Why would you need to know this then? Well, your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) is how many calories your body needs every day to maintain your weight.  When you are in training you need many more to help your body build muscle.  In my case, about 3,100 cals!  But you can’t get this from eating pizza and burgers sadly.  It has to come from ‘clean’ foods. If you aren’t doing this then you can pump away i nthe gym like fury and you will not see fast, impressive results.
What is Eating Clean then?

I have taken this from a variety of sites, all acknowledgements are at the end.
Cut right back on animal fats, processed fats and fat in general.

PROTEIN
You need plenty of protein as this is the most important building fuel for your muscles.  And you have to eat many meals in small quantities and eat the right thing at the right time. High protein foods include chicken, turkey, fish, red meat, eggs, milk and dairy products, quark, nuts and beans. Eat these foods or have protein supplements at least every three hours.

Five servings of fruit and vegetables should also be eaten per day. This is the absolute minimum and ideally eat more than five.

Okay, so how much protein should I eat a day?  Well… between 1.25 and 1.5 grams per pound of bodyweight (thats about 2.5 to 3 grams per kilo).  But not all in one sitting! Your stomach is the size roughly of your two clenched fists and you should only eat a meal of that size.  Small, frequent meals is the way to go.

CARBS

What about carbs?  Well, youy should only be eating carbs for breakfast and just after your workouts when your muscles need fast access to building blocks for repair and growth.

So are any carb sources OK? Of course not!  The easy rule is, if you like it don’t eat it!

Here is a guide:

Must-have carb sources: green veggies (broccoli, cucumbers, lettuce, spinach, celery, asparagus, etc.)

Can-have carb sources: other veggies (except potatoes), berries (blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, blackberries, etc.)

Occasional carb sources: Other fruits

Rare carb sources: brown rice, whole wheat bread, whole wheat pasta, cream of wheat, potatoes, yams

Should-avoid carb sources: white bread, white pasta, oatmeal

Must-avoid carb source: pastries, cookies, candy and any other junk sugary food

FAT

Just cut all fats out, right? Wrong! Not all fat is bad.  Some are your friend.

The “good” fats are the essential fatty acids: fatty acids that your body can’t produce itself and that are needed for optimal function. These fats have to come from your diet or supplementation program. These essential fatty acids fall into two broad categories: omega-3 and omega-6. Most people get plenty of omega-6 from their diet, especially if it’s rich in animal protein sources. However, omega-3 deficiency is very common in North America, mostly because fish consumption is generally very low. Omega-3 fatty acids, especially the all-important DHA and EPA, have several benefits when it comes to being healthy and building a muscular physique.

Sardines, tuna, mackerel, salmon are all good in this respect.  Also use Olive oil and linseed oil as they are good sources too.

Omega-3 Fatty Acids:

- Increase insulin sensitivity, which has positive effects on both muscle building (facilitating nutrient transport to the muscle) and fat loss (reducing the amount of nutrients stored as fat).

- Increase the body’s use of fat for fuel, especially when exercising.

- Improve nervous system recovery/regeneration and function.

- Improve cardiovascular health by improving blood flow, reducing triglycerides (”bad” fatty acids), as well as the formation of plaque and blood clots

PRE AND POST WORKOUT

Pre-workout make sure you have eaten in order to provide sufficient energy to fuel your workout, but not too much as to bloat you. Eat small amounts of slow release carb foods such as wholewheat pasta, granary bread, banana, blueberries, broccoli, tomatoes or a small salad.

Then after training you need to ensure you have sufficient protein for growth and repair as well as carbs to replenish your stores. The best time to fuel for a workout is actually after the previous exercise session. Have fast acting carbs like glucose (fizzy drinks), a small amount of chocolate or the supplement maltodextrin here.

The hard part is organising this!  Making meals that are tasty and good for you and avoiding eating junk.  Buy lots of little boxes to put your food in and take to work for your food.  Yeah, people will think you are a weirdo for a while but it won’t be long before you can twist their arms off like a silver-back Gorilla will it?

ALCOHOL

In a nutshell, don’t binge drink! Drink as little as you can.  One glass of wine a few times a week is opimal for health really.  Also, too much booze will make you end up in the kebab shop or curry house.  And that will very quicky wreck all your hard work, trust me!

WHAT ELSE?

Organise your diet in advance.

Write down everything you eat.

Study the backs of food packets for nutritional information.

As a general rule, the less processed a food is, the better.

People starting at the gym seriously often eat chicken breasts, chicken breasts, chicken breasts and chicken breasts.  This is not a good idea.  Eat them by all means but eat other stuff too.  Mix it up or you will become intolerant to it.

Eat Breakfast.  That is so important I will say it again - EAT BREAKFAST.

Try not to become a food bore - this is actually really hard!  You will find yourself going on about fat and carbs to people.

