Hi all, I am new to this site and already find it to be very useful and I believe it will help me in hitting my goals. So you know where I am coming from, I was pretty sporty and thin back in high school then basically did no exercise in University and ate heaps of crap till I very quickly got out of shape. I want to get back in to shape for 2 main reasons being that I love competition and sport so I want to be able to do my best and also I am really not a fan of how I look now and would love to change it.

I am 172 cm in height and weigh 85 kg (sorry for the metric as I am an Aussie and too lazy to do the conversions).

I have been fairly seriously going to the gym for around 6 months now. 3 days a week for 2 hrs with sport on 2 other days. My routine is 1 hr weights and 1 hour cardio. I have already gotten alot of useful tips from some of the posts on these forums in regards to the type of cardio I should be doing etc. In 6 months I have developed some muscle mass which is encouraging and lost a little body fat but nothing that compared to what can be done in 6 months.

My main problem is my diet as I an stick to a plan as needed but I am terrible at designing one. According to the calorie calculator I should be having 2500 calories per day to be losing weight (assuming excersice etc) and I also now realise I should be having 5-6 smaller meals a day. If anyone has a plan that I can use / adapt I would appreciate it and any other information that can be useful.

I look forward to your responses and ideas.

although people would be able to type you a sample diet layout, it is best to read the nutrition section, and come up with a diet that suits your needs. It might seem hard, but once you read a bit, it will all fall into place.

Fair enough point, I have read a bit of the nutrition pages and there is some very good advice so I will see what I can do. For your reference, my current diet goes along the lines of :

Breakfast - 8:30 - Cereal (usually cocoa pops, I know these are higher in sugar than some but they really dont seem too bad)
Lunch - 1:00 - Sandwich (usually ham/salad or tuna/tomato)
Dinner - 6:30 - Whatever my parents serve (usually meat/3 veg however I am moving out soon so I will be able to control this more myself)
Supper - 10:00 - Protein shake after the gym

I have removed all soft drink from my diet 2 years back and most sugar (I ate a lot of crap at Uni) though I do admit that on a Tuesday night I tend to do movies with friends and this can involve takeaway for dinner and on weekends I may have a few drinks (bourbon and coke) all of which are not good for me. Despite this I do not see how I am exceeding the 2500 calories I am allowed to eat a day on a controlled diet, however I suppose the mix is all out aswell.

In regards to my training, I do the gym on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday between 8-10pm. 1 hour of weights (chest one night, back another and arms another although I have started to change this a bit after reading some of the other posts on these forums) followed by 1 hour of cardio (treadmill running in a pattern of 6km/12km for 3min/1min intervals. I now see I should be doing more intense for shorter periods so as to burn more fat and less muscle). I also have indoor soccer on Friday nights and cricket / soccer regular season on Saturdays.

I hope that these details will show that I have given much thought to this and would really like to improve on what I am doing since I am not seeing the results I would like.