How to plan your diets; for Morbidly Obese, Skinny, and Skinny Fat people! [UPDATED]

Hey Everyone!

Yeah yeah, I know that i had promised to write this post about the exercises that one needs to follow to lose weight, but I think it would be better if I do not let my blog get specified for weight loss only, hence taking my last post as base this time I would like to guide our very obese, skinny and skinny fat readers towards their goal of a fit and well shaped body.

Though first those who have nor read my previous posts, I strongly urge them to please go ahead and do so, for that forms a solid base on everything that I write henceforth will be based.

Okay, so lets get going, shall we?

So let me first start with the overweight guys:

So those of you who are corpulent/very overweight (BMI>30-32), you better start taking care of your body before you get into the category of morbidly obese, and for that, here is what you need to do:

1. Go through my last two articles, get some basic know how of how our body uses and gains fats, how to calculate your TDEE and what foods you should completely avoid.
2. Now, I would strongly suggest  that you try and follow a paleo style diet.
   Paleo Diet is a diet based on the types of foods presumed to have been eaten by early humans, consisting chiefly of meat, fish, vegetables, fruit and excluding dairy and almost all processed food.
   To get to know more about Paleo Diet Click Here.
   This diet has an excellent history when it comes to shedding weight for people who are morbidly obese.
3. TIP: Keeping your calories in check and maintaining a clean diet with the right ratio of macros is much more important to lose fat than spending hours and hours in the gym.
   Personal Experience.

P.S: I will talk about the workout regimen in my next post, please make sure you check that out.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    
After Obese, lets come to the other end of the spectrum, the skinny guys:
If you fall into the category of people who, no matter how much they stuff themselves up with food, are unable to gain weight, then you are at the right place, please read on.

As a skinny guy, the most difficult challenge that you will be facing is neither planning your diet nor the exercise, but eating the amount of food/number of calories that you need to get in order to gain weight.
Anyhow, not getting distracted from the main topic, lets get started on how can you actually go about gaining weight:

1. Go through my last two articles, get some basic know how of how to calculate your TDEE and Daily Goal Calories (DGC), how to plan your meals and the importance of protein, carbs and fats; especially protein.
2. Once you have calculated your TDEE, your DGC, your macros and decided upon weather you want to clean or dirty bulk (I would strongly suggest a clean bulk, i.e caloric surplus of not more than 500 calories.) you need to go forward and start planning your meals, but let's leave it here for a little while.
3. Coming to your macros, Protein! as an INDIAN, this component is going to be the most difficult to manage, see Indian veg diets are mostly carb centered with a little/no protein, so if you are a vegetarian, it's going to be a bumpy road for you.As a side note, here are a list of foods that i used to get my daily protein intake:
   Paneer (Raw), Eggs, Soybean chunks, Chicken(yeah, i am a non-vegetarian),fish etc.
   Long story short, I used to gorge on anything with a lot of protein given that its not too unhealthy e.g Deep Fried Chicken (Trans Fat).
   Also. I used a whey protein supplement as well.

So, now let me tell you how I, as an Indian student living in a college dorm with limited resources, managed my meals while bulking:

1. Once I got my TDEE, I used MyFitnessPal, I planned a day before and I made sure that I get the projected protein intake from, as i told you, paneer, eggs etc.
   Once I get my required protein Intake, I observed how much carbs and fats I took along with the food that I ate to get my protein and how much more should I need, to get to my projected macros of the day.
2. After this being done, the diet planning is just reduced to fill in the blanks, the carbs and fats that I need to take I try to get them from rotis, bananas, oatmeal and egg yolks, peanut butter and simple nuts respectively.Also, those of you who do not know how to use MyFitnessPal, please refer to my earlier posts.Note: Usually if you are using Paneer, Milk, Whole eggs to get your protein, the daily fat that you need to take is almost covered and there is very less that you need to get from other sources which only leaves your carbs to be taken care of.
3. Now that you know how you can manage your meals, here is my personal advice for you, as you are a skinny Indian guy on a clean bulk, I personally think that as long as you are getting your protein intake of the day, you don't need to sweat it even if you overshoot your calories, It's okay, you're genetically skinny and you won't gain a lot of fat easily and even if you do, it wont be noticeable.

