Need specific fitness advice.

[Seshat]

I think you've missed what I am aiming for. My secondary goal is to gain strength. My primary goal is to tone my body and reverse the Global Expansion of my midsection, as well as get back in biking shape.

And here is one of my few disagreements with my learned colleague (Whiskey). Unfortunately the most effective link I've found to describe this (in a few minutes of googling) was Wikipedia, so here's the wikipedia info on skeletal muscle types.

There are several types of muscle in the human body. Cardiac (heart), smooth (intestines, other involuntary muscles), and skeletal (voluntary muscles).

Skeletal muscles contain two(ish) types of fibres, that I call 'jerk' and 'sustain', and the wikipedia article calls 'fast twitch' and 'slow twitch'. Or 'type 1' (sustain/slow twitch), and 'type IIa, type IIb, and type IIx' (jerk/fast twitch).

Lift your arm rapidly - as fast as you can. You just used jerk/fast twitch muscle cells. Now hold it there as long as you comfortably can. You're using sustain/slow twitch muscle cells.

Fast twitch muscle cells, at rest, are bulkier than slow twitch cells. So a muscle that's full of fast twitch cells looks like it belongs to Arnold Schwarzenagger. A muscle that's full of slow twitch cells looks like it belongs to Ginger Rogers.

If you want to fill a muscle with fast twitch cells, do heavy weights and few reps. With slow twitch cells, do lighter weights and more reps. Fast twitch, something like 2 sets of 5 reps is good. Slow twitch, try 3 sets of 10, or 2 sets of 15.

In either case, while you're trying to build strength, you should just barely be able to finish the last rep of the last set and maintain form. If you can do it easily, it's time to increase the weight. If you can't do it, you're using weights that are too heavy for you.

Starting out, you may need to use just the bar, with no weights at all. Or even just do it without any weights! If you're starting where I started from, minimal weights and 1 set of 5. It'll build.



Now for the food side.

Eat until you're not quite full. If you're still hungry - not peckish, but actually hungry - half an hour after the meal, eat a bit more. If you're not peckish half an hour after you ate, you probably ate more than your body needed. Try eating a bit less next meal. If you actually feel full half an hour later, as opposed to neither peckish nor neutral, you did eat too much.

If you're attempting to lose fat, you'll probably be a bit peckish until you're at your preferred fat/muscle ratio. It's okay, you get used to it and it's not a problem.

By the time you're ready to maintain weight, you'll be familiar with your body's natural signals, and able to control what you eat almost automatically. If you find your waistbands getting tight, switch back to letting yourself be peckish.

Body condition score This body condition score is aimed at cats and dogs, but you can analogise it to humans. It's independent of weight, BMI, or body type, and gives a good idea of what a healthy level of body fat is.

Use it to determine whether you should gain or lose fat. (If you need to gain fat, see a doctor - there are some people whose natural body type predisposes them to not have 'enough' fat, but for most people, it's an indicator of starvation, malnutrition or disease.)

(Note that I do NOT say 'gain or lose weight'. Gaining muscle is good for you, at least to a point. Gaining or losing other body tissues is involuntary - it comes along with gaining/losing fat and/or muscle, and with age.)

[Seshat]

And another double-post.

Not all 'diets' (ie, lifestyle eating choices) work for everyone. Atkins clearly works for Whiskey, and good for her. Low Glycaemic Index/Glycaemic Load works for me.

As long as you get enough calories and aren't malnourished, the diet works. It should also consist of foods you can sustainably afford, enjoy preparing, and enjoy eating. It should contain celebration foods, because the ritual of celebratory food is so important to almost all human cultures. And it should contain an allowance for small amounts of food not strictly in the diet plan - eg, Jester's beer. Or my occasional lemon meringue pie. (Which is SOOOO not low GI. But also sooo good.)

And it doesn't need to have an 'official' name. If you develop something that works for you, all on your own, then who cares? If it works, it WORKS. Go for it.