I am 5 foot 5 167 lbs, the bmi on this website is not correct. I definitely have more muscle than fat. I just need to get rid of a little fat and gain a little muscle. Run 10-15 miles a week. I lift weights 4-5 times a week. I don't have the greatest of diets. But I am working on it. I am counting my calories now as of two weeks ago I didn't care. I am making sure I am in between 1300 to 2000 calorie intake a day. Im not wanting to get a six pack at all, so I know that my goal that I want to attain is a hella near. My love handles arent huge but they could stand to get smaller. basically, just need some better directions to get me to my goal faster.. say 2-3 months.
thanks in advance

Matt

There would be a few things you could do. I would recommend running more each week or incorporating another aerobic activity like cycling or rowing-machine etc. The more aerobic exercise you're doing, the more it will help you. Getting Fit and Healthy! You also said you dont have the greatest diet, so I dont really know what that means. It will be important to stick to a healthy diet...

Your post is like saying, "I'm doing stuff in the water. Please tell me how to swim better." What stuff? If you want specific advice, you'll need to tell us exactly what you are eating, how much and when.

Otherwise, since your level of activity already seems to be up there and you yourself say your diet "isn't the greatest" (which reads to me like "is horrible so horrible I want to avoid having to deal with it" ) work on following these rules. From what you describe, the odds are pretty good just cleaning up your diet will get you where you want to be.

"which reads to me like "is horrible so horrible I want to avoid having to deal with it" )

you read me like an open book. : )

Its a bowl of cereal in the morning, about two cups. 10-20 grms of protien bar or shake.
a lean pocket for snack and half of a power bar or protien bar about three hours after breakfast.
lunch is the same thing (lean pocket and the rest of the bar)
three hours later a full protien bar 20grms or canned tuna or top ramen.

and dinner is the worst, it varies from burgers, pizza, lasagna, tri tip, sandwich. With sides of chips, asparagus, broccoli, salad, mashed patotoes, fries... basically whatevers around to eat. i make sure not to eat huge portions. about a fistfull.

and about two hours later i have to have a small snack so i have been trying to eat yogurt, before that it was usually a bottle of beer (literally) or a handful of cookies.

I know its a pretty lame diet but I work as a laborer in construction so when I work i either burn a hella calories or i burn nothing. and lately its been slow (stupid economy) so i have been trying to do some frugal spending, and trying to adjust my diet to my day is really hard. some days im REALLY hungry when I don't do anything, so i don't know what to nourish my body with. I know it can be done, a lot of its mental for me... but sometimes my stomach wants to take charge and eat up the whole fridge and cupboards.

also [focus], that link didn't work for me....

Just to give you some healthier lunch ideas...

My fiance is a labourer in construction as well. He can sometimes work 10 or more hour shifts. He brings a cooler to work and it's stuffed with 3-4 apples, a container full of melon pieces, 2-3 sandwiches (usually turkey or chicken on whole wheat with some lettuce), a few cups of yogurt, and some cubes of cheese along with 2 or 3 water bottles. This is all packed with an ice pack to keep everything nice and cold through the whole day.
Just letting you know that it IS possible to eat real food instead of having to rely on protein bars and such in your line of work.

whats his physique like if you don't mind me asking. and also whats the rest of his diet like during the day ie breakfast, dinner, after dinner snack?

Hm, well he's 5'7, and I don't know his actual weight but I think he's in the 160's somewhere. He's quite muscular. Breakfast is a meal we rarely eat together, but when I see him eating it's usually some whole wheat toast with peanut butter, or a bowl of cereal with milk. Dinner is... whatever I put on the table infront of him Usually just some type of lean protein with a complex carb and a bunch of veggies. In the evening I think he eats some more yogurt, and on occasion I see him eating another peanut butter sandwich, along with a big glass of milk. His caloric intake is pretty high because he burns alot of calories at work, so I'm sure he's just making sure he doesn't lose muscle mass.

He doesn't count calories or pay attention to portion sizes at all really, as he's just concerned about maintaining, so it's hard for me to be any more specific for you.

De Nile's not just a river in Egypt. Or something.

Here's the link again for some basic nutritional guidelines. Somehow an r went missing when I pasted it into my earlier post. Very odd, but whatever.

Bars are crap. Shake is fine (as long as it's not some weightgainer garbage a protein shake that has more than a g or two of carbs or fat in it isnt what I'm talking about) but nowhere near as satisfying and filling as a whole source of lean protein would be (chicken breast, extra lean ham, egg whites, that sort of thing - check out LV's grocery list in the nutrition forum here or read some of Jon's articles on his site (in the link) for ideas.

This may as well read "garbage for snacks". The more you learn about nutrition the more you will learn that generally speaking, the more steps it took for food to go from its natural state (walking around oblivious in the case of say a cow or in the ground for vegetables) to mouth, the better it is for you. There are very few exceptions. These "protein bars" you're eating may as well be Krispy Kremes.

Garbage, garbage, garbage. Canned tuna is a decent choice for a lean protein but a lot of people avoid eating it more than once or twice a week these days because of mercury contamination scares. Get it fresh and prepare it yourself ideally, but canned chicken breast would be a decent substitute here. With lots of fibrous vegetables (as with every meal from now on basically, haha, if you haven't already read the link - you get used to it pretty quick, and it keeps you full and healthy without keeping you fat) and some sprouted whole grain bread for example. You can even enjoy a number of condiments that don't contain any calories or junk (prepared mustard for example is one of my favorites).

