Newbie Questions

[bigjohn718]

Hello to everyone. I am newbie to this forum and to weight loss/ muscle building.

I am 23 years old, 6'6 and i weigh 260lbs. I don't really look fat, except for the belly. My goal is to lose 30 pounds and then put on some muscle. I am excercising more and reduced my total calorie intake. I have a few questions to make sure that i do things correctly.

1. I currently run 2-3 miles first thing in the morning and another 2-3 miles at night. This is the cardio that chose. Will it be bad to try to lose weight by doing both cardio and weightlifting?

2. If i do weight lifting, is it better to lift every other day? or is it better to work hard for a few days and then rest for a few days?

3. In order to lose all this fat and gain muscle, is it better if i try to lose the weight first by excersising and eating less AND THEN weightlifting and eating more?

or do you think that since i already have the weight, i can simply weight lift and turn that fat into muscle easly?

Hope to hear your input.

John

[Unreal]

This has been answered many times. Diet is key to weightloss. Heavy lifting should be next, then cardio. Heavy lifting alone is a good workout, gets the heart going, and makes sure you retain your lean mass that you have no. Tons of cardio with no weights leads to skinny-fat man syndrom where you turn into a sack of loose skin. I would start a good lifting routine, such as WBB1, and get your diet in check.

You cannot turn fat into muscle. Sorry. Wish you could.

[mrelwooddowd]

Here is the ever-elusive WBB1....
http://www.wannabebig.com/article.php?articleid=25

Here is a great list of foods for you to make up your daily caloric intake, in order to maximize the nutritional efficiency of your diet.
http://www.wannabebigforums.com/showthread.php?t=46565

You are doing way the hell too much cardio. A solid lifting routine will burn just as many, if not more calories than all that cardio, all the while helping to rehape your physique. If you want to do cardio once or twice per week on off days, then have at it, but two-a-days of jogging is insane. You WILL destroy your knees at your age and size..give it up...

Set up your diet based on your maintenance caloric intake requirement, calculated here..
http://www.caloriecontrol.org/calcalsm.html

To drop weight, just figure up the maintenance calories based on a minimal activity level, and let the exercise put you into a caloric deficit. If, for example, you burned 500 calories per day into the maintenance caloric intake, then over the course of one week (being 7 days of 500 cals per) you would drop one pound of fat (3,500 calories). Cutting more calories results in faster loss (being more total calories), but can not only be counter-productive over time, but lead to a stallout and subsequent motivational destruction on your part.

Tust me (and everyone else here), if you're cutting @ 500 per day and doing WBB1, the body shape improvements alone will be enough to keep you on-task. There's nothing like first-timer gains. Doing a structured routine like WBB1 will also let you teach yourself what muscles to work on what days, and how your body responds to diferent schemes.

[mrelwooddowd]

And Unreal is correct..you can't turn fat into muscle..lol

[BG5150]

And Unreal is correct..you can't turn fat into muscle..lol
You can't? :( Bummer, now I'm gonna have to work out and eat right. Crap.