FITNESS AND HEALTH FORUM

Getting Started 1. Patience. The one thing you need to be getting started is being patient with yourself. Everyones fitness journey starts in different ways at different times. 2. One idea that is great motivator is setting a 1 month, 3 month, 6 month, and 1 year goal. These goals should be realistic, and achievable. Maybe it's losing body fat, maybe it's to run a marathon, or maybe it is just to be in good physical shape for yourself. 3. Set something that you want to achieve and create an action plan for it. The internet has a ton of great information, and a great set of brilliant individuals have spent loads of time researching to provide correct data and training techniques to use. Look for sites that have licensed and certified individuals who know what they are talking about. 4. Influencers are always going to be trying to push their way of working out on you, but 9/10 it isn't going to give the same results it gave them. Nowadays these people are blessed with ridiculous genetics that provide insane growth and development in short periods of time that most people can't achieve so DO NOT compare yourselves to them. Look to yourself and be proud you're actively making a change. 5. Still eat your comfort foods, it's important to recognize that your body will begin to fight you psychologically as well as physically if you just cut off some of your favorite foods even if they're unhealthy. You can still eat them but just don't eat at the same level. Reduce the intake of those foods so you're body is still getting the fix for it but not to the point where it will slow down your goals.

The right choice for you What workout is right for you? I'm not sure, what are your goals? Do you want to just be strong? Do you want to look like someone who lifts? Do you just want to lose some weight and feel more in tune with your body? YOU need to define this, setting up workouts is so much easier when you know what you want for yourself. For someone who wants to put on muscle and develop strength, you should be doing workouts that are high in volume. What I mean by this are sets of exercises between 4-8 of sets of 6-15. These workouts will provide high intensity for the muscle to break down and redevelop to grow (you need to be eating in a caloric surplus during this period). For Strength, you should be doing exercises of higher weight, lower reps and an average amount of sets. Something of this variety are usually down by powerlifters for the three compound lifts of Squatting, Bench Press, and Deadlifting. Set counts look something around the lines of 3-6 sets of 2-6 reps. The weight during these sets are higher than compared to your volume counterparts but the strength will develop a lot faster. For basic weight loss, doing HIIT workout varieties or just a mix of standard resistance training with cardio is huge. Weight training will allow you to develop more muscle mass to replace the fat you lose and increase your bone density, with cardio increasing your VO2 max, strengthening your heart and increasing lung capacity. It's important when wanting to lose weight to look at Body Fat Percentage (BFP) compared to wanting to lose weight. Lower body fat means less risk of life threatening diseases and a more strengthened build compared to just shedding weight which could be muscle, water, and fat.