Skinnyfat, advice, any experience?

So first, being skinny-fat is not unhealty. The problem is not that you have to much fat on your body. Most skinny fat guys have a body fat percentage of around 15 to 20 percent. That's an Ok range. => The problem is that you have not enough muscle.

So to your questions:

Go for the bulk, obviously... Your goal has to be to build muscle.

Building muscle and maintaining the current weight (losing fat) is actually not possible at the same time (apart from noob gains, but that's not your case anymore).
Building muscle => Bulk => Gaining Weight
Losing fat => Cut => Losing Weight
Don't be afraid to gain weight. On a bulk it's the goal to gain weight...

Go for the weight lifting, reduce the cardio... A full body workout three to four times a week works best for me.

High Protein, high fat, low carb, reduce sugar to an absolute minimum. Make sure you're in a calory surpluse (about 500 kilocalories => Clean bulk) - again you want to gain weight!

That's actually the cycle of bulk - cut. Bulk (gain weight, mostly muscle) => Cut (reduce weight, mostly fat) => Repeat.
But why are you so focused on your body weight? You should be more focused on what you see in the mirror.

Why so much cardio? Why not 10 to 20 minutes low intensity cardio right after your work out?

I'm not a fan of cheat meals, but whatever fits you best, i guess...

I go for 1.5 grams protein per kg bodyweight.

That's never a bad thing

 

One important thing to remember, particularly if you're wanting to simultaneously add muscle mass and lose weight is to not be discouraged by weight gain; you probably already know this but muscle is much denser than fat. So if you find that you've actually gained weight it is not necessarily a bad thing, particularly if your body is burning fat reserves to accelerate muscle growth.

If you're wanting to bulk up, or maximize muscle growth, I highly recommend increasing your reps to the 8-12 range with longer periods of rest; this seems to be the sweet spot for muscular hypertrophy (you may already know this). I would also recommend adding more than 1 rest day, workout out too much can actually inhibit muscle growth and can also be detrimental to your health if your body is not allowed to rest and repair itself sufficiently. I workout 3 times a week, and I still see plenty of gains, if I plateau then I typically either switch out the lifts I do or change the reps and that usually does the trick. It seems that you're already doing split training, but if you're dead set on going to the gym 5 days a week then I suggest splitting the muscle groups even more specifically and avoiding back-to-back days of working the same muscle groups and allow them to rest but still get your workout in. For instance, I do back and biceps on Monday and then legs and core on Friday since several lifts I use for each session are either the same or use the same muscle groups to perform the lift.

Nutritionally, I would worry less about how much calories you consume and focus more on maximizing nutritionally valuable calories. That is, making sure the food/calories you intake are also beneficial in other areas, such as high in antioxidants, vitamins, glycemic index, etc. Your body is going to need plenty of fuel to facilitate the repairs that result in muscle growth. If your body is not getting enough calories, it's going to go into a starvation response in which it will revert any extra calories it does receive will be most likely converted to long term storage (fat) to ensure it has enough fuel to function during the next period of starvation. I would focus more on ensuring you're eating more valuable calories (i.e. vegetables, lean protein, complex carbohydrates) rather than overall calorie intake. I eat mainly vegetarian 5 days a week with the occasional white meat and fish if I'm feeling fancy. This is primarily because I typically only cook two meals during the work week since I'm single and I don't reduce portions because I'm lazy; I try to maximize the amount of nutritional valuable calories I intake in those meals. The weekends are my cheat days and I eat whatever I want and usually a bit more than I normally would; but cheat days are about having fun and rewarding yourself for keeping on the right course during the rest of the week. Also, if you haven't yet, drastically reduce or completely cut out sugary drinks, think of them basically as liquid candy bars because that's what a lot of them are, even the sports drinks. For sports drinks I typically try to pick the lower sugar ones, I also don't encourage the "diet" variants, if they actually worked we'd know it would by now.

Overall I would suggest to ensure your not doing too much or being too strict in your journey, you can always do more later, but I would be focused more on just getting into the habit first, particularly nutritionally speaking, and then getting more restrictive/doing more as you go along. The journey is a long one, full of ups and downs (sound familiar?) so just stay the course and fall in love with the process!

I hope this helps

 

I feel like I'm in a similar boat. I'd like to lose a few pounds. I'm definitely not fat, by any means, but my body fat percentage isn't nearly low enough for the muscle mass I've gained from weight lifting to be noticeable as muscle. If that makes sense....

