Hey, hi, hello internet. I’m going to add more knowledge to your collection of knowledge today. (It’s gonna be a long one, brace yourself.)

I’ve been a chubby kid my entire life. I have no idea how it feels to have a flat stomach or toned arms. I was born with rolls and they’ve never gone away. So since at least age 11 I’ve been interested in weight loss and fitness. Now, I am one of the lucky ones, I’ve never been too obsessive about my weight and I’ve never had any of the typical eating disorders. I’d say I fell into the category of: A bad relationship with food and some very mild body dysmorphia. However, I have been on the diet and exercise fad for all of my life and like most stories, mine always ended in failure giving up.

Then there was a morning in February of 2018 where I woke up and thought to myself… 

“Hey, self!”

“What up, fam?”

“Get your butt out of bed, we’re doing the thing and this time we’re gonna do it right.”

“Okay, sure, we’ll be miserable for two weeks and then order $40 worth of pizza? Wake me up in two weeks, thanks.”

“No! We’re gonna do it slow, we’re gonna change our whole thing here, and it’s gonna stick!”

“Oh. Wait, really?”

“Dude, get out of bed!”

I wish I could tell you there was some magical moment that happened or some inspiring quote that changed my life, but truly I woke up and decided to become healthy.

My tactic…

…was to start so slowly that I could trick myself into thinking I wasn’t changing anything.

I replaced one diet pepsi per day with one can of sparkling water. Yes, it was disgusting. Flavored sparkling water tastes like 10 year old Sprite that a grapefruit sneezed into. And now I’m addicted to it.

A couple weeks after that, I replaced two diet pepsi’s a day with sparkling water. (I love carbonation, so regular water wasn’t doing it for me.) And a couple months in I was able to start weaning off a few of my sparkling waters and replacing them with regular water.

It took almost a year for me to stop drinking diet pepsi every day. Don’t feel bad about yourself if you’re addicted to soda, those companies manufacture soda to be addicting. Walk before you run.

Two or three months into breaking my sody-pop addiction, once it wasn’t something I had to focus a lot of energy on, I started to do the same thing with replacing my fast-food meals or bad snacks with healthy alternatives. (I’ll do a whole other blog on how to fix your diet, so I’ll leave it at that.)

By the top of 2019…

…I was finally ready to implement going to the gym. Again, I started ridiculously slow. I bought some dumbbells and did tiny workouts twice a week in my living room. I also started a Pinterest board of weight lifting workouts; subscribed to and downloaded every fitness podcast so I could listen in the car or at work; procrastinated everything to watch way too many YouTube videos under the excuse of “doing research”.

From February to June I consumed and digested all of the knowledge that I could hold. I was still walking my dogs at a very hilly park and doing light dumbbell workouts at home, but for the most part I was learning. Now that’s what I call a slow burn.

In fact, one reason I started this 90 day expedition is because I got bored! I’m not saying I’m an expert, but I felt like there wasn’t anything more groundbreaking for me to learn until I complete my first set of big goals. I mean, after 8 months of constant research there comes a point where you have to trust yourself and do the thing.

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Alright, here we go.

Amidst all my research, one thing that I thought was lacking on the world wide web was a FREE comprehensive guide on how to start weight lifting or working out at the gym in general. Not a specific quad routine, not a “do what feels best” sort of guide, not ten quick tips; I scoured the internet for someone who could tell me how to do this for myself. I, like I’m sure most people do, had to piece together bits of information from multiple sources and a couple paid subscriptions to finally get a handle on how to:

• Start going to the gym
• Make my own workout routines
• Adjust my workouts accordingly to get the best results

And listen, I know this is not a big blog and I’m not a known person that anyone would take advice from, but if one person finds this and I make life a little bit easier for them, then I’ve done what I came here to do.

Also let me preface this my saying: Please don’t sue me. I’m literally no body. If you take my advice, then you’ve taken advice from a novice stranger on the internet. (How do people actually sue people for that? Geeze.)

Phase 1

If you’ve never gone to the gym, start by going to the gym. That’s it. Pick a time that works for you and challenge yourself to go to the gym for 20 minutes every day.

If you’re sleepy that day:

• Walk around the gym and familiarize yourself with where everything is located
• Stretch for 10 minutes and then walk on the treadmill
• Hop in the sauna if your gym has one
• Find a corner to sit down and drink coffee while you save Instagram workouts

It really doesn’t matter what you do for those 20 minutes as long as you’re doing it at the gym.

Then if you’re feeling more energetic on a particular day:

• Put your treadmill on an incline and walk
• Pick a machine that you know how to use and do 10 reps on a very low weight (I don’t usually recommend machines, but I’ll get there.)
• Pick a different cardio machine and try to challenge yourself for 10 minutes

My point is, make a habit of going to the gym.

 

Phase 2

Make yourself a beginner weightlifting routine. This is going to take a minute to sort out, so commit an evening to yourself and really figure this out.

