Some questions about workouts.

You could just do strength training to build some muscle under your already existing fat (assuming that you would not go in calorie deficit), maintain the fat and you would look slightly leaner. Or you could combine strength training with cardio (like running, cycling, swimming, etc) to burn some extra calories and build muscle at same time, and look way more leaner faster. Or you could just reach that calorie deficit you need by eating less instead of running. You don't have to run, running would just let you ate more and not be so strict with diet.

I use MyFitnessPal.com to count calories. You don't need any specific diet, just ate more and you will gain muscle, ate less and you will lose fat.

 

Many would surely disagree, but my advice is just to drop weight for now.
Don't worry about building muscles or abs, you can think about that later.
Focus on dropping that bodyfat percentage, exercise is important, but
try to fix your diet before you do anything.
It's all about being in a caloric deficit, you do not need a diet in particular,
don't be fooled by fitness industry.
Obviously, strenght training could be benificial but it shouldn't be your main
concern in my opinion.

 

One thought: losing weight and a flat belly may seem like nice goals, but are difficult to achieve and measure improvement if they are your main focus...your body changes a lot, and one can be advancing in their workouts but gaining weight and seemingly not be improving which causes a quicker burn out.
I would suggest going for rep, weight( as in lifted), and distance type goals to keep you focused and increment little by little.

I am 5'10" was 240lb now I am 185lb, some days I look into the mirror and feel like I havent changed, even though to others I visibly have, but I still want my flat abs.
Try a combination of it all: cardio, strength training, and diet, because if you ignore one it can cause setbacks in your routine.
Diet: look to create calorie deficit over a week, avoid added sugars/salts, maybe intermittent fasting, go for fruits veggies and protein
Stength: many simple effective bodyweight exercises, easy to string together in quick succession to create cardio workout
Cardio: running, walking, biking swimming
Last thought just be weary of intensity, get yourself a good sweat but dont ramp up too fast lest you can risk injury and setback.

 

bump! I'm in the same boat! if I had a good body this will help my dating. Anyone good site recomendations focused on chest and abs please. Would be very much appreciated

 

Some exercise is better than no exercise. I would say stick to the workout as closely as possible, if you need an extra rest to finish that's fine...just start with the small goals: ex. reduce rest time to finish, finish workout as planned, up the ante (increase reps). Once you mastered the routine you picked, either add to it or find a more difficult challenge to go after.

 

Girls care a little bit about body, but more about confidence: mental discipline to workout helps both. I'm no fitness teacher by any means, but I have improved myself a lot over 2 years...and have scrolled through a slew of diet, exercise, weightloss, fitness, etc. material over the years.

One of my favorites that hits legs, abs, cardio, a little chest (gives me a great sweat in 9 minutes)

8 sets of:
20 sec mountain climbers (as many as you can)
10 sec rest

1 min rest

8 sets of:
20 sec squats (as many as you can do)
10 sec rest

Totals 9 mins, hits abs and legs (arms/chest a bit too with the mountain climbers) and add some rounds of push-ups for the chest.

You can see quicker results in arms and chest lifting weights, but sometimes hassle getting to gym and you don't stick with it for long. abs are always tough, need cardio, focused exercises, diet (and sometimes good genes)

 

To lose fat, you need to be in a caloric deficit. Your body needs "x" amount of calories to maintain everything, that's your maintenance level. Go above and you're in a caloric surplus. Go below and you're in a caloric deficit. Cardio and other forms of training will help burn fat, but the main point is to achieve a caloric deficit by the end of the day (daily total caloric intake).

To build muscle, the biggest driver is progressive overload. If you are not getting stronger, you can only increase your muscle mass so much before you plateau. If you have the equipment, follow AlphaDestiny's novice programme here. If you don't have much equipment, or want to work out at home, then bodyweight training will be a good option. You have a lot of calisthenics advice on YouTube, so check them out.

Me personally, I do Gymnastic Strength Training™ (check out GymnasticBodies), which is the strength and mobility aspect of gymnastics (mostly bodyweight) translated into a fitness programme. The courses aren't the cheapest, but following them for a few years would get you to amazing levels of athleticism, and that's my preference. So you have a lot of options, go do some research and see what works best for you! All the best.

