hey man, you sound a lot like i did just 8 months ago. In Jan 06 I was 195 lbs, over 20% body fat at 5'10" and not eating so healthy (even though i thought I was...)

Now in August 06 I am 5'10, 160 lbs, 8.5% body fat (thats 147 lbs of lean mass). As you can see i lost 40 lbs and it was mostly fat while maintaining my base muscle mass of about 150 lbs. Now I am lean and cut (but theres always room for improvement)

I have gotten criticism that I am now "too skinny" but thats just where I want to be at because now I can start packing on the muscle and even small muscle growths look like tremendous gains because every time a muscle changes under my skin it shows through since I have such low BF%.

How I did it? Baby steps. Baby steps man......a lot of people urge you to junmp into a regimin and diet plan with suppliments etc etc, and if you have the discipline, I would also highly recommend that...but for me, whenever I tried to do that (and im an extremely disciplined person) I would always fall short of my goals and lose motivation.

Start with working out. Get into the mindset that you WANT to be there, that was my first biggest challenge, but now you can't keep me away from the gym. Secondly, if you want to lose weight, train to lose weight....here's what I mean...

I started my plan by joining a martial arts school. My intention was to get in better shape and learn the art. In 2 months, I lost 15 lbs and lost no muscle. I was training 6 days a week in an art I wanted to train in....I WANTED to be there. Thats why I would strongly recommend joining a martial arts school to anyone who is interested in martial arts and wants to lose weight. I would sit at work and fidget in my chair waiting to get to my martial arts class because I couldnt wait to get in the dochang and throw some kicks. Psyche is half the battle my friend...

IN my experiance, when you are at the point where you enjoy working out and seeing results and it becomes fun for you to go to the gym, you want to really maximize your results. Now I KNOW everyone wants maximum results but when you get to the point I am talking about you REALLY WANT those results and you want less to get in your way. Thats when I started paying closer attention to my diet. Notice, I didnt say I started to cut EVERYTHING out of my diet instantly, I simply just cut the things out of my diet that I knew were bad, like soda, chips and fried foods. Once I was at that stage the nutrition knowledge and discipline just kept building up. 7 months after that initial attention to nutrition and I now log every one of my meals for calories, protein, carbs, fiber, and vitamins. I didnt start at the extreme, but I got there and I did it on my own. Thats how you have to do it.

Once you get these foundations your psyche will be your guiding force. After 2.5 months of karate I had to give it up because it was time to go back to school, thats when I got into lifting....but I continued to lose weight while doing mostly lifting rather than gain weight (which is what I wanted to do, because I wanted to lean up, at this point) THat is why I refuse to agree with anyone who says you can not lose weight while lifting. In march 06 I was 180 lbs (15 lbs down from karate and starting to watch my diet) at 5'10" with about 16% body fat. From there, since there was no more martial arts school at college, I was lifting 6 days a week. The key to losing weight, in any regimin, is to ingest less calories in a day than you are using in a day. Therefore, I was keeping my caloric intake below my Basal Metabolic Rate (the amount of calories u use up in a day if u just sit in a chair all day) at about 1800. This ensured that I was using less calories in one day than my body needed. By the end of the school term (march 06 to june 06) I was down to 167 from 180. Thats another 13 lbs in 3 months. Thats a 6 month total of 28 lbs.

When I got home from school I continued to lift with the same intake until I reached 160 lbs, at 8.5% body fat. The amount of muscle on my body has remained somewhat static for these months at around 150 lbs of lean muscle, BUT my strength has increased and my body is much more cut due to the lessening of body fat. At this point I am very lean and trying to bulk up therefore eating almost twice as much as what I have been eating for months.

If these are the kind of results you are looking for I can give you a more in depth look at my training schedule but you body is different than mine. Therefore, you can try out my routines, but I while you do, you should try to listen to your body and see what it's telling you. Thats key.

Therefore in my experiance you can still see massive results with 3 things. Baby Steps, Discipline and Listening to your Body.

Would love to speak with you more about this if you'd like