Quote:
Originally Posted by suspenceful
Newcomer to this thread and the gym.
I'm almost 27 and have been eating fast food for every meal, drinking 2-3 sodas per day and consuming way too much beer for the past 5 years. Somehow that only adds up to 155lbs on a 5'9" guy.
I've always been skinny and struggled to put weight on throughout high school (105lbs) and college (115lbs). No matter what I ate, how much I ate or what I did... I was a twig.
About 2-3 years ago I got my desk job and finally started to gain weight. I was delighted to see 135lbs on the scale and no longer see my ribs. But then I quickly hit 145lbs and noticed the only area gaining weight was my gut. Recently I tipped past 155lbs and my midsection was a lot bigger than the rest of my body. I was disgusted with myself and decided to do something about it a few weeks ago.
I stopped drinking soda, cold turkey. I drink nothing but water now. I emptied my sugary snack drawer at my desk. I started meal-prepping healthy meals for every lunch and dinner of the week. I stopped overeating during meals or pointlessly eating out of bordem. It wasn't until I did this that I realized how much I enjoyed eating, especially bad food. The first week sucked and I felt hungover every single day.
Fast-forward almost 3 weeks later and here we are. I'm down from 155lbs to 147lbs and the only thing I changed was my diet. I feel better. My pants got slightly looser but I still have a gut. I'm sure dieting alone won't get rid of it.
What are some things I can start doing at the gym to turn this fat belly into a fit core? I'm not looking to bulk up into a monster, but I would like to tone what I have and maybe turn some fat into muscle. Some abs and pecs would be cool too.
I have a $10/mo membership to the local 24/7 gym. Can someone give me a personalized routine? A schedule with tips/workouts to do, otherwise I won't stick to it. I'd like to go 2-3 times per week, but I don't know what the hell to do there. I'm too cheap to pay for a personal trainer. Back in my college days I tagged along with some of my friends and did some crunches and bench pressed, but it's safe to say I don't really know what I'm doing.
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My first thoughts are, changing your diet is the best first move. There's an amazing variety of great healthy food. I stay away from artificial food coloring and those man made trans fats-partially hydrogenated oils.
Slowly going into an exercise program, the first thing is to learn to protect your spine and joints by not doing resistance exercises incorrectly. Also you don't need to have planned your workout in advance. Once you get to the gym figure out what you want to do that day, at this stage try to figure out which exercises you like doing.
Think about aerobic exercise, biking, running, swimming, jump rope - all things you can do in most gyms.
As for resistance training push-ups are a nice exercise, you can do them anywhere. But I would do a variety of free weight and machines for the first six-months. Learn to use them correctly, with appropriate weight and then think about how you may want to effect the look of your physique if that's what interest you. I would suggest that things like squats you do w/o weight at first and deadlifts I suggest you research on who and where you learn and get instructed on such an exercise.