New Bloke Alert!

[No Hope!]

Right - first of all hello to everyone. Second of all i have logged on because i need help!

Basically, all through my youth i was ver active playing football and rugby two times and week and swimming numerous times. However for the last 5 maybe more years i have done pratically nothing apart from drink beer and smoke. I am now 25 and had enough. I now smoke about 4 /5 fags a day and about two months ago started jogging. About 3 weeks ago i joined a gym and have been everyday. More often than not with a personal trainer but she is to leave and i want advice on the whole of my life not just the hour i put in at the gym.

If im realistic then i will be able to go to the gym every working day for an hour to an hour and a half. My diet is **** and to be honest i need to shift abit of weight around the mid section. I am 14 to 14.5 stone and 6ft 1.

Now here are my aims

1) To get a 6 Pac as soon as possible but set myself a year
2) To run in next years marathon

I have spoken to my brother who has told me just to concentrate on Cardio for now but i was hoping someone could give me

1) An idea of a realistic diet for an office worker in London who doesnt want to spend 20 quid a day on food
2) An idea of a good workout in a gym

I am a complete novice so any help would be good!

Cheers :

[No Hope!]

Oh yeah. Would any suppliments help?

[Lady C]

To see your abs, clean up the diet. 90% of those abs are made in the kitchen, the other 10% is exercise. Go to the top of the "diet and nutrition" forum and read the notes. Lots of good advice there.

[threenorns]

i wouldn't just focus on the cardio, either - that'll eat away at muscle tissue, which is not usually a good idea.

since your time is limited, try one of the pre-made programs like MaxOT for weights.

high-intensity cardio will give you better net benefit re: fitness and fat loss, so try guerilla cardio (it's in here somewhere). 12 minutes workout and you're out the door.

do NOT do weights and cardio sequentially on the same day - you'll not get the best results.

[No Hope!]

Thanks for your help! Right - I have looked at the for the Guerilla Workout and can find lots of references to it but cannot actually find it! Can you point me in the right direction?

So basically you advise me to shift this belly first by doing the Guerilla Workout, changing my diet, continuing on my Abs and any extra sport that comes along and then once this is sorted move onto weights two times a week and Cardio three?

[cursor]

Guerilla Cardio

You should devise a plan that incorporates the following three elements

• Balanced nutrition
• Quality resistance training
• Cardiovascular activity

You will no doubt find this thread helpful: Some Links and helpful tips

[No Hope!]

I haven't got a clue about this whole diet side of things and this Guerilla Abs thing seems too good to be true.

[threenorns]

guerilla-style cardio is very very effective for fat-burning.

abs are ONLY made in the kitchen - you can crunch till the cows come home, but if your body fat is too high, no one will ever see them.

the first thing to realize is that you're not going to step into the perfect exercuse plan and the perfect eating plan on monday at 9am. it'll take you weeks to figure out the best systems for your body.

the trick is to start. read the stickies at the tops of the forums, then go through the different forums paying particular attention to posts by cursor, LadyC, Jaster, MostMuscle, IronMan, and Firehawk. there are other gurus in there, but those are the ones i'm most familiar with and can think of off the top of my head. often they'll contradict each other - but that's because what works for one may not work for another. this is where you have to make your own determination.

like i said before, consistent application of effort is the key.

[No Hope!]

Thank you for your help!