help for my wife

[laytownking]

my wife and I are about to get a membership to a gym and I was wondering what would be a good work out plan for her. she is a bit over weight and she complains about it all of the time. The issue is I don't know a lot about loosing weight. I am a skinny guy so my main focus is gaining muscle. I know that some of the same pricipals apply. My issue is, she seems to think that strictly cardio is going to get her results. I know that she will probably get some results at first with just doing cardio but I don't know how motivating it is going to be once her body gets used to just cardio and she's not loosing the weight as steadily. Ive been to our local gym a couple of times and have only seen a girl in the free weight room once and she was huge kinda sexy though. she ask me all of the time "would you find me more attractive if I were to loose weight" you all know what my answer is " I love you how your are" and I do but it would be nice to have her all cut up and in shape

[malkore]

she needs resistance training AND cardio., preferably on alternating days, with 1 day off a week.

she needs to know that unless she happens to have testicles, she's not going to 'get all bulky' from lifting weights. make sure she realizes adding muscle means more calories are burned to maintain that muscle, making leaning out easier to an extent.

Also, put her on low reps. She'll be tempted to buy into the 'high reps to tone' crap, and that's all it is...a crappy myth. you can gain muscle and lose muscle..you can't tone it into a new shape, and you have to just lose total body fat to get definition (or 'cut')

Once she gets going she could do some circuit training for an added cardio boost during weight training, but wait til she's been going for a month. hardcore circuit training for a newbie is a recipe for nausea or a session of gym vomiting...not cool.


You might have her pick up Body for LIFE or Body RX. Both are good reads for both diet and resistance training. Body RX uses no cardio, but you can add it in easily enough, and it has 3 specific phases, 6 weeks each, plus a 4th 'maintenance' phase.
If anything, either book will convince her that cardio alone isn't the fastest, nor easiest, way to reach her goals.

[laytownking]

hey thanks a lot for that much needed information. I just felt that the easiest way to keep her going back to the gym is her getting the satisfaction that comes along with results I was pretty sure that she would need some resistance to paralel with her cardio I will search for those books online and let her know thanks again

[meganl]

how do you calculate muscle fat ratio in your body?? and how much weight training does it take to gain a pound of muscle??

[malkore]

Its extremely difficult, if not impossible, to determine how many pounds of pure muscle you have...without a team of scientists and the right equipment.

That's why we use the term LBM - lean body mass...all your weight, minus the fat. This is easy to determine, as you simply take your total weight, multiplied by % body fat, and that give you LBM. So if you weighed 200 lbs, at 10% body fat, you'd have 180lbs LBM.

As to your second question: it takes as much as it takes...and its more about food intake than amount of weight lifted.
Some guys can gain a half pound of muscle in a week...some guys it takes 3x that...other guys it might take 6 weeks.

[meganl]

tnx btw ur blogs r gr8!!!