Hey I'm looking for some advice on nutrition so basically I stopped blazing, drinking beer, soda ext. and started eating healthier this is what pretty much my daily food consumption is:

Morning (7am): Whole wheat english muffin with natural peanut butter and a banana
Morning Snack (10am): either one serving of natural yogurt or one serving cottage cheese
Lunch(1pm): Chicken Salad no dressing. (Chicken, cheese, carrots, cucumbers)
Afternoon snack(4pm): 2 pieces of fruit (banana, apple)
Dinner(7pm): Chicken breast and little bit of pasta

I am currently running/jogging/walking 5 miles every other day and lifting every other day with Sundays being a rest day.

I also am starting to take protein shakes. Do you think I should be eating more? My main goal is to lose the fat then work on getting cut. Any suggestions?
I'm 5'11" 190lbs and 19 years old Male.

Sounds pretty low, how much weight are you losing each week?

at first I dropped about 10 pounds in a week and a half. For the last two week I went from 195 to 188 so about an average of almost 4 pounds a week.

increase your portion sizes thats a lot of weight to drop that fast, ican understand if your just starting off you probably would lose 3-5lbs the first week or two but that should be cut back to 1-2lbs per week. Besides that I think your diet looks ok w/the protein shake, you can always get more picky but you seem to have a good foundation. (ie) im 180 and 6ft and im on a 20% cut right now eating 2600cals but I do more cardio so with your height and weight you should be getting at least 2300-2400 cals id say

Ok thanks, so about how many carbs then? and if I maintain my exercise 5 miles (every other day and soon to increase it to 6 miles,7 miles, so on) and lifting on the others days. I should be able to lose the fat and gain more muscle?

This formula below is one ( of many ) you might want to try and figure out how many total daily calories to ballpark for each day - this one is a bit different as it attempts to account for some of the cardio and weight training ( which you do almost every day each week ) calories separately...........

A - Your weight in pounds

B - Take A X 11 = RMR calories

C - Take B X 1.6 for your daily activities calories

D - Number of minutes you weight lift per week X 5

E - Number of minutes you do aerobic cardio, sports etc. per week X 8

F - Add D & E....divide by 7

G - Add C & F to get an estimate of your daily maintenance calories

.......to which, you can cut your ' maintenance calories ' by 20% or so as starting point toward helping you shed some fat.

btw - how many total calories does that day's worth of food ( you listed above ) come to ?

On the carb question, one approach you may want to consider as a starting point is to take in about 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight ( 1 gram of protein is 4 calories btw ), take in about 25% or so of your total calories ( i.e maintenance calories less 20% ) from fat and plug for the balance - i.e the remainder of your total calories ( i.e maintenance calories less 20% ) would come from carbs ( 1 gram of carb is also 4 calories btw )

on avg. around 1400-1500 calories. So I should increase my calorie intake correct? So I should be consuming more than 3000 calories. So I will still be able to lose the fat this way?

What did you get as an estimate of your ' daily maintenance calories ' when you ran the numbers in that calc ( i.e A - G ) I gave you ?

As I said, a good starting point is take an estimate of your ' daily maintenance calories ' ( however you wish to calculate it ) and to cut it back by 15% - 20%.

just a comment about increasing your cardio everyother day, ive found out the hard way that if you do more than 45-60min of cardio a day it starts eating at your muscle badly and the fat just stays at least it seemed like it did for me. I used to run 10miles everyother day which took a little over an hour but now I do cardio 7 days a week roughly 30min or a little more somedays and got much better results from that. Im not suggesting you do cardio everyday (im trying to cut) but maybe spread it out instead of just increasing it daily try 5 days a week or something

A. 190
B 2090
C. 3344
D. 600
E. 2880
F. 497.14
G. 3841.14

Fair enough.

So, 3,840 less 20% ( to help shed fat ) is about 3,000 calories or so a day.