And don’t beat yourself up for eating something naughty once in a while.  That’s ONCE IN A WHILE ok?!

Finally, remember that you will need a diet for putting on weight when muscle building and for losing it when you want to get ripped.  These will be different.  There is plenty of info out there on it.
THANKS TO THE FOLLOWING FOR INFO FROM THEIR ARTICLES,  I COULD NOT HAVE WRITTEN IT WITHOUT THEM:

James Collier BSc (Hons) RNutr, Nutrition Consultant and MuscleTalk.co.uk Co-Owner

Christian Thibaudeau at tmuscle.com

Weight-loss-for-busy-people.com

The US Navy Seal Fitness Handbook

Men’s Health magazine

Men’s Fitness

At least that’s what I thought before taking the time to actually read the forums. Had I ever spoken to the bodybuilders in the gym? No, of course not - didn’t need to, right?

Well it seems I need to give a very large apology to the bodybuilding community as a whole, because what I have found are kind, honest, dedicated people who are prepared to give up their time and experience to people like me.

I have been preparing to return to the gym for the first time in about 8 years recently. Of course, I knew exactly what to do and needed no advice, but thought I would look anyway.

Thank God that I did and that there are so many helpful people out there. My original idea of ‘using steroids to kick start my training’ went straight out the window as did the 45 minute CV workout before weight training.

I read Cashman and Toxictoffees guides at MuscleTalk (www.muscletalk.co.uk) which I found infinitely helpful and made me realise that I wasn’t just about to start at the gym at all - I was fundamentally altering the whole way in which I live my life. Weight training, when done correctly, seems not to be just about looking big but also ‘putting your house in order’; by which I mean having the right attitude mentally. A healthy body and mind run together. I can now see that by embracing the advice on these forums I am not only pumping weights but I am quitting the junk food diet, I am junking the Friday and Saturday night binge drinking and I am not only looking at myself with new respect but other people too.

Toxictoffee talks about saving up and buying his sofa once he had sorted his living room out. His point is ‘don’t bother with supplements of negligable effectiveness until you have sorted out the important things’. But it also said something else to me - he SAVED to buy the sofa. No ‘take it now and pay next year’ deal and no credit card. This seems to tie in with the whole bodybuiilding paradigm as it requires a well ordered mind, dedication and patience. I haven’t saved up for anything in years but I have sworn from here on in if I want anything (that Red and White ‘06 Yamaha R1 I dream of for instance) I will save for it.

So, to sum up (if anyone is still reading) - my thanks go out to Cashman, Toxictoffee and all the other forum members whose entries I have read who have taught me a few basic life lessons. For the last 8 years my partner and I have been, to all intents and purposes, living in a rather unpleasant place after my company went under and I got into massive personal debt, but now we are fully paid up members of the Human Race again.

I turned 39 last week and I am now champing at the bit to get to, and beyond, the level of fitness I had 8 years ago. My head is still spinning trying to keep up with all the information on here about diet and training and I am hoping that you guys can help me put together a workout plan to give me what I want. So this is me:

As I said, I am 39, 5′10″ tall and currently weigh ~72 Kilos, and haven’t done a great deal of excercise in years. I can’t jog for more than 5 minutes without stopping at the moment so I am totally unfit really. My diet has been getting better and better over the last 8 months and now I dont eat junk food, dont drink more than 2 pints of cider at a time (And only do that once a week) never eat ready meals, eat plenty of fresh fruit and veg. I have quit smoking. My body fat has been slowly creeping up due to sedentary lifestyle (mainly sitting in a car for many hours driving and doing little which involves activity).

My goals are to get rid of the gut and to put on muscle bulk. Specifically targeting (in order of importance) thighs, chest, buttocks, arms as these need the most work. I have quite nice calves but have always suffered from weedy thighs and a small ass. My chest is quite weak too.

I suppose the only other thing that may be relevant is that in my job as a surveyor I have to leave for work at 7am each day mon-fri and get home anywhere between 3pm and 7pm.

I am starting back at the gym in about 10 days and was hoping that you guys could come up with some advice on a good workout for me. I guess 3 or 4 days a week is the optimum.
I am raring to go and guess with a good diet and weight routine should be able to make some major changes in the next 10 weeks or so.

Return to your semen-spattered cradle of filth, Collins!

Okay, because of the nature of this post I just want to establish a few things first;

*    All the firearms mentioned in this post are totally legal and the owners hold firearms certificates for them

*    All shooting was done in a safe and sensible way by experienced  people on private land

*    No laws were broken and no animals were harmed.

Right, now that has been established then we can continue.

The other day I spent a morning, as you do, watching friends firing an M16 and other firearms. Actually, it was an armalite (the civvy version of the rifle) and to be even more precise a modified AR-15.

