What's so wrong with skinny fat anyway?
 

K, I always hear people saying they don't want to be skinny fat, they want to be toned.
Then I see pictures of toned girls with flat stomachs like this: http://media.buzzhumor.com/7/toned7c5baa.jpg
and I think it's so ugly.... I don't find it attractive in the least.
It's like.. I hate the toned look. So I've avoided weight-lifting, really... because most people say "Oh you won't bulk up, you'll tone!" but I hate the toned-look. I like the look of being slim but having some padding on you... still being a bit squishy all over.
But everyone else always seems to distain this and wants to be toned and have muscle definition and improve their body.
So uh... what's wrong with me? I seem to be going against the grain here, so I want to try to understand it... what exactly is so appealing about having a toned body?
Everyone seems to find skinny girls with a little padding on them a very negative thing, whereas for me that's an ideal, so I just don't get it. :dizzy:
It DOES make losing weight near the end difficult though. I wish I could have muscle to burn calories WITHOUT having any increased look of toneage at all. But I'm willing to sacrifice that! XD Just gotta work hard!

I so understand to a point, I'd rather look like Scarlett Johansson than a personal trainer, but you'd have to work out insanely and diet like a professional athlete to look like that picture, if it's not just naturally your body type. I don't think weight lifting will hurt in the least. In fact, though it may seem counter-intuitive, a healthy amount of fat with strong muscle tone under it is what gives that soft female frame! Without the muscle tone you'd look giggly and out of shape, which I'm sure all the work you've put in wasn't aimed for :)

And on a side note, what's with all these ripped chicks with fake boobs on fitness sites? It just gives unrealistic goals to those of us with out the dough or desire for plastic surgery. Boo on them.

I am in total agreement! I don't want rock hard abs or a completely toned body. Maybe a little bit, but I still want to be fun to hug. Toned does not equal healthy, just like having a little extra squishiness(note, LITTLE extra) doesn't equal unhealthy. Women are genetically meant to be squishier than men, that's why we have the babies and they don't.

Plus, contrary to media belief, I think guys like a little softness in their ladies ;)

Meg I'm with you. I'd rather be Marilyn Monroe than, say, Sarah Jessica Parker. I want to still have a feminine shape without all that toning. However, I don't think weight lifting will necessarily make you that toned. I have a friend who looks like that and she barely eats anything with fat in it and works out hours a day. I think it takes a lot of extreme behavior (and airbrushing) to get to that point and manintain it.

First, you're not getting the look of that picture unless you're working really hard, and possibly genetically blessed. I see that I'm in 20-somethings so maybe you don't care, but losing weight at the expense of losing muscle can lead to problems later as you age.

A little more about it here - http://www.marksdailyapple.com/skinny-fat/

And, it may make it harder to not gain weight later as you age...
http://health.yahoo.com/tips/too-ski...age--3203.html

It's all about personal preference. Some people prefer an extremely zaftig look. Some prefer rail thin. Some prefer "toned". Societal preferences change from decade to decade, even year to year. It's your body, so you get to decide what you make it look like (its LBM to fat composition, so to speak.)

However, I agree with what others say here. You don't need to risk getting "toned" or "cut" or "ripped" if you want the benefits of resistance training. There are MANY benefits aside from aesthetics, such as less injury, better posture, better agility, and as you mentioned, HIGHER METABOLISM.

The "toned" look is less about what your actual muscle mass is, and more about the fat to muscle ratio. In order to get that toned look your body fat has to be quite low.

So don't let the fear of appearing "toned" be an excuse to stay away from the gym. I can tell you from personal experience it takes MUCH more than a few resistance training sessions a week to get toned. I have resistance trained 5x a week since June, using up to 25 pound dumbbells, and I still look much more like Anna Nicole Smith (the chunky version) than the chick in your picture! I would be very surprised if she has higher than 10% bodyfat.

Just don't let your body fat get that low - and i shouldn't even say "let", because I think for most of us here (for myself, anyway), getting to that low a body fat percentage would be almost impossible, and for most of us, not desirable. It's not a choice between "toned" and "skinnyfat" - there are definitely healthy in-betweens.

