"This weightlifting thing"

So I’ll actually start a thread on what I’m doing. Or what I think I’m doing. I think.

Let’s start off with stats, or at least pertinent info, as "stats" to y’all might mean something different than what I’m thinking of.

I’m 38, going to be 39 in March, 163 lbs. roughly, gained about 40 of it through pregnancy. The kid is going to be 6. :rolleyes:

As of 2 days of that FitDay site, my diet is 50% carbs, 32% fat and 19% protein. Which adds up to 101% but why argue with the computer? So I need to up the protein and slide back the carbs. Maybe the fat a bit too.

Exercise up until now …. let me switch direction on that. High school, I became anorexic. 80 lbs., and that was a weigh-in at the docs I had put on a few lbs. for. (I’m 5"1 BTW.) So I kinda drifted out of that late HS early college but really started exercising a lot. This was in the Jane Fonda days, lots of aerobics. But I also, looking back, unwittingly had a fairly good weight regimen going. Lots of made-up compound exercises with weights — situps with a dumbbell swung behind my head to over my knees, weird aerobic-inspired squats and lunges with dumbbells, stuff like that. My real love was cycling. I’d go out for whole days and just get lost. I enjoyed powering up hills, then keeping up with traffic on the way back down.

So then we hit post-college (which was a slow transition because I didn’t do it all full-time) and the working world, which we all know makes one more sedentary. Although I still never gave up working out. Tried jogging for a while, that was OK but I didn’t know anything about it except putting on sneaks and a decent bra. That transitioned into stationary bikes and ellipticals and stairmasters at the gym for a few years, with a bit of nautilus equipment thrown in once in a while.

Weight in college: 108. Weight at marriage: 120. Weight when I got pregnant: 130. Max weight at pregnancy: 180. Weight after pregnancy: 160. And here I sit 6 years later.

So I’ve read more and more about "this weightlifting thing" as my mother calls it, and with a brother we’ve nicknamed the red-headed hulk, I’ve gotten a few glimpses into heavy weight lifting since he got into it when he was in college. … but not nearly enough to just start picking up dumbbells apparently. There’s more information than I can process in just a few days or weeks.

I picked up a book, "The New Rules of Lifting for Women" by Lou Schuler, I’d heard the name somewhere before and I saw some of the stuff discussed in forums here, so I picked it up. It has what I’m looking for — "do this, lift that, eat this, and read about why you’re doing this" kind of format. I need someone to tell me where to start!!

So this is where I’m starting: a bunch of compound exercises, nothing isolated yet. For how long? No idea. How heavy weights? Dunno. I have weights, max 8 lbs. dumbbells, which I’ve found right now do that get-fatigued-at-12-or-15-reps thing, I have a bench and plates (maybe 100 lbs. worth) and I picked up a barbell today. It’s one of those curved ones, like to fit your grip, not a straight basic bar, does that matter?

Tomorrow starts my basic routine, which will be somewhere like 8 reps of compound exercises.

Squats
Bench Presses
Bent-Over Rows
Overhead Barbell Presses
Stiff-Legged Deadlifts
Barbell Curls
Calf Raises

Three days a week. I want to continue doing my general running and walking and elliptical other days. I’m going to stick to the weights on the 3 days and see how I need to rearrange the cardio stuff as I go.

OK I’m tired of typing now. Any input greatly appreciated!!