The beginning of what I’m sure will be a long road. . .
After years of aimless workouts, I finally want to take my fitness to a higher level. Instead of just working out twice a week because it’s healthy, I want to challenge my body and watch it transform into a lean, mean, tight-body machine. I really want to see what my body is capable of looking like at its optimal performance level. I’m always tearing out workouts and clean eating recipes from magazines & I keep them all together in a workout binder for motivation. So now that I’ve kicked my a** into high gear and decided this is what I want to commit to, I just need to focus on staying motivated and not getting discouraged when I don’t see quick results.
For me, the challenge I’m running into right now is the clean eating. I’ve always been a healthy eater and love the stereotypical "hippie/granola" food 
so it’s easy for me to eat more blandly than most people. But the problem I’m encountering is the occassional cheat food. . . even though I’ve been a healthy eater, I’ve never restricted treats when I’ve wanted some. I’m not a huge sugar fanatic and never drink soda, but I’m finding it hard to go from 0 to cold turkey overnight. I find myself scrutinizing everything I’m about to eat. I crave egg salad because of the protein but never eat it because of the mayo. I freak out about rice because of the carbs. I even felt guilty about eating a hot link at a BBQ yesterday because it wasn’t lean chicken or fish. I just want to be able to find a happy medium with my diet and not stress about whether or not I’m doing it right.
August 12, 2008 at 9:50 pm
Your diet should match your goals. If you want to be 5% bodyfat (hypothetical ex), you should eat extremely clean while working out hard or expect to have to push your lifting and cardio to insane levels. When my best friend was taking his weight from 181 to 163 in six weeks (and maintaining lots of muscle) he was doing the freak show in the gym and in the kitchen. For normal physiques (12-18% bodyfat), you shouldn’t have to be burning out the belt on the treadmill or super picky on your eating, but keep working out consistently and avoid sugar/wasteful carbs as much as possible. (you let one in and all the others quickly follow)
August 12, 2008 at 9:52 pm
Your diet should match you goal (okay, duh). If you exercise more, you can also eat more, and if you eat junk, you should be prepared to have to work harder to get your body where you want it.
August 14, 2008 at 12:16 pm
How hard you have to diet depends on what you want from your body. The two times I got lean my abs never showed. I had good strength in the entire gut area on both occasions, but my diet sucked. I didn’t want the total package, just the power and size. A washboard stomach was not at all on my agenda and, with my high fat cell count and upbringing, I have to work very hard to get ripped abs.
Best!
August 21, 2008 at 11:35 am
Any idea how to calculate the amount of calories I should be eating on my on & off days?
August 21, 2008 at 11:53 am
Check out
http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showpost.php?p=205518961&postcount=497
August 21, 2008 at 2:37 pm
Thanks Decosta, the videos were awesome! I actually followed along and estimated all my numbers. From what I’ve figured, it looks like I need to keep my caloric intake at about 1600 a day in order to lose 2lbs/week, even if I’m lifting at the gym. Hmmmmm. . . doesn’t that sound a bit low?