Should skinny-fat guys bulk or cut? A final answer to this haunting question. (I SAID FINAL ANSWER, REGIS.)

The following question haunts skinny-fat dudes more than the pictures inside of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark:

Should you bulk and build muscle, or should you cut and lose fat?

I have an answer.

Before I spill some beans into your brain, let's look at why this question is such a Sophie's choice for skinny-fat dudes.

If you don't want to appear skinny-fat anymore, you need to do two things.

Skinny-fat “syndrome” is a distinguished appearance resulting from a unique body fat distribution atop a linear under-muscled frame. If you don't want to be skinny-fat anymore, you need to…

First, lose fat. If you lose fat, you'll no longer have a unique body fat distribution. Poof! Just like that, you won't be skinny-fat anymore. Granted, you'll be skeletally skinny, which is also a prison and why…

Second, build muscle. Preferably in such a way that makes your shadow look less capable of giving birth. 

Your gut reaction to needing to lose fat and build muscle probably leans towards double-dipping. “How do I do both… at the same time?” Doing both at the same time is known as a “recomp,” which is short for “recomposition,” which is a snooty word reserved for suits stiffer than Stifler's sock. I’m sticking with “double-dipping.”

Double-dipping is daring (if you don't believe me, just ask George Costanza) because losing fat and building muscle are often seen as physiological opposites, like Squirtle and Charizard. The internet’s greatest sci(fi)entists like to say you can’t lose fat and build muscle at the same time.

The good news?

They’re wrong. They aren’t total opposites. You CAN lose fat and build muscle at the same time, and you MIGHT accomplish said feat if you binge my breadcrumbs.

The bad news?

The practicality of double-dipping usually overshadows the possibility of double-dipping. In other words, it’s like having a threesome with your partner’s best friend. It's not, like, impossible or anything, like regrowing a finger, but there are more than enough logistical issues barricading the idea in a place inside your brain you have to pretend doesn't exist.

If you try to double-dip, you'll probably end up empty-handed with no progress in either direction, which is more demoralizing than clogging a toilet in your friend’s house and not being able to find a plunger. You’re better off single-scooping. You can aim for fat loss (known as “cutting”) or you can aim for muscle growth (known as “bulking”). And thus, the choice: bulk or cut?

At first glance, this question looks rather innocent, like Riley Reid in plainclothes.

And the answer probably seems more obvious than Botox in a boomer: Attack the bigger insecurity. If you don't like how your stomach has more creases than Watto's nose, then cut first. If you don't like how your arms can be mistaken for a blade of grass, then bulk first.

Imploding your bigger insecurity isn’t a bad idea and may ultimately hold the hammer, but there are two reasons the situation is stickier than it seems.

First, you probably don’t have enough muscle mass to look good at a lower body fat percentage. If you cut and lose all of the fat you have, you’ll probably look more like Christian Bale in The Machinist, as opposed to Brad Pitt in Fight Club.

You may be insecure about how much body fat you currently have, but that doesn’t mean you won’t be equally insecure with less fat, looking sickly like Stick Stickly.

Second, beginner bulking endeavors often result in fat gain. You may be insecure about how little muscle mass you currently have, but that doesn’t mean you won’t be equally insecure with more muscle, looking sloppy like Slimer.

Imploding your bigger insecurity might piledrive you into second insecurity that's equally as suffocating. Kind of like taking a pill that will cure your headache at the cost of being kicked in the nuts thirty minutes later.

What do you do?

Neither bulking first nor cutting first is 100% foolproof. Both require swallowing consequences you’d probably rather spit, but, in my opinion, one tastes a little more like Belle Delphine’s bathwater than the other (I'll let you decide whether this is a good thing or a bad thing).

I suggest cutting first.

There are eight reasons why I suggest cutting first. This would be a good time to fasten your seatbelt and return your tray table to its full upright and locked position.

1

Irregular rolls.

You need to get rid of your double chin. You aren’t Bib Fortuna. Humans only have one chin. Get with the times.

2

Ease, please.

In general, losing fat is easier than building muscle. Easy is good. Easy is why training wheels exist. Easy is why you crawl before you walk… unless you’re a giraffe. Giraffes stand thirty minutes after they're born. They run ten hours later. And they have black tongues. Humans are lame.

To make a serious bid for muscle growth, you have to alter not only your exercise habits but also your eating habits. And your overall strategy has to be sound (unless you want to end up like Dreamer).

With fat loss, you have a wider margin for error. For instance, you don’t need to exercise to lose fat. This isn’t to you shouldn't exercise. You should, just like you should rinse your dishes directly after dinner so the debris doesn’t coagulate and take 10x longer to clean than it otherwise would.

BUT.

The fact remains: you don’t HAVE to exercise. You can lose fat through diet and diet alone. And, even more, you don’t have to adjust your eating habits as wildly as you think you do. You can eat Twinkies and Doritos and lose weight. I wouldn’t. But you could.

3

Seeing is believing.

