The Gym, enemy number 3

Number three after exercise and diet is the gym, ah! The smell of sweat running down a guy squatting 500lb is something to dream of-oh ah hi there.. well move along now.
The gym as how people see it is mostly false, many believe that it's a place filled with testosterone spewing 250lb tanks, which well there are but not that many. Usually in a gym you will find the "big" inhabitants which are.. well big, and the not so big inhabitants, being a not so big inhabitant doesn't mean that you aren't strong, I've seen guys smaller than me lift more, it just means that they train for different thing, so try not to judge that much when analyzing the population of your gym.
I tried to bring a few "fat" friends to the gym with me, they all said the same thing to me more or less: "I can't go to the gym like this! They'll laugh at me!"
You see now, in a gym nobody really cares how you look like, on the contrary if they see you working hard trying to slap that fat in the face they will acknowledge you in the "family". Also, having friends in the gym is extremely important, not to save face or to not seem lonely, it's just fun to spot a guy you can laugh at for making strange faces, really try it.

.. seriously 

Well, just to clarify, that's a diver if you can't see all that water around him, though generally all their faces are the same when lifting, it's one of the reasons I even go there.

Another reason why the gym is an enemy are the ridiculous membership prices, I mean.. 60$ a month, dude what. I know that you need to make money but 60$? Might as well build my own gym with the money I spend in a year.

So you should always try to find the cheapest gym possible, as an example in my town there's a gym ran by a youth agency which costs almost nothing (80$ a year).

How I started

To be honest, I don't even know how I started lifting, I was young and foolish, all I wanted was to impress girls, hey hey now! I bet some of you (if not most) started lifting to impress girls.
When I was around 16, life wasn't much of a challenge to me, everything was bland and somewhat easy, but the only problem I had were the girls. There were a few somewhat fit guys in my class which were usually on a pedestal of  admiration from the girls, god and I wanted that feeling too. So I started lifting, I went on with SS and GOMAD and in about 6 months I could bench 190lb, squat 400 and deadlift 410, my legs were pretty strong from the start so that's the only way I can explain my squat and deadlift stats.
I got pretty much what I wanted, girls started paying more attention to me, at parties there was always a pack of them trying to touch my muscles. It was fun for a while, until it got annoying and I had to stop wearing tight shirts and all that type of clothing that makes you look "bigger".
After 1 year of lifting I realized that I couldn't care less about the opposite sex, all I thought about was getting stronger and having a tighter body, it's quite a radical change isn't it? Well, right now lifting has become part of my life, just as somebody wakes up and makes a pot of coffee, I wake up and lift, something in the lines of a daily routine.
It sounds pretty narcissistic doesn't it? Well, why shouldn't it? I gave it my all and now I can admire myself. You can't really say that lifters are narcissists (which they usually are) as everybody else is a narcissist in one way or another, everybody loves themselves just that lifters love what they have achieved.

GOMAD - Gallon of Milk a Day

GOMAD stands for gallon of milk a day, yes that means drinking a gallon of milk a day. It is generally aimed towards people who want to bulk or skinny individuals who are in look for some fat to put on their bones.
To be honest, you could drink 1-2L a day, it will still be effective as a weight gain plan.
At first it'll be pretty hard to stuff that much milk down everyday, but if you drink a cup with every meal and sip every now and then, it'll be relatively easy.
I for once kept a bottle of milk next to my computer and managed to chug 2-3 (1L each) bottles that way.
With GOMAD (well, more like 3/4 GOMAD) I gained around 15 pounds in one month, it was a huge difference to be honest, going from 140lb to 155 made a huge impact on silhouette, it made me look bigger, it made me feel better and I stopped looking like a bunch of matches taped together.

Here's a link with more information about GOMAD.

Important Notice: Always drink a lot of water!

Drinking water is extremely important, it helps with muscle recovery and prevents retention, use this to calculate your recommended water intake.

Advanced routines

After a while you'll notice that beginner routines that focus on adding a lot of weight every workout will not be that effective anymore because you keep stalling and you're not gaining that much strength anymore, well that moment is when you should switch to some more advanced routines:

The Texas Method - Excellent after SS

Jim Wendlers 5/3/1 - Typical powerlifter/athleticism program.

Madcow 5x5 - Full body strength program.

Joe DeFrancos Badass - Bodybuilder/athleticism program.

Now whatever you chose depends on what you want to follow, for strength The Texas Method or Madcow, and so on.
Keep the basics in mind, good form, avoid injury and drink a lot of water.
Lifting is usually the easiest part of getting fit, if you have any questions be free to leave a comment.

Also anything after these routines would depend on you, although generally if you can't gain anything anymore on these routines (and that's usually in a lot of time) it means that you've hit your natural muscle mass limit and  if you want to gain more muscle you would have to resort to steroids.

Diet part 6: Supplements

Choosing supplements is complicated if you have no idea what to get as most of them are useless, I'll make a small list about supplements that work save your money.

Fish Oil - Fish oil is great, omega 3 especially, it makes you smarter, stronger and improves your general health. EPA and DHA are the essential omega 3 fatty acids you want, ALA is less effective.

Eat about 1-3g of EPA/DHA per day.

Vitamin D - If you don't get enough you should supplement it, but only if you don't get enough as having too much vitamin D could be dangerous (check with your doctor if you need to supplement it). Vitamin D is one of the most important vitamins out there, is is involved in everything so not getting enough will make it worse for you everywhere.

Protein Powder - If you're not getting enough protein out of your meals, protein powder would be the answer, the type of protein powder doesn't really matter so just get whatever is cheapest.

Magnesium - usually you don't get enough of this, consider supplementing.

Zinc - same story as magnesium same for Vitamin C.

Vitamin C 

Multivitamin/minerals - It would help if you're not getting enough of these from your meals, not much but it would.

Creatine - Contrary to popular belief, creatine is safe and helps with muscle development a little, eating about 5g of it everyday would be recommended, also consider buying it in monohydrate form only, much cheaper and just as effective.

PS: You find creatine in red meat too, in about 2-3 pound you can find 5g of protein, but eating 2-3 pounds of red meats everyday would not be recommended.

That's pretty much it, anything else is garbage and you should avoid it, also the only necessary supplement would be Fish Oil, you should avoid everything else if you can't afford them.

Diet part 5 - What to eat: Grains and Cereal

Nuts - Any nuts are good, high in protein, vitamin E, magnesium etc. Also high in calorie so they're perfect on a bulk.
My favorites are: Almonds and cashews, but you can choose anything.

Oats - Amazing breakfast food, fills you up, full of carbs to power you up.

Quinoa - High in protein and fiber, free of gluten and tastes great.

Lentils - Cheap, tasty and literally booming with protein, probably the cheapest source of protein out there.

Rice - Just like oats, full of carbs and extremely tasty.

Pasta - I know that these are not grains, although they are made out of them so I though of putting it here, delicious high carb/protein food also relatively cheap.

You can basically eat anything, just be careful about it's protein/calorie count if you're cutting, always check the label.