“I Want to Get Healthy, but Feel Clueless About How to Start”

Get Advice That Will Erase Your Fears of Fitness and Help You Make the Changes You Deserve

Everybody knows somebody who seems like they sprang from the womb with a washboard stomach and the ability to run a 6-minute mile. They’ve always looked hearty and hale; they eat, sleep, and breathe fitness. We probably know a lot more who get winded walking up a flight of stairs. For some of us, just looking at the stairs is enough to have us breaking out in a sweat. In fact, not too long ago, that’s exactly who I was.

I played my share of little league sports as a kid, but I was what you’d call a “natural-born nerd”: Prone to injury, frequently ill, more interested in sedentary activities like video games and movies. As my physical activity dropped off, my weight ballooned, and I eventually just accepted it: I was the fat kid. And I thought the difference between myself and more athletic types was ingrained, and unchangeable.

I’d love to say I always knew it was a problem for me, but the truth is I was in serious denial. Despite pushing 300 lbs my entire adult life, I thought I wore the weight pretty well. Sure, I was heavy, but I didn’t look it — or so I told myself. Inevitably, though, the unhealthy years caught up with me, and I realized how much harm I was doing to myself, not just physically but mentally and emotionally as well.

I had a choice to make. If you’re reading this, you might, too.

A Successful Transformation Starts in the Mind

Not everyone who decides to get healthy starts out on the heavy side like I did. Whether you’re overweight or just out of shape, we tend to begin in the same place: “I know I need to change…I have zero idea where to start.” Looking back, I already had — the choice is what mattered most, the beginning of the entire journey.

Change isn’t easy. Even our unhealthy habits can be a comfort to us. They’re familiar, and we identify with them. Just like the way I thought of myself as the fat kid, those habits seem part of who we are. The idea of leaving the ease of your status quo and becoming somebody else can be scary. It’s the single-most important fear you’ll need to overcome on the path to your new, healthier lifestyle.

Guiding Principle — Finding Your “Why”

In my case, the reasons for wanting to get healthy and start getting fit were many. I was afraid of my family’s medical history, which includes diabetes, heart trouble, kidney disease, and fatty liver disease. I also wanted some sense of control over my life. After years of just reacting to things that happened to me, I wanted an element of real action, something done with purpose, something done for me.

Your reasons may be different. Maybe it’s as simple as wanting to feel better about the way you look. Maybe there’s an activity you want to be fit enough to perform. Maybe you just want to make sure you live long enough to see your children grow into adults. Whatever your motivation, once you’ve made the decision to start working out, it’s that reason that will see you through the stages of the journey that follow.

Lions at the Gates: What’s Holding You back?

Having a reason in mind will make starting out possible. It won’t be easy, but it will definitely be worth it. Research suggests that even a single exercise session can improve your body’s ability to cope with physical stress, meaning you’ll experience less fatigue after exerting yourself. Just one workout can even increase insulin sensitivity, which for many people is the key to changing their body composition and affecting fat loss.

Exercise can also alleviate anxiety and depression symptoms, improve sleep, elevate mood, and reduce overall stress. With all those benefits added on to the more obvious changes in physique and physical ability, why aren’t more people fitness enthusiasts? For the most part, it’s fear.

Most people aren’t aware of the aforementioned fear of change, but when asking for advice on starting out many express anxiety or fears about taking their first steps on the path to fitness. The trick here is that there’s really no wrong way to go about it. So long as you try to educate yourself, it’s not as if making one mistake will lead you down a path to ruin instead.

We are only ever works in progress, and your efforts to get healthy will go through revisions and refinement on a regular basis. You don’t have to get it right from the get-go.

Many people find themselves afraid of the gym, as well. It can be overwhelming — even intimidating — and the idea of taking these sometimes-stumbling first steps in front of other people can be enough to keep people from walking through the gym door. I remember my first time in the gym, after months of slow plodding alone at home where nobody could see. Even my bashful first forays into fitness forums were nerve-racking.

