fat. Are you ready for that?

I doubt it.

Muscle insecurity decreases
Fat insecurity increases

This seesaw traps a lot of skinny-fat guys. They cut, initially. They stop cutting and start bulking soon after because they hate how gangly they’re becoming, and then, two months later, they stop bulking and start cutting because they hate how rotund they’re becoming, and then, two months later, they stop cutting and start bulking because they hate how gangly they’re becoming, and then…

They’re caught in a rundown. They’re doing lots of work, but they don’t commit to a direction long enough to get anywhere.

There isn’t a perfect solution. Neither bulking first nor cutting first is 100% foolproof. Both require swallowing consequences you’d probably rather spit. But, in my opinion, one tastes a little more like Belle Delphine’s bathwater than the other.

I recommend cutting first unless (UNLESS!) your muscle-related insecurities 100% outweigh your fat-related insecurity.

For instance, when I was skinny-fat, I just wanted to be skinny. Losing fat meant more to me than building muscle. I would have inhabited a methhead’s body at the flick of a switch. If someone would have told me to build muscle first and get fatter, I would have shut down.

If you want to become a mountain of muscle and you don’t care if your body has the consistency of mashed potatoes, then maybe you should bulk first.

As.
Long.
As.
You.
Bulk.
Correctly.

Muscle growth requires a motive, money, and materials. This manifests strategically as (a) exposing your body to supergravity stress and then (b) eating an abundance of food in order to give your body the money (energy) and materials it needs to build muscle.

The bottleneck in the sequence above is motive. Without motive (supergravity stress), much of the money (energy) you feed your body will get stored as fat instead of used for muscle growth.

Call me cynical (because I am), but I don’t think you have enough gym experience to justify a full-fledged bulk. I could be wrong. In the event I am, here’s something else to consider:

Fat loss requires an energy deficit. Your energetic expenses are higher than your energetic income, which forces your body to use its savings (body fat) to pay its bills. Body fat is a reserve of excess money (energy).

If you’re giving your body a motive to build muscle, your body can break down its fat stores and use the resultant energy to pay for muscle growth. In other words, you’ll double-dip. The odds of this happening are much higher when you’re cutting and underfeeding as opposed to bulking and overfeeding.

Overall, cutting first is more practical. There’s a bigger potential upside and a wider margin for error. For instance, you don’t even need to exercise to lose fat. This isn’t to say you shouldn’t exercise. You should, just like you should rinse your dishes directly after dinner so the debris doesn’t coagulate and take 10x longer to clean than it otherwise would.

BUT.

The fact remains, you don’t have to exercise. You can lose weight through diet and diet alone. Here’s how:

 

Part 2

Losing fat is simple. Unfortunately, “simple” ain’t “easy.” Many things make losing fat tougher than a sirloin steak served at Denny’s, like an unholy obsession with craft beer. Not that I’d know anything about that. I’m not drunk right now. Are you drunk right now? Don’t tell me I smell like motueka hops. You smell like motueka hops. Stop projecting.

Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to become a cardio queen and jog jog jog your life away in order to lose fat. The driver of fat loss is (and will be) your eating habits, otherwise known as your “diet.”

Some people don’t like the word “diet,” as we’ve been conditioned to think of “diets” as temporary weight-loss interventions involving crippling deprivation and rabbit food. The real definition of “diet” is less sinister and simply refers to the kinds of food you habitually eat. If you eat an entire box of Toaster Strudels every day, that’s your diet. There are no weight-loss connotations attached to the word “diet.”

Your diet drives fat loss because it has a bigger influence on energy balance, which is the relationship between energy supply, energy demand, and internal energetic material. If you’re unfamiliar with energy balance, you should read Body Comp Basics.

Body Comp Basics contains the first principles of fat loss. Here’s a ten-point synopsis:

1. Energy demand is the amount of energy your body requires to perform all given tasks. Expenses.
2. Energy supply is the amount of energy you consume. Income.
3. Internal energetic material is stored inside of you and can be broken down for energy when needed. Savings.
4. When supply is greater than demand you have a surplus of incoming energetic material, which results in an increased amount of stored energetic material.
5. When demand is greater than supply you have a deficit of incoming energetic material, which results in a decreased amount of stored energetic material.
6. Body fat is a form of internal energetic material, which means losing fat requires an energy deficit. (There’s no such thing as spot reduction. Your body will burn fat from wherever it pleases.)
7. This makes it seem like you can eat whatever you want and lose fat, as long as demand conquers supply. This is somewhat true, but the situation is a bit more complex because energy isn’t the only substance we derive from food that’s essential to our survival.
8. We also get (and need) nutrients from food. You can die of scurvy before you die of starvation. Nutrients do things energy can. Your body uses nutrients to grow your muscles and keep your teeth intact (along with thousands of other things). Energy is manpower, nutrients are materials.
9. Losing fat is a juggle between consistently supplying less energy than your body demands and also keeping your body nourished.
10. On one hand, these objectives are divergent because food, energy, and nutrients are linked. The more food you eat, the more energy you can potentially supply, and the more nutrients you can potentially deliver. For fat loss, you have to limit your energy intake, which means you’ll inherently limit your food intake and potential nutrient intake. On the other hand, these objectives are convergent because many of the foods you should eat to control your energy supply are packed with nutrients.

