Beginning a workout for a newbie

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Kaldaur
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Beginning a workout for a newbie

Post by Kaldaur »

Hey Kwon, I've got a question for you. I'm 23 and a senior in college. My problem is that I'm scrawny, and nothing I've tried helps me put on weight. I'm 5'10 and I've weighed 130 pounds for about eight years now. My weight has only fluctuating both up and down around five pounds since I was 15 years old. I want to begin buffing up and putting on some weight, since I am about to become a professional in the schools, and I don't want to be confused for a student.
My question to you is what should I begin doing to increase my weight/muscle mass? I don't want to just put on thirty pounds of beer weight; I'm planning on going to the gym every day I need to so I can achieve my goal. What do you recommend?
My caveat is I'm eating the meals provided by my university, so there are not a lot of variables there. If I need to eat a certain type of food, I can seek that out somewhere, but since each dorm offers something different to eat, I'd have to cater my meals to a certain building.
I've read the other threads, but since so many of them are about losing weight, I thought I'd start a new thread. I'm sorry if you covered this somewhere else, but I figured I'd ask and get your advice. I appreciate the help, man.
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Re: Beginning a workout for a newbie

Post by Sueven »

Kald: I've been doing something similar over the past year, I'll try to post advice soon.
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Re: Beginning a workout for a newbie

Post by Kaldaur »

Thanks Sueven :) Yeah, any help at all would be appreciated. I feel a little out of sorts; my exposure to working out has always been a few days of basketball, soccer, or football per week. I've never really hit the gym.
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Re: Beginning a workout for a newbie

Post by Abelard »

Hi Kaldaur,

I totally feel for you here. I use to be really scrawny before I got into bodybuilding in high school. I'm going to give you a sample of the diet I follow. I swear that as long as you follow this, you WILL gain mass. I started lifting in grade ten, by the time I finished grade 11 I had gained 20 pounds all muscle, and I was ridiculously cut as well. So it does work if you stay with it.

Heres the diet copy pasted from a facebook message I sent a friend a few weeks ago.

Remember, technique and diet are the most important parts of working out!

Important Facts*
ok heres a decent meal plan that I follow. If you have a gainer then just take that once a day or however they instruct. If you're on whey protein then take them as i instruct. Make sure to drink as much water as you can through out the day between meals. It will flush out your system and is really good for your skin. Main problem being that you pee ALL the time. Make sure to have juice with your breakfast so you switch your metabolism to a fructose metabolism, which is more effective. I'm going to leave suggestions on stuff that you can easily put together and bring around with you. Our training schedule is going to be taking place after breakfast, so make sure you get that eaten before 6 45 / 7 when I come to pick you up.

Breakfast: Whole wheat toast, beans, scrambled eggs mixed w/ egg whites, oatmeal, orange juice, protein shake or gainer.
(You can feel free to swap out bits and pieces like replace one thing with cereal, another with sausage/ham/bacon, omelet, tomato soup or cream of wheat.) Variety is key.

*water drinkage

Mid snack: Apple, protein shake or gainer, yogurt, vector or other type of oat bar, any type of fruit juice, x amount of raisins or cashews.
(Can switch this up with dry cereal, banana/orange etc.)

*water drinkage

Lunch: Sandwich, protein shake or gainer, piece of gum or 2 as your breath will smell terrible by this point!, another oat bar.
(Can switch this up with a variety of things depending on where you are. I'm going to assume university, or somewhere with access to a microwave: Pastas, chicken breasts, paninis, tomato soup etc.)

*water drinkage

Mid afternoon snack: I normally just opt for cheese and crackers, or raisins/cashews with milk or juice to drink w/ it. You should be through your gainer or protein by this point, if not then finish that off.

*water drinkage

Dinner, do your best to have dinner before 6 or 7. Dinner can be any mix from potato/veges/chicken/turkey/pastas/beef/soup. For drink I recommend either milk or juice. No pop, pop is the devil.

*water drinkage

If you need to snack I recommend snacking on little finger things like peanuts, cashews, raisins which are high in protein/fiber. Its enough to keep you occupied while watching tv or whatever, but you arent getting retardedly bad carbs like you do from potato chips.

If you want to get really really hardcore, I recommend picking up some Omega 3 tablets and popping a couple of those a day whenever you see fit. You're system is going to be a bit wonky for the first couple weeks of this as you're speeding your metabolism up and putting on more weight (but its good weight).
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Re: Beginning a workout for a newbie

Post by Abelard »

Actually its funny that you said you weigh 130. Thats just about what I weighed when I began, lol.

p.s.
Not sure if the diet says this or not, but do you best to make sure you finish your last meal before 5 00 - 5 30.
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Re: Beginning a workout for a newbie

Post by Kaldaur »

I've been drinking milk and juice every day, 3 times a day for 5 years now. I don't think I've ever had a pop in my life. Sad, I know.

