TL Fitness Initiative (Weight Loss/Gain) - Page 52

If you have no experience and not quite sure what to do, what I would initially recommend is walking. Perhaps for the first week go for a walk after work, get home, get changed into some comfortable clothes and go for an hour long walk while listening to music or an audio book, do it at a brisk pace, perhaps adding short bursts 1-2 minutes of power walking in the routine. This will help your heart and lungs initially, specially when it comes to constant changes in intensity. The following week you will want to increase your intensity. If you have access to a bike, start biking for 30-40 minutes a day, try and be pedalling the entire duration, even if you are rolling down hill, shift up the gears and start pushing.

If you don't have access to a bike change your brisk walk to a power walk and change your short bursts of power walking into short bursts of jogging.

If you're already somewhat fit, I would just up the intensity of those exercises. Jog with short bursts of running 20-60 seconds every few minutes, whatever you are comfortable with. If you're cycling go for short sprints, 20-60 seconds at 80-90% intensity. Whatever you decide to do, make sure you go for a minimum of 20 minutes before stopping and lowering your heart rate to its resting pace.

That's basically how my initial cardio routine started, although I was grossly overweight so some of the above might already be too easy for you. But it helped me go from getting tired and worked up after a 60 min walk to consistently jogging/running 3-6 miles everyday and I can pretty much pedal up a vertical hill in the highest gear on my bike now, whilst when I started I would switch to negative resistance on a flat surface.

As for weight training , it is very very important in your fitness goals, it boosts your metabolism, it helps burn more fat and it will make you look a lot more defined. Although you don't have to go to the gym straight away and load up 300lb on the bench press. If you're a total beginner I can suggest a couple of things. The best thing you could do is get a personal trainer and be absolutely honest with them about your ability and goals. You'd really only need 5-10 sessions with one along side doing your own research until you'll know enough to be able to work out on your own.

The other thing you can do, which is the way I started is start with bodyweight exercises.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodyweight_exercise

I started with things like push-ups and dips, leading into pull/chin-ups. It was really all a great starting point before I hit the weights at the gym or started doing free weights at home. I also believe it gauges your ability. When I first started I would have been way too embarrassed hitting the gym when I couldn't even do 3 push-ups, god forbid having to do a pull-up. Its different if you have a personal trainer though because they understand these things.

Regarding your diet, I honestly believe it is very difficult for someone to give you personalised advice. Because what works for one person may not work for another. Its the reason why there are a million different diets available. The best thing you can do is your own research. I spent the entire duration of my fitness journey researching nutrition, even to this day I will read up on everything.

What I will suggest with your diet is to not make drastic immediate changes, I would even go as far as saying keep eating what you are eating now, but in smaller portions.

Use a weight loss calculator online. Here is one I quickly googled. http://www.freedieting.com/tools/calorie_calculator.htm

Find out how many calories you should be consuming to lose weight and then workout how much you are currently consuming and adjust accordingly. In regards to changing your diet, start with 1-2 things at a time, if you're consuming a lot of soft drinks, slowly start reducing your consumption. Go from 2 soft drinks a day to 1, then to 0. If you like your junk food and are for example eating out 4-5 times a week, cutting it down to 2-3 and eventually 0-1.

If you don't get enough fruit and vegetables in your diet, start by adding a piece of fruit to your breakfast, or a serving or vegetables to your lunch/dinner.

Do you see the pattern? Eventually you will get to a point where you will learn enough about nutrition and have made enough small changes for all these things to make sense to you. At that point you can start worrying about how much protein you are consuming, how many grams of healthy fat you have consumed as opposed to saturated/trans fats. Carb intake etc, but I promise you when you get to that point, your natural consumption will already be healthy and balanced enough for none of that to matter.

Finally I know I have said this time and time again and it probably sounds corny by now. Motivation is king, you will need to stay motivated, you will need to enjoy what you are doing, if jogging/biking seems like a chore, mix it up, do something you enjoy. Join a sports team or go swimming, go rock climbing etc.. Just stay active and motivated and always set a reachable goal, if your final goal is to gain 50lb of lean muscle, make your starting goal 5lb of muscle within a 1-2 months. If you can see your goal, if you can reach for it, it will become achievable.

And the other thing, education will open your eyes. I realised how terrible my diet over the years had been, based heavily on a lack of eduction regarding the types of foods I was consuming, I didn't realise that a bottle of orange juice and a bottle of coke were equally bad. I would think that just because my hamburger had salad in it, it was actually healthy, that was seriously my mindset on food.

I didn't know anything about good fats and bad fats. Good carbs and bad carbs. Today I honestly can't even remember the last time I had a can of soda or white bread. I don't even like the taste of tea or coffee these days if it has sugar in it, while if you saw me a couple of years ago you wouldn't believe that I would be having 3-4 spoon fulls of sugar in my tea or be feeling thirsty and having a can of cola when a glass of water would have done.

On an ending note:
I apologise if my advice sounds patronising, but reading through some of the posts above, I know they would have all scared me( As it all sounds really difficult) or confused me if I had read them a couple of years ago.