Looking for advice

[Mike23666]

I could use some opinions on what to do for my workout routine. I'm currently 5'8", 28 years old, and 195 lbs of mostly fat. I recently just healed from surgery and during that time I lost 15 lbs solely through counting my calories and eating 1600-1800 calories a day. Anyways I've gone to the gym 16 out of the last 18 days and I've seen very little progress so far. My friend (who rarely goes to the gym) says I'm not giving myself enough time to rest. I typically do something like arm curls, bench, shoulder press, back extensions, ab machine, crunches, and walk/run for 20-30 minutes. The following day I'd do calf extensions, leg press, hips, leg curls, ab machine, crunches, and walk/run for 20-30 minutes. I do these all the machines at about a medium weight and do 3 sets of 12 reps. By the 3rd set I'm near failure generally on every machine. Then the following day I continue with this cycle. Anyways I have another friend who says since I need to lose weight I should be doing very low weight and tons of reps, but I've been trying to put on muscle at the gym and shed the weight by counting my calories (I eat 2000-2200 calories a day). Am I doing this wrong? When I go to the gym I am generally minimally sore. Also if it matters I drink a protein shake every day and plan to start taking Animal Pak tomorrow. I also sleep 7-9 hours a day. Any insight someone could give me would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[Everse]

Doing tons of reps with low weight won't make you lose much fat. You should however try to keep your pulse high. One way of doing this is to keep the amount of time between sets as low as possible. So when you are done with your first set, go do all the other exercises for 1 set each. Then go back to the first one. And cycle this until you're done. You should stick to 10-12 reps per set. Before you start lifting, you should do some sort of cardio warmup, for a few minutes. So that your pulse is pretty high when you are about to start lifting.

Boxing is a great way to lose fat aswell. Try to mix up your workout.

[jaminoodlesoup]

First of all, congrats on the weight loss! You are off to a good start - you are in the gym, working out, and trying to make some good lifestyle changes.

Now, to get you to do it the right way!

Start a proven strength program. There are some good options listed in the stickies at the top of this forum. Basically, you want a progressive program that uses the basic compound lifts, and focuses on the 4-6 rep range. Once you get a solid strength base you can start worrying about bulking and cutting. I would recommend eating at maintainance calories, or maybe just under maintainance. As you build muscle you will need the calories and since you are a beginner you will probably drop some more fat anyway.

Doing high reps and light weight is a waste of time. You would be better off spending that time running on a treadmill, because neither will add muscle but at least the treadmill is more efficient cardio.

Make sure you are getting lots of protein in your diet. For your weight I would shoot for 190 grams of protein per day. That's a lot, so you will need to make sure you are getting a good amount of protein in every meal. Eat 30g when you wake up, at least 30g with every meal, 30g post-workout, and 30g before you go to bed and that will almost do it.

Finally, make sure you rest. That means at least 1, maybe 2 days off from the gym and 7-8 hours of sleep every night.

Follow this and you will see noticable results in about 3 months, guaranteed.