New to the scene

[Plaz]

Hello, my name is Josh and I am kind of new to the whole bodybuilding scene.

Let me start by saying I have been lurking around these boards for a little while now, trying to pick up bits and pieces of advice and I thought I should make my presence known.

Well I'll get to it then. I am currently 20 years old, and have been weightlifting semi-regularily for nearly 2 years now. Until recently, my biggest problem was motivation, as it seemed to come in spurts. You see, you won't find me in the gym every single day, rather 4 times a week on a good week, maybe once or twice on a bad week. There's also been scattered times where I went everyday or not once. Since comming to this board, I'v tried to motivate myself to go 4 times a week at the minimum.

I weigh about 180 pounds, and don't know my body fat %. Any good ways to test this w/out a doc? I usually spend roughly 2 hours at the gym, with about 45 minutes spent on cardio per session.

Through those 2 years of sporadic weightlifting, and a combination of extremely bad nutrition (Arbies, Perkins, and the occasional Buffet) and no use of suppliments has left me in a position where I have decent enough strength in my upper body, arms, and legs; although probably not as good as it should be considering the bad diet. However, aside from my chest muscles, calves, and triceps, I am not very well formed. Judging from what I have learned from this board, I have been trying to 'cut,' but it is proving much more difficult then I thought. My worst part is probably my gut, while not as bad as your McDonald's frequenter, it still has very visible love handles.


So I wonder if it would be out of place to ask a couple of questions in my introduction here.

1. What would you recommend I eat in my diet. I am currently residing in Taiwan for foreign language studies, so my choices are limited and I don't really think I could find a good source of any kind of suppliments here. If I could however, I wouldn't want to go for anything resembling 'juice.'

2. Is my workout regiment decent enough for somebody in my position? Again, it is 4days/week, 2hrs/day (8hrs/week) with 45mins of cardio per day and the rest working most all muscle groups. Should I alter it to cut?


Thanks again. I am sorry if I sound like the lazy newbie here that some of you may loath, but I am. I have been trying to change that though, and I really want to push myself. My father always told me that if you want to be the best, you need to learn from the best, and you guys on this board seem to be just that.

~Josh