The start of something new.

ShoulderChip

Hi,


I have recently moved to a new city and a new job and find myself near to a gym and minus a two hour daily commute so have found time for the first time to get healthy.

Everything I know is based on reading up bits and pieces over the year, I have never trained proeprly, I have never seeked advice from anyone before so would be very interesting in laying out my plan and hearing any feedback on it.

Just to give some background I am about 5ft 11, roughly 10-11 stong actually unsure, I am at first look pretty skinny but do have a beer belly and a complete lack of tone. I have been working for six years since college and in that time have progressively drank more and survived more on sweets and sugar instead of proper meals.


I have started to turn this around in the last 8 weeks or so, but started properly 3 weeks ago. I have dropped sweets and sugar from my diet completely. I know have time to cook and cook three meals a day. my relationship with vegetables before was "what are those icky green things on my burger" I know have a nutri bullet and have a large pure vegetable shake every day (mixture of kale, chard, spinach, etc I try and mix this up a bit, I dont especially know whats good or not, but my mantra is if its green and look horrible I will try it) I dont mind drinking these so its a fast way of moving towards a life with vegetables. My breakfast is three oatabix with that new almond milk stuff and half a veggie shake. For lunch I tend to have something like a ham and chicken sald from pret a manger, or typically a meat dish reheated fromt he night before today it was duck with some pepers and a protein shake, for dinner i usually have a meat and peppers and maybe some sweet potatoes (Steak/chicken/roast ham).
I am proud of this new diet given where I came from (fry for breakfast, takewawya for dinner dominos etc, and crisps and chocolate for lunch with a white bread sandwich) I am interested in tweaking it and would apreciate any suggestions but I am not at the stage where I need to worry about tweaks with 1% be3enefit etc.

Next up is going to the gym I have been going for three weeks now. After not been in two years. The first week I went on a saturday and did the weight machines, it was embarrasing how little I did, I did my best on each machine but didnt manage three reps of 10 on most of them and the weights were pretty low. That whole week I was in agaony, it was sore to raise my arms over my chest to put my jumper on etc lol. The next week I managed to go two days, one day on arms and chest, and second day on legs and shoulders. again I was sore for a number of days but nowehre near as bad. his week I have managed to go four times two days on two days off. I am starting to get better and really starting to feel the difference. I feel like at the start I had random muscles which I needed to develop to allow me to have a proper go at heavier weights.

My goal ideally is to have a six pac and some muscle definition in about three to four months. I am probably not a typical guy who goes to the gym in that I never want to get very bulky I just want definition and to be lean. First priroirty flat stomach, second priority definition.

Things which I am probably not doing right

• I still have no interest in cardio
• I still smoke
• I still drink rather a bit and am not yet prepared to reduce this considerably until I hit the limit of gainsthrough diet and going to the gym.
• I only do one machine to strengthen my back I guess I dont understand the impportance of doing my back.
• I don't stretch, I don't see the benefit.
• I dont quite understand the balance between eating to gain and not eating too much to lose weight, I would say I am definitely not eating enough to put on considerable msucle but my goal is also weight loss around the gut so am not really sure of what I am doing here.
• I am making up the machines as I go along on the assumption that the best thing is to pick a target weight where I do something like 12,11,8 reps

Okay I hope that was not too laborious read, I am just looking for any pointers on something you may have noticed or identified with from the above, I'm enjoying it so far and am going to make sure it continues

ShoulderChip

I would love some feedback if anyone has any comments?

Yer Aul One

[Read all the stickies in the main section, there is loads of useful information in there.
When I was starting out, I searched the word "advice" in "Health and Fitness" and read through a lot of threads created by similar people. You start to see a theme in the advice that the guys who post in this forum give out. They really know what they are talking about and you get to know pretty quickly who to listen to.

