How To Fix Skinny Fat I How To Lose Fat And Build Muscle At The Same Time
In this instructional video, Eric Roberts explains the phenomenon of being "skinny fat"—a condition where a person appears thin but lacks muscle definition. He outlines the two most common causes: losing weight primarily through cardio or calorie deficit without strength training, and a lifelong lack of resistance training. Roberts emphasizes a crucial mindset shift: stop focusing on losing weight or body fat and instead prioritize building lean muscle mass. He provides concrete nutrition guidance, recommending eating at maintenance calories (estimated as body weight in pounds × 14) and consuming roughly 1 g of protein per pound of body weight. He also discusses the optional use of a modest calorie surplus for accelerated muscle gain. For training, he advocates moving away from cardio‑centric routines toward structured strength‑training programs that emphasize progressive overload, increasing weight, reps, or sets over time, and training intensity (working close to failure, using tempo or pause reps). He stresses tracking progress via regular photos (every 4 weeks) and body measurements (every 2 weeks) rather than the scale. Throughout, he points viewers to additional free resources—articles on calorie calculations, protein intake, and 52 free workout videos—available in the video description. The overall message is that by aligning diet, training, and mindset toward muscle growth, skinny‑fat individuals can achieve a more defined, stronger physique.
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Ma, ma, ma, ma. All right, voice is good now. Let's dive into this, shall we? What is going on, YouTube? Hope you're doing super well. Hope you're doing amazing. In this video today, we're going to be talking about how to fix skinny fat. I was about to say, what is skinny fat? We're going to talk about what is skinny fat. But we're specifically going to talk about how to fix skinny fat. Once we go over what is skinny fat and why does it happen, we're also going to cover the mindset shift that needs to happen in order for you to fix skinny fat. And then we're going to shift into gears into applicable things you can do in terms of with your diet and with your workouts in order to fix skinny fat. All right, so without further ado, let's dive right in. I don't— Fucking sirens, man. Jesus. All right, what is skinny fat? Skinny fat is basically this thing where you're not overweight, you're not obese, but you're, you know, and maybe you've lost some weight, but you're not really looking the way you want to look. You don't have the, the toned arms, you don't have the defined shoulders, you don't really have the leg muscles you were looking for. You're just kind of skinny, right? But again, you're not inherently overweight because when you step on the scale, you know, you may not think you're, you're very overweight, right? So it's this matter of, you know, you're not fat, but you're not looking the way you want to look. It's kind of like this, this in-between, right? Now, why does skinny fat happen? Skinny fat happens because number one, you've lost a good amount of weight and you've gotten to your goal body weight, which we're going to talk about later, you've gotten to your goal body weight, but you've done it in a way where you really either A, haven't exercised much, and/or B, you've mainly just done cardio. I've had, I have a lot of people come to me who, um, have lost some weight, but their main form of exercise was cardio, right? So that's kind of the first scenario. The second scenario is maybe you've just been like this your entire life. Maybe you've never really been overweight. You haven't really had any weight issues, but you haven't ever really looked the way you want to look because again, whether it's the fact that you've never exercised much or the fact that again you've stuck mainly to cardio. Those 2 things, again, even if you've never been overweight or had overweight problems, if you've never really dove into strength training and never really dove into actually lifting weights and building muscle, you can kind of get this physique where you're like, yeah, I mean, I'm not overweight, but I don't look the way I want to look, right? So that's kind of what is skinny fat and why does it happen. Those 2 scenarios are the most common scenarios. Obviously there's others, but those are the 2 most common scenarios. Another one I can think of is, you know, if you're recently possibly coming off of surgery and/or possibly coming off of a time period where you have not been working out for an extended period of time, whether it's, you know, 6 months or 6 years or anywhere in between. So, um, I'd say those 3 scenarios are the most common. Now let's talk about skinny fat and the mindset shift that needs to happen in order for you to, to correct skinny fat. Because what most people come to me and say is they are looking to lose weight because they don't like the way they look in the mirror. So they think in their head They need to lose body fat. And this is probably you. You're probably thinking, if I don't look the way I want to look, I need to lose weight. And the problem with this is if you are skinny fat right now, if this is what you're dealing with, obviously I assume it is because you're watching this video. If you are dealing with skinny fat, I think you've already realized it's not about the number on the scale anymore. That, that is going to be one of the least most important things for you to actually look at during this journey because again, You can lose fat without losing weight. You can, uh, you