Double-Dip

Double-dipping is daring. (If you don’t believe me, just ask George Costanza.) I’m talking about losing adipose and building muscle at the same time, of course, which is colloquially known as a “recomposition” — a word stiffer than a teenager’s secret sock. It’s known as double-dipping around these parts.

No doubt, double-dipping is the dream. You need to lose adipose and build muscle. Doing one without the other won’t kill the craving you have for a pixelated physique. On one hand, if you gain muscle without losing adipose, you’ll be softer than a sourdough starter, and you’ll still jiggle when you jump. On the other hand, if you lose adipose without building muscle, you’ll be pointier than a toothpick and look like (an even more) malnourished Mick Jagger.

I doubt you want to be soft-serve fat or chemotherapy thin. I’m guessing you want to be lean and muscular, built like a bottle rocket. (I don’t know what bottle rockets are built like, but there’s something about being built like a bottle-rocket-built that sounds right.) If I were a pandering man, I’d say you want to look toned and defined, but everyone with toenails knows appearing toned and defined is a byproduct of having decent-sized muscles and a low body-fat percentage. In other words, if you want to appear more toned and defined than you currently are, you have to either lose adipose or build muscle. Or do both.

In your case, you need to do both. Don’t tell me you’re afraid of getting “big and bulky,” either. I know you probably don’t want to look like a pro bodybuilder (same), but, trust me, you need to add some beef to your bones if you want to look well-built at a low body fat percentage. For some reason, skinny-fat guys (like you) often overestimate how muscular they are even though their shoulders have less meat than an impossible burger. If you sucked all the adipose from your body and got six-pack pixelated right now without a change in muscularity, you’d look like a member of the Dallas Buyers Club.

So you need to lose adipose and build muscle, this is known. But doing both at the same time is tricky because they’re often seen as physiological opposites, like Squirtle and Charizard. You’ve might have seen some Quackademics™ say things like:

Losing fat requires catabolism! Catabolism is the act of taking big things and breaking them into smaller things! Like breaking a LEGO tower into the individual bricks it’s built from! On the other hand, building muscle requires anabolism! Anabolism is the act of creating bigger things with smaller things! Like taking individual LEGO bricks and building a tower! You can’t create something and destroy something simultaneously! Your body can dismantle the LEGO tower or build the LEGO tower! There’s no middle ground!

Eh…

Losing fat and building muscle aren’t total opposites. You can do both at the same time, especially if you’re a thin-skinned noob or a retired veteran with muscle memory in your back pocket, returning to action after a hiatus. But the practicality of double-dipping usually overshadows the possibility. In other words, it’s like having a threesome with your partner and their opposite-of-cold best friend. Possible? Absolutely. We’re not talking about re-growing a finger. Probable? Well. Um. Eh. Not enough to risk the fallout associated with trying.

Double-dip daredevils usually end up empty-handed, in purgatory, with no results whatsoever. They don’t lose adipose. They don’t build muscle. The only thing more demoralizing is helping a recently established romantic partner move into a studio apartment and clogging the toilet in the process (the plunger is, of course, still in a box on the moving truck).

For the most part, double-dipping is a happy accident, not a deliberate destination. You’re better off single-scooping. Especially if you’re new to this. You should either strive to lose fat and get lean through a process known as “cutting” or strive to build muscle and get big through a process known as “bulking.” If you happen to double-dip along the way, great. If not, no big deal. At least you’re moving in the right direction within one of the two verticals.

From here, we run into a question that haunts skinny-fat guys more than the pictures inside of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark haunted me when I was young enough to have a mushroom-top haircut (it was in style, you have to believe me):

Should you bulk first?

Or should you cut first?

To get the answer, continue ahead to Part 4 of 6-Pack School.