To summarize, a good fat-loss diet does two things: (1) creates an energy deficit large enough to cause meaningful fat loss in a realistic time frame; (2) creates an energy deficit small enough to allow you to keep your body nourished.

There are more complicated and less complicated ways to work toward this objective. Considering most people can’t diet past Monday, I’ll start on the simpler end of the spectrum with a one-eyed look at my “lazy” dieting strategy.

If you want to lose fat without trying you should first focus on quality and not quantity.

In other words, you should eat mostly Mother Nature’s foods, which are things that can be found in nature and consumed almost immediately, with minimal preparation. Things like fruits, plants, and animals. These foods tend to be the most nutrient-rich foods in the world.

Almost every other food requires some kind of processing in order to become edible. Processing isn’t inherently evil; cooking is technically a form of food processing. There are levels to processing, though. It’s one thing to char salmonella off a turkey leg or turn a cow’s tit juice into cheese. It’s another thing to create a handheld stay-fresh-forever chocolate cake designed to deliver an intense dopaminergic spike in the name of consumer addiction. And so, it’s useful to distinguish between two types of processed foods.

Low-processed foods are derived from Mother Nature’s materials and have few ingredients. Things like cheese, yogurt, rice, and grains.

High-processed foods are derived from processed materials and have a lot of ingredients. Things like chips, candies, crackers, cookies, cakes, and, of course, protein bars.

One of the easiest ways to distinguish between low-processed foods and high-processed foods is to look at how long the food has existed. Low-processed foods have been around for ages. High-processed foods were created within the past century or two.

Eating an abundance of high-processed foods will make it more difficult to lose weight. High-processed foods are easier to break down and digest. Your body doesn’t undergo as much “digestive exercise.” You end up absorbing more energy. For instance, some research showed 38% of the fat in peanuts passed through the body unabsorbed, whereas all of the fat in peanut butter was absorbed. In other words, eating 400 calories of peanut butter has the potential to make you fatter than eating 400 calories of peanuts.

Research also suggests it’s easier to overeat high-processed foods. In one study, researchers broke participants into two groups. One group was fed high-processed foods. The other group was fed low-processed foods. The meals they gave each group contained the same amount of calories, sugars, fibers, fats, and carbohydrates. They were allowed to eat as much or as little as they wanted. End result, participants in the ultra-processed group ate around 500 calories more per day than the participants in the low-processed group.

Odds say the more overly processed foods you eat, the more difficult time you’ll have with fat loss. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not impossible to lose weight with a diet high in high-processed foods. A nutrition professor at Kansas State University named Mark Haub ate mostly junk food for ten weeks and lost 27 pounds. Similar stories exist. However, the people that lose weight eating a large portion of ultra-processed foods also seem to rigorously track their energy intake.

Since I’m approaching this from the opposite perspective (losing fat without trying), I say the bulk of your food intake (around 80%) should consist of Mother Nature’s food (and her low-processed variants) that serve a nutrient end with minimal negative side effects. Example: blueberries are full of vitamin K, vitamin C, and manganese alongside antioxidants and other compounds that protect against cell damage.

The remaining 20% can creep into the high-processed world as desired. These are foods with minimal nutrient yield and potentially undesirable side effects. Typically, these foods are eaten purely for pleasure. Example: table sugar doesn’t contain nutrients beyond carbs and may increase inflammation.

If you want to lose fat without trying you should also avoid most calorie-containing liquids. 

Drinking things is much different than eating things. Liquids bypass most of our satiety circuitry. This is why I’m not a huge fan of “healthy” drinks, like green smoothies. The ingredients may be healthy, but you’d never eat the ingredients of a smoothie the way you drink them.

Here’s the recipe for a green smoothie:

1 cup pineapple chunks
1 ripe banana
1 cup frozen mango cubes
1 cup coconut milk
4 cups baby spinach
1 Teaspoon vanilla extract
3–4 Tablespoons flax meal or chia seeds

You blend these ingredients and suck down the resultant liquid without thought. Would you ever eat all of these solid ingredients as a meal?

No.

When solid food becomes liquid food, you put things into your body you otherwise wouldn’t.

Sugary soft drinks and (most) juices are chock full of energetic material with no real nutrition. This one-two punch is made more dangerous when you consider these liquids don’t contribute to satiety and satiation the way solid foods do.

If you drink a small bottle of Mountain Dew, you’re eating fourteen tablespoons of sugar. Eating fourteen tablespoons of sugar is similar to eating two potatoes. What’s going to feel better in your belly: 8 ounces of liquid or two potatoes?

Reserve your energy intake for foods that will fill your belly by drinking mostly water. (Water doesn’t contain energetic material. I hope you know this.) There are sensible low-calorie beverages that aren’t water, like black coffee and plain tea. There are also sugar-free sodas and flavored seltzer waters. (Studies show artificial sweeteners aren’t the wretched hive of scum and villainy people once thought they were.)

