I have been extremely consistent for about 11 months, however no ever looks at me and says ‘Oh he probably goes to the gym’
Several reasons
1)Poor starting point
Had a lot of fat and almost no muscle, overweight
2)Trash program
The coach in the gym directly put me on machines without squat bench etc, 20sets per muscle group
- (Probably) poor genetics
Barely saw any ‘rapid’ progression on my lifts in the start, took me weeks to increase weight
4)Obsessed with losing fat/fatigue from cut
Ended up cutting way too long, I wanted to get ‘lean’, but since I had no muscle, never lost my gut, just looked even worse ‘skinny fat’
However I seem to have fixed all the issues on my end, and am seeing slow but steady increase in reps and weights, it’s still kinda demotivating when my friends say that they can’t see progress but ofc they don’t know how bad I fucked up and ngl I am actually getting a little excited with everything coming together, and was wondering how long did it take y’all to start looking good
I tell you what my personal trainer told me about weight loss: When it comes to losing fat, you have to view it as you would see a puddle drying up. The areas of water on the edges will be the first to go, then slowly it will dry up until the center is left, that being the deepest part of the puddle. That’s how fat loss goes. The area with the most fat will be the last to go. You cannot target special areas for fat loss, so if you think doing more sit-ups will make your gut magically disappear, sorry, it’s doesn’t work that way.
I had already internalised the fact that it’s not possible to target areas for fat loss, but this analogy is really helpful to me. I used to be much stronger and leaner than I am now, and I think this framing will help me because at peace with my puddle as it shrinks. Thanks for sharing.
…but if i put some ab musculature on there, shouldn’t the fat be less visible, I know you can’t spot reduce, but I thought if you had low muscle, the fat is just gonna be more visible
To summarise, musculature won’t hide fat because the fat layer of the belly is on top of the abs, fat hides abs.
I’ve been a rower in the past and some of my colleagues were able to show abs easily. Others like me, literally had to follow a very harsh routine for a 17 yo kid to even be able to. I was plenty healthy, I just wanted to get abs because of course a 17yo wants to.
The issue? Genetics. Some people accumulate fat in the belly first, so it will be the literal last place where it will go away. This means that even though I was the strongest of the club, with best times on competitions, I had a (very minimal) fat layer on top of the abs I obviously had given the competition results, and it covered the abs themselves.
Now, this is an extreme example, but I think that it shows why sometimes we must accept that “taking out the belly” is a marathon, not a sprint. And it does not really matter which part of your body you exercise in regards to weight loss, since your body moves fat around to compensate for it. Yeah, you will build muscle and volume in the places you exercise, sure, but that won’t make belly fat go away by itself.
For example, I recently started exercising and dieting and went down from 128kg to 114kg, aiming to be back at 95ish. My belly has reduced a lot, fat too, all around my body. All I did was some intense static bike and dieting, no lifting until a while because I felt embarrassed with my body. In any case, it worked, literally anything works IF you keep up with both diet and exercise.
I don’t know when I started to look good. It was tricky for me because I had a long history of on again, off again anorexia and bulimia. In practice that meant my default state was quite overweight, and whenever I tried to diet, even if I started out sustainable and steady with the progress, I’d always succumb to the toxicity of my brain. I think in hindsight, the reason why I was never happy with my body when I did lose the weight was because of lack of muscle.
So that means that when I did actually start lifting, my only goal was to get stronger. Eventually I found myself losing weight because I was in a better headspace and able to improve my eating habits, but that was probably at least a year after I started. I was never able to cope with the bulk/cut cycle, that feels like a fairly advanced “technique” to get right. the weight loss I experienced was in part due to increased muscle mass and activity levels increasing my needed calories and my actual intake being fairly stable, combined with trying to eat more home cooked foods.
Another thing that delayed my actual strength was that I had a lot of weaknesses in various supporting muscles. It’s probably something you’ve experienced too, if you were on machines for a while. I think I loosely followed strong lifts, but I’m not sure. I had help from the powerlifting society. I had to put a lot of work into flexibility and stability, because it was like I was starting from the plateau, but once I started making proper progress and I understood good form, I improved quickly.