Believe it or not, dinner is actually the best, as it appears to be the only meal in which you are eating some actual food (in the sense that asparagus and broccoli are generally unprocessed and green = good ... unless its mold or rot in which case it equals death ). That said, if you're going to eat out, eat leaner cuts of steak, chicken breast, or pretty much any seafood with lots of brightly colored vegetables and whole starches such as brown/wild rice or yams. Believe it or not, these will better satisfy your hunger in both the short and long term. Over time you will come to recognize that any preference for the burgers, pizza, lasagna etc is psychological and not physiological.

Yogurt is almost always full of all sorts of junk. Consider instead some delicious natural peanut or almond butter on a slice or two of sprouted whole grain bread with a cup of cottage cheese. These are all slow-releasing, filling sources of nutrients, and pretty much the ideal choices before bed in terms of minimizing possible muscle breakdown while sleeping, not to mention beneficial in some ways to the quality of sleep itself (not being hungry being a pretty good recipe for a good night's sleep haha).

Some hunger is in your head, some is in your body. Contrary to popular misconception, it is possible to eat a great deal and be overweight while still being undernourished. Follow the linked rules consistently for 3-6 months and try to tell me these problems haven't mostly or completely gone away and you'll be lying. Basically what you have right now instead of discipline and knowledge is a pile of excuses and (to an extent) willful ignorance. That's my way of saying you are soft and rationalizing it instead of hunkering down to train your "eating right" discipline like you would your muscles with weight training. There's a knowledge element to it, sure, but as a beginner to either it's 90% guts and patience and 10% not being totally clueless (in the sense of continuing to do the same thing when it's been made clear it doesn't work - aka "being a crazy person").

It also happens to be the case that in almost all cases, with just a little effort eating healthy is far more cost effective than eating junk food. You might, for example, prepare all your own meals in large batches or say for the next day the night before -- this can be as easy as making several tasty but healthy sandwiches, chopping up some vegetables, and grabbing a couple fruits in all of 10 minutes total (with practice) -- and taking them with you in a cooler as suggested. I have little doubt that just that would cut your total food costs by at least two thirds upfront, in addition to making it much much easier to make healthy choices.

Which leads me into a little note on the difference between willpower and motivation. Willpower is the burst of energy you use to set things up so motivation can kick in and keep it going. Most people who fail at this stuff (which by the way is a scary high percentage - precisely because they don't know what I'm telling you right now) do so because they waste their willpower doing it the hard way day in and day out instead of using it to take an honest look at what's what and get rid of as many problems/excuses as they can so that motivation (which, while nowhere near as strong as willpower to begin with, recharges much faster and can stockpile through success to the point of being INFINITE) can deal with what's left (which usually isn't much at all once you've removed the self-sabotage).

Get on that ****.

dude, im on this ****. thanks a lot for your advice! And yes, it all was just a huge piece of denile that all i needed is a quick swift kick in the butt.

This may be a stupid question but im going to ask anyway. While on the 7 rule diet, i would presume that it wouldn't hinder my goal of getting a little bigger in muscle mass, right(given if i do the right workouts obviously)?

It just occured to me that on the 7 rule diet it didnt mention much about bread. i know you mentioned what bread is cool. would that be altering the 7 rule diet in a good way?

Also, this is what i took from the article, eat protien/carb/fat for everymeal. So i figured for every meal I'd portion it out to 70% protien 20%carb 10%fat(or something to that effect).

Very doubtful. I'll be shocked if switching from a terrible diet like yours to a healthy one doesn't cause you to gain noticeable amounts of muscle. Remember, you are not going to make an active effort to eat less than you need or more, what you are doing is changing what you eat. Indirectly you will end up eating far less (whole, healthy foods are more satisfying in the short and long term physically and yet generally contain far fewer calories than processed ones) and almost certainly shedding plenty of fat and gaining some muscle in the process but the goal is to change your bad habits to good ones and show yourself that you can get it done if you set your mind to it.

After that (and some people don't need to do any more), you can begin to worry about calorie counting and manipulation, if it's necessary.

Basically what Berardi has to say about complex carbs (whole grains of any kind, sweet/regular potatoes, whole grain breads/pastas/etc, stuff like that - cereals are basically out except warm ones like oats [just oats, or just grains, no other ingredients, mix in your own fruit, milk, cinnamon, protein powder, whatever does it for you]) is that you should limit them to meals around exercise. I didn't really touch on them because in the case of someone like you who is working hard all day, that means eat them pretty well every meal. You will likely simply need the energy.

Just a recap:

Generally speaking, Berardi-style eating actually means you'll end up closer to around 40% protein, 30% carbs, 30% fat, but don't worry about those numbers for the time being. Worry more about whether you are following all the rules at each meal. Rule #4 does apply to very active people as well, technically, but it might be a bit much for now, as above. Also, don't forget the part about breaking the rules 10% of the time. Just so long as you don't go wild and eat huge amounts. It's actually important that you do so. Planned breaks (instead of a cheat or "going off diet") mean much better avoidance of binging (because they take guilt out of the equation - you are doing what you're supposed to for good reasons) and greatly increased psychological endurance.

Some tad-bit about those love-handles man. First and foremost its important to diet to drop overall bodyfat to get rid of those things. You seem to be a candidate for first place that fat is stored is last place it will lose. While you are burning all those bodyfat while excercise, if you have a poor diet, when the body has extra calorie it will store in the love handle for you. Really watch what you eat and how much per seating.

Secondly, do not do spot training especially that titta-tot to work the side muscle. While you may think that you burning fat in those love handle, what you may be doing is developing muslce there and making it appear bigger (just with more muslce). The excercise I am referring to is holding the weight at your side and lowering it towards the knee and straightening back up. It's good for core stabilizing but in term of creating a smaller waist illusion, its awful.

thanks to everyone for all the info. im sure ill see a huge difference in a few months.