Hi everyone! newb here...

[oh noes!]

Hi, my name is Jitu and I live in VA.

I stopped working out and eating healthy about a year ago and I am feeling the effect of not being in shape. I have shortness of breath and I am always tired and I feel sick when I think about food.

A lot has been going on with my personal life that I couldn't motivate myself to get back to my regimen but I am sick and tired of being out of shape and unhealthy so I am going to start going back to the gym and change my diet.

My first goal is to lose the fat...and a lot of the belly fat and then I will start with the muscle building. My main concern is losing the fat first. How much should I run and how often to optimize the rate of fat loss? I used to drink 8 oz of milk with protein power after my workout. Will that negate the fat and weight loss process?

Any suggestions will be helpful and I know this forum will be my homepage from now on

[E36Guy]

Welcome to the forum.. im not sure about the whole running and losing weight thing.. as far as I know, it all depends on how long you stay in that "target heartrate" zone where you are burning your calories and such. Im sure the others will be along to tell you a little more on the subject.

Anyway, good luck. Keep us updated.

[Sportsmedjosh]

Losing fat can be a simple subject or a complex subject. I would think about going about it at a whole approach. I wish I had some diagrams but here is what I would do record your eating, don't worry about calories but record them. Anyways do a combo of both weight training and cardio, I would you will get much better results. A lot of people say don't start with that and just do diet while this is true you will delay the onset of muscle hypertrophy and hyperplasia which believe it or not really uses a lot of calories so the more muscle mass you have the more of a buffer you have with excess calories.

[oh noes!]

For the conditioning period, should I do full body workout or do different body parts per day? and should those be done with machine weights or free weights?

[Sportsmedjosh]

What conditioning period are you referring to?

[E36Guy]

I always find the best feelings from free weights. It seems to me that machine weights will focus on the specific muscles, but with free weight you get a whole bunch of secondary muscle workouts while keeping balance and such with the weights.

[Sportsmedjosh]

I like using both, when I feel I can't do anything else with free weight on my total fatigue days I'll go to machines to keep the form correct and try to get a couple more out with either the lowest weight or just the handles of the machine. Usually on the days where I want to totally fatigue I can't even use the machine at the end with no weight at all.

[spizeegrl]

Along the same lines as what E36 Guy said...regarding free weights vs machines. There are variables such as what your current fitness level is and what your goals are. Working with free weights, you improve stability,form, core strenth, etc. Once you have those down, you would progress to or incorporate machines, to improve strength. I do supersets of both. So for every muscle, I do a free weight followed by a machine or vice versa.

They say that you can get as much of a cardio workout in circuit weight training as you do on the cardio eqpt. I've never been a runner, but I did row crew 1 year. If you have access to a rowing machine, you burn just as many calories running, w/o damage to your knees and it's a great total body workout.

[EUROTEK///M3]

welcome! im in the same boat as you....im on my 4th week of working out/diet...im still doing alot of reading....check this out:


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