This is great, bet you had a bit of withdrawal! You're making changes and feeling the benefits. Keep it up!

I broadly agree with Reflex. In addition to my other past comments on this thread and others, bear these in mind as you move forward:

1) grains (bread/cereal/pasta) - these are a historically somewhat modern human contrivance, they will spike your blood sugar, give you a minor opioid hit, make you fat (insulin sensitivity) and give you little to no nutritional value. Most people are intolerant to the gluten in grains and have no idea. In other words: avoid.
2) fats - saturated fat does not make you fat, so the fat on things like bacon, and butter melted onto your vegetables, and in eggs and on steak...etc are actually good for you. Natural fats and butter within reason are your friend.
3) crisps, ribena, OK as a brief stopgap to get you off the pop, but ultimately kiddy food you can look to move past. Anything in a flashy packet or can is a once a week treat at most.
4) if you end up with essentially 3 plates of food every day (1 @ breakfast/1 @ lunch/1 @ dinner) with each plate being half meat and half vegetables, with a banana as one snack between meals, and a youghurt the other, and a protein shake immediately after exercise while still sweating...you'll be eating like a champion. Obviously this requires time and effort, you will need tupaware boxes and to prep things every day.
5) forget the bloody fat burners, please. We want to move towards nature, not away from it.

Keep on truckin' it's good progress so far.

PS

For me, your diet sounds OK, just get some more protein into it! It really helps if you have things you like as part of it, since you're more inclined to stick to it!

Also re your workouts... I'm not a fan of Back day, Chest day, Arms day, legs day etc. for a lot of reasons but if losing weight is your goal then you'd be better off ditching this strategy in favour of something more total body orientated.

Compount movements like the Deadlift and Squat and olympic lifts like the clean work almost every single muscle in your body in a single explosive movement and are a million times better at building muscle and ramping up your metabolism than isolation movements like bicep curls and weight machines.

I go weight training twice per week and my workouts look something like this:

The 'Big Three':

5 x 5 Deadlifts
5 x 5 Squats
5 x 5 Bench / Shoulder Press

Other Stuff (usually 3 to 4 of these):
Pull Ups, Dips, Press Ups, Bent Rows, Lunges, Planks, Incline Dumbell Press etc.

And then 10-20 min on an ellipictal or treadmill.

Stretch down.

If you want a good weights program google 'Starting Strength'.

Just my two penneth anyway mate, best of luck!

Amen!!!!

DJ I've been following your posts and tbh I know you want quick results but you seem to be doing really well as you are!

Your diet has come on leaps and bound from one of your first posts so I wouldn't be too hasty otherwise you might relapse! Give it some more time then as PS and Caboose say drop out the other stuff and you get used to it and feel comfortable.

Really twice a week? whats your figure like out of curiosity...


Yeah I need to keep it steady and just keep at it... could do with some kind of morning boost though I'm always dead in the office at 7am...

I'm sure somebody else has said about scrambled egg whites in the morning - Sainsburys sell them in a chilled bottle/carton and they make ok scrambled eggs.
Personally I have 2 scrambled regular eggs (with soya milk) and a couple of plum tomatoes in bed with a decent herbal tea within 15mins of waking up. It gets food in me without spiking blood sugar levels, then have a real light snack an hour or 2 later if needed.

Edit:

Each to its own.

To be honest, every man and his dog will have different opinion about training routine, nutrition etc etc. It is never one size fits all! There are a lot of contributing factors. I have taken pro hormone, fat burner, natural supplements etc etc. With a good research, advice from my gym mates, I have never find anything is detriemental to my ...!

Figure is a result of diet + training and whilst my training's good, my diet is less so! I'm 15% Body Fat, 15 Stone and 6'2" tall - Kinda like a Rugby player. I'm comfortable with how I look tho - I used to be 19 stones worth of fat so I'm pretty happy with myself. I run a lot too and mix up my routine with Kettlebells and such also. I've just embarked on a drive to get down to 14 stone in a month - I'll let you know how it goes!

If you think that training twice a week isn't enough to build muscle, then don't worry - it's more than enough. Of course you can train 3 times a week (the starting strength program I mentioned is a 3 x a week program) but if your goal is fat loss then you'd be better off doing some cardio on the other day I would think. But it's up to you - if you enjoy weights, then by all means do them 3 times a week! And you can do stuff on your arms too - you'll just get way more benefit if you do them after big compound movements.

Also if you want more protein, Milk, Yoghurt, Marmite (yes that's right, marmite!) are all great choices.

There's also Quark (continental cheese that tastes like Yoghurt) and Biltong/Jerky if you're feeling adventurous!

How much does protein affect fat loss? (I say fat, because I don't necessarily want to lose weight. Just fat).

Most websites I've read in the past regarding fat burning, have just concentrated on having a calorie deficit and not really mentioned protein in diet..

I am going to get some protein powder on pay day, I'm just curious on how it will affect my fat burning...