I am 23 year old, 99 kg and 176 in height. I am a newbie to fitness. I started hitting the gym today. What I want is to reduce a bit of weight (with cardio), but mainly I want to shape my arm muscles and chest. Not excessively, just want to make them noticeable. Since I am a student before last year at university, I plan on devoting my whole summer to the gym (4-5 months total). In that period, I plan on going Monday, Wednesday and Friday and do weight-lifting, followed by cardio, while entirely doing cardio only during Tuesday, Thursday and the weekends. I also plan on reducing the junk food and increase my protein intake. However, I registered at a health forum and the pro bodybuilders there told me that I won't achieve anything without going into intense workout programs and regimes. This is why I decided to ask the more.. casual people here, who hit the gym, but are not pros. Do you think I can reduce my weight with couple of kilos and barely shape my upper body in 4 months? As I said, I don't want to look ripped, I just want to tone down the weight a bit and make my muscules more shaped and visible. Is that achievable by not following strict regimes, but simply go and train the parts I want to train with a limited amount of exercise? Thank you and appreciated!
What pro bodybuilders consider an achievement is going to be different than what an average joe considers an achievement Diet will play a big role in the weight loss and so will walking a couple miles a day besides your cardio workouts Heavy weight/low repetition will build bulk while low weight/high repetition will give definition I would suggest low weight/high repetition for your weight-lifting since you're trying to reduce bulk and gain a defined shape.
Regardless of how much you work out, you can not out train a bad diet. If you want to drop weight, get your nutrition plan in check first. Get a food scale, weigh everything, make better choices with food, and log everything you eat. There are many apps available that help with this. I use my fitness pal and it has helped me. Also if you are just looking at a short term of exercise, you are setting yourself up for failure. To achieve lasting results, you need to make this a life style change and stick with it. You did not put the weight on overnight, nor will it come off overnight. Look at it as nutrition and fitness, not diet and exercise. Best of luck.
Yeah, if you want your muscles to be visible, it is hard with a layer of fat covering them and the fastest way around that is to diet properly. I have one of my best buddies who is a body builder type and he can literally eat like crap and lose his abs and then eat clean and get them right back over a week. This tells me that diet is a bit more important than the exercise regimen since you can have an awesoem physique and then just mask it all under some insulation. You'd be better served to educate yourself on nutrition and then spend the time executing that. I think @PanChango hit it out of the park with . Get this mindset and then enact methods to live by it. I'm trying to reverse damage at 40 where you can prevent it all together at 23. Good luck to you and let us know how it goes.
Okay my two cents. I'm 62, 5ft 7in tall. In April of 2016 I weighed close to 200 lbs. The job I was working had some screwed up 2nd shift(1700-0100) hours plus there was some 3rd shift(0100-0900) PLUS 12 hr tours on the weekends. When I got bored at work I ate junk food. Ate junk food outside of work. Slept like crap. In short I was a hot mess. One day I fell asleep on post at about 0730. Got caught by the HR guy. Boom, I was gone. I told you that story to tell you this one. I stopped eating junk food(I haven't seen the inside of a Mickey D's or Burger King in a year), I don't eat anything after 1900 hrs, between work and home I walk & bike( we've got these cool 3 wheelers to get around the warehouse) about 5 miles a day(running is out of the question cause of two bad ankles) and I limit my alcohol intake. I try and do between 30 and 70 push-ups a day. I'm down to 173 lbs, went from size 36 back down to 34. I get at least 7 hours sleep a night. I'm working 0800-1600 with weekends off. Not saying this is for you, but if you apply some discipline to your life, you'll lose the weight and get stronger. There's some guys around here that could probably help with the weight training. Good luck and welcome to the Den.
Thank you for the replies! The pro guys at the other site told me that i should either focus on losing weight or gaining muscle. They told me that in the former case I will become skinny and lose the muscle and in the latter - i will gain muscle and become fat. While my priority is to lose weight first, then gain muscle, I will focus on dieting and cardio, but I still want to weight lift at the gym. They told me this is ok in order to maintain my existing muscle. However, won't that take me to point 0 where I neither lose or gain muscle? Since I will be losing the weight and some of the muscle with it, won't it be a waste of time to weight-lift?
