Hello everyone. I'm posting because I'd like input with my plans regarding overall fitness. I'm not exactly sure how to format this so I'll probably be all over the place. I apologize for that, but please bear with me.

(General/Diet)First of all I want to develop a life-long routine or at least something for the next 10-years or so just to be healthly. I don't mind exercise, matter of fact I enjoy it most of the time (just makes me feel better overall). I don't do diet fads, I don't mind making changes to my diet as in less junk food/more protein or things like that. Bottom line please don't post anything unrealistic, I like to eat and while I don't consume a lot of junk there are times when I will and I don't plan on changing that. While I'm at it I may as well say I don't eat pork (No, I'm not Muslim or Jewish it shouldn't matter here anyway). I also have a Centrium vitamin supplements available.

(My Body)It has been a while since my last doctor visit so my numbers on my body aren't 100% accurate. I'm somewhere between 5'7-5'11 probably 5'8 or 5'9(average height). I weighed myself on an iffy scale and came out at 165lbs. As of now I have an uncomfortable amount of body fat, my muscle definition/tone has almost completely vanished. However, I don't consider myself to be obese by any stretch. I'm 18 and I've probably got a few more growth spurts left. I was looking in another thread and actually I look a lot like the guy in the "Getting in Shape" thread.

(My Goals)For short term I want to build up a comfortable amount of muscle mass before starting all out strength training. I want to weigh around to 200lbs. I don't want to be bodybuilder huge, but I'd like to be a bigger than most guys my size. Pretty much I just want to have a basic routine to keep myself in the same shape for years to come. A realistic one. The problem with me is being consistent with the workouts, and building healthy, lasting habits. I'm used to/interested in the same or similar workouts to fighters. On a side note, I'm assuming that through the course of any good routine my body will be aestically(sp?) pleasing.

(What I'm doing now)I've started a few routines to get my body out of its "lazy" state I've been in for the past year. But I am not sure of the specific effects of what I'm doing. At the moment I don't have access to a gym, so I work with what I have right now, which isn't much. I have two 10lbs dumbbells, a small spot on the floor, and a 13 year old that I wrestle around with. I can't really afford to buy anything right now, but suggestions for future equipment/supplements are welcome. (I'll have access to a gym in a few months btw.) In the morning I do 12 push-ups, 140 crunches, leg lift(until I can't hold my legs in the air), 20 squats w/10lbs dumbbell in each hand, wrist curls w/10lbs (until I get tired), bicep curls 50 per arm at 10lbs. Basically I repeat that 3 or 4 times a day. I've only been doing it for two weeks. Note that on a lot of my lifts/push-ups, I capitalize on controlling the entire lift or push. I figure that way it takes more effort and I get more "burn" out of it each time.

(Bottom Line)If people in prison can get gain size and strength with little materials I'm sure I can as well. For the time being I need help on using myself and my equipment affectively and when I get a couple of things together I'll need to know what to do also. My biggest things are gaining muscle mass, then lowering my body fat, then constant strength training all while keeping my body "beach-worthy". I'd like to thank anyone who is taking the time out to read this and help me progress with the physical aspect of my life. Sorry about the ridiculous read and horrible formatting. I'll be looking forward to responses and suggestions. Thank you for your time. ~Q

This message was edited by qoolflame on Jan 06 2008.

For diet, in general most people respond well to increasing protein intake, decreasing carbs, and increasing good fats.

Eating "healthy" should be fine until you get more serious. If you are looking to burn fat, it is incredibly important to get high protein, otherwise you will burn what little muscle mass you have along with it.

5'8 and 5'9 at 200 lbs with a low body fat is pretty large and more than enough size to do well in bodybuilding in the appropriate weight class, but I know what you mean. Getting larger than that shouldn't really be a worry, since 200 and up is about where most people start having really trouble gaining size without some kind of "gear."

I'd recommend not jumping in and changing everything at once, so you can actually adjust to the lifestyle and not burnout.

