Bodybuilding Forums

Hey all, I first want to take a second to thank everyone in advance for reading my story and offering any advice. I am a 30 year old single father who has never really worked out on a consistant basis. I have spent most of my life living in fear of the beach and waterparks, and suffering from a low self esteem. Now that I have a child I have made the mental decision to get into as best shape as I can, both to allow me to do the great father/son activites out there, but also to ensure that I am here for him for a very long time. I am really confused on where to start. I have a gym membership, but seem to wander around aimlessly. Its not like there was a lifting class in high school that taught you how to transform you body. Im not sure how but I recently stumbled across musclehack and was immediatley intrigued. I have spent almost two days off and all reading as much information as possible. Everything seems to be right on which brings me to my question, where do I start? Some info seems to be geared for those who are already in moderately good shape and want to go to the next level, and some info seems quite advanced.

I am 6'1 and weigh 240 currently. I am trying to get down to a very solid 175-185. Do I start by loosing fat with cardio and diet and then start lifting, or do I utilize my size and lift now and worry about the fat later? If anyone has any advice it would be greatly appreciated!

averagejoe wrote:Hey all, I first want to take a second to thank everyone in advance for reading my story and offering any advice. I am a 30 year old single father who has never really worked out on a consistant basis. I have spent most of my life living in fear of the beach and waterparks, and suffering from a low self esteem. Now that I have a child I have made the mental decision to get into as best shape as I can, both to allow me to do the great father/son activites out there, but also to ensure that I am here for him for a very long time. I am really confused on where to start. I have a gym membership, but seem to wander around aimlessly. Its not like there was a lifting class in high school that taught you how to transform you body. Im not sure how but I recently stumbled across musclehack and was immediatley intrigued. I have spent almost two days off and all reading as much information as possible. Everything seems to be right on which brings me to my question, where do I start? Some info seems to be geared for those who are already in moderately good shape and want to go to the next level, and some info seems quite advanced.

I am 6'1 and weigh 240 currently. I am trying to get down to a very solid 175-185. Do I start by loosing fat with cardio and diet and then start lifting, or do I utilize my size and lift now and worry about the fat later? If anyone has any advice it would be greatly appreciated!

This will not be pretty, and I am not nice - but a BMI of 31.7 is neither pretty nor nice, either, so that's that. Here goes.

First, I'm going to go ahead and assume that your weight is in fact largely fat and not muscle. As you progress towards your goals, your body fat percentage will matter a hell of a lot more than it does today, but for our purposes with you as a beginner, the ol' BMI pretty much says it all. You're fat, and the weight must come off.

The THT programs are not designed with the beginner in mind. These are intermediate to advanced routines, and you should take advantage of them once you're ready - probably on the scale of six to twelve months after you start routine exercise. If my assumptions about your current fitness levels are correct, jumping headlong into a program like THT could cause serious injury. Additionally, for where you are versus where you want to be, THT is not the brightest of ideas. TSPA might work for you (see the website for more info), but I'm not familiar enough with that program to make a definitive recommendation, so I'm going to stick with what I know.

Where you begin is the weight must come off. Not all "size" is created equal. You cannot utilize your "size" if it's based on a high percentage of body fat. Fat is not metabolically active, it does not contribute to strength, and it must go. Personally, there was a once upon a time that I was over 250 pounds, and I'm 5'8". There's been 2 points in my life like that, actually. So I've got a fair amount of insight on where to start and how to make this work

First off, quit wandering around your gym, and wander around your kitchen. I'd like you to take a moment to open your cabinets, and look at what's in them. Read a few labels. Take a good hard look at the amount of sugar in your diet, the amount of processed food, the convenience foods you eat because they're cheap and easy, the snacks you don't really need, the beverages that are just straight sugar water and are empty calories. This is the nutritional strategy that made you weigh 240 pounds. If you want the 240 pounds to go, all of this must go. It is simply not possible to exercise away a lousy diet, you have to fundamentally change your approach to nutrition. It's important to understand we're not talking about "going on a diet". We're talking about your lifestyle is wrecking your health, and you must permanently change it. Our parents taught us a lot of bad habits. You probably grew up like I did that a meal means meat, vegetable, and a starch. You probably feel the need to clean your plate at meal time. I'm betting you have no idea what a correct portion of, say, beef, looks like, or how much potatoes is too much potatoes, or that corn and potatoes is starch and starch. I don't mean to be insulting, but these are the traditional habits and thoughts of the average American that have lead us to have the highest incidence of morbid obesity in the world. And all of this must go.

