The Fitness Program Starts Here - Easy To do Step By Step Guide in Total Fitness

Since I can't find the Fitness Thread, and this is a topic that keeps coming up, I decided to make a new one that would be consolidated. This post will be a compilation of everything you need to know about fitness, gaining muscle, losing weight, and living a healthy lifestyle. I'll edit this post as I keep adding new information. All new information will be in red.

Introduction
Losing weight or gaining muscle or even being concerned with our physical appearance is something almost every guy goes through. A lot of times, we try something that doesn't work and eventually give up. This is a guide outlining the basic information for a beginner/intermediate individual who wants to lose weight or gain muscle. First, we have to understand the difference between anaerobic and aerobic exercises.

Anaerobic vs Aerobic
Biking, running, and swimming falls under aerobic exercise, where the primary goal is to burn fat through repetition over a long duration of time. Anaerobic exercises are short spurts of explosive energy in the form of weight training, sprinting, or plyometrics, where the human body can only do sets in between short breaks. The benefits of anaerobic exercise is that you can either gain muscle or burn fat. Cardio, in general, is a very poor muscle-builder, because the body adapts to the continuous repetition and intensity that it is put under.

Despite of what anaerobic/aerobic exercise can do, even if you worked out everyday, you won't see a single change if you have a poor diet.

Food and Nutrition
Ever wonder why you ran everyday and you still can't shed a pound? Wonder why you lift weights 4 times a week, and don't look any different 3 months later?

You're eating wrong.

I'm not going to lie, but calorie counting is important if you want to have total control on weight gains/loss. A cheeseburger could have 600 calories, and a ham sandwich could have as little as 200 calories. Why the big difference? Fat. Here are the caloric breakdown of the three essential building blocks of what you eat:

Carbohydrates: 1 gram = 4 calories
Protein: 1 gram = 4 calories
Fat: 1 gram = 9 calories

There you have it. If you look on any food packaging, you'll see a nutrition label that gives the number of calories per serving size. Read some of them, then it'll become clear to you.

Not all fats are bad, though. Not all carbohydrates are bad either. Protein is somewhat overrated. Let me explain.

Carbohydrates
Carbs is the fuel for your body. It's the only food that'll give you the most energy, and it's the first source that your body will go for. You can't function at your best without carbs.

There are two kinds of carbs: simple carbs and complex carbs. Simple is bad. Sugar is a simple carb, and when you eat candy and anything with sugar in it, what you're eating is no different than the greasy fats. Also, simple carbs burn fast, which means that it'll provide you with a jolt of energy, but it spikes quickly, where you'll be sapped of that energy in a short amount of time. If you take in too much simple carbs, since a lot of us like to indulge in sugars, the excess simple carbs will be converted to fat, and stored in your body.

However, one note is that most fruits are simple carbs, and while you might think it's bad, I'll say it's good and bad. Fruits have essential vitamins that you need to take, but the sugar in it could be bad, especially if it's fructose. Fructose is one of the "killers" where it slows down your metabolism. I'll get into metabolism later.

Complex carbs are good. You'll see them in foods like multigrain breads, bagels, potatoes, pasta, vegetables, and you get the idea. Healthy stuff. Simple.

Protein
Protein is the worst source of energy. It's the last thing your body will go for, and if most of your diet is protein, you're going to be weak and your breath is going to stink. However, you need protein if you want to build muscle, but you don't need insane amounts of it. Typically, you would want 1 to 1.5 grams of protein per body weight in pounds per day. For example, if you're 165 lbs, you should take in at least 165 grams of protein a day.

The best source of high protein is found in egg whites, beans and lentils, chicken breast, low-fat milk, whey protein, tofu, and really, in lean meats and fish. Or to categorize it, dairy, nuts/beans and poultry.

Fats
One of the biggest misconceptions is to avoid fat completely. Not true, you need fat to build muscle and to lead a healthy lifestyle, and in fact, fat i]can[/i] burn fat. Problem is, not many people know about good fats and bad fats.

