Find your starting line.
Seven questions, five minutes. Stop guessing whether to bulk or cut. Get a specific protocol direction based on where your body actually is.
The diagnostic runs in your browser. Nothing is sent anywhere. Your answers and result stay on this device — clear them with the reset button at any time. The full Builder Protocol (the 12-week system the buckets below come from) is a separate paid product, linked at the bottom.
"Should I bulk or cut?" is the wrong question.
It's the first question every skinny-fat guy asks on a fitness forum. It's also the reason most of them are still stuck three years later. The honest answer is unpopular: for your body type, both are wrong.
Bulking on a soft midsection drives the surplus into the wrong tissue — your fat. Twelve weeks later your waist is thicker and you look softer. Cutting, on the other hand, exposes the fact that there isn't enough muscle underneath. You weigh less and look like a thinner version of the same problem.
The third path is body recomposition — fat down and muscle up at the same time. It works for beginners and early intermediates, but only if the deficit is calibrated to your starting body fat and protein is high enough. That calibration is what this diagnostic gives you.
Seven questions. One direction.
Answer honestly. The diagnostic doesn't care about flattering self-assessments — it cares about putting you on the right protocol. Use a mirror under good light for the body fat estimate. If you're between two answers, pick the higher (softer) one.
Skinny-Fat Diagnostic
Your answers are saved on this device only. Reset any time.
Where your body actually is.
The diagnostic places you in one of four buckets. Each bucket gets a different deficit, a different timeline, and a different first move. The taxonomy is below — the bucket the diagnostic assigned you is highlighted in your result above.
This diagnostic is the opening page.
The bucket the diagnostic assigned you is one input in a larger system. The Builder Protocol is the complete 12-week build that runs from that bucket forward — training, nutrition, tracking, and the troubleshooting trees for when it stops working.
It rests on three pillars. Each pillar attacks a specific thing skinny-fat beginners do wrong.
Stimulus. Progressive overload. The V-taper.
Bucket deficit. Protein anchor. Real food.
Photos. Measurements. Strength. Not the scale.
What's in The Builder Protocol
Twelve chapters covering the full system end-to-end: why bulking and cutting both fail you; the three pillars; the training program (Push / Pull / Legs / Volume Day, week by week); nutrition setup with a built-in calculator; the tracking framework; sleep, stress, and step floors for desk workers; and a nine-month roadmap for what happens after week 12.
Plus seven appendices that handle real life: the Day-One Checklist, the Hevy app workout, the Recomp Calculator, a 7-day meal plan with shopping list and 90-minute Sunday batch protocol, real-life situations (travel, restaurants, holidays, shift work), a six-step troubleshooting tree, and a 25-question FAQ.
Get the full Builder Protocol.
A 20,000-word interactive ebook with built-in calculator, 12-week tracker, and Day-One Checklist. Works on phone, laptop, dark mode, offline. Lifetime access plus future updates.
- The complete training program — 4 sessions/week, week-by-week progression, programmed deload
- Bucket-calibrated nutrition with the recomp calculator running in your browser
- Multi-metric tracking framework — what to measure, when, and how
- 7-day meal plan + shopping list + Sunday batch protocol
- 25-question FAQ + six-step troubleshooting tree for stalls