Skinny Fat? What Is It?

We all have that friend: The one who eats only mac ‘n’ cheese and cookies, does zero physical activity, yet still fits into jeans from high school. While you sweat through regular workouts and take the time and effort to cook and eat healthy meals, your friend stays thin seemingly without trying.

But looks can be deceiving. The number on the scale doesn’t paint the whole picture.

“Skinny fat” is an unscientific, non-medical term to describe people who appear to be at a healthy weight, but actually have a lot of body fat and very little muscle. Living a “skinny fat” lifestyle doesn’t come without consequences. Read on to learn more about it, plus ways to get stronger and healthier.

Are You Skinny Fat?

While there is no formal definition of “skinny fat,” it generally refers to people who fall within a healthy weight range but exceed the recommended body-fat percentage and do not meet normal ranges for muscle mass.

“The term ‘skinny fat’ is the perfect demonstration of the misconceptions on what being healthy is,” says Cody Braun, fitness expert.

The medical term for “skinny fat” is metabolically obese normal weight. (And since “skinny fat” isn’t the friendliest of terms, we’ll mostly stick with MONW from here on out.) The acronym says it all: A person can be a seemingly healthy weight, yet metabolically obese.

Crescendo Fasting? What Is It And Should It Be The Fasting Method For Women?

If you’ve ever looked into intermittent fasting, a diet that requires followers to fast for 12 to 20 hours daily, you might’ve come across some dire warnings about the diet being really, truly, dangerously bad for women.

Women’s bodies are more sensitive to the signals of starvation, so going too long without eating could throw their hormones out of whack, some experts say. As a result, intermittent fasting can make you so ravenous that you end up devouring everything in sight. Or worse, it can cause your body to break down lean muscle for fuel.

A quick Google search of “intermittent fasting for women” will tell you that the best way to avoid this supposed fate is with crescendo fasting—a special type of fasting that works with our delicate lady hormones instead of against them.

Instead of fasting 12 to 20 hours daily, crescendo fasters fast for 12 to 16 hours at a time on two to three non-consecutive days per week. (So, they might stop eating at 7 PM and fast until 9 AM the next morning and then do the same thing again a few days later.) The origins of the diet are murky, but it seems to have a cult following among Paleo-leaning health blogs.

Fast Food Cravings

                         


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Related: Cravings - Enjoy in moderation?

Cravings - Enjoy in Moderation?

If you've ever found yourself staring at the bottom of an empty bag of chips (or pint of ice cream) after telling yourself you'd just have one serving, you know how difficult it can be enjoy your favorite treats in moderation. 

Nevertheless, plenty of experts will tell you that's the best way to keep your food cravings in check and prevent overindulging later. However, while that logic is still sound in some respects, a new study shows that eliminating food cravings during weight loss is more nuanced than that. 

THE RESEARCH

This study, published in the journal Obesity, monitored 367 overweight participants (their average baseline weight was around 207 pounds) over the course of two years. All participants stuck to a highly restrictive diet, and researchers monitored their body weights and craving levels at baseline, six months, and 24 months.

Reduce Those Cravings Fast ! Here's How.

Want to keep your Cheetos cravings in check? Your go-to strategy might be wrong: Eating just a little of your favorite snack doesn’t help reduce your cravings at all, a new study in the journal Obesity suggests.

Researchers had 367 people who were trying to lose weight keep food logs to see if their cravings changed depending on what they ate. They discovered that cravings for foods decreased when people consumed them less frequently—but there was no change at all in their cravings if they simply ate what they craved in smaller amounts.

That means if you want to stop craving a certain food—say, you can’t resist a bag of hot salty fries, or you need a couple scoops of ice cream to top off your day—you’re better off eating it less often than simply reducing your portion of it, the researchers say.

Related: Eating this Snack May Fight Your Junk Food Craving

It likely comes down to your conditioning response: Your cravings exist in combination with internal stimuli, like stress, or external stimuli, like time or day or behavior. So if you consume the cravings during the stimuli previously, whenever that comes up again, you’ll feel the urge to chow down.

Dairy? - Should You Stay Away To Help Your Weight Loss?

Any serial dieter will tell you to steer clear of the dairy cabinet. It’s full of saturated fat that will play havoc with heart and waistline. Opt instead for low-fat processed spreads, skimmed milks and fat-free cheeses.

Big mistake.

Fat is not the villain we once thought it was. There is no doubt we have to watch our fat intake, and saturated fat does seem to be linked with heart disease - but I suspect that it is as much to do with the way that fat is packaged up as the fat itself.

Consider a bacon butty, with white bread, lashings of butter, loads of ketchup and salt and washed down with a cup of sugary tea. Then think of goats cheese, sat atop a pile of salad, whole-grains and avocado, and a large glass of fresh milk. Both full of saturated fat but one is chock full of additives, preservatives and sugar and the other full of vitamins and fibre.

Related: Can Eating Avocados Help You Lose Weight

Some Weight Loss Strategies That Should Be Avoided.

Hi check out this video and let me know what you think?