can, you can gain weight without gaining body fat. And I talk about this more in my YouTube video. I'll link it here above and I'll put it in the description below. I talk all about the difference between losing body fat and losing weight and gaining body fat and gaining weight. They're not one and the same, right? So feel free to go watch that video. But like I just said, the number on the scale is not what you should be concerning yourself with anymore. That should be one of the last things you concern yourself with. In terms of progress trackers, what you should be looking at is your progress pictures, obviously, because you're wanting to look a certain way in the mirror. So taking progress pictures every 4 weeks and taking measurements every 2 weeks— those 2 things will be a better indicator of your progress right now than the scale, because the scale may go up, down, or stay the same. But if you look different in the mirror then this is why, again, the scale is not the best indicator of progress. So what is this mindset shift you need to change? You need to change thinking about losing weight and losing fat into building muscle. You need to go in a completely different direction if you want to fix skinny fat, because again, as you've already seen, you're not overweight. So the problem is you not losing weight or losing more body fat. The issue is You need to build more lean muscle mass to put on your body because that's the only way you are going to get that tone, that lean, that defined look you are, you are searching for, whether it's your defined shoulders, whether it's you want to see your leg muscles, whether you want, you know, more defined arms, whatever it is, you can't get that until you build muscle because in order to have the defined arms and defined shoulders, you can lose all the weight you want to in the world. But if you don't have the muscle to show, you can just lose weight, lose weight, lose weight, and you'll, you'll never achieve that look. You will never attain that look unless you have muscle on your body to show when you lose that weight, when you lose the body fat. This is why right now, if this is what you're dealing with, you need to stop focusing on losing weight and losing fat. You need to start focusing on building muscle, building strength, and focus on building your body up. This is why people call it bodybuilding. You build the body you want. You don't tear it down, AKA losing fat. You build up the body you want. You build muscle, you get stronger, you do more reps. So you need to concern yourself with building muscle as opposed to losing fat. This is going to help you build and shape that physique that you are looking to attain. All right, so listen, the first half, again, we talked about what is skinny fat. Why does it happen and the mindset shift that needs to go on if you are looking to fix skinny fat? All right, so now let's dive into how are we going to build muscle? What is that going to look like? Is the scale going to go up? We're going to cover all those things. What your diet looks like, what nutrition looks like, what workouts look like, all those things right now. All right, so first and foremost, let's dive into diet because that's kind of the most— one of the more simple ones, right? So With your nutrition, again, nutrition comes down and changing your body composition comes down to calories in versus calories out. So how many calories are you eating and how many calories are you burning? If you want more in-depth information on that, I'm gonna link an article here I did in the description below. But calories in versus calories out. So the first most important thing that needs to happen is when somebody comes to me as a client looking to fix their skinny fat, the first thing I do Is put them up to maintenance calories. Because probably what's happening right now for you is, again, you've probably been focusing on losing, losing fat, which is probably focused on being in a calorie deficit. Get out of that calorie deficit and get into more of a maintenance. Because again, the more calories you're able to have, the more muscle you're able to build. The more muscle you're able to build, the better your physique is going to look at this moment in time. So we need to get you out of a calorie deficit and get you more into a calorie maintenance. Now, what is your calorie maintenance? Good question. Now, I know my handwriting isn't that good, but an approximation of how many calories your calorie maintenance is for you is take your current body weight in pounds times 14, and that is how many calories around what your maintenance calories are. Because remember, maintenance calories is not just one number, it's a range. So for this example, If we take somebody who's 150 pounds and times that by 14, that's 2,100 calories, which I know probably seems like a lot for you right now, and you're probably kind of scared of hearing that, but I promise you it's what you need if you want to fix skinny fat. All right, so let's just say somebody takes 150 times 14, that's 2,100 calories, right? So calorie maintenance is a range. So for example, there, this person's calorie maintenance range could be from 1,850 to 2,150. That could be their kind of maintenance range, right? Unless I work with you directly, I can't tell you the exact range, but using this equation to start off is going to get you a very, very close number to what you should be. So as far as diet goes, take your current body weight in pounds times 14. That's how many calories you should be eating right now. Okay? So now the next thing we're going to talk about is maybe one of the more