Transforming your body is tough because there aren’t immediate confirmation cues. A hologram doesn’t jingle into existence after you eat a bushel of broccoli informing you you’re +12 vitamin C and -4 body fat. If it did, you might eat more broccoli. But it doesn't. And so, after you eat broccoli and you feel exactly the same as you did an hour ago (if not worse, for eating a food resembling something you'd find inside Yoda's underpants), the odds of you continuing to eat broccoli are small (perhaps smaller than whatever is inside Yoda's underpants).

The earliest reliable confirmation cues you get are results. And, in general, you can lose fat quicker than you can build muscle.

This helps.

A lot.

Imagine trying to dig a hole and after eight hours of slamming a shovel into the same circle of soil, you haven't even made a dent. You'd want to quit. Likewise, if you’re two weeks into your transformation and you have nothing to show for your hard work, don’t be shocked if you feel compelled to fly over the cuckoo’s nest. “Trusting the process” sounds good, but it’s high-class hindsight bias. Your brain likes certainty. This is why you peek at the sheet after you wipe. (Don’t lie to me.)

4

I double-dip dare you.

Even though double-dipping is best seen as a happy accident, the odds of certain accidents happening are biased to specific subsets of the population. Older people are more likely to fall in the bathtub. Teenagers are more likely to find themselves crying behind the wheel of a crashed Honda Civic.

Likewise, compared to seasoned veterans, noobs are more likely to lose fat and build muscle at the same time. And, in my opinion, the likelihood of double-dipping increases even more if you’re cutting, as opposed to bulking.

One of the biggest downsides of cutting first (getting too thin) may not actually come to pass. Of course, this isn’t to say it definitely won’t, just that the possibility is there.

5

Scared strength.

In an ideal world, bulking would yield 100% muscle growth and 0% fat gain. As mentioned, the odds of this happening are lower than Ethan Klein's double chin. Bulking isn’t a precise procedure. You give your body reason and resources to build muscle and then hope your body doesn't store said resources as body fat.

This doesn't mean the amount of fat you gain during a bulk is random. It's not. The amount of fat you gain (relative to muscle mass) during a bulk is g-spot sensitive to your strategy. If you do what Dreamer did, you'll end up the size of Gamorrean guard. I'm not going to get into the dirtiest details of how to (properly) bulk. Let's just say you should be lifting heavy objects, eating plenty of proteins, and massaging your muscles with freshly squeezed goat's milk every hour. (Okay, so maybe not that last one, but I'm serious about the other two.)

Are you physically and mentally prepared to begin a legit progressive strength training program? If not, you have no business bulking. You're better off keeping your calorie intake conservative until you're confident under the bar and ready to push your poundages.

Of course, this is conjecture. You may already be squatting, pressing, and pulling like a pro. I don’t know. But I do know this:

6

Hungry hippos?

Think of body fat and muscle mass as two Hungry Hungry Hippos trying to gobble up as many marbles (food) as they can.

• During an efficient bulk, the muscle mass hippo eats most of the marbles. You gain mostly muscle and minimal fat.
• During an inefficient bulk, the body fat hippo eats most of the marbles. You gain mostly fat, and minimal muscle.

There may be a silent saboteur swaying you towards an inefficient bulk. There is often said to be an inverse relationship between body fat percentage and bulking efficiency. In other words, if you have a higher body fat percentage when you bulk, you'll have a less efficient bulk.

There are a few theories often thrown around to explain this phenomenon. Some blame insulin sensitivity. Some blame hormone levels. Some blame inflammation. I don't like getting super sciencey, so I'm just gonna say, for some reason or another, having a high body fat percentage makes your muscle mass hippo sleepy and lazy, which allows your body fat hippo to eat more marbles.

Because of this, many people recommend getting lean before bulking, to make the bulk more efficient. Lowering your body fat percentage is sedative for body fat hippo and stimulant for the muscle mass hippo… or so the story goes.

The link between body fat percentage and bulking efficiency has come under scrutiny recently thanks to Stronger by Science. If you wanna chew through Stronger by Science's thoughts, karate chop this. The TL;DR being, your body fat percentage may NOT influence either of the hippos' hunger.

As long as you control for training, diet, sleep, stress — you know, the usual stuff — getting lean won't necessarily make for a more efficient bulk… from a physiological standpoint.

This is good news.

This is bad news:

Being fat reduces bulking efficiency for non-physiological reasons. This has nothing to do with insulin sensitivity, inflammation, or anything potentially influencing either of the hippos' hunger. Being fat makes you more likely to get fat when bulking for a much less sexy and much less scientific reason:

When you're fat, you have a tougher time evaluating the efficacy of your bulk.

When you're lean, you can use your anatomic delineations as a flashlight. You have six-pack abs. You start bulking. One month later, you're consistently eight pounds heavier and your six-pack has turned into a kangaroo pouch. You can bet most of the weight you gained was fat. And, knowing this, you can adjust your strategy before you end up playing jazz flute on Jabba's sail barge.

