New to all this stuff

[D4rkHyli4n]

Hello everyone

So I'm pretty much new to all this stuff and would need some advices

I started training 3 months ago, after a LOOOONG sedentary life. No sport, all day long on the computer, and getting fatter and fatter. Decided to finally change this. So let me summarize my situation:

I started training intensively, going from doing nothing at all to training... well... quite a lot. So 6 days a week, I started going to the gym, first starting with a cardio session of 20 mins the first day to 1 hour the last day of my first week until my knees stopped cooperating, along with this I started lifting weight (Split routine), the whole session lasting about 2 hours. A week later, I learned about HIITs after being told an hour of jogging wasn't the best idea in my condition. So I started doing HIIT 6 days a week... then learned it was too much, so I dropped it to once every 2 day, and doing medium intensity intervals the other days. All was fine for the first month, then since I was on a low budget I couldn't afford a 5 month package at the gym and a single month is a ripoff so I stopped going for a month. During that first month, my weight dropped from 269 to 252.

A month later (About 3 weeks ago), I restarted going to the gym, and I restarted with the same intensity. 30 Mins HIIT on an elliptical, about 1h30 of weight lifting on a split routine, 6 days a week. A week later, after meeting a coach at my gym and explain I wanted to mainly lose fat and then gain some muscle, he suggested a Full-Body Routine on 4 days on a Push/Pull/Push/Pull rotation, and said I could manage to keep it on a 6 days training. So I started doing so, until now.

So 3 weeks later (Today), I only managed to lose about 5 pounds. I also learned it's totally normal that I lost so much the first month since my body wasn't adapted for such an intensive training. Now, guess what, I'm exhausted from overtraining.

So that bring me to a few questions, I looked around on the web to find answers but it seem nobody agree on anything about the way to train and all this stuff with a fat loss mentality.

Sooooo I'm really confused...

Ok before my questions, a few general informations that might help you to answer:
1- I used Fat Burners and Carnitine during the first month, but since they didn't do much during my second month of training, I guess I'll stop that.
2- I don't use any other gym products, and don't intend to (No proteins, no pre-workout, no creatine, no anything finally)
3- My nutrition isn't great, so I guess I do lack proteins intake. However, I've been lowering my calories since a week to help in my weight loss, which might probably affect my recovery.
4- I don't want a specific diet, I love food too much, the best I could do is what I'm doing, which is reducing calories/sugar/carbs.

So there is what I want some informations about:

1- I guess I'm overtraining but I didn't feel it before, but it seem it's totally normal since my body got used to training so now my recovery rate is getting slower. Is it just normal or the fact that I started a full routine instead of my split is problematic? Should I just start again the previous routine?

2- I heard too much isn't much better, should I go to the gym a little less frequently?

3- I just started doing my HIIT sessions after my lifting instead of before, heard it was better for weight loss and it's better to retain my muscles, should I keep it that way or is it better to do it before?

4- I also heard it's not ideal to do such a training while I'm lowering my calories consumption. Read something about raising it back to normal from times to times to recover quicker, should I do so?

Any other advices are welcome! Just keep in mind that my main concern for now is losing fat and then I'll check to build up muscles, since I heard doing both at the same time is pretty hard

Thank you very much for your time!

[STC1188]

1. Probably not. I would stick with the full body. I would work to get diet in check first before trying to burn more. That will also help with your recovery or lackthereof.

2. Too much can be bad. However, I think you need to get everything in line first before making that assessment. Too easy to say something is difficult and stop doing it with an excuse.

3. For freshness of lifting (and maintaining form, preventing injury, and performing maximally), I would save all cardio/HIIT/MIT sessions for after weights. I wouldn't worry about catabolism; recovery seems to be more paramount in your case.

4. Again, get diet and training in order first, then experiment with refeeds. At your size and weight, you do not need refeeds.

A lot of this stuff is mental, so you may want to look at ways to relax, unwind and recover when outside of the gym. Or you could cut out some gym cardio and take walks through a park or other relaxing area. Get a massage or take a bath: whatever de-stresses you.

[Megajord]

I think for weight loss you should really focus on the dieting side of things. Really, it's nearly ALL diet. Read the stickies here and get a good idea of what is required.

If you eat at a calorie deficit, you could sit at home all day watching sitcom reruns and lose 2 pounds a week.

Alternatively, you could go super hard in the gym for 3 hours a day, 6 days a week but not watch your diet and lose nothing or gain weight.

As before, check out the stickies and you'll be set. Sounds like you have the drive to do it now just gotta play it smart and make the right choices.

[D4rkHyli4n]

Ok so thanks for the advices, I don't have the possibility to do a strict diet with my lifestyle, however I started counting calories with myfitnesspal. That app cap however is a weight loss of 2 pounds/week, since I try to lose about 3/week I try to keep a 500 calories left as much as possible, meaning I eat about 1500 calories daily, but that's just a rough estimate. I tried some calculators and I have absolutely no idea of my calories intake requirement, particullary how to add the burned calories by the exercises.

Tried with some different links in the pinned posts to find a good calculation, the best I could find is freedieting.com, which give me, according to my weight, height, age and exercise habits (5 days per week, while I go 6 and pretty intensively (Well I think)) a total of 2500 calories maintenance, which would mean a 1900 calories/day diet is a heavy fat loss, so I'm already far under that number...

Tried some other websites from the links but I'm totally clueless, so I hope someone might help me with this :S

I'm pretty sedentary, outside of the Gym I'm not doing any sport yet, but at the Gym I give all I have. My program include about 1h to 1h15 of fullbody lifting with a 30 sec regain between each set (3 sets of 15 most of the time), followed by 30 mins of elliptical (Medium intensity 1 day on 2, the next day HIIT session of 30 minutes (5 Mins Warm-Up /// 20 Mins of 20 sec running/40 cooldown HIIT /// 20 mins Cooldown) , and add 30 mins total of quick pace walking to go at and back from the gym. The elliptical tell me I spend 400 calories after 30 mins, myfitnesspal calculator give me 500 (Not too sure which one to follow, since the ones I'm using have no handle bars, it might play in the calculation I guess) and since I do HIITs I'm not sure if I should boost that number or anything...

So anyone could give me a rough estimate please? It's not like I didn't try, I just can't put the finger on the right answer :P

Because right now with my 1500 calories, if I start with an average of 2500 requirement and I add the approximate calorie loss of 500 I have in mind, I would be 1k5 cal under my requirement which would mean -3 pounds/week (Which I've been told is pretty much the acceptable limit)

So any help is greatly appreciated Tnx!