Hello all, I've lurked around these forums for awhile now, but now I'm finally ready to share my story.

My main problem is that I know what I want to acheive, but I can't make myself just sit down and do it, hopefully you all can help.

I've been working out on and off since April '04. I started shortly before graduating from high school, I was at 197 at 5' 9" and had had enough, I had spent my whole life overweight and was ready for a change. I was doing well until I started college and fell off the horse for a while. I did a few things here and there that year, but not much. Sophomore year came and I found a friend to go to the gym with at the end of the year. That was going well until school ended and I was halted again. Junior year I finally started to going to the gym on a semi-regular basis the last semester. I was going at least once a week, which compared to previous years was a big step forward. Now I'm at the beginning of my senior year and I'm at somewhere around 160 and 5' 10", I haven't checked in a few weeks. I've lost a lot of weight over the past few years and right now I feel I'm on the verge of really getting to where I've always wanted to be. I just need to be able to buckle down and do it.

I've been lucky in that whatever I've lost I've managed to keep off without really adding that much more weight on during the off periods. I'd like for this to be the year where I'm working out on a consistent basis the entire year.

I've looked at my schedule for school and I've got a definite 2 days that I can work out on Thursdays and Saturdays, and a possible 3 days if I can add in Monday. In the gym at my school, all that I've been doing are some exercises with the machines and some dumbell exercises. Just hitting as many major muscle groups as I can. I feel that there are more exercises that I could be doing, so I'll take any suggestions as to ones to do. Also, I'm not sure how to divide which muslce groups I do on which days. Normally, I'm only in the gym for about 30-45 min. I don't do any cardio, unless you count walking all over campus everyday. I can go into more detail if need be.

Diet is where I tend to have the most problems. I see so many other peoples diets consisting of the same thing over and over again, and it usually looks pretty tasteless that it just kinds of scares me off of trying to do anything formal. I just try to make the right choices about what I eat, but that's always easier said than done. Especially here at school, where at the dining area they have different stations set up. One for what they call vegetarian meals, which really aren't that vegetarian since its usually some kind of meat served over rice. A station with a typical dinner item, some kind of meat and various sides. There's a salad bar, a deli bar, a pizza and hamburger area. My problem is that sometimes the food at the vegetarian or dinner station so I just go for the hamburger and fries because its the easiest, even though I know I should get something from one of those stations and probably visit the salad bar as well, but sometimes I can't get myself to do that. How do I make myself eat something I know that I should? I'm sure some of you have had a similar problem so I'm curious what you did to fix it. Again, if you need more details I can give them.

I've just seen so many people make amazing transformations in less than 1/4th the time I've been working at it and I want to be one of those success stories.

If you've read all of that thank you very much, I hope you can offer some help as I really want to make the most of my last year at school. :)

Edit: I'm having trouble uploading pics, I thought I made them small enough, but I can't seem to get it to work.

Hey Brian, welcome to JSF. :tu:

What are you current goals and focus with your diet and training? Strength, conditioning, hypertrophy, fat loss? If it's all of the above, give us an idea on priority. With your stats, it sounds like you've already taken care of whatever weight problem you had in the past. Great work there btw.

Take advantage of the range of equipment you have available at your school gym. If you've been using the machines for awhile, it's probably time to start transitioning to freeweight work. Start reading up on proper form for squats, deadlifts, bench press, and rows. You don't need a thesis level disection of the lifts to start, just a general understanding of queues to keep yourself within a safe and efficient range of motion. Keep reading and tweaking things from there.

The following links can help with the visual aspect:

EXRX Exercise Directory (http://www.exrx.net/Lists/Directory.html)
Precision Nutrition Exercise Videos (http://www.precisionnutrition.com/members/exercise.php)

We should be able to help with a workout plan once we understand your goals a little better. Sounds like you'd be best starting out with something that handles most of the programming for you. Here are a couple to look over:

HST Training (http://www.hypertrophy-specific.com/hst_index.html)
Waterbury Big Boy Basics (http://www.t-nation.com/readArticle.do?id=459533&cr=)

Threads talking about peoples' diet might be a little misleading. Most of the threads you see are people giving an example day from their diet to see if they're on track with basic ideas. Eating the same thing everyday is not only not necessary, but it's not optimal for your health or results. Having variety and rotating your vegetables, fruit, protein sources, and more should be encouraged. We run across threads all the time where people are eating too little to support their workout activity. A salad with nothing added is not a great meal for a strength training athlete. It needs some chicken, fruit, extra vegetables, etc, so don't get caught in the shallow end of your nutritional needs.

Hope this helps you out a little. Best of luck to you.

Thank you very much for your reply, I think it should be helpful. :)

To answer your first question, I'd like to know how to post pics, because that would help me decide where I should be focusing my efforts. I can't decide if I should start focusing more on putting on muscle, or if I should still be focusing on fat loss. I'm leaning towards focusing on putting on muscle. If I could show you my pictures I think that would help.

In the long term, I don't really have any desire to get big like a lot of bodybuilders. I'd just like to look toned, I think that's the right word, I'm not sure.

Thanks again for the links, I think they should help.

Make sure your pics are and appropriate size. 300 wide by 450 tall would be fine. Check the file size vs forum limits. If the file is too big, reduce the photo resolution until it is appropriate file size. Click in the little paperclip to attach files. Select browse to upload photos from your computer. Once you've selected them, the file path will appear in the little text box. Then you'l need to click the "Upload" button to actually upload them. The little uploader screen will now show the uploaded attachments near the bottom of the screen. When you submit the post, the photos will now appear at the bottom of the post.

Thanks! I was clicking on the wrong link, I was trying to use the one on the bottom of the page. Anyway, here are my pics. I'm aware that I need to work on my posture, I'm going to work on fixing that. Just out of curiousity, what do you think my bf% is?