Newbie Needs Advice

Hello everybody: I a middle-aged newbie and I appear to have a serious “skinny fat” or normal weight obesity problem. I am 6’ 4", 220 lbs. I recently got my DEXA (% body fat composition), the total was 33% fat. Two years ago DEXA measured it to be 31%–what scares the heck out of me is that I am fairly active (some modest weight lifting, jogging ocassioanally, etc) and between those two scans I lost 10 lbs, but my percent body fat went up 2 percent. Turns out that while I was losing 10 lbs I lost all of it in lean body mass–muscle!!!

I have Marc Rippetoe’s book and Jim Wendler’s 5/3/1 program book. Is this the best way to go? Any other advice?

Should I even do MORE weight lifting then 5/3/1 suggests I do (4 times a week?)

Any advice greatly appreciated.

I think your diet should be more of a concern than the exercise. Exercise is the easy part; as long as you’re eating right you should be able to build muscle on just about any weight lifting program (provided that you’re putting the effort in and not just half-assing it).

You should probably repost this in the beginner’s forum though because you’ll receive more advice there. You’re likely to get a lot of negative comments in the bodybuilding forum. Also, it would probably be a good idea to start a thread about your diet in the nutrition forum.

Thanks for the advice, riddle, Ill repost this in beginners forum.