Help needed !

You sound like me back when I was back in my early 20s. I am 26 right now and I am by no means lean. I am not fat either but I can confidently tell you I am more or less in shape today, maybe I still need a bit more cardio to get my small belly away. There are two ways doing this, the hard way and the long and hard way.

The hard way
I can tell you from my personal experience nofap plays a critical role in muscle building. Stop listening to those who say fapping does not reduce your testosterone level, it does. It deprives your will power to go to the gym and the ability to absorb nutrition and proteins from your daily diet. If you fap daily, you can stop reading now because the rest won't work. Your target is less than one fap per week. It's always better if you can go cold turkey / monk mode. The next step is food. I don't know what you eat everyday but I guess for an average American, we are eating a bit more than the rest of the world. Try to increase your portion of protein and reduce the consumption of fat. I didn't cut off fat entirely in the beginning, since I was a bit too skinny so I didn't change my diet at all. I soon realised fat will bar you from getting in shape. Don't worry, stay with whatever you have for now. If you are from somewhere else other than the States, you might need to eat a bit extra. This is for weight gain. It's hard to build muscle from nothing but your skeletal body. The third step is working out. You might just said 'duh', but I can tell you it's much harder than it looks, at least in the beginning. You will need to go to the gym at least 3 times a week, for an hour and a half or more. It's even better if you can get yourself a trainer, if not, look around in the gym room. One trick for me is to do weight before cardio. Willpower is like mana, if you use it on cardio, you will have less willpower on weight, vice versa. And then, time will tell.

The long and hard way
You will soon be reaching 24, by the time you reach 23-25, you can feel the speed of your metabolism decreases significantly. In other words, it's extremely easy to get chubby. Unless you can stay away from junk food or eat extremely healthy, you will definitely see weight gain. By that time, reread the hard way.

 

I’m just writing about the exercise part of this.

And of course this is my opinion, not law written in stone.

You can only start where you are and slowly work up. If you are at zero exercise I don’t think it’s realistic or wise to jump into an extensive work out routine. Set realistic “micro-goals” with a solid big goal for further in the future.

My suggestion:

Start small and easy.

Keep a work out journal and do push ups, sit ups, and a short walk outside. Set up realistic goals for numbers and distance and do it at least five days a week. When you start doing it consistently then increase the numbers and distance. Then start adding on exercises as well.

At some point think about weights, going to the gym, running, or any other exercises that interest you.

But I say start small and then increase.

Lots of people sign up for gym with huge goals that they want to jump into right away and then end up discouraged and quit.

There’s an old saying about eating a whole elephant. You do it one small bite at a time.

You can do it! Just remember, it’s one small step at a time with that huge goal up ahead.