We’ve certainly made progress. We started with the basics, like what creates a skinny-fat body. While there might be some genetics in the batter, it’s more than that. Culture is huge. We also talked about what makes a skinny-fat body unique . . . why it ain’t skinny. And then we got into the juicy stuff. [...]
We’ve certainly made progress. We started with the basics, like what creates a skinny-fat body. While there might be some genetics in the batter, it’s more than that. Culture is huge. We also talked about what makes a skinny-fat body unique . . . why it ain’t skinny.
And then we got into the juicy stuff. What exactly your body is doing on the insides—how it’s flinching. To fix this, we touched down on S. Island, eventually saying that the first step is of rewiring is about stimulating correctly (even though that comes with baggage): do some strength training in a way that’s going to also cater to the typical skinny-fat look (narrow shoulders, wider waist)—what amounts to X physique training, and I have my eight favorite exercises for that. They will build a solid foundation for your future and help you on your way to the solid base.
From there, we veered off course a little. Some of you might be knee deep in the barbell world, but that’s not always the case. To cover all avenues, we went back and touched on common mainstream misconceptions that come up when starting to strength train, like the idea of toning and what’s up with six pack abs. I know you don’t want to be an oiled up bodybuilder on stage, but strength training in some capacity is non-negotiable.
And so here we are, ready to get back on track. But here I am with a sock in my mouth.
The easy part is over. The idea of challenging your muscles to continually adapt — doing the great eight exercises, or whatever substitution you can mange — is one of the few constants from now until the end.
Everything else is up in the air because my philosophy on how to go about changing skinny-fat syndrome is built on just that: change. How your body functions tomorrow won’t be identical to how it functions today. You’re never the same person two days in a row. Whatever you did today goes into who you become tomorrow.
You never train the same body twice.
Food is never digested by the same body twice.
You’re always evolving, and we’re hoping to evolve to a certain end. The one goal of any skinny-fat solution should be to put your body in a place where it’s best able to gain muscle without getting fat.
Anyone can lose weight or lose fat, but neither of these things say anything about being in a good place for the one goal. Having a lower body fat (getting to the solid base) is an important part of where we’re headed, but that’s an overt view. The covert view is all about convincing your body that energy is best served repairing stimulation damage (supporting muscle growth) rather than getting chunked up in fat cells.
Because of this evolution it’s hard to say that anything will be “good, bad, right, wrong” from now until the end of time. It all depends on context.
Both supply and extra stimulation work are going to change over time to suit how your body is changing, and to understand how all of this will be positioned you should read something I wrote earlier.
It’s tough for me to explain, but something “bad” in stage one might be good in later stages. Training changes, too. That article writes about these things a little bit, but we’ll solidify some of the context over the next few days
Looking back, with the way I decided to tackle all of this, it’s no doubt I ran into a wall. It’s hard to break this down piece by piece because, well, emergence. You can’t say much about supply, signaling, soul, and stimulation unless you talk about them as one comprehensive entity.
So instead of bleeding over what to write about, I’ll move onward with signaling and supply strategies that you can wrap your head around for the next few days. I’ll save the rabbit hole — what’s essentially the holistic view from top to bottom on how this all intertwines (in other words, some of what I said and some of what I should I said from the begining, and saying it all in a way that doesn’t lend itself to an existential breakdown on essay XXVII) for the next Saga.
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Hat tip to Amir Siddiqui for some of the ideas here on ever changing bodies. I want to say it was something I knew yet never brought to words, but I might just be giving myself too much credit.