As I said above, at the end of the day even our unhealthy habits are a comfort, and shaking free of those can lead us to invent all manner of obstacles. The truth is, there are only a few genuine considerations when starting out, and they’re all about patience and pacing.

While judgmental people abound in all areas of life, the vast majority of people pursuing fitness goals are doing the same thing you are: Working on themselves to improve their health. The fact that they’re further along that path doesn’t mean they won’t respect you for it. In fact, they might even offer to help.

This is what I found in the form of the JYM Army, a Facebook group of fitness enthusiasts who share the common ground of not only bettering themselves, but doing so with the help of Dr. Jim Stoppani, one of the world’s foremost educators on fitness, nutrition, and supplementation. His message to newcomers to fitness was critical to my success.

Afraid as I was to put myself out there where other people could see, what I found was a community that was welcoming, encouraging, and supportive of my goals. With the decision to change made and the commitment to see it through, it was finally time for action. But I didn’t start out logging miles on the treadmill or throwing up massive weight in the gym — I started by making changes to my diet, and taking a nice, long walk.

Getting Your Diet in Order

Before you start worrying about how much you can pull on a deadlift, you need to have your diet in order. Unless your efforts are built on a strong nutritional foundation, they won’t get you very far. I’ve remarked in the past on how a healthy diet is critical, and a diet designed to meet your goals even more so but, in a nutshell, it just comes down to making good choices, and making sure you’re eating enough of the right things. Most importantly, you need a diet that works for you.

“To the average person, the word “diet” has a negative connotation — they instantly think of bland foods, hunger pangs, feeling deprived — when in reality, diet is the word for the foods you already eat,” says Stoppani. “Most people judge diet plans based on how popular they are, which celebrity endorses them, or how quickly they claim to work — when the real test of a diet should be how well it fits your needs, and whether it’s sustainable.”

A good diet doesn’t have to be drastic. Simple changes like giving up fast food, drinking more water, and getting more protein in your diet can make a world of difference. Tracking meals, too, can have a profound effect on your eating habits. By making these adjustments and figuring out how many calories you need from protein, fat, and carbohydrates per Dr. Stoppani’s Dieting 101, you’ll ensure that your diet can support the healthier lifestyle you want to be leading.

What About the Workouts? The Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins with a Literal Step.

As I said, I didn’t begin my fitness journey by jumping headlong into workouts — I started with a walk. At 285 lbs and having been entirely inactive for years, the key to starting out was going low-impact, and just staying active. Swimming is a popular option. Bill Janke, whom I interviewed recently, cited water aerobics classes as a great start to his 230 lbs fat-loss journey. Classes in general are a good idea, and many are geared toward beginners. But the bottom line is, you don’t have to go all-out, you just need to get moving.

At first, my walks around the neighborhood spanned maybe a mile. I’d wake up, eat breakfast, and take a walk. If I had time later in the day, maybe after lunch or dinner, I’d take another. If I had someplace to go and it was close enough — you get the picture. Eventually, my walks stretched to 5 miles or more.

Now, that’s all well and good if you have the time for it, but most people don’t. If I’d known then what I know now, I probably would’ve walked less, too. The reality is, it doesn’t take hours pounding pavement or on the treadmill to get your metabolism going — it only takes two minutes an hour.

As he mentioned in the video above, Dr. Stoppani believes in what he calls the 30/60 Rule. In simplest terms, for every 30 minutes of inactivity, you get up and move for 60 seconds. This doesn’t have to be anything special — a simple walk down the hall and back can suffice. You can do jumping jacks, or push-ups, or run in place , anything to remind your muscles that they’re meant to be moving.

As Stoppani explains, “What we find is that when we sit for about 30 minutes or longer we start shutting down those metabolic genes that are controlling the fat-burning and glucose metabolism. When those things start shutting down, turning off, stop creating those proteins that we need for metabolism, that’s when those metabolic disorders happen.”

The key is to keep those genes in the muscles activated, which in turn keeps your metabolism going. So if you’re starting out and afraid to throw yourself into full-blown workouts, don’t worry — just get up and take a walk.