That's a huge help Abe, I really appreciate it. One problem I'm going to have is my limited amount of meals available on campus. I can only get 12 meals a week through the residence halls, and I'm a poor student. I work four jobs, but that's only just enough to actually get me through school. I don't have enough money to pay for extra meals during the week. Should I start going to the store and buying food in bulk that is nonperishable, or if it is, will be eaten within a day or two? The meal I would most likely need to prepare on my own is breakfast; lunch and dinner I'm okay with.
Also, I'm a huge pretzel eater. I go through a pound of pretzels about every three days. Can I replace raisins and cashews with pretzels, or are they not a good replacement? Do pretzels even do anything for a diet? I hope you're figuring out how clueless I am :)
As far as Whey, do I need to go to a specialized store to find that, or is it available in places like Wal-Mart or a generic grocery store?
And when you say protein shake four or five times, does that mean I'm just milking one through the day? Or do I make a new one for every meal?
As far as meat products, are we looking for chicken breasts? What about commercial chicken strips? Is there an acceptable type of prepared poultry or meat that works, and others that don't?

Sorry for all the questions, I'm just trying to pick all this stuff up.
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Re: Beginning a workout for a newbie

Post by Abelard »

You can get by with a lot of non perishables like soups, oatmeal/cream of wheat, but you'll have to bite the bullet on somethings.

I don't know a whole lot about pretzels, but they are pretty salty. I recommend cutting down your consumption a bit, but no need to sacrafice them just yet if you're only beginning your training. You see, you'll be getting pretty massive gains when you first start out. You'll start to feel a lot stronger first before you actually start seeing your body change.

Uh, you CAN get whey at Wal Mart and stores like that, but I always goto this local place called Heavyweights to get mine. I don't know where you live (assuming USA), but I recommend looking into what specialty stores are around that offer it. I find local places are better for prices, customer service, deals, quality, and general knowledge. For instance, the last time I loaded up on supplements I was a bit short, and the guy who runs it knocked 10 bucks off the price of Glutamine for me. :~ You may even want to consider ordering online. This one guy at my gym gave me the url to some premium whey place that looked pretty cool.

As far as the shakes themselves go. You're going to want to take one full shake, not sip on the same shake at each meal. I found that when I began using the whey my results increased by about 30% at least. For a smaller guy you may want to start out with a gainer. You usually only have to take it once a day, or so. The gainer is like a 1k calorie bomb, which makes it really useful to put on weight. Basically, if you are someone with an ungodly metabolism (called Ectomorphs) then you'll have to stuff your face 24/7, lol.

Chicken breasts, lean meats like beef/chicken/turkey. You could get by on the chicken strips, but the skin on them is pure fat.
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Re: Beginning a workout for a newbie

Post by Aslanna »

They make unsalted pretzels. But they still make me thirsty.

I'm no nutritionist but 4-5 protein shakes, in addition to daily meals, seems like a bit much to me. And a waste of money. Especially with a weight of 130.
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Re: Beginning a workout for a newbie

Post by Bojangels »

If you never hit the gym, once you start lifting you should notice an increase very quickly. I guess it depends on how much weight you want to put on. At 5'10 130 I bet you could put on 15-20 lbs in a few months just by going to the gym. I can't stand going on funky diets.
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Re: Beginning a workout for a newbie

Post by Abelard »

Aslanna wrote:They make unsalted pretzels. But they still make me thirsty.

I'm no nutritionist but 4-5 protein shakes, in addition to daily meals, seems like a bit much to me. And a waste of money. Especially with a weight of 130.
The number is 3 for protein and 1 for gainer. Its really not that unreasonable at all. Especially since most whey protein packages you buy will last you for 3 - 4 months.
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Re: Beginning a workout for a newbie

Post by Tegellan »

4ish shakes a day really is way too much. It is a supplement, not a replacement for meals, proteine shakes are not good for your digestive system, so you should only use them for a quick shot of proteine after a work out, and to replace maybe one meal a day. 2 would be the absolute max I would recommend per day.
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Re: Beginning a workout for a newbie

Post by Ocalen »

Hey man, I'm new here but I might be able to help you out. I went from 130-175 pounds (I put on 45 pounds of muscle) over the course of 2-3 years. I'm 30 years old now so I was basically 130 (my height is 5'9' or 5'10") all of my life.

Anyway I started doing bodyweight exercises about 4 years ago or so. I would basically do sit-ups, crunches, push-ups and pull-ups. After awhile (about a month) I started noticing results and actually put on 5 pounds or so.

