Best diet to "Reshape Body?"

[Easy Mac]

Hey, guys, I'm not necessarily looking for a way to lose weight. Right now, I'm 5'10 and 170 lbs, not bad. My legs are all muscle, but my upper body feels fat, and I feel I'm carrying too much weight in the stomach. The problem is, I've gained about 30 pounds in 3 years (damn metabolism, but at 140 I felt I was unhealthily skinny). I've started running the past week, but I don't have a gym to go to until I go back to school next month.

So any advice on what I should do to not really lose weight, but try and keep the same relative weight, just change my physique (i.e. more muscle, less fat)? I'm trying to eat better, but I hate the tastes of salad and basically anything healthy (I am a very picky eater). Do I need to just suck it up and eat whats healthy or just improve my sloth-like attitude and maybe just curtail my eating habits (I guess I can't eat like I'm in high school anymore). And of course hit the gym when I get back to school.

Any advice on how I should exercise for the next month (or just run, and do situps and pushups until I can do something better?)

Oh, and I went for a normal checkup last week, and my blood pressure is right in the middle of normal, and my doctor said I'm perfectly healthy. Mainly, I just want to look and feel that way.

And please don't say Atkins, I can't live w/o my moms spaghetti

[damnMikeBrown]

The most effective method to "reshape" your body, is to modify the underlying structure of it. This is best accomplished by weight training or regular physical resistance work.

You don't necessarly need weights to massively alter your muscle mass. Look at any kid going through Basic...I know from personal experience. We never touched a weight in Basic, and we got HUGE, just in the span of 10 weeks. The key when resistance training is to make sure that your protein intake is sufficient to repair the worked muscle.

Running and other cardiovascular work will help in that it will encourage the fat stores in your body to get lost, thus allowing a clearer view of the underlying muscles.

I'm sure you can find a beginning program involving no-weight type of exercises, including pull-ups, dips, push-ups, flutter kicks, and a host of others I can't think of at the moment.

Don't dismiss the value of these exercises because they don't involve weights, you can and will make gains by doing them provided you work them properly, consistantly, and give your body sufficient time and nutrients to recover.

[Swaggs]

I would recommend doing 40 push ups and 40 sit ups every morning and 40 push ups and 40 sit ups every night before bed.

Also, if you drink cola a lot, giving it up for diet (I still hate the stuff, but drink it on occassion) or unsweetened tea w/ Sweet and Low. I really believe that all the sugar and carbs in colas are quietly a very big cause of unhealthy weight gain.

[damnMikeBrown]

I'd recommend against the above. No offense Swaggs. Not the diet cola part, that's very sensible, but the workout routine.

Working a given muscle, even with body weight resistance, should not be done daily. For a beginner, twice a week for a given muscle is sufficient, with two days of rest in between.

When working with own weight resistance, the gains occur when muscle failure is induced.
For example:
Do pushups for one minute
immediately roll over and do sit-ups for a minute
immediately begin Pushups for 45 seconds
sit-ups 45 seconds
pushups for 30 seconds
sit-ups for 30 seconds

When you can no longer perform a pushup during the time interval, drop to your knees and continue.
When you can no longer perform sit-ups during the time interval, lie flat, place your hands underneath your back-side, hold your legs straight out 4-6 inches off the ground, and begin flutter kicks.

By the 3rd set of pushups, even with the interval of recovery when doing situps, muscle failure will be achieved for most beginners.

Likewise, you could do many variations of pushups with short recovery periods. Hands close together, feet elevated, front elevated, hands facing outward, inward, elephant pushups, etc.

The key is to work the muscle to exhaustion, then let it rest for 2 days, while getting good rest, and keeping a good level of protein intake to rebuild the muscle.