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I'm about to enter the world of lifting, as it is about damn time I got around to it. I've got a personal trainer who is going to run me through techniques and build a program but I'm a bit lost when it comes to the nutrition side of it - any tips out there for a 30 year old male in reasonable condition looking to get stronger and not wear himself down?
There was an AAQC by @JhanicManifold, but basically:
don't drink your calories, unless they are a protein milkshake
avoid highly processed foods, they aren't satiating
eat more veg, whole grains and legumes instead of pasta and rice, potatoes are somewhere in the middle
eat 1g of protein per 1lb of bodyweight
take creatin
You'll start losing fat if you change your diet, but you won't grow muscle if you don't eat enough protein. Eat more quark, egg whites, lean meat, fish, seafood, legumes. Drink protein shakes. They are just fat-free powdered milk with sweeteners, and without them you will find it hard to hit this 1g/1lb target. Find protein bars you can eat instead of candy if you have a sweet tooth. Creatin is equally harmless, but really helps you grow stronger.
Speaking of the training program:
a personal trainer is good idea, their biggest job is to make sure you don't skip your gym days
talk to them about your goals: what do you want to look like: a gymnast, a bodybuilder? Do you want to be able to brag about your single-rep weights or twenty pullups? Or do you just want to touch your toes and do a bridge?
establishing a routine is important. You shouldn't schedule your gym sessions around the rest of your activities, it should be the other way around: you can't do this on Monday, that's your gym day. Don't have too many gym days per week, it's easier to establish a routine if it's only two or three
with two or three gym days per week you should concentrate on compound movements. Don't go too heavy, 10-15 reps per set is the sweet spot for noob gains
you'll still want a dedicated day for legs if you have three gym days, because leg muscles are big and take longer to recover
form over reps (if there's one thing to hate CrossFit for, it's for ignoring this)! Form is especially important for compound movements. If you don't feel your PT is being an asshole and just looking for something to complain about every set of yours, they might be looking at their phone instead of your form, ask them for a form check
however, everyone's skeleton is different (I know mine is). Some PTs are super anal about foot placement, hand placement, where the bar should touch your body, how deep you should go, etc. If something feels wrong, stop and tell them. If they tell you you should deadlift with your feet in parallel and you feel like you can really engage your hips with your feet in a more toe-out stance, tell them. If they have you do preacher curls with an EZ bar and you just can't find the right grip, tell them
I should really make a giant "Nerd's Guide to Getting Ripped & Shredded" as a post that we could always link for these questions, rehashing everything every wednesday seems like a bit of a waste of time.
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When you're just starting? Mostly just make sure you're not eating total garbage, honestly. Both lifting and eating requires lots of little improvements over a long time. It's way too easy to get frustrated if you feel like you need to dive in and get 100,000 things exactly right otherwise all your gainz will be for naught. Most of the advice/debate out there is focused on how to take a 1% elite athlete and turn them into a 0.1% elite athlete, and you'll hear tons of people spouting their very particular system for trying to do such. You can probably ignore most of it.
Just start with the little things, which is probably just cutting out some garbage. Don't eat piles of dessert food. Don't drink alcohol to excess. Try to get decently regular sleep. Just keep going to the gym, even if you "don't wanna". If you don't have this base, biting off a bigger to-do list is just a recipe for frustration and failure.
If you have this good base and have consistently had this good base for a few months, then, the next typical recommendations are to try to get enough protein and get a decent approximation for how many total calories you're eating. Even this is kind of hard, takes some effort, and is slow-going. Finding a calorie tracker (or making your own) that isn't so frustrating that you quit is a task. Don't expect to settle it on day one.
Man, improving my diet has helped WAY more than I expected. Just eat lots of lean meats and vegetables and losing weight becomes both quick and painless. At least that's how it has been for me so far.
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Eat clean. It's not too complicated. My brother, who is a powerlifter, pretty much eats steak and sweet potatoes for every meal. He also stays on protein and hydration shakes all day every day, but he is way more intense that me. I'm a more casual lifter and do not worry about my nutrition as much. I try to eat clean, homemade food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Greek yogurt in the morning, sandwiches for lunch, caesar salad and chicken for dinner, and nuts/protein bars/fruit and other snacks throughout the day. It works for what I need.
You don't need to overdo the lifting. 3x a week doing compound gains is more than enough to get started and you'll definitely see changes by 60 days in. Your physique will be better. You'll have more energy. Moving and lifting things in your daily life will get easier.
One other piece of advice is try going to the gym when it's not super crowded. I go to the gym after work and it's jammed, especially the squat racks and bench presses. If I could, I'd go to the gym in the middle of the day and not have to worry about it being overrun.
Good luck and have fun!
Thank you! I work nights so crowded gyms aren't really an issue for me thankfully haha.
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Download a calorie tracker (I recommend Macros but MyFitnessPal is the most popular). Estimate TDEE*. You want TDEE - 500 worth of calories for losing fat** ("cut") or TDEE + 300 for building muscle ("bulk"). The other big thing is getting enough protein, which your tracker will calculate. Here's how many grams/day you're looking for.
Everything else like nutrient timing is an advanced lifter's concern.
* You should expect to to gain/lose a pound of weight for every 3500kcal of surplus/deficit. If this doesn't go as expected after your initial water weight changes in the first week, adjust your TDEE estimation.
** If you're obese, make it 500 times how many BMI classifications you're overweight by
EDIT: If you want the math behind it, the rule of thumb is to have 30kcal~ of deficit for each pound of fat in your body. But that's a little complicated and it's hard to know the exact amount without an advanced body scan anyway.
Thank you!
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