Throw away all of your processed food. If you feel bad about throwing away food, donate it to a soup kitchen, but get it out of the house. Then go through the canned goods, and start reading labels. Not all canned goods are created equal - some soups, for example, are loaded with fiber and nutrients, and some are nothing more than sugar and artificial flavorings. What you're looking for are high fiber contents and low sugar contents. If you feel the canned product in your hand meets that definition it can stay. If it does not, it must go. Also on your "must chuck" list - chips of any kind, baked treats, white bread, refined sugars, sugary cereals, low-fiber cereals, full-flavor soda, booze, beer, and margarine (which you will replace with butter used in moderation). You're going to want the bulk of your nutrition to come from simple, whole-food sources. Think one and two word ingredients, and think simple. Learn to love things like marinated chicken breast - just regular boneless skinless chicken breasts, left in your choice of salad dressing overnight, and then grilled till done. Lean beef is in fact great for you - but not in giant portions. For where you are (and this will change radically when you get your weight down and are ready to add back weight in the form of muscle), six to eight ounces of lean red meat is more then generous. Pork is always a good choice, as it's one of the leanest sources of protein available. And if fish isn't part of your diet, make it so - just season with lemon and pepper and not tartar sauce and beer batter. Fibrous veggies are very much your friends as well. Spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, green beans, brussels sprouts, lettuce - these are all things you can go 100% nuts with. Take a great big bowl, fill it full of mixed greens, throw on some chicken and one 2-tablespoon serving of your choice of dressing for lunch. If you absolutely must eat out, research before you go, and don't hesitate to use the wait staff as a resource. If it's Burger King, ask them to hold the bun. McDonald's? Get the BLT salad, and use half the packet of dressing. Taco Bell? Two words: Fresco style. All these places have nutritional information available on their websites, use it.

Of course, it's not enough to simply change what you eat. You need to monitor how much. Avoid consuming much more than 600 calories in a single sitting. Avoid consuming under 1500 calories, or over 2200. DO NOT CHEAT. Everything, no matter how small, contributes to your caloric intake. I recommend tracking your consumption. Android and iPhone both have apps available to help you do this (i.e. FatSecret.com's Calorie Counter). Don't trust your eyes, either. Start measuring your food. A digital kitchen scale will cost you maybe $20, but the more you know, the better your level of control, and the better your ultimate results. A typical day at this point should look something like...

Breakfast - Fiber One cereal and unsweetened soy milk
Lunch - Salad w/chicken and dressing
Dinner - Salmon and steamed veggies with butter

Notice the lack of starches. Net carbs are THE ENEMY. This will remain the case forever. To figure net carbs, when you look at a nutritional panel, take the total carbohydrates, subtract the fiber, and the rest are the carbs your body will be converting into fat. Too much carbs cause an insulin spike, and that negates everything you've done to lose weight. Fiber, on the other hand, is going to be your friend. There's a reason I listed that Fiber One cereal for breakfast - you feel fuller longer with a belly full of fiber, which means you eat less. Fiber doesn't get digested, and in the gut helps carry away excess fat and waste. And pound water - your body will need it to eliminate the fat you'll be burning off. Simply cutting your calories this way will result in significant weight loss.

But, just like not all size is created equal, neither is all weight loss. You want to lose the weight of the average ten year old - but you don't want to end up with the average ten year old's muscle mass in the process! Now, your body does not comprehend that it is overfat. Your body is designed to do one thing and one thing only - survive. Your bodily systems do not care how you look by the pool. It will not cooperate with you with diet alone, and it will catabolize muscle over fat, since muscle is metabolically active, thereby further reducing your metabolism and thwarting your efforts to get in shape. You prevent this through rigorous exercise.

You'll want to both lift and do cardio. You are, in effect, on a giant huge mega-cut, so the cardio is very much warranted. It does burn a ton of calories, it does help increase your metabolism. Lifting will subject your body to enough stress to trigger the mechanisms that maintain and build muscle mass - basically defeating your body's tendency to catabolize muscle over fat. You will want to exercise early, before breakfast - and there's a reason for that. You want your body to burn fat. Your body will not burn fat until the blood glucose is gone, and it cannot mobilize fat in the presence of insulin. First thing when you wake up, your blood glucose and insulin levels are as low as they're going to go, and you should leverage this. Do not eat anything, just go work out. Get your water, have a cup of coffee on the way there (and switch the sugar for splenda), and hop to it. I suggest (and have done in the past) three days a week of cardio and abs, and three days a week of strength training. Alternate them, and that one day of the week that's neither, feel free to kick back and be lazy - just don't be lazy about your food intake.