 

You can work out anywhere, @DYS1994, though some places are more appropriate than others. Your environment won't change the training stimulus, your training will.

You don't need to follow a special diet plan, just track how much you eat. I assume you're having breakfast, lunch and dinner now, right? Just scale the portion size to fit your goals, that's it (counting calories is easy, counting macros is the crazy deal). Of course, eating healthy is recommended.

 

Hi @DYS1994,
The 9 min program mentioned above is more of a time crunch or get started program: results initially will be more mental. You know you're doing something healthy, you have the muscle soreness to prove it, after a couple of weeks you should see efficiency gains or be hitting higher rep counts per time interval. You'll likely see an increase in energy and drive to add more or replace the workout after a few sessions as well.

My big weight drop was after doing short exercises like that for a few weeks then committing to an intense 2 week daily swimming ~2hr routine, buying a trial gym membership. That was by no means sustainable for too long with a long work day and little sleep routine, but got me in shape quicker, then kept doing simple stuff after. Over the 2 weeks and 2 weeks after the swim is when I started seeing pounds shed.
Again I stress try not to focus on the weight gain or physical appearancbe change...it comes much slower than you think/want, just do something to know your doing it, look for improvements in reps or time working out or just getting all the muscle groups sore and youll be more motivated to continue and add.

 

@DYS1994 I agree with @Kallosthenos with a couple caveats...try to avoid some of the empty calorie sweets with refined sugars, foods high in sodium, check lable on dressings for salad, and watch out for portion sizes with pastas, its much smaller than most people think.
I am also not a fan of lowfat or sugar free products as some of the replacment ingredients are not that great for you.
You can buy portion control containers or find DIY home cooking recipes that are low in calories and allow you to eat until full. In the end it is mostly calorie deficit

 

Not sure what they mean about fatty abs. Ab workouts will build ab muscle, plain and simple. However your friends are right in that you need to lose weight first.

There's a saying that is really true: Abs are built in the kitchen, not the gym. Everyone has ab muscles to some degree. If you get unhealthily underweight, even if you've never been to the gym, you'll have visible abs (although they'll be tiny looking and not very nice).

You basically need to drop to low body fat % ranges to get abs showing. If you've already built a nice base of muscle there, then you'll see abs at below 14% body fat or so. If your abs are smaller, then you may need to get to less than 10% body fat. If you haven't really built any abs at all then you'd need to get to like 7-8% body fat before you see them.

You say you're kind of fat so my advice is to lose weight first. You can either be gaining muscle (and putting on a small amount of fat), or losing fat. It's very difficult to both gain muscle and lose fat at the same time. However, since you're a beginner to working out, you will gain some small base of muscle even when losing weight. So focus on the weight loss first.

When you're at a lower body fat % it's actually easier to gain lean weight (i.e. muscle), so getting skinny first will make it easier to build up the muscle you want later.

For what it's worth, last year I was a similar weight to you. I've since lost all the weight, got down to ~10% body fat, and now I'm 7.5 weeks into my first bulk (muscle building phase), have put on a couple of pounds of muscle so far, and I'm already so much happier with how I look.

So how did I lose the weight? Simple: Diet.

Weight loss is all about your diet, NOT about exercise. Exercise is a catalyst that can help speed up weight loss, but if you don't have your diet in check then even hours of daily exercise won't make you lose weight. You lose weight by consuming less calories than you burn - so exercise helps by increasing the calories you burn, but if you've been eating too much (which you have if you managed to get fat) then if your diet is still bad, it won't help much/at all.

So we need to find out how much you need to eat. Bear with me, as this process is going to take a few minutes and you're going to need some scales, a tape measure and a calculator. Doing this sped up my weight loss so much though so I highly recommend you do what I'm about to suggest.

First, grab a tape measure. Now measure around your neck at the thinnest point. This should be just under your Adam's apple. Write down the measurement. If you measured in centimetres, then convert it to inches by dividing the number by 2.5.

Next, measure around your stomach at the navel (i.e. where your belly button is). Before you do this, make sure your stomach is relaxed. By relaxed I mean, don't suck your stomach in, but don't push your stomach out either, just let it rest where it normally rests. Write down this measurement. If you measured in centimetres, then convert it to inches by dividing the number by 2.5.

