June 7th, 2007
“Scary Skinny”- Tabloid Tell-Alls
I admit it. I bought the National Enquirer. I know, I know,you should never admit you bought the Enquirer, but the headline GOT me!“Hollywood’s Deadly Skin And Bones Diet: Stars Risking TheirLives To Be Thin.”Not to be outdone, IN TOUCH magazine’s cover story was remarkablysimilar with the headline:“SCARY SKINNY!”
Actually, I wasn’t “reading” the Enquirer at all, I was, ahem, “Doing professionalresearch…”
And besides, you have a lot of time on your hands at the checkout line when your weekly grocery list includes:
7 grapefruits, 4 packs of blueberries, 6 apples, 12 dozen eggs (yes of course, I throw away most of the yolks, thanks for asking), 9 lbs of chicken, 2 lbs of lean top round steak, 3 packs of salmon, 4 cans of tuna fish, 2 tubs of quaker old fashioned oats, 7 bags of broccoli, 7 bags of mixed vegetables, 4 bags of spinach, miscelleanous salad vegetables, a big giant bag of sweet potatoes, several bags of brown rice… uh.. and that’s just in the first shopping cart, LOL!
TABLOID TELL-ALLS!
Anyway, on the cover of the Enquirer there were photos of a “bony skinny”Angelina Jolie at 5′ 7″ 100 lbs, Anna Kournikova at 5′ 6″ and 110pounds, and Cate Blanchett at 5′ 8″ and 106 pounds, among others.
After I flipped past the picture of Sharon Stone’s butt cellulitecircled and enlarged for detail (no, I’m sorry to say, I’m notjoking about that!), the feature story inside discussed an issue that’s really quite serious:
Dr. Stanley Title said that “The skin and bones diet is extremelydangerous and can cause serious health implications. Literally, theyare starving themselves to death.”
Dr. Title said that Hollywood celebrities know that they look 10 lbsheavier on camera so they’ve almost all at one time used extrememeasures (often including diet drug abuse), to the point where even casusal observers notice the protrudingbones and rail thin bodies and wonder if they’ve gone too far.
People are dying to be thin, and unfortunately, that cliche has provento be literally true on more than one occasion in the case of severe anorexia.
SKINNY DOES NOT NECESSARILY MEAN HEALTHY
All too often, people forget to include “health” when they’re settingtheir goals. It’s just “x lbs” or “size X” or “X% body fat,” but seldoma mention of health, energy, nutrition and quality of life.
There’s a side to this “scary skin and bones diet” that’s even morealarming than what the Enquirer alluded to.
I am privy to this only because I’m a fat loss coach who hastaken thousands of body composition tests over the years, which is whymost people don’t know about this.
Dr. Title, in the Enquirer story, said that these diets “leave thedieters looking skeletal with bones protruding under the skin.” True. And many clearly are flirting with eating disorders.
But something else I’ve noticed from my experience is that starvationdieting can often produce the opposite of the intended result. Instead of improving your body composition…
YOUR BODY FAT TO MUSCLE RATIO CAN ACTUALLY GET WORSE AND YOU BECOME A “SKINNY FAT PERSON!”
That’s right. Not only does skinny NOT = healthy, skinny also doesNOT = lean, and skinny certainly does NOT = muscle.
Starvation dieters become victims of “skinny fat syndrome” and they diet off lots of “weight”, but the weight consists of more muscle than fat, so they end up with almost no muscle left, but a lot of the fat still remains!
Too bad they’re dieting off all their muscle, because MUSCLE is the engine that drives your metabolism.
Sometimes it’s not the “skin and bones” diet at all, it’s the”Bones and Fat diet.”
I’ve measured the body composition of some women who at a casual glancelooked thin or even down right skinny, and to my absolute shock anddismay, I found they were carrying body fat in “worse than average” range!
One woman I took a test on was about 5′ 7″ and 121 pounds.On any height weight chart or by any other standard that would be thin.
And this shows the flaw of thinking only in terms of “skinny,” “thin”or even just “bodyweight”: Her body fat measured an astonishgly high 28%!
That’s 34 lbs of fat out of 121 lbs, leaving only 87 pounds of lean body mass and fat free-tissue!
Imagine for a moment an arm bone, with a one inch pad of fat surroundingit, kind of like foam insulation around a pipe. That’s what her armwas like, only the insulation was pure fat!.
