Stuck After Two Months

Training Beginners
1

Hi I am a new here… tried looking a few treads but can’t find anything i was looking for… Sorry for the long post…

I have been going to the gym 2-3 times a week for close to 2 months now. Used to go the gym in 2007 till the november holidays. And did judo for 6 years.

Problem : My weight has always been stuck between 65-68 kg… couldnt change it since 2007 gave up in november and now i wanna try again.

Goal : I wanna look like van desel or one of the 300 spartans haha well… if thats even possible…

I am 20 years old now, and I look pretty much like zagman (1 user at T-Nation), I could post pics if you all need to, just not sure if you want the pics of me flexing or not. and which bodyparts.

I have been going on a diet for 1 month now, in the mornings i only have either a bowl of milk with cereal or 2 slices of wholemeal bread with jam or nutella.

Noons: normally just a plate of little rice with 1 dish of veggies and 1 dish of meat.

Dinner: No rice no pasta diet, with just a plate of either veggies, a plain corn baked in the oven with 2 nuggets or a fish finger, or just grean bean soup or just fruits.

Workout: 3 sets of 10 of the following :
12.5 kg bicep curls
16 kg chest press
9kg pull ups (pretty weak yah?)
Recently (50 dips after reading the T-Nation
and also 10 kg of the exercise… that u sit on a bench and go up and down with ur shoulders… dont know how to describe that…
and then a 400 calorie 40 min cardio run on treadmill.

on days which i dont go to gym, I normally do 4 sets of 20 pushups with 2 sets of 50 crunches at night.

Questions: I am considering to get protein whey, gnc. But do I drink it everyday according to this schedule??

2

I’m gonna venture and say you might not have read enough yet because you’re making a number of… inefficiencies… in your diet and training.

To answer the actual question you asked though, yeah, drinking whey every day would probably be a good idea.

On to advice you didn’t ask for;

You don’t look like Zagman. Zagman outweighs you by about 40lbs.

Your diet looks like starvation. Thats barely enough food to live on, much less retain or build muscle on. To adjust it, eat five to six times a day, and have a portion of protein at every meal.

You’re small, you don’t need to be going on a diet. You should focus on eating healthy, and eating more. Get enough food to satisfy your hunger and train hard. Throw in more healthy fats- extra virgin olive oil, nuts, and avocados.

Your training sucks because there’s no legs. Instead, do this:

it’s a program called ‘starting strength’ by a strength coach whose got a track record for making progress with beginner athletes. It’s also got a great track record with people who did it and kept logs of it on the beginner’s forum- they’re not too hard to find and I recommend reading them.

Stop doing cardio.

I realize this may be a shock to you. I do not mean to insult you or demean your endeavors on your current plan of action- in fact, I respect you mightily for sticking to that diet, I imagine it was very difficult- but there are faster and easier ways of getting to your goal.

Also, I would advise reading the first four threads in the beginner’s forum. These stickies contain indexes to a bunch of articles about lifting and nutrition and general lingo that it would behoove you to read.

Good luck, and welcome to the nation :slight_smile:

3

Thanks for the quick reply!! Yeah i read the first 4 treads… but i am just stumped by which one to do!!! theres just so many options. and most importantly i forgot to say that i dont want to eat all those… “super food, grow, flame out” and that kind of stuff kinda… scared of the side effects if theres any.

One more thing i forgot to say is that, i am doing the “carb cycling” thing, i eat something like a large portion of rice or pasta before working out. With meat definately.

Hmm so are you saying i should eat more rice?? Because lots of my friends told me that I should cut down on my carbs (rice, pasta) and do cardio to tone and get abs?
as for the leg training isnt the cardio runs enough?? Note: i also walk to school 40 min at around 4mph on weekdays. and its pretty sloped as well.

4

[quote]sugi wrote:
Thanks for the quick reply!! Yeah i read the first 4 treads… but i am just stumped by which one to do!!! theres just so many options. and most importantly i forgot to say that i dont want to eat all those… “Superfood, Grow!, Flameout” and that kind of stuff kinda… scared of the side effects if theres any.

