Fitness advice

billy2shots wrote: »

First off there is no such thing as toning up.
There’s losing fat, gaining muscle or recomping.

The first two speak for themselves, recomping is where you lose fat and gain muscle at the same time. Sounds perfect right? Wrong. Out of the 3 it is by far the hardest thing to do. You must master nutritional intake and timing of those macros around exercise to make it work in the long run. Luckily brand new trainees can recomp during their first 6 months of training. After that window you really have to choose between gaining muscle (along with fat) or losing fat (whilst losing a little muscle).

However we are getting ahead of ourselves. No amount of training will out do a poor diet. Nutritional intake is key in being successful regardless of which goal you choose.
First you need to work out your ‘maintenance Calorie intake’. This is how much you need to eat to stay exactly as you are.
Once maintenance has been determined you will then tweak that number depending on your goal.

Muscle gain=250 calories a day extra
Fat loss =500 calories a day less
Recomp=Maintenance (six months then pick from the two above)

Those maintenance calories can then be split between food groups. I always recommend 0.7grams of protein per lb of bodywey (actually it’s 1g per f lb of lean body mass but not many are experienced to work that out so will stick to 0.6g of total weight)

Fat- healthy fat from some nuts, extra virgin olive oil, eggs, coconut oil etc. Somewhere in the region of 0.3-0.5g per lb of body weight is a good starting point.

Carbs- The remaining calories can be used for carbohydrates. Again healthy choices are prefect. Foods low on the glycemic index are better, so wholemeal breads and pasta Ofer white etc etc.

Some respond better to low carb high fat diets and others the complete opposite. Above is a good staring point.

Once diet is nailed down then you can move on to exercise.
Running will not ‘tone’ your body as explained earlier. Running will help you lose fat through energy expenditure with the correct diet but will not add muscle (very small amount to legs not withstanding).
Resistance training with weights or body weight is the way to add muscle.
Those runners you see on tv with good muscle development have spent years in the gym.
Swimming can add a little muscle and help lose fat but again the muscle will be nothing compared to resistance training.

Please don’t us PTs. £499 and a few months is what’s needed to gain a PT qualification. In 20 years of training I can count on one hand the number of PTs that actually know their stuff.
The amount of online resources these days is more than enough to refer to for exercise form. So many PTs teach dangerous form and it’s scary to watch.
If you are desperate to throw good money away then make sure someone has qualifications relating to nutrition.

This is the very basics but feel free to ask more.