strength training-whats the point?

You're correct - without significant protein intake, you won't experience hypertrophy, you won't "bulk up." It's really hard to gain muscle during dieting, but what you're doing with strength training has two big benefits over other types of activity. First, anaerobic exercise is really potent and burns -lots- of calories compared to aerobic exercise. Second, you're telling your body not to burn muscle, but to burn fat instead (I know this is a gross generalization, but without strength training, the muscle will go before the fat as muscle demands more calories).

You could probably do with replacing carbs with protein, especially if you're trying to lower body fat percentage. To change up your routine, try sprinting up a steep hill (a hill you know that will kick your butt) for about 30 seconds for 8 sprints, do this twice a week.

I hope what I've written above helps in some way - everyone deserves the body they want. :bigsmile:

90 minutes of cardio how often? 90 minutes of steady-state cardio is too much.

Err, please do keep going to the gym! :embarassed: It sounds like the only changes you really need to make are reducing the amount of time spent doing steady-state cardio and upping your protein intake.

Tuna, whey protien shakes, almonds, egg whites are some of the ways I add extra protien to my diet, whey protien shake instead of milk on my cereal in the morning is my favourite tho.

Almost forgot to add... If you like cardio, keep doing it, it keeps your heart strong so that you can more effectively perform weight training.

BUT do it AFTER, not before you weight train, because it burns your anaerobic energy almost immediately while utilizing aerobic energy. Strength training uses anaerobic as opposed to aerobic energy, and thus you'll need it to hit the weights hard.

Generally, if you're looking to keep your body fat down and protein up, chicken and turkey are excellent choices. Beef-based products are very high in protein but tend to have more fat. Likewise with pork. If you're trying to stay lean and up your meat-based protein intake, I'd focus on turkey, chicken and fish. Milk, nuts and beans are also good sources of protein.

There is a lot of bad advice/information in this thread (I'm not going to call people out in public, so I'll just say that, if you want to know more de1amo, please PM me) and before you follow it, I hope you confirm that it's good advice. Not saying it's intentional, but this is how bad habits form.



Anyway

de1amo, couple of things.

First, it's perfectly fine to do both cardio and resistance training. If you're close to your goal weight, you should be very close to your maintenance calories anyway. While you really can't gain significant muscle mass while in a caloric deficit, there's real reasons behind continuing to do weight training even if you aren't building muscle. The reasons are, weight training release hormones that cardio doesn't, it keeps muscles active which means they won't be canabalized for fuel, keeping your existing muscle mass intact.

If you're asking how to build significant muscle mass, well it's simple: 1) lower the cardio down to say 30 minutes (somewhere below the glycogen threshold, you can still do it, just make sure you're not burning up all your muscle site glycogen). 2) try to keep your protein intake between 25% and 35% while doing the weight training 3 to 4 times a week. Note, you shouldn't weight train the same muscle groups every day (or even every other day in most cases). and 3) eat at your maintenance calories and make sure you eat your exercise calories.

that's it, not really much more too it than that besides eating healthy.

I agree with SHboss

25-30% of your total caloric intake from protein. That should at the very least keep you from losing muscle mass with all the exercise you are doing. IF you see you are getting too big, ease it down until you find balance.