23 yr female - completely new to this, looking to tone/gain some muscle weight

[SilverNella]

Hello all

I'm a 23 year old female looking for some beginner advice.

I know i'm probably not asking in the right place on this site but I don't even know whether I should be weight training, body training, changing my diet or a mixture of the three, sorry!

I don't want to reel off my life story here, but my current BMI puts me in the underweight category and i'm looking to gain in a healthy way. I'm a real exercise beginner; from ages 11-21 I walked pretty much everywhere so I got plenty of cardio in and my fitness level probably wasn't too bad. but even then I didn't do any toning exercises or weight training.

And now i'm even worse - I hardly move around AT ALL all day, as I said i'm a complete beginner on exercise/fitness matters so I don't know how much this is impacting my muscle mass. Does doing 1-2 hours a day of average speed walking build up significant muscle mass in comparison to a daily routine of nothing but errr, walking to the car ? I'm wondering if my lack of activity is partly contributing to my low weight (though it's also diet related).

I know in order to gain muscle i'm going to have to up my diet and i'm guessing a lot of protein will be involved. However despite my low number on the scales, my body fat % is comparatively high - my poor diet over the years has lead to some starvation mode stomach storage and muscle wastage, my arms (and to a lesser extent my legs) are very thin compared to my midsection.

So erm...my question would be how can I bring my muscle mass up and maybe my fat % down? Like a lot of women my problem bits are lower abs and my butt, so i'd like some ideas on how to tone these areas whilst building up my arms and legs and bringing everything into proportion. I realise some of my shape is genes, we're a pretty apple-shaped family - but i'm happy with moderate improvement! I may attach a picture to this if i'm feeling brave later so you can see what I mean. Warning, it wont be pretty

I have a lot of time to exercise during the day at the moment and am happy to start very small and build up, even over a period of years. I don't want to get really big, i'm just aiming to 'tone and sculpt'...thanks v. much in advance,

Love Nella xxx

 

[mastershake5824]

Keep it simple with some basic exercises. Start out with bodyweight exercises. Push ups(on knees if needed), air squats, crunchs, leg lifts, bicycle/ runner crunchs(opposite elbow to knee), things along those lines. Then move on up to simple weight exercises. Bicep curls, tricep extension, dumbell squats, medicine ball crunchs/twistie on decline bench, leg extenstions/curls. I'd say keepthe reps around 15/3 sets. Keep the Crunchs rep high if you can. You can wiki/google the exercise if needed. If you can get in a gym it would be best, roughly 30 a month and there's always ppl around willing to help.
As for the diet, sounds like you need to eat more. Now I'm not the best person for info on that seeing how i got the metabolism of a Jack rabbit
and eat 3200+ but not to sure what's what but I try, but keep it healthy as possible. Lean meats, chicken,fish, fruits and vegetables. Hope this helps a little.

 

[SilverNella]

Thanks a lot mastershake - that's just the sort of general advice I was looking for.

I would gain plenty enough on probably HALF of 3200 calories - poor, mangled metabolism - but i'll do some research on my BMR etc to work out numbers. I know I don't currently gain on 1200 but above that, i'm not sure what will happen.

 

[mastershake5824]

Basic rule of thumb is add 500 calories to your diet at a time. So if your maintain ing weigt off of you current intake, up it by 500 and give it a week or two and if nothing up it again.