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[The Gopher]

Since last January, I've been trying on and off to lose some stubborn belly fat. I am by no means overweight, in fact, I'm underweight I believe. I weigh about 140lbs and am 5'8. However, all my friends are as thin as me and they are all in a lot better shape, most of them have definition to their abs and stomach. I've always wanted that, but have never been able to put in the work required. So, in an effort to improve the three things mentioned in this thread, I am going to start an extensive exercise and diet program that also includes giving up smoking. To most of you, I'm sure this will be boring and ignored, but you all are more than welcome to use this thread as a journal for any exercise you do, what you eat, drink, or to talk about health in general.

My goal is simple - gain muscle in my arms and back, and lose the stubborn belly fat. If this goes well, I will actually gain weight. I start in 25 minutes and will be giving up my sugary drinks and my bad habit. Wish me luck!

[The Headliner]

Good luck giving up smoking, again.

[Illusion]

I pound meat for exercise.

[Advocate]

I gained some weight in the past year drinking a lot of beer and eating carbs.  So recently, I have been working to get that off.  Lots of walking, short term lower carb diet, and such.  Plus, I have not really done weights since high school, so I grabbed a couple 25lbs dumb bells and am doing certain things with them.  My goal is repetitions versus higher weights.  I do not want to gain muscle as much as I want to maintain health and strength.  So I have been doing that since June.

[The Gopher]

That's awesome. This is the first dumb bell I've ever owned and within a few weeks I saw improvement in my arms. So far today I have not smoked, although it's been hard. I've had one cup of coffee - I couldn't resist. But I did eat breakfast for a change and tried to pick up my pace on my walk to class. :y:

[Neil]

Good luck. In the first 3 months you train you'll see results if you train regularly and sort your diet out. It's hard to just single out muscles and say you want them to grow, your best of training big muscles primary once a week as they need time to rest. I currently weight train 4 times a week (Back and Shoulders on Monday, legs on Tuesday, Chest on Thursday and Biceps/Triceps/Abs on Friday or Saturday) which builds the muscle and to sort the left over fat you want to lose i'd recommend 5 a side football or sprint intervals. I play weekly 5 a side on Wednesday afternoons and a 90 minute 11 a side footie match on Sundays and football training for an hour on Thursday nights. I have gained muscle and size and lost body fat from the exercise on top of the weights. Aslong as your motivated you'll be fine.

[The Headliner]

Neil is in fact a machine.

[Neil]

Oh believe that. Did I also mention about my superhero night job?

[The Headliner]

}{urri finally passed the torch, eh? (Not the Human Torch of course, not even }{urri could pass him.)

[The Gopher]

UPDATE: Well, the weight lifting is going well, but my hatred for cardio is making it hard to keep with my goals. Also, I've significantly cut back on smoking, but let's be real, the cold turkey method was never going to work.

As for the diet, my main focus thus far has been cutting out soda. Unfortunately, this means I'm hardly drinking anything at all because for some reason I always forget to drink water.

[Neil]

Try and do sport then as thats the most fun way of doing cardio. Or interval sprints on a treadmill - they are very effective and are done before you know it. e.g 5 mins warm up then 10 min interval sprints... 30 secs jog, 1 minute sprint, keep this up for 10 mins, and then finish with a 5 min jog at the end. Very good use of 20 mins and the minutes will fly by. Much better then doing 30-40 minute boring same pace jog on a treadmill.

[The Gopher]

So, last time around, I failed miserably. But today I woke up and I felt really motivated to finally stick with this. A few weeks ago I bought a weight bench, but within the very first week sprained my wrist. My wrist is feeling better now, so I decided to give this whole "workout" thing another try.

I started by eating a nice, hefty breakfast. Two eggs, two slices of toast, and three strips of bacon. I know, not the healthiest thing in the world, but at least I ate breakfast! I skipped lunch, like a buffoon and had a fairly hefty steak dinner. I've drank tons of water today, and as of almost three hours ago I stopped smoking.

Of course, that isn't that much of an accomplishment, but I did do 40 minutes of P90 (the precursor and much less intense version of P90X) followed by three sets of bench pressing (start at 50lbs) and some exercises with my dumb bell. I'm going to stick to this routine for about a week or two to adjust before I up the intensity.

Oh, and since this post is already a mile long, in addition to cleaning out and hiding ash treys in the house, I have been taking herbal supplements for two weeks now, one of which is designed to help with quitting smoking.

I'll keep everyone updated!

[Ethan]

Good Luck man, I need to lose about 10 pounds, think I'll start exercising too.

[The Gopher]

Last week, I went 23 hours without smoking. As of yesterday, I started taking a small dosage of lithium used to help make quitting easier. I'm 24 hours and 19 minutes removed from my last cigarette, and I've only had TWO real cravings. I think this is really happening this time!

[Neil]

In the past 7 days i've:

Cycled 13KM twice
Rowed 2500 metres twice
Played 1 hour 5 a side football
1 hour football training
90 minute football match
2 weights sessions

Hopefully that makes you feel bad and motivates you to get back to running/lifting! If it doesn't, then meh.. I tried