Thread: Am I on the right track to getting lean?

Hey everyone,

I posted on the training board a week or so ago explaining how I wanted to get abs. That's one of my main goals, but I also want to get lean. I still have a bit of a gut, but it's not really a huge bulge, but enough of one.

I'm 21, 6'3" and currently weigh in at 184 pounds.

My training routine consists of lifting and running every other day. For example, Monday I'll run, Tuesday I'll lift and so on. I don't usually skip a day, is that bad?

I go down to the local high school track, run a mile and then do some interval training, by sprinting the straight-aways and briskly walking the curves.

For lifting, I'm sort of limited to what I can do here at home. I have a weightlifting machine that works on a pulley system. It's kind of hard to explain what I all do, as I don't really know the proper names, but I do sort of a incline bench press, where I'm sitting and pushing the handles out like a regular bench press, I do bicep curls, a tricep exercise, some leg exercises, the butterfly type of thing that works your pecs and seated pull downs which I think work my upper back and shoulder muscles.

My ab workout is just crunches on a exercise ball and the bicycle ab workout.

Sorry I can't really explain it any better.

Diet wise, I've sort of been following the guidelines of The Abs Diet over on the Men's Health website. I've used a few of their smoothie recipes and have tried to eat/snack on some of the things they've suggested.

I've started to control my diet better than I have in the past. Today, so far, I've had a bowl of Wheaties with what I'd estimate to be a cup, maybe a little more than a cup of 1% milk. I threw a few raisins into the cereal as well. That was it until lunch (seeing as I had to go in and take a few exams). For lunch I had a sandwich with sun dried tomato turkey, thinly sliced on whole grain bread with a bit of honey mustard to moisten it a bit and an apple. So far today that's all I've had to eat. To give you a better example, here's what I ate yesterday.

Breakfast
- 2 hardboiled eggs
- 1 8 oz glass Banana Split Smoothie (Recipe from The Abs Diet @ Men's Health) That smoothie consisted of 1 banana, 1/2 cup 1% milk, 1/8 cup frozen orange juice concentrate, 1/2 low-fat vanilla yogurt, 2 tablespoons of chocolate whey protein powder and 6 ice cubes.
- 1 8 oz glass of orange juice
- 300 mg fish oil tablet

Lunch
- Tuna fish sandwich on whole grain bread (Tuna was canned)
- 1 apple
- 1 8 oz glass of 1% milk

Snack
- Salted almonds (I'd say I had about 15 of them)
- 1 stalk of celery sliced into four smaller pieces, a little peanut butter in each section and a few raisins on top of the peanut butter on each section
- 1 cup of Green Tea with some honey added to sweeten it

Dinner
Spaghetti (made with lean ground chuck)
Salad, topped with light ranch dressing
1 8 oz glass of 1% milk

After Lifting
1 8 oz glass of Banana Split Smoothie

That's just an example of what I ate yesterday, but am I on the right track? I switch it up a bit with the smoothie recipes I found, so there's another one from the Men's Health Site I use too, which I think has more protein in it.

Also, does it matter when I lift? Usually I run before I eat dinner, so that's usually around 6:30 pm, but I usually don't lift until around 9:30 - 10:00 pm

Any comments, suggestions, advice, etc, etc are more than welcome!

Thanks!

It'll be the LAST thing to leave. For you it's abs, for me it's legs. We get what we get. <sigh>