One more thing i forgot to say is that, i am doing the “carb cycling” thing, i eat something like a large portion of rice or pasta before working out. With meat definately.

Hmm so are you saying i should eat more rice?? Because lots of my friends told me that I should cut down on my carbs (rice, pasta) and do cardio to tone and get abs?
as for the leg training isnt the cardio runs enough?? Note: i also walk to school 40 min at around 4mph on weekdays. and its pretty sloped as well.[/quote]

He’s saying you should eat more in general.

First Paragraph:
You don’t need to take Flameout and Superfood, etc. Protein powder should be a must–use it before and after a work out. Or to replace meals if you’re on the go. There are no real side effects to basic supplements like fish oil and protein powder, so no worries.

Second Paragraph:
Forget carb cycling. Are you eating clean and enough yet? Nope. Focus on nailing a good diet. If you’re wondering what to eat, the Men’s Health (shudder) abs diet food list is a good place to start. Fruits, veggies, meats, complex (wheat) carbs.

Third:
Forget what your friends say? If you’re trying to gain weight, you’ll need some carbs. Pick a goal. Wants abs? Then don’t try to gain weight. Want to put on some muscle? Then don’t try to get abs. Read Berardi’s “7 habits of highly effective nutrition” article for some general guidelines of a good diet.

5

Ok so here’s what i got to do (goal is to gain muscles not abs):

  1. Change my diet completely (do i still get the rice/pasta or just the fruits veggies and meat)

  2. Drink protein whey every morning, before workout and after workout?? Hmm 3 times? Do i think it everyday even though i only work out three times a week??

  3. My exercise plan is still fine? Or do i completely cancel out the cardio and just do weight training??

  4. Do i contradict my training if i were to do cardio and yet my goal is muscle gain and toning? Or would i be better off just doing squats.

P.S: sorry for being a newbie… completely new at this… and have no idea which exercise plan to do…

6

Read a tread by Drumhogg about “changing a fat boy” was hoping for some help in my case as well…

Spent around 2 hour reading through a lot of articles about what kind of exercises I should do and i am still stumped.

I will try and post my diet programme from today on… if thats okay?? Need some help pls. Btw i have no idea how to find the nutrition info like how Drumhogg does it…

28th April 2008
Breakfast 8am:
2 slices of whole meal bread
1 spoonful of strawberry jam, carb 12g, fat less than 0.5g, protein less than 1g

Lunch (uni meal, no idea about the nutrition values) 12pm:
Half a plate of fried rice
2 servings of beef
1 servings of veggie

Dinner 6pm:
300 g of pork ribs
100 g of carrots
4 beef tendon meat balls

Intended supper 9pm:
1 small bowl of Yogurt with a whole apple

I gonna get the protein whey tomorrow or wednesday and start adding it to my diet. But how am i doing?? By the way, i only drink water the whole day.

7

Well, on one hand, you could look at the nutrition facts of the food you’re eating. Usually it’s on the side of the bottle/can/bag/container. The alternative is to use something like Fitday.com

If you’re getting it from uni cafeteria… just post, and we’ll see what we can do.

Your diet is not bad, but is far from optimal. This is okay. I’m gonna post some suggestions- see how many of them you can incorporate into daily life.

  1. eat five or six small meals
  2. eat protein at every meal
  3. eat breakfast
  4. don’t drink any liquid but water

You already nailed 3 and 4. Try on 1 and 2 tomorrow.

As far as the questions you posted earlier

  1. You don’t necessarily have to change your diet completely- make managable, sustainable changes.

  2. Make a protein shake (protein powder in water) and use that as your protein source for any meal that doesn’t already have protein at it. For example, lets say you have eggs for breakfast (eggs have protein), a tuna sandwhich for lunch (tuna has protein), and will have a steak for dinner (steak has protein), but you only have an apple for your mid-morning stack. Down a protein shake with the apple, rather than have the apple by itself.