It basically boils down to caloric intake vs calories burned unless you have some metabolic problem. If you eat as many as you burn, either through just existing (this is called your Basal Metabolic Rate) or working them off, you will reach stasis. If you eat more than you can burn, you will gain weight, could be muscle or fat<--this is where the exercise part comes in. If you eat less than burn you will lose weight, again, this is where the exercise comes in, you can lose fat and muscle. If you can find a season of The Biggest Loser, watch it. It's not only inspiring as hell, it shows the link between the nutrition and fitness. Really large people who live mainly sedentary lives lose massive amounts of weight in relatively short periods of time simply by moving and eating right. They eat enough to keep from dieing and move more than they ever had. I enjoy eating. I reward myself with it. I do it when I'm sad. I do it when I'm happy. Breaking the connection between food as fuel and food as an emotional crutch is a biggie; I still haven't aced this. It is good that you are asking questions but you may find your time better spent researching and educating yourself on nutrition and fitness than trying to find a diet and workout. The "why" is almost always more important than the "how".
You _can_ lose weight and gain muscle tone. Anyone that says you can only do one or another is nuts. The point is to moderate your diet, and up your calorie burn level (exercise). If you want smooth muscle, find a swimming pool, and if nothing else, water walk. The resistance of the water is smooth and steady, and will stress the muscles to grow (you want this) without the jerks and slams of using weights or other machines. Bicycles are good for the legs, because it's a smooth movement. Walking/jogging can be harder on the knees - especially jogging. So, if you decide you just want to lose some weight, get some weights for your legs and wrists, and just wear them all the time. That will increase calorie burn without having to change food habits. As for diet - you can lose weight with crappy food. You just have to eat less of it. Get a normal sized meal, and throw a quarter of it away. Eventually, you'll just stop getting that extra quarter. I'm overweight, but for 20 years, far too many of my meals have been fast food - and I'm still only about 30 lbs overweight. It sounds like a lot, but when up to _three meals a day_ can be fast food, and I've kept myself there, I think I've done pretty well.
A person new to fitness will get results with just about any fitness program in the beginning. This will not last though. As you get in better shape, your fitness program will have to evolve to keep progress moving forward. I often tell people that just start out "it's not important HOW you workout, it's important THAT you workout". I recommend you get into the gym and give it 100%. You will learn a lot about training and nutrition by observing and by reading. Personally, I would not ask too many people what they think. Not because I don't value other peoples opinions, but because they more opinions you get on the "right way" to workout the more overwhelmed you will get. Like blades, opinion vary widely on the proper way to workout and eat. If there is one piece of literature I would recommend to you, it would be Max OT. I started on Max OT after about 1 year of training and it really dialed me in almost 18 years ago. I still use many of the Max OT principals in my own routines to this day. Good luck and enjoy the learning process !!! https://ast-ss.com/max-ot/introduction/
Anything involving 'supplements', I immediately find suspect, unless you're into sheer bulk muscle. (That's my opinion. I realize it's a huge market, and I realize there are people that need/want them. I just don't see them as being beneficial if you're simply trying to streamline, or tone up) I will say that you've said that it was after a year of training, so you obviously had a specific goal you were going towards, and it was a tool you used after a year of figuring out what you were doing. Me? My suggestions tend to be limited to 'reduce calories, change your diet, and low impact workouts'. If I had a pool nearby that I could use on my erratic schedule, I can guarantee I'd be in it at least three hours a week.
I posted the article for the training advice and structure, not for the supplement protocol. A great training program is detailed and eliminates all the guess work for the trainee. To be honest I forgot all about the supplement aspect of Max OT. Looking back now I followed the supplement protocol somewhat meticulously and received great results. As for the "supplements" argument, I find them very useful. Yes the supplement industry is unregulated in the US so homework needs to be done. But there are a lot of high quality supplement companies out there and products that can help you achieve all types of results !!!
I mentioned it because when I clicked on the link, the first thing I was presented with was a HUGE bottle of supplement. I did say that there is a purpose for them; just not for someone who is JUST trying to tone/diet.
