Skinny but fat - please help

Theboinkmaster

Hello

I've recently commenced a serious weight-gain regime. Starting out at 5ft 11" and 10 stone I'm very skinny. With the proper exercise and diet I find I can gain weight, that's not the problem - it's by lower abs/stomach.

I find I have a "pot belly" in that the top of my stomach is flat but the bottom comes out further and is rounded. What I'd like to do is have a completely flat stomach but ad some muscle at the sides if you know what I mean - so that I have a wider mid-section but so that it does not stick out - at the moment my lower belly sticks out far too much.

I currently only have bench presses/squats/deadlifts/dumbell presses in my workout and am wondering what type of abs work do I need to ad to address this problem? I don't think I'm eating too much fat as following the 20/40/40 rule and have researched diet properly.

Thanks in advance,
Simon

yomchi

and am wondering what type of abs work do I need to ad to address this problem?

You don't need to do any. Get your diet right and your cardio correct and your abs will show naturally.
Cut down alcahol consumption for a start!

Theboinkmaster

there's nothing wrong with my diet - I eat a minimum of fat and I don't drink at all.

can anyone help?

Skiesonfire19

Firstly, the calories in alcohol cant be used for immediate energy! So every gram you drink, that means you store 7 calories of fat straight to your stomach! Fact! Hence the phrase beer belly!

Drinking also lowers your testosterone levels, and raises estrogen levels. Estroen encourages your body to store fat! So alcohol is the worst thing for a guy! But that's for another day.

There is no such thing as spot reducing, you can't just say I wanna loose the bellt.. Your body will burn off fat eveny from your entire body!

Stick with the cardio, running and rowing are the best cardio!

Are you getting muscle gains from your workout?

Skies

mickoo

your diet is not as great as you think-otherwise you would not be gaining so much fat-your probably taking in to much sugar foods if your not taking lots of fat-lower your calorie intake and make sure your challenging yourself with the weights..

justsomebloke

ok if you want to get your abs to show you have to drop you bodyfat, especially if you have a "pot belly", your abs only start to show at around the 10% bf mark.
If you are doing squats and deads with proper form these should be hitting your core well enough for you to have a decent abs, so chances are that it is diet that is letting you down so you will have to decide whether you wan to continue bulking (and probably put on more fat) and then cut, or lean out now and try and do a clean bulk.

Boru.

Theboinkmaster wrote:

there's nothing wrong with my diet - I eat a minimum of fat and I don't drink at all.

can anyone help?

Yes. I can! As regards your firts sentacne on your diet, I cna bet the farm that if you posted a edtailed diet we would find problems. That's not a criticism of you by the way, just the educational system - my definition of a healthy clean diet as personal trainer, and the worlds definition of a healthy clean diet as the average "informed consumer" are worlds apart. Still if you are eating too much of the right foods you could stil put on fat - for more info on diet read the stickies....e.g. how many calories you need, why, and how cna fat actually help you lose weight etc.

Now with all that said I recently posted in a similar thread on weak and untrained muscles being the casue of the little pot belly effect and I believe similar advice would be useful to you. Read up on it here - http://boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055039550 and see if its applicable. If it is great, if not come back and explain why.

All the best,

justsomebloke

Skiesonfire19 wrote:

Firstly, the calories in alcohol cant be used for immediate energy! So every gram you drink, that means you store 7 calories of fat straight to your stomach! Fact!

sorry do you have links to the medical studies which prove this

Skiesonfire19 wrote:

There is no such thing as spot reducing, you can't just say I wanna loose the bellt.. Your body will burn off fat eveny from your entire body!

actually you can spot reduce however toactaully see the effects of it you really need to be at a low enough BF% already to take advantage of it, .Boru as far as I remember has a link to a study on it. That and t-ha at the end of his cut last year successfully used spot reduction to help remove the small amount of excess fat in his problematic areas.

Skiesonfire19

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/cabi/bjn/1996/00000075/00000001/art00008

There, i'll even highlight my favourite sentence from it for you

''to an extent equivalent to storing 74 (SD 51)% of the alcohol energy as fat.''

Skies

justsomebloke

That study is about the overnight effects and does not say anywhere that none of the energy from alcohol can used immediately in fact it states "It is concluded that alcohol has no special thermogenic capacity, and that its energy can be accounted for in a similar way to carbohydrate."

Skiesonfire19

Yeah over night, have you never fallen asleep with drink in you?

cowzerp

Alcohol calories are dead calories-they are never used for energy and therefore will store as fat-the bigger cause for concern is-your body soes not use body fat fo fuel when you have alcohol in your system and just burns the stored calories from your muscles-also alcohol causes testotorone levels to decrease and muscles to decrease in volume-sorry...:)

justsomebloke

Skiesonfire19 wrote:

Yeah over night, have you never fallen asleep with drink in you?

have you never fallen asleep with carbs in you?

t-ha

Skiesonfire19 wrote:

Yeah over night, have you never fallen asleep with drink in you?

^^^I think I've just pin-pointed where this argument got stupid.

Did you even read your own link? They were investigating claims that alcohol has thermogenic or other properties that make you leaner when you take it with a meal. However, they found that: "Alcohol leads predominantly to the storage of an equivalent amount of fat when taken in addition to energy requirements."

There was nothing in that paper to back up your earlier statements. Personally, I would be more consumed with the testosterone reductions (which will favour the catabolism of muscle over fat), dehydration, the extra calories in the drinks & the extra calories in the chipper food most people have afterwards. Alcohol calories are not magic calories that can't be burned, and that link didn't say so either.

shmaido

t-ha wrote:

^^^I think I've just pin-pointed where this argument got stupid.

Did you even read your own link? They were investigating claims that alcohol has thermogenic or other properties that make you leaner when you take it with a meal. However, they found that: "Alcohol leads predominantly to the storage of an equivalent amount of fat when taken in addition to energy requirements."

There was nothing in that paper to back up your earlier statements. Personally, I would be more consumed with the testosterone reductions (which will favour the catabolism of muscle over fat), dehydration, the extra calories in the drinks & the extra calories in the chipper food most people have afterwards. Alcohol calories are not magic calories that can't be burned, and that link didn't say so either.

you rule t-ha!