3)Do the program explained in the link I posted above. “Starting Strength”. If done correctly, you will gain strength, size, and experience in the gym.

4)First of all, cardio isn’t exercise for your legs. It’s exercise for your cardiovascular system. Squats are an exercise for your legs.

Cardio just burns away energy your body could use to grow. So don’t do cardio for now.

Muscle ‘tone’ is a muscle’s readiness to contract while still at rest. It comes from having a low bodyfat level and lifting heavy weight frequently. You’ll get there if you persevere, but it’s still in the distance right now. And cardio does nothing for it.

I hope this helps. If you have a question, first try and get an answer with the search feature, but if you can’t, don’t hesitate to post and we’ll be happy to chime in and lend what knowledge we have.

8

ok thanks i will try and post my daily meals everyday. And also incorporate that training programme into my gym workout tomorrow. THanks alot for the help! really appreciate it. But wouldn’t it be a heck of a lot of protein if i were to drink 2 protein drinks for each mid day snack, plus 1 in the morning, and 1 before workout and 1 after workout??

Hmm and regarding the workout, it wouldn’t take me more than 30 min to complete all that…?? And also i can already do 50 dips… at intervals of 2 min and sets of 5x10.

9

[quote]sugi wrote:
ok thanks i will try and post my daily meals everyday. And also incorporate that training programme into my gym workout tomorrow. THanks alot for the help! really appreciate it. But wouldn’t it be a heck of a lot of protein if i were to drink 2 protein drinks for each mid day snack, plus 1 in the morning, and 1 before workout and 1 after workout??

Hmm and regarding the workout, it wouldn’t take me more than 30 min to complete all that…?? And also i can already do 50 dips… at intervals of 2 min and sets of 5x10.[/quote]

It takes most people 30-45 minutes, depending on how much rest between sets, and how much accessory work you are doing. With the dips, start adding weight until you can’t do 2x5-8. Every time you can do 2 sets of 10 with your dips and pull ups, add more weight.

I’ve been on SS for 5 weeks, and have seen some good initial gains. I envy your ability on dips, as I can barely do them. Oh, well… every starts from somewhere, right?

Listen to these guys. There’s a lot of good advice to be had.

10

hmmm correct me if i am wrong. but isnt dips the thing that you just hold urself between two parallel bars at slightly above waist height, and then u go down and go up again?

how do u add more weights to that eh… yeah 30-45 min hmm thats pretty short cause i normally train for 2 hours including cardio…but now that cardio is out for me…, i was thinking if i should just go for a full body workout including biceps and other training. Also wouldnt a 30-45 min training is kinda mild intensity eh?

haha dont envy me mate it was one of the things we had to train alot during my judo training… dips… haha. but if i have to add weights like what u said i doubt i can do that much either.

good luck to u in ur strength training dude!

11

[quote]sugi wrote:
hmmm correct me if i am wrong. but isnt dips the thing that you just hold urself between two parallel bars at slightly above waist height, and then u go down and go up again?

how do u add more weights to that eh… yeah 30-45 min hmm thats pretty short cause i normally train for 2 hours including cardio…but now that cardio is out for me…, i was thinking if i should just go for a full body workout including biceps and other training. Also wouldnt a 30-45 min training is kinda mild intensity eh?[/quote]

Most gyms should have a belt with a chain attached to it that you can hang a plate off of, use that to add weight to your dips, or try holding a barbell between your feet if you can’t find the belt. And no, a 30-45 minute with rippetoe’s or any other good strength program should leave you pretty worn out, able to do each exercise maybe one more time if you’re doing it right. If you can walk out of the gym without breaking a sweat, you need to add more weight to your lifts.

12

It’s entirely possible you’re great at dips because you’re not going down far enough. But yeah, that’s what dips are.

You add weight by holding a plate between your legs.

