is this HIIT? + general cardio/weights/protein intake help...

Basically, can anyone be my personal trainer for a second?

Ok, first of all. My stats: female, 19 (almost 20!heehee!), 5'4", 140lbs. I've been an athlete most of my life (thus love working up a sweat, feeling exhausted, sore muscles,etc) except for the past 3 years, so I'm wanting to lose all this excess fat, build muscle, and increase endurance and general fitness skillzzz.

After reading about the many extended calorie burning benefits of HIIT, I decided to start trying it on the treadmill (which is sort of difficult with all the button pressing, but oh well, it keeps me more focused than jogging around ATL). Usually I'll warm up for about 5 minutes then run at 8.5-10(the top speed) mph for 1 minute, then go down to 4-5.5 mph for 1 minute, back up to 9-10mph, etc. I usually do this for about 15-20 minutes, but don't feel TOTALLY wiped out afterward... I wish the heart rate monitors on the treadmills worked... So, anyway, would I be getting all those wonderful HIIT benefits from this routine? Is it so much better that I should totally replace my regular cardio? When doing this HIIT routine, how many calories should I expect to be burning over an extended period? I'm not sure how to log it except for the actual time I'm running, which is a lot less calories than my usual 5+ miles over an hour.

Second, looking back over my eating analysis, I've been eating way too much fat, a little too many carbs, thus definitely not enough protein, even when trying to throw extra protein in. I'm going to buy some whey protein powder today. I've been having a lot of problems with overeating and even binging (possible disorder, or maybe i'm just bored all the time and have lost all self-control) lately, so regardless of whether or not it will help build more muscle in a calorie deficit (will it?) I'm hoping the extra protein will help curb my appetite and keep me full...

Is a 20/30/50 fat/protein/carb ratio at about a 500 calorie deficit (should i go bigger/smaller?), working out for around 1.5 hours 6 days a week, good for my goals?

Third, which should come first in my workouts, weights or cardio, and when's the best time to supplement with protein or eat? I usually do weight training first, then cardio. Do I need protein right after weights (i don't think i could handle running hard on a stomach full of protein shake), can it wait until after doing 30-60min of cardio, or should I drink it before? Should I just start doing cardio first? And as far as splitting up muscle groups, and trying to decide between HIIT or cardio, would it be a good idea to do lower body resistance and HIIT one day, then upper body and running 5 miles the next?

Ummm, haha. SO, I'm gonna go ahead and give a big thank you to anyone who reads all this and can help me out.

anyone? i'd love to have some answers for my workout today...? please? thank yooouuu.

Here is an excerpt from an article that discusses the EPOC effect of exercise.  The extra calories burn is not enough that I would log it.

EPOC and Weight Management
Because the body continues to expend energy after exercise, EPOC plays a supplemental role to an exercise program in weight management. Currently, researchers are interested in the effect different forms of exercise have on EPOC.
The evidence suggests that a high-intensity, intermittent-type of training (interval training) has a more pronounced effect on EPOC (Haltom et al. 1999). Also, it appears that resistance training produces greater EPOC responses than aerobic exercise (Burleson et al. 1998). The research suggests that high-intensity resistance exercise disturbs the body’s homeostasis to a greater degree than aerobic exercise. The result is a larger energy requirement after exercise to restore the body’s systems to normal (Burleson et al. 1998), and thus an explanation for the higher EPOC. The underlying mechanisms that cause the higher EPOC observed in resistance exercise include elevated blood lactate, and an increase in circulating catecholamines (epinephrine and norepinephrine) and anabolic hormones.
Inspecting the data from several investigations, it appears that EPOC accounts for postexercise expenditure of 51 (Haltom et al. 1999) to 127 (Burleson et al. 1998) kilocalories. Since a pound of fat is equal to 3,500 kilocalories, the effect of EPOC on weight control must be regarded in terms of a cumulative effect over time.

Link to the article: http://www.drlenkravitz.com/Articles/epoc.htm l

Most people recommend weights then cardio and as far as food, as long as you get at least 20% of all three you are ok but you do need to stress protein to build muscle.

 EPOC doesn't seem to be enough of an effect to explain the observable results from HIIT or resistance training - there's clearly something we want going on when you do intervals and weights, but what it is exactly is up for debate.

 RMR is elevated by about 4% for up to 38 hours following a bout of resistance training, but it will also be elevated by the same 4% by having a meal rich in cayenne pepper, or taking a 500mg EPGC extract capusle - but neither cayenne nor green tea have the same observable effects on body composition. 'course, for cayenne the effect lasts 30 minutes, green tea about 8 hours, but even if you were to take green tea capsules every 8 hours it still wouldn't give you the same result as going out and doing intervals on your bike or lifting weights will.

 So what's actually going on is anybody's guess - we know that it works, but there's reason to think that we have very little idea why.

 You might be doing regular IT if you're not feeling completely wiped out at the end of it - which is great for increasing cardiovascular fitness, aerobic conditioning, and while not quite as good as HIIT for body recomposition, still better than steady-state.

 For a program outlining one possible HIIT (s)training schedule, check out HIIT and run - see if  your current schedule fits in there somewhere.

 And you seriously wouldn't want to do HIIT every day, it's extremely taxing on your recovery abilities, so doing too much is very counterproductive.

 Weights before cardio, unless you're a college-age male endurance athlete, in which case it doesn't matter. You're college age, but I would assume that you're still female, so lift first :)

 Nutrient timing is - complicated, but in general it works best to have either a solid meal 90-120 minutes before your workout or a shake 0-30 minutes before. The post-exercise anabolic window is roughly 1 hour, but protein synthesis in your muscles is elevated for a long time following exercise (24 hours to 6-7 days, depending on intensity and your training age) so if you have the protein shake pre-lifting, and then possibly save a mouthful or two to sip before running, and having a second shake post-run... well, given your stated constraints that would probably be optimal. If you could have food first and then the shake in between lifting and running it would possibly give you a slight improvement, but unless you're a competitive physique or endurance athlete I don't think you're going to really notice the difference.

 How you should arrange your training depends a lot on your goals and your training age - for a beginner, whole body 3xweekly is ideal, for the more 'advanced' athlete it may be neccesary to train push/pull/legs on alternate days. So it's completely goal-dependent, but for most people pull/HIIT, push/endurance, legs/nothing is a sensible combination - for you I'd think that whole-body/endurance cardio one day, HIIT on non-lifting days only would make more sense.

 Also, keep in mind that when you're trying to gain muscle, received wisdom from bodybuilding circles says that more than 90 minutes of cardio a week seriously interferes with the process. So if you're in a muscle-building phase, it may be best to limit cardio to below that level - maintaining what muscle you do have is considerably easier so if you're still in a fat loss phase lift heavy, and do as much cardio as you've got the time for.