If I had to give advice to anyone wanting to get strong, I’d say to be stern with yourself about form. Yes, it’s satisfying as hell to see the number go up as you get stronger, but doing it properly is way more efficient in time and effort than letting oneself off with half reps or bad form. It’s one reason why I liked barbell exercises so much, it was much easier to make adjustments to target different muscle groups - little things like having a wider stance for squats, for example.
It depends on your goals. 5x5 is a pretty good program for muscle gain. Nutrition is super important to take in enough and the right stuff.
For me it was about 2 months to start seeing subtle changes. After like 8 months I think I was starting to look somewhat “fit”, then after like 1.5 years I think I started to have that “muscular” look
It sounds like you pretty much figured out what was holding you back. It’s frustrating to feel like you have wasted time, but good on you for pushing through! This stuff is genuinely hard to learn, lots of conflicting advice out there
Its less frustrating and more disheartening tbh, so much effort for nothing, but I try not to think about it and focus on the present
It’s not for nothing.
You are piloting a wildly more able, and healthy body now. Fitness health and mobility are a gift. Looking a certain way is just the bow on top.
I’ve been in a similar place with respect to lack of progress and feeling disheartened. Something that helped put some more sweetness into the bittersweet experience of having built a habit but it doesn’t feel like it’s working, is knowing just how significant exercise is for human health.
My field of study isn’t fitness, but being a scientist and also a nerd meant I rabbitholed into the whole fitness thing when I got frustrated with inaccurate or misleading “bro-science”. There’s a lot we’re still learning about how fitness works, but it seems like something that is basically true (as close to a medical consensus as I’ve ever seen) is that pretty much all humans are healthier with exercise, whether you’re fat or thin or fit or unfit. What exercise level is appropriate varies person to person, obviously (people who are overweight may find swimming easier than running for example), but basically everything you’re doing is fucking gold. My actual field of research is in biochemistry, so I’m most interested in the remodelling that happens at a cellular level, but I cannot state enough how significant getting up and about is. This kind of progress is even harder to measure or notice than muscle mass or body shape, but know that it is happening, and that your efforts aren’t for nought.
There’s a lot of really good advice here, even the stuff that seems a little mean. Mine is this… Go full nerd on this shit for 5 months.
Calculate your macros, weigh your food and track your weight, take a month to figure out your maintenance calories. Then do a 2 month bulk cycle, drop back to maintenance for a few weeks, then a 2 month cut cycle. Take pictures too.
Supplements in general are a waste of money. The notable exceptions are Creatine, its one of the few ones that show tangible benefits and a good preworkout (I’m up for work at 4am, gym is at 4pm… I need that serious jolt or I’m dogshit) I will say Ive fucked with some PEDs (not steriods but still… I couldnt pass an olympic piss test) but I’m not going to endorse them. Ill give you some candid advice on it if you want to reach out for more info privately.
What?
You “cut” after you “bulk”…
If you start out and immediately “cut” you’re just trying to lose weight.
“Bulk” is where you just build muscles. It’s hard to do because muscles are ridiculously inefficient which is why we need to lift weights to get a lot. We have to trick our body into thinking it needs huge inefficient muscles.
Once you have them, losing fat is easier because every small movement wastes a shit ton of fuel. And fat is fuel.
Like, it sounds like you picked up some buzzwords, but don’t understand them.
What/who is your “coach”? Like, are you in a CrossFit gym? Are you a kid doing school weightlifting? Is it an employee at a gym you go to?
Either way, your best advice is probably whatever you coach says, start listening to them.
You didn’t even give people your age. No one is going to give as good and relevant advice as the coach who’s already helping. You say you’re really out of shape, which is why the coach put you on machines rather than stuff like bench/squat. You need to build support muscles and get technique down on machines before you hurt yourself on weights.
If it was fast and/or easy, everyone would be jacked. It’s going to take a while and be difficult
Good Intel here but a super negative vibe. Dude is just asking some questions and he doesn’t need this heat.
Sry, yeah I was trying to lose weight, but tbh I have always heard people use the term ‘cut’ when giving advice to people who are starting fat
That being said, if I get literally close to 0 results in 8 months despite working hard and eating well, then I can be sure something is wrong with my training
Also I had to start on ground zero anyway when I started those compound movements, my form was shit, I might have had the strength (spoiler alert I didn’t) but it didn’t transfer over
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