Hi chaps.
Let's see if someone can give me some tips. Here's the situation.
Joined the gym about a month ago, with the intention of getting a good body tone. I'm generally active in summer (hiking/tramping mostly), but I get lazy and lose fitness in the winter, so I decided I may as well kill two birds with one stone and join the gym in the winter. Now, for the dilemma.
The trainer said I have to eat lots of protein if I want to build up muscle and get results. 200g a day at least, and move up from there. However the kicker is that I need to lose some 15-20 pounds of fat too too.
I'm 6'1", clocking in at 210 pounds currently. I've noticed that in this month my belt feels a little bit more loose, but the weight went up too. That's okay, muscle is heavier than fat, and I've lost some of the latter, but I have to lose more fat.
Now, the thing is, at 200g+ protein a day, I just don't see many ways of cutting down calories, except by living on protein shakes (I take 50g protein a day from shakes) and bars and similar. I have tried changes on my diet, but I really don't want to cut down on my fruit intake, or I'm going to go low on several vitamins. So I'm trying to make everything low fat (trimmed milk, 99% fat free low sugar yoghurt for the breakfast "Special K Protein" cereal and so forth), but cutting down carbs just stimulates gluconeogenesis and breaks protein to create glucose, so I'm not sure how well that would work.
Tips on this? How many calories should I be looking at per day? I go to the gym 4 times a week, with this schedule:
Monday: PT session, 1 hour, where he beats me up pretty bad
Tuesday: Cardio, I'm usually too tired to do anything else, but my legs manage a hour on the exercycle doing hill climb fine (burns about 500 calories).
Wednesday: Rest.
Thu & Fri: Weight machines on my own, which tends to be less intense than with the PT. Thinking of fitting some light cardio at the end if it'll make a difference.
On a separate note, I've got a very unbalanced body right now. Due to the kind of exercise I did regularly (the hiking), my legs are pretty good. I max out my routine at 10 reps @350 pounds with the leg press, and I stopped doing calf pushes at my trainer's advice when it became clear that the maximum weight of the machine (some 400 pounds IIRC) didn't really faze me, I could do 30 reps without much trouble - I apparently have to wait until I have more balanced legs. However, my upper body sucks (specially my arms - and specially my triceps, the biceps tends to hold out better and let me do the rowing/pushing/back exercises well), usually my triceps gives way halfway through my sessions and I have to work the chest and shoulders with exercises that don't involve them - and that's quite annoying too. Any advice on the triceps thing other than hit it hard and often?
Let's see if someone can give me some tips. Here's the situation.
Joined the gym about a month ago, with the intention of getting a good body tone. I'm generally active in summer (hiking/tramping mostly), but I get lazy and lose fitness in the winter, so I decided I may as well kill two birds with one stone and join the gym in the winter. Now, for the dilemma.
The trainer said I have to eat lots of protein if I want to build up muscle and get results. 200g a day at least, and move up from there. However the kicker is that I need to lose some 15-20 pounds of fat too too.
I'm 6'1", clocking in at 210 pounds currently. I've noticed that in this month my belt feels a little bit more loose, but the weight went up too. That's okay, muscle is heavier than fat, and I've lost some of the latter, but I have to lose more fat.
Now, the thing is, at 200g+ protein a day, I just don't see many ways of cutting down calories, except by living on protein shakes (I take 50g protein a day from shakes) and bars and similar. I have tried changes on my diet, but I really don't want to cut down on my fruit intake, or I'm going to go low on several vitamins. So I'm trying to make everything low fat (trimmed milk, 99% fat free low sugar yoghurt for the breakfast "Special K Protein" cereal and so forth), but cutting down carbs just stimulates gluconeogenesis and breaks protein to create glucose, so I'm not sure how well that would work.
Tips on this? How many calories should I be looking at per day? I go to the gym 4 times a week, with this schedule:
Monday: PT session, 1 hour, where he beats me up pretty bad
Tuesday: Cardio, I'm usually too tired to do anything else, but my legs manage a hour on the exercycle doing hill climb fine (burns about 500 calories).
Wednesday: Rest.
Thu & Fri: Weight machines on my own, which tends to be less intense than with the PT. Thinking of fitting some light cardio at the end if it'll make a difference.
On a separate note, I've got a very unbalanced body right now. Due to the kind of exercise I did regularly (the hiking), my legs are pretty good. I max out my routine at 10 reps @350 pounds with the leg press, and I stopped doing calf pushes at my trainer's advice when it became clear that the maximum weight of the machine (some 400 pounds IIRC) didn't really faze me, I could do 30 reps without much trouble - I apparently have to wait until I have more balanced legs. However, my upper body sucks (specially my arms - and specially my triceps, the biceps tends to hold out better and let me do the rowing/pushing/back exercises well), usually my triceps gives way halfway through my sessions and I have to work the chest and shoulders with exercises that don't involve them - and that's quite annoying too. Any advice on the triceps thing other than hit it hard and often?