Gym training and diet

Forcing yourself to go to the gym is no fun.

You need to incorporate it into your life, or find sports you enjoy.

Cycling to work is a great start. Only takes me about 10 minutes longer each way due to traffic and gives me an hours exercise and 4/600 calorie burn.

I agree with a lot of what has been said before but I would recommend Creatine, its a natural occuring amino acid in the body so its not some man made crap and it helps you a lot with the removal of lactic acid. I use BSN cell mass, expensive but boy does it work it has a transport aswell though so its not just creatine alone hence the price(transport helps it into the muscle quickly). There are cheaper creatines out there, EAS is another relly good one. Hope that helps

Originally Posted by andyharding

Here is a sample of my diet and training routine it is a killer.
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Hope this helps. If you have any questions just ask.

Where's the cardio man? You need to do some serious cardio work to support that weights programme otherwise your heart will not be able to pump enough blood to where it needs to be IMO.

[arc123]

Agree with BigApe on the triathlon training. Or any type of training with a high level of variance. Keeps things interesting, and prevents the body from overloading/tiring too quickly in any one area. I find that it allows you to train 'most' days as if one area of the body is tired, do somethign else.

Alos - with the protein whey. As has been said, you can get this from a good diet. However, after a weights session, it is generally accepted that you need to feed your body protein within an hour of finsihing training. so a protein shake can help you to achieve this, and get some substance into your body quickly before heading home for food.

And I cannot believe how boring eating chicken/rice/pasta every day must be!!! yeah low fat, high carb/protein but christ you must be missing a huge amount of vits/minerals!

I have wrote on this thread for a while, I found a gym near my house with a pool and gym its about £31/month, so not too much.

The hardest thing I still find is what to eat? I need inspiration on this, I wander around the food store thinking okay so what can eat? So ideas for food guys, casue thats what is getting me right me right now! The rest of it I can probally do myself and with an instructor.

They also do classes so that should be enough to bring up to shape as well.

I have be advised to work on my upper strengh as that is what I will use the most, but I will balance this out. So by using this gym, I can work on everything to get fit. Swiming is a good form excerise too. I gonna get back into martial arts combined this should help a lot.

Originally Posted by Bluethunder

Right I have decided that I need to get back in the gym and really improve my fitness.

To that end i'm thinking other folk here must work out, so i need to figure a good work out program, which protein supplients to use also diet tips, i'm running out of ideas, one what to eat, whats is also good to eat when the cost of food is taken into account.

At the moment I'm around 10 stone or 68KG or 140lbs (Lucky you, I'm almost double that!), don't want to lose any more weight really, may drop half stone when I do competive sports to knock some weight off.

I'm looking to drop the rest of the body fat ideally between 8-12%, improve cardio, build up muscle and also core stability espcially around lower back and hips(which I have problems with, they just hurt a lot sometimes)

So what are people doing to keep fit?

I was 119kgs before I got on holiday, I went to the gym for 2 weeks, my training worked itself to, 10km of cycling, 20 minutes on cross trainer, 15 minutes of treadmill, then weights, a more than capable but large ammount, quick repetitions on these. Then into the pool for 20 lengths and then steam room and jacuzzi to chill out. Limited myself to 2000 calories a day also.

Whilst in Switzerland I did a lot of walking, jogging and the odd cycle, walking up the mountain was the hardest.

I dropped a bit of the chubb around me and it distributed itself as muscle, as when i got back I weighed 122kgs but i felt physically fitter, was heartbreaking but good because i knew i was fitter.

Now my injury has thrown that back in my face and will all distribute itself back to fat if im not careful

[chris8886]

just keep swimming plowsie, that shouldn't do your ankle any harm as you're almost weightless in water (if you see what i mean). and if it still hurts it a bit when kicking then get one of the bouys you can put between your legs and just use ur arms. tis a killer i tell you!!