Now weigh yourself. You should weigh yourself first thing in the morning before breakfast as when you eat food, your body gains temporary water weight. Overnight your body dehydrates from lack of water and loses this water weight - and so weighing yourself in the morning is most reliable. Write down your weight. If you measured your weight in kilos, convert it to pounds. Your weight in pounds = (your weight in kilos x 2.2)

Okay, so now you have your neck measurement in inches, your abdomen/navel measurement in inches, and your weight in pounds.

Take those measurements and input them in this calculator: https://www.fitmatic.com/c/calculators - they should go in the "Neck", "Abdomen", and "Weight" fields respectively. Don't worry about ankle, waist, or other measurements. Just add in the ones I told you to add, and also input your age, and your height as 5'6 like you mentioned in the post.

It should look something like this once you have all those filled in (here I've filled them in with my own stats):


Now click on the button that says "Measure".

Scroll down until you see a bit that says body fat. You should see several numbers below. The navy method in the first box is usually pretty accurate, but your body fat % may be a little higher in actuality.

I've circled the number you want to pay attention to (of course look at this on your own calculation not on mine):


So now you have your body fat % roughly. You now know how far away you are from the ideal body fat % range. Before you start building muscle you should get down to around 10-11% or so. Or even as low as 7-9% if you really want to. You'll put some fat back on when building muscle (because you can't build muscle without building *some* fat) so it's better to get //too// skinny before you start than to start building muscle while you already have excess fat and end up too fat and having to diet.

Next, scroll down further until you see the stuff about lean mass. I've again taken you a picture to show you the number you need to write down. I've circled the number you need to write down in red:


That's your lean body weight. In other words, that's how much you weigh without counting your fat. This number goes up as you increase muscle. This number is also important for working out how much food you need to eat, and so this number is why we've done these calculations.

Time for some more calculations using this number!

Next we work out your Basal Metabolic Rate. This is the amount of calories/energy your body needs to burn to survive even if you'r inactive/in a coma:

Basal Metabolic Rate = 370 + (9.79759519 x Lean Mass in pounds)

(Lean mass in pounds is the number we got earlier)

Once you have your basal metabolic rate, we still need to do one last calculation. You see, your basal metabolic rate is how many calories your body needs to survive at complete rest. This is how many calories you'd burn even if you were in a coma and didn't move for months. Every day you do move. Even if you sit at your computer all day, you're still somewhat active, and so we need to increase this number by how active you are.

So now take your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) number and multiply it by how active you are. Select a number from this list that you feel best suits how active you are:
Sedentary = BMR X 1.2 (little or no exercise, desk job)
Lightly active = BMR X 1.375 (light exercise/sports 1-3 days/wk)
Mod. active = BMR X 1.55 (moderate exercise/sports 3-5 days/wk)
Very active = BMR X 1.725 (hard exercise/sports 6-7 days/wk)
Extr. Active = BMR X 1.9 (hard daily exercise/sports & physical job or 2 X day training, marathon, football camp, contest, etc.)

So for example if you do sports 3-5 days a week, then multiply your BMR by 1.55.

The new number you're left with is your TDEE, or Total Daily Energy Expenditure. This is how many calories you would need to consume to stay the same weight. If you want to gain muscle, you need to eat more calories than this (but then you'll also gain fat).

Since our first goal here is fat loss, we need to eat less than this number. But how much less? Well, a good amount of weight loss is 1lb a week. So, a good number is 500-600 calories less. So if for example your TDEE comes to ~3000 calories, then you should be eating 2400-2500 calories a day in order to lose 1-1.2lbs or just a bit more each week.

So now comes the next step. How do you even know how many calories you're eating? Does this mean weighing every meal and constantly checking the packaging? Well, if you have time to do that, then yes - being meticulous in tracking calories will massively help you lose weight faster. However, you don't have to be so thorough.

Personally I recommend signing up to http://www.myfitnesspal.com/ - it's a site that lets you track daily calories. You add in the foods you've eaten, and the amount (if you don't know the exact weight you can guesstimate) and it'll tell you the calories, carbs, fat, and protein in it. So you'll get a rough idea of how much you've eaten. If you track your meals each day like this, you'll find it easy to stay ~500-600 calories below your TDEE, and lose weight at a steady rate of roughly a pound a week.

