How to Lose The Skinny Fat Body at Home

This is most likely is the question I was asked the most during the gym closures for the covid lockdown… “Can skinny and ‘skinny fat’ people build muscle at home?” and in short the answer is YES, baring in mind there is somewhat a caveat in regards to how much muscle growth you will make at home compared to in an actual gym but overall you can still see results at home!

In regards to which is better… well in most cases a gym will be better due to having much more available equipment for you to be able to increase the resistance during your workouts, but I will cover some tips to help you get the best out of your home workouts!

How To See Results Training At Home?

Although you can make progress at home it is not always guaranteed as it depends on the following; your diet (this is a huge factor in seeing results) and the equipment you currently have (such as dumbbells/barbells, resistant bands) or even if your using your own bodyweight you will still be able to see some results.

Are Resistance Bands Good For Building Muscle?

If you only have resistance bands, this is better than nothing, although this isn’t as optimal for building muscle as actual weights, it is still better than having nothing.

Depending on the type of resistance bands you have, they can be very beneficial to add to your workouts. You can simply do a google search for a multi strength resistance bands they usually range from £16 – £20 or search on MyProtein as they have a light and a heavy resistance band. (37% Discount code: TJGains).

There is a wide range of exercises you can do with resistance bands and still get a really good work out in, you can see a demo of this on my Instagram ‘ChillinwithTJ‘ for more videos and example exercise’s.

What Equipment is Best to Use At Home?

If you can get a hold of dumbbells, then do so! Having them you can do a lot more workouts. With the right routine you can get a decent full body workout in.

If you’re skinny fat and your main goal at the moment is to gain muscle, because your current body fat is a lot higher than your muscle mass thus have an imbalanced ratio, with this type of physique you need to do resistance training to build that muscle mass, to level out that muscle to fat ratio. This will start to look differently, a little more broader and muscular overall, giving you the better look to your physique.

What to Eat and How Much Calories?

As a skinny fat person you need a high protein diet, 0.7g- 1g to 1lb of lean body weight, you want to try make it as easy as possible to build/maintain muscle preferably from whole foods. For example, you should roughly have 145-165g of protein for 165lb slim built person. In the event you struggle to get protein in from real foods, then a whey protein source will be fine but ideally we want to have real foods. As always your protein intake needs to fit within your calorie intake and if you don’t track calories at all then you need to start to!

Track for a minimum of 7 to 10 days to find out maintenance calories and stick to that for now whilst introducing training because in reality, you’re already slim, you do not need to be in a calorie deficit we’re just trying to maintain/build on the current muscle you already have. IF you’re underweight and have a frail physique then try bumping up your calories by 250 – 360 at first to see how it goes for the next 2-3 weeks whilst training, if you don’t train you’ll just gain fat.

Home Training Routine?

Its hard to pin point a specific routine designed for skinny fat bodies as you all have different equipment, similar to the above, I have various home workout routines on my Instagram page that should cater to all these include, no equipment at all just using things you may typically have around your household, resistant band training, dumbbell training etc. Depending on how often you train and the equipment you use:

For Resistance Band: I would recommend training 4 to 5 times a week for a minimum of 45 minutes and really try to push yourself

For Dumbbell: I would recommend training 4 times a week with a fairly structured workout routine

For Bodyweight only: I would recommend training as much as you can possibly 5 – 6 times a week for a minimum of 35 minutes but really push yourself as much as can

How Long Until I See Results?

Ok people, here comes blunt TJ.. brace yourself!

I often get asked can I get in shape in the next few weeks, the answer is probably… no, at the end of the day it takes time to improve your shape, the physique you currently have took you, 5/10 or even 20 years to get to where you are – you need to realise that you can’t expect to get rid of the physique you currently have in a few weeks, its not going to happen!

You can definitely make some improvements in the next few weeks such as being fitter in general but in terms of losing a complete skinny fat physique can take months, the quicker you can improve your diet and consistently follow a structured routine and not constantly changing them is the more likely you are to see results and keep them.

Final Tip

The biggest takeaway I want you to have from this blog is do not feel disheartened, I have many people message me similar messages along the lines of ‘I’ve just started the gym, I wanted to improve my physique and now gyms are closed. All the efforts I’ve put in have been wasted, shall I just give up now and restart again when they do open’ the answer is NO! you shouldn’t give up and you shouldn’t feel like it’s wasted. At the end of the day, yes it has thrown you off slightly and possibly limited a few months of progress but really and truly its is better than if you did absolutely nothing! Even if you are not vastly improving your physique from day one at least you’re getting fitter.

Try to make you main focus on staying active and ensuring you’re mentally fit and happy.

As always check out the video below for a more in-depth.