What i need to know is, what exercises i should be doing to help improve my body's look within the next month...im going to a new school and everything, so i have a new outlook on life..
Renegade has some of the right ideas...
But, make sure you keep your expectations in check. Unless you're already very close to your goal, you're not going to reach it in a month. You can make some great progress in the right direction, but to reach your goal and maintain it will most likely take years of constant work. You shouldn't expect to "do a diet" or a "routine" for a month or a year or any amount of time and then stop because you've reached your gold - it needs to be a permanent lifestyle change or you'll never be able to maintain it.
All that being said, the most important thing is your diet. There is a lot of good information around and in the stickies about how many calories you should be eating to lose weight, and the proper ratios of fats/carbs/protiens, and lots of other good information in general. As the saying goes, "abs are made in the kitchen". In order to see your abs, you will need to have under 10% body fat. All the crunches or other ab excercises in the world won't matter if you can't see your abs through the layer of fat. If you get your diet down just right, you can lose weight without working out at all.
However, if you want to lose fat and not lose (as much) muscle mass, you need to incorporate some heavy weight lifting. I learned this the hard way - I once lost a hundred pounds doing cardio 6-7 days a week. When I stopped running and went back to my old eating habits, I gained 200lbs back over the next 4 years! There are some good stickies here about starting out with free weights, and the basic lifts that should be the core of your workout - squats, bench, overhead press, deadlift, pushups, rows, pullups (assisted), etc. Don't worry about things that only work small, isolated muscles, such as bicep and tricep exercises. Read the stickies to get an idea of sets and reps - I would recommend something like 3-5 sets of 5-8 reps of the free weight exercises, and 3 sets to failure of the bodyweight exercises. Maybe some people can give you advice specifically working with a home gym machine, but for best results, I think you'll need to have access to some free weights. The machine is certainly better than nothing though, and if its all you got, it will help your boddy retain muscle mass while you're trying to lose weight. If you're worried about "bulking up", or if you actually want to gain muscle mass, you have to realize that if you're trying to lose weight (eating less calories than you burn), you will possibly gain a little muscle mass if you haven't lifted before, but you won't "bulk up" or gain a lot of muscle mass - you need to be eating more than you burn in order to do that, in other words gaining weight.
The last component is cardio. My views on cardio have recently changed. I used to do steady state cardio every day, i.e. running XC and biking at steady state. Thats how I lost weight before. However, the results weren't sustainable - Its too much to have to do 1-2 hours of cardio a day (when I was in my best shape) for the rest of my life just to feel like I was getting a workout. On top of that, because I wasn't lifting weights, I lost a ton of muscle mass. When I regained weight, then, not only did I gained more weight than what I started at, it was all fat, so I ended up with a higher body fat % as well. Now, since I've incorporated weight training, I have a different view on cardio. I lift weights 3 days a week (M, W, F). I decided I wanted tuesdays and thursdays completely free to give my muscles a good rest in between workouts (when you're losing weight, its harder for muscles to repair, so rest is extra important). So I do my cardio immediately after lifting weights at the gym. I've also switched from steady state cardio to intervals. For example, instead of doing 30 minutes on the treadmill at a speed of 5.5-6, I'll do 15-20 minutes of intervals going back and forth between 3.5 (fast walk) to 7.5-8 (fast run/nearly sprinting). Right now, I can do intervals of 1 minute running/1.5-2 minutes walking. I did that 5 times yesterday followed by a 5 minute cooldown jog/walk. I'll give it a month or so honest try before judging the results, but for me, a combined weight lifting followed by cardio 3 days/week is a sustainable routine I could continue indefinately.
Thats basic it - diet, weight lifting, cardio in that order. And the most important thing to remember is: find what works best for you, with what you have available. Everything I've said works for me right now, but it probably isn't the best for everyone. Everyone is different