(I'm a woman, so that might make my experience different.) I feel like ever since I started lifting weights and having some muscle, I feel like I look more chubby than muscular, because you can't tell that that extra bulk is muscle. So I guess I need to trim a bit of fat or something. I'm far from being fat, but my arms look so much bigger now that I've been lifting weights more, but I feel like people just assume it's fat, not muscle.

I'm planning to try to lose a couple pounds soon, but I've never been very good at discipline unless it's something I really really want. I'm not sure if I care enough about this to stop eating the things I want to eat. Lol

 

If you're worried about muscle mass gain, and want to focus more about losing weight without gaining muscle, I would recommend muscular endurance training approach. I'm not sure if you already know what that is or not, but the basic concept is to turn weight lifting exercises into more aerobic exercises. This is achieved by lower weight, higher reps (think 15 - 30 reps), and shorter rest periods. This approach will allow you to continue to lift but to minimize muscle gain.

As for nutrition I would simply suggest trying to find healthier alterations to some of your favorite meals. For instance, one of my favorite meals (I actually made it last night) is mac and cheese, but the alteration being that it is made with greek yogurt and wilted spinach. I also love it because it's essentially a one pot meal which is super nice for when things get hectic. No need to drastically alter your eating habits, the internet is great for finding more nutritionally valuable variants of your favorite meals. Small changes like that should go a long way as long as you're fairly consistent over the long run.

 

Yeah, mostly I just really like soda. Lol I don't think I'm willing to completely give it up, but I try not to drink too much of it.

 

That's one (and probably the biggest) problem, why finding useful informations on the internet has become so difficult (specially on the subject weight loss and fitness). There's way to many fitness youtuber, who have nothing more to offer then giving advices which kind of supplement you have to buy (of course theirs) or which workout routine to follow (also of course theirs).
Worse is just the fact, they're mostly overcomplicating the subject or worst giving wrong informations. In my humble opinion fitness is simple - you just have to follow one simple rule: "Focus on the hard work and not on the small tricks!"
Meaning hard, heavy workouts on a regular basis combined with a healthy diet. This requires discipline, and that's where most people struggle.

"There's no supplement for discipline!"

Speaking, personally, still after around 8 years of weight lifting, I'm not specially motivated most days to workout, but I get my lazy ass up and do it. But I think, when your following the advices given by @Daedaleus and humble me, you'll see result over time. Keep up the good work!

"Peope often overestimate what's achiveable in a month and often underestimate what's achiveable in a year."

 

I don't think you would necessarily have to give up soda, but I think getting into the mindset of "Okay, this soda is a snack" would go a long way in monitoring how much you drink in a day. I still occasionally enjoy a soda during my non-cheat days, but I typically count it as a snack in and of itself; which helps as then I'm more conscious of what, or if, I eat anything else with that snack. I would always prefer and advocate doing small, manageable, but meaningful changes over trying to completely alter your eating habits over night; that way you are much more likely to stick with it rather than get frustrated or be miserable and just revert to your old habits because it's too stressful to try and change everything overnight.

 

I like you used to be skinny fat after following conventional workout programs such as p90x and Insanity. I switched over to powerlifting and eventually shaped out my body to be more muscular but still skinny fat. I found the answer to being ripped is a cycle of time in which you engage in prolonged fasts. 3-5 days is where results really are the best where 3 days is barely enough to really take advantage of fully being in ketosis to survive and 5 days is the maximum before muscle loss and strength at the gym becomes greater.

 

I don't see how it'd be possible for me to fast. When I'm not working, I'm at school, and the weekends are dedicated to studying (so food is necessary, otherwise I can't focus). So there's no opportunity for me to fast, unfortunately.

 

Check out Vetruvian Physique on youtube. I remember watching a few vids on this topic.

 

Master bodyweight exercises (10+ Pull ups, 30+ Push-ups, 50+ Squats, 20+ Burpees, Handstand Push-ups [bonus but very useful to have]), learn to cook healthy protein rich meals, eat 4 good meals everyday, learn how to count your macros, and above all be consistent, that is stick to your plan for 25 days out of every 30 days or something like that.

 

Slow and steady is the best way for lifting iron. Eat right, sleep well and slowly keep adding difficulty in terms of weight, reps, volume etc etc. Learn to research various training methodologies and experiment slowly and determine what works over the years. Easy stuff, but not everyone manages it.

Best wishes! May you get stronger by the day.