Follow through everything I've said above and you'll lose the weight quickly just like I did.

Then, once you've done that. What next? Time to build some muscle.

Say you're down to 10% body fat now, and you want to gain some muscle. What do you do now? Well, muscle is built by creating small micro tears in the muscle fibre, then providing adequate calories and protein for these tears to be repaired, and resting long enough for it to happen, so that the muscle is repaired larger than it was before.

In order to create enough resistance and strain to create these tears, the muscles have to be worked under progressive overload. This means you need to progressively increase the volume of your workouts. The simplest and most sustainable way to do this is by increasing the weight you lift every week or two.

If you can get yourself to a gym, or buy yourself a barbell with weights, along with a rack and bench, then I suggest one of the standard novice barbell programs out there. For muscle building never try to make your own program. As a beginner you don't understand the process of muscle building well enough yet to make a good program. We all do it, I did it too and made some crappy program and saw no gains. Then I switched to a proper novice program and have started to make good gains.

The program I personally use is the Fierce 5 novice program. It looks like this:

Workout A
Squat 3x5
Bench 3x5
Pendlay Rows 3x8
Face Pulls 3x10
Calf raises 2x15/Tricep pressdowns 2x10 Superset

Workout B
Front Squat 3x5
Overhead Press 3x5
Romanian Deadlift 3x8
Lat Pulldowns 3x8
Ab work 2x15/Bicep curls 2x10 Superset (I don’t care what ab work you do)

What those numbers mean is for example 3x5 = 3 sets of 5 reps.

The two workouts are done as follows:

Monday - Workout A
Tuesday - Rest
Wednesday - Workout B
Thursday - Rest
Friday - Workout A
Saturday - Rest
Sunday - Rest

Then the next week you start with Workout B, etc.

Although personally rather than taking two days of rest at the weekend, I just alternate: Workout A, Rest, Workout B, Rest - and repeat that forever.

If you don't have access to a gym for the mechines needed for Face Pulls, Lat Pulldowns, or Tricep Pressdowns, those exercises can be replaced.

Face Pulls can be replaced with Reverse Flies with dumbbells.
Lat Pulldowns can be replaced with Pullups (if you can't do pullups, start with assisted pullups, and add in some kind of row like the barbell row to help strengthen your lats)
Tricep Pressdowns can be replaced with French Press or Lying Tricep Extensions.

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If you really can't get access to a gym or barbells, you can do Fierce 5's all dumbbell workout, here:
http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=162916931&p=1266579671&viewfull=1#post1266579671

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If you can't even get access to dumbbells, then try a bodyweight/calisthenics routine like the one found on the /r/bodyweightfitness/ subreddit here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/bodyweightfitness/wiki/kb/recommended_routine

Make sure you get adequate rest. Workout one day, then rest the next. Muscle is built during rest periods not in the gym. So training extra and not getting enough rest will actually decrease your gains (or halt them altogether).

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As a final note, once you're onto the muscle building stage, you again need to go back and change up your diet. Do the calculations I mentioned in the weight loss part of my post again. This time however, you want to aim to be eating 200-300 calories more than your TDEE, instead of 500-600 calories less. This caloric surplus allows for you to have some calories to dedicate to repairing the damaged muscle tissue and growing new muscle.

You can go even higher than 200-300 calories over TDEE, but know that you can only build 1-2lbs of muscle a month, so going much higher than 300 calories will mostly only increase your fat gains not your muscle gains.

Last but not least, protein intake. You should aim to get around 1g of protein per lb of lean mass when trying to put on muscle. Alternatively you can aim to get a minimum of 0.8g per lb of total body weight. Protein is needed to synthesise new muscle tissue and to prevent your current muscle tissue from being broken down. That MyFitnessPal website I suggested to you earlier allows you to track your protein intake so it can be a good way of checking you're getting enough.

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Yes this post is a little bit tl;dr, but I promise every part of it is important info and if you actually read and apply everything I've said you'll make huge progress over the next few months. It'll be worth it. Hope this helps

 

@JesusGreen nice post...spot on, great tools and references.