i know exactly how it feels to be skinny fat back in the day i was a skinny fat guy and i'll show you some photos up on your screen and i figured out a couple of key things that i was doing wrong both in the gym and in the kitchen and i turned it around i managed to get super shredded and then i went on to compete in a number of bodybuilding competitions so this video is for everybody guys and gals that are skinny fat that are making all the same mistakes that i once made
and you want to figure out how to correct those mistakes and get into the best shape of your life stick around i'm going to talk about it in this video coming up [Music] alright my friends welcome back brad here again brand newton fitness.com it's my website and my brand new youtube channel so welcome back for the one subscriber that we have on this channel so far this is my third youtube channel so you got to start somewhere 12th of october 2021 episode 5 filming from lockdown city melbourne the most locked down city in the world
that is a fact now i'm going to jump straight into it and i'm going to keep this as short as possible skinny fat what is it you probably know what it is if you're watching this video you probably are a skinny fat which is okay it's how i started i'll show you the photos of what i look like as a skinny fat back in the day essentially skinny arms skinny chest and a little bit of a gut right maybe some love handles as well that's what skinny fat is skinny fat is essentially somebody that has
not much muscle on the frame and quite a bit of fat in all the wrong places so that's essentially what skinny fat is so what causes skinny fat before i get into the solution i'll talk about what causes it and so i'll talk about the mistakes that i made because they're probably the same mistakes that you're making in the gym and outside of the gym as well i've got them listed here now i've made all of these mistakes at some point years ago which was why i was a skinny fat back in the day the
first one is very little strength training now when i first started my training journey i was intimidated and scared of and this is truth of doing dead lifting because i thought i'd break my back i was scared of bench press because i thought that i'd drop the bar on my chest and i would die that's the truth i was scared i was scared of doing overhead press because i thought i'd drop the bar on my head so the truth is is i stayed away from all of the heavy compound lifts because they looked very intimidating
to me as somebody that was just starting my fitness journey and so i stuck with cable machines predominantly and even so with cable machine workouts because they were pretty safe i didn't track those workouts i didn't know how to track my training i didn't know anything about progressive overload so i'm throwing some terms at you you probably never heard of them which is fine that's okay but essentially i didn't do any compound movements which i'll talk about in the solution in the next part of this video i wasn't training correctly that's the truth so i
was doing predominantly cable machine workouts i wasn't doing proper training which kind of accentuated the skinny fat problem that i had and the second one here is no protein so this was a big one now i was getting a little bit of protein in my diet but i certainly wasn't getting the amount of protein that i needed for the training that i was doing at that time now you need on average around point eight to one gram of protein per pound of body weight per day i said that really fast i'll throw it up on
the screen i'll also mention it again later on in the video but i was probably getting around i think i was getting like 70 or 80 grams of protein a day back in those days which is not enough protein if you're training in the gym even if you're doing the wrong training you do you need to get more protein so that is one of the reasons why i wasn't building any muscle which led to being skinny fat was because i wasn't getting enough protein so we'll come back to that the third one severe calorie restriction
now a lot of people do this particularly women right i did this as well i starved myself at times i didn't eat enough calories i thought if i just you know ate 1500 calories a day or 12 i wasn't even tracking my calorie intake to be honest with you but i just knew if i severely restricted my intake of food then it would be the quickest way of losing fat so that was another reason why i was a skinny fat guy severe calorie restriction a lot of you guys could probably relate to that starving yourself
yo-yo dieting that kind of stuff i've been there i've done this i've made that mistake the next one is too much cardio now i've done this you know hours on the treadmill five six days a week thinking that the more cardio i was doing the more fat i would lose combining all of these together led to losing a whole lot of muscle keeping the fat on my frame which then accentuated this problem of being a skinny fat i made all these mistakes which ones are you making now it's okay you're probably making several of these
which is fine you need to know what mistakes you're making so that then you can correct them so once you know that we get we get to the solution now how i turned my body around from being skinny fat to being shredded it took time that's number one i would suggest doing this for at least six to eight weeks six to eight weeks and you'll start seeing considerable improvements with your physique but you have to trust the process one thing my coach always taught me when i was competing trust the process six to eight weeks
the solution the first thing i had to do was i had to fix my training that was the first thing down here weight lifting four times a week that's what i did between three to five times a week i got onto a structured weightlifting program if you don't know what that is or what the best one is i actually wrote an article i'll link it below called push pull legs i talk about the kind of weightlifting i was doing in that article i'll link it below push pull legs and essentially push pull eggs is a
very simple split right organizing your training into push muscles pull muscles and legs there's many different types of splits but that's what i started with and that saved me this one saved me weightlifting now this is what i did i hired a personal trainer to help me through the most intimidating lifts the deadlift now the deadlift i as i mentioned before i was super fearful of i thought i was going to hurt my back it turns out that i didn't hurt my back provided someone shows you or you start off with very light weight like
for me it was around 60 kilos that's how i started off my deadlifting journey 60 kilos trying to figure out the correct form and the technique and all that kind of stuff and then getting a personal trainer to just check my technique a couple of times that gave me the confidence to then go away in my own time and start doing a lot more deadlifting so the first one being dead lifting the second one being bench press so if you're a guy watching this you know what i'm talking about get confident with the bench press
start off with a light weight get someone to spot you get a personal trainer to show you that's exactly what i did that broke me through my fear of both the deadlift and the bench press the third one is the squat either front squats or back squats again get someone to show you how to do it do a bit of research on it incorporate the squat for your legs right the fourth one is going to be your overhead press and start off with light weight once again and the next one is going to be you