Obviously I don’t really  do this sort of thing often.   It was rather enjoyable though, watching these guns go off, but was also very frightening when you realise the power behind a bullet. From 100 yards, a single round will make a brick explode. Nothing is left - just the debris. The force is incredibly powerful. So then I stopped to think about what it would do to a living thing… which brings me on to the point of this post…

Watching Big Brother the other night I was utterly disgusted at the way that repugnant girl Alexandra DeGale was talking about what a big Gangsta she and her friends are and how she will be waiting for the others to come out. “Remember that I told you” was one of her favourite sayings, darkly intimating as to what was going to happen to other contestants at the hands of her “Strong… solid, So Solid men…” and then going ‘pow pow pow’ and pointing her finger about.

I have seen this behaviour before on TV, silly little girls glamourising guns and rappers and giving it the pointed finger gun gesture as if it’s cool. What exactly is cool about this? For a start, rap artists glamourise treating women like bits of meat and making money from other peoples misery. Secondly, most of them are not ‘Gangsta’s’ anyway are they? It’s just a load of marketing hype to sell their CD’s to middle-class suburban schoolboys. Its so stale now to be honest and I am glad it is disappearing from public life as 99% of it was crap.

I struggle to find the words to express how crass this girl is; with her pathetic talk of harrassing other contestants and having them shot. I wonder just how she would react if she could really see what happens to a human being when a bullet hits them. I somehow doubt it would be the tough-faced braggadocio she so keenly expressed on Big Brother; I suspect she would be shocked and sickened. Perhaps that’s what these people need - to shake the ignorantly glamorous image of guns out of their heads and to see firearms for what they really are. However, Alexandra seems defiant and, incredibly, denies she has done anything wrong. All I can say really is that she needs to try and educate herself a bit more and GROW THE FUCK UP.

Am I the only one who has noticed how many guff-awful episodes there are now? I mean, come on. There have been so many dreadful episodes now that I forget most of them and show little interest in seeing them to the end. Like the one with the Doctor’s daughter in it for instance - full of glaring plot holes, bewildered looking fish head soldiers, acne infested gawky teenagers and a corny plot line held together with one of Russel’s soggy semen-spattered wank tissues. And now it looks like he has a daughter roaming the universe that he doesn’t know about (The Doctor that is - not RTD who I don’t think has any children?). I groaned out loud as that episode started and could see the corny ending racing toward me in double quick time. Please God, don’t let it become a spin-off, don’t let it become a spin off…. like that, that… what was it called? The one where they dug up one of the old Doctors Assistants? It doesn’t matter, it was beyond bad. It was probably put down like the grotesque mutant that it was (Hopefully buries alongside ‘Rose Tyler: Earth Defence’). Its like RTD pushes the contents of a scrabble board up his backside, pops up to see the head of programming, and sprays letter squares out all over his big, shiny mahogany desk.  “Fantastic Russell, here’s a cheque for £3 Million”.

Am I the only one who thinks that they could, perhaps, do better? The last episode I really enjoyed was the one which was set just before the Great War. A 2 parter, it was thoroughly entertaining and involving and left me with a tear in my eye at the end. And guess what?  It wasn’t written by RTD. I think he was too busy writing a spin off about K9’s radar ears being teleported back in time to the start of the Second World War and becoming a radar chain station along the south coast.
So come on, you know you don’t want to admit that Doctor Who is bloody awful, and we all love Mr Tenant, but those plots…. ***wince*** You can fool some of the people all of the time…
rating: 4/10
Robsa

PS I hear that there is to be a new spin-off series out next spring where Sylvester McCoy’s brain is transplanted inside a BBC Micro model ‘B’ home computer attached to pram wheels which goes around investigating murders in swimming pools owned by homosexual TV entertainers. Can’t wait. Awight?

Hitler’s Children (2004) First Aired 2005

Fascinating UK TV mini-series documenting the Hitler Youth. With interviews from former HJ (Hitler-Juegend) members and film footage showing some of their activities through to the end of the war. In one episode there is a particularly fascinating part where, before the war, they go on an exchange program with either Oxford or Cambridge University students!. It’s interesting to hear what the HJ say about the British students.

If you are interested in WW2 I can highly recommend it.

Channel 4 blurb:

Hitler’s Children
First shown on Channel 4 in July/August 2005
Hitler was determined to bring German children under his control – the result was the Hitler Youth. This five-part series hears the testimonies of former members and draws on unpublished archive material and chilling propaganda footage for the first comprehensive film portrayal of the young people of the Third Reich.

http://rapidshare.com/files/112799430/Hitlers_Children.rar.001
http://rapidshare.com/files/112807876/Hitlers_Children.rar.002
http://rapidshare.com/files/112816272/Hitlers_Children.rar.003
http://rapidshare.com/files/112824432/Hitlers_Children.rar.004
http://rapidshare.com/files/112831906/Hitlers_Children.rar.005
http://rapidshare.com/files/112838546/Hitlers_Children.rar.006

Enjoy!
Robsa

INTRODUCTION TO COMPUTERS & THE INTERNET, MICROSOFT OFFICE 2007 and MICROSOFT SQL SERVER 2005

NOTE: IF YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT RAPIDSHARE IS THEN READ MY POST ON RAPIDSHARE FIRST!

