pre-30 hysyteria

C

CollarBoneHigh

0
Hello All

I have become a total gym rat in the last few months and don't know any one in real life who is into that sort of thing so I thought this forum would be a good place to find people who share this interest.

I've always been fairly active (live in the city and walk every where) and have been into dancing for a long time (used to break dance until about a year ago, when my aging bones and joints stopped putting up with it). I was never really a gym person -- mainly because I always found it boring and didn't like the scene in gyms and had a hard time making my way to the gym during normal gym hours.

In the last year I moved in with my honey and a few pounds crept on, noticing this and the thought of turning 30 (turned 29 a few months ago) got me motivated to go to the gym whether I like it or not. Fortunately I found a 24 hour gym so I can work out any time I please and there isn't the typical meet markety scene thing going on in there so I don't mind going that much.

Current stats: 5 ft, 103 lbs, 22% bf.

My current fitness regimen:
Cardio
- 60 minutes on the eliptical every day (reckless youth has screwed up my knees terribly and it's the only cardio I can really stand).

Weights:
- 2 days week of chest and tricep weights (incline, decline and regular bench presses, incline and regular chest flys; kickbacks, tricep extensions and tricep presses)
- 2 days week of shoulder weights (military presses, lateral raises, upright row, overhead press)
- 2 days week of bicep and back weights (bicep curls, preacher curls, hammer curls, concentration curls; rows, pull overs, reverse flys)

Calesthetics
- 200 sit ups on exercise ball daily
- about 50 push ups day (I should do more)


Diet:
I am a vegan so I eat a lot of veggies. I tend to eat ceral for breakfast (special k with lowfat soy milk or oatmeal) and steamed veggies (usually broccoli or asparagus) and either a morning star griller burger for lunch or veggie hotdogs. My honey and I cook a different dinner every night but I try to pick meals that are 300 calories or less. Fave snacks -- those 100 calorie mini bags of microwave popcorn, baby carrots, dry cereal, steamed broccoli, fruit, fruit sweetened soy delicious (vegan ice cream around 110 calories/serving). Average daily caloric intake for me is about 1200.

Goals:
get better muscle tone, maintain good cardio health (heart disease and obesity run heavily in my family) and maybe lose 5 or 10 lbs. Pretty much my entire family is overweight and they are pretty disdainful about my interest in health and fitness so I try not to discuss it with them.
 
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Welcome.

The 1st thing you need to think about is changing your workout.

Your not doing anything for your legs, obliques (sides) or back which will result in a bad back, bad posture and your also missing out on all the weight loss benifits of training large muscle groups. Building strengh in your legs will help you knees unless a doc has specificaly told you not to.

next, you need to swap your cardio and weights. Always do your weights 1st so you have the energy to lift to your full potential. Otherwise you'll be worn out before you even get close to them.

Look in to HITT training as it will help your fitness far more then flat out cardio for 60mins.

Also, you would be far better off with a full body workout 3 times a week, this will help muscles work together and stop shoulder injures. At the moment you are working your shoulders 6days a week!

You shouldnt train any muscles every day. All muscles work the same and should be trained the same. You shouldn't be doing pushups every day on top of your weight training, you are only stopping them from healing.

200 sit ups is way too much.

Please read the bodybuilding and weight training stickys thoroughly beofre posting questions, as I'm sure you will have many and most will be answered here.

Good luck, I'm sure you will see some very possitive changes coming very soon.
 
CollarBoneHigh said:
Current stats: 5 ft, 103 lbs, 22% bf.

My current fitness regimen:
Cardio
- 60 minutes on the eliptical every day (reckless youth has screwed up my knees terribly and it's the only cardio I can really stand).

TOO MUCH. 20-30mins, 3 times a week is plenty of cardio unless you're training for a marathon

Weights:
- 2 days week of chest and tricep weights (incline, decline and regular bench presses, incline and regular chest flys; kickbacks kickbacks suck, tricep extensions and tricep presses)
- 2 days week of shoulder weights (military presses, lateral raises, upright row, overhead press)
- 2 days week of bicep and back weights (bicep curls, preacher curls, hammer curls, concentration curls; rows, pull overs, reverse flys)
in general, not a good split, and you never appear to work your legs!