On the items you listed, here is my two cents:

ShoulderChip wrote: »

Things which I am probably not doing right

• I still have no interest in cardio
• I still smoke
• I still drink rather a bit and am not yet prepared to reduce this considerably until I hit the limit of gains through diet and going to the gym.
• I only do one machine to strengthen my back I guess I dont understand the impportance of doing my back.
• I don't stretch, I don't see the benefit.
• I dont quite understand the balance between eating to gain and not eating too much to lose weight, I would say I am definitely not eating enough to put on considerable msucle but my goal is also weight loss around the gut so am not really sure of what I am doing here.
• I am making up the machines as I go along on the assumption that the best thing is to pick a target weight where I do something like 12,11,8 reps

The more muscle mass you have, the more calories you will burn "to live", so it is definitely worth putting on some muscle. Cardio is great because you can count calories burned, where you cant do this with resistance exercises. I used to do a lot of cardio and I have lost more body fat since I changed my exercise routine to include a lot more weight training.

Nobody should smoke, this might not impact your training significantly but you are paying a company to blacken your lungs, brown your teeth, make you stink and shorten your life. (ex-smoker)

If you go down the road of counting calories to achieve a deficit, then the drinking will need to be considered. If your alcohol levels still allow you to fall under your deficit- then fire away. If it doesn't then you will not loose the weight you want to...simples

Your back muscles are some of the largest in your body, repairing these will take more effort on your body than smaller muscles. More effort means burning more calories. So working your back is essential. Also, nobody wants to look disproportionate, so increasing your muscle mass evenly is key.

Each to their own on the stretching stuff. If you have a good range of motion for all your exercises and you warm up correctly, maybe you don't need to. I have poor range of motion in certain areas so stretching is what I do to improve that and ultimately improve form and lower injury potential.

On the eating to gain thing: eating more than your body uses will make you put on weight. The stickies carry all the info you need. There is a bit of science behind it in identifying your maintenance intake. If you want to loose weight, you have to then have to have a deficit on your maintenance intake. If you want to gain weight you need a surplus etc etc. (Read the stickies, people who know more than me have laid it out much clearer than I could)

There are starting programmes that most people in the know would start you on. I was never advised on this and wish I had of. Examples:
http://startingstrength.com/index.php/site/about
http://stronglifts.com/5x5/
I would recommend starting here.

ShoulderChip

Yer Aul One wrote: »

[Read all the stickies in the main section, there is loads of useful information in there.
When I was starting out, I searched the word "advice" in "Health and Fitness" and read through a lot of threads created by similar people. You start to see a theme in the advice that the guys who post in this forum give out. They really know what they are talking about and you get to know pretty quickly who to listen to.

On the items you listed, here is my two cents:


The more muscle mass you have, the more calories you will burn "to live", so it is definitely worth putting on some muscle. Cardio is great because you can count calories burned, where you cant do this with resistance exercises. I used to do a lot of cardio and I have lost more body fat since I changed my exercise routine to include a lot more weight training.

Nobody should smoke, this might not impact your training significantly but you are paying a company to blacken your lungs, brown your teeth, make you stink and shorten your life. (ex-smoker)

If you go down the road of counting calories to achieve a deficit, then the drinking will need to be considered. If your alcohol levels still allow you to fall under your deficit- then fire away. If it doesn't then you will not loose the weight you want to...simples

Your back muscles are some of the largest in your body, repairing these will take more effort on your body than smaller muscles. More effort means burning more calories. So working your back is essential. Also, nobody wants to look disproportionate, so increasing your muscle mass evenly is key.

Each to their own on the stretching stuff. If you have a good range of motion for all your exercises and you warm up correctly, maybe you don't need to. I have poor range of motion in certain areas so stretching is what I do to improve that and ultimately improve form and lower injury potential.

On the eating to gain thing: eating more than your body uses will make you put on weight. The stickies carry all the info you need. There is a bit of science behind it in identifying your maintenance intake. If you want to loose weight, you have to then have to have a deficit on your maintenance intake. If you want to gain weight you need a surplus etc etc. (Read the stickies, people who know more than me have laid it out much clearer than I could)

There are starting programmes that most people in the know would start you on. I was never advised on this and wish I had of. Examples:
http://startingstrength.com/index.php/site/about
http://stronglifts.com/5x5/
I would recommend starting here.

Super thank you, I will take some time and go through all that and then send an informed reply, cheers for the starting push.

eclectichoney

+1 on the smoking if your goal is to "get healthy". It is probably the single biggest thing you could do to improve your health.

One of the main things with training in my opinion is consistency, whatever you do, cardio, weights, sports, whatever. Sticking with it can be hard after the initial enthusiasm but aiming for 3 solid sessions a week, *every* week will get you results.