Good fats: polyunsaturated and monosaturated fats
Bad fats: saturated and trans fat

The good fats can be found in fish, where they have the essential OMEGA-3 fatty acids which is good stuff, olive oil, almonds, and linseed oil. Bad fats are the typical stuff: potato chips, bacon, burgers, hot dogs, and so on. The thing about trans fat is that it's an invented fat through man-made chemical processes.

Your body doesn't recognize it easily, and thus, takes longer to burn it, and gets added to your fat reserve.

Meals
Most people eat three meals a day: breakfast, lunch, and dinner. This doesn't work. Most of the time you're hungry between meals, and most of the time, you overeat when you do get a chance to eat your meals. In other words, when you're starving, you could be losing muscle because your body doesn't have the fuel to use from food, and when you're eating, you're taking in too many calories in one sitting, where the excess food will be stored as fat. The solution, and the backbone of any diet, is to break up the three meals to six smaller meals spread throughout the day. That means you'll have a meal every 2-3 hours. It's tougher to micromanage, but for the reasons above, this is what most bodybuilders and fitness experts recommend. As I said before, it is a lifestyle change, so if you can get into the habit of eating six meals a day, then you won't starve yourself or be too full, but give your body the constant fuel that it requires.

Time of Day: Ideally, your breakfast should be heavier than your last meals, because your metabolism is highest in the morning, and you need fuel in the morning because you just spent the last eight hours not eating (sleeping). Also, you should not eat anything an hour before bedtime because your body needs time to digest, otherwise it will be stored as fat. A typical six-meal day looks like this:

Breakfast: meal (ie: a glass of orange juice, oatmeal, and two eggs)
Mid-morning: snack (ie: yogurt, a sandwich)
Lunch: meal (ie: pasta)
Mid-afternoon: snack (ie: banana, bagel)
Dinner: meal (ie: chicken breast, vegetables and a baked potato)
Late evening: snack (ie: tuna, a glass of milk)

How Much Food: I mentioned calorie counting, but you can avoid that if you listen to what your body is saying. If you're eating six meals a day and don't feel hungry or too full at any point, then you're eating the right amount, but might have to decrease or increase your food intake slightly if you're either trying to lose weight or to increase mass. It's important to understand the nutritional content of each type of food, so you know exactly what you're eating and what it does to your body.

If you're starting a new diet program, do not increase or decrease significant amounts of food in a day. Allow your body to adjust, so gradually increasing/decreasing your food intake is required.


Sample Meals: Here's a list of good foods that you could include, or do combinations as part of your diet:

Oatmeal, eggs, non-fat milk, chicken breast, fish, tuna, lean meats, vegetables, non-fat yogurt, multigrain bread, multigrain bagels, red potatoes, multigrain pasta, tofu, non-sugary cereals, beans, almonds


A must-have list is as follows:

- Almonds
- Beans
- Dairy (fat free milk, cheese, yogurt)
- Eggs
- Natural peanut butter
- Olive oil
- Whole-grain breads and cereals (including oatmeal!)
- Whey protien powder
- Raspberries, and other fruits
- Spinach, and green vegetables
- Canned tuna
- Chicken breast
- Turkey
- Lean fish
- Lean ground beef
- Long-grain rice
- Whole-wheat pasta
- Ground flaxseed (a must!)



Daily Breakdown: A recommended daily nutritional breakdown is about:

50% carbs
25% protien
25% fat

You can decrease the carbs to 40% and up the other two to 30%, depending on what fitness level you're trying to achieve.


Water
You will have to drink lots of water, and I'll say a few things: your body is mostly water, your health will improve with water, and you will burn more fat (raise metabolism) with water. How much water? At least 8 cups a day. Personally, I drink about a gallon or 4 litres throughout the day, which is anytime I feel thirsty, really. It sounds like a lot, and it is, but it's what you gotta do.