When I grabbed the back of her (very thin) arm- it was just onegiant fat fold! Literally no muscle – just bones and fat.
Are you now starting to see the problem we have here with the way most people are dieting and thinking?
Do you realize how slow your metabolism would be if you only had 87 poundsof lean body mass? How about how weak you would be? is that what youreally want?
I used to think “fat” was bad. Then I found out about “skinny fat” – nothingworse than skinny-fat, right?
Not so fast, How about “skinny-fat, malnourished, unhealthy and weak?” NOW THAT’S BAD!
People are so fixated only on the pounds of bodyweight and the outwardappearance of “skinny” or “thin’ they are paying NO attention to health,energy, strength, function, muscle and vitality – the things that count!
4 TIPS TO BE “FITNESS MODEL LEAN”…
NOT “WAIF-MODEL SKINNY”
(1) FIRST. Above all else, do not starve yourself.
ANY very low calorie diet can work in the beginning, but that’s exactly where the danger is – there’s a false sense of success achieved withrapid weight loss.
Rapid bodyweight loss almost never lasts. The thing is, in this day and age,you already know that. But you so desperately WANT to BELIEVE in the promiseof the quick fix, that you ignore your own logic and act on emotion.
Never starve yourself. It’s better to burn more calories withexercise and activity than it is to cut more calories.
When you’re active and burning calories, you can eat much more,providing you with more vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, fiber,essential fatty acids and essential amino acids.
Proper nutrition = optimum health.
Starve yourself = inadequate nutrition = poor health
(2) SECOND, you must make strength training a part ofyour lifelong exercise program.
You must do resistance training. This is the stimulus and signalto your body to keep the lean muscle when you are on a moderatelyreduced calorie fat loss program.
Weight training is NOT just for bodybuilders. There is simply no substitute for strength training in keepingyour muscle, stoking your metabolism, getting you lean,making you biologically young and keeping you healthy.
Yes – do your cardio too. But don’t do just cardio and think that’s enough. It’s NOT. Cardio + weight training are the TWO exercise elements that when done in combination will produce the fastest healthy fat loss results you can get, while maintaining all your muscle.
——————-DON’T DO THIS—————————
Almost all “skinny fat” people do two things:
1. Starve themselves on very, very low calorie diets
2. Refuse to lift weights
————————————————————
(3) THIRD, you have to change your language.
Words are so powerful aren’t they? Just a change in vocabularycan instantly change a feeling and begin to change your behaviors.
If we stopped trying to be “skinny” and stopped “dying to be thin”(what a terrible metaphor), and instead we focused on “being healthy”"being lean” what a difference it would make.
What if you focused on “improving your nutrition” instead of “goingon a diet?” what kind of difference do you think that would make?Just the sound of that – “nutrition” – how does it make you feelcompared to “diet?” I’m SERIOUS, THINK about that. What associationscome along with each word?
What if you added to your goal list a desire to look and be”athletic.” How would that change your perspective? Is therail-thin, protruding bones waif-model look “athletic???”
————————–DO THIS!————————————-
- Always include “being healthy” in your goals, not justreaching a certain weight or dress size.
- Always include “being LEAN” in your goals, never justlosing bodyweight.
- Always focus on “improving nutrition” not “dieting.”
———————————————————————-
(4) FOURTH, measure your body composition.
You must become aware of the difference between body fatand bodyweight and you must understand body fat percentageand body fat testing.
That doesn’t mean don’t use your scale and ignore what the mirrorshows you and how your clothes fit, it means doing all of the above.
Always measure your body composition (skinfold caliper or othermethod), and understand what youre losing – is it weight or fat?Is it just water weight? Could it be lean muscle you’re losing?
A single measurement will tell you.
Burn The Fat, KEEP The Muscle
Everything I’ve described here about what you should do and whatyou should not do is the same approach that *natural* bodybuildersand fitness competitors have always used.
These athletes CANNOT afford to lose an ounce of muscle, sothey train hard and eat sometimes as many as 6 clean-natural-food meals a day to stoke the metabolism and feed the muscle.
It’s the approach I use to reach the type of physical conditionyou see in the picture on my website, and its’ the approach I havebeen teaching to others for years in myBurn The Fat program.
I hope that more people who were focused only on being skinny willbegin to focus on the right thing:
It’s not about being “skinny.” It’s about being “lean” and being “healthy.”