As far as workout - anything more than 20 reps with a weight is no longer anaerobic exercise, and not all that worthwhile to the body. You should not be repeating a workout 3-4 times a day; with mostly bodyweight exercises you should be fine doing the same movement every other day. With heavy weight training, you need to wait even longer. Working out so often with the same stuff, while burning calories, will only destroy your muscle faster. And having muscle is incredibly important for losing fat. The gym is a very important thing to have access to - without it solid gains are pretty much impossible (as far as gaining size).

My recommendation is until you have real access to a gym, to focus on bodyweight high intensity low-rest kind of exercises with a really high protein diet. This is because you won't be gaining much size even on a bulking kind of diet with bodyweight exercises, so you might as well just try to maintain what you have while burning fat. Ideally you would do weights first to help build muscle to burn it, but your situation just doesn't allow for it (though you should do your best to change the situation so that it does allow for it).

Keeping a beach-worthy body while building muscle, past the first few easy pounds, gets incredibly difficult. Even in a clean bulk, I've put on a pound or two of fat over the winter and will have a little work to do before I'm happy for the summertime. The gist: don't plan on going to the beach during the fall/winter/early spring, especially if you're going to want to eat some junk too.

If you don't mind could you list some foods that are most effective for a high protein diet? My normal diet consists mostly of eggs, meat(chicken, beef, turkey), cheese, potatoes and ketchup XD. On average that is you'd catch me eating. As far as junk goes every once in a while I'll want a candy-bar or something sweet, and I definitely have more sweet cravings around the holiday season that just passed.

Yeah, I've also noticed that people in general get a tad chunkier during the winter. I think its natural actually.

Something very important to me is being natural and healthy. I won't consume do any type of steriod period, no Creatine or things like that. However I am interested in supplements that can help me out with what I'm trying to do. Right now I'm only taking a multi-vitamin, but I've been looking into fish-oil in whey-protein as well. What are the benefits of those supplements and do you have any recommendations to help out? Is there anything wrong with taking a multi-vitamin and along other supplements?

I agree with not jumping into anything too fast. I'm trying to take my time and execute a lifestyle change and not a fad or something for temporary help.

I'll have access to a gym in mid Feb. Would it be possible to make decent gains at home if I could find some heavy lifting materials like in the gym? Also I should note that a got the "Perfect Push-up" as a gift from my brother yesterday. What do you think of the routine in the box? As in is it any good? It has a rotation of regular, wide arm, and chair, push-ups.

As far as high protein foods go, should I eat before the work-out, after the work-out or both? And I gathered from what you said I should do more cardio or just keep my heart rate high during workouts. Is that correct?

Thanks again for taking the time out to read and help me out. I don't have much time online, but I'm in the process of checking your journal and a few others, although I don't plan on copying anybody because I feel that as individuals we are all different and the same things won't always work well for me.

Cheap, high protein food:

Tuna
Eggs
Chicken (buy in bulk and freeze)
Whey powder

As far as that goes, that's all I really use. Nuts like Almonds are also good.



Being natural and healthy is good to have important - but don't let that give you misconceptions about what things are. Creatine is not a steroid, and is no different than whey in how natural it is. It's simply isolated amino chains that you naturally consume in a lot of different foods, but, like whey, just makes it easier to get a useful amount.

Fishoil, Whey, and Creatine is a really solid combo of supplements as all have heavily researched results, and are safe for longterm use. Not to mention they are all very cheap.

A multivitamin is helpful as well - try to get it in powdered form as this absorbs better, and its a little bit debated whether or not the pill forms actually do a damn thing.

With similar supplies, you can do anything at home that you could do in the gym. It's obviously easier once you have full gym access though as you can switch amongst cables/machines/freeweights. I don't really know much about "The Perfect Push-up", but unless it is putting external weight on your body it's not going to do that much for building actual muscle mass. It can at least keep some strength while you lean up though, if no weight access.



You should have a pre-workout and a post-workout meal. Pre-workout is different for anybody - just make sure there is a good protein source, good carb, and not all that much fat. Post-workout should be some sort of healthy fruit juice (not crap like Juicy Juice) and, ideally, a whey shake. Post-workout carb is also very important. PB sandwhich is a great choice.


