I have been begrudgingly fleeced out of my chewing gum at work. As such I'm in a sharing mood.

At some point I'm my life I would welcome the opportunity to become schooled in nutrition and training. On a more professional level than the current personal level. As such I'm always willing lend a shaky hand to friends who seek a little advice.

I would like to post a small snippet from a document I written for a friend who was new to training.

A post to a friend

Right, where do we start and what do we address.

As you probably have guessed yourself, your diet is far from optimal to help you achieve your current goals. Goals I assume to be to keep a reasonable level of body fat whilst building some quality muscle. Correct? Good, let’s continue.

At the moment, as you are new to training, your body is will be in the honeymoon period of weight training. Basically this means that seeing as though this is the real first time your training on a regular basis, and hitting the gym hard. Your body will be forced to quickly adapt to the stresses you are placing upon it by rapidly adding whatever is needed to cope with the new demand. In this case muscle. It is quite literally the initial shock to your system that causes this! However as you have probably guessed, this period does not last. Whilst you could get away with eating dog shit for dinner, breakfast or whatever during the honeymoon period, the time approaches were this type of diet is going to stop you from gaining in the gym. Not only will this slowdown your increase of the weights on a weekly basis, it could also stop you gaining any muscle at all as energy demands are not met. Now I know anyone with half a brain cell wouldn’t be stupid enough to take the time out and pay to go to a gym. Just to end up looking exactly the same 1-year down the line. All your £’s would have been spent on what would essentially be a trip to see some sweaty people in skimpy clothing.

The next bridge we must cross is to detail what you should expect from the gym results wise. I am going to use this time to speak about body composition and goal setting.

Essentially there are 2 people in the gym. Or at least there should be. They are those who are bulking, and those who are cutting. The bulkers are the guys whose primary aim is to add quality muscle mass whilst trying to keep a limit on fat mass. The cutters are guys whose aim is to strip them of body fat whilst maintaining as much muscle as they can in the process. Your now thinking “hey wait a moment; I want to add muscle WHILST stripping bodyfat”. Now this is entirely possible for honeymoon trainers and steroid users. A natural trainer with a little training under his belt will be hard pressed to do both. This type of stuff isn’t achievable for 95% of natural trainers. Swallow the bitter pill and let it go! As you know my personal aim is to Bulk up until I’m happy with my muscle mass levels. Mass doesn’t come overnight and will take time and patience. Only when I’m happy with my levels of mass or unhappy with possible acquired bodyfat, would I consider cutting. it would be pointless of me to do anything else at this given time. For starters nobody will see your 6 pack hiding under your best winter coat! No use cutting down to a 6 pack unless you have the muscle to accompany it. Unless of course you fancy the look of a peasant class chaver , or Christian Bale from the Machinist. You decide what is right for you!

The rant is over and hopefully your head should be clearer on what choices you have in front of you