Loose Fat or Gain Weight? What to do?

Hey all

I am 21 years old, i weigh 160,a dn I am 5'10... in the last year or 2 I have added alot of fat to my body and I am not very muscilar at all. I have love handles and some fat around my stomach, thats about it though. I am going to start going to the gym daily to work out so i can gain muscle, but I am not sure if I should try to loose fat or gain weight? I want muscles, and I know i have to eat at least 5 times daily, and eat alot of protine. But should i go on a diet first get skinny and loose all my fat then start muscle building or the other way around? Just need some advice on what to do any help will be appriciated.

You can go either way but based upon what you have said I would recommend the strategy of increasing your muscle mass first. I say this because you acknowledge that you have very little muscle. Of course by adding muscle you will also necessarily add some fat but you will also be increasing your basal metabolic rate (muscle burns more calories than fat) so that when you then do work on losing the fat your metabolism will work more in your favor.

If you try to lose the fat now you are going to have a more difficult time since your lack of muscle translates into a slower metabolic rate. And as you lose fat, you will lose some muscle which will slow your metabolic rate even more.

Make sure that you eat at least 0.8 grams per pound of body weight, train hard, get enough rest, sleep well. You might start at aiming for about 2500 calories or so. Get some calipers and measure yourself and weigh yourself once a week to make sure that you are not gaining more fat than muscle. You can then readjust up or down on your calories based upon your progress. If you find you are gaining too much fat (reflected in calipers) then adjust calories down. If you find you are not gaining much muscle then adjust your calories up. Continue to monitor your progress using the calipers and scale.

Good luck.

You haven't even started lifting yet. Get started and hold your weight steady for a few months. Then you can decide based on the progress you're made. No need to worry about it now, imo.

Lose fat not loose fat. It works better that way.

Start lifting every other day not every day (3 days per week tops). Do a full body workout for starters. Focus on learning the basic lifts like squats, bench press & bent over rows for now. Learn deadlifts, military press and others later on. http://www.aswonline.com/articles/beginner.html

Some exercise demo sites to see how many exercises are performed. http://www.exrx.net/Lists/Directory.html http://www.hardtrainer.com/exercise_armoury.htm

Check out this news group's FAQ here. http://www.trygve.com/mfw_faq.html
http://www.stumptuous.com/weights.html (lots of good info)

Jeff out ...