New guy just starting out here - give me your best advice...

[espoleta]

Hello everyone,

I have been reading this forum for a few days before I finally decided to join it and post my own stuff. So here I go. I am just starting out on this quest to transform my body into what I want it to be. Well, "just starting" isn't quite accurate. Let me give some back story. First of all I am 22 years old, 5'8" and 190 pounds. I have been working out for about two months now. Prior to that, the last time I really worked out seriously was when I was a sophomore in high school - nearly 8 years ago!!!

I was not always built like I am now. During my first two years of high school I was very serious about athletics. As a freshman, I wrestled. I was in the 145 weight class, about 5'6" tall and my weight was usually between 135 and 145 pounds. A good average was 140. I was in excellent physical conditioning. We had three-hour practices, every day, with a high degree of conditioning and "torture" type exercises, and we did weight training twice a week or so and on the weekends. (Everyone was starving themselves so nobody actually gained any real mass, but it was a workout nonetheless.) I weigh 190 pounds now so that should indicate how much I have let myself go!!!

I also played rugby my freshman year. My sophomore year, I quit wrestling and just played rugby. That meant that I inevitably gained a little weight, but I was eating better and lifting more and so I gained muscle too. I was probably in my best overall physical shape at this time. I weighed, let's say, between 150 and 155 pounds.

My next two years in high school I didn't play sports and I didn't work out. So I started to go downhill right there. Then when I hit college, boom, the downward spiral really began! That was when I discovered weed, and alcohol. You can imagine what happened next, in terms of my physical condition. With all the partying, drinking, and munchies, I had the worst diet in the world. The vast majority of my fellow high school ex-jock buddies went through the exact same thing during college. We totally let ourselves go!!! I wasn't even the worst of them. I had buddies who were ripped to shreds back in high school and now they're total porkers. I had a horrible diet, was constantly eating pizza, coke, candy, fast food. Looking back on it now, I'm disgusted just thinking about it.

Needless to say, over my 4 years of college, I really put on the pounds. Well, the pictures should speak for themselves. I should add that over the past 2 months (first time in the gym in nearly a decade!) I have made some pretty good progress. I have radically altered my diet over the past 2 or 3 months. NO more soda, candy, snacks, pizza, high carbs, or any of that ****. Just lean meat/fish protein and fruits+vegetables like apples and bananas. Also completely stopped smoking weed and cigarettes. And I have been doing 30 mins cardio and 1 hour of weights in the gym each day, 5 or 6 days a week, for the past 2 months. I have lost about 14 pounds and definitely FEEL better, so there's some good news right there. I don't have any pictures from 2 months ago before I started working out (it never occurred to me to take any) but if I look bad in my current pics you should see how I looked before. I definitely improved, no question. But I still have a long way to go.

As you can see from my pictures, during the college years in which I gained all that weight, I developed really horrible red stretch marks on my lower stomach. Is there any way of getting rid of these, or at least making them less obvious?

Here are my pictures (taken literally 10 minutes ago.)


Just for the sake of comparison, so you can see how much I let myself go, below is a picture from 2005 taken just after my freshman year of college - before I really started to go downhill. I obviously don't have my shirt off but you can clearly see how much weight I put on.


So here I am. 2 months into my working out, and I am pretty optimistic. If you could see what I looked like BEFORE I started, you'd know what I mean. My diet has paid off, although it takes more time to figure out what to eat and I am not very motivated when it comes to cooking or shopping for food. My workouts have paid off as I have definitely increased my strength if not my muscle definition. I'm trying to figure out where to go from here.

As it is now, I am going to the gym (YMCA) 5 times a week at least. Monday/W/F I do biceps, triceps, (curls/rows) abs, and Tues/Thurs I do bench presses, flat/incline, and do shoulders (military presses.) I do biceps curls of 50-60 lbs on a curved barbell and 25/30 dumbbells. I do bench presses of between 60 and 90 lbs on an olympic barbell. (I know, that's so lame...I used to bench 200 in high school...but I am just getting back into it so I am trying to start small and ease into higher weight.) I try to do at least 11 sets of 11 reps (11 is my lucky number) And I do at least 30 mins of cardio (stationary bike or stair machine) each day. I realize this is a very basic workout but again, I am just getting into it.

So...where to go from here. The past 2 months I've lost 14 lbs so if it keeps going at that rate, I would say that is pretty good. What can I do to improve my workout? More cardio? Should I do fewer reps of heavier weights?