1. Decide on a stretch flow that you like; it doesn’t have to be complicated or lengthy, just stretch all your big muscles until you feel slightly more flexible than when you started. I have a secluded part of my gym with a wall that I can put my butt towards when I stretch so I don’t worry about people looking at my booty.
2. Decide if you’re going to do an upper body day or lower body day and then choose three exercises from the following body parts:

Upper Body Day:
Shoulders, Biceps, Triceps, Rear Delts, Upper Back, and/or Chest

Lower Body Day:
Quads, Butt, Hips, Inner Thighs, Calves, and/or Lower Back

If you’re as neurotic as I am then you’ll already have a bunch of weightlifting videos, pinterest pins, and instagram posts to pull from for these body parts, but if not then google it! Type into your search bar: “Free weight shoulder workouts” and you’ll be met with all the oily, orange, muscle people that you never asked for but who know how to lift heavy things.

How you’re going to structure your workout:

1. Stretch: 3 to 5 minutes

2. Aerobic Warm-Up: 5 to 10 minutes (i.e. walking on the treadmill or yoga; anything that gets your heart rate going while also letting you focus on breathing)

3. Weight Lifting: 3 sets of 10 reps per exercise

Example Upper Body Day:
3×10 Cable Machine Tricep Pull-Downs
3×10 Dumbbell Bicep Curls
3×10 Lateral Pull-Downs

4. Cardio: 10 minutes (optional, but I like to add in an inclined walk on the treadmill to round out my workout)

5. Cool Down: 5 minutes of stretching / walking

A couple notes before we move on:

• Don’t skip your stretching or warm-up! Just don’t.
• If you’re going to use machines, stick to the ones that aren’t rigid. Go for the Cable Machine or the Lateral Pull-Down Machine that has the swingy bar, not the metal beams; Unless you’re trying to body build, you don’t need to isolate specific muscles. If you want to tone your body focus on types of weight training that forces you to use other parts of your body for stability. If you’re confused on this, just opt for free weights, they’re probably better any.
• When picking the amount of weight for each exercise, use this rule of thumb: Pick a weight that is easy enough that you can do all 10 reps but difficult enough that you’re making an involuntary weird face by the 9th and 10th rep.

This is how I structure all my workouts.

As for a split, I like to workout 5 to 6 days a week and I never do the same day twice in a row. I go back and forth between upper and lower body days and usually switch up the actual lifts that I do each time, too. Sometimes I throw in full days of cardio if my muscles are feeling extra sore. Listen to your body and don’t push yourself too hard. Personally, I’d rather go too slow and take an extra month to reach my goal than go too hard and injure myself and have to start from square one once I’m healed.

That being said, when you’re ready to kick it up a notch…

 

Phase 3

This is where I was when I decided to do this 90 day challenge for myself. I was nailing all my workouts and stalling in weight loss and getting bored. If you’re here, try amping things up.

> Use compound movements instead of working on one body part. That is, instead of doing a Bicep Curl try doing a Hammer Curl into a Dumbbell Overhead Press. It’s still one movement but it’s a little more intricate, requires more stability and thus more muscles activating, and works your biceps, triceps, and your shoulders.

> Add a HIIT routine into the mix. (Or crossfit or a workout class if you’re brave enough, but I’m personally not there yet)

> Make some new, baby, fitness goals that align with the main goal you’re still working towards.

For example, my main goal is to lose fat, but I’ve decided that I’m going to start running. I’ve always been too heavy and (too ignorant about running form) to run without injuring my lower back or knees. Well, that was 30 pounds ago. So now my little tiny baby goal is to do interval jogging as my cardio at least twice a week. It’s still pushing me towards my main goal, but it’s something smaller that I can check the box off of every week and feel like I’m progressing more quickly. It’s essentially a distraction from my main goal.

> Add supplements to your routine! Don’t go overboard, but give half a scoop of pre-workout a try or drink a protein powder shake after you workout. I’ve been loving BCAAs for extra hydration (and flavor) during my warmup.

See what works for you, see what challenges your body, and take it slow.

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If I could travel back in time this is all the stuff that I would tell my younger self. I’ve been gathering all of this information in my brain-place for years and if public school taught me anything it’s that I should regurgitate that information back into the universe in my own words.

These are the sources of more or less all of my knowledge:

(And these are all people and accounts I legitimately follow and love. There is no filler that I popped in to make a longer list. I told you I’m obsessed.)

YouTube:

• Whitney Simmons
• Heidi Somers
• Blogilates
• Mari Fitness
• Jordan Shrinks
• MissRemiAshten
• Nikki Blackketter
• Love Sweat Fitness

Instagram: (The best place to find new workouts, imho)

• julia_terpak
• buffbunny
• whitneyysimmons
• noexcuses.fitlife
• atighteru
• mytrainercarmen
• lisafiitt

Podcasts:

• Fitness Matter with Pahla B
• Chasing Excellence
• Dishing Up Nutrition
• Cut the Fat Weight Loss Podcast
• TRAINED by Nike

 

Okay cool, so I basically just wrote an E-Book. Sorry for the wordiness, friends. You’re welcome for filling some of your knowledge gaps, internet.