Calesthetics
- 200 sit ups on exercise ball daily way too much. 2-3 ab workouts per week
- about 50 push ups day (I should do more) too much...2 days of chest presses AND 50 push ups a day???


Diet:
I am a vegan so I eat a lot of veggies. I tend to eat ceral for breakfast (special k with lowfat soy milk or oatmeal) and steamed veggies (usually broccoli or asparagus) and either a morning star griller burger for lunch or veggie hotdogs. My honey and I cook a different dinner every night but I try to pick meals that are 300 calories or less. Fave snacks -- those 100 calorie mini bags of microwave popcorn, baby carrots, dry cereal, steamed broccoli, fruit, fruit sweetened soy delicious (vegan ice cream around 110 calories/serving). Average daily caloric intake for me is about 1200.
way too low. soy protein sucks. I don't understand Vegans so I can't really comment here because everything I"m gonna tell you is eat some meat, eat some dairy, eat some eggs and vegans don't do that

Goals:
get better muscle tone, maintain good cardio health (heart disease and obesity run heavily in my family) and maybe lose 5 or 10 lbs. Pretty much my entire family is overweight and they are pretty disdainful about my interest in health and fitness so I try not to discuss it with them.
Click to expand...

don't expect much muscle gain on a strict vegan diet. you're unlikely to get enough protein to get an athletic build.
1200 cals a day is a bit low...like starvation level low...then again if you lack much lean muscle mass, you need fewer calories to begin with.
 
Aren't rows, pull overs, reverse flys back exercises? I have really bad tendonitis in my knees so a lot of leg exercises aggravate it. My legs are the part of my body I am happiest with any way, they are lean and toned from years of dance and using the eliptical often. If you can suggest any leg exercises that won't bother my knees I will give em a try. I already saw a sports med dr about my knees and he advised against things like leg presses, it won't help the tendonitis, it will just make it hurt. I am most interested in focusing on my arms and stomach since they are the parts that I think aren't firm enough.

Should I switch to 1x/week for upper body strength training? That just doesn't seem like very much.

I will read up on HIIT but I don't want to give up on exercising daily. I work at a desk job and I'm sedentary all day so by the end of the day I feel like a vegetable.

Re: diet. I don't feel like it's worth getting into the benefits/drawbacks of veganism so we'll just have to agree to disagree there. I do not care about building big muscles or looking athletic. I just want to be slim and eliminate flab. I don't see what is wrong with 1200 calories/day. According to this formula BMR = 655 + (9.6 X wt in kg) + (1.8 X ht in cm) - (4.7 X age in years) my BMR is only 1241. If I want to lose a few lbs shouldn't 1200 calories/day + daily exercise do that?
 
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1. BMR is your "this is what I need to survive if I don't move an inch all day long"....think of BMR as your 'comatose calorie needs'. You need BMR + activity modifier to determine a 'scientific guesstimate' of your caloric needs. I'd suggest 1.4 as a modifier... 1241 * 1.4 = 1737 cals a day.

2. I'm not saying once a week for upper body, I"m saying don't make it your focus. if you want, do 2 upper body and 2 lower body workouts a week. do not skip legs, the upper legs contain the 2nd and 3rd largest muscle groups in teh body. the last thing you should do is only focus on arms and abs.
Could also do 3 fullbody workouts a week.

3. weight trainign IS exercise. that's why you do not need to do eliptical 60mins every day. in fact, doing 60 mins a day of slow eliptical has made you too efficient at burnign fat for energy.
What does that mean? it means you got more efficient...you can burn less stored fat and get teh same amount of energy out of that burned fat as someone who does less cardio...they have to burn more fat to get the same energy output because their body kinda sucks at converting fat to energy.

thsi is why interval training is king. you workout harder, in bursts of almost 100% effort, then slow down, catch your breath, and repeat. you'll do more cardio work for the heart, lungs this way, and you won't get too good at burning fat either.

I do no lie when I say the people at my gym who plod along on the cardio machines for an hour have the worst body compositions of anyone their.
by that I mean they either have way too much fat, not enough muscle, or combinations...like, a waifish woman that still has a belly, even though I can see all of her ribs and vertibrate in her back showing through her shirt.....not enough lean mass, and still too much fat.

meanwhile the people hitting the heavy weights 3 or 4 days a week, and then 30 mins of intense cardio on the other 3 days of the week...those people look awesome...lean, toned muscles that show.
 
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