I hold a B.A. in Natural Science w/ an emphasis in Chemistry. Basically a useless degree unless you are going to become a doctor or something like that because it covers a lot of the bio sciences. So that qualifies me a lot better to talk about this stuff than some fitness trainer. Plus the fact that 20 + years ago I was an amateur bodybuilder and had the chance to actually use these methods so I know this works from personal experience. 

If you want to get in shape and stay in shape it needs to be a life change. One of the key things is to eat less. Less of everything and eat small meals several times a day. Who came up with that and why is it pushed so much now?
 

Well, early humans came up with it. One of the big problems is that although we have evolved as a society and civilization our biological make up is still geared for being a hunter/gatherer. What I mean is that our bodies are designed to be walking around all day hunting up food. Food that would be relatively scarce compared to your supermarket shelves.
 

So the way we stock pile food in our cabinets and pantries and eat such huge, fat and carb laden portions of food, considering we sit on our ass most of the time is crazy! The amount of food we need to eat is really a small portion of what we do.
 

That is why there are so many obese kids. They eat huge portions of food that is usually crap and sit on their ass playing video games, messing on computers or just being lazy. And that has a lot to do with why so many kids are also on Ritalin and all these other psychotropics. When you have a biological machine as finely tuned as the human body if you don’t use it the way it is intended you have problems.
  

So what do you do? Think about it. What would a day be like for a hunter/gatherer? They would get up as soon as the sun came up and begin foraging for food. They’d get up and get some berries, fruit or grains depending where they were located. Our fat laden breakfasts of sausage, eggs cooked in butter, toast with butter and things like that are killing us.
 

The answer is to eat like a hunter/gatherer. Now I don’t mean that you have to start eating nuts and berries, which wouldn’t be bad, but you do need to drastically reduce the amount of food you eat and eat several small meals. 

Why eat several small meals? Because you need to keep nutrients flowing in your body. Your blood is a carrier for the nutrients and it takes it past all the organs that monitor it for different things. The organs then release the amount of particular chemical they are responsible for to keep your body in balance. If you eat one huge meal a day you can now see how there is a huge rush of nutrients and then the rest of the day your body is “starving”. This messes up your chemistry bad. And you MUST eat the meals whether you feel like it or not. That is the key to the whole thing.
 

The next most important thing is to exercise. You will not believe how much work the body will do relative to the small amount of food you eat. 
 

I gave up bodybuilding a LONG time ago and had gotten fat and out of shape sitting on my ass doing this computer work. That changed when the last few years to make ends meet I have been doing construction work. (Imagine, someone with my talent working construction, sucks!) Specifically concrete work; the dirtiest, nastiest, job on a construction site, I dig foundations (big ditches), run a jack hammer, smash old concrete and that kind of thing every day. It took about a year but I lost about 35 lbs and got in a lot better shape. I was amazed that relative to how hard I was working that the fat wasn’t just falling off. But I was still eating 2 or 3 huge meals a day filled with junk. 

I took the time to reflect and see what I was doing. I worked harder than 99% of the people yet I was not in better shape than 99% of the people. So obviously it was what I was putting in my body. 

I began to change what I ate and it radically changed the way my body looked and functioned. One of the key things I did was to just eat a few bites of each portion rather than eat the entire serving. That way you can eat whatever you want but you won’t get fat. Now there has to be some common sense used. You can’t eat just a few bites of a Big Mac for every meal. You need to have a diverse intake of foods. You should eat some of the nuts and berries; you should eat some grains and things of that nature to balance out the crap. But you have to eat it every day. You can’t eat crap 5 days a week and eat good 2.

One way to know what is going on with your body is to make a food journal for a week or so. Look at what you typically eat. And I mean write down every thing including Tic Tacs. Once you see what you eat you will be more aware when you are eating too much or the wrong thing.
 

As you are getting your eating under control you have to begin some kind of exercise program. I suggest walking if you live a sedentary life. Increase it as you go and after a couple weeks start to bring in other things like the basic deep knee bends and the calisthenics from gym class. 
 

If you are really serious then do your exercises first thing in the morning before you start eating and don’t drink anything with sugar before you start, just water. Then after your exercise you can start eating. That is to burn fat because in the morning your body has the least energy available so it will go to burning fat soonest. 

And burning fat is the key. It is the most complex chemical reaction in the body to supply energy so it is your body’s lease favorite way to get energy so you have to MAKE it burn fat. That is done by raising your heart rate to at least 75% of max for at least 40 minutes.
  

It takes about 10 minutes to burn up the energy stored in the muscles. After that your body will start actually burning muscle for about 5 or 10 minutes to see if it can give you enough quick energy to get your over the hump.  Hopefully you will stop this insane use of your muscles soon and that will all be over. But you have to keep going because then it switches over to using the fat stored. That only starts after about 20 minutes so that first half hour you are barely even burning fat. Time and intensity is the key.
 

This varies with everyone so some people will start burning fat quicker; these are people that carry less fat to begin with. If you are heavy then you need to exercise accordingly and put in at lest an hour of walking. That needs to get more intense as time goes by. Start walking faster or using stairs, that kind of thing.
 

For obese people the gym is a long way away. You don’t want to hurt yourself. It took you years, sometimes decades to get in horrible shape; you can’t turn it around in a few months. 
 

If you are in relatively decent shape then after a short period of time you can begin resistance exercise or hitting the gym. When you begin training don’t over do it. Go in the gym and start with the little dumbbells and try the machines with very little weight. They key is doing the exercises properly to work the muscles effectively.
 

Think of the body as a series of cables and pulleys. You want to focus on the group you are supposed to be working. For example; if you are doing your chest, or pecs, make sure your elbows are not down by your side. You want them up in line with your shoulders so that the muscle (cable) that connects your upper arm bone to your breast bone is not all tweaked around the corner of your shoulder joint. That is why you want to use light weight to start. Learn how to do the movement properly.
  

Same with all your muscles, look at what bones they connect to and move the bones so the muscle in as straight of a line as possible going over the joint.
 

Also learn to work the actual muscle you are working. If you are doing the pecs start with one at a time and take your free hand and touch the muscle you are supposed to be working.  It should be all tensed up and stiff throughout the entire movement. If you feel it jumping then it isn’t under constant stress so you are not working correctly. In the beginning work on form and use light weight. How much the muscle works is relative to the amount of energy (fat) you burn not how much weight you fling around.
  

In the beginning do low weight and high reps but not more than 15 or 20. Really learn to feel the muscle but don’t work so hard that you are in such pain that you can hardly move the next day. You should feel a little stiffness in the AM that works out by noon. If you are still sore all day then you are working the muscle hard enough to start building it. Other wise you are toning it.
 

If you want to build muscle you need to work your way up to heavy weight whatever that is for you. Heavy weight is say about 4 or 5 reps but you have to not be able to get the 5^th. 
 

It is important to cycle your workouts and change them up regardless if you are building muscle or just getting in shape. DO NOT do a regular routine all the time. The human body is about the most adaptable thing there is and before you know it your work out won’t work because your body adjusts to it. About every three months completely change your workout. 

IF you have any questions let me know.
 

OH, and if you are too skinny, this works for you as well but in the opposite way. You gain nice solid muscle and maintain a low body fat. BUT YOU GOTTA EAT!