Skinny Legs Part 3: Endomorph Nutrition and Workout Guidelines
Alright endomorphs! As promised, here is your how to get skinny legs nutrition and workout guideline. Unfortunately, your body type makes it a little more challenging for you to achieve thin, toned legs, but it is not impossible. It will just take longer and require more hard work and dedication. Your best bet it to combine both exercise and a healthy diet, as it will be more difficult to achieve fat loss and skinny legs with just diet or exercise alone.
Nutrition Guideline
The most important thing is not to eat too many or too little calories. You need to get that balance right! You should be in a slight calorie deficit, but not too much as you will be working out intensely and need to fuel your body for your workouts. For more on my daily diet, check out my previous blog post here.
What you should be eating
Protein and fats will be your new best friends! Make sure you’re eating a diet that is high in protein and healthy fat. Good sources of protein include: lean meat (especially chicken), eggs, protein powder, yoghurt and soy beans. Good sources of healthy fats include salmon, avocado, nuts, nut butter, eggs and healthy dips.
What you shouldn’t be eating
Carbs are not your friend. Unfortunately, your body type cannot get away with a high carb diet or too many naughty treats so you must have discipline. You still need to eat carbs as they are absolutely essential for your body to function. But make sure you’re sticking to a low carb diet and are avoiding processed foods and alcohol. Good sources of carbs include: fruit, green vegetables, sweet potato, white potato, whole meal bread, brown rice, and oats.
The timing of your carb intake is also very important. Ensure that you focus on eating carbs first thing in the morning or within one hour of your workout. Post workout, your body is in an anabolic state and needs the carbs to replenish your body, NOT store fat. This is the absolute best time to consume carbs, whether it be morning or night. Research has also shown that glucose tolerance is highest in the morning so your body is best able to deal with carbs in the morning.
Workout Guideline
Your number one goal should be fat loss. For optimum results you should be doing the following
- Weight training 3-4 times per week
- At least 20 minutes of cardio after every weight training session
- 2-3 days of cardio only
- One rest day per week
Weight training
Your goal should not be to lift as heavy as you can as you can bulk easily. Your goal should be to exercise at a high intensity to burn maximum calories. A full body weights program will work better than a split program (i.e. chest and triceps, back and biceps, legs and shoulders on separate days).
Keep your weight high but not at your maximum (i.e. 70%) and keep your reps high (12-15). To increase intensity and burn maximum calories, only have short breaks between sets (30-60 seconds) to keep your heart rate up. Increase intensity by including supersets, drop sets and HIIT.
Cardio
Try to do at least 20 minutes of cardio after every weights session. That means you will be doing some form of cardio during every workout (i.e. 6 times per week). It is beneficial to do cardio after a weight session because doing weights uses up your glycogen stores, which means your body will use more fat during your cardio workout (for more information on this, check out my previous skinny legs blog post oncardio).
You should also have at least 2-3 days of cardio only. Moderate intensity cardio will work best for your body type and to help you achieve fat loss on your lower body and get those desired skinny legs.
Rest
You MUST have at least one rest day. Because your program is so intense, rest is going to be very important to help your body recover and prevent you from injury. If this program is too much, start out with a less intense program and work your way up. Or start by lifting very light and doing low intensity cardio and build up.
Don’t get discouraged if you don’t see immediate results. It will take you longer to see a difference, but you just need to persist! Your legs will probably be the last place that you see any weight loss (this is normal for most females) so if you’re seeing fat loss in your upper body and stomach, then keep going! You’re on the right track to getting rid of that stubborn fat on your legs. Everyone is different, but it may take up to 8 weeks to see any noticeable difference
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