How long does it take to get in shape? I know this is a difficult question: what's in shape? So how long does it take until other people start to notice?
In shape is a term you'll have to define for yourself. When I was younger, the definition seemed to revolve around appearance and weight. Nowadays, I also throw in exercise metrics.
For example, this time 6 months ago I was 10 lbs lighter than I am now. But I'm a lot stronger now. I couldn't even do 135 lbs back squats (bar plus 45 lbs plate on each end) back then. Nowadays my routine consists of a few sets of back squats that culminates in a 10 repetition set of 315 lbs (bar plus 6x45 lbs plates). Physically, my weight is 10 lbs heavier now, but I have a lot less fat and so I'm a lot more compact in size.
I'm trying to lose some more fat, but when doing this there is always the real risk of losing muscle along with it. The scale does not tell the whole tale. By keeping tabs on how strong I am with respect to certain exercises, I can get a pretty good back-of-the-napkin kind of estimate of whether I'm losing fat or muscle.
When other people begin to notice changes depends heavily on your approach to "getting in shape". You can go fast and hard (and incorrectly). This might have you drop lots of weight the wrong way (e.g., losing lots of muscle a.k.a. the Oprah 1990s approach). A lot of commercial dieting programs depend on this strategy, because people will notice fairly soon (e.g., 1 month after starting). The early congratulatory praise by colleagues is encouraging and motivating to the dieter, causing them to keep going. If you go for a more gradual approach, people may not begin to notice for many months. That was the case for me this time around. People really didn't begin to notice until I bought some new clothes.
Because I lost weight so rapidly in high school, it was much more difficult for me to keep motivated this time around. Luckily, my friends whom I train with kept me focussed on metrics that could indicate progress such as how much weight I could push in an exercise and for how many repetitions. The goal this time around was to pack on muscle first, even if it meant gaining weight, and then to begin a cutting phase where I'd adopt an extremely strict diet and different exercise routine for a one or two month period.
Let me know if you're interested in some good resources. I didn't adopt any one plan. For example, I enjoyed the Hacker's Diet and while I think it's a good start, I personally felt like absolute shit most days when I treated a "calorie as a calorie". Whether I interpreted this incorrectly, the book says not to worry too much about what you eat so long as you pay attention to your caloric intake. Well, until I started eating nutritiously, I felt like crap, performed like crap at the gym, and while I did lose weight, I just didn't feel very healthy.
I'm not sure if you're personally interested, but if you're trying to get in shape I would allocate a 3 month window in which you think your chances of being stressed out are low and in which you can get lots of sleep and rest. You're going to be forcing your body to make so many changes that it'll really stress your immune system and ability to stay committed. In the first month, cut out stupid habits like excess drinking (or switch to vodka/soda from beer), eating half a pizza on a Friday night, downing tons of non-diet soda, etc.. This will be enough of a shock to your system, but you'll need to plough through 3 weeks of this to kill the bad habits.
In the next month, start increasing your physical activity while refraining from your previously bad eating habits. I'd tell you to get a personal trainer if you can afford one, but honestly the quality varies so much that it's risky. Perhaps you can seek out a friend who has a similar body type to your target, who can show you the ropes. Again, really push through the first 3 weeks until working out becomes as much of a priority as ensuring that you've done your backups or checked your code into the repository :-) Don't feel like you need to join a gym. The activity can be a sport, riding a bike to work, hiking, etc.. It just has to be consistent
In the third month, come back to your diet and begin to adopt healthier eating habits. Count your calories in everything that you eat to figure out where you're going overboard. Then make changes so that you come under your caloric requirements. I'd suggest 2000 calories as a good daily target intake for your average young male trying to lose weight this way. Any less and you probably won't get enough protein. Any more and you're probably eating too well. Increase your protein intake: if your target weight is 160 lbs then try to aim for 160 grams of protein a day (chicken breasts and eggs are your friends). If you're like most westerners, your meals are probably meat/poultry/fish supplemented with carbs and then rounded out with vegetables/fruits. Invert this last allocation so that your meals are supplemented with lots of vegetables/fruits and rounded out with a few carbs. In fact, if you really like vegetables, go to town on them. The more you eat the better you'll feel (it's a subjective thing) and they're generally so calorie-sparse as to be a non-worry.
I'm curious how you went from squatting 1 rep max of 135lb to 10 reps of 315lb in 6 month. It's quite a transformation. According to http://www.exrx.net/Testing/WeightLifting/SquatStandards.htm..., that puts you in the advanced percentile of men who weight 140-160lb which should take roughly, "multi-years of training (more than 2 years)."