important things is going to be protein. Protein is super, super, super duper important because— and actually, I can tell you firsthand, I've worked with some clients in the past who we haven't changed their calorie total at all, but we brought their protein up to where it needed to be, and their body and their physique started changing literally almost like that. Within 2 to 4 weeks, their body started changing. Protein is by far one of the most important parts of this equation. If you are not hitting your protein goal, which we're going to talk about If you are not hitting that, that's a big problem. That should be one of the top priorities on your list on how to fix skinny fat is hitting your protein goal. Because number one, protein is the, the only macronutrient that is going to allow you to build lean muscle mass, right? And if we go back to earlier, we talked about the issue right now is you— is not you losing body fat. The issue is you need to gain more lean muscle mass. If you do not have adequate protein, you will not be able to gain lean muscle mass. I don't care how great your workouts are and I don't care how good your diet is. If you don't have protein, enough protein, you are not going to build lean muscle mass. So in that instance, to fix skinny fat, we need to be getting around 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight. So again, for example, if you weigh 150 pounds, you should be getting around 150 grams of protein. And again, I said around, okay? So if you're getting 142 grams, amazing. If you're getting 164 grams, amazing. Around a gram of protein per pound of body weight. I guarantee you, if you do this, you are going to start to see your physique change, see your body change. Because again, that skinny fat look is like, you know, it's kind of soft, you don't have any real definition. When you start introducing the proper amount of protein into your diet mixed with going into a calorie maintenance, your body is going to start getting that more, uh, you know, oh, that more defined look. All right, so Start doing that. And again, if you want more information on protein, if you want, you know, if you want— because one of the biggest things with protein is people struggle getting enough protein in. And listen, I understand it's hard. I weigh 265 pounds and I'm eating around 265 grams of protein per day. It's not easy, I understand. I wrote an article I'm going to link here in the description. I wrote an article on the 5 best ways to increase your protein intake during the day. Feel free to go read that article. It's on my website. It'll help you out a ton. So again, as far as dieting goes, those are the 2 biggest things right there. Get enough protein and eat around your calorie maintenance. If you do that, you are going to see your body change if the final piece of this equation comes into play, and that is going to be your workouts. And again, shifting from losing body fat to gaining muscle, not only is this a dietary shift going from a calorie deficit to a calorie maintenance or even a calorie surplus, which we didn't talk about today, but A calorie surplus is basically you're going to your calorie maintenance and adding 250 to that, around 250 calories. So if your calorie maintenance is 2,000, going into a calorie surplus would be anywhere from, you know, 20— excuse me, 2,100 to 2,300 calories, right? That'd be a 100 to 300 calorie surplus, and you could also do that as well. But normally I like to start people out at maintenance and kind of work from there. So now talking about workouts, it's a mental shift as well because Normally when you think losing weight and not looking the way you want to look, you need to do more cardio. You need to do more HIIT classes, more burpees, more high-intensity aerobic exercise where your heart rate's very high and you're breathing heavy and you're sweating. We need to get you away from that. And again, I'm not to say it's bad because again, if you enjoy that, that's, that's amazing. But if you're looking to fix the issue of skinny fat, you need to go from cardio, high intensity, all those kinds of things. To more of a structured strength training muscle building program. And again, if we go back to earlier, the only way you're going to fix skinny fat is if you turn to a more structured muscle building program. Because again, the only way to fix that is to build muscle. If you're doing hours of cardio or HIIT classes and those kinds of things, those things are not going to build muscle for you. They're, they're just, they're not going to build the muscle that you want. And again, if you've been doing those things all this time and you've gotten to this point where you are kind of this skinny fat, it hasn't worked for you yet. So you have to change it and do something different, right? So going into a more structured muscle building program is what you are going to need to do. And again, this means that you are focusing on getting stronger, increasing your workout performance, increasing your reps, increasing your weights, uh, over a period of time. You are getting better at pushups. You're lifting more on squats. You're doing more on deadlifts. You are focused more on increasing your workout performance because again, The only way you are going to build muscle is before you even talk about diet. You can have the best diet with the best calories and the best protein, but if your workouts aren't on point and where they need to be and you're not pushing yourself and bringing proper intensity to your workouts, you're not going to build muscle. So again, I don't care how great your diet is. If your workouts are