How do I start?

[Sterile SquidParticipant 21]

 

A brief backstory.

For a skinny fat guy of 165ish lbs at 5’10, what is the best way to start? I occasionally do calisthenics to pass the fitness tests at my job but other than that I sit on my butt in front of a screen eating junk food. The only tangible asset to my “diet” is that I frequently drink water instead of carbonated drinks. A few years ago I used to work out three days a week adhering to Rippletoe’s Starting Strength plan but I frequently plateaued due to a poor diet. After my workout partner got hospitalized, I lost motivation and everything fell by the wayside.

At this point in my life, my primary goal is to exercise for strength and health, with aesthetics as a secondary consideration. What programs do you recommend? Any books on nutrition you swear by? I have considered trying intermminent fasting. Would it be possible for me to implement jogging, at the very least once a week? I hope for this to be a new hobby with tangible returns.

Any help or advice will be greatly appreciated.

[ILiveAgainParticipant]

You must get your mind right first. Until you do that … your going to keep failing.

You just need the ‘f~~~ it’ moment …. then all will fall in place.

I would recommend you incorporating free weights in your new routine.

Diet and sleep are just as important.

You just go and start doing.

[KingOfTheSeaParticipant 1270]

Hey, Sterile Squid. I love all of Brad Pilon’s books on nutrition; just a personal opinion there but he really goes out of his way to prove his points with solid research. An additional benefit is that they’re all e-books, meaning that when new information and research comes along, he analyzes it and modifies his theories around them instead of letting his theories modify the research. I know CrazyCanuck on here also likes his work. Currently, he has 3 books that I know of:

Eat Stop Eat- I’d say this was one of the very first books (at least as far as I’m aware of) that delved into intermittent fasting. Very straight-forward in both his explanation of the research and his recommendations. The ultimate take-away here is that one only really needs one or two 24 hour fasts a week.

How Much Protein?- Tackling the infamous question in fitness. Also a good read; I’ll save you the time and say the appropriate range is about 60-120g a day based on level of experience (beginners need more, then taper off a bit), height (taller you are, the more you’ll need), weight (interestingly, the more muscle you have/the closer you are to your genetic potential, the less you need), age (younger trainers need more), amount of training (more training means more protein) and gender (men consume more than women).

Flat Belly Forever- Don’t care for the name of this one, but it’s about the importance of healthy gut bacteria and how to cultivate it. Basically, the key guidelines here are to have a more plant-heavy diet incorporating the protein recommendations from How Much Protein? and to fast intermittently.

 

As for working out, I’m the opposite of you (aesthetics are my first priority with strength being a close second), so I don’t know what to tell you other than to stick with the compound lifts (rows, pullups/downs, dips, bench, shoulder press, deadlifts, squats) with maybe 1 or 2 isolation lifts to round out your physique. I will say this, though: The two biggest mistakes I see working at the gym are people who put too much on their plate and don’t give themselves enough time to rest (3-4 hours a night, 5-7 times a week) and people who injure themselves by not learning and executing proper form. If you can, find a proper teacher because the powerlifts are very technical. Hope that helped in some way, shape, or form. Experienced has a lot of gym knowledge, so hopefully he’ll chip in here as well.

 

EDIT: Oh, yeah! As ILiveAgain said, make sure you are getting enough rest! I see people abusing pre-workout supplements all the time to try to make up for lack of sleep, but there is no substitute for the real thing!

[FrankyParticipant 2338]

I’ve matched calisthenics with boxing, i pretty much do my cardio that way.

As for programs i do 2 days of chin-ups and pull-ups a week and 2 days of dips a week.If you want strength keep the reps between 5-12 (or maybe even 10) if it gets too easy add more weight.Rinse and repeat.You should also know that if you do this ,your body won’t really look all that impressive but you’ll get strong as f~~~.

[SnakeSpectator 2080]

Eat rice, beans, and oats every day. I recommend brown rice, green lentils, and rolled oats. Brown rice and beans benefit from soaking. Soak brown rice and lentils for 24 hours, rinse, and then cook for 40 minutes. Every person will have their own diet, but these three items are almost essential, in my opinion, due to price and nutritional profile. Use a program like Cronometer to see a layout of your diet, and consult with a website like The World’s Healthiest Foods to build it.

[Crazy CanuckMember 4215]

Best way for weight loss is to eat 5 to 10 serving of vegetables. You can still have carbs and proteins. I fast on a daily basis. I eat from noon to 8 pm. It helps limit how much you can eat. Stress is your number one enemy for fat loss.

