Hi. I'm new here -- a YMCA membership Christmas Present sturred stirred some dust in my 5'9 194lb. frame, sending me surfing to this site. You're guys' enthusasism completely shook me. I'm pumped. I'm going to lose weight to 155.

I have just a few questions.

Using 'kmfishers' advice on the 'I am Fat' thread, I logged onto FitDay.com today, and here is what my Calories Eaten vs. Burned looked like.

Calories Eaten Today
Total: 1942

Calories Burned Today
Total: 3453
Basal: 1977
Lifestyle: 1256
Activities: 220 (I did day 1 of Weighttraining from kmfisher)

But, according to kmfishers equasion, he said to do this:

Calories per day = (194 lbs * 11 * 1.2) - 1000 = 1560 cals per day

So, my question is, should I be aiming at eating 1560(from equasion) cals per day or eating 2453 (my calories burned/day - 1000)???

And, what is basal and lifestyle calories and should I take that into account?

And my third question is, what would you recommend for me, being 194lbs instead of 240? Would you still go Weights, Weights, Cardio, Weights, Weights, Cardo? That doesn't seem to make sense with me -- it seems like it would be more effecient to run/cardio more because I burn more calories.

Thank you very much in advance. I guarentee that your advice will be appreciated, memorized, and, most importantly, used.

you're not eating nearly enough to feed your body if you did nothing. You mentioned you'd lose weight down to 155. And you will eating that little. But you will be a very fat skinny guy with virtually no muscle. You need to rethink your dietary approach.

An effective way to go about dieting would be to follow the approach listed in this thread "how's my cutting diet? i'm close to getting it right" on the fat loss page. I gave him advice in caps.

The keys to retaining muscle are understanding what effects certain foods have on your body. When to consume them.

I say the more veggies, the merrier.
Lean protein at every meal.
Quality post-workout nutrition isn't going to make or break a program but it important in retaining muscle mass while cutting.
Fasted cardio at 65-75% max-heart-rate is a good idea.

read around, see what others have to say. Good luck, and please don't eat at a 2000 calorie deficit.

Welcome to the forums. Congradulations on starting to become a healthy person.

I would suggest you look at Marcus's post. It's a kind of primer for this forum. http://forums.johnstonefitness.com/showthread.php?t=1222

Not everyone agrees with him 100%, but we probably all agree about 85-90% at least, and it is a great place to start as far as nutrition is concerned. I cannot say it better than him. Start there, and then ask questions for tweaking.

You suggested that cardio will burn more calories than weights. I can see why you would think that, but the opposite is true -- let me explain. When you lift heavy weights, low reps, you are forcing your muscles to grow larger. You might feel sore the next day, that's because your muscles are growing, repairing, recovering. That growth burns a lot of calories. Actually, it burns calories 24 hours a day -- even while you are sleeping. Further, muscles are very expensive to maintain. That is to say, bigger muscles = higher metabolism. Or, every muscle fiber you have burns calories 24 hours a day just to maintain the muscle. Obviously bigger muscles burn more calories than smaller muscles.

So, even though you might burn more calories at the gym doing cardio, you'll burn more calories overall if you do weights. In fact, around here, most people agree that nutrition is the number 1 factor in losing weight, weights are second, and cardio is just icing on the cake. In fact, lots of people lose all the weight they want with just nutrition and weights, they never do cardio and it is easy. Personally, I tried just nutrition and cardio -- man, that was hard. Now, with weights, the fat is coming right off.

Also, I would suggest starting slow. Don't burn yourself out quickly, this is a lifestyle change, and you probably won't stick with it if you try to change radically overnight. You're just setting yourself up for failure. Keep coming back to this site, you'll find lots of support here. Keep us posted on your progress. Good luck.