can do pull-ups as well incorporate pull-ups so that's essentially and i talk more about those core compound movements in the article down here push-pull legs right but i'm just giving you a very quick summary and then all of the other weight training exercises that you do kind of fall in around those core lifts so that's how i did it and i just did that for a good six to eight weeks and i started seeing remarkable improvements in my physique right because to build muscle you need to put your body under stress you need to put
your muscles under stress on top of that weight lifting i did this so i did this three to five times a week using push-pull legs for dead lifting bench press all that kind of stuff that i mentioned i also tracked my weightlifting journey i never did this before now you can track using a notepad it's completely up to you right you can get a notepad and you can just write down you know how much weight how many sets how many reps that you did on a particular day or you can use an app on your
phone which is what i like to use my thing is over there i like to use fit notes fit notes i've been using for years so go and get fit notes and with fitness you can start recording your weightlifting journey that way there are many great apps but that's the one that i still continue to use like six or seven years later i've been using that one forever and that helps me keep track and ensuring that i'm lifting a little bit heavier weight week after week after week because you must aim to get a little
bit stronger on each of your lips every week it's okay if you have a bad week but over time you want to train a little bit heavier a little bit stronger on those main lifts so that's the first big thing that helped me reverse skinny fat the second one is nutrition i call it meal planning right so we'll call it nutrition same thing now it's important that you track your nutritional intake you don't have to be a ninja with the calculations around calories and macros or macronutrients and i'll talk more about this kind of stuff
i'll link some articles below on my website go and check them out because there's obviously a lot more to this than what i have time to explain but when i got myself onto a meal plan for both cutting and bulking a structured meal plan that incorporated enough protein enough fat enough carb according to my goals then i started to see my body change as well so you can do all the training that you want in the gym but if you're not getting enough calories or your calories are not set according to your goals or your
macronutrients are not set according to your goals then you're not going to get the body that you want it's super important that these two work together right you can do all the nutrition you want you can eat clean you can eat amazing food you can get all the protein you want but if you don't lift then your body's not going to change as mentioned if you lift but you don't take care of your nutrition and you eat garbage all day then your body's not going to change so these two go hand in hand 100 each
meal plans so you can either cut or bulk so a lot of people ask me through my website brad should i cut or should i bulk first i always tell people my story and then i look at your physique when the photos come through on my website and then i give people better advice based on individual circumstances but for me i started off with a cut first i started off with a cut and i cut down to around 10 or 12 body fat from memory and then when i got to around 10 to 12 body
fat i then went to a bulk i bulked up to around 20 and i used meal plans for this so i use a cutting meal plan to cut down to about 10 to 12 body fat and then when i got to that i then bulked to around 20 percent and then after i bulked to 20 and while i was bulking by the way i was also doing strength training dead lifting bench press overhead press all those all those lips i mentioned before i was still training the same way during a bulk but my lifts were
much better because when you're in a calorie surplus when you're bulking your lifting performance increases versus being in a cut and then when it got to about 20 percent then i cut again for the second time and then when you cut you're actually removing all the fat not all the fat but as much fat as you can while preserving as much muscle as possible right during your second cup which one should you do should you cut or should you bulk now if you have a lot of fat on your frame right if you're a guy
watching this and you're around 20 body fat then you need to cut i would say you would need to cut first uh if you're around 10 to 12 body fat as a skinny fat then i would say bulk so it depends on your in your frame what you're currently sitting at but it's usually easier to cut first in my experience because when you're just starting this journey of doing what they call a body recomposition where you're changing your body composition you're increasing your muscle and you're reducing your fat right so body recomposition and you're just
starting this journey for the first time when you start off with a cut you're actually seeing you're getting positive reinforcement in the mirror which actually helps build your confidence in that this process actually works whereas if you're a beginner just starting out and you jump straight into a bulk and you get heavier it doesn't look so good in the mirror it doesn't give you that positive feedback loop that as a beginner you really do need and you need that positive feedback loop to give you confidence that what you're doing is working and when you're bulking
off the off the bat and you don't you can't see all your muscle definition because when you're bulking you're putting on a bunch of fat you're also building muscle providing your weight training you can't see any of your striations you can't see any of that muscle you're building because the fat is covering it so you don't get the same feedback loop in the mirror that's why i like cutting first then bulking then cutting as a general rule of thumb and the last one i want to mention is cardio now the cardio that you set depends
on your the goals you you're trying to achieve now when you're cutting i like to increase my cardio but again i'm not doing too much cardio what does that mean too much cardio well i was doing one one and a half hours of cardio a day five days a week too much too much because i was not getting enough protein and i was also severely restricting my calories which led to this problem in the first place so i dialed back my cardio for a cut i was getting around three days i was doing around three
days of cardio a week at around 20 to 30 minutes a session that is it low to moderate intensity up to three days per week of cardio during a cut and if i was doing high-intensity interval training like if i'm doing muay thai kickboxing for example then i might do two high-intensity interval training sessions a week of around 20 minutes of muay thai kickboxing uh because hit training has its own benefits right over and above normal low intensity cardio so you have to dial in your cardio these three things do this for six to eight
weeks and you will see you will definitely see positive changes in your body and you will definitely get away from this problem of being skinny fat so that's a quick summary i'll link up some articles below go and check them out push poor legs i'll give you links to some meal plans to check out and a few other articles that i think was going to really help you that helped me turn my situation around if you have any questions please let me know guys more than happy to help you out and i'll see you in
the next video