Note: Please remember the fats that I am advising you to eat as your daily goal are the "Good fats" and not trans fats. If you don't know the difference please consider my previous post.


EDIT: Although I would always suggest a clean bulk to skinny guys but please be advised that a clean bulk takes time and results will come definitely, but slow, sometimes frustratingly slow.
If you are on a clean bulk then you'll first need to make sure that your program and diet is good and then you'll have to believe in it because once you get doubts on what you used to believe, its a downward spiral from there.
Also, if you are skinny and want to take up a "Dirty Bulk" its upto you, the results will come faster but there are cons to the dirty bulk as well, e.g. too much fat. So if you want to take up dirty bulking, please be informed about it first.
Also, I should tell you this, Ankit Sharma, the guy that I was in my first post was a dirty bulker, and you can see, his results were phenomenal!
Now it all depends on person to person on how your body reacts to the stimulus provided by weight training, hence it must be your choice which path you want to follow. :)

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

Okay and now comes the tricky part of the problem, the skinny fat guys. Basically skinny fat guys are simply the ones with a a good amount of body fat without a decent foundation of muscle
So here is the hard truth, If you are a skinny fat guy living in an INDIAN college, buckle up for you are in for a loong battle, and its not going to be easy, not that it is impossible, HELL NO! only that it is not going to be easy, and it will be very specifically depend on the kind of place you are in and the resources in hand.
Also, if you are not a student or living away from home, then no problems as you can manage this situation easily.

So before you continue reading any further, I'll advice you to first confirm and be sure that you are actually a skinny fat guy.
Those who are not sure, please refer to this link HERE
Also, these Images might help as well.
Once you have decided that you actually are skinny fat, lets see what you can do about that:

1. First, if you are a skinny fat guy, you have 2 options with you, either to lose fat or gain muscle, now when you look at yourself into the mirror you look chubby and you think that you must lose some fat, but with the shirt on you look like a skinny guy who has never been to the gym, so what should you do?
   So if you find yourself in this situation, here's what I would suggest you to do:
2. First, calculate the your TDEE and DGC, with the amount of protein, fats and carbs that you need daily.
3. Secondly, get on a Clean Bulk. Yeah, that's right, you need to gain some quality lean muscle before you even start to think about losing fat, cutting with a skinny fat body will spell disaster.
4. Okay and now comes the Golden Rule of your clean bulk that you would be undergoing for at least a year before you start to cut and that is, Not more than a 100-300 calorie surplus! yeah, you heard it, in fact, I would strongly suggest you to be as close to you maintenance calories as possible! I know being an Indian guy it would be very hard to track each and every calorie that you take throughout the day but hey, this is what you signed up for! so stop complaining and get busy.
5. Now coming to your daily Macros, here's what you need to do:
   Get the required protein and fat intake for the day, even if you overshoot on these in your diet, its okay and you can compromise on your carbs to cover it all up, as long as you are not cutting your carbs too much.
6. So this concludes your diet part, as far as the question of what you can eat and what you can not eat goes, please go through my previous posts.
   Also, to read more about how to approach a skinny fat problem, please refer HERE.

Tip: If you are a skinny fat guy and a total newbie to the gym, you don't need to panic as you are in luck, almost all of the newbies can lose fat and gain muscle at the same time and for that all you need to do is to eat clean, almost around your TDEE and exercise hard.
For more information on everything that I have talked about, please refer to the following video:

EDIT: If you are a skinny fat guy, don't even think about dirty bulking! a HUGE MISTAKE!

With this, I'll conclude this post and the topic of the next post, this time for sure, will be workout programs for different body types.
Till then, stay healthy!
Cheers! :)