Your friend and coach,
Tom Venuto, CSCS, NSCA-CPT
www.BurnTheFat.com
Copyright Burn The Fat Blog.com. Do not copy
Although I was on the right track when I found your book, I credit you with helping me take health and conditioning to another level. Others have seen the changes in me and have begged me to tell them the “secret,” which I always do with enthusiasm.So, again, thanks for what you do. Would that more people know about your program/advice!
Though I didn’t intend that.So how else – well every time you complete your training – you MUST praise yourself on your excellence and promise to do a little more tomorrow or the day after – Keep your promises to yourself and you will succeed. Build yourself an exercise plan that you CAN do and set a START DATE a month in advance. You must believe in yourself first, try learning to say NO to the things that you believe you eat too much of, delay them for a day, two days to a week and then every two weeks. Psyche yourself up. When you believe in yourself – you will start feeling more confident – you will eventually improve your mental state.Start eating a little less than usual before you start dieting and cut down on the fatty products learn to grill your food, find healthy nutruitional alternatives and try eating them. I removed butter and all oil from my usual eating habits 6 months prior to starting my diet, I stopped having milk in my coffee, changed the sugar to unrefined and eventually stopped eating meat. No I’m not a vegetarian, I like my meat and enjoy a healthy portion in moderation today. Actually I eat anything I want today but only in moderation.My diet began with a workout in the morning, just a few stretches followed by a few sit ups, after four weeks I was up to 60-80 sit-ups a day, at the moment I maintain a hundered with weights every morning. I started with low weights stretches using just a couple of kilos and even today I use 7-10 kilos on each arm when I stretch. But there is no hurry. I dont want to look muscular – just lean and healthy.The workout used to be 5-10 mins, now I admit I take 30 mins every morning around 5.30am. I’m early bird and often my first meetings begin around 7.30am.I always used to get up, use the loo, check my weight, make a note, then workout, then have breakfast, shower, dress and head off to work.Breakfast then is the same as today, 1 glass freshly squeezed pink grapefruit juice, 1/2 glass freshly squeezed lemon juice (2 lemons) and 1 green apple sliced (grannie smith’s the best)2nd breakfast was around 11am, often my first break of the day, a light green salad with onions a glass of water followed by a cup of pu-erh tea.At this point in time it happened to be summer, the days were hot and I had a lot of free time. Working as a teacher I had nearly all summer to myself, though not much money. I had bought a rougth terrain bike and I would cycle around Warsaw, starting at just 5km a day to 30km, often weekends would be 50-100km. You can do it if you believe in yourself. But don’t push too hard initially just build up progressively.At around 2pm was Lunch time and I enjoyed a healthy no-fat soup about 400ml just green veg, no carrots nor corn, no bread of any sort nor pastas. Followed by another glass of water and a cup of coffee.Then I’d go to a private lesson/meeting and only drink a glass of water while there.around 5pm I’d have a healthy salad, just greens no fish no meat – just greens – dont add oil or vinegar either.Weight training around 6, walking fast on the treadmill to jogging, and then upper body workout.7pm home, last soup and glass of carrot juice, cup of pu-erh and a glass of water.By 9pm I often felt sleepy because of the diet and the hot water and would easily fall asleep. Its important to sleep a lot while dieting, it helps the body re-generate, it also helps you overcome any hunger pangs you may or may not be feeling.But dont sleep too much, 8 hours is enougth.I repeated this and survived for 3 months, I didn’t cheat and still look great. When I finished my diet, I was a lot lighter, could run like the wind and dance all night long, I lost ten years off my looks, everyone thought I was someone else, I even had difficulties with my ID cards.My clothes were ALL replaced from XXL to small, thats UK 38 to 30.I did well. And I’m healthy and strong. But I always had a good heart and a good mind, so I always knew what I was capable of and I still know today.Next month I’m getting married.My Life is Fantastic. I believe in Myself – You can do it too.Tom is a brilliant guy – he’s got his head on right and there’s not many people like him in the world today. I wish there were more level headed people around.On a final note, anyone wishing to undertake any diet, should consult a qualified doctor – I know I didn’t – but I know you should, I stopped when my skin got too tight, my fingernails stopped growing and my hair too. I know what my limit is and I worked out my pace – please dont hurt yourselves.Next year I’m 40 and I look like a 25 year old, or should I say would if I could stop my hair from graying 
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