If only I had this article "The ideal body fat percentage to bulk"

Readytokillthebeta01

Readytokillthebeta01

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Joined
Aug 15, 2020
https://bodylogiq.org/en/the-ideal-body-fat-percentage-to-bulk/

So a little background here. About 3 years ago I wanted to get into weight lifting / looking better, so I decided to start my research on how to go about that. To make a long story short, I've quite honestly suffered my entire life from being "Skinny fat" where my stomach is larger but my arms and other muscles are small. As a result, I was given the advice that I should "bulk" first to put on muscle. The might be sound advice for someone who is plain skinny and has no muscle, but for someone who is skinny fat, they have a problem that plain skinny people don't suffer, a higher body fat percentage.

As a result, I spend the next year "bulking", but because my body fat percentage was way too high to being with, all I ended up doing was putting on more fat. After about a year of this, I decided that it was time to cut. The end result, I ended up basically right back where I started, which little muscle and a large stomach. Thus, this cycle continued on until one day I actually decided to get a body fat percentage check, (up until this point I didn't even know what BF % was) I got a full DEXA scan in LA and found out that I was 26 percent body fat!

It took a long time for me to see the errors of my way, but long story short, if I had been graced with this article before I started my journey, I know I would have saved myself the years of going from fat to skinny fat.

Anyways, if anyone is curious I am now down to 22% BF and will not stop until I reach my goal of 10%. I'm currently doing a body recomp, which is exactly what I should have been doing from the start.

If anyone does read the article, please leave your thoughts below.
 
If you want to recomp properly. You need to be lifting heavy 3 times per week, and you need to be eating at least 0.8 to 1g of protein per pound of bodyweight in order to build muscle and maintain what you have while losing fat. Also, to actually build muscle, you have to get stronger, there is no way around it. The reason why you didn't get anywhere within a year of training is because your lifting numbers stayed the same. If you want a big chest, try to get your bench press to 315 lbs, if you want big wide shoulders try to get your overhead press to 200lbs, if you want big legs, try to get your squat to 400 lbs and your deadlift to 500 lbs (the deadlift will also build your lower back and your grip), if you want thick abs, do all your compound movements without a belt by using the valsalva maneuver and do weighted crunches (with either a band or the cable machine) at the end of each workout and try to add weight. And, if you want a very wide back, try to get your weighted chin ups to 100 lbs. That is the real secret to getting muscular as a natural. And if you want to progress really quickly, do high frequency low volume training with an exercise selection mainly focused on the essential compound movements like the bench press, the squat, the deadlift, the overhead press, the barbell row and the weighted chin up. For the program, ditch bro splits and do full body instead, you can use either Stronglifts 5x5 or Starting Strength when first starting out, and then a couple months later when the program stops working, you can switch to something like Madcow's 5x5 or The Texas Method and keep making gains.

As for nutrition, focus on maintaining your weight by calculating your TDEE, and once you stall, add 10% and milk that for a while, and when you stall again, add another 10%. This is perfect because it lets you learn proper form and it lets you make mistakes without getting too fat. The skinny fat physique is caused by a lack of muscle mass, with a layer of fat on top of it, the best way to fix it is to get muscular. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XgN-jx2ic4
 
5'11" ~165 lbs
Was going to the gym with a friend for a while but didnt track my progress/diet besides occasional progress pics

Going to start tracking everything and going hard Monday with a workout plan ive purchased
 
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