Newbie Reaching Out for Advice...

[misslindsayjoan]

I am a young female in my mid twenties, have always been active but fairly new to working out in a gym and/or working with weights at all. I am only looking to lose about 10-15 pounds but overall, I am looking for results with toning and not haven't the easiet of time.

I eat a fairly clean diet - lots of raw fruit and veggies, chicken, spinach and beans, tuna - but I am feeling a little overwhelmed with all of the information out there. What I am wondering is what type of diet I should be following to get the most of out of workouts, and what the best foods to be eating pre and post workout are? After thinking that fruits and veggies were great for me, I recently learned that I have been sabbotaging myself with the amount of fruit I consume. So clearly I am not doing it right...

Thanks so much in advance for the advice; any feedback is greatly appreciated.

 

[Wardy257]

Your diet looks good to me. Google the Schofield equation and use it to work out your basic calorie requirements (BMR). This figure will the amount of calories you need just to survive, you then need to multiply it by your PAL figure to calculate your requirements under different conditions. As a rough idea use 1.2 for a normal non training day and 1.5. For example, if your BMR is 1200 cal then times it by 1.2 which give you a requirement of 1440 cal on a non-training day and so on.

Most people in your situation tend to under eat and therefore your body will try to retain energy through fat defeating the object so make sure you eat enough.

I would not worry too much about pre and post exercise feeding at this stage. Just make sure you eat before and after you exercise and don’t train fasted.


The term “tone” is a marketing phrase and meaningless. You either have muscle, or you don’t and you either have fat covering that muscle or you don’t. If you have enough muscle and a small amount of fat you look “toned”. To gain muscle (don’t for a second think you are going to grow bulky, it wont happen unless you take steroids etc) you need to lift weights. A simple workout such as Bill Star’s 5x5 will be fine as long as you stick to the plan properly you will look more “toned”. This will also increase your metabolism which will help you burn more energy each day for free.