"If pussy was a stock it would be plummeting right now because you've flooded the market with it. You're giving it away too easy." - Dave Chapelle

[Anonymous 12]

I’ve found that exercise in itself tends to fix the eating problems. You start to exercise you feel better, your mind corrects itself and as a result you tend to not want the junkie food so much.

Also with the exercise just start light, if you push it too hard to begin with you will wreck yourself and be too sore or even sick the next day and end up losing momentum before it even picks up. I had this happen to me a few years back, did a session with a personal trainer who just flogged me, I wasn’t used to it and ended up with the flu which stayed with me for the next 2 weeks.

So work up to it slowly, just 20-30 mins a day of even brisk walking and some weight training.

 

[experiencedParticipant]

Think in the ‘here and now’ because otherwise at the gym you’ll think, man, wish I’d been eating more protein. [At the gym focus on your workout only]. or when eating crap, – thinking man , should work out harder, thorough warm up/moderate weight, not stopping until true failure etc.

Key here is at the gym, between sets, relax, clear your brain, then visualize getting all the reps ahead of time and then when the time comes to push, push, as though your very life depended on it. As Karolyi said, “the body is a reluctant medium.” But it is a medium. At the gym, you must convince it to grow in no uncertain terms.  You know the next set is going to kill you, but you blank that out of your mind. You have carefully stretched, you have thoroughly warmed up with lighter weights on this movement, you know to never hitch your breath…… you can do this many reps, you will do this many reps, and you do them. Rest, wind up, execute. Say to yourself mentally that you have gotten the rest, you’ve eaten the nourishment, you’ve paid the gym dues, you came here today, all this stuff!!!To Get One more rep minimum compared to last workout, in this movement in this set. Start bringing a log and writing down every rep. So you can refer to this.

One resource that’s priceless is the shear quality and quantity of videos about all this on youtube. STUDY what the expert information is out there. Beware that not all are experts, you should take what I’m saying here with a grain or bag of salt. Ask men[a guy’s shredded, ask how. A guy’s got freaky calves, ask how.]at the gym specific questions respectfully and 10 out of 10 will be more than happy to help you, after the set, and sometimes after that particular bodypart. If YOU write down the points. or even listen earnestly.

When shopping for food, “is this exactly what should be bought considering all the effing pain you put yourself through at the gym?”

DO limit the volume of your workout. IT’s been said that overtraining is the scourge,  it’s true. Don’t add and add exercises. And don’t swap around exercises too often.

Ironically, think of specific exercises the way gold diggers think o’ men,  use the eff out of them for all the gains you can extract and then dump them once you’ve got a better one lined up as the replacement.

At gym…focus on your workout.  At grocers focus on the right food.  At career, focus on career. At times between, focus on relaxing and enjoying life.

 

 

"It seems like there's times a body gets struck down so low, there ain't a power on earth that can ever bring him up again. Seems like something inside dies so he don't even want to get up again. But he does."

[BDParticipant 1146]

Just start by doing anything brother, running, roller blading, soccer, hockey, hiking, gym do it all. Stretch it out. Start light and slow, listen to your body.

Study what you want, different workouts give different results, bulky, cut, strength, endurance, do you want to train towards something specific?

Have you made a goal? Have you identified your weaknesses so that you can fix them? Do you have any injuries to consider? Are you mentally ready?

Bodybuilding.com’s MFT28 made a definite change in my life, it is free, and it is quite advanced. I modified it a bit, skipping the high rep night routines in favour of more cardio and cutting wood.

I failed many many times before I succeeded, it was hard, punishing. Failure is the path to success. Best of luck in your physical goals brother.

http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/greg-plitts-mft28-day-28-trust-yourself.html

 

 

Because in order to be able to think, you have to risk being offensive.

[HitmanParticipant]

fast, enjoy huger,eat sparingly,seek quiet..listen within..get in touch with yourself..inner knowledge w ill pour forth..

[QcummerParticipant 652]

“Eat to Live”

“Eat for Health”

Leafy Greens…like Popeye!

Greens, Veggies, Fruit, Beans, Oats, Seeds, Nuts, Mushrooms, Salmon and Chicken…ya know…actual FOOD.

As for working out. Just do what you enjoy the most…shoot hoops, ride bike, martial arts, digging ditches, etc..