Introducing the Interval: How High-Intensity Interval Training Can Help

There came a point in my walking habit where jogging felt like it’d be easier and more enjoyable than walking quickly. There’s some debate as to how good that may or may not be for my knees, but I gave into the urge. But again, I didn’t jump right into jogging miles, I just ran for a few houses and then resumed walking. As it turns out, I’d accidentally stumbled upon a pretty effective exercise technique: Interval training.

As studies have shown, high-intensity interval training can accelerate fat loss more effectively than classic, steady-state cardio like running or cycling, and more efficiently too, requiring far less of your time.

Dr. Stoppani’s site, JimStoppani.com, features a number of articles explaining this training method, which involves brief bursts of effort that alternate with rest or low-exertion phases. This can be in the form of Tabatas, which are specifically structured as a 4-minute format of 20 seconds of exertion followed by 10 seconds of rest, but it can also be found in the form of what’s known as cardioacceleration.

Cardioacceleration is brief stints of cardio performed between sets of resistance exercises and, for beginners, it can be found in both his Shortcut to Shred program, which introduced the concept to his fans, as well as his Beginner Cardioacceleration program, specifically designed with fitness newcomers in mind.

By implementing interval training, you can reduce the length of your workouts while still reaping all their benefits, if not more. Particularly for beginners who aren’t accustomed to exercising for hours at a time, interval training is an ideal choice.

Don’t Wait for Weights — Resistance Training for Beginners

The benefits of cardio cannot be understated: Increased endurance, cardiovascular health, and fat loss are all important goals, especially when you’re starting to get fit. Resistance training should become a part of your path as well. Muscle tissue burns more calories at rest, so having more of it can only help your metabolism. However, as with everything else, pacing is important.

For those who have never set foot in a gym before, as well as those who simply haven’t been active for a long while, Dr. Stoppani’s Beginner to Advanced program is designed as an introduction to weightlifting that gradually builds over 12 weeks so that your body has time to adapt to the rigors of training.

Full-Body Benefits from Full-Body Training

One final training method well-suited to beginners — but effective for advanced gym veterans as well — is full-body training. Dr. Stoppani is easily the world’s biggest proponent of this training style, employing it in his own daily workouts. Much like his 30/60 Rule, the benefit to full-body training is its impact on gene activation. More than that, however, it proves an excellent way of conditioning the newcomer’s body to training in general.

“The first six months of training, mainly neurological changes are going on. Your body’s learning how to synchronize the way it fires nerve impulses to the muscle,” Stoppani says, “and the way you get stronger is not by building more muscle, initially — you get stronger by teaching the nerves how to fire better. So, for a beginner doing the bench press three times a week is better than once a week, because it trains their nervous system quicker, and they make better gains that way.”

One of the key highlights of full-body training is its brevity, with many of Stoppani’s full-body workouts requiring less than an hour to complete, and some needing as little as 40 minutes. This style of training is not only effective, but convenient, and because the intensity of the workouts can be easily changed by simply reducing the number of sets performed or lowering the weight used, it’s also ideal for those introducing themselves to weight training.

What Are You Waiting For?

By this point, the benefits of living a healthier lifestyle should not only be apparent, they should be something you crave. You know you want a better life for yourself, and that fitness will deliver it.

Whether it’s fear of embarrassment, fear of failure, or fear of change itself holding you back, the fear of missing out on everything a healthier lifestyle has to offer should be greater. If your biggest concern is not having a clue where to begin, now you know: Start small. By making gradual changes to your diet and activities, you’ll not only develop new, healthier habits, but you’ll begin to see benefits that will encourage you to keep pressing onward.

By educating yourself along the way and continually challenging yourself, a healthier and better life can be yours. So what’s holding you back? You know what you want. Go and get it.

To learn more about Dr. Jim Stoppani’s Dieting 101 meal plan, as well as his Beginner to Advanced program and scores of other programs and workouts, head to JimStoppani.com. You’ll also find articles and videos on nutrition, training, and supplementation that can help you pursue your goals with confidence.