Water reduces cramping and muscle tears. It also gets the bodily functions moving efficiently, flush out toxins, and besides, muscles are 70% water. Also, if you drink lots of water, you won't feel as hungry, so it kills those midnight cravings.

Vitamins and Minerals
Your body needs all the minimum requirements of vitamins and minerals in order to function properly. You might want to use multivitamins if you feel that the foods you eat doesn't cover all your vitamin/mineral needs.

Metabolism (Why You Gain or Can't Gain)
Your body is essentially a fat burning machine. You feed it fuel, and your body burns it; feed it too much, your body stores it as excess fat; you don't feed it enough, your body look to the last energy source, by burning your muscles. Controlling the rate your body burns energy is called metabolism. High metabolism = you burn fat like crazy. Low metabolism = you seem to always add fat. Two variables I should mention that affects metabolism is age and genetics. The older you get, your metabolism decreases, which is why you'll learn that gaining weight is easier when you're older, and why teenagers have trouble gaining weight no matter how much they eat. As for genetics, some people can eat very little and still gain weight. Why? Blame their overweight parents.

Going back to anaerobic and aerobic exercising, if you do them, your metabolism will increase, but the advantage of anaerobic exercise is that your metabolism will be at an all time high hours after your last work out, even as long as 24 hours! That's a great way to lose fat even if you're trying to gain muscle, because your body is burning the fat that is already stored. Now that we understand a bit about food and our body, let's talk about whether we want to lose weight, or gain weight.

Losing Weight
Eat less calories, and do cardio. That's the simplest way to say it, but you have to know your restrictions. Don't eat less calories to the point where
you'll starve, because then, your body will eat your muscles. You can eat a lot of food, but make sure what you eat is strictly clean and that your body is burning more calories than what you take in. You'll lose some muscle in the process, but you'll burn way more fat if you're doing it right. The healthy approach is to burn 1 pound of fat per week for the average person.

To maximize burning fat, combine aerobic and anaerobic exercises.

Gaining Weight (Muscle)
Eat more calories, and lift weights. Muscle weighs more than fat, and adding one pound of muscle will burn 60 calories per day, which is significant if you add it up. You will have to consume more calories than your body can burn in order to gain weight. To ensure your body is not gaining weight in terms of fat,

you need to lift weights consistently and with intensity. You will gain some fat since you are consuming more calories than you burn, but you will see much more muscle. Before I talk about a training program, there are a few crucial points.

Can I Do Both?

Not really. It's extremely difficult to lose fat and gain muscle at the same time, and it's very, very rare. What bodybuilders mostly do is go through a bulking and cutting stage.

Bulking Stage: Eat more calories than your body burns. While doing weights, you'll gain more muscle, but you'll also gain some fat, which means you might say good-bye to your abs until the cutting stage.

Cutting Stage: With all that muscle under that layer of fat, you want to keep as much muscle as possible but shed a lot of fat. The cutting stage is opposite of the bulking stage: eat less calories than your body burns while lifting weights and doing cardio while on a strict diet plan.

A reminder: Don't overeat, under-eat, or do anything extreme. Always keep it gradual.


Intensity
For every anaerobic or aerobic session, you need to give it 100% or you're not going to see results. The more intensity you put in, the more you push your body, and the more the muscle fibers break down. When your muscle fibers break down, the body will repair the fibers and add more in addition to that. That's what lifting weights essentially do: break down muscles. Only at maximum intensity.

Rest
You can't lift weights every day, and you shouldn't do cardio every day. Your body needs rest to repair and to recover. Generally, cardio is good for 5 days a week, lifting weights are good for 3 days a week (4 if you're really up for it), and weight/cardio combinations are generally tougher, going for 5-6 days a week, where diet and sleep is extremely crucial.

Motivation & Dedication
It's hard to stay motivated to something that is tedious and difficult. As long as you have the motivation (working out with a buddy) and the dedication (not skipping a workout day), you will reap the benefits.