[JasonParticipant 282]

It all depends on the specifics of your goals. You say you want to train for strength and health, with aesthetics as a secondary thing. All well and good, but what kind of “strength” do you want? What sort of overall body build and physical capability do you want? Someone with lots of upper body muscle will naturally not have the ability to run as fast nor for as long as someone who focuses on lower body muscle, and so on; (successful) long-distance runners tend toward the skinny end of the spectrum for a reason. The whole “training yourself to the limits of human ability” in all areas, “Batman-style”, defies the laws of physics (and very candidly shows that most comic book writers haven’t the foggiest idea about even the most basic concepts of physics, biology and fighting, but I digress…).

As a general rule, work toward doing the things you want to have the ability to do; the body adapts to what it does. If you want to do long-distance running, don’t focus on your pecs.

Personally, I practice martial arts and have done so since a very young age, and I want – and have ended up with – the body to match. More specifically, I practice martial arts that focus on speed, technique (including joint locks and manipulating the opponent’s body) and striking power, and as a result I have a much leaner physique than, say, someone who focuses on wrestling. Put differently, I have comparatively small muscles, but each individual muscle cell has a much larger number of mitochondria than someone who trains only using weights, or someone who doesn’t train at all (in other words, I have considerably more strength than my appearance suggests, particularly as it pertains to explosive power).

As for general exercise tips… If you want to burn fat and also make sure you can actually follow-through with your training, I recommend “micro-sessions” (some of you here have probably heard of or used the same concept but perhaps with different terminology) of anywhere between a couple minutes and up to about 10 minutes; roughly 3-5 minutes seem to work the best. Basically, you do some form of exercise that gets your heart rate up (I do high-speed martial arts forms for this), but you do it only for a brief amount of time. This allows you to get in exercise between other tasks (simply standing up from your desk and doing brisk exercises for a couple minutes shouldn’t affect your work schedule all that much), increases metabolism as all such exercises do, and – if done whenever the mood strikes (though obviously as often as possible) rather than in regularly set intervals, pushes the body into “active” mode, raising the overall metabolism over time and not just in and around the micro-sessions. Physiologically speaking, because the body doesn’t “know” when it will exercise, but finds itself with reason to believe it will exercise, it keeps itself “active” by raising its overall metabolism, meaning that you’ll not only find yourself more mentally and physically alert, but you will also burn more fat in-between training sessions. Win-win.

If you want to burn fat as quickly as possible, you should combine such micro-sessions with longer sessions with lots of muscle-building, primarily using free weights; bigger (read: heavier) muscles consume more energy (and thus fat) than smaller muscles, even when performing the exact same movement (hence why long-distance runners focus on keeping muscle weight down in order to increase their overall endurance) or just sitting still; you could liken this to how a bigger, heavier car requires more gas to run than a smaller, lighter one, even when traversing the exact same distance. Remember to start out with light weights, though, and gradually increase them as your body adapts; under no circumstances should you start out with heavy weights! If you do, you’ll most likely end up damaging your muscles and ligaments and in extreme cases cause joint and bone damage!

There lies serenity in Chaos. Seek ye the eye of the hurricane.

[OldscoundrellParticipant 412]

Personally, I grew up weight training. Started around the age of 12. Knew that it was going to be a life long ambition, then the marriage happened and boom. Went years without doing anything but limited bursts of cardio(boom) and work. There is a strange thing that happens when you restart from a long time of nothing. Your mind says, yeah I can still do this..but your body says “f~~~ you” in the form of intense pain in your muscles and joints. Your boxy is weaker than the mind. And it creates the famous wall.

To get around it and the lack of desire to lift, I opted for strenuous activity that also achieved productivity. Like raking my 3 acres w/ trees with a 7′ metal rake made out of a galvanized fence post, and other various cheesy karate kid esk productive methods. It was slower results but a much more enjoyable ride to say the least. Before too long, lifting was enjoyable  again and finally got that good sore feeling back.

Doing something is always better than nothing. Might as well be 2 birds with one stone.

[SonicParticipant 43]

Hi sterile squid, I would recommend riptoes starting strength or strong lifts 5×5. I know you already mentioned riptoes, see if you prefer strong lifts instead? both are fairly similar as they combine several compound exercises, the only difference is the number of sets done.

As king of the sea said make sure your form is good to prevent injuries, there are lots of YouTube videos showing you how to execute each move properly, and when you are starting out don’t worry about how much others are lifting it’s important to get your form right first rather than letting your ego control how much you lift.

 

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