What to do when you fall prey to the skinny-fat syndrome?

This is something that people often ponder over and most of them usually get quite confused because they have no clue or help as to what direction  to choose: should they lose weight OR should they gain weight? One gets pretty hopeless and it's like fighting a battle with yourself when deciding what to do. Here are the consequences losing weight and of gaining weight when stuck in this rut:

Losing weight:   people who choose to lose weight often spend endless hours doing on the treadmill or in the park in the hope that they may shed some pounds. They will give up food and fall prey to the presumption that by exercising this way they WILL lose weight and get that body that they want. I've got news for you: I've been down this road and this is the WORST thing you can do to yourself and that is why I've written this in red. 

Consequences: What happens when you do the above is that you are depriving your body of important nutrients (vitamins, proteins, carbohydrates, calcium, fats, etc). As a consequence you become flabbier and demoralized with poor skin, irritable, anorexic and disgusted by yourself. I've actually seen people who looked better when they were fat as opposed to what they looked like after losing the 'weight'.

Reason: The reason for this is that people focus so much on losing 'weight on the scale' that they presume that every time they lose a pound (or more) they are losing fat. That is NOT the case. The main thing to consider is FAT LOSS and NOT weight loss. Here's how: bodybuilders and fitness trainers often PREFER LOSING FAT WHILE STAYING AT THE SAME WEIGHT. 
Here's why: when you lose weight you are often losing muscle AND fat. Now, people who focus on losing numbers on the scale are so determined to lose weight that they would rather starve and see those numbers go down, than eat and stay at the same weight. What happens in such a situation is that people often end up losing MUSCLE rather than FAT and that is worse. This could lead to weakness, poor respiratory system ( the largest muscle in the body is the heart), osteoporosis,  and other such health issues. Check out the following link for more information on this: http://www.medicinenet.com/weakness/symptoms.htm .
It would be better to go for FAT LOSS because that would mean that you would be losing fat and this is the right way to go. You can judge fat loss by loss of inches,  how your clothes fit you and how you look in the mirror. This is something I often focus on myself and what I work on when working with clients. Therefore, FOCUS ON FAT LOSS AND NOT ON THE WEIGHING SCALE. 
But if you DO lose weight, that does not always mean that you are going down the wrong path. However, do NOT rely on the weighing scale, rely on the mirror. 
In my next post I will focus on how one SHOULD deal with the skinny-fat syndrome and the appropriate measures to deal with this issue.

Getting Both Sides of The Picture

Today I am going to help understand why some people are against the idea of building muscle at all.

Some men fall prey to the pre-conceived notion that weight-training and building muscle would lead to hair loss due to the production of testosterone ( which is produced during such activity). This is not true. Here is an article to disprove such myths : http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=53848.

The main gist of this article is that hair-loss is genetic and NOT simply because of testosterone production. Hence, it is wrong to assume that testosterone leads to hair-loss.

Secondly, many people believe that building muscle would involve the consumption of ridiculously high amounts of protein and that over-consumption of protein could lead to kidney-stones, the production of uric acid, cancer and other such diseases. 
Once again this is WRONG. It is true that a person who is weight-training would need a higher amount of protein than a sedentary person (in order to preserve muscle mass) but it is wrong to assume that this could lead to any of the above mentioned diseases. On the contrary, I know quite a few people who consume LESS THAN ENOUGH PROTEIN and still suffer from uric acid at a young age!
It is not that high amounts of protein leads to these problems : consuming high amounts of ANY FOOD without regulating them via exercise will lead to some problem or the other. By way of example high amounts of carbohydrates on a daily basis leads to over-production of insulin which would lead to diabetes and/or obesity.
Therefore, the idea is to regulate these nutrients. Protein could be channeled towards muscles and help preserve or build muscle ; carbohydrates could be used to enable one to lift weights and this would prevent them from getting stored in unnecessarily high amounts. Simply put, anything that you eat, if you do not put it to use, will get converted into fats and/or cause other problems such as those mentioned above
Another thing that I have observed is that many tend to think that protein shakes and steroids are the only way to gain muscle and so, people think that these are the only ways by which they could gain muscle. Again, this is WRONG.
Only bodybuilders and those wishing to get the body of a bodybuilder revert to such methods of increasing muscle. That does not mean that this is the ONLY WAY BY WHICH ONE WOULD GAIN MUSCLE. I know many people with an amazing physique without using such products and my friends, clients and I are amongst such people.

Lastly, this is for women/girls: you will not put on a lot of muscle because you do not have what it takes to gain such large amounts of muscle, biologically. Women produce small amounts of testosterone because of which they will never get big or put on manly muscles. 
Read this link for your own comfort ladies: http://www.sgfitness.com/site/1388195/page/664580

Solidifying my stance

To further solidify my stance I will illustrate to you, via pictures, what the skinny-fat look is, by using examples of famous celebrities or even an average person, who one may think is thin or fit, but is, in fact, not.

 

Mischa Barton. Personally, to be honest, I thought she was thin but never flabby. I saw her in The OC. However amazing she may have looked in the season, this is the reality of this celebrity

Nicole Richie: I saw her in The Simple Life and thought she was very thin but never, paradoxically, flabby at the same time.

Shia Lebouf: Again, same story, I thought he was thin when I saw him in Even Stevens, a show in which he acted when he was much younger. He was later guided by professional trainers to help him get in shape in time for the Indiana Jones movie.

Some random skinny-fat guy.
















So, there you have it. These are examples of skinny-fat people who you may or may not be fans of. However, the purpose was not to attract you to the blog so that you may oggle at celebrities. The point was to show you that skinny-fat people do exist amongst ourselves and that it is an illusion of a person being fit or thin when he/she is actually not.

The misconceptions regarding muscles

Its been a long time since I posted up here. I was rather surprised to come across a number of misconceptions regarding building muscle, even if it is not for bodybuilding competitions. While some assume that building muscle leads to baldness (due to an increase in testosterone levels when training with weights), other believe that it is more important to REDUCE WEIGHT ON THE SCALE THAN, NO MATTER WHAT, EVEN IF IT IS DONE AT THE RISK OF LOSING MUSCLE MASS. If you are someone who supports such theories then let me show you what you are headed for :

Sure, this guy will be able to wear anything he wants to and he may seem perfectly fit or thin to you but the truth is what is evident in the picture. This is known as the skinny-fat syndrome. It is not very easy to get out of such a situation. The only way to get out of this is to re-gain the weight lost, in a healthy manner, and then manipulate your metabolism from there on. What was all the effort, to starve yourself, for then?
As was stated above, the only way that one can get out of this conundrum is to gain weight and to do so in a healthy manner with a healthy diet plan and a healthy mind-set. Therefore, muscle must be gained to prevent you from falling prey to such a physique: where you merely create the illusion that you are thin.http://stronglifts.com/how-to-lose-the-skinny-fat-look-forever/.
The link that I have attached above is a mere summary of how you can save yourselves from this dilemma and I intend to elaborate upon this summary, in my own way.