Well after a few months of this I decided to take up a notch and start mixing up bodyweight exercises with weight lifting, only I was using little weights. I would work out about 4 times a week and do all of the above exercises plus I would lift some weights. For example I would curl a 20 pound dumbell about 75 times on each arm, then do 50, then do 30, etc. Basically I was working on building muscular endurance (not strength). I was unaware that lifting heavier weights would actually do more to increase muscle size. However, I started to notice I was gaining weight. I gained another 5 pounds or so and was up to about 140 pounds now.

Then I started finding out about eatting right. I realized that my body didn't have enough protein in it to keep that muscle I was gaining, so I decided to go to Wal-Mart and buy some whey protein. I would drink two of these a day. I also bought some higher protein snacks, such as granola bars, yogurt, jerkey, peanuts, etc and would eat a snack 3-4 times a day. Combined with eatting a healthy breakfast (like the one mentioned above), lunch and dinner, by drinking my two shakes and eatting the 3-4 snacks I was intaking about 200 grams of protein a day now. So, I continued working out AND eatting right. Within a few months I had put on another 5-10 pounds and was up to about 150 pounds.

I think I peaked at around 150 over the course of a year or so (I gained about 20 pounds in a year). Finally I found out about lifting heavier weights and started to invest in more weight lifting equipment and started to lift heavy vs. light. I started doing bench presses, lifting 35+ pound dumbells, squats, and deadlifts. When I started I was only able to bench about 130 pounds - well now (about a year or so later) I can bench about 275. I eat right and work out 4-6 times a week.

So your answer is eat right AND work out 3-5 times a week (have two days for rest). Lift less heavier weights vs. more lighter weights. Work different parts of your body on different days. For example chest and triceps on Monday and Thursday and Lower Body on Tuesday and Friday, etc. Make sure you intake at least 150 grams of protein a day at your weight. Eat every 2-3 hours (snacks). Your snacks should include peanuts, yogurt, granola bars (the 10 grams of protein ones), jerkey, fruit just to name a few. Your meals should consist of eggs, bread, cereal, fish, chicken, veggies such as brocoli, spinach, etc. Stay away from sugary type foods if you can.

Good luck man.
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Re: Beginning a workout for a newbie

Post by Kwonryu DragonFist »

Some different diets to gain weight.
-
Diet 1:

Meal 1: 4 Korn 60-80 gr,Whey Tech 60 gr,Super omega 5 stk,Multivitaminerals,400 mg. ALA.
Meal 2: Eggs 6-8, Knekkebread or brown bread, Fruit,1000 mg C vitamins, Oliveoil 2 spoons.
Dinner 1: Red meat, fish, chicken or tunafish 300 gr, Rice 80 gr, vegetables, Oliveoil 2 spoons
Meal 4: Before workout, 6 Ribose, 250 mg. B3,Fruit

Under workout: 25-30 gr. Whey Tech, 30 gr. Carbo Fuel, 15-20 gr. Druesugar, 10 gr. Glutamin, 10 gr. Kreatin, 7 dl. of water.

I drink of shake between the sets of my workout. The shake is empty when I'am half trough my workout.

Then I take: 600-800 mg. Kalium, 800 mg. ALA, 1000 mg. Glucosamine Sulfate.
After workout: 60-80 gr. Whey Tech, 80-100 gr. Carbo Fuel, 15-20 gr. Druesugar, 6 Ribose and 5 Super Omega.

Dinner 2: Same as dinner 1.
Dinner 3: Same as Dinner 1 and dinner 2, but only with 40 gr rice, multivitaminminerals and 1000 mg. C vitamins.

Next meal: 60 gr. Proteinshake(with proisolat 90%), magnesium and zink.
Night meal: At night I will eat what I find in the refrigrerator.
-
Diet 2

07.00 Minimeal
60g protein
5g fishoil
2-3 caffeinepills
1/2 l water

08.00 Breakfast
100g oatmeal
30g fiberoatmeal
40g wheyprotein
120g eggs
100g banana
1000mg c-vitamin
1 multivitamintablett
10g flaxseedoil

11.00 Lunch
250g chickenbreasts
100g rice
100g sweetn sour sauce
15g bread
10g olive oil

14.00 quickie meal
200g banana
30g wheyprotein
40g sojy proteine
10g flaxseedoil

16.00 Dinner
250g chickenbreast
100g rice
100g sauce
15g bread

18.00 Pre Workout
100g rice
200g keso
50g wheyprotein
2-3 caffeinepills

19.00 Workout

20.00 Post workout-1

120g wheyprotein
400g milk
120g maltodextrin
100g banana
500mg c-vitamin

21.00 Post workout-2
100g rice
150g tuna
50g wheyprotein
70g fruitsugar
10g fishoil

23.00 Eveningmeal
80g milkproteine
20g fruitsugar
500mg c-vitamin
1 multivitamintablet

03.00 Nightmeal
50g milkprotein (if you wake up)

Add supps like creatine, glutamine, ALA to this as well.
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