One thing you may have noticed is that my workout doesn't include squats...because I don't know how to do them. I plan to begin doing them once I can get someone to show me the proper way to do it. I never did them in high school so I never learned.

There are some huge flaws in my program right now. One is that my diet (while very healthy) is not consistent through-out the day. I generally do not feel very hungry until 5 or 6 in the afternoon, at which point I eat dinner, and then have a few smaller meals every few hours until I go to sleep. From reading here I take it I should be eating through-out the day instead of only at the end of the day. Also I have horrible sleeping habits that are very inconsistent. Some nights I will only get 4 hours of sleep (though I will take a long nap that afternoon.) I wish I could sleep earlier and get up earlier but I always take naps during the day, so I wind up staying up (like right now...it's 5:37 AM!) The third issue is that I have been taking ***** extended-release over the past year and a half. I was prescribed it by my doctor after I had some inexplicable panic attacks and I have been on it ever since. For about a year and 3 months, I took 2 MG every night, then for the last 3 months I went down to 1.5 MG. The reason I think this is a problem is because I am fairly certain that this drug lowers the metabolism significantly since it is a tranquilizer. So it is my intention to get off it completely within the next few months.

So...thank you in advance for any and all advice. I hope to keep updating this thread as my progress improves. The other threads here have been a great inspiration to me to build my body and lose fat. It is a great quest and I feel a new sense of purpose in life.

I am sorry about how long this post is. I just feel like I needed to say everything clearly.

Hope to hear back from you guys soon. Cheers.

[espoleta]

One other thing I figured I should ask...I usually work out in the evening, between 8 and 10 PM. Should I also be working out in the morning, or earlier in the evening? I have heard that it helps the metabolism to work out in the morning.

[espoleta]

I know it's considered bad form online to "bump" your posts...nevertheless I'll bump this one once, in case anyone has any advice to contribute. If not, it's cool.

[photooco]

hey man congrats on the progess, looks liek you have a good muscular base to start, keep it up

one thing i noticed; are you doing 11 sets of each exercise? that seems like it might be excessive.

[espoleta]

From what I have been reading here, it sounds like the number of reps is overkill...but I don't really feel satisfied unless I do that many. I don't feel the "pump" otherwise.

Should I be doing fewer reps of more weights?

As you can see from my pictures my big issue that I want to focus on is "cutting" more than bulking. But I don't really know how to do it properly. The only kind of "cutting" that I know is the kind that I learned in wrestling...which is very unhealthy and counterproductive if you're trying to retain strength and muscle mass. How do I do it so that I don't get weaker and lose muscles?

Should I stop looking at it as "cutting" vs. "bulking" as I have read on this site and just look at it in terms of an all around workout?

[espoleta]

Bump again any advice on how to cut without sacrificing mass? I've always had strong shoulders - they've gotten much stronger over the past few months with the lifting and high protein diet. Ditto for arms. My bench press sucks in terms of weight but I do a lot of sets and I also do lots of flys. In terms of mass, I think I'm in a good place *for right now* and mainly want to lose the "spare tire" and stomach fat so the abs will show through.

How should I balance my lifting and cardio effectively?

[Ross_Rodgers]

Hey man, it looks liked you definitely have a good frame to build on. I don't think you'll have much of a hard time gaining and it looks like you're in *decent* shape.

I'd say eat clean for the next few months and do low intensity cardio in the morning right after you wake up. Lift 4-5 times a week and get a good well rounded routine going. You'll start seeing some good results about 2 months in. Just stick to it and you'll be fine. Once you start seeing results you really will get more motivation.

Good luck - remember, eat clean, sleep well and lift hard.

[espoleta]

Thank you a great deal for the encouragement and advice. When I was younger, in high school, I was frequently told that I was a "mesomorph" and that I had a naturally muscular frame, particularly large shoulders and a strong back. It has always been very easy for me to put on muscle and to lose weight - on the flip side, it's also been easy for me to gain weight in the form of fat. That, I brought on myself through a horrible diet. Even after I stopped playing sports and lifting, I generally worked outdoor labor jobs in the summer, and so even through college I still had decent muscles underneath all the fat that was unfortunately starting to build up. So now at this point it's a matter of increasing definition and getting rid of the excess fat.

When that's done, *then* my plan is to concentrate on putting on even more mass, with the secondary goal being to keep the fat off for good.