Hey guys, fellow fitness enthusiast here. I just wanted to make a post offering help to anyone who wants to get into shape and may be a little overwhelmed by all of the conflicting information out there. I have over 5 years of lifting experience and over the years have obtained a solid knowledge base of bodybuilding, strength training, proper peridization, and fitness in general. If you have any questions regarding fitness feel free to drop them down below and I'd be glad to help you out. Regardless of your experience level I'm confident that I have something to offer knowledge wise, and I hope to maybe learn something in return as well through discussion here.
If you are a beginner who wants to get into shape you can also visit my website (work in progress, and no I don't make any money from you visiting as I have no ads and no paid services yet, I simply have a passion for helping people get into shape) at http://www.fit-philosophy.com/index.html where I have a very effective beginner routine and a fitness primer that I'm working on to help complete beginners understand how to achieve pretty much any fitness goal.
Some things I'd like to touch on that some people amy not immediately know or may not be common knowledge. I can provide scientific literature to support these claims and go into further detail.
Spot reduction is a myth. Training a body part will not make you lose fat on that specific area of the body to any significant degree.
While strength and muscular endurance ARE tied to rep range, hypertrophy is not. The total amount of "hard sets" (defined as a set taken 2-3 reps from failure) are what drive hypertrophy.
As a natural lifter, even if your main focus is bodybuilding, your main focus should be on progressive overload (strength; adding weight to the bar) and not exclusively super high volume bodybuilding training. The reason beginners make such rapid physique changes is becaues of the rapid rate at which they gain strength; this added with what we know from #2, it is important to train in the strength ranges often and to strive to get stronger as one of your main goals.
In regards to weight loss and weight gain, it does not matter WHAT you eat, but how much you eat. You can eat as clean as you can, if you are not in a deficit you will not lose weight. While the source you get your nutrients and calories from matter for health, they are less important for body composition.
