Close to my goal. I want to put on some muscle.

I started my diet 2 and a half months ago and I am currently 12 pounds away from my goal weight of 170 and I want to start building some muscle once I get to 10 pounds away.

My current calorie intake is 1500 calories a day and I have not been doing any excersize at all yet.

Here are my questions:

1) how much should I up my calorie intake if I do 1 hour of strenuous excersize a night, 5 nights a week.

2) I want six pack abs(I know everyone does but I'm willing to do the work), what excersizes should I do and how many reps should I do to attain my goal.

3) I want to maintain a weight of 170 so I will be trying to lose weight while I put on the muscle, is that safe?

I have access to a 24/7 workout room at my condo association which has a few running machines, free weights, and what looks like a knock off of a bowflex.

I would like to avoid alot of sit ups because it seems to always give me a really sore back.

Some advice would be great, I've never worked out before and I dont really know where to start.

Firstly well done at achiving getting so far already and secondly what you want is totally achivable.

Im no expert and im sure someone how is will come along and give you waaay better advice than i can, but as im also in that area of wanted to lose the fat and gain alittle muscle ill tell you whats currently working for me.

1. Calorie intake.

Im currently carb/calorie cycling which is away of giving your body the fuel it needs to build muscle while eating at a weekly deficit. Basically in short what i do is do weight training 3 days a week (mon,wed,fri)and on thoses days i eat maintanince calories and make sure i get about 50% carbs and 1g of protien per body weight.

The rest of the week i eat my normal deficit calories (keeping my lvl's of fat and protien consistant and cutting out the carbs to about 30%(low but not stupid low)) while concentrating on still getting lots of protien (1g per body weight).

On thoses days i do either cardio or have a rest day, if the cardio follows one of my lifting dasy i make sure it's "light" steady state cardio so i don't undo the work i did in the wieghts room.

Although if your deficit calories is 1500 with no exercise you may need to add a few cals even on deficit day, i'd plug your "new" activity level into the tools and see what it comes out with because you'll burn out fast on 1,500 and you'll NEED food to build muscle and its also important its GOOD food, get rid of all the packaged rubbish and eat WELL ... fresh fruit veggy's and meats avoid anything highly process'ed.

2. Six pack

You don't need to specifically hammer your ab work to give 6 pack ab's like you i hate situps i have a boney ass and quite frankly they hurt, but i do, several different types of crunchs do a youtube for cruches, see what you get you need some that work the front and the sides.

However The trick to a six pack isn't exessive ab work because suprise suprise you already have a good set of ab's beneith all your fat because you use them EVERYDAY!! the trick to showing them off is burning the fat off and getting your bodyfat% down.

3. Gain muscle / Lose weight ... well your wieght might now go down per say i've lost only 4lb's since i started wieght training  because im gaining muscle BUT the importat think is that my body fat% IS going down and a look about a billion times better. Yes its safe, yes it's doable see what i said about carb cycling in answer 1.

Lastly hide the scales seriously if your going to build muscle they are not gonig to show you what you want to see ....  you weight loss IS gonig to stall but that doens't mean its not working, muscle is heavy it's heavier than fat so you can actually gain weight. However you'll slim down and generally start taking a much better shape ... so time to swap the tape measure for the scales.

thanks for the advice. I looked up the proper way of doing crunches and to my amazement, I certainly "feel the burn" the next day. It doesnt really look like much excersize when you watch someone else do it.

One part of your reply confused me:

"On thoses days i do either cardio or have a rest day, if the cardio follows one of my lifting dasy i make sure it's "light" steady state cardio so i don't undo the work i did in the wieghts room."

What can you do to "undo" the work in the weight room?

When you do a good session in the weight room you need to give that area of your body about 48 hours to recover because when you work out you sort of tear lots of timy rips i your muscles and when you rest your body repairs these rips and in doing so makes your muscles leaner / stronger, its actually this repair work that makes you stronger not the "strength training it's self"

re-working the same muscles doens't allow your body the time it needs to repair these tiny rips infact it just makes them worse and worse to a point where its not trying to repair them to make you stronger but repairing them because your caused yourself harm.

trust me if you want to get leaner and stronger never work the same muscle group twice in two days, and for your legs that means keeping your cardio light.

So remember our ability to build muscle is only as good as our ability to recover from our training, and we can't build muscle without REST!!!!

Thanks that makes sense now.

So here is what ive got going on, let me know what you think.

Every other night I go down to my association gym, I do a mixture of different excersizes,

1) I start off with 20 sit ups using this fairly comfy sit up bench they have

2) then I do 20 reps of 30 pounds using this weight machine where the weights are stored behind you attached to pullies. You push the bar away from your chest.

3) then I do 20 reps of 20 pounds using the same machine, but pulling down from above me to my lap

then I get on a stationary bike for about 10 minutes to let my abs and arms take a break.

then I repeat steps 1, 2 and 3 and call it a night.

i'd be temped to do your ab work after your weights you'll get the biggest benifit's from your lifts when your muscles are fully rested and although when you do abb work your not working all group as it where it can still tire you out and effect your performance on the weights.

Also you seem to be working very isolated area's of your body using one machine several times it really only going to make you uneven and trust me this is bad... because im assuming you want to like like a sculpted adonis not a misformed out of proportion gene freak haha.

im currently having a really hard time evening myself up after an injury because tore my chest/shoulder muscle a while back i've spent time "neglecting" that area of my body mostly because weights still hurt. However i've noticed it's really affecting my posture and im starting to look like the hunch back of Notre dame and ive had to get the help of a personal trainer who is very expeinsive to try and help fix what i've screwed up ... (apparenly i worked my shoulders tov much and negected my chest and back.. sigh)

Anyway it's very important to find a workout plan that works every muscle group evenly, it's not that hard there are some really good ones on the web that are not that hard to master trust me if i can manage them anyone can haha.. (just don't neglect a certain exercise like i did haha)

you can find some good suggestions here :

http://caloriecount.about.com/forums/post/904 89.html

this is also a good site

http://www.t-nation.com/archives.do?y=2008

it's and offer's alot of help with proper nutrition too because remeber now your weight training your diet needs to focus on that not just losing the pounds because you need to fuel your body correctly to make good progress ... muscles need fuel and all that jazz .. eat crap and you'll look like crap .. blaaaah blaaah blaaaah .. you get the picture??? 

It al seems very daunting when you start out trust me i was where you are 10 weeks ago and it all seems overwheming and it can be hard to know where to start but your taking steps in the right direction and that all thats important.

As of this morning ive lost about 5% body fat and just last night i saw my dance teacher who was quite frankly blown away with how good im looking so suddenly because i've not seen her since my last dance audition (8 weeks ago ) where i was told be a horrid man  to "get my fat ass of his stage, how dare im embarrase myself coming before him looking like a whale" ... sigh.

Anyway the point is if i can do it anyone can ... and trust me although im a dancer ive never lifted a weight in my life of done any other form of structured exercise in my entire life... im a well known lazy ass haha.. i like my computer my tv and my icecream ... exercise and eating right is very very alien but im doing it and so can you.