not there, your body is not going to change. And I just said something, bringing intensity to your workouts. One of the biggest things I see people kind of get afraid of, especially women, both men and women, both men and women, but especially women, they think that, you know, when I say, hey, start lifting weights, start getting stronger, start lifting heavier, they think they're going to turn into the Hulk. They think they're going to turn into, you know, Mr. Olympia or Arnold Schwarzenegger. I promise you, if it was that easy, I would have done it by now. I've spent my entire life trying to do it. It's not that easy. You lifting weights, again, the only way to build muscle is through— you are providing a stress great enough on your body that your body has to adapt to. So for example, if you're lifting 100 pounds for 5 reps on squats on week 1 and month 6 rolls around and you're still lifting 100 pounds for 5 reps, why would your body change? Your body's used to that. You're not putting a new stress on it. You're not challenging your body. You're not challenging your muscles. So your muscles aren't going to grow stronger and more defined. You need to be progressively doing more. So for example, this could look like week 1, you're doing 100 pounds for 5 reps on squats. Week 2, you do 105 pounds for 5 reps on squats. Week 3, you do 110 pounds for 5 reps on squats. You're increasing slowly over time. This could also look like if week 1 you're doing 3 sets of 8 pushups, week 2 you could do 1 set of 9 pushups and 2 sets of 8 pushups. Week 3, you could do 2 sets of 9 pushups and 1 set of 8 pushups. Either way, on both of these things, you are doing more over a period of time. And again, not only doing that, but making sure you're bringing proper intensity to your workouts. And what I mean by intensity is, again, get away from the cardio mindset, get away from the, you know, I have to be sweating, I have to be out of breath. That's not what I mean. What I mean is how close are you lifting to failure? How heavy are you lifting? So again, for example, I'm actually gonna put a video right here. I'm gonna put it up. You can watch it for a second. This is what I mean when I say bring proper intensity to your workouts. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. So as you saw from that video, on the 6th, 7th, and 8th rep, they were starting to get hard. They were challenging me. They were pushing me mentally and physically. As you saw the last rep, I was kind of like, right? So like, you need to be bringing intensity to your workouts. If your sets If if your sets are not looking like that, if you're getting done a set of ten reps and you're just like, all right cool I'm done, it's not going to cut it. I don't it's not going to cut it. You need to be lifting heavier. You need to be pushing yourself to do more. And again, even if you don't have heavier weights, you need to find a way to make sure you are pushing the intensity of your workouts. Whether it is you know adding a pause rep or adding a slow eccentric. So for example, on that on that video you just saw, if I went five seconds on the way down. And then 5 seconds on the way up. That could be one way to increase your intensity, but you need to be bringing proper intensity to your workouts. And again, the best way I can explain this is if you watch that video you just saw, the last 2 to 3 reps should be challenging you. If they aren't, you need to be lifting heavier if you want to fix skinny fat. Okay? So make sure you're, you're lifting with intensity. Make sure you're doing more over a period of time. You're progressively overloading, whether it's more sets or more weight or more reps or whatever it is. Do those 2 things combined and you will see muscle growth. Now you're probably thinking, what does a workout look like? How can I structure my workout? Don't worry, I got your back. I put up 2 videos here on YouTube. I'll link them here above, part 1 and part 2, but they literally go over exactly how you can set up your own workout program. Literally, it's all right there for free, so go check it out. I also want to put here in the description below 52 free workouts from me to you. They're literally free. They even have like exercise videos of me showing you how to do the exercise. It's probably by far one of the best free things I've ever seen anybody give out. Not to toot my own horn, but I just— I'm being serious. So I'm gonna link that here in the description below. But again, as you kind of have saw, these are the, these are the 4 main pillars of what you need if you want to fix skinny fat. And again, just finishing off, the most important thing is you need to get away from thinking about losing weight. Get away from the scale. Get away from losing body fat. You need to start building your body up, getting stronger, building muscle. That is how you're going to change your physique. If you do not do that, your physique will not change. So please use all the free information I got here. If you have a question or concern, drop it below. I'd be happy to help you, but you need to focus more on building your body up and building muscle to fix this skinny fat that you have going on. All right, so listen, I hope the video was well. I hope you enjoyed it. Hope it taught you something. If you have any questions or concerns, again, let me know. Drop them— the questions below. I'll be happy to answer them. And other than that, thank you for watching. And, uh, if you enjoy the video, feel free to give it a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel for more content like this. And, uh, we'll talk soon. All right, thanks.
