What weight lifting/exercise routine should I follow as a beginner?

I am 6' and 200lbs. I am joining a gym and want to know what's best for exercise and weight lifting for just normal toning up and maybe some belly loss. The gym has treadmills, elipticals, etc and weight area that I know nothing about...Any help in both or either is appreciated! Including how often a week to do it and any rotations. I've never worked out before, but am generally not weak.

Public Comments

1. If you want to lose fat and gain muscle you need to start weight lifting and doing regular cardio exercise. Ideally you should do three alternate days of cardio, and 3 alternate days of weight lifting. An ideal cardio exercise is jogging, and a plan like Couch to 5k is excellent to build up endurance: http://www.coolrunning.com/engine/2/2_3/181.shtml

With weight lifting it depends whether or not you have access to a gym. If you do I suggest you follow a plan like Starting Strength, the wiki of which is full of very useful information : http://startingstrength.wikia.com/wiki/Starting_Strength_Wiki

If you don't have gym access read Brain over Brawn, a free ebook, which contains lot's of useful information about dieting and weight loss : http://brainoverbrawn.com/get-the-book/
I highly recommend you read it regardless of your plans, as it will educate you on what is required to lose weight.

Next you should get your diet in order. To lose weight safely you should aim to have a total intake of 1750-2000 calories a day. This includes the food you eat as well as the exercise you do, so if you eat 2500 calories and do 500 calories worth of jogging your daily total will be 2000. You should aim for a split of around 40% carbs, 40% protein, and 20% fat, and if you need to lower any other those lower carbs before anything else. You can record your food intake and exercise on sites like http://www.livestrong.com/myplate/ which are free to join. In addition to your food intake you should aim to drink around 8 pints of water a day to encourage weight loss.

If you are weight lifting you need at least 1g of protein per lb of body weight. If you have trouble reaching this amount from food I suggest you buy whey protein : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whey_protein

If you read Brain over Brawn, follow Starting Strength and Couch to 5k, and keep tracking your calories on Myplate you will definitely see improvements, and the sooner you start the sooner you will look and feel awesome.

2. 3-4 Times a week for 1-2 hours a day should be good. First day upperbody 2nd lowerbody next upper next lower
Since you're a beginner I would just mess around your first day see how much weight is your max.
You should try putting on muscle before toning.
Start with simple dumbbell curls, move on to squats bench presses.
Ask some people around the gym for help. The gym I go to everyone is really nice and taught me the basics when I first started to workout.
When you've put on some muscle, toning exercises are the same excercises you do except lower weight and high reps.