How about many rep's per set and set per session did you do? And how pound increment did you add for each week?
My ideal weight is 170 lbs but I'm training to get to 181 by end of summer (buddy and I are using similar charts:-) ). I'm at 195 lbs now, so still stocky. My 1 rep max wasn't 135 at first, but it was the max weight I could do 10 reps of. At my weight now, the advanced percentile is way higher than 315. It's 387 according to that chart. The 315 lbs set takes all my effort. If I don't eat right, sleep well the night before, and am not mentally ready, I might fail after about 4 or 5 reps. I've gone up to 330 lbs but then my form just sucks and I'm not squatting deep enough. I imagine if I want to get up to 365 lbs it'll probably take me another year. All that said I'm happy with my level on squats now. I'm not as strong on dead lifts (flexibility problems still) and I'd rather focus my effort there. I've been stuck doing Romanian dead lifts until I sort out those flexibility issues and can get my form right.
My buddy who is training me happens to be an engineer who loves these charts and reads a lot about training. He immediately identified my natural strength on the squats but pointed out that my flexibility was absolutely atrocious (sitting all day as a programmer, who'da thunk!). So he forbid me from doing back squats at first. I focussed instead on doing lunges, lots of stretching, and then we eased into doing body weight squats and dumb bell squats. He also had me strengthening my core as much as possible so it'd be ready for squatting.
Other than that, I have a nice natural ability to put on muscle. That's never been a problem. My problem is as the muscle packs on, so does the fat. A lot of my progress is attributable to my training buddy though. He really pushes me and on days when I work out alone, I don't nearly get as good of a workout. It also helps that we've both got the same ideal body weight (although his problem is he's naturally underweight). So we don't want to fall too far behind the other in our weak exercises. We're both too lazy to want to keep moving plates back and forth onto bars in between our sets :-)
UPDATE: just saw this part of your post
How about many rep's per set and set per session did you do? And how pound increment did you add for each week?
After the first couple of newbie sessions of squatting, I could do 6-8 reps at 185 lbs. We would do 4 sets of squats right at the beginning of our workout. First set involved 6 warmup body weight squats. Set 2: 6-8 135 lbs. Set 3: 6-8 155 lbs. Set 4: 6-8 185 lbs. We'd only do squats once a week. Only in the past month have I increased squats to a once or twice a week exercise. If you aren't hurting (at first) or stiff (later) for the next couple of days after squatting, you're probably not pushing your max weight and you have some sort of mental block. At first the long rest left us completely fresh for the next workout.
The way we train is that we don't move up until we can get a high rep set at our previous max weight. So even though I think I can only do 6-8 going into that last set, if I can push myself to do 12-15, I will. This is where a gym buddy comes in handy. They'll know if you're sandbagging and will tell you to push out two more reps. If I hit this target, we move up a weight class, which at first meant throwing another 30 lbs on there to 215 lbs. I stuck at 215-225 for a while. Then we jumped up to 275 which was shocking after about 2 months at 225. I stuck at 275 for another couple of months and then we started putting on 10 lbs here and there, until I could get to 300. That was a big psychological double-edge sword. It felt like a hell of a lot of weight but it felt good being able to do that. A couple of weeks of 300 was enough for me to get to 315. I've stayed there and really focussed on improving my form and depth.
Right now we're doing 4 sets as described above, and then on the 5th set we drop down to whatever weight we can handle 15-20 reps of. For me right now, that's 225. After that last set I'm about ready to pass out, it's pretty exhausting.
I dunno, sounds pretty chaotic :-) But we like to change it up. We're constantly contradicting ourselves, one week going for low rep high weight and the next going for high rep moderate weight sets.
Weight is not really a problem for me yet (according to this BMI index I'm underweight, fwiw), but this year I lost muscle and gained weight (in fat). I'd like to reverse that. My problem is with exercise: when I feel like exercising I do it like I used to be able to. But then the next few days I can't exercise because my muscles are sore and weak. And generally I have a hard time getting into the habit. I used to cycle ~120 km per week to school but now I live closer to school...so I used to burn one day's food by cycling and I'm not eating less now.
I don't care about looks and muscles, but I'd like to get in shape to be able to run & cycle better again and feel fitter. What type of exercise do you recommend? How do you motivate yourself to exercise?
