Heavy weights or Heavy cardio to weight loss?

[Fastbird]

Greetings all! I am new here and I must say there is a WORLD on information here. Some really great reading and advice.

Let me start by saying I am currently 5'6 and 218lbs. About 10 years ago I was semi-serious into lifting (squats, bench, etc.) for strength purposes (racing BMX) and weighed around 175. Now that I am a bit older, I am trying to get back into shape for personal pride reasons and to keep up with my 3 kids.

I started out about 6 weeks ago...light weights, medium reps...just trying to ease back into it and get my form correct before I started heavier lifting. No point to killing myself the first week back and getting hurt.

After 4 weeks of easy going, I started a weight training routine loosely based on Jim's bodybuilding guide and I also started N.O. X-plode. I must say it tastes a lot better than the Creatinge Mono and Grape Juice from yester-year.

Anyways, I train 5 days a week at lunch in the company gym using the following schedule:

M - Legs
T - Chest
W - Back
R - Shoulders
F - Arms

During the initial month I lost 10 lbs. Over the past week or so, my weight loss has plateaued and today I am actually up 1 lb to 218 with 26% body fat.

Finally I get to my question.....

How much should I expect with the "newbie gain" as far as muscle is concerned? Also my lifting weights are going up pretty quick...is that mucle memory?

Should I be mixing in cardio with my work outs? If so, how much?

Last, is it better to lift hard and gain muscle to lose weight, or is it better to go hard on cardio, lose the weight and then strength train?

My goals are to get to 200lbs by years end, around 20% body fat and be able to bench 200lbs. (currently doing 155 x 5reps). Also should throw in there that diet is good, but not great (working on that) 2000-2200 cal per day intake.


Any comments/help is appreciated.

[JayFive]

Combine the weight training days into around a 3 day split and do cardio on off days. Morning, empty stomach cardio. Fix your diet. Read some stuff around here about carb cycling. Then, when you put all that into action, watch the fat melt off.

[TheHorseman]

Check out the last few weeks of my blog (Chuck Norris). It'll point you in the right direction. Don't know if you're looking at going as aggressive as I'm going, but the diet is going to determine if you properly partition the gain/loss.

[lee thompson]

Heavy weights,squats,deads and bench,sensible diet will put you right there.

[Fastbird]

thanks for all the advise guys! I will post results as they come.

[pullup master]

add deads to the leg day,
I would get rid of that arm day,
maybe make friday a leg day also, with big time deadlifting.
focus on big compounds for places you can add muscle to quickly, i.e., the legs and back can take most of the attention.