This is my first post on here, so please be kind

I will start off with some background on myself before I do do anymore. I'm 5'11 260lb (mostly belly) and I'm 25yrs old. For all of my life up until about 5 years ago I have been in extremely good shape and health. I played semi pro baseball in Cape Cod, but that came to an end when I torn up my knee and ankle. Since my injury my body has changed ALOT, due to depression and inactivity.

I went from being 5'11 weighing 189 and having very little fat, to 260lbs and having a big gut. My arms are still pretty muscular as are my legs. The funny thing is when people ask me how much I weigh and I tell them, NO ONE believes, they all think I weight 200-220lbs. I dont how many times I HAD to step on scale and prove how much I weigh. Even my doctor didnt believe what scale read. I guess I carry weight well, but in my eyes I dont.

I started lifting weights again last week, I started out bench pressing 80lbs and as of today I'm pressing 180lbs with 3 sets of 10, so I know that I still have my muscle its just covered.

So my question is how many calories should I be getting a day? I'm so confused when it comes to calories and carbs? Basically I want to shrink my waist, stomach and butt. I know that spot training is useless. My personal goals are to shrink areas listed above and to HOPEFULLY drop my weight to 200-210.

Here is an idea of my workout schedule:
(all are done with free weights)
Monday:

1 hour in weight room

*Chest
*Shoulders
*Biceps
*Triceps
*Abs

1 hour on stationary bike (25-30MPH)


Tuesday:

1 hour in weight room

*Back
*Quads
*Calves
*Abs

1 Hour on Stationary Bike (25-30MPH)


Wed:

*ABs

2 Hours on stationary Bike (25-30MPH)


Thursday:

2 Hours on Stationary Bike (25-30MPH)


Friday:


1 hour in weight room

*Chest
*Shoulders
*Biceps
*Triceps
*Abs

1 hour on stationary bike (25-30MPH)


Saturday:


1 hour in weight room

*Back
*Quads
*Calves
*Abs

1 Hour on Stationary Bike (25-30MPH)



Sunday:


30 minutes on stationary Bike 1 hour in weight room

*Back
*Quads
*Calves
*Abs

1 Hour on Stationary Bike (25-30MPH)



I try eat as healthy as possible, only salads, fish, grilled or baked chicken. Water and vitamin water is all I drink.

This all you need
Calorie Calculator - Daily Caloric Needs

Check the macronutrient ratios also to determine the carbs you need to take. This should help.

Thank you, that is very helpful

I know exactly how you feel (except I never played sports or had an injury). However, to once be in shape and look great, then wake up and realize you barely recognize what you see in the mirror feels like crap. I'm glad to see that you have decided to take control of it and make a change for the better.

The calorie est link is a good start (remember the extreme loss option is not always preferred). Also, it uses the Mifflin-St.Jeor formula, which is fine. It wouldn't be a bad idea to hit "advanced options" and switch it to Harris Benedict as well - just to get a range of caloric intake since any formula is an estimate. Make sure you take in enough calories, it will slow down your wt loss if you cut them too drastically.

For your workout - chill out. One hour workouts are more than sufficient, and you certainly don't need to (and shouldn't) workout everyday. Just b/c some is good, doesn't always mean more is better.

You could try something like

M/W/F - cardio (look into interval training for 30-45 min instead of such a long steady state cardio, I would recommend starting with general interval, then 'graduating' to HIIT later-which would be even shorter)

T/TH - wts (there are a million different ways to set up a workout, but I would recommend doing full body wkouts on both days - play with splits later on if you like)

Rest on Sat/Sun

Or you could do wts on M/W/F and cardio on T/TH
Or if you don't like to rest two days in a row, then you could split it up differently - the point being, don't work out everyday, at minimum you should rest one day a week, preferably 2 (especially at first).

I can't tell you much on diet, but I can see you're doing too much cardio. You should be aiming for 20-45 minutes, and not 1 full hour. I personally think 1 hour is a bit of an overkill.

My situation is pretty similar to yours. Everyone underestimated my weight as well.

Generally, I think 1 hour of cardio every day is too much. If you want to do it every day, I would shoot for 30-45 minutes. I do cardio every day, and do 30 minutes on weekdays and 45 minutes on weekends.

1 hour on resistance is just starting push it. You may want to bring it down a notch. I do 30-45 minutes of weights 4-5 days a week, with the time period depending on the muscle groups I am targeting that day.

As for your caloric intake, if you have a decent gym, they should have access to a nutritionist who can determine your metabolism rate via a breathing test. I did that today, in fact, so now I have a good idea of my caloric intake range to avoid eating too much or too little.

I would dump the vitamin water. It's a waste of money. Drink tap water and take a good multivitamin.

Good luck!

Thanks for the input guys

I understand what you mean about changing how much I'm doing. I'm doing to try what you have listed and see how that works. I do a total of an hour of the bike, but I split it up into 30 minutes before I lift and 30 minutes after or on non lifting days 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes at night.

Yeah I refuse to go to the gyms around here, I have Planet Fitness which if you are lucky you MIGHT find someone to check you in and to my knowledge they dont offer any pro help. Then there is Golds Gym which is about 8 miles from me, so I'm doing this on my own at home in my home gym.

Yeah the Vitamin water is terrible I just needed change for a that moment in time and it was either vitamin water or Gatorade and the water seemed like the better choice. 99.9% of the time I drink water.

My goal for the summer is thin out and lose my gut and love handles and over the winter I want to rebuild my muscle. From what I have read there is no way to really lose fat AND build muscle at the same time, so I have decided to split it up and see how it turns out.

So right now I'm eating about 2k in calories and staying FAR away from fried foods, to much sugar, high fat foods. I'm sticking to vegs, fruits, fish, baked chicken, hard boiled egg whites. As for working out I'm doing lifting and cardio, but just a tab bit more cardio than weights.

I'm open to any suggestions anyone may have. I have been surfing around here gathering as much info as I can, and I must say there is ALOT of great stuff on here.