When you're fat, you don't have a flashlight. Your stomach is a soft singular surface. If you gain eight pounds of fat, you might look and feel similar, which might lead you to think, This bulk is going great! And then you'll keep doing what you're doing.

Going from 10% to 13% is obvious, which will stop you from ending up 17%. Going from 17% to 20% is less obvious, which means you're more likely to end up 24%.

This is bad news, considering…

7

Loose skin?

Pushing your body fat percentage to an unseen ceiling doesn't come without consequence. For starters, the fatter you are, the more likely you are to have loose skin once you get lean. The only way to get rid of loose skin is through surgery. The only thing I want under a knife is food.

Also, pushing your body fat percentage to higher heights might trigger the creation of new fat cells, especially if you're young(er). I'd rather wear underpants made from pinecones than create new fat cells because there appears to be a correlation between fat cell quantity and ease of fat loss. If you have more fat cells, you'll have more difficulty losing fat. This is due to leptin levels and a bunch of other stuff I'm not qualified to talk about.

To make matters worse, fat cells are stage-five clingers. When you lose fat, you dissolve the stuff inside of them, but the outer shell remains. Sort of like deflating a balloon. The air inside disappears, but the rubber remains.

From what I can find, no one really knows how long fat cells stick around. Some resources say fat cells are like men's underwear: Your body never gets rid of them. Other resources say fat cells go away if you deflate them and keep them empty for an extended period of time, which sounds encouraging until you consider the aforementioned correlation between fat cell quantity and ease of fat loss.

Safe to say, if you plan on getting lean and staying lean for a long time — like, uhh, the rest of your life? — then you should be wary of pushing your body fat percentage to an unseen ceiling. Even if you don’t create brand new fat cells and you just fill the ones you already have to higher heights, you’ll probably have a tougher time getting (and staying) lean.

8

Tick-tock.

The fatter you are, the longer it will take you to get lean. There's a big difference between cutting for six months and cutting for twelve months. Think about how much time passes between Christmas every year. I'd rather kiss Kris's kringle than cut from one Christmas to another.

Beyond being mentally and behaviorally burdensome, crazy long cuts can murder your muscle mass. Muscles don't like calorie deficits; the longer you sustain a deficit, the more likely you are to lose muscle mass, even if you're doing everything you can to keep it around. So if you bulk first and gain some muscle mass alongside some body fat and then go on an extended cut to get rid of the fat you gained (and the fat you already had), you're probably going to lose some of your hard-earned muscle mass during the extended cut.

Of course, the muscle won't be gone forever. You can do another bulk after you cut. You'll regain the lost muscle much quicker and more easily than it initially took to build thanks to muscle memory. This is encouraging, but I think the alternative is way more encouraging. If you cut first, you might double-dip, which means you might end up leaner and slightly more muscular in a shorter time span.

Compare the two:

You bulk for six months. You gain some muscle mass and some body fat, then you cut for one year. This leaves you rather lean and mildly muscular. This is an eighteen-month transformation.

You cut for six months. You lose some body fat and gain a small amount of muscle mass. This leaves you rather lean and slightly muscular. This is a six-month transformation.

In the second scenario, you have an entire year to add as much muscle mass as you might have in the first scenario… and that's not all. You can tackle any fat gained during future bulks with “mini-cuts,” which will allow you to stay relatively lean year-round while you work towards building an amount of muscle you're happy with.

This scenario also breaks your cutting cycles into more manageable chunks. Who doesn't like manageable chunks?

Let's end this.

Cutting first is obviously the better option. Right? Right? Eh. Maybe? As mentioned, there is no foolproof path.

If you're squatting, pressing, and pulling like a pro and you're confident in your diet, then bulking first may not be as terrible as it appears in the rearview mirror. Likewise, if you don't want to be six-pack lean and you're comfortable rocking a softer dad bod, then you might be better off bulking first.

But, for what I think most skinny-fat dudes want to eventually do with their physique, I say you're better off cutting first… as long as you don't think cutting means becoming a cardio queen and starving yourself (save for the occasional juice cleanse). If you want to know my cutting strategy, check out my simple yet powerful 60-day skinny-fat transformation challenge.

Cut until you realize that, even though you did a little double-dipping, you don't have nearly as much muscle mass as you hoped you would, which means, visually, you’re starting to look like an emaciated prisoner of war, which is making your friends and family concerned for your health, which, in turn, is making you wonder if you should have bulked first, to have some semblance of muscle mass for this exact moment in time. Cut until you're shredded, sickly, and absolutely terrified of increasing your calories in the name of bulking because you think you're going to slingshot regain all of the fat you just lost, given that fat regain tends to be prioritized right after a reduction in weight (did I forget to mention that?). Cut until you realize you should have bulked first, but, since time is linear, you can't change the past, which means you're forced to deal with the situation at hand, which seems bad, but you have to believe me when I say it's only bad in hindsight because if you would have bulked first, you would have probably wished you cut first after your first day of work at your new job on Jabba's Sail Barge.