I am getting lost in all of this. I have been working out of and on for years. My problem is always consistency, and I already know that. However, I am at it again. I am a skinny fat man. In cloths I look skinny, but....

Anyway, Im about 6ft ,195#, 25 yrs old. I think my waist is around a 35 or 36. Medium frame. Typical day is spent in a class room or working on cars, mostly in a classroom though. I usually walk about a mile and a half home from class.

So here are my issues:

1) every site tells me a drastically different number for caloric maintence. Im getting numbers from 2600- 3700 for calorie maintance. To be honest though that has been my expirience. I never gain or lose weight no matter what I eat. And I love to eat. So i need an accurate method of figuring out how many calories I need. and how many I should cut by.

2) I dont know whether I should do cardio 5 days a week or not. My main goal is a 6 pack by june. To do that I think I need to lose about 15-20 pounds.

3) I want to work on my skinny ass arms while im at it, is it possible to make them look a bit better while cutting?

Nothing is 100% accurate.

But this calculator is as a good as anything at giving you a close approximation how your calorie needs........

Delaware Consumer Health Information Services

I've also seen a simple rule of thumb calc of 16 calories X per pound of bodyweight ......less 20% ( to shed fat ) as a good starting point.

Losing fat is all about losing calories.

Diet and exercise ( i.e resistance training and cardio ) are key considerations when looking for ways to cut calories. Diet, however, should be your number one priority IMO.

As for cardio. Cardio helps burn calories......and the more cardio you do per week, the more calories you'll burn.

In addition to the frequency of cardio, the greater the duration of the cardio and the intensity of the cardio - all other things being equal - the more calories you will burn as well. What type of cardio did you have in mind ?

A 6 pack is usually first associated with around 10% body fat ( and less ) , and at 6'0 195, I'd guess you might be somewhere around 16% body fat ( but that is just a guess ..could be more ) ...so you'd have to drop about 14 lbs. in 8 weeks to get around 10%.

First. Thank you.

Second. Is 14pounds a reasonable goal for 8 weeks?

third: HIIT is all the rage on these forums, and if i can get away with only doing cardio for 20 minutes 2 or 3 times a week AWESOME. But realistically I think I will probly also have to do some SS. BUt how much and when are the questions.

For better results you need to incorporate some resistance training. Exercises such as pushups, chin-ups, lunges, squats etc are a good place to start.

If you dont build your abdominal muscles there will be nothing to show.

That's losing about 1.75 lbs of fat a week........certainly do-able ( the ' max " you see cited most often is about 2 lbs a week ) ..... with some proper nutrition, commitment, discipline and hard work mind you.

It sort of depends.

When doing 20 minutes of HIIT vs doing 20 minutes of low to moderate intensity steady state cardio, then HIIT will likely burn more calories overall. Will doing 20 minutes of high intensity steady state cardio burn just as much as 20 minutes of HIIT - in this case, maybe...maybe not.

And of course 20 minutes of high intensity steady state cardio burns more calories than doing 20 minutes of low to moderate intensity steady state cardio, and doing steady state cardio 5 X a week burns more calories than 2 or 3 times a week. etc. etc.

So, it's really up to you....the right amount of cardio is what's right for you.

So if Im doing weight training on mon wed and fri. and I do HIIT on tues and thursday. Would you recomend also doing some steady state cardio? If so on which days?

One option is to do HIIT right after your weight workout ( if time permits ) and do steady state on tues and thursday..for a total of 5 cardio sessions in a week.

But if it were me, and I had a good aerobic base, and I only had 20 - 30 minutes to do cardio, and was accustomed to HIIT AND I wanted to shred fat as fast as possible in 8 weeks ...I'd wouldn't opt for steady state at all...but that's just me.

Instead, I'd do my weights 3X a week and in addition to that fit in HIIT 4X a week ....for 4 weeks. Then, for the last 4 weeks I'd still do weights 3X a week and bump HIIT to HIIT 5 X a week.

I read that your not supposed to do HIIT on the same days as your lifting. Because it eats into the same type of energy or something. Something to the effect of it being overtraining.

If you do HIIT on a day set aside for for HIIT only and nothing else, granted, you'll be less fatigued than if you do HIIT after weight training.

And you're right, HIIT and weight training rely heavily on glycogen for fuel.

But, assuming you have a solid diet, if you do a 20-30 minute HIIT session after weights, you should have enough gas left in the tank to still have a pretty robust HIIT session IMO.

That is a HUGE difference in caloric intake that! wow. You could always talk to your doctor to get an idea. I came a across article that I use. Maybe that will help you out.
How Many Calories Do You Need? - 24 Fit Club
But I get how it can be confusing. I have the opposite problem. My clothes make me look fat but unclothed... everything looks proportioned. But I want to lose so my clothes hang on my like they used to. UGH, losing weight is tiring!

Simple solution: Buy bigger clothes