Help for maintaining weight and gaining lean muscle?

If you are looking to maintain your weight, first thing first is you should be meeting your calorie goal over the week. 2000 under for the week would result in slightly more than 1/2 lb/week of weight loss over the long term.

As far as beginner weight programs, I would recommend an all over body program with compound lifts, no need to do isolation exercises at this point. Stronglifts 5x5, Starting Strength, Allpro are the most popular. There are groups for all of these programs on MFP.

I'm sorry but how would you "maintain weight" yet gain muscle?
If you're goal is to gain muscle then you need to be in a surplus,period.
Being in a deficit or maintenance isn't going to add weight or magically turn fat
Into muscle. I would say find a solid lifting program, follow it and make sure it's
Progressive overload and eat at a small surplus; 200-400 calories to minimize fat gain.
It's impossible to gain muscle without gaining fat,let alone gain muscle while maintaining weight.
You can do this!

Btw,id recommend if you're new to lifting strong lifts or starting strength, both are good for beginners and
Focus in compound lifts.

Hi,

Your goals and approach, except for one big exception, sound EXACTLY like mine just now.

I'm going to be controversial, based on my 26 years of being in the gym and changing goals numerous times and I totally, disagree with what people are saying about exercise (However I acknowledge that this is just my own personal experience and opinion). The reason I saw fit to comment is that your goals and eating habits are the same as mine, right down to the protein and Centrum supplements and paleo diet.

I'm 5'11" and I've dropped from being an 84kg fat boy (thin frame so don't carry fat well) to being 76kg (and dropping) in three months. Now I can see five muscles on my abs but can't quite get the sixth - doh! I've got from a 36" waist to a 32" and all my friends tell me I look much better.

What did I change (aside from eating habits)? My gym workout was totally wrong for toning and lean muscle. Like you I was doing bench exercises, various reps blah blah and sure, I got stronger but it didn't really tone me or drop my waistline.

So.. I abandoned the weights completely and switched to running (indoors and outdoors). It should be noted here that I was the kid at school who was soo bad at running that the fat kids who stopped for cigarettes would beat me. I did NOT like running.

My goodness it works. I had to build up slowly because I had no endurance and if, at the beginning, someone had said to me then that I could run 10k every other day I would've laughed my @ss of at them but now I can do it and in three months I've dropped 8kg, I can count abs without flexing and I look faaar more muscular than when I was doing weights but my recovery time is far faster and I don't have to be religious about the workout regimen. Plus I sleep better and people tell me (without any prompting) that my shape looks better.

But for me, the icing on the cake insofar as seeing that it's working is that I used to look at the guys in the health club, pumping weights, thinking wow, they look toned. Now I just think they look fat.

The only downside, for me, is that I have soo much energy that I feel wired most of the time. Just sitting here now, I'm in the mood to go and run for an hour or two, yet I used to be the lard @*kitten* king of video games! If I can do this at 40, it would be gravy for you should you decide to give it a go.

Just my two pence worth

I know this goes against what some of the other good folks suggest. As mentioned, this is merely based on my own personal experience.

I stay away from circuit stuff because it just puts me off exercise but that's just a case of different things work for different people

Having said all that you can do anearobic respiration with running simply by inserting sprints into your run or, my personal favourite, getting on a treadmill, setting the gradient to 15% and holding 8km/s for as long as you can, then drop to 4% till you feel recovered and repeat. THAT will get your strength and endurance up. You will also see your 10k times drop dramtically. I never set a treadmill to less than 4% otherwise I'm doing nothing and it's doing all the work.

I recently started looking into the paleo diet, and I think it's a bit of a mixed bag. I work with a personal trainer and asked him about it, too. Paleo is good in the sense that it sort of forces you to incorporate a lot of vegetables, which is an area many people struggle with. On the other hand, in the words of my trainer, "Your workouts will suck because you're not getting enough carbs." Paleo seems to be a bit of a fad diet, not all that unlike the South Beach, Adkins and others. I prepare a TON of paleo recipes, but I'm picky about which ones I use. To me, paleo does NOT automatically mean healthy. I usually end up adding some steel cut oats or brown rice just to be sure I'm getting enough carbs. I found that my trainer was right. When I was doing strict paleo (which wasn't for long, mind you) I didn't quite have the energy for the workouts I did in the past. Since I've re-incorporated some GOOD carbs, my workouts are better. I can lift heavier weights and have better stamina.

The reason I say all of this is that you've definitely got the right idea with your workout plan. To build muscle, you have to pick heavy things up and put them back down. :laugh: I kind of wonder what would happen with your workouts if you incorporated some good carbs - maybe you'd surprise yourself and have even more stamina and could lift more! More lifting = more muscle development. Carbs have gotten quite a bad rap - and unfairly so - because your muscles need the good carbs. Based on my research I really don't think you can get enough carbs to fuel your muscles without incorporating some whole grains.