This message was edited by Tumbles on Jan 07 2008.

Nutrition > Supplementation > Training

Spend time sorting out your nutrition first. Make a food diary for a few days and calculate how many calories you eat and from that how much protein, carbs and fats you eat. The food diary is good as it shows exactly what you eat, so you can cut it out. Its best to cut cravings out your diet little by little - otherwise youll struggle and can possibly end up binge eating. Its important to get a good balance and if you want to put on some size then having a fairly large protein + carbs intake is a neccessity. Try eat carbs with low GI (your complex carbs such as wholemeal rice, wholemeal pasta etc). Follow what that other guy said about protein too as its an important factor when trying to pack on muscle. Theres also little factors, like making breakfast your largest meal of the day etc.

Next is supplementation. Its used to speed up the process and basically its extremely difficult and expensive to consume enough protein entirely from food, so this is where it comes in good use. Dont worry about all the different types of supplements for now as you dont need them. Get yourself some whey and some simple carbohydrates (dextrose, maltodextrin). Mix those carbs in with the whey and consume immediately after a weights session. This is the only time you should be having simple carbohydrates as it gives you an insulin spike for muscle growth and repair. Nice attitude about steroids though - exactly the same mindset as me.

Lastly is training. How many days are you going to devote to the gym a week? Split your routines so you do a bodypart each day but youll also have to throw in some cv to lower your bodyfat.

Sorry I couldnt elaborate on some things but ask away and ill be willing to help. Im very tired atm.

I think what I'm going to do is start a public journal like to other members, along with my personal log, to help keep track of everything. I don't have time to the last few days right now, but I want you two to know that I really appreciate the help and I hope you both continue to help me with refining the process.

Until later I have another quick question. When your muscles are sore after a workout what exactly does that reflect?

when ur sore u usually dont raly feel it till next morning atleast i dont but that means ur muscles tore or something like that anyways its not in a bad way when it tears it grows back stronger so it takes more to happen again. u might wanna try something that i do 1-2 a week usually weekends its called tabata u can read more about it here http://www.gymboss.com/tabata.html
every time ive done it so far ive been sore next morning
and heres the timer i use for it http://www.speedbagforum.com/timer.html
something u may wanna know is that if u wanna build body mass u need more weight+less reps and strength training is more reps+less weight if u need anything cleared up or anything else just ask hope i helped with something

Perhaps you could explain why bodybuilders are more frequently doing high-rep sets and powerlifters do lower rep sets then? That's just not right.


And I'm quite sure that when your muscles are sore it does not necessarily mean anything other than lactic acid buildup.

i guess i mixed em up?

and well im just saying what i heard

Just updating my status since I haven't posted anything for a few days. I've kept a food dairy for about 2 weeks now and I'm in the process of calculating my intakes. Also, I've gained access to heavier dumbbells for my home workouts. I'm currently doing a home workout every other day. I've had more energy and overall have been feeling better. However I do notice I'm having more bowel movements than usual since I've started dieting and exercising. Thats all for now, I'll try to post more later, and also start the PJ when I get a chance. I don't really have any questions at the moment but I'll post them here if I do.


http://www.pponline.co.uk/encyc/0002.htm < That is an interesting article I ran across concerning resting and recovery after workouts.

quote vadar41

I'm kind of in a similar situation as you Qoolflame.

I've never been "fat" persay, but I've always had an extra 5-10 pounds I could lose for as long as I could remember. About a year ago (I'm 17) was the first time I actually seriously started eating nutritiously/working out consistently. Right now I'm about 6'2" and 190 pounds. Over the summer while I was in really good running shape, and at the peak of my strength levels, I was working out daily and put on a lot of muscle, but still maintained a little more body-fat than I'd wished for.

Now, 6 months later, I'm near the end of basketball season and over 15-pounds lighter from all the aerobic workouts. I'll resume my weight-lifting after the season ends (End of January), to start putting on muscle for the upcoming football season.

