To the OP:
I guess it just depends on what your goals are. What do you mean when you say you want to "get in shape?" Do you just want to lose a lot of weight, or do you want to improve your physique? If you want to look very skinny, then focus only on cardio and eat very little. If you're successful you will look anorexic. If, on the other hand, you want to have a physique that most people - men and women - regard as more masculine, more appropriate for a
man then you need to build muscle as well, which means lifting weights and eating a plentiful, high protein diet.
To me, a man who is rail thin with little to no muscle mass is not "in shape." There is no reason to try and look like a body builder if you're not going to compete, but that doesn't mean that you don't want to build muscle. For most men to get the body they are looking for they have to build muscle.
1. Eat organic and try to be vegetarian only. Eat fresh raw fruit and vegetables when possible.
Eating organic is wonderful if you have the money. But, being a vegetarian poses a lot of problems for anyone who is trying to build muscle. Because muscle is built out of protein and various amino acids, cutting out meat or animal products like eggs, milk and cheese will make it virtually impossible for you to make the gains you want. I know that a lot of vegetarians are pretty healthy and not overweight, but they don't necessarily have the physique you may be looking for. Trying to gain muscle and burn fat while maintaining a vegetarian diet is like trying to win a game of basketball against LeBron James with only one leg and one arm tied behind your back. It's pretty much pointless.
3. Eat banana in the morning with plentiful of water, eat regular lunch
no grease and sugar please. Eat dinner before 7pm and nothing after
This all depends on when you go to sleep. If you go to bed right at 7pm (who does that?) it's ok to stop eating at 7. However, if you have a normal bedtime, say around 11pm, then you will be intentionally putting yourself into a catabolic state everynight, essentially sabotaging your muscle growth. Like I said in my above post, eat a small meal every 3 to 4 hours, to keep your metabolism up. For me, I always eat cottage cheese right before I go to sleep because of its casein protein, which digests very slowly over a period of hours, helping prevent muscle loss over night (also cottage cheese has plenty of BCAAs). If you are really serious about preventing muscle loss overnight, you could think about taking a casein protein shake right before bed.
4. Exercise buy a Nintendo Wii if you're too lazy to go to gym or too scared
to get into open shower because of your "body image issue" or meeting
some perverts there LOL.
Not to be mean, but this is terrible advice. I've played the Wii. It's really fun. It's a great game system, especially for kids or groups of people. But it will not make you lose any weight or build any strength whatsoever. Suggesting someone get a Wii instead of going to the gym is quite frankly idiotic. It's such bad advice that it's probably a joke. I hope!
If you're overweight, the first thing to do is lose weight through cardio exercise. Work on strengthening with Nautilus later.
Like I said above, this all depends on your goals. If you are
only interested in losing weight, then sure, just do cardio. You will eventually look like you are anorexic. However, if you are interested in gaining any kind of muscle at all, to make your now thin body proportional and somewhat masculine in appearance, you have to build muscle as well. There is absolutely no reason to wait until you have lost a lot of weight to start lifting. Fat people can lift just as well at thin people! (Maybe even better in some instances.)
The thing to realize is that
lifting weights also burns fat! If your goal is to burn fat and gain muscle then you must lift weights. If your weight lifting routine is good enough, you can even burn all the fat you want and not do any cardio. But, in any event, lifting is essential to any fitness program. And when you start lifting, Nautilus machines are not what you should spend the most time on. Follow the
Starting Strength program, which is essentially barbell compound movements. It's all you really need starting out.
Also, if you did only focus on cardio for a few months you may find that when you eventually tried to start building muscle it would be much harder. It may not seem like it but former fat guys are often the best candidates for developing great strength and great physiques. This is because your body will transform your current mass (fat) into muscle. If you don't have any mass to transform (i.e. if you are very skinny), then you have to add that mass from somewhere else, by eating a whole lot and creating a huge caloric surplus. This is why products like "weight gainers" exist. Fat guys don't really need those so much, obviously.
Join a nice gym that is convenient for you to go every day. Find a cardio exercise that is challenging but tolerable. I would suggest Elliptical. Start doing about 30 minutes a day on a weight-loss program. Eventually add some more cardio, like 20 minutes on a bike or a treadmill. Work your way up to an hour a day.
It's great to go to the gym everyday. However, it is terrible for your body to work the same muscle groups over and over, day after day after day. You have to give your body time to recover!!! Otherwise, you will simply induce over-training and possibly a repetitive stress injury.
This is why I suggested in my post above that you work in lifting
and cardio together, alternating days for each. If you are lifting weights properly, you will burn
a lot of calories. Coupled with a reasonable cardio program, you both cut body fat and help develop your muscles at the same time without over-training or over-stressing any particular part of your body. If your goal is just to lose as much weight as possible and look absolutely emaciated, like a Holocaust victim or something, then sure, do only cardio every single day. But, if you want a healthy, proportional, masculine body, you must incorporate lifting and give your body enough time to recover.
Also, when you do cardio you absolutely do not need to do it for an hour, unless you're training for a marathon or something. If your goal is fat loss, you need to focus on getting your heart rate up. The best way to do this is short bursts at a very fast pace. This kind of training is called "HIIT" or High Intensity Interval Training. It basically boils down to running at a normal pace for a few minutes and then running at a very fast pace for a minute or two, alternating between different paces for the duration of your run.
HIIT is easiest on a treadmill, but if you don't have a treadmill you can go to any high school track, sprinting on the straight parts and jogging on the curves. Or you can even just go find a field somewhere and measure out 100 meters or so and just do sprints back and forth. Sdg475 put up an excellent post outlining a cardio routine that achieves this, and probably wouldn't last more than 20 to 25 minutes.
It really all boils down to your goals. If you only want to lose weight, then starve yourself and do hours of cardio every day. If you want a healthy, fit, strong body, then you must eat enough of the right foods and adopt the right weight lifting program. It's up to you.