Originally Posted by plowsie

I was 119kgs before I got on holiday, I went to the gym for 2 weeks, my training worked itself to, 10km of cycling, 20 minutes on cross trainer, 15 minutes of treadmill, then weights, a more than capable but large ammount, quick repetitions on these. Then into the pool for 20 lengths and then steam room and jacuzzi to chill out. Limited myself to 2000 calories a day also.

Whilst in Switzerland I did a lot of walking, jogging and the odd cycle, walking up the mountain was the hardest.

I dropped a bit of the chubb around me and it distributed itself as muscle, as when i got back I weighed 122kgs but i felt physically fitter, was heartbreaking but good because i knew i was fitter.

Now my injury has thrown that back in my face and will all distribute itself back to fat if im not careful

mucle weights more than fat so if your muscle mass has increased so will your weight, so its not a problem

Swiming is very good excerise as well, so go for it. You can't expect weight to just fall off, it doesn't work like that. I was 11 1/2 stone a few years back, I'm now down to what I am now. But this has taken a long time for this happen so put off.

Also you need something else besides swiming to build up bone desnity you need some land base program as well. So free weights could be an idea. I would suugest circuit classes but if you ankle isn't good then that wouldn't work.

Have you had physco to strenghen your injury?

Its a change of life style thats what people forget. my kid sister is trying to lose weight as well, I have pointed this out to her. she works 9-5 there is no good reason why she go to the gym 3 times a week. I did when i was 9-5 so its possibale.

But this about your diet, if you eat crap then don't expect to lose weight or even be hrealthy. Hence why commets about what to eat it doing my head in coming up with a good menu to eat off. Think it as 70% diet.

So look look at what you eating, keep a food dairy it is meant to work. I don't I eat drink what ever I want, but to for me its not problem.

Keep at it, you will get there.

Without going too much into supplements, my gym routine is VERY random, this is because I work odd hours as I am a driving instructor so basically whenever I can get it done. I found that going to a gym wasn't working for me cause i couldn't make myself go so wasted a fortune on various memberships over the years, until I found that if I had weights in the house I would use them more often. At the moment I have an Olympic Barbell and a set of Bowflex dumbells, all in about £600+ of weights and about 250kgs approx with which to play. This for me works great, forgive my gym life story but my point is its horses for courses as regards exercise and I know I should do more cardio, I am so bad a doing it regularly.

So back to the subject of food, this is also random with me, I don't calorie count and eat rubbish some of the time( chocolate, crisps the odd burger king) but in my experience you have to be realistic. I advise when you are shopping to eat more Protein than you have to bulk up and gain strength although you have probably heard this before. A good protein shake after a workout is a great idea as just after working out you body is craving nutrients its like a sponge, the first 30mins is the best window to get this started. Lots of fish, tinned or ideally fresh (low fat and high protien) Eggs, red meat (contains lots of quality protein and creatines quite high in it too although its a fatty meat) white meat (low fat high protien but a bit bland) nuts and pules are good too. Get yourself a good book on it all and find out about the Biological Value or BV of protiens to see whats best.

Try not to eat TOO much carbs because it turns to fat if not burned you need to find out about complex and simple carbs too as the complex ones (pasta, potatoes etc) are the ones you really need for working out hard.

Anyway I am ranting a bit, hope this helps.

Oh, I forgot to say that you have to change your life for all of this and integrate it into your lifestyle as a PERMANENT change to get the best results

Your diet is the most important factor of how you look. The term "you are what you eat" is the truest there is. Then it's training, sleep, genetics etc.

I eat the occasional treat (like a burger at the bike meet) but all in all I eat very strict. Every 3 hours (waking hours) I'm having at least 30g good quality protein from a variety of sources (fish, lean meat, seeds/pulses etc). I limit carb intake in the evening but during the day I only eat wholegrain carbs and small portions. Very little sugar in my diet but some in the morning to help recover from my run. I do a 3 mile run 5 days a week first thing before brekkie (about 6:30am). It's hard but the results make you feel awesome (plus the wife doesn't complain either).

Yes I am a bit OTT but there is always a happy medium and a way of eating better. Good luck in the endless quest my friend.