Joining the community

[kwesadilo]

Hi folks. I'm a college student finishing up my master's degree in computer engineering. I'm one of those high-metabolism skinny guys. I've been sedentary most of my life, and I have typically performed pretty badly any time I needed to do anything physically demanding. At various times in the past three years or so, I've tried to get in better shape, but I haven't been very thorough about it. I lifted weights and kept track of my performance, but I gave almost no thought to my diet. I'm 22 years old and 5'9". During high school and most of college, I weighed between 130 and 135 lbs and ate pretty much whatever I felt like. Last school year, I was excrutiatingly busy and gained like 15 pounds of what I can only assume was pure fat from eating convenience store snacks for multiple meals per day.

This summer, I finally had some time to devote to getting fit and started going through the Rebel Strength Guide. The gym at my office had minimal free weights and no pullup bar, so I just stuck with the Basic Training bodyweight exercise regimen. I'm pretty experienced at lifting, so most of the exercises weren't really doing much for me, e.g. I can do bodyweight squats for several minutes until I get bored and quit around 30 reps. I was mostly focused on developing a routine, increasing my calorie intake, and tracking my workouts and meals. I kept eating whatever sounded good at the time but intentionally ate more than usual. It seems like on days where I just eat the amount that seems natural, I eat about 1800 calories, and on days where I really push it, I get up to like 2700. During this time, I went from 150 lbs to 156 lbs. My only noticeable performance gain was in maximum number of pushups (from 10 to 15). My physical appearance showed no change.

Now, I'm back at school for my last semester, I have a pretty large amount of time to devote to fitness, and I have access to a decent gym with a large selection of free weights and a pullup bar. I have begun training with dumbells. I have also started training with my school's parkour club one day a week. Nominally, my goal is to increase my strength and stamina while cutting a more defined and masculine figure. I don't really have any hard performance or measurement goals, because I don't know enough about what I'm doing to set reasonable ones. Commitment-wise, I intend to strength train four days a week and do parkour at least one day a week for the remainder of the semester. I hope to get measureably stronger steadily and increase my weight to about 160 by December. To support these goals, I want to get eight hours of sleep per night and eat enough healthy food to bulk up without getting too fat.

As far as immediate goals, I sat down at my computer just now and signed up for the forum to try and figure out the easiest way to get enough food that's good for me. I usually eat a lot of takeout and catered food from conference rooms, but it's really annoying to count calories that way, and I don't usually put in the time to lookup the calories for everything. Every time I try to actually cook something from basic ingredients, I spend forever shopping and cooking, and then it ends up being like 2000 calories total. Therefore, I'm trying to find things that I can make quickly and in bulk that will give me a ton of calories and hopefully not be too hard on my insides.

I just got here, so I'm not sure what challenges, groups, or guilds are. Mostly I'm just looking for food advice right now. I guess I'm also looking for a community to support me in my fitness efforts. I've never had that before, though, so I don't know what would be helpful.

[Caution]

Welcome fellow Computer Engineer! If you want to get stronger, may I recommend Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe. Also getting size and strength isn't just about calories, make sure that you are getting at least 1 g of protein per lb of lean body mass (I use myfitnesspal to track my macros). The next challenge will be posted next week. Also it may be tougher with eating takeout and catered food, but have you looked into paleo/primal at all?

[CyningaDena]

Welcome to the boards! It sounds like you've got the foundational experience and the resources to make some awesome changes in your life. That's pretty exciting! I'd second what Caution said. Through grad school I somehow managed to eke by on a diet of frozen pizza and Cheez-Its, and this was not the proudest time of my life. And since Mom always assumed there would be barefoot/pregnant wimmin-folk to take care of my nutritional needs, I wasn't taught how to cook smart for myself. Picking a diet that I had control of was huge. I'll be honest: it was pretty tough for the first few weeks while I stocked my pantry and learned how to plan meals, shop smart, and cook and store leftovers. But now I've got a good routine that doesn't seem nearly as time-consuming as it was up front.

Every Saturday or Sunday, I troll through my cookbooks and pick four meals that sound appealing. I spend maybe an hour and a half on Sunday sifting through the store specials and shopping, and then cook a meal every other day. Breakfast is a piece of cake that I don't really have to plan for too much, and those four cooking sessions leave me with enough leftovers for lunch/supper for the full week. Throw in some veggies for sides and some healthy snacks, and I can top out at 3200 calories per day.

I used to think that cooking was a ridiculous waste of time. Why bother fixing up a dish with all those ingredients when I can just shove some chicken into my mouth, and then a piece of bread, and then some carrots, and get basically the same thing as this casserole recipe? But no. It really is worth the time commitment, and the time commitment really does get smaller as you get into the groove.

My diet is vegetarian/vegan for no particular reason other than because it's healthy, it works well for me, and I have vegan friends who can give me help. So I can give you some pretty good resources on easing into that diet from square one if you like. Otherwise, I'd suggest posting a thread in the General Diet forum and getting feedback from other folks. Although many people here follow a primal/paleo diet, it's by no means the rule, and I'm sure you'll get tons of helpful advice on crafting a healthy diet to support your goals. There are also lots of students here, too, who can probably relate to the special challenges of eating well on a small budget with very little time.

Keep us posted about how your goals and challenges progress!

[kwesadilo]

Thanks for the advice, guys. I don't think I'm going vegetarian any time soon. Paleo sounds kind of appealing but kind of time consuming. Once I start cooking stuff, I guess I'll get an idea of how feasible it would be. I'll see what the diet forum has to say.

[Aqweei]

Good luck! I know how hard it can be to devote x amount of time to x amount of different tasks through out the day! Sounds like you are well on your way to have a plan that will work for you though.