Drinking beverages that contain energy isn’t the end of the world. (I drink raw milk almost every day.) You just have to respect them as if they were solid food. (Next time you see someone drinking a Mountain Dew, imagine them eating a baked potato.)

Following these two “lazy” dieting suggestions will likely trigger fat loss if you’ve never dieted with fat-loss intent before.

Instead of eating a cream-cheese-covered bagel and drinking a glass of orange juice for breakfast, you eat some eggs and drink some black coffee. You put 300 fewer calories into your body and you didn’t have to rise before the rooster and run six miles in sub-zero temperatures (in recently purchased above-the-knee-shorts).

The next big concern is protein intake. Protein is one of three macronutrients (the others being carbohydrates and fats). The macronutrients get a lot of press because they’re the nutrients we can extract energetic material from. The rule(s) of thumb:

proteins: 4 calories / gram
carbs: 4 calories / gram
fats: 9 calories / gram

even though macronutrients steal the show, there are worlds below the macronutrients you shouldn’t ignore. there are micronutrients (vitamins and minerals), phytochemicals, bacteria, and other things i’m not smart enough to pretend to know about. catering to the sub-macronutrient world can be overwhelming. it’s one thing to keep an eye on carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. it’s another thing to keep an eye on the 10+ vitamins and 20+ minerals you need.

the best way to take care of your sub-macronutrient needs without trying to take care of your sub-macronutrient needs is to eat mostly Mother Nature’s food. who would have thought the things that have sustained human life for millions of years would contain the very things humans need to survive?

proteins are the Ron Burgundy of macronutrients because of their role in muscle growth and repair. you need nitrogen to build muscle; trying to build muscle without proteins is like trying to build a house without wood. proteins are the only macronutrient containing nitrogen.

if want to boost your odds of double-dipping, you need to eat plenty of proteins. even if you don’t double-dip, you’ll do a better job retaining muscle tissue. (the only thing proteins can’t do is play the jazz flute.)

this is something ignored earlier: yeah, you can eat tons of junk food and lose weight, but weight is different than fat. chances are, Haub (and the others) lost a larger percentage of muscle tissue than he otherwise would have if he ate plenty of proteins and other nourishing foods.

old school bodybuilders and strength enthusiasts used to say you should eat one gram of protein for every pound you weigh. in other words, if you weigh 205 pounds, then you should eat 205 grams of protein. (rule should be modified if you’re obese.)

science says you probably only need 0.7-0.8 grams of protein for every pound you weigh. i don’t care what science says. i’m superstitious. i waste hours of my life in the gym every week trying to build muscle. i don’t care about eating a pinch more protein than what may be physiologically necessary, especially considering there’s no downside.

protein’s presence should dominate every feeding.

reaching your protein requirement is easier if you eat meat, eggs, and fish (don’t shy away from organ meats like liver and heart). dairy can also help. milk, yogurt, kefir, and cottage cheese are staples.

Cheat codes: First, Greek yogurt tends to be higher in protein. Second, Fairlife milk has more protein than other milk

(whey protein power is a convenient source of proteins, but you want the majority of your proteins to come from Mother Nature’s foods.)

if you don’t eat meat, eggs, fish, or dairy for religious or personal reasons, you have an uphill battle. you won’t have a lot of variety in what you can eat because you’ll have to eat foods high in protein; you can’t afford to eat a lot of foods that don’t have proteins.

 

 

when eat chicken breast, which mostly proteins, can eat w/e carb u want regardless of proteins b/c have energy. when you eat split peas, well, have to eat fucking split peas. can’t not eat them

 

even more, proteins aren’t as likely to be broken down and used for energy. your body would rather use the bits and bytes of pulverized proteins for other things. although i’m not dumb enough (or smart enough?) to say the energetic component of proteins doesn’t “count,” i don’t classify them as an “energy” nutrient.

 

Even though no food (to my knowledge) will permanently halt fat burning, you should:

Eat mostly Mother Nature’s food.

Parts of creatures that formerly had heartbeats, fruits, and plants. Don’t eat laboratory experiments stuffed inside vacuum-sealed plastic bags.

Drink mostly water and no-calorie beverages.

Stay hydrated. Your pee should be a pale-yellow color, not a neon-mustard color.

Place proteins at the center of every meal.

if you eat three meals per day, eat at least two hockey-puck-sized portions of protein with every feeding. at minimum. this won’t be enough, but it’s a start.

Forget about the battle between carbs and fats.

fats are essential, meaning we need them to survive, yet we can’t produce them ourselves. in other words, if you don’t eat fats, your body won’t be very happy (or alive, for that matter). your life will be 10x better if you eat sardines.

carbs aren’t essential, meaning we don’t need them to survive. doesn’t mean they’re bad. in the late 1930s, Dr. Walter Kempner put his patients (many had high blood pressure and kidney issues) on a strict diet consisting mostly of white rice, fruit, juices, and sugar. in one study of 106 patients, everyone lost at least 99 pounds.

as long as you’re eating low-processed foods, what matters most is controlling your energy intake.

 

 

PART: EXERCISE