Training for 30-45 minutes is actually all you need to stimulate muscle and strength growth and then get out of there. It’s not ‘mild intensity’ if you use heavy weight.

Depending on how much you were getting before, yeah, it can be a lot of protein. I wouldn’t recommend protein powder at every meal, just every meal you don’t have meat or cottage cheese or something else with a significant amount of protein. It’s recommended you get .5g of protein per .5kg of bodyweight. A lot of guys get great results with more.

If you want good results, eat a lot of protein. Hell, eat a lot of food period, but definitely don’t skimp on the protein.

13

I really just want to hug this guy. hes so nice a keen and knows he is a newb.

far cry from the usual type which is the guy who wants to be like brad pitt, does nothing but ab exercises and eat nothing but shitty muscle gain products.

mate im a fat loss ‘expert’ myself, but ive picked up a lot of bulking knowledge, the basic stuff that will form a foundation.

If you have any questions, no matter how stupid they may sound, private message me and ill help.

14

Wakakaka chutec thx man! u made my day haha!! Would be great if a hot chick told me that… haha. anywaysss just came back from the gym. but first heres my diet for today.

Morning 9am:
2 wholemeal bread
2 tablespoon of peanut butter

Before noon 11am :
1 slice of cheese 5.1g protein, 1.9 fat, 1.8g carb

Afternoon 12pm:
150g of chicken thigh, 1.5 carb, 25.5g protein, 14g of fat.
2 beef sausages, 18g protein, 22.3 fat, 10.5 carb
4 bussel sprouts
half a cucumber

Before workout 2pm:
1 cup of protein whey (13.3g protein, 1.3g of carb and fat)

After workout 4.30pm:
1 cup of protein whey (same as above)
1 banana

Dinner 6.30pm:
same as lunch (no choice… cooked for myself…)

Supper 9pm:
yogurt with mueslis and an apple.

How does it look?? Just bought the mega whey from gnc. 5 lb, the vanilla tastes… like crap… damn!

15

As for the workout:

I realised a big problem… there were only dumb bells, work out machines ( leg press, chest press, leg curl, and the machine u use to train pullups where u pull the weights down, and cable weights) theres also (treadmills and cycling machine and a dip and pullup station) sorry for the limited options… cause thats the gym provided for my apartment…

I tried doing the workout A recommended, i got to admit it was much more tiring than i expected. Btw the values given are all with just 1 dumb bell, so i wasnt sure if i were to just multiply by 2 or what. cause i use 2 dumbbells at once.

Squats:
warmup: 10kg 3 sets x 5 reps, 15 kg 3x5
Working set: 20kg (44lb) 3x5
Bench Press:
warmup: 10kg 3 sets x 5 reps, 15 kg 3x5
Working set: 20kg (44lb) 3x5
Deadlift:
warmup: 10kg 1 sets x 5 reps, 15 kg 1x5
Working set: 20kg (44lb) 1x5
Dips:
tried to carry a 10kg dumbbell with my legs, did 6 reps… and i lost control… and the dumbbell dropped off… and i got a scratch on my ankle. but still i continued to do 3x8 dips afterwords. And i think i go really low… my head is around 5 cm from the bar i think?

And now my arms and chest feel busted from the exercise but feels really good! feels like a good whole body workout, for only 40 min!!

after that, i went to the sauna for 20 min… is that good or bad? for my goals??

Also i am considering to do 2x50 pushups and 2x50 clutches and 60 of the bend the metal bar thing, during the offdays or should i just rest??

16

Don’t do pushups or crunches- let your body rest.

It sucks that you don’t actually have a barbell. If you can get a workout with dumpbells though, that really shouldn’t be a problem.

Your diet is both good and bad.
good: eating 7 times a day.
good: Protein with most meals.
bad: Carbohydrates in the evening.
bad: eating protein/carbs by themselves. (meals @ 9am, 11am, and 9pm)
bad: Overall calories not enough.