Oh and congrats on your 40+ pound weight loss! I just saw that. That's spectacular. At your height you must look fantastic at 166!

I ditto SunnyP. There is an enourmous difference between being toned and dropping your body fat to a level that is so low that you will look like that model.

I have worked out with weights for years and I'm still extremely curvy and have not bulked up AT ALL. If anything it's made my arms slimmer. Weight lifting builds muscle which burns more calories than fat and helps you maintain your weight in the long run.

My mother is "skinny fat" and it is definitely not attractive. She is built like a stick but still has saggy butt and flabby thighs.

I would encourage you to try working out with weights. I really love it and you can make it as easy or hard as you choose by how much or how little you lift. It never "feels" like a work out to me unlike cardio which is torture. Plus as that article mentions weight lifting helps with bone density.

For me personally, I'd like to be in between skinny fat and toned...I don't want saggy arms and thighs..I want them to feel toned and firm. HOWEVER I think that it would be impossible for me to look like that model. That would take extreme dedication/time and genetics..which honestly I just don't have.

I also think that when girls are THAT toned it doesn't look feminine at all...perhaps that is why we perfer some softness. I think body builders in general look disgusting!

If any of you want, I can photoshop you to look like that model. I really don't think we can realistically achieve 6-packs.

Toning is good.Toning will add some firmness to our softness. Soft but no jiggly, hopefully. :)

Two things:

I think it's important to do weights regardless of how you want to look in the end. They are good for you and your overall health and you can even avoid the tone looked.


Also, I like my curves and don't want them to go away! I've been blessed with an hour glass figure and I should rock it... but as it as been said, I like the middle ground between skinny fat and toned.

This! :cool:

I have a friend who actually bulks up without wanting to. It's really weird. She builds muscle like no tomorrow.
Like... even if she doesn't want to. She's 5'6" and was told by the doctor that for HER, being below 150 is underweight, because she naturally has about 30 pounds more muscle than most girls (without doing anything to maintain it). Just from doing regular cardio she starts to bulk up (which boggles me, seeing as cardio often leads to muscle LOSS) and if she TRIES to build muscle mass, she starts developing a 6-pack within a month with very little effort.
It just boggles my mind. I don't know what makes her different from other girls but I've never met ANYONE like that. O_o
Now, I'm obviously not insinuating that would happen to me... NOOOOO. I don't think 99.9999% of girls could even do that even if they wanted to. I just think it's kind of funny.

Anyway, I see some of your points. I think with me it's honestly a matter of thinking of those girls who are toned and not soft at all and I'm like D:
Don't lie, you know that overweight people are way more nice for hugging than skinny people. I love hugging my obese friend. She's so squishy. :D But my other friend is underweight, and hugging him is like hugging a rock... I think in that sense my obese friend is much more appealing. I dunno... I think I just like squish. I don't think you have to be obese to have squish, though.... just a little extra padding! That way you don't have to have the health hazards that go along with it. :) Now that I'm in a normal weight range I'm going to have to be careful as I continue to get closer to 145... since if I feel I'm getting to be not squishy enough I need to stop, gain just a hair back, and stop for maintenance... which is why I'm even more hesitant to do weight training while losing. That would alter my weight and make it even more difficult to determine where the ideal squish weight is. Maybe if I was no longer losing I could experiment with some weight training and determine how much muscle is enough that you could never even tell it's there but...
it certainly seems difficult, you know?
UGH.

Hm.... I wouldn't want to be a stick anyway.... I'd want it to blend more with everything else... wouldn't want to be that skinny personally, weight lifting or not!

:o Thanks. I'm actually at 164ish now but only change my ticker every 2 weeks on my official weigh-in day. I've only lost about 3 pounds this past September, but slow and steady wins the race! My body seems to like this weight so I'm not really fighting it. The only part of me still "fat" rather than "soft" is my stomach, which I've barely lost anything from becuase my body hoards stomach fat for dear life. :lol: I've lost 46 pounds and only dropped one pant size because of my hoarded stomach fat. :p We'll see what happens in the next 20 pounds though......

Skinny fat doesn't mean having some padding. It means being a low weight but having a high body fat percentage.