The Bodybuilder Life Style

[Markme]

The Bodybuilder Life Style
By Mark Davenport

Ever see an incredibly toned or muscly person around and say to yourself “gym freak!”?
Well these days it has acquired a more professional name than just a gym freak, Bodybuilding has been named as a new type of lifestyle along with the many other lifestyle types that have come about in the 21st century.

From my personal experiences, the bodybuilding lifestyle is quite a pleasant yet complicated life style, which is very rewarding and in the end it really just comes down to wanting to look and feel great. You are continually watching your diet, making sure you’re eating enough and eating correctly, this applies to both male and female bodybuilders. Also your workouts always have to be improved; you need to plan new and better work outs as soon as you stop seeing the results you are trying to achieve.

So if you have read this far you may be wondering what’s the point in going to gym 5 days a week, not eating chocolates and bad foods and being sore from working out.
Well the benefits out way the losses, yes you may be sore some of the time(mainly when you begin); but once your muscles are fit and you can jog a fair distance you actually decrease your chances of getting sick as your immune system is getting stronger from all the healthy eating and exercise.
Working out releases serotonin which gives you the same release as anti-depressants, BUT you will also have a better sense of well being because your body will start to tighten up and you will definitely notice your improvements; so will all your friends!

Some of you may be thinking “I might give this a try!” Well I do advise giving it a try, you will definitely get addicted to going to gym and you can truly live out the meaning of being a “gym freak”.
But to make sure you don’t give up after going for a week or more, join up with a friend who is a motivator or someone who’s already been going to the gym for a while. Also hiring a personal trainer is your best bet for achieving any goals you have set yourself, which is something else I have to talk about as well. Personal trainers really aren’t all that expensive and they will decrease the time taken to see results.

Setting Goals is a BIG part of staying healthy.
If you don’t set yourself a goal, then you do not have to anything to achieve by going to the gym do you?
But also you have to remember that setting a practical goal is better than setting a goal that you know is currently unobtainable. If you’re a size 20, you’re not going to become size 6 overnight, but that isn’t to say that it isn’t achievable; I regularly hear of people losing 100 pounds of body weight and they truly look like a total different person in the end. So set a goal that is achievable in a few months.
If you want to lose 20 pounds, make your first goal eating a diet that will help with your weight loss and then work on your work outs to maximize fat gain. If you’re looking to add on some muscle mass, then also look at your diet, are you eating enough healthy foods? If you are already at a gym, is your workout the best if could possibly be?
Everyone has to remember that any sort of goal is attainable if you really try your hardest and are guided with the correct knowledge.

Your Diet is the biggest key to achieving your goals.
You see those huge hulking body builders with 300 pounds of muscle and 2% body fat? They would never have become what they are today without a truck load of food. Some of them would eat for their first meal what you probably eat in 1 day. It usually consists of 1kg (2pounds) of potatoes and 1kg of steak and they consume 8 to 10 of these sorts of meals a day.

The key to weight loss is eating 4-6 smaller portioned meals and if you can really find the time to eat extra meals try for 8 meals a day. I lost 7kgs of fat using the ketosis diet, which requires you to eat a lot of meat and protein medium range carbs and it really does work wonderfully, I can’t say that I do cardio for more than 10 minutes a week and I manage to keep losing fat.
So it’s the diet that makes the person. It doesn’t mean that you have to have some absurdly strict diet to lose weight; I have McDonalds maybe once a week. People have this idea that eating bad at all will stop your gains and losses in its tracks, but it’s totally wrong. In fact some diets make use of McDonalds, pizza and KFC to actually consume enough calories to gain muscle.

Now I’m going to talk about your training routine.
Unless you know someone who is a personal trainer you are better off going to at least a onetime consultation to write up a training plan for you that will fit your goals, rather than going along and doing everything at a half assed pace because you’ve over trained a certain muscle group.
On the odd occasion you can trust a gym freak with writing you a plan for your needs, but it will more likely turn into doing the plan that they wrote for themselves.
Once you get a plan written up, it’s important that you make sure you change the plan every 1-3 months, depending on how fast you are advancing in strength and endurance; you have to remember when starting out at a gym, it is very easy to outgrow a plan in a few weeks to a month.
I write a lot of plans for my friends and they outgrow the needs of their plans very rapidly when they start out.
Also to find the best personal trainer for you, you need to ask questions like these.
“What will my diet look like?”
“If my goals are A…B…C… is this going to be the best for me”
Also alert them to any possible injuries you have. Provide them with all the information they ask you, it will help them a lot.

Intensity and Focus.
Never go to gym with these thoughts in mind “ it doesn’t matter if I don’t work out hard, I will work out properly next time” because you have already failed yourself, you know that you’re not going to work hard so why bother work to your maximum today or any other day?
Also you have to make it to gym at least 3-5 days a week, otherwise what is the point in paying to come?
Always be trying to improve yourself, so if you’re running for 15 minutes on 10km/h, try run for 15minutes on 11km/h and continue to advance, also increase your running times. The same applies with weights, if you’re benching 60kg, try to bench 65kg and then 70kg, I think you get the idea.
Remember results don’t come immediately it may take a couple weeks or a month, but the results will come!
No one starts off a super hero, even I started at 50kgs barely being able to live 40kg on the bench press, now I’m 85kg of lean muscle benching upwards of 110kg, in just a few years!

So if you have read the entire way through this article and have thought that gym isn’t for you, then 5% of the time this may be true.
But if you’re saying anything like “I don’t have time for gym” or “I can’t really afford gym”,
Well if you have enough time to sit back and read this article or you have enough time to watch 1hour plus of T.V. then you have all the time in the world to go to gym.
And if you think you can’t afford going to the gym, a lot of gyms have monthly payments available, so just add up all the excess money you spending on alcohol, fast food, cable and whatever else you like to spend your money on, I bet it exceeds what the gym membership totals at by at least 3 or 4 times.

So I hope that I will be seeing you around the gym, I guarantee you that you will become a happier, healthier and better shaped person that you can be proud of. So give it a try, you can buy a 3 month membership and if it’s not for you, then there’s not much lost, but if you like it you have just discovered an entirely new world.

Also check out Bodybuilding.com - The Future Of Bodybuilding! Huge Bodybuilding Site. its a very rich resource that you should tap into.

Copyright Mark Davenport 2009 all rights reserved

[Lady_Phoenix]

this article is well written, motivational, and informative. good job. ^_^

[peace.]