To grow, you’re probably going to have to eat more than that. I’d guess you’re getting about 2500 kcal (it’s impossible to know without reading your nutrition labels). Shoot for about 3000. You can do this by adding some peanuts or by eating more meals like your lunch.

Every meal should have a protein source and a fuel source (fat or carbohydrate or both).

Carbs are great. Try and limit them to the morning, if you can (carbs like fruits or bread). This helps ensure you eat them when you’re most insulin sensitive (mornings), so your likelihood of storing the energy as fat decreases.

On the whole though, it doesn’t look half bad. Nice job.

17

Ok got that! thanks for the great help man. never knew my diet was so wrong…

Things to do:

  1. Buy some almond nuts as snacks.

  2. no noodles/rice/pasta in the night/evening only in the noon or morning.

  3. Increase my cals… hmm so i guess i should twice the amount i am having for breafast, for example : 4 wholemeal breads, get more snacks in during snack time.

  4. for dinner just meat to reduce carbs? Like what Drumhogg is doing? just a piece of steak or chicken breast with veggie?

  5. I am rather confused about the “eating carbs/protein” by themselves. so what shoud i eat them with?? (for eg: i thought 9pm supper was pretty balanced??)

P.S : I am using drumhogg’s diet as a reference… also how does he have such a detailed diet log is it by fitday?, now i have to run back and forth the kitchen trying to enter the nutrition values.

I gonna post my diet planned for tmr, so you guys can help me change it before i actually eat it. So here goes…

Morning (9am) Cals Fat Carb Prot
4 pieces of wholemeal bread 315 5 59 12
1 tablespoon of strawberry jam 25 0 6 0
1 tablespoon of peanut butter 95 8 3 4

morn-noon snack, 10.30am :
1 banana 67 0 17 1
1 cup of protein whey drink 70 1.3 1.2 13.3

Lunch, 12pm at uni :
1 large plate of fried rice 271 12 34 5
1 serving of chicken 97 5 3 9
1 serving of beef 433 31 13 27
1 serving of veggie

Mid-day snack, 3pm:
1 serving of nuts (approx 100g i guess havent bought it yet)
1 cup of protein whey 70 1.3 1.2 13.3

Dinner 6pm:
1 round steak 5 oz approximately 227 12 0 29
4 brussel sprouts 41 0 9 3
1 sweet corn 63 1 14 2

Supper 9pm:
yogurt 110 4.5 12.9 4.4
1 serving of muesli 150 5.1 29.2 5.1
1 apple 67 0 17 1

total cals :2200 approx, total protein: 129
I think this is the most detailed i can give… exhausted just from typing this diet…

I might eat some “the natural confectionary co.” non-fat jellies 343 kJ, 0.1, 19.4, 0.7 to supplement my calories or is it bad for my diet?

Once again… thanks alot to everyone helping me, espacially otep!

18

Yeah. It’s probably Fitday.

As a shortcut, when counting calories and stuff for your food log, I usually just count overall calories and protein. The fat/carb breakdown is usually unimportant, so long as you you know whether a fuel source is predominantly fat or carbs.

When trying to gain, it’s recommended you eat your bodyweight in lbs x 20. I guess kg it’d be x40. So you’re looking for 2800-3000 calories each day as a rough guide.

For protein, usually 1g protein per lb in bodyweight, or 2g per kg. So for you, it’d be 150 at a minimum.

Don’t reduce dinner down to just meat. Drumhoggs trying to lose fat, you’re trying to gain muscle. While there is some overlap, you need to eat a lot more than he is. The meat would be a good starting point- take the meat, add some veggies (for health) and then drown it in extra virgin olive oil. Oil is generally inexpensive in terms of overall calories, and it makes things taste good, and it’s healthy.

The ‘don’t eat carbs/protein by themselves’ comment could have been better explained. Generally, at each meal, you want to give your body both nutrients to repair itself, as well as energy to grow and let you do stuff with. So you want protein to repair your body, but you want protein to be USED to repair your body, not have it used as a fuel source. So you eat some carbohydrates or fats along with the protein to prevent your body from trying to use that protein as a fuel source and to free it up for the repairing of your muscles and the growing of new tissue. Does that make sense?

