Losing Fat, Gaining Muscle

marissarekush

Hello All,
I am looking for a little advice here. I am currently 13-15lbs away from my goal weight, however I still feel like I want to build more muscle. Currently I do 3-4 days of cardio (1hr) and 3 days of strength training (30-50min videos on YouTube with my own hand weights or kettle bells at home) a week. But, being so close to my goal and still feeling like I have a lot of "jiggle" I was thinking of cutting one day of cardio and adding another strength day. So, my question is: should I increase my calories slightly (still in a deficit though) and start to really monitor my protein intake? My concern is that I don't want my body to use up the muscle I do have, because I am not feeding it enough energy to fuel the strength training.
My fitness pal currently has me at 1228 calories a day and I usually go over that (eat back some exercise calories), but I stil feel that's not very much. My goal was originally set to 1lb/wk and I changed it to 0.5lb/wk but my calories did not change.

Age: 23
SW: 189
CW: 168.8
GW: 155ish

If anyone has any input, it would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!

KathyApplebaum

A recent study showed that you can add muscle while eating at a deficit if you workout and get plenty of protein. As long of you don't have kidney problems, give it a try.

lemonychild

Pretty sure u still need to cut fat before u see definition

skorsk

Drop the cardio and lift heavy and eat your protein.