How do I even start?

Hi guys,
So I got a question from one of my followers that basically asked me to make her a workout regime as she didn't really know what she should be doing for cardio and weight lifting. She does not have access to any classes at her gym but has access to a gym so here was my response. Thought this might help any others in the same situation :)

Hi :) thanks for trusting me with it!

Well I presume you are trying to lose weight so I suppose I'll just take it from there.

First of all, as you probably know, cardio is the way to lose weight. A lot of research has been done on fasted cardio which is the only cardio I do now. Dunno if you know what that is but basically when you wake up, work out (literally anything, running, elliptical or bike - I really like doing the bike for 30 minutes in the morning) but don't eat before hand. Literally make it the first thing you do in the morning. Also don't push it too hard in the morning, obviously you need to be sweating but not to the point where you get sick. I did a whole blog post on fasted morning cardio and it's one of the things I swear by!!

Another thing with cardio might be setting yourself a goal. For example, train to run a 10k (not necessarily a race, just by yourself) by the end of the year, which might encourage you to go out for runs. If you don't have a goal, you really have no real reason to push yourself!

Next, weight lifting. There are so many beginner articles and I live from bodybuilding.com haha, it's where I took my first strength training regime from. For you, you can do a two or three day split. With the two day, it's split into upper and lower body day and is more cardio based, obviously you're working a hell of a lot of muscles on the upper body day haha.

I prefer to do a three day split (did a two day for a couple of months and didn't see strength gains/results as much as I would've liked). There are soooooooo many options so I'm not even going to give you a set regime. Sometimes I even go to the gym with my base exercises (on my blog I've posted tons on this, link is in my bio of my instagram btw haha) and then I just end up googling back exercises for example and just do some extra sets! Then some days I only do like three different exercises but tons of sets on each. There is honestly such a wide variety of stuff you can do I cannot give you a set regime.

To start, have a look at this: http://muscleandbrawn.com/3-day-beginner-muscle-gaining-workout/

I think starting a new weight lifting regime is daunting because when you go in to the gym, you don't really know where everything is and you're kind of walking around like a headless chicken. But half the battle is starting. You HAVE to start somewhere to get somewhere!!!! so please don't be scared to do it, just fricking do it ;)

Also, I think that 80% of losing weight is through your diet. If 80% was exercise, I'd be a fitness model hahaha so keep that in mind. I post literally everything I eat and so do tons of other instagrams so there's tons of information! I don't have a completely strict diet because I see this as a lifestyle and I need to bear in mind that this is a long-term thing and not push myself to a breaking point when I binge. But I base my diet around high protein/high fats and fill the rest with carbs. I find I'm much fuller on energy and just generally feel healthier when I eat less carbs! I have the worst body type for storing fat though so my body can't really tolerate carbs.

I would just take this as a basis for moving forward but not y'know swear by it. At least once a day, I find myself googling something/reading a book/reading an article about the science behind it all and my knowledge has grown so much over the past two years. What you just need to do is gradually educate yourself and learn what works best for your body. It does take time but you should think of changing your lifestyle instead of trying to lose weight for the short term. I made that mistake and lost all the weight I wanted to, and found I put it back on when I actually started eating normally because I was eating so little. So please learn from my mistakes, do not starve yourself. It is true that as soon as you go back to just normal eating, I never went crazy but I still put the weight back on!

Sorry if this is a bit all over the place, just trying to get as much information for you as I can in :) keep reading articles etc and get a good idea of what might work, try it and if it doesn't, try something else.

With your limitations on cardio classes etc I would do more outside activities like running/long walks (I'm doing a 52 mile walk next year which should help the fat shed off hahah!!) and make sure to SET YOURSELF GOALS. It's so important to do that otherwise you don't have a clear idea of what you actually want from what you're doing.

I hope you don't mind me putting this on my blog.

Hopefully this helped,

xxx