Counter-Productive Lifestyle

Wow..I am glad I found this msg board. After trolling around here for a few days I feel compelled to share my story as well.

In the last few weeks I have come to understand that my counter-productive lifestyle habits have been the primary inhibitor to my fitness progress.

I have been lifting since 1995 (off and on) and I have never been satisfied with my results. for a period (97-01) I was in the navy and watched my workout partners all getting ripped and huge around me and I never understood why my body wouldn't respnd equally.

It never occurred to me that nutrition was even a factor. All these years of intense weight training all the while I was consuming whole pizzas, beer & soda, and bacon-cheeseburgers everyday.

I guess I gave up all-together about 2 years ago and blamed my failure(s) on genetics. At least before, while my belly was fat, my shoulders and chest looked proprtionatly large but a few weeks ago, after some critical self-analysis I recognized that I had become an un-attractive, pudgy, lazy bastard.

Specs : 5' 9" 190LBS

At this moment of self-doubt and loathing a close friend of mine handed me a book called "Body For Life" by Bill Phillips (I think). Anyways, I read it cover to cover and was immediatly inspired to give body building another try.
It has been 4 weeks now and I am astonished that this much progress could be possible. I've only lost 5 lbs but my frame looks completely different!

But the point of this post is to outline the myths that I whole-heartedly believed to be true, yet were the primary reasons for my bodybuilding failures in the past.

1. Nutrition is not important since you're working out.
This has to be by single largest failure. I kept myself fat by eating whatever I
wanted to, whenever I wanted.

2. The best way to get a cut look is by lifting harder and starving yourself
This actually worked for a few months until my muscles started looking flat
and I was much weaker in the gym. Parts of my body got thinner but other
parts looked freakishly out of proportion (love handles).

3. More food will make you fatter
Even after reading "Body For Life" I still felt totally skeptical that 6 meals a
day could result in fat loss, not fat gain. Needless to say, I have been
astonished at my results thus far on this 6 meal a day plan.

4. You want bigger muscles, you must lift bigger weights
I never understood the concept of "form". I actually thought I could sway
around and force more weight up even if clearly the intended muscle group
was not being used to lift the weight.

5. Aerobics is not necessary if you're working out intensly with weight training
Again, aerobics (specifically running) is very difficult and requires major
discipline. I have always hated it and because of that I never did aerobic
exercise. Seeing the results, my tune has changed.

6. Supplements are required to build muscles
Supplements helped keep me fat regardless of the effort I put forth in the gym
Now I realize that supplements are really not necessary and if used
improperly they will keep/make you fat. Whey protein and 3 cheese pizzas
do not go well together.

7. I don't really care about my legs so I'll only work my upper body.
Man do I feel stupid. The human body is far more complex than that.

Anyways,
Just wanted to share

Welcome to DB. What a great post, thanks for sharing.

I too started with Body For Life and then moved on to MaxOT, which I love even more. Glad you got back into lifting. I think you'll like hanging out here.

Wanna join the fat loss challenge? It starts next week. Details are here, in case you missed it. The Race The more the merrier.

excellent post, welcome- A lot of us here have been down the same road, and ended up in this place only to find out that just about everything we thought we knew was wrong.

awesome post...welcome to DB!

"Try and fail is the manner of losers. Try and learn is the way of the strong." -- Unknown

[image]http://img376.imageshack.us/img376/8302/opensuse2oi.jpg[/image].

Now that was a great first post! Welcome. What you just said are the myths and there's so many people out there just don't get it. Really glad to see you do. Nutrition is like 97% of this.

Thank you for sharing this.

Marc C. David - NGA CPT
Author of NoBull Bodybuilding
www.nobullbodybuilding.com

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