Now for my question-

How should I best go on about putting on "lean" muscle for football while still losing fat for the spring/"beach-season"?

I'm planning to try taking in higher amounts of protein (150-200g/day) while eating less carbs. I just don't want to eat too much food so that I put on extra fat/weight while I gain muscle; nor do I want to not eat enough so I don't see much muscle growth.

Thanks for reading.

I may be not 100% but from what I've been learning you need to make sure a few things get done.

For one your overall calorie intake has to be higher that what you use up while working out. Like you were saying you need a high protein intake and supplements like Whey protein can help with that. As far as exercises go you want to lift high-intesity low rest routine, and ideally it should be under an hour. By the way, if you plan on gaining muscle you should plan on gaining weight because thats what will show up on the scale if you're doing it right.

Another thing, you can't do everything at the same time otherwise you get very minimal gains in each section. What I plan on doing is concentrating more on bulking until spring, stop, cut fat for beach season and start bulking again come fall. I don't really think you get body fat from bulking unless you're unhealthy fat intake is high and you're not using up the nutrients that you take in.

Be sure to check out what others posted, you'll find everything I just posted in more with them. Just get educated and the rest will fall into place. Good luck.

You will almost always get a bit of body fat from bulking, but should never be anything extreme if you are doing it properly.

Thanks, I think that pretty much answered my question.

Edit-- Alright, so I'm leaning more torwards toning up right now versus strength/weight gain. I'll keep my cardio workouts going, and start up strength training in a bit, but with an emphasis on cuttting weight and toning up, then I'll work on bulking up more once football starts up around June.

This message was edited by vadar41 on Jan 16 2008.

Well, I just got a job as a cycling instructor and now I'm my university cycling team... so I can tell you what's the fastest way to get into shape: Cardio.

Cardio doesn't exactly build muscle mass, but that can be built later.

I personally think it's more important to build a cardiovascular base, and then from there you can do intense strength training to build your body up. The reason I believe cardiovascular base to be essential to any training regiment is the fact that increase lung and cardiac output allows you to workout for much longer periods of time which can allow you to do maximal muscle damage for maximum muscle mass growth (hypertrophy).

Since running is very hard on your knees, especially if you're overweight, heck, even if you're of normal weight... I suggest you do elliptical or biking as those are NON-WEIGHT bearing exercises. These will build your cardio base and you will drop fat incredibly fast if you keep your heart rate (HR) in the 170-175 range for your age group (this is an average, and you should check what your max HR is by testing yourself doing anerobic threshold or seeing your doctor).

Do cardio at least 5 times a week for an hour. Anything less is almost useless if you really want to lose fat. If you can do 6 or 7 days a week that would be perfect though.

Watching your diet is a great idea, I personally recommend trying to increase your fiber intake (dietary specifically) and water. Note that I didn't say fluids. No alcohol (you're illegal anyways), no more than 2 cups of milk (skim or 2%), no gatorate, no juice (fruit juice in any form is just sugar).

If you crave juice, eat fruit. Actually eat the fruit. I know it's hard to peel or wash etc... but I don't drink juice anymore. If you can't do the fresh fruits, do applesauce. Try to stay away from canned fruits in syrup which is once again... sugar.

Sugar is the enemy. It's actually better to consume fat than sugars.

People might kill me for saying this... but Trans-Fats shouldn't be a big issue for you if you don't eat much meat or meat based products. Trans-Fats affect your cholesterol and if you're almost vegetarian like me, they're better than saturated fats in that matter. If you do eat meat, keep them away. Try to eat lean meats like poultry or fish. Expensive, but that's why it's expensive.

Once you lose your first 5 lbs or so you won't be able to stop. Also try to workout right after waking up, since this will boost your metabolism your entire day.

Also make sure to eat after working out. A cliff bar or a bowl of cereal is excellent. Try to get a bit of protein in for muscle recovery and make sure to stretch properly.

If you need any more tips, I can help you, or I can ask my boss. She's written so many articles in so many books and magazines it's unbelievable.