general dietry advice

flogen

Hey all,

I know this is thread 100 of this genre, but wondering if people could give me some general advice on my diet as I start on my route to healthiness etc.

Firstly, about me:

I'm over 6ft (say around 6'1'', 6'2'' or so), aged 21 (almost 22) and according to the scales weight 14 st 9 lbs, give or take... am quite broad shouldered, probably partially due to the tonnes of swimming I did during my body's early development stage (until secondary school, to be precise).

I've just started in a local gym, and my short term goal is to lose the excess weight I have, which is mainly on my stomach and chest.

Medium term goal is to improve overall fitness considerably, get into better shape physically and build up upper body strength and muscle.

Long term goal is to be left with a decent upper body, well defined etc - not to any kind of extreme body-builder status but to a good stocky and well built degree, something to match my shoulders!... obviously want to improve lower body too but to a lesser extent


I'm hoping to get a workout routine in the gym tomorrow (will post it up here once I do - again, priority is to lose the fat, then build the muscle although I'm sure you can do both at once).

What I'm looking for here is some dietry advice to achieve my short, med. and long term goals.

From what I've read around here so far the simplest advice is to avoid processed foods, and naturally I'll be avoiding anything overtly unhealthy.

What I need advice on is 1) the things I need to aid my goals, 2) the things I should avoid like the plague at all costs (for example - may seem like a stupid question, but I'm a fan of black coffee... will that need to get knocked on the head?) and 3) what kind of balance i should be aiming for between different food types.

Also - as far as suppliments go, I figure I need a crash course in this and some advice on what would suit my needs best, and if they're really needed in conjunction with the right diet.

In recent weeks I've been trying to eat healthily, but while it's an improvement on before (bran flakes for breakfast, cutting out snacking and as much crap as I can, 3 square meals a day etc.) I know that it's not suited to what I want to achieve.

All help is greatly appreciated.

Adam

rubadub

flogen wrote:

I'm hoping to get a workout routine in the gym tomorrow (will post it up here once I do - again, priority is to lose the fat, then build the muscle although I'm sure you can do both at once).

If you are overweight you can do both at once, I did. I was a constant weight for a few months, loosing fat and gaining muscle at the same rate.
Check out www.exrx.net and read the stickies, it is worth knowing what is going on in your body than just blindly following a routine some guy gives you.

flogen wrote:

(bran flakes for breakfast, cutting out snacking and as much crap as I can, 3 square meals a day etc.)

Some would consider bran flakes to be highly processed food. Some brands are loaded with sugar too. Try porridge. And you should be eating 6 evenly sized, evenly spaced meals per day, this will boost your metabolism, and make resisting snacking far easier.

flogen

rubadub wrote:

If you are overweight you can do both at once, I did. I was a constant weight for a few months, loosing fat and gaining muscle at the same rate.
Check out www.exrx.net and read the stickies, it is worth knowing what is going on in your body than just blindly following a routine some guy gives you.

Many thanks for the link - didn't get my routine today (some family stuff came up so had to put it off), but it seems to be full of information, as do the stickies.

Some would consider bran flakes to be highly processed food. Some brands are loaded with sugar too. Try porridge. And you should be eating 6 evenly sized, evenly spaced meals per day, this will boost your metabolism, and make resisting snacking far easier.

Shows you what I know!
Thanks for the tips, will make the switch asap, and work out a 6 meal regime too.

any other pointers, tips etc. are of great help.

flogen

Just to update on my progress (and seeking some further advice)

I've not yet managed to get myself into a 6 meal routine, upping it to 4 at the moment.

Breakfast is porridge with a homemade banana milkshake (low fat, of course) in lieu of what used to be a cup of instant coffee and a bowl of bran flakes.

Lunch is a brown-bread sandwhich with a modest filling - cutting out the usual suspects like mayonaise or coleslaw and not over-doing anything... washing this down with either water or a fruit drink (like an innocent one) again in lieu of a coffee.

Dinner is a bit less predictable as I eat at home and am still having the "family" dinner but it's never anything like take away and is usually quite healthy... that said I've made improvements where I can like switching to wholemeal pasta/brown rice and ensuring my meat is grilled instead of fried and so on, but I hope to just move over to my own meal in the next few weeks.

The fourth meal (which would usually be between lunch and dinner) is usually a couple of boiled eggs just to keep me going.

What I've cut out is the likes of my 2+ cups of coffee a day, white bread and big sandwhiches, my snacking and my preference for anything sweet... Having weighted myself after 1 week of this I had managed to drop 3 pounds too - and that's with no additional exercise (just walks to and from bus stop/work etc. which would be about 30-45 minutes of low-intensity exercise a day).

The weight loss was just what I needed to show myself that while my diet isn't perfect, the small changes I've made have made a big difference already... the plan is to lose the belly through how I eat and get fit, build muscle and tone up through the exercise. In both my diet and exercise I'm not looking to go crazy - I need to lose a little bit of weight and want to build up a little bit of muscle, that's all.

As mentioned already, family stuff meant I hadn't been to the gym until Saturday, and I just went for a decent swim then (and Sunday too, just to get 2 sessions into the one week).

Going in today to finally get that programme and start a proper routine - I'll probably add swimming to the end of it as a warm down because I really enjoy doing that.

So a few questions:
Can anyone think of the best way to describe to the trainer what I'm looking to do - lose weight, get fit and tone are straight forward enough, but I'm worried that she'll think I'm looking to do some serious body building when all I want is to gain some muscle, to my arms and chest particuarly, without going too far or too big..

Secondly - am I defeating the purpose by having a milkshake rather than a simple fruit smoothy? If so, what's the best way to get the consistency down as I find any time I just pulverise the fruit into mush it's still a bit too thick.

Finally, having bought the wholegrain pasta, I didn't see any major difference between its nutritional information and that of regular pasta - is it just a case of being the best of a bad bunch or is there something very beneficial I'm missing?

flogen

OK - got my programme and ran through it today - seems to be more than enough for me as I need to get my fitness back on track before I push anything... and I'm to come back in 4 weeks for an update:

Warm up:
10 minutes on bike - the setting is at around 8 effort if that means anything, probably depends on the brand of machine though (keeping this over 65mph - or is it kmph?! I didn't check... )

Stretches etc.

Cardio:
10 minutes on cross-trainer keeping heart rate above 140bpm
2,000 meters on Rower machine

Weights:
Chest Press - 3 sets of 15 reps
Upper back - same
Shoulder press - same
leg press - same
ab machine - same
(the weights vary machine to machine and seem to be changable depending on how I'm doing - at the moment they're at 15, 15, 10, 50, 30)

Mat:
Oblique curl - 2 sets of 20
reverse curl - same
press up - 2 of 10
back extension - 1 of 10

then warm down.

Thoughts on this? It seems to do the job for me, and will be upped in 4 weeks too - she asked me if I was a smoker (which I'm not, and never have been) which gives you an idea of how unfit I must seem! Knew I was bad, but didn't realise it was that bad!