Hi all.  Well, here are a few E-book compendiums for you to get you started.

1. If you are looking for a new job as a secretary or similar you may need to brush up on your office skills, or may be panicking because you haven’t used Microsofts new Office 2007 suite then this compendium is for you.  An OFFICE 2007 ‘For Dummies’, an OFFICE 2007 ‘Bible’, a book of tricks for office and one on workflow.  This should be all you need for office until you get to an advanced stage.
2. If you are new to computers completely - especially if you are an older user - you may be looking for a helping hand in understanding them. My second pack comprises of:

PC’s for dummies (10th edition).   An excellent starter book for those who are completely new to PC’s.  It
describes the PC and the main uses people make for them.
All-in-one desk reference for dummies.  A complement to the above book - a handy reference for those (multitude
of) acronyms you don’t understand)
the internet all-in-one reference for dummies.  An internet reference.

1. My final compendium is for what is probably the best piece of software Microsoft have ever made; SQL server. So you have SQL server for dummies and SQL: A beginners guide. SQL is the language of the database and understanding it is crucial to understanding what you can and cannot do with your database. These two books should see you clear for most coding projects short of a major commercial intranet.

Of course, if you like these books may I suggest (as a writer myself) that you BUY the books. There is no real substitute for a good, paper book in your hands or propped on your desk as you code.

Look out for my other Rapidshare E-book releases: A gardening pack, a hypnosis and self help pack, a couple of classic books.

regards, Robsa

1: Microsoft Office 2007 Pack

2: Beginners Computing package

3: Microsoft SQL server 2005 compendium

Confused? Don’t be. I am, of course,  referring to what Scientologists call non-scientologists (check out wikipedia here for a brief explanation).  I have had some interesting discussions with people about Scientology and one was even foolish enough to tell me that it ‘works’ for some people, is ‘misunderstood’ and ‘xenu’ and the ‘Space Opera’ are nonsense invented by its detractors to attack L. Ron et al.   Whilst I agree that it does indeed ‘work’ for some people (in the same way that hypnotism, brain washing and NLP works) - for many people in fact - its aims are utterly unhealthy in as much as it only wants you to keep paying the ‘church’ for an endless procession of courses on the ‘bridge to total freedom’ and beyond with the ‘Operating Thetan’ levels.

Without saying much else (Scientlogists operate a policy known as ‘fair game’ - if you attack them then they will go to any lengths to destroy you and ruin your life.  It really doesn’t take much.) I will give you a link to a couple of books that you may find interesting if you either are thinking of becoming a scientlogist, have a loved one involved or are just curious.  I iwll say no more on the subject; I am sure you can make up your own minds.  One is a biography of L. Ron Hubbards life, the other is an account of a young girl who became involved in Scientology in the early seventies.  Scientology has changede since then, but only a little.  The way they operate now is fundamentally IDENTICAL to what she described back then.  I can to some extent confirm this.

Enjoy!  As usual you will need to join Rapidshare to obtain these files.

http://rapidshare.com/files/112585502/scientology_E-books.rar 

If you do not know what Rapidshare is then I will explain it briefly here; it is a huge server farm in Switzerland run by a German company where literally millions of people have uploaded files.  Now, scattered across the internet are forums, blogs, search sites and so forth which list these files and links to download them.  As usual, it all started off with porn so most of it is porn.  Having said that, there are also many, many movies there.  I will publish a post of my favourite rapidshare links some time soon.

Finally, the last quick thing I need to say about it is that although you can try it for free I would honestly tell you not to bother.  Join as a premium user!  It is currently €6 (about four quid) and for that you will get high speed downloads coming out of your ears!  You do have a 25gb limit per 5 days but this can be discarded if you upload stuff which people download.  For instance, I average 400-500k/sec for 99% of my downloads.  What are you waiting for?! join today!
Wiki has a page on it here.

On to my first Upload!

Robsa

Yeees folks, watched the Evil Dead trilogy again last week; I had forgotten how fantastic they are. Check out this superb Old Spice advert he has done:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af1OxkFOK18

He has also done a couple of movies recently which Nicky and I are desperate to get hold of - ‘The Man with the Screaming Brain’ and ‘My name is Bruce ‘. Find some info on My name is Bruce here, and see a trailer of it here. Bruce plays himself when a village is beseiged by a Demon and mistakenly thought to be a real superhero. If you want a bit of quality entertainment then check him out!