Lost weight but also strength and muscle mass, advice?

Male, 22 years old, 145 lbs, 5' 7"

I started on my weight loss journey last august at 195. I worked out 3 times a week (lifting weights and walking/running at least 5 miles) for a couple months, not really counting calories but eating healthier foods... then 5 times a week until march (only running/eliptical, 5 miles, 500 calories under maintenance), and recently i've been so busy with work i've been cutting calories (to around 1400) and only doing a mile or two three times a week, if that. Up until feburary i was feeling healthy and strong and could lift about 45 lbs for 7-8 reps (1 arm curls) and had pretty good size biceps. Now i can barely lift 30 lbs for more than 3 reps and cant even lift 145 on the bench (1 rep). I have decided to cut cardio from my workout days and only do weight lifting in hopes of getting newbie gains again and have my body remember the muscle it had. Now the question i have is: I know i have to eat maintenance at least (which is 2200) to gain muscle, however will eating more help or will it go right to fat? I eat my weight in protein on days i work out eating this aunt millie's heart healthy bread and egg whites. Thanks for any advice you may have or experience you can share.

First off, GOOD MOVE dropping the muscle wasting cardio.  With just your height and weight, I'm not sure what your body fat % is, but it sounds like you're more concerned about putting on some muscle.  A few thoughts:

1) get your protein up to 1.5 grams / lb body weight minimum.  Try eating cleaner.  You may want to try starting with 30% P, 30 % fat, 40% carbs and adjusting (lower carbs) from there.

2) If you're not doing compound exercises like Squats and dead lifts ADD THEM.  Start your workout with them.  Then add things like pull-ups, rows, bench, dips, military press.   Lose the curls.  Once you can do 3 sets of 10 pull-ups, bench 1.25 x body weight (BW), squat 1.5 x BW and dead lift 2 x BW, then maybe consider adding them at the end of your workout.

3) You can eat clean and just above maintenance to Get big without getting fat.  Keeping the intensity of your workouts up while in the gym is ideal.  You should be sweating and keeping time between sets not chatting on a cell phone like a lot of people do. 

If you're looking for pre-planned workouts, a lot of people recommend Starting Strength and New Rules of Lifting for Men.  You can also try to design your own when you get the experience:

How to design a damn good program - part 1

How to design a damn good program - part 2

Finally, this is a kind of inspirational transformation:

refined physique transformation

Thanks for your reply ds1973. You seem like a pretty "in the know" kinda guy. I was reading the sites you gave but none tell you how long you are supposed to work out for. They say to work a muscle set until failure in 3-5 reps or so. However, how many different muscle groups should i work out a day? They seem to overlap as far as if i work my biceps or thighs to failture its a lot harder to train my chest muscles or even my abs since u have to use your arms and legs for the abdominal. Should i WANT to be aching all over and push through it just maybe doing less weight as the workout goes on or is that something to avoid? Basically in a nutshell im just curious if there is a such a thing as overdoing weight training in a day like there is cardio. I heard about an hour of hard sweaty cardio is the max, what is it for weights?

There are multiple pages for part one and two of the program.  Part 1 page 2 goes over the amount you're supposed to work out in a table halfway down the page.

To gain strength/muscle you want to use weights you can only do 3-6 times. I would recommend doing 3 exercises per muscle group with 3 sets in each exercise. So you would be doing 9 total sets overall divided by three different exercises. You should keep your sessions @ 45-60 minutes. If you exceed 75 minutes, your body switches into a different mode that begins to feed off muscle.

I also agree that you should re-work your nutrition. Get at least 2500-3000 calories easy of the right types of food.

For cardio, do HIIT 2-3 times per week on non-lifting days. This is the only cardio that spares muscle. It also speeds up your metabolism for hours and hours after you are done so you burn more calories through out the day while you are at rest. Plus it takes far less time to do (28 minutes total including warm-up and cool down) and is much more fun/challenging. You can read more about how to do it in my thread here : http://caloriecount.about.com/hiit-high-inten sity-interval-training-best-ft140800

Thanks for all your replies.