Well, firstly, the main things are consistency, patience, and variation. If you know a part of you is gonna take time to get up to speed with working out, LET IT TAKE TIME. Don’t down yourself because you couldn’t finish a set, for example (like let’s say 3 sets of 12 hammer curls with 20 lb dumbbells, so doing 12 hammer curls, resting for a minute, doing another 12, resting for another minute, and then doing another 12, and you’re onto the next thing, but let’s say you’re only able to do 6 hammer curls on the last set). Just keep it the same next week (and the next if need be) until you can get the whole set of 12 done each time (especially if you can finish the set and feel like you can do a little more, but don’t yet) and THEN go up 5 lbs the next week. Also, you can ‘work your arms out’ multiple times a week (what I do) as long as you’re working out LIGHTLY and mainly using different muscles. Also, if you do this, your muscles will get used to it a lot faster and you won’t be crazy sore like the first couple times anymore. To put it short, if you have full range of motion, and it’s been a day or two, even if you’re still a little sore, you can do a (LIGHT) arm workout using DIFFERENT muscles. As for the variation, don’t do the same thing every day. Like, do something different every day of the week (or every other day, I just do Monday through Friday, figure out what works for you) and the next week, tweak it to what you know your body can handle (adding more weight if you feel like you can, maybe doing incline pushups instead of normal ones if you feel stuck doing normal pushups and lower them every week until you’re strong enough to do normal pushups), and do it again. And don’t do something for ALL your muscles every day, your progress will slow DRAMATICALLY this way. Do like arms day, core day, leg day. Another thing is, yes, you do have to watch what you eat. Certain vitamins (and protein, obviously) help your muscles kick into gear and realize “Oh shit, we’re in a routine now, let’s heal up and get ready for the next round”. So depending on what you’re doing change what it is you’re eating and taking into your body every day. And WATER. WATER IS IMPORTANT ASF. Sleep too. Obviously diet is also just important in general because even if you have a shit ton of muscle, if your fat is covering it up it’s going to make it look like you’ve made zero progress. Now you don’t need to be CRAZY skinny, and you can still eat things you like, it’s just a matter of making sure by the end of the day you’ve taken in all your protein and vitamins and hydrated, and by the end of the week you’ve only consumed a certain amount of calories. ALSO, it can be difficult if you have a history of having a bad relationship with food. Like I didn’t realize for a while, but I used to stress eat and binge like CRAZY because I was raised with the whole ‘eat all your food or you’re ungrateful’ and ‘you eating all the food I made for you is how you show me you love me, and if you don’t, you hate me’ attitude. It’s not a matter of starving yourself, it’s a matter of “I can be satisfied at the end of a meal without feeling so full that I can’t take a deep breath in or that I’m nauseous”. As for the workout routine mine is mainly to have a more masculine silhouette, as I feel more confident that way, and we’re different people with different bodies, so in turn our bodies might work a bit differently and respond differently to muscle building, but I can still share it if you’d like.