Now, cardio really is whatever you want it to be. Swim, bike, run, elliptical - doesn't matter. The key is it needs to be something you can do continuously for 30 - 45 minutes at the same pace that keeps your heart rate elevated. Don't worry about intervals, or programs, or "fat burn" or "cardio training" or any of the other silliness for now. Set the timer, press start, and run (or pedal, or swim, or whatever), and do not stop or slow down until you're done. When it starts getting easier to complete your time, press the level up button on your choice of machine. Be advised, exceeding 45 minutes is probably excessive at any point, and may simply over-fatigue your body. For your ab work on cardio days, if you're about to say "crunches", you're about to be correct. Do 3 sets of at least 10 flat on your back, and three sets on each side to hit your obliques. As that 10 becomes easier - increase it.

Strength training is a bit more of a complex endeavor. I can give you all kinds of crazy recommendations here, but really, I'm just going to take Mark's existing phenomenal work and modify it for your goals. Go here and download the logs. If you don't have MSOffice, go here and get OpenOffice, does the job just fine. Chop the decline sit-ups right completely off, ignore the "Consolidation" tab, and change everything from 1 set to 3. Yes, that makes for a long, arduous, grueling, OMG-I'm-gonna-hurl workout. Suck it up, buttercup. Just start light with the weights. You want enough that it's a struggle toward the end of each set, but at this point, not so much that you can't actually finish the set. When you can finish each set without it feeling like you're going to pull yourself apart, up the weight. Don't feel embarassed if you have to start with sets of 8 or 9 at very low weight - you have to start somewhere.

Do all of this for three months - and save up some money. If you can do this, I guarantee you'll be in desperate need of a new wardrobe.

Supplement wise, I'd like to let you in on a little secret - not much actually works. Conjugated Linoleic Acid (sometimes marketed under the brand name "Tonalin") is actually clinically proven to help aid the body in eliminating fat from the face and abdomen. Personally, I take these and swear by them. CLA is CLA, it's only actually manufactured by two companies on the face of the planet, and Puritan's Pride has always provided me high-quality and super cheap vitamins. If you're super hard up for some energy to get going, go ahead and help yourself to some caffeine - a cup of coffee or a NoDoz. There's emerging research that caffeine may actually end up being the god high king of all supplements, just don't go pounding lattes or taking a fist full of caffeine pills. If all else fails and you are truly truly desperate for some help killing your appetite and losing weight, BronkAid + low-dose Aspirin + NoDoz = ECA. Not more than 1 each, not more than 3 times a day, not less than 4 hours apart and not less than 6 hours before bed. If you choose to use this combination, start with just once a day for a week, then two for a week, then three if you think you can handle it based on results and effects to this point - and absolutely DO NOT continue using that stack for more than 10 consecutive weeks. I've personally been trying this. I'm three weeks into this cycle, but it seems to be helping with the last few stubborn pounds. Your mileage may vary, and I am only 3 weeks in, so I'm not going to recommend this per se, just point out that it's out there and appears to in fact not be 100% garbage like so much of the fat burner segment of supplements is.

So, to recap. Carbs bad, Fiber good, Protein good. Small meals good. Booze, sugar, processed food EEEEVVVIILLLL. Pay attention to what you eat at all times, the more control the better. GET UP OFF YOUR BUTT AND GO WORK OUT first thing in the morning. Repeat 6 days a week. for 12 weeks, then take a week of and evaluate - and then devise a new program for your exercise (like a 5-day split like THT), and go back at it again. And again and again. Until you get to where you want to be. Fat-be-gone pills do not exist.

Now go figure out what you need to do to adjust your lifestyle for daily exercise healthy eating, pick a date of when you are going to 100% commit yourself to being fat no more, and when that day comes, don't look back - just run.

Good luck, mate.

Thanks JoH. Lots of good stuff in here that I found helpful as well!

tht is definitely the best way to begin. one doing exercises there are some docs i could email you if you need that outline how to do many exercises. once you know how to do them and how much you should be lifting, then the rest should be easy peasy....pm if you need

r0cstar...did you realise this thread is over 6 months old ?