Your last meal (9pm) for yesterday wasn’t horrible. It was small, and it was low-glycemic. You could do much worse. However, it could also be a lot better. There wasn’t a lot of protein, and there was a lot of carbs. Like you’ve read earlier, carbs aren’t necessarily bad, but are best timed in the morning to take advantage of your higher insulin sensitivity in the morning. At night, you generally want a big hunk of meat, with some veggies to keep you full, drowned in oil. Protein and fat, and antioxidants (from the vegetables).

That said, a lot of the recommendations made to you are just that- recommendations. Make the changes you can, but don’t go broke trying to buy good food, and don’t make your life a living hell thinking you can’t have carbs in the evening, or anything like that. There aren’t any hard and fast rules, just some general guidelines to speed along progress.

So small changes-

  1. double the size of your morning snack (@ 10:30am)
  2. have a protein drink with your meal at 9pm
    3)double the size of your midday snack (@ 3pm)
  3. Add a second (or third) tbsp of peanut butter to breakfast
  4. add two tbsp of oil to dinner(6pm- if you can, you may or may not have oil in your house)

and before you know it, you’re at 2800kcal and a bunch more protein.

I would advise against eating the non-fat jellies. It’s junk food. It’s not nutritious. To get best results when trying to gain strength and muscle, you want to eat a lot of food, but you want it to be good, nutritious food. Jellies aren’t.

That said, it IS extra calories, and you DO need extra calories… if you down them, down them in the morning (that insulin sensitivity thing again) to minimize damage/fat-gain.

19

okok thanks! now for my diet for tmr.

Morning (9am) Cals Fat Carb Prot
4 pieces of wholemeal bread 315 5 59 12
1 tablespoon of strawberry jam 25 0 6 0
3 tablespoon of peanut butter 95 8 3 4

morn-noon snack, 10.30am :
1 banana 67 0 17 1
2 cup of protein whey drink 70 1.3 1.2 13.3
2 caps of omega 3 fish oil

Lunch, 12pm at uni :
1 large plate of fried rice 271 12 34 5
1 serving of chicken 97 5 3 9
1 serving of beef 433 31 13 27
1 serving of veggie

Mid-day snack, 3pm:
2 serving of nuts
1 cup of protein whey 70 1.3 1.2 13.3

Dinner 6pm:
1 round steak 5 oz approximately 227 12 0 29
2 tablespoon of olive oil
half a capsicum
6 brussel sprouts 41 0 9 3
1 sweet corn 63 1 14 2

Supper 9pm:
yogurt 110 4.5 12.9 4.4
1 serving of muesli 150 5.1 29.2 5.1
1 apple 67 0 17 1
1 piece of cheese ( or do i have a protein drink again…? kinda sick of it if i drink it 3 times a day…)

total cals :2400 approx, total protein: 150

Just wondering. If I eat these much calories on my off days, wouldn’t it all turn into fats? Would it be better to eat lesser calories on off days and more on work days and do some cardio to get a ripped effect??

Also… i feel fat eating so much… I would be going to the gym again on fri and sun. so tmr will be an off day as well.

20

All in all, your diet is starting to look much better. The cheese in the evening should be fine, honestly you want to get something a little slower digesting then whey protein in your system before bed anyways. As for your question,seeing as your daily caloric needs (did a quick estimate based of BMR + calories burned due to day to day life)are around 2700 cals, and you’re eating 2400 cals, you shouldn’t really gain anything on your off days.

Moreover, if you train hard, your body uses off days to repair the damage done to your body during workout, so the caloric surplus goes towards building your muscles back up and doesn’t get stored as fat, assuming you are eating clean. If you can get to 2800 cals on your off days and around 3500 on your lifting days, you’ll grow. You’ll add a little fat, but if you’re lifting and keeping your protein intake up, most of the weight will be muscle.