Don't feel that you must gain a pound every week or lose a pound every week. From my personal experience, as odd as it may sound, I might not gain a single pound for a month or two, then suddenly I gain 5 lbs one day shortly. You have to look at the long run and not look for quick solutions or instant results. It's a long-term dedication that will pay off in the end. I surprised myself when I opened up an old training journal that I don't use anymore, and learned that I gained 20 lbs of muscle in eight months, when the whole time I felt that I wasn't making any progress. Another time, when I stopped bodybuilding for months, I started to look a little flabby and flat. I decided to take a picture of myself as a "before" moment, then I lifted weights consistently for a couple months, and took another picture of myself. The results were amazing: I looked thicker, harder, and significantly bigger. Granted, that might be because of muscle memory.

Muscle Memory: This phenomenon is very encouraging. If you used to be big, then one day, you got extremely sick and couldn't do anything for two weeks. You lose all your hard-earned muscle. That's not the case, because whatever you earned and lost, you can quickly get it back.

Sick Days: If you have a cold or a flu, and don't feel like working out, don't. Your body needs time to recover from the sickness, and you should not lift weights or exercise because your body is already doing as much as it can do, and working out will only delay your recovery.


Sleep
In order to get the most out of your workout, to avoid sick days, and to allow your body to recover fast, you need at least 8 hours of sleep a night. It's hard to do, but seven would work. During sleep, your body is recovering, which is also repairing muscles, and during the REM stage, your body is burning lots of fat, which is great. Don't underestimate sleep.

Stretching
Stretch before and after a workout. You'll avoid injury, improve your flexibility, and you could gain up to 33% more muscle. 'Nuff said.

"Failure"
To do a set until failure means to do something until you can't do it anymore, no matter how hard you try. For example, if you can only perform a 15 lbs dumbbell exercise 8 times at the most, you're doing 8 repetitions in that set, or you did 8 reps until failure. Failure is good.

Workout Session - Burning Fat
For losing weight, do anything cardio like swimming, running, and biking. Sports like basketball, hockey, and anything that has physical activity is another one. Doing it for at least 30 minutes is great, but don't over-do it since your body needs food eventually or you'll end up burning more than your depleting energy reserves.

As said before, combining cardio with weights produces best results.

Workout Session - Gaining Muscle (or Burning More Fat)
For gaining weight, the best tried and true method is lifting weights. Avoid machines if you can and stick with free weights (dumbbells, barbells). The reason why I say avoid machines is that they typically do all the work on the negative resistance (lowering your motion, or away from your body) which is more important than positive resistance (lifting, or bringing toward your body). Make sure you lift slowly, and slower on the negative resistance (seconds).

Never lift fast, because you'll risk yourself for injury and you won't see best results.

Duration: A weight training workout should always be between 30 minutes to 1 hour max. If you go over one hour, a chemical called cortisol will kick in and cortisol kills your muscles.

Exercises: See a list of sample exercises at http://www.abcbodybuilding.com/slideshow.php?id=16&subId=37 to understand how to perform a specific exercise for a specific muscle or muscle group.

Anatomy: To understand your muscles, it's best to study muscle anatomy. Here is an excellent chart of the basic muscle parts:

http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/anatomy.htm

Compound Exercises: Compound exercises work on several other secondary muscles, which makes them great muscle builders. The three common compound exercises are: bench press, deadlifts and squats. Note: Deadlifts and squats are high intensity workouts, so if you're a beginner, don't attempt them until you're ready.

Repetitions: To maximize strength gain without significant muscle gains, do 4-6 reps, but be careful since weights are typically very heavy and risk of injury is high. To maximize muscle gains, try to aim for repetitions between 6-10 reps. Any more than 12 reps, and you're basically doing cardio.

Sets: Doing, for example, 8 reps until failure for a single exercise is called a set. Most do 3 sets per exercise.

Between Sets:
Rest for 30 seconds to a minute between sets. Wait for more than two minutes, and you're going to lose that intensity, and consequently, gains. Be quick, consistent and on time.

Muscles: For each exercise, you should be targeting a specific muscle. For example, in the arms, you have your deltoids, triceps, biceps and forearms.

Typically, you should do 2-3 exercises for each muscle.

Muscle Group: You should dedicate one day to a muscle group. In the previous example, arms is a day. Chest and back is another day. Legs is another day.

Sample Weekly Session
Sunday - rest
Monday - arms
Tuesday - rest
Wednesday - chest and back
Thursday - rest
Friday - legs
Saturday - rest

Rest days: Ideally, allow at least 48 hours for your muscles to recover before working on the same muscles again. Some exercises may work on primary muscles, but they can also work on secondary muscles that may need time to recover.

Change it up! Change your exercises every four weeks, otherwise your body will adapt to it.


Push ups and Sit ups? Push ups are useful when you're doing incline presses (feet on a bench, chair, stool, etc., and hands on the ground) only if you're struggling to do 8-10 reps. Remember to go really, really slow! If you can do more than 12, then push ups are basically useless. Same goes for sit ups, which btw, you should never do since it's bad for your back and neck. Do crunches and the various abdominal exercises that you can do with a weight plate or on the bench.


Soreness
You may feel your muscles hurt like hell the day after your intense weight lifting session. That means your muscles are repairing, but it doesn't necessarily mean you're gaining muscle. In fact, if you don't feel pain at all, it doesn't mean you're not gaining muscle either! Don't rely on soreness as an indicator of muscle growth. If you feel pain rather than soreness, see a doctor.

Protein Shakes: Invest in it, because the best way to gain muscle is to down a protein shake (whey protein + water) after a workout. Gulp about a cup down immediately after your workout and stretching, then finish the rest off within 30 minutes. As part of your balanced diet, though, you don't really need it.

Body Fat
A healthy range for most bodybuilders are 8-10% body fat with a good Body Mass Index (BMI), but don't take the BMI as an absolute indicator of healthy weight, since it doesn't take into consideration of people with different body frames and those who are naturally muscular (since muscle weighs more). What's more important is how you see yourself in the mirror and be happy with how you look. Don't always rely on the scale, and in fact, some don't even use a scale since it may discourage progress.

To measure your body fat percentage, you need to use a caliper for accurate results. You can either buy one, or take one free at your local gym.

Membership vs Home Gym
A membership costs more money in the long run, with transportation and fees, but you get all the equipment you can dream of. You might have to wait behind somebody who's using the equipment, which is why a home gym is convenient. Personally, Powerblocks (google it) and an incline bench and an adjustable barbell can do most of what you need. You need a range of weights to be able to do various kinds of exercises, as some exercises requires heavier weights, while some does not.

Improve Your Vertical
Since this is a basketball forum, increasing your vertical is not just a matter of strength or weight, but your explosiveness. The quicker you can get from the ground to the air is what I mean by explosiveness. Programs like Air Alert and whatever else may offer that stuff, but if you google plyometrics, you'll get great vertical guaranteed. Plyometrics is an anaerobic activity, and like weight training, you need days off as it is typically vigorous. Squats also help, since jumping largely depends on your quads.

Advanced Training
If you're a beginner, don't do these.

For extreme weight loss in the least amount of time, google high intensity interval training or for short, HIIT.

For advanced weight training exercises to maximize muscle gains, google pyramids and supersets.

Resources
Websites
www.abcbodybuilding.com (very good resource, but beware of the Christian fundamentalists on the message boards, though)
www.bodybuilding.com

Books
The Abs Diet by David Zinczenko (good basic resource for beginners and intermediates; everything you need to know and very easy to follow)
The Encyclopedia of Bodybuilding by Arnold Schwarzenegger (the bible of bodybuilders; for the advanced)

Magazines
Men's Health
Men's Fitness